April 22, 2022

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All you need is L.O.V.E.: 50th Year Celebration Page B1

Seeing history unfold

Primary Election: Candidate Statements Pages B6-B15

THE WARSAW GHETTO. The blood of our brothers and sisters still cries out from the ground. The question is are we listening? Will we take care of everyone, not just our own? Will we speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves?

Will we be righteous when so many are cowards?

ANNETTE VAN DE KAMP-WRIGHT Jewish Press Editor fter a whirlwind week, during which Jeff Kirshenbaum and Rabbi Steven Abraham agreed to join the JFNA mission to the Polish-Ukrainian border, and 28 duffel bags were filled with over-the-counter-medicine by a generous community, the two found themselves on a plane to Warsaw. With the exception of one news outlet referring to Jeff as “Rabbi Kirshenbaum,” everything went miraculously well. Below, we’re sharing Jeff and Rabbi Abraham’s words, without too much editing. Entries written by Rabbi Steven Abraham are marked with RSA and those written

by Jeff Kirshenbaum with JK. MONDAY, APRIL 4 And we’re off. Steven Abraham and I are honored to represent our community on a JFNA Humanitarian Mission to Poland and the Ukrainian border.

Thank you to everyone who generously donated medical supplies for our trip and to the Omaha Jewish Federation for asking us to go.

Twenty-eight duffel bags checked. JK I’ve spent much of my life feeling like a bit of an imposter

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when it comes to my own Jewish history. So many friends and people I admire lost family in the Holocaust. My religious school teachers were all survivors, and I could never understand their pain. While the Shoah was a communal loss, it is a loss an outsider cannot fully grasp.

Ironically, most of my father’s family was born in Kiev, Ukraine and in Russia. I don’t know their stories, except to say they came to America looking for a new life prior to the war, traveled through Ellis Island and, like so many, had their names changed to become more American.

In high school, I traveled on a teen trip to the Czech Republic, to Prague, and visited Theresienstadt, the model concentration camp; it was an out-of-body experience. I never had the desire to visit Poland, as I feared I would not be able to fully appreciate the enormity of what took place. In my mind, to not understand, to not be able to appreciate it, was to dishonor the memories of those who perished. I didn’t feel worthy of it.

Today I get the chance to visit Poland, but under very different circumstances. I am beyond honored to be traveling with other members of JFNA to witness and hear more about what is taking place in Ukraine, to see the refugees and witness the work being done with my own eyes.

See Seeing history unfold page A2

A2 | The Jewish Press | April 22, 2022

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Seeing history unfold

Continued from page A1 I am conflicted about this journey, but incredibly honored. I am so proud of our community for coming together with an overwhelming amount of medical supplies and Passover games. All done in the hopes of bringing a small amount of joy to those who have lost so much.

More updates to come. RSA TUESDAY, APRIL 5 As we embarked on our journey, it was essential for me to express why I thought this mission was so important. Jeff and I came to see the incredible work being done by a host of Jewish and secular organizations. Organizations such as the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), Natan, the JCC in Warsaw; all working under the umbrella of the Jewish Federation & Jewish Agency. We came both to witness and help raise awareness for this vital work back in Omaha.

When we arrived in Warsaw, we were immediately met by JFNA staff and shortly joined the other 25 members of our trip from all over North America. Our first stop was to drop off goods at a makeshift distribution center at the Nozyk Synagogue in Warsaw. It was remarkable to see all the humanitarian goods brought from Omaha and its sister Federation Communities. The speaker from the JDC explained that, besides the work they have been doing for women and children, they have also been helping to relocate Holocaust Survivors who were looking to leave

Rabbi Steven Abraham and Jeff Kirshenbaum at the border crossing

Ukraine (at least in the short term). As with many refugees, the JDC explained that most of the refugees want to return to Ukraine and so are choosing to relocate for the time being throughout the EU. The last choice is to fly across the Atlantic unless they have family in the US. Ironically, many refugees are choosing to go to Germany; these elderly Jews want to go there as they see it as the best place for their families.

Following our tour of the JDC facility and the unloading of our humanitarian aid, we headed for the Focus Hotel. The Focus Hotel is near the center of Warsaw. This is a lovely, 4-star hotel with quality accommodations, modern furniture, and great Wi-Fi. The hotel, and a few others, have been leased by the JDC and The Jewish Agency for Israel to house people who have fled Ukraine with the hopes of making Aliyah to Israel.

Check-in at Eppley Airport: two travelers, 28 duffel bags

The Israeli government has established a fully staffed hospital at the hotel and also has set up a mobile consulate to speed-process citizenship for each person. In addition, there have been almost daily flights to Israel mostly chartered – to bring Ukrainian citizens to Israel. Upon arriving in Israel, they immediately receive an Israeli passport and earn full citizenship. They then go to an absorption center that begins the process of integrating them into Israeli society.

It is absolutely remarkable and extremely hard to put into words the logistics and collaboration that had to come into place between the Jewish Agency and the JDC. As we left the Focus Hotel, we were given a few facts and figures: • 68,955 - number of calls starting on Feb. 24 to make Aliyah and ask for assistance • 8,998 - Ukrainians who have made Aliyah (as of 4/4/22)

• 11,046 - Russian applications for Aliyah.

This is a less-talked-about dilemma but an essential piece of the story.

• 5,000 – number of non-Jews that Israel will absorb • 5 – countries, including Poland, that are helping Jewish refugees • $41,302,939 – monies the Jewish Community has raised While at the hotel, we heard several incredible stories. One story was from a gentleman whose mother had been designated a righteous gentile by Yad Vashem. Their mother saved a Jewish family during WWII. Due to their family’s status as righteous gentiles, they could gain entry from Ukraine to Israel.

After returning to the Marriott, we were honored to hear from the newly minted Israeli Ambassador to Poland, Honorable Yakov Livne. He and his office have worked to help See Seeing history unfold page A3

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Seeing history unfold

Continued from page A2 the 15,000 Israelis get out of Ukraine and build up the Jewish Agency presence in Warsaw to help Ukrainian Jews get to Israel. He also spoke passionately about how Poland has stepped up throughout this conflict. Israel is the only country operating a field hospital within Ukraine.

We then heard from Rabbi Michael Schudrich, Chief Rabbi of Poland. Rabbi Schudrich explained that as soon as the war broke out, a Crisis Management System among all Polish Jewish network agencies was established. Rabbi Schudrich pointed out that, “for hundreds of years, Jews in Europe were the crisis.

Now we are running the crisis management center.”

Not being able to sleep last night, I took a much-needed walk. First, I felt the need to take a walk to see the monument to Janusz Korczak, the Polish Jewish doctor who ran an orphanage saving countless Jewish children. After-

Images from the Warsaw ghetto

ward, I walked a few blocks to see one of the monuments of the Warsaw Ghetto.

It was difficult, if not impossible, to live with the dissonance of walking through a beautiful modern city and yet right in the middle are monuments to our people’s past that took place no more than 80 years ago. RSA WEDNESDAY, APRIL 6 As I write this, we are on our way to Medyka, Poland, a town on the border with Ukraine.

Everywhere Jeff and I go, folks ask where we are from, and we are proud to say — Omaha, Nebraska. Thank you for being on this journey with us. RSA It’s an honor for Steven and me to be representing our Omaha Jewish community on this trip.

I’m sure it will take time to fully process what we have seen, heard and what we have yet to see and hear. We are seeing history unfold in front of our eyes. JK Our last stop at the border was at a

closed former Tesco store that has been turned into a refugee center. Imagine a vacant Wal-Mart store that overnight morphed into a center for Ukrainian refugees — virtually all women and children — to catch their breath and to begin to make plans as to where to go.

It’s being run by volunteers — volunteers from all over the world.

It’s heartbreaking to see so many displaced without a firm knowledge of what’s next. But, seeing the many dedicated volunteers working tirelessly 24/7 is indescribable.

With a free morning before the flight back later today, we went for a run through the older sections of Warsaw.

Within the first half mile, we were at the remaining wall of the Warsaw Ghetto and the monument honoring Janusz Korczak.

It’s hard to put into words seeing this in the middle of a bustling city.

Sobering to see. Impossible to forget. JK See Seeing history unfold page A5

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2022

Update from the Jewish Agency for Israel

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As the Russia-Ukraine war rages on, we want to keep you and our partners and supporters informed on the vital lifesaving work the Jewish Agency is doing. So far, 11,500+ Jews have come to Israel as olim (immigrants) or as eligible to make Aliyah from Ukraine and Russia. As our operations continue, we expect this number to keep growing based on the volume of calls to The Jewish Agency and the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews’ hotline. To date, the hotline has received over 32,000 calls from Ukraine, 35,300 from Russia and Belarus, and 3,900 from the rest of the former Soviet Union.

The Jewish Agency continues to operate 18 facilities at five different border crossings for thousands of refugees, many of whom will

make Aliyah, with 85 people on the ground, including Israeli emissaries, local workers and volunteers helping carry out our efforts. More than 1,500 refugees are being accommodated in the Agency’s transit facilities in Ukraine, Poland, Romania, Hungary and Moldova while their Aliyah paperwork is processed; many arrived at our centers on the nearly 400 buses we’ve coordinated with local organizations.

The Jewish Federations of North America, in partnership with The Jewish Agency, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, and IsraAID, launched a first-of-its-kind central volunteer hub in support of refugees fleeing Ukraine. The new initiative will recruit and place hundreds of skilled volunteers, See Jewish Agency for Israel page A6

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Seeing history unfold

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The border crossing between Poland and Ukraine

Continued from page A3 This morning we woke at 5 a.m., boarded the bus and headed for Medyka on the Poland-Ukraine border. On our way south, we passed by the city of Lublin, the home of the famous Lublin Yeshiva (Chomei Lublin) and the infamous concentration camp Majdanek.

The Medyka border was a surreal experience. Over the past six weeks, approximately 2.5 million Ukrainians have left their homeland, upwards of 125,000 at the Medyka border crossing. It was incredible to see free food offered by the Sikh community food truck, World Central Kitchen, the Egyptian triage tent, and the Italian paramedics.

It is hard to describe the feeling of seeing families, children, elderly walk across the border searching for safety. It is one thing to talk

about it, it is one thing to hear it, it is a different experience to be standing and watching a family walk across a national border searching for safety and a new life. The scene was unlike anything I had ever seen or felt before, yet I had a deep sense of pride knowing that the Israeli flag was the first thing you see when walking into Poland.

Following our time at the border, we drove about 10 minutes to a makeshift refugee camp in Przemsl at a Tesco Shopping Center. The center had recently been closed, and the mayor decided to turn the center into a shelter. We had the privilege to walk in, although photos were not allowed out of respect for the privacy of the refugees. As we walked in, we saw flags of multiple nations, from UK to Germany, and families were sleeping under the

STRONGER FAMILIES A BETTER COMMUNITY

flags of the countries they hoped to immigrate to. Inside the Tesco Center, Israel has set up a medical clinic staffed by Hadassah Hospital staff, as well as a daycare, also staffed by Israelis. What is important to point out is that there was NO NEED for Israel to have any resources at the Tesco Center, as anyone who wanted to make Aliyah would have already declared this to the JDC and skipped the Tesco Center. The entire reason for Israel to have staff at the Tesco Center was because of their care and concern for the Ukrainian people.

We left the refugee center and headed for the Rzeszow Jasionka Airport to fly back to Warsaw. As we drove into the airport, the first thing we saw was a dozen U.S. Patriot Missiles batteries.

In addition, the base next to the airport has

been staffed by members of the 82nd Airborne of the US Army. All these precautions were taken to defend Poland, a NATO ally of the United States. RSA THURSDAY, APRIL 7 While the formal program was now over, Jeff and I woke up and attended Shacharit services at the Nozyk Synagogue. The Nozyk Synagogue is a Jewish Heritage Site. During the war, the Nazis turned it into horse stables.

Now it is once again an active congregation housing a Kollel and daily minyan.

Before we headed to the airport, we met with the JDC leadership in Warsaw that had been relocated to the Hampton Inn Hotel.

This hotel currently has 80 adults and 18 youth; there are five hotels across Poland hosting over 200 adults (mostly Jewish). JDC never asked if anyone was Jewish. Folks were evacuated, and they wanted to help.

At the JDC meeting, we met with the head of youth activities for Russia, Moldova, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and others.

She oversees 63 cities with Jewish youth across Russian speaking countries. She went from Moscow to Riga, Latvia, then on to Warsaw. We also met with the director of JCC in Kharkiv (Harkov) in Ukraine, a city now destroyed by the Russian military. Both women are refugees, yet are now helping to acclimate other refugees to Warsaw.

It has been a whirlwind 50 hours on the ground in Poland, an experience I will never forget. I look forward to sharing some of my experience about the work being done on the ground and how we can help after shabbat services. RSA

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Yom Ha’atzmaut: Meet the vendors

JESSI TAYLOR Executive Assistant, Jewish Federation of Omaha On Wednesday, May 4, from 5-7 p.m., we will celebrate Yom Ha’atzmaut as a community. During our carnival, the following vendors will offer their various crafts and art pieces at our Shuk. a.j.k. o’donnell has always been an artist, and began writing as a child. By 14, she had moved out of her childhood home, living in the countryside outside Omaha. Over the course of five years, o’donnell lived in multiple places before finally settling down. It was during this time of constant uncertainty that she began to compile poems from her childhood and works recently written into the collection Nicoteane and Other Foolish Mistakes. In 2018, she released her second collection, This Void Beckons. o’donnell’s writing has appeared in the Huffington Post, with her 2017 series entitled A Life in Transitions, the Outrider Review, The Daily Iowan, and most recently on Medium. “My literary career will always be focused on investigating the human experience

Omaha BBYO to hold Ukraine Fundraiser ALEX KUGLER Omaha BBYO and Mother Chapter AZA #1 are hosting a fundraiser supporting the people suffering from the conflict in Ukraine. On Tuesday, May 10 at 5:30 p.m. at the Staenberg Omaha Jewish Community Center camp pavilion. The entire community is invited to join us for food, music, backyard activities, inspiration, and hope.

All proceeds raised will be donated to the cause. Living in the United States, it is very easy to take our freedom for granted. Let’s unite together as one and give back to the world!

Jewish Agency for Israel

Artwork by Doug Wolfson

in an intimate, yet universal, fashion, she said.

I hope to remain a constant voice of the mundane, the unconsidered, and the improbably prophetic events of the human narrative.”

Annette van de Kamp-Wright and her daughter, Isabella Wright, will share their space and their art at the Yom Ha’atzmaut carnival. Annette paints in her spare time (she has a soft spot for pomegranates), while Isabella’s drawings are mostly digital and belong in fairy tales. Annette is from Voorthuizen, the Netherlands; Isabella was See Yom Ha’atzmaut vendors page A8

Continued from A4 especially those who speak Russian and Ukrainian, on the ground over the next few months.

JReady, The Jewish Agency’s platform for emergency preparedness, response and rehabilitation, in collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Israel Trauma Coalition, sent a delegation to Sofia, Bulgaria, to implement training for some 50 community leaders to assist them in the treatment and absorption of the refugees. The training included several workshops and seminars, providing tools and resources to best equip the variety of community professionals and volunteers in addressing the refugee crisis.

Last week, Jewish Agency lay leaders Michael Siegal (Chairman of the Board of Governors), Steven Lowy (Member of the Board of Governors) and Beth KiefferLeonard (Member of the Board of Governors) traveled to Poland to see our operations on the ground at Ukraine's borders firsthand, volunteering alongside staff and volunteers and meeting with Jewish refugees. They were joined by Israel’s Minister of Aliyah and Inte-

gration Pnina Tamano-Shata, Jewish Agency Acting Chairman Yaakov Hagoel and CEO Amira Ahronoviz, as well as Keren Hayesod Chairman Sam Grundwerg, and other senior leaders. Dan Elbaum, The Jewish Agency’s Head of North America, also traveled to the field last week, joining a JFNA mission visiting our operations in Poland and Budapest before flying alongside 141 olim to Israel on an American Jewish Committee-sponsored flight.

For the Passover holiday, we are organizing Seders — sponsored by UJA Federation of New York — for 300 refugees in the hotel rooms we’ve booked for them across Eastern Europe. We are also sending Haggadot in Russian, produced by the Harold Grinspoon Foundation’s PJ Library program, to our centers in Eastern Europe and providing them to the immigrants who are being accommodated in hotels in Israel, with an opening letter from Tamno Shata and Hagoel.

Additionally, we sent a delivery of kosher food for Passover weighing nearly one ton (~2,000 pounds), to the Chief Rabbi of Poland for the holiday activities the community is organizing for Ukrainian refugees.

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Visit to Ukraine

As I write this story, a terrible war is raging in Ukraine. The citizens and soldiers in that Eastern European country are defending their nation and starting to rout the Russian army into defeat. Women and children refugees are entering Poland, while men 60 and younger are required to remain to serve in the military.

A 45-year-old former lawyer-turned- RICHARD FELLMAN actor, raised in a typical Jewish family, is Ukraine’s president. The world agrees that Volodymyr Zelensky is well on his way to becoming an icon and a man of world history. Thousands have been killed, especially women and children. Cities are being laid to waste. Arms and supplies are being sent to Ukraine from many other places. Europe hasn’t seen such devastation since World War II. The Omaha Jewish community joined others across America and sent two representatives to Poland to view the war and report back. Jeff Kirshenbaum, one of Omaha’s strongest leaders, and Rabbi Steven Abraham of Beth El Synagogue flew to Poland and viewed the tragic masses of survivors and the hourly miracles performed by volunteers. They have returned and reported what they saw.

In one of his reports, Rabbi Abraham spoke of Rabbi Michael Schudrich, the Chief Rabbi of Poland, who is among those leaders supervising the work of Jewish organizations.

In 2009, I lived in Ukraine for six months. Three years later, I returned to Kyiv for two weeks to deliver lectures on American politics at the Advanced College of Public Administration.

When I completed that task, I spent a week in L’viv in Western Ukraine, visiting the lands where my family originated. On my way home, I spent three days in Warsaw, Poland.

Friday afternoon in Warsaw, I went to the Nozyk Synagogue, the central Jewish building in Poland’s capital. The Nazis destroyed countless Jewish places of worship, but left Nozyk standing and turned it into a horse stable. It is now refurbished. I waited in a small outbuilding until the main structure was opened. In a corner of the restored shul, a dozen young men were studying. One could hear their voices. Groups of tourists entered. An elderly man came to each small group

Tritz Plumbing Inc. 402-894-0300 and explained that the Chief Rabbi of Poland would lead the service, and that he always wanted to greet each group, so we were asked to remain after services ended.

At exactly 5 p.m. a man in a business suit walked in to the front of the synagogue, spoke with each group, and stopped by me.

“Shabbat Shalom, I’m Rabbi Schudrich. Where are you from?” he asked.

“I’m from Omaha,” I said.

“That’s right down the Missouri River from Sioux City, isn’t it?” he asked. “Do you know my friend Jule Harlow?” I said “Yes, I do,” and he smiled and said: “Stick around; I want to talk to you.” His American accent surprised me.

He invited me to dinner in a small adjacent building with about 30 others. He asked me to sit next to him. He spoke quickly.

“I’m vegetarian, so we don’t serve meat, “ he said. “No brisket tonight. I married all of those young couples and converted nearly all of them. See that good-looking man with the handsome blonde wife? He was a neo-Nazi, but now he’s learning Hebrew. Come with me after dinner.”

He lived in an elegant building about a block away in a totally up-to-date apartment.

“Jule and I are friends from our days at the seminary, but I’ve become Orthodox. My father was a Conservative congregational rabbi. Jule has told me how he comes to Omaha for Rosh Hashanah, visits his mother in Sioux City during the middle days, and returns to Omaha for Yom Kippur.” I told Rabbi Shurdich that Jule and I were good friends.

As the evening went on, he began telling stories.

“Remember the time when the President of Poland and his delegation were flying to Moscow to meet Russia’s president and the Polish plane crashed? All on board were killed. I was invited to fly on that plane, but I told the president that they were flying on Shabbat and since I observe the Sabbath, I could not fly with him.

“But I’m alive. The others are not. I’ll help you get a cab. Next time you visit Warsaw, call me. It’s a lovely city trying hard to establish good relations with Jews. I’m helping them.”

“Shabbat Shalom.”

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Yom Ha’atzmaut vendors Continued from page A6 born in New Orleans but considers herself a life-long Omahan.

Doug Wolfson grew up in Omaha. After his retirement, he rediscovered his love for making art. He combines his expertise with different technologies and traditional art, merging the two to create something new. A few years ago, inspired by his family’s own beloved pets, he started doing pet portraits.

He also creates other decorative items using a laser cutter and other traditional art techniques. Doug’s art crosses many genres. He accepts commissions and looks forward to sharing his work with the community.

Heather Miller’s mission is to normalize wearing cocktail rings with sweatpants. “I want to make the next generation of heirlooms,” she said. “I love using using old school metalsmithing techniques, antique impressions, and the highest quality gemstones in my designs.” Heather studied metalsmithing at NWMSU, Maryville, and Overland Park, KS, before working as a hairstylist for 25 years and returning to the craft of metalsmithing over five years ago. She works from her home studio in midtown Omaha and draws much of her inspiration from the historical architecture of the city.

Liam Chleborad is a self-taught artist of various medias. Most of all, he likes making things for people and helping their ideas come to life. He also explores humor through comics and illustrations. Liam will be selling

prints and commissions for personal works.

Papio Fiber was born to fill the need for more unique, high-quality wool in the Midwest. A one-woman studio specializing in very small batch hand-dyed yarn, each piece is expertly dyed with professional grade dye and hand-washed and dried with care.

RSVP specializes in finding the perfect invitation, card, or gift to fit your needs. They have a knack for making things custom and unique to you while happily helping to write the perfect wording, choosing just the right font and ink colors with style, flair and etiquette. RSVP began in 2003 when Nanci Kavich, a newly single stay-at-home mom, decided she wanted to share her love of paper and the personalized gift with the world. Nanci had always been passionate about etiquette and the wonderfully personal art of the written note.

Unpreserved Suburban Farmstead is a food and lifestyle company, specializing in personalized and custom infant and Judaica artwork.

This event is made possible through the generosity of the Murray H. & Sharee C. Newman Supporting Foundation, Herbert Goldsten Trust, and the following JFO Foundation funds: Special Donor-Advised Funds, Esther K. Newman Memorial Fund, Gertrude T. & Albert B. Newman Endowment, Morton A. Richards Youth Program Fund, Foundation IMPACT Grant.

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Israel’s different sense of humor A recent segment of Israel’s popular satiric television show Eretz Nehederet (Wonderful Land) addresses the Polish law that prevents Jews from suing for property stolen in the Holocaust. In his introduction, the pro- TEDDY gram’s host says, “Our WEINBERGER special emissary, Tamir Bar, flew to Warsaw to check out what the Polish people themselves think about the law.”

Herein, an edited portion of the segment in honor of Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, observed this year beginning on Wednesday night, April 27.

To upbeat music (the kind you would hear on a typical travel show), the piece opens with Tamir in front of a fountain in Warsaw, saying: “Poland: A country with a rich history, impressive architecture, and Grandpa’s real estate.”

Tamir is equipped with a rolling suitcase that he pulls behind him, as well as a Polish-English translator.

SCENE 1 [A house with a small dog barking outside] Tamir to the woman of the house: “Maybe the dog doesn’t like the Jews.” “No, no, no,” the woman tells him. After they go inside, Tamir says to the woman, “I’m doing a documentary about my grandfather. He said he lived here.”

The woman goes into the kitchen, asking, “Do you want some tea or coffee?” While she is there, Tamir takes out a tape measure and starts measuring a wall. Responding to Tamir, the woman says, “I remember only Abraham Rafael. We called him Vladek.”

Tamir: “Yes, he is the brother of my grandfather.”

Woman: “My grandfather bought this

house from him in 1944.”

Tamir: “When Vladek was here, you saved him, and you took his house. But now that Vladek is old, we’re thinking about switching back.”

Woman: “No!” The woman brings out documents testifying to the sale of the house.

Tamir picks up his mobile phone, goes into a corner, and, speaking in Hebrew, says, “Avi, there’s a complication: she has all kinds of supposed documents, apparently saying that it’s hers.”

[When Tamir returns, the woman ask:] “What is the attitude toward Poland in Israel?”

Tamir: “Israelis feel that they will never forgive the Polish for what they did to them — unless they give them the Polish passport.”

SCENE 2 [An apartment with an elderly couple] Translator to Tamir: “Your grandfather used to live here?”

Tamir: “Yes, yes.” And then Tamir says, “If it’s okay, picture of my grandfather to put here. Just for my grandfather, okay?” He then places a black-and-white picture—clearly of himself with a Hitler-type mustache—on top of a tall cabinet.

Tamir takes something in his hand and says “So, this is a mezuza.” He proceeds to hammer it onto a doorpost, saying: “It means that the house belonged to the Jews.”

Tamir places a big white kippa on the man’s head, saying, “if you don’t mind I put it on, okay,” but the man immediately takes it off and says “no.”

Tamir asks the translator, “Is it okay if I come live here with them? He won’t feel I’m here, I’m like ghost.”

The older woman shakes her head “no” and the man, who is becoming increasingly agitated, says, “Look somewhere else.”

See Israeli humor page A9

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New exhibition honors James Smith

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Israeli humor

JORDAN PALMER St. Louis Jewish Light Chief Digital Content Officer Honoring a life dedicated to art is the theme of a new exhibition honoring St. Louis artist James Smith at the Gallery At The District. The show, which opened on March 31, honors Smith, who passed away suddenly last month at the age of 73. The exhibition runs through May 31 and is open to the public.

“Words can never do justice to describe James’ creative abilities. Making paintings was his passion, he had an amazing studio and his dedication to art, research and creativity was limitless,” wrote his family about the artist.

Smith attended the University of Kansas, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Art followed by a Master of Fine Art from the University of Illinois.

He taught fine art as a graduate student at the University of Illinois, followed by the Uni-

versity of Manitoba, Western Illinois University, University of Missouri, St. Louis; as well as an adjunct professor at St. Louis Community Colleges: Florissant, Meramec, Forest Park and Fontbonne University.

He departed teaching to focus full time on creating and selling his artwork and would often receive letters of appreciation from former students.

James Smith’s art inside JCCs Although not Jewish, Smith’s work is displayed in the public collections of various facilities including the five Jewish community centers in St. Louis, Kansas City, Denver, Omaha, and St. Paul. For many years, Smith worked with Michael Staenberg, who was a force behind the development of these JCCs. “James Michael Smith conducted a tremendous amount of research to create these images in conjunction with the Jewish beliefs and the facilities that these works of See James Smith page A10

Continued from page A8 Translator: [Calming the man and turning to Tamir]: “He says it’s enough.”

Tamir: “He’s angry?”

Translator: “Yes.” SCENE 3 Tamir to a woman in a nice apartment: “My grandfather used to live here, and he always told me that his dream is to come back here, destroy everything, and build a big parking lot. Entrance 20 shekels [about $6.20] and every half-an-hour, five more shekels. 70 shekels for the whole day.” The woman laughs.

Tamir: “My grandfather, his favorite food was gefilte fish; if you don’t mind [he reaches into a plastic bag], I brought a carp from home — maybe we’ll make gefilte fish?”

We then see Tamir in the kitchen cutting the fish. In Polish the woman asks the translator, “What does this idiot want from me.”

SCENE 4 Tamir to an older man on the street: “Excuse me, you heard about the law that forbids Jews from claiming back their property?”

Man: “Yes, of course. Jews always thinking about money. Is that true?”

Tamir: “Is it true?”

Man: “Yes, it’s absolutely true.”

Tamir: “We not think only about money — also about real estate.”

Man: “Of course.”

Tamir: “What’s your problem with the Jews, the number one problem?”

Man: “You think there’s only one problem?”

SCENE 5 Tamir to a thirty-something man on the street: “Do you feel there’s antisemitism in Poland, or is it just something made up by the media that’s controlled by Jews?”

Man: “To be honest I have no idea, I haven’t come across this.”

Tamir: “What do you think the Polish people could learn from the Holocaust that they can implement in the next Holocaust?” The man laughs.

Note: Using this column as a guide, given the fact that much of this Israeli satire was conducted in English, curious readers might want to access the original segment at: https: //www.mako.co.il/tv-erez-nehederet/ 770e3d99ade16110. After clicking on the link, scroll down to the segments from 02.02.22 and click on the piece that is 6:36 minutes long.

Teddy Weinberger, Ph.D., made aliyah with his wife, former Omahan Sarah Jane Ross, and their five children, Nathan, Rebecca, Ruthie, Ezra, and Elie, all of whom are veterans of the Israeli Defense Forces; Weinberger can be reached at weinross@ gmail.com.

See full digital issues https://issuu.com/jewishpress7

Vote for Rick

VOTE FOR Rick Holdcroft NE Legislative District 36

Paid for by Walt Peffer for Douglas County Assessor/Deeds | 11612 Douglas, Omaha, NE 68154

Paid for by Holdcroft for Legislature

A10 | The Jewish Press | April 22, 2022

News LOC AL | N AT I O N A L | WO R L D

Beth El Annual Cantor’s Concert presents Maccabeats HAZZAN MICHAEL KRAUSMAN Beth El Synagogue “Bringing The Beat Back to Beth El” is the tag line of our upcoming Cantor’s Concert featuring the Maccabeats, America’s premiere Jewish a cappella group. The event will take place live and in person in Beth El’s beautiful newly renovated sanctuary on Sunday, May 22, at 4 p.m.

As their website notes, “the Maccabeats have entertained and inspired hundreds of audiences worldwide, from Alabama to (New) Zealand and everywhere in between. Using nothing more than the unadulterated human voice, a clean-cut presentation, and a little Jewish humor, this unique group of singers is able to connect with fans of all backgrounds and ages.”

As in the past, proceeds from the concert will go to benefit the Seth Rich Memorial Camp Scholarship Fund, which enables students to attend Jewish summer camps of every denomination. Jewish summer camping is fertile ground that nurtures and develops Jewish spirit, identity and commitment. Purchasing a ticket or sponsoring this event not only will provide you with an unforgettable afternoon of entertainment but constitutes an investment in our future communal leadership.

It is most appropriate that this effort is presented in memory of Seth Rich. Seth Rich was part of our Beth El family.

He attended Camp Ramah in Wisconsin for six years, participated in the Ramah Seminar in Israel and served as a staff member in Wisconsin for two years. Seth also attended Camp Sabra for one year. He was an outstanding example of how attending Jewish summer camps can benefit the individual, our communities, and the entire country.

The concert chairs, Mary and Joel Rich and Pam and Bruce Friedlander, together with the entire team at Beth El, are working hard to produce this outstanding concert. While individual tickets start at $18, there are a variety of sponsorships

bama wrote: “The performance was absolutely amazing, and my email inbox has been totally flooded with compliments and rave reviews — all for the Maccabeats. Y’all are not only incredibly talented, but you also have a dynamism and charisma which the audience can definitely feel!”

I first heard the Maccabeats live in concert as part of the Florida Panthers Hannukah celebration several years ago. The thousands who attended the game were thrilled by their exciting and captivating performance – I became an instant fan!

With their upbeat, exciting and engaging style, the Maccabeats promise to have you and the entire audience tapping your feet, singing along and dancing in the aisles.

James Smith available. Please visit our website at www.bethel-omaha.org to purchase tickets and find links to some of the Maccabeats’ amazing songs. You can also email me at haz zankrausman@bethel-omaha.org, or call the Beth El synagogue office at 402.492.8550 for more information.

As Cantor of Beth El, I have three goals in producing these annual concerts: to provide an outstanding and unique Jewish musical experience for the Omaha community, to establish Beth El as a premier venue for concerts of Jewish music, and to ensure that any student that wants to go to summer camp can go. The Maccabeats check all the boxes and more!

Loraine Reszick from the Levite JCC of Birmingham Ala-

Continued from page A9 art were created for,” said Maneta Siegel, director at the Gallery At The District.

At the opening of the exhibit, Staenberg remembered his friend and commented on how Smith, through his art, learned much about Judaism.

Gallery At The District The Gallery is a beautiful, modern and inviting art gallery and showroom located in The District in Chesterfield, just outside of St. Louis. The current exhibit features a portion of Michael Staenberg’s extensive personal collection featuring works by local, regional and international artists. When you visit the gallery, you will enjoy a diverse selection of eclectic paintings, sculptures and photography covering a range of subject matter and mediums that are available for purchase.

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BRIAN GRIMM Assessor/Register of Deeds

Paid for by the Committee To Elect Brian Grimm, PO Box 390546, Omaha, NE 68137, 403-639-8931

The Jewish Press | April 22, 2022 | A11

Above: Beth Israel’s youngest were ready for Pesach!

Above and below: Friedel students participated in the school’s 34th annual speech contest. The students selected the theme of their speeches based on this year’s topic: great times in American history. Ella Anderson (1st place), Judah Kohen (2nd place), Ilana Appleby-Leo (3rd place), the top speakers from the school contest, will move on to the district competition at the end of April. Friedel has had five past state winners, and the 2015 national winner, Danny Denenberg, was a Friedel student.

Above: The Ruback family recently celebrated their matriarch, Faye Ruback, as she turned 95 years old. Surrounded by several of her great-grandchildren, standing, Cameron Skiles, Jacob Torres, and Carter Eades; seated, Nicole Torres, Emma Eades, and Sydney Skiles, Faye was showered with love and good wishes from near and far. Happy birthday to a wonderful mom and grandma!

The winners of the RBJH Disney Day Wacky Wednesday contest are... Clockwise from above: the perfect Cruella de Vil, Phyllis Knicky; Joy Rutar, Most Original; Heather Smith, left, Best; and Natalie Osborne, Wackiest.

Left: Jewish Family Service’volunteers placed Pinwheels for Prevention on the lawn in front of our building. This annual event draws positive attention to the topic of keeping children safe.

SP O TLIGHT

GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY

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.

Above: Doris Alloy with great grandchildren Addy and Jack Williams and granddaughter Alissa Arbeiter.

Below: Harry and Doris Alloy with their daughters/grandchildren and great grandchildren (after a rousing hamantashen baking session!)

Above: Visiting scholar Dr. Lior Sternfeld delivered a lecture about Iranian Jews in the Diaspora.

Above: The Martinez Historical Society initiated displays featuring ethnic and religious celebrations. The first exhibit was about Chinese New Year. Karen and Oliver Pollak offered to do Passover. “Our accumulation of Haggadahs, empty matza boxes, Passover cookbooks and Seder plates came in handy,” Oliver said, “as did our shelflife expired jar of gefilte fish.”

A12 | The Jewish Press | April 22, 2022

Voices

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The images you are about to see

ANNETTE VAN DE KAMP-WRIGHT Jewish Press Editor This op-ed discusses the reported sexual assault of Ukrainian citizens by Russian troops.

CNN reported that US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken recently said the global backsliding of human rights was evident in Russia’s actions in Ukraine: “We see what this receding tide is leaving in its wake. The bodies, hands bound, left on streets.

Theaters, train stations, apartment buildings reduced to rubble with civilians inside. We hear it in the testimonies of women and girls who have been raped, and the beseeched civilians starving and freezing to death,” Blinken said.

The reports of increased sexual violence make for especially tough conversations. One human rights group accused the Russian military of using rape as a weapon of war. Yet, Putin continues to call this war “noble.”

An April 7 headline by the Jerusalem Post read: “Ukraine claims over 300 cases of rape, sexual violence by Russian forces.”

According to the article, UN political affairs chief Rosemary DiCarlo said the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine is attempting to verify allegations of sexual violence by Russian military, including gang rape and rapes in front of children.

These are unpleasant topics to think about for those of us who have the luxury of sticking our heads in the sand. And make no mistake, we can feel as if we do everything we can, we can send donations and we can pray, and all the while we can

still act as if this is happening to someone else, far bombings. away. It does not affect us. It’s not our war. Our bodBut while we give in to our discomfort (“don’t talk ies remain intact. about anything that has to do with sex!!!”), victims There have been a number of trigger warnings on in Ukraine and, let’s face it, in many other places, the evening news lately. Not just for stories about have to survive it and make sense of it. A global Ukraine; it also happened after the recent subway backslide of human rights, indeed. shooting in Brooklyn, when copious amounts of What can we do? We can choose not to look blood were smeared on the platform. “We have to away. We can pay attention and bear witness. We warn you,” the voice-over will say, “that the images you are about to see...’” and so forth.

There is such a thing as respect for the victims, of course. But, if we go back for a second to what is happening in Ukraine right now, do we sometimes use the excuse of privacy to simply avoid paying attention? We already know how difficult it is for victims to talk about sexual assault and to relive the crime; are we making it harder because we refuse to look? Who needs the trigger warning more, the vic- A pro-Ukraine march in the Main Square of Krakow, Poland, tim or the public? And if we talk and draw March 24, 2022. Credit: Omar Marques/Getty Images attention to these reports, are we helping, or are we can listen when the victims talk. Most of all, we can making things worse? accept that listening and bearing witness is a I don’t pretend to know the answers to any of thankless and ugly job that leaves us feeling powthis. I do know that in every war, throughout the erless. It needs to be done anyway. No, we can’t centuries, rape seems to come all too naturally to change the outcome, we can’t undo the crimes. We certain people, if we can call them that, regardless may have to admit that we are, at times, a little bit of what nation they are from. This is not a Russian useless. problem—it is a humanity problem. It’s shameful That realization is also a part of bearing witness, and sickening, and we are all uncomfortable talking because sometimes, all we can do is watch it hapabout it, much more uncomfortable than when we pen. So don’t look away. talk about school shootings or robberies or suicide

New York City still includes two French Nazi collaborators in its Canyon of Heroes. Why? MENACHEM Z. ROSENSAFT JTA Statues of Presidents Thomas Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt were recently removed from, respectively, the New York City Council chamber at City Hall and the entrance to the American Museum of Natural History on Central Park West. Municipal officials, acting amidst a wave of sensitivity to historical slights, noted Jefferson’s role as a slaveholder and the Roosevelt statue’s demeaning depiction of Native Americans.

Regardless of their shortcomings, neither U.S. president has ever been accused of dispatching tens of thousands of people to be killed in gas chambers. But two people honored by New York City have been.

For most of the past two decades, plaques honoring Philippe Pétain and Pierre Laval, under whose watch as leaders of the Hitler-allied Vichy regime approximately 77,000 Jews living in France were murdered, have been on prominent display in New York City.

The Pétain/Laval government promulgated draconian antisemitic laws, “aryanized” or seized Jewish property and rounded up thousands of Jews for deportation from France to Nazi death camps in German-occupied Poland.

Yet black granite markers engraved with Pétain’s and Laval’s names remain untouched on Broadway’s Canyon of Heroes in lower Manhattan.

The Pétain and Laval plaques and 204 others embedded in the sidewalks between Battery Park and Chambers Street commemorate individuals and groups celebrated with ticker-tape parades beginning in 1886. On Oct. 22, 1931, Laval, then prime minister of France, starred in his parade. Four days later, Marshal Pétain, the French army’s commander-in-chief at the end of World War I, was escorted up Broadway by 2,000 uniformed men and three bands.

At that time, neither of them had yet descended into ignominy; that happened during World War II. Both were tried for treason in 1945, found guilty and sentenced to death. Laval was executed but Pétain’s

sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.

The plaques, however, were installed in 2004 — not 1931 — by which time Pétain and Laval had been notorious for over 60 years. Imposing these blights on the New York City landscape in the first place didn’t appear to ring alarm bells — a fact that speaks volumes in and of itself.

Serge Klarsfeld, one of France’s most prominent authorities on the Holocaust, revealed in 2010 that Pétain, the chief of state of Vichy France from 1940 until 1944, had personally and significantly worsened conditions for Jews in France: A draft of his

French Jews were deported and killed as well.

Symbolism matters. A lot. And for better or worse, Pétain and Laval have come to epitomize Nazi collaboration at its worst. In France, no one except for ultra-right political extremists like Éric Zemmour — a reactionary (and, unfortunately, Jewish) fringe candidate who finished a distant fourth in Sunday’s first round of French presidential elections — wants to have anything to do with either of them. The last French street bearing Pétain’s name, in the village of Tremblois-lès-Carignan, was renamed in 2011.

A sidewalk plaque along Manhattan’s “Canyon of Heroes” remembers a ticker-tape parade in 1931 honoring Pierre Laval, who would go on to serve as the head of France's Nazi-aligned Vichy government.

Credit: Jacob Fishman

government’s first Law on the Status of the Jews (“Statut des Juifs”) of October 1940, which defined who was Jewish and which excluded Jews from large segments of French public life, included Pétain’s handwritten notations making the law ever more strict.

For his part, Laval, the head of the Vichy government, told German and other correspondents at a news conference in September 1942 that he intended to continue deporting alien Jews — that is, refugees and other Jews who did not hold French citizenship from France. “No man and nothing,” Laval declared, “can sway me from my determination to rid France of alien Jews and send them back where they came from.”

What’s more, while most of the Jews sent from France to the Nazi death camps were indeed foreign or stateless Jews, large numbers of native

In 2017, with Confederate monuments coming down across the United States, attempts were made to have the Pétain and Laval plaques removed from Lower Manhattan. At first, then-Mayor Bill de Blasio agreed, tweeting that “the commemoration for Nazi collaborator Philippe Pétain in the Canyon of Heroes will be one of the first we remove.”

His resolve did not last. In January 2018, the Mayoral Advisory Commission on City Art, Monuments, and Markers recommended that the Pétain plaque should stay where it is, arguing that “if a marker is accurate, and not celebratory of egregious values or actions, it should not be removed.”

The commission did throw a bone of sorts to those who were offended by the Pétain plaque. It suggested “re-contextualizing” it by adding explanatory texts so as to “reframe” the markers “as See New York City Canyon of Heroes A13

The Jewish Press | April 22, 2022 | A13

The Holocaust – History and Memory

A scholar whose work deserves more attention is Lawrence Langer. His work, such as Pre-empting the Holocaust, proclaims how important it is to see the Holocaust not primarily to gain insight into man’s inhumanity to man, American racial prejudice, the treatment of Native Americans, White Privilege, or trying to get “happy endings” or inspiration from survivors. Rather, it should MICHAEL GENDLER be viewed as unique with no equivalent Guest Editorial before or afterward. Never before or since has a nation devoted all its resources to the murder of an ethnic group both within and outside its borders. In Langer’s terms, it should be seen in a literalist perspective (the atrocities themselves) rather than an exemplarist one (how we can use these events to understand cruelty and human nature in general, especially regarding today’s concerns).

The late survivor, Magda Fried, of blessed memory, told my class that upon stepping out of the train to Auschwitz, an SS guard, to welcome her, ripped an earring out of her ear. Langer writes of victims waving their hands to the SS asking for another bullet so they would not be buried alive in a trench that they dug themselves. Other witnesses have described mass shootings carried out by the Einsatzgruppen SS who followed Nazi soldiers into Russia beginning in June 1941. Their only job was to gather and murder all Jews found in villages and towns.

Over 1,500,000 died like this. One prisoner from the Polish underground testified that not infrequently, Jewish people who had been shot, but not killed, fell into the pits covered with lime. As chemicals were introduced into these pits, the fate of the victims was to be chemically boiled alive. Words from such victims devolved into shrieks and mind-piercing screams.

So, how do we go about teaching a history of gratuitous torture and slaughter on a massive scale to secondary education and college students? First, they must understand that the

Holocaust was a horrific defeat for the Jewish people. Those who survived are invaluable treasures to assist us in recording what happened. However, it is not the survivors, but the dead who should be given the most attention. As Viktor Frankl, a survivor, wrote in Mans’s Search for Meaning, “We who have come back, by the aid of many lucky chances or miracles— whatever one may choose to call them—we know: the best of us did not return.”

Given the degree of savagery on the part of Nazi murderers, it is a mistake to teach students that we all contain within us the capacity to do such evil. Primo Levi, a survivor, detested such conclusions. He wrote that to confuse the murderers with the victims or others is a “moral disease, an aesthetic affectation, or a sinister sign of complicity...” (Langer, p. 34).

Finally, such monstrous evil could only be defeated by the use of violence in the service of good. It was the Allied military forces that finally stopped Hitler from eventually shipping New York City Jewish people to death camps upstate. After the Holocaust, pacifism in the face of evil was increasingly seen (accurately) as cooperation with it. And not the evil of banal bureaucrats, or a smoothly run industry of murder, but the evil of individuals who despised the Jewish people.

Holocaust study should not be primarily to find stories of inspiration (some of them, of course!), not to help learn about racism in America, not to be one example among many, not a symbol of man’s inhumanity to man, not a story about how many of us could become like SS murderers (just not true of most people), not how men like Eichmann represented cogs in a machine and illustrate the “banality of evil,” (Eichmann and most other Nazi killers were anything but banal, they harbored a passionate hatred of Jewish people), and finally, not so that we can look around us and see versions of the Holocaust present today. While these things may be discussed, the emphasis must be on the horrors themselves, the viciousness of the murderers toward the Jewish people, and the courage of those who resisted and those who liberated the camps.

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New York City Canyon of Heroes

Continued from page A12 a teachable moment.” It is not clear whether the commission discussed the Laval plaque at all.

Four years later, not only are the Pétain and Laval markers still there, but no “contextualizing” content has been added.

These two Holocaust enablers with blood on their hands continue to receive equal billing with the likes of Winston Churchill, Dwight D. Eisenhower, David Ben-Gurion, Queen Elizabeth II, Charles de Gaulle and Nelson Mandela.

I am not taking issue here with the removal of the Jefferson and Roosevelt statues. But if they were taken away, what possible rationale can there be for not doing the same to the Pétain and Laval plaques?

Pétain and Laval, incidentally, are not the only World War II villains to be glorified in the United States. The Von Braun Center in Huntsville, Alabama, is named for Wernher von Braun, who, prior to reinventing himself as a key architect of the American space program in the 1950s and 1960s, was a Nazi major who lethally exploited inmates at the Dora-Mittelbau concentration camp to manufacture the Third Reich’s V-2 ballistic missiles. A large bust of von Braun stands prominently outside NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, also in Huntsville. My father, who was imprisoned at Dora for several months, said that conditions there were worse than he experienced at Auschwitz.

As the son of two survivors of Auschwitz and BergenBelsen, I urge Mayor Eric Adams to take a fresh, hard look at the obscenity of heroizing two antisemitic Nazi collaborators on the streets of New York City, and fervently hope that he will have these markers removed without further delay. It’s the morally right thing to do.

Menachem Z. Rosensaft is Associate Executive Vice President and General Counsel of the World Jewish Congress and teaches about the law of genocide at the law schools of Columbia and Cornell Universities. He is the author of Poems Born in Bergen-Belsen (Kelsay Books, 2021).

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.

The Jewish Press Endowment The purpose of this endowment fund is to ensure the Omaha Jewish Press continues to serve the Omaha Jewish Community.

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The Jewish Press

Synagogues

A14 | The Jewish Press | April 22, 2022

B’NAI ISRAEL SYNAGOGUE

618 Mynster Street Council Bluffs, IA 51503-0766 712.322.4705 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 Join us on Friday, May 13, 7 p.m. for evening services with a guest speaker. The service will be led by Larry Blass.

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, Carole and Wayne Lainof, Mary-Beth Muskin, Debbie Salomon and Sissy Silber.

Handicap Accessible.

BETH EL Virtual 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: Passover Festival Morning Services Day 7, 10 a.m. at Beth El & Live Stream; Kabbalat Shabbat, 6 p.m. at Beth El & Live Stream.

SATURDAY: Shabbat Morning/Passover Morning Services Day 8 with Yizkor, 10 a.m. at Beth El & Live Stream; Havdalah, 8:50 p.m. Zoom only.

SUNDAY: Siddur 101 with Hazzan Krausman following morning minyan; BESTT (Grades K-7), 9:30 a.m.; Torah Tots (Ages 3-5), 10 a.m.; Torah Study, 10 a.m.; Kindergarten Roundup, 11:15 a.m.; Trivia Night with St. Luke, 6:30 p.m.

MONDAY: Women’s Book Group, 7 p.m. at the home of Gail Veitzer and Zoom.

TUESDAY: Mussar, 11:30 a.m. with Rabbi Abraham at Beth El & Zoom.

WEDNESDAY: Yom HaShoah Candle Pickup, 10 a.m.-noon at Beth El; Virtual Tai Chi, 3:15 p.m. with Beth Staenberg; BESTT (Grades 3-7), 4:15 p.m.; Community Yom HaShoah Teen Programming & Dinner, 5:30 p.m. at the JCC; Community Yom HaShaoh Commemoration, 7 p.m. at the JCC. FRIDAY-Apr. 29: Nebraska AIDS Coalition Lunch, 11:30 a.m.; Kabbalat Shabbat, 6 p.m. at Beth El & Live Stream.

SATURDAY-Apr. 30: Shabbat Morning Services, 10 a.m. at Beth El & Live Stream; Jr. Congregation (Grades 3-7), 10 a.m.; Havdalah, 9 p.m. Zoom only.

Please visit bethel-omaha.org for additional information and service links.

BETH ISRAEL Virtual services conducted by Rabbi Ari Dembitzer.

Classes, Kabbalat Shabbat and Havdalah on Zoom, WhatsApp or Facebook Live. On site services held outside in pergola, weather permitting. Physical distancing and masks required.

FRIDAY: Chag Kollel, 8:30 a.m.; Shacharit, 9 a.m.; Tot Chag, 10:45 a.m.; Mincha/Kabbalat Shabbat/Candlelighting, 7:54 p.m.

SATURDAY: Shabbat Kollel, 8:30 a.m.; Shacharit, 9 a.m.; Yizkor, 10:45 a.m.; Tot Shabbat, 10:45 a.m.; Daf Yomi, 7:10 p.m. with Rabbi Yoni; Mincha, 7:50 p.m.; Shalosh Seudos/Laws of Pesach/Kids Activity, 8:10 p.m.; Ma’ariv/Candlelighting, 8:57 p.m.

SUNDAY: Shacharit, 9 a.m.; Daf Yomi, 7:10 p.m. with Rabbi Yoni; Mincha/Ma’ariv, 8 p.m.

MONDAY: Nach Yomi — Daily Prophets, 6:45 a.m. with Rabbi Ari (WhatsApp); Shacharit, 7 a.m.; Deeping Prayer, 7:45 a.m. (Zoom); Daf Yomi, 7:30 p.m. with Rabbi Yoni; Mincha/Ma’ariv, 8 p.m.

TUESDAY: Nach Yomi — Daily Prophets, 6:45 a.m. with Rabbi Ari (WhatsApp); Shacharit, 7 a.m.; Deeping Prayer, 7:45 a.m. (Zoom); Kids Parsha Class, 3:45

p.m.; Daf Yomi, 7:30 p.m. with Rabbi Yoni; Mincha/ Ma’ariv, 8 p.m.

WEDNESDAY: Nach Yomi — Daily Prophets, 6:45 a.m. with Rabbi Ari (WhatsApp); Shacharit, 7 a.m.; Deeping Prayer, 7:45 a.m. (Zoom); Wednesday School, 4:15 p.m.; Daf Yomi, 7:30 p.m. with Rabbi Yoni; Mincha/Ma’ariv, 8 p.m.

THURSDAY: Nach Yomi — Daily Prophets, 6:45 a.m. with Rabbi Ari (WhatsApp); Shacharit, 7 a.m.; Deeping Prayer, 7:45 a.m. with Rabbi Ari (Zoom); Character Development, 9:30 p.m. with Rabbi Ari (Zoom); Medical Ethics, noon with Rabbi Yoni at UNMC; Daf Yomi, 7:30 p.m. with Rabbi Yoni; Mincha/ Ma’ariv, 8 p.m.

FRIDAY-Apr. 29: Nach Yomi — Daily Prophets, 6:45 a.m. with Rabbi Ari (WhatsApp); Shacharit, 7 a.m.; Deeping Prayer, 7:45 a.m. with Rabbi Ari (Zoom); Mincha/Kabbalat Shabbat/Candlelighting, 7:30 p.m.

SATURDAY-Apr. 30: Shabbat Kollel, 8:30 a.m.; Shacharit, 9 a.m.; Tot Shabbat, 10:45 a.m.; Daf Yomi, 7:20 p.m. with Rabbi Yoni; Mincha, 8 p.m.; Shalosh Seudos/Laws of Shabbos/Kids Activity, 8:20 p.m.; Ma’ariv/Havdalah, 9:06 p.m.

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

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

FRIDAY: Shacharit, 10 a.m.; Candlelighting, 7:54 p.m.

SATURDAY: Shacharit, 10 a.m.; Yizkor, 11 a.m.; Moshiach Meal, 7 p.m.; Yom Tov Ends, 8:57 p.m.

SUNDAY: Sunday Morning Wraps, 9 a.m.

MONDAY: Shacharit, 8 a.m.; Personal Parsha Class, 9:30 a.m. with Shani Katzman; Advanced Biblical Hebrew Grammar, 10:30 a.m. with Prof. David Cohen.

TUESDAY: Shacharit, 8 a.m.; Virtual Pirkei Avot Women’s Class, 7 p.m.

WEDNESDAY: Shacharit, 8 a.m.; Mystical Thinking (Tanya), 9:30 a.m. with Rabbi Katzman; Introductory Biblical Hebrew Grammar, 10:30 a.m. with Prof. David Cohen; Introduction to Hebrew Reading, 11:30 a.m. with Prof. David Cohen.

THURSDAY: Shacharit, 8 a.m.; Advanced Hebrew Class, 11 a.m. with Prof. David Cohen; Talmud Study (Sanhedrin 18 — No advance experience necessary), noon with Rabbi Katzman; Kitzur Shulchan Aruch (Code of Jewish Law) Class, 7 p.m.

FRIDAY-Apr. 29: Shacharit, 8 a.m.; Inspirational Lechayim, 5:45 p.m. with Rabbi and friends: ochab ad.com/Lechayim; Candlelighting, 8:01 p.m.

SATURDAY-Apr. 30: Shacharit, 10 a.m. followed by Kiddush and Cholent; Shabbat Ends, 9:05 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: Kabbalat Shabbat Service, service leaders/music: Rabbi Alex and Elane Monnier, 6:30 p.m. at SST; Candlelighting, 7:55 p.m.

SATURDAY: Shabbat Morning Service, 9:30 a.m. with Rabbi Alex at TI; No Torah Study; Havdalah, 8:58 p.m.

SUNDAY: First Spring Temple Gardening get-together, 8:30-10 a.m. Please let Ellin Siegel know if you

are interested in helping and if you have any questions; Last Day of LJCS Classes, 9:30 a.m.; Men's Jewish Bike Group of Lincoln meets Sundays at 10 a.m., rain or shine, to ride to one of The Mill locations from Hanson Ct. (except we drive if it’s too wet, cold, cloudy, windy, hot or humid) followed by coffee and spirited discussions. If interested, please email Al Weiss at albertw801@gmail.com to find out where to meet each week; South Street Temple Board Meeting, 1:30 p.m.; Pickleball at Tifereth Israel is on hiatus until after Yom Kippur 5783. In the meantime, everyone is welcome to play at Peterson Park through the spring and summer; just wear comfortable clothes and tennis or gym shoes. For motre information, contact Miriam Wallick by email at Miriam57@aol.com.

TUESDAY: Tea & Coffee with Pals, 1:30 p.m. via Zoom.

WEDNESDAY: LJCS Classes, 4:30 p.m.

THURSDAY: Remembrance Service, 5:30 p.m. at Holocaust Memorial.

FRIDAY-Apr. 29: Kabbalat Shabbat Service, service leaders/music: Rabbi Alex and Elane Monnier, 6:30 p.m. at SST; Shabbat Candlelighting, 8:03 p.m.

SATURDAY-Apr. 30: Shabbat Morning Service, 9:30 a.m. with Rabbi Alex at TI; Torah Study on Parashat Achrei Mot, noon; Havdalah, 9:07 p.m.

OFFUTT AIR FORCE BASE

FRIDAY: 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 Brian Stoller, Rabbi Deana Sussman Berezin and Cantor Joanna Alexander.

DAILY VIRTUAL MINYAN: Monday-Friday, 8 a.m. via Zoom.

FRIDAY: Conclusion of Passover Service and Yizkor, 10:30 a.m. via Zoom or In-Person; Tot Shabbat and Farewell to Passover, 5:45 p.m. In-Person; Shabbat B’yachad: These are the Generations: Temple Israel’s 150th Anniversary Archives Project, 6 p.m. via Zoom or In-Person.

SATURDAY: Torah Study, 9:15 a.m. via Zoom or InPerson.

SUNDAY: Youth Learning Programs, 10 a.m.; Words of Wisdom, 10:15 a.m. In-Person; Book Club, 10:30 a.m. In-Person.

MONDAY: Jewish Law & the Quest for Meaning, 11 a.m. via Zoom. . WEDNESDAY: Yarn It, 9 a.m.; Youth Learning Programs — In-Person: Grades 3-6, 4 p.m.; Grades 8-12 Yom HaShoah Program and Dinner, 5:30-7 p.m. at the JCC; Community Yom HaShaoh Commemoration, 7 p.m. at the JCC. THURSDAY: Thursday Morning Class, 10 a.m. with Rabbi Azriel via Zoom or In-Person FRIDAY-Apr. 29: Drop-In Mah Jongg, 9-11 a.m.; Shabbat B’yachad: Voices of the Congregation with Ariella Rohr, 6 p.m. via Zoom or In-Person.

SATURDAY-Apr. 30: Torah Study, 9:15 a.m. via Zoom or In-Person.

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

Jewish approval of President Biden drops RON KAMPEAS WASHINGTON | JTA The good news for Joe Biden is that a majority of U.S. Jews approve of the job he is doing. The bad news is that the number in a new poll, 63%, is a sharp double-digit drop from where he was last year.

President Joe Biden A poll released April 13, 2022, by the Jewish Electorate Institute, a group led by prominent Jewish Democrats, showed Biden’s approval rating down from 80% in a poll by

the same organization last July. His disapproval rating this year is at 37%, up from 20 percent last July.

Both polls were carried out by GBAO Strategies.

The Jewish Electorate Institute put a positive spin on the numbers. “Jewish Americans continue to support President Biden and the Democratic Party at levels higher than the general American voting population, a trend that appears on track to continue in this year’s midterm elections and in the future,” said the group’s chairman, Martin Frost, a former Jewish Democratic congressman from Texas.

Biden’s approval numbers generally have dropped precipitously in the last year, a result of a botched exit from Afghanistan, a persistent pandemic and inflation that his government can’t

stem. His approval rating generally is hovering at 42%, the lowest of his presidency. Jewish voters generally favor Democrats.

One area Biden scores well among Jews is in his handling of Russia’s war against Ukraine, with 72% approving.

Support for Democrats on a generic congressional ballot also dropped from 68% to 61% while support for Republicans rose from 21% to 26%.

Both parties are already campaigning heavily in Jewish communities where shifts in the vote can change the make-up of Congress, where Democrats have a thin majority.

The pollsters reached 800 registered Jewish voters via text from March 28-April 3 and the margin of error is 3.5 percentage points.

Life cycles IN MEMORIAM ALLEN KAHN Allen Kahn passed on Aug. 30, 2021 in Omaha. Services were held Sept. 2, 2021 at Beth El Cemetery, and officiated by Rabbi Steven Abraham.

He was preceded in death by his daughter, Linda Kahn.

He was survived by his wife of 69 years, Esther. (who passed on Dec. 18, 2021.) He is also survived by daughter and son-in-law, Pam and David Gross, son and daughter-in-law, Marc and Kim Kahn; grandchildren: Julie, Greta, Stephanie, Nathan and Christina, and Zachary.

Allen was born in Omaha, on May 27, 1929, to parents Benjamin and Sarah Kahn. He enjoyed many adventures with his brothers Stewart and Roland. He graduated from North High School, and was a devoted Husker football and basketball fan. Allen was a devoted and supportive husband, and a great and fun father, ensuring his children were well prepared for the world ahead.

Memorials may be made to the Nebraska Humane Society.

Wine from a West Bank settlement at the White House seder SHIRA HANAU JTA Wine from a West Bank settlement was on the menu at this year’s White House Passover seder on Friday hosted

by Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Dough Emhoff.

But a spokesperson for Harris said the choice should not be construed as a political statement about Israeli settlement in the West Bank.

“The wine served at the Seder was in no way intended to be an expression of policy,” Herbie Ziskind, an advisor to Harris, said in a tweet.

A photo posted to Twitter by Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff showed wine from the Psagot winery on the table at the White House seder, Apr. 16, 2022. Credit: Twitter

The response from the Harris spokesman came after reporters spotted a bottle of wine from the Psagot winery in a photo of the seder that Emhoff posted to social media, eliciting a flood of criticism from anti-occupation activists.

“These photos show @VP serving wine from Psagot at Passover Seder. Psagot’s vineyards are on stolen Palestinian land. It’s not cool. It was the Trump that ‘legitimated’ the theft,” James Zogby, founder of the Arab-American Institute, said in a tweet.

The Psagot winery, which is located north of Jerusalem in the West Bank, has been active in efforts to resist international efforts to prevent goods produced in Israeli settlements from being labeled “Made in Israel.” The winery challenged a 2016 French ruling requiring wines produced in Israeli settlements to be labeled as such, though the European Court of Justice upheld the French law in 2019.

In February 2020, the winery introduced a special label named for Mike Pompeo, then-President Donald Trump’s Secretary of State, whom they thanked for repudiating a State Department finding that Israeli settlements were illegal.

The photo of the seder posted by Emhoff also showed traditional seder plates on the table alongside an orange, a more modern addition to the seder plate meant to symbolize inclusion of LGBTQ Jews at the seder. The tradition to host a seder at the White House was started in 2009 by then-President Barack Obama.

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Passover in public seders CNAAN LIPHSHIZ JTA Between air-raid sirens in Odessa, Svetlana Niselevitch, an 84-year-old Ukrainian-Jewish Holocaust survivor, has been preparing to join a Passover seder for the first time in her life.

“We didn’t observe Jewish traditions in my family,” Niselevitch, a poet who was born in Kharkiv, said. But she said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as well as the COVID-19 pandemic, convinced her that “every chance to practice Jewishness is important.”

Niselevitch, who will celebrate Passover at an event organized by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, or JDC, is among the thousands of Ukrainian Jews who are preparing to celebrate the Jewish holiday in dozens of group seders both in Ukraine and outside it for Jewish refugees from Russia’s war.

Emergency curfews, supply-chain interruptions and the dangers of war are complicating Ukrainian Jews’ efforts to celebrate Passover, the holiday that celebrates Jewish freedom and security.

Still, the fact that so many Jews are participating demonstrates both the robustness of the worldwide relief effort supporting Ukrainian Jews — and Judaism’s ongoing resilience in a region scarred by the Holocaust and communist suppression of religion.

Thousands of Ukrainians have died in the ensuing conflict and millions have left the country, mostly into neighboring European countries and, for Jews and their family members, to Israel. Millions more have become internally displaced, seeking refuge in places they hope are unlikely to draw Russian bombing.

For the Jews remain inside Ukraine, wanting to participate in large gatherings in such circumstances may seem counterintuitive, especially considering that the pandemic is still raging across Eastern Europe. “But it’s only natural,” said Gershon Birenboim, a Jewish teacher who is helping to prepare a group seder for Jewish refugees from Odessa, Kharkiv, Kyiv and beyond who are staying at a resort in Irshava in western Ukraine.

“When you’ve fled a war, leaving behind everything, that’s when you’ll start looking for the things that connect you and tie you down,” he said.

Chabad and JDC have been organizing group seders across Eastern Europe for decades, including under challenging geopolitical circumstances. Other groups, such as the HIAS Jewish refugee agency, are departing from their normal activities to offer Passover events.

The Jewish Press | April 22, 2022 | A15

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A16 | The Jewish Press | April 22, 2022

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Remembering Gilbert Gottfried

demic, a 70-year-old woman unwittingly reRON KAMPEAS moved her bathing suit and took a shower in full JTA Gilbert Gottfried, the comic with a grating perview of the other participants. sona whose boundary testing got him canceled Gottfried credited his wife for turning him more than once, has died. around from a notoriously parsimonious bacheHis family announced Gottfried’s passing “after lor into an attentive dad who walked his two kids a long illness” on Tuesday on Twitter. He was 67. to Hebrew school. He met Dara Kravitz, a music Various outlets reported he suffered from a heart executive, in the late 1990s at a Grammy’s party condition related to myotonic dystrophy. he was attending because of the free food. She A 2017 documentary revealed that contra his dropped food on the table and he picked it up foul-mouthed routine, Gottfried was a sweet and and put it on his plate. loving Jewish dad.

Gottfried grew up in a secular Jewish home in Gottfried was reluctant to let that truth get Brooklyn — he told JTA his Jewish knowledge out. “I was too much of a wimp to say no” to the was limited to “I know that if we’re ever rounded filmmaker, Neil Berkeley, he told the Jewish Telup again, I’ll be on the train.” When he and Dara egraphic Agency. married in 2007, she insisted on a wedding under Gottfried, who affected a high nasal voice for a huppah and raising their children with a Jewish his comic appearances, was a boundary crosser, Gilbert Gottfried at SiriusXM Studios in New York City, Feb. 3, 2020. Credit: Slaven education. and it got him into trouble at times. In 1991, Fox Vlasic/Getty Images for SiriusXM Dara Gottfried adored her “gentle genius” and apologized after Gilbert, hosting the Emmy was bemusedly frustrated by his shyness when He lost the audience — for a moment. He recovered with awards, kept joking about fellow comic Pee-wee Herman’s re- one of the raunchiest-ever tellings of the notoriously raunchy not performing. “Open up a little, Gil!” she chided him during cent arrest for masturbating in an adult movie theater. a 2013 New York Times interview. joke that has “The Aristocrats” as its punchline.

That dampened Gottfried’s career — for a while. He continBut Gottfried’s kindness was his own: The documentary “I’ve always said tragedy and comedy are roommates,” Gotued to score gigs in movies, on talk radio ( frequently with tfried told Vulture in 2019. “Wherever tragedy’s around, com- tracks Gottfried accompanying his sister, street photographer Howard Stern), on sketch shows and sitcoms, and as a voice edy’s a few feet behind them sticking his tongue out and Arlene Gottfried, to chemo sessions. She died of cancer in 2017. on cartoons. He was the funny animal sidekick, Iago the par- making obscene gestures.”

In a 2014 interview with The Guardian, Gottfried, perhaps rot, in Disney’s Aladdin.

Aflac, the insurer whose trademark duck Gottfried voiced unwittingly, revealed his own gifts in explaining why he adThen he famously told perhaps the first joke about the Sept. and which was his most lucrative gig, dropped him in 2011 mired his sister so much.

11, 2001 attacks, just a few days after terrorists piloted air- after he made jokes on Twitter about the tsunami in Japan.

“Someone else couldn’t see the funny or odd or touching planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. (At a (Gottfried’s self-inflicted wounds seemed to be timed by thing, and capture it,” he said. roast for Playboy Magazine founder Hugh Hefner, Gottfried decades.) “I don’t regret the joke,” he told JTA. “I regret losing His family, in their message, appealed to the public to keep said he had to catch an early flight for Los Angeles because the money.”

Gottfried’s love for humor in mind. “Although today is a sad the only one he could find had “to make a stop at the Empire Sometimes the raunch found Gottfried. In 2020, during his day for all of us, please keep laughing as loud as possible in State Building.”) daughter’s bat mitzvah, held on Zoom because of the pan- Gilbert’s honor,” the message said.

B1 | The Jewish Press | April 22, 2022

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All you need is L.O.V.E.: 50th Year Celebration GABBY BLAIR Jewish Press Staff Writer L.O.V.E. (The League of Volunteers to the Elderly) will be celebrating 50 years of service and dedication to Rose Blumkin Jewish Home Residents and our remarkable community of friends with special anniversary concerts on Sunday, June 12, 2022, in the Alan J Levine Performing Arts Theater on the JCC of Omaha Campus. Please mark your calendars now and plan to help us celebrate!

Co-President Gretchen Radler, said, “Residents and their families, RBJH staff, the members of the L.O.V.E. Board and Honorary Event Chairs, Patty and Steve Nogg, are looking forward to our long awaited ‘All You Need is LOVE 50th Year Celebration’ featuring local Beatles tribute performer, Billy McGuigan.”

McGuigan’s Yesterday and Today: Interactive Beatles Experience is a unique show that leaves the song choices completely in the hands of the audience. This is done through request cards that are filled out prior to the show. Audience members are asked to submit their name, their favorite Beatles song and the reason why they chose that song. The cards are collected, and a set list is created just before the show begins based upon the songs chosen by that particular audience. As an added treat, the reasons that the audience members chose those songs make up the narrative of the evening. Every show is different, every, show is interactive, and every show proves that The Beatles music truly is the soundtrack to our lives.

Thanks to a generous sponsorship by the Karen Sokolof-Javitch Family Foundation Music Fund, L.O.V.E. will be holding two concerts on June 12 and would love if the entire Omaha family showed up for this event. An ice cream sundae bar will be held before the afternoon performance; an hors d’oeuvres and cocktail reception will be held before the evening performance.

In addition to the concerts and receptions, many fabulous prizes, gift baskets and art pieces will be raffled off; winning tickets will be drawn after the event and winners will be notified by phone/email.

Over the past 50 years of partnership with the Rose Blumkin Jewish Home, L.O.V.E. has raised funds for many major projects and improvements to enhance the lives and comfort of

RBJH Residents in addition to providing countless volunteer hours to assist with Resident activities.

Due to the challenges presented by COVID-19, L.O.V.E temporarily pivoted away from traditional roles of offering in-person engagement to Residents, finding innovative ways to stay involved, and as always, working to improve the quality of Resident experience during this unprecedented time.

“The past two years of this pandemic have certainly strengthened our collective understanding of the impact of isolation.

While L.O.V.E. was temporarily unable to fulfill our traditional role of offering in-person engagement to Residents, our volunteers have come up with innovative ways to connect to Residents and to keep Residents connected while continuing See All you need is L.O.V.E. page B2

Co-Sponsor of the Taylor Force Act

DON BACON IS ENDORSED BY: Pro-Israel America Republican Jewish Coalition ǿƊǘƊ §ȌǶǞƧƵ Ǐ˛ƧƵȲȺ ȺȺȌƧǞƊɈǞȌȁ Nebraska Farm Bureau Mayor Jean Stothert

B2 | The Jewish Press | April 22, 2022

News

DONATION LEVELS FOR THIS EVENT GENERAL ADMISSION OPTIONS: • $50 (adult)/$25 (child) per ticket • general admission for afternoon • performance • $100 (adult)/$100 (child) per ticket for • evening performance • $60 Recommended Donation- Family of • four - Ice Cream Social ONLY (No • concert)

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All you need is L.O.V.E.

Continued from page B1 our mission to improve the quality of Resident experience during this unprecedented time,” Radler said.

“Volunteers have ensured all Residents receive birthday cards, Mother’s and Father’s Day treats, special teas, Thanksgiving cocktails, Veteran’s Day tributes, Hanukkah and holiday parties and many other small touches of L.O.V.E. Volunteers have also been generous in providing new Residents with welcome bags filled with all sorts of goodies and materials to help them transition to their new home while in isolation for a period of time. Most recently, L.O.V.E. purchased large iPads and stands to ensure Residents and their loved ones — near and far — could communicate during periods of quarantine and linen warmers for all neighborhoods, with the help of a Staenberg Family Foundation Anything Grant.”

She continued, “Funds raised during our ‘All You Need is L.O.V.E.’s 50th Anniversary Celebration’ concerts will go towards a number of slated projects for Residents including procuring a coffee kiosk, spa improvements, providing for immediate and future transportation and technological needs, and recreational and entertainment opportunities. Additionally, L.O.V.E. will assist with staff trainings and education to ensure our Residents continue to receive the best care possible.”

“L.O.V.E. has become an integral part of the Resident experience,” Radler said. “Until the COVID pandemic restricted access to the

PATRON TICKET OPTIONS: $250 “Come Together” • Help cover extra expenses from COVID • response • Two tickets to the performance of your • choice $500 “Good Day Sunshine” • Help sponsor a permanent coffee kiosk • for Residents and their guests • Two tickets to the performance of your • choice $1000 “Ticket to Ride” • Help cover van expenses for Resident • transportation needs • Two tickets to the performance of your • choice

Home, our volunteers helped plan and run weekly events, assisting RBJH activities programs and visiting with Residents. Being unable to physically be there exposed the need for L.O.V.E to be able to financially support activities from a distance. A lot of extra work falls to the staff when volunteers cannot be there in person, so we want to be prepared to offer fun, enriching activities, entertainment and supplies for Residents even when we cannot physically be there. In order for L.O.V.E. to be successful, community support is imperative. All you need is L.O.V.E and all L.O.V.E needs is YOU!”

Schedule of events for June 12: AFTERNOON CONCERT AND ICE CREAM SOCIAL: 1 p.m. - Ice Cream Sundae Bar Reception at The Shirley & Leonard Goldstein Community Engagement Venue 2:30 p.m. Concert featuring Billy McGuigan EVENING CONCERT AND RECEPTION: 6 p.m.- Hors d’oeuvres and cocktail reception at The JCC Gallery & The Shirley & Leonard Goldstein Community Engagement Venue See All you need is L.O.V.E. page B4

$5000 “Here Comes the Sun” • Help to cover staff trainings and • education monthly/ quarterly • Provide concerts and other • entertainment opportunities for • Residents • Support future technology needs for • Residents • Four tickets to performance of your • choice + preferred seating $10000 “Help” • Help to renovate the RBJH Spa for • Residents • Four tickets to performance of your • choice + preferred seating

ELECT

for MUD davepantos.com

Candidate with unrivaled experience and judgement.

Paid for by Pantos for County Attorney Paid for by McCollister for MUD

The Jewish Press | April 22, 2022 | B3

Ken Burns’ next documentary and other entertainment news

ANDREW LAPIN, CALEB GUEDES REED AND SHIRA HANAU JTA For his next historical deep dive, famed documentary filmmaker Ken Burns is exploring America’s relationship to the Holocaust.

Tentatively titled The U.S. and the Holocaust, the three-part miniseries set to air Sept. 18-20 on PBS is co-directed and coproduced by Burns and his longtime collaborators Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein. Burns’ production company says the series “dispels the competing myths that Americans either were ignorant of what was happening to Jews in Europe, or that they merely looked on with callous indifference.”

In a 2019 interview with Esquire, the Emmy-winning director said the series would be “all about immigration and who’s an American and who’s not an American.”

Like all of Burns’ projects, the documentary has taken years to make. But it will now be the next release from his production house, as he announced in a promo message that aired last week to accompany his latest PBS documentary, Benjamin Franklin.

“Our next film is one of the most important we’ve ever worked on,” Burns, the director of such works as The Civil War, Jazz and The Roosevelts told viewers, by way of introducing the series.

Burns, whose wife is Jewish, has explored the Holocaust in different ways before. The 2016 documentary Defying the Nazis: The Sharps’ War, for which Burns came onboard as codirector and co-producer midway through its production, followed American Unitarian minister Waitstill Sharp and his wife Martha in their mission to save Jewish refugees in Europe.

His 2007 series The War, about America’s entry into World War II, also discussed the Holocaust.

Silverstein was born in 1930 to a middle-class Jewish family in Chicago. He started drawing and writing from a young age and drew his first cartoons for adult readers when he was a GI in Japan and Korea. In addition to his career as a children’s book author, Silverstein was a prolific songwriter and playwright. (He also inspired the name of the youngest child of a Jewish family that recently appeared on Ava Duvernay’s homeswapping TV show.)

The U.S. Postal Service’s special edition stamps commemorating notable Americans have included many Jews, including the physicist Richard Feynman in 2005, cartoonist and inventor Rube Goldberg in 1995 and, in 1991, comedian Fanny Brice, the inspiration for the musical The United States Postal Service released a new series of Forever stamps in Funny Girl. The series in which Brice appeared was drawn by the Jewish illustrator Al Hirschfeld. honor of Shel Silverstein. Credit: USPS

Vote on May 10

Lost and Watchmen screenwriter Damon Lindelof gets emotional JTA Acclaimed screenwriter Damon Lindelof learns that several members of his family tree died in the Białystok ghetto during the Holocaust on Tuesday night’s episode of the celebrity genealogy show Finding Your Roots.

With help from the archives at Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial and museum, the Finding Your Roots team found six pages of testimony detailing the fate of a branch of Lindelof ’s family.

Lindelof, who created HBO’s 2019 Watchmen series and cocreated Lost, reads from the show’s compiled pages about his family tree, repeating “circumstances of death: ghetto Białystok” after several relatives: his great-granduncle — the brother of his great-grandmother — and his wife and their four children.

Lindelof, who had a bar mitzvah and attended synagogue in his native Teaneck, New Jersey, acknowledges that he has visited Yad Vashem, which houses an archive of nearly five million Holocaust victims. But he didn’t know the names of his specific family members who died during the Holocaust.

“I assumed there must be some line of family, but I didn’t know their name,” he tells host Henry Louis Gates, Jr., getting emotional as he explains his reasoning. “I wouldn’t even know where to look before today.”

Lindelof described the discovery as “somewhat of an affirmation of survival in some strange way.”

Białystok was a northern Polish city where Nazis set up a Jewish ghetto in 1941, killing thousands of local Jews and deporting thousands of others to concentration camps.

Time magazine listed Lindelof, 48, as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2010. Past Jewish guests on Finding Your Roots include Pamela Adlon, Dustin Hoffman, Scarlett Johansson and Paul Rudd.

US Postal Service honors Jewish poet Shel Silverstein JTA The United States Postal Service released a new series of Forever stamps Friday in honor of Shel Silverstein, the Jewish author and illustrator who died in 1999.

The stamps commemorate what is perhaps Silverstein’s most famous book, The Giving Tree, which tells the story of the relationship between a boy and a tree. The stamps feature an image of the boy from the story catching an apple with Silverstein’s name written below.

“The issuance honors the extraordinarily versatile Shel Silverstein (1930-1999), one of the 20th century’s most imaginative authors and illustrators. His picture book The Giving Tree and his quirky poetry collections are beloved by children everywhere,” the description on the postal service’s website reads.

DISTRICT 6

Paid for by Mirch for Legislature | 12516 Eagle Run Dr. | Omaha, NE 68164

VOTE MARILYN ASHER FOR LEGISLATIVE DISTRICT 8

Marilyn Arant

sher

DISTRICT 8 LEGISLATURE

Back to Basic Education Property t Tax Relief Support upport Law Enforcement Enfo f rcement

Fair representation for all residents of District 8 INTEGRITY- EXPERIENCE - ACTION

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8

B4 | The Jewish Press | April 22, 2022

Snowbirds

All you need is L.O.V.E.

Please let the Jewish Press know in advance when you are leaving and when you are returning. Sometimes several papers are sent to your “old” address before we are notified by the Post Office. Every time they return a paper to us, you miss the Jewish Press and we are charged! Please call us at 402.334.6448 or email us at jpress@jewishomaha.org.

Return Nancy Kratky to OPS School Board District 6 Nancy Kratky is a retired teacher and board member who cares about the Omaha Public Schools, its students and the community. She seeks to use her history, knowledge and experience in public education to help the Omaha Public Schools to enable all students to achieve their highest potential.

A Qualified Voice...

Your Best Choice!

Paid for by Nancy Kratky for School Board, Vern Dolleck, Treas., 1204 N. 101st Cir., Omaha, NE 68114

ELECT

Continued from page A2 7 p.m.- Concert featuring Billy McGuigan Tickets are now available for purchase at: https://app.arts-people.com/index.php? show=135010.

All funds raised after the coverage of expenses will be made available for the support and benefit of RBJH Residents, enhancing their quality of life by addressing future needs, improvements and programming. Successful achievement of L.O.V.E.’s goals will ensure that the RBJH

continues to be a competitive and first-class facility that goes above and beyond in fulfilling our Resident’s needs. L.O.V.E. is a 501(c)3 and as such all donations are fully tax deductible.

If you wish to be an angel donor for this event, become a L.O.V.E. member or volunteer, please contact L.O.V.E. Co-Presidents Gretchen Radler and Larry DeBruin at love@rbjh.com or RBJH Volunteer Coordinator Sabine Strong at sstrong@rbjh.com with questions.

All you need is L.O.V.E. Tribute Book In the Jewish approach to caring and honoring one another, L.O.V.E. will also be publishing a keepsake Tribute Book Program for this commemorative event that will be distributed to concert goers.

Tributes can be purchased in honor of a Resident or RBJH Staff Member or volunteer, in remembrance of a loved one, or to advertise a business or service. Please help support this effort and our cherished community elders by purchasing a Tribute.

All Tribute information must be received

by May 1, 2022. Photos should be high resolution JPEGs or PDFs. Please send tribute

information to Margie Utesch at mutesch @jewishomaha.org.

PRICING OPTIONS All options are in full color Inside front and back cover Back Cover Option A - full page Option B - half page Option C - quarter page Option D - eighth page Option E - 5 lines Option F - 3 lines

$600.00 $800.00 $320.00 $180.00 $100.00 $75.00 $54.00 $36.00

L.O.V.E. TRIBUTE BOOK ORDER FORM Please send Tribute Payments to :LOVE in care of Les Kay, Treasurer, 222 S. 150th Circle, Omaha, NE, 68154. Be sure to include the following information: Check # ___________ Make checks payable to: L.O.V.E. Cash amount $ _________ Credit Card (Mastercard or Visa Only Please) Card # _____________________________________________ Exp. _____/_______ CVV# ______

‘Compelling’ Israel data shows Americans over 60 should get 2nd COVID booster

DISTRICT 18 CLARICEJACKSON.COM Paid for by Jackson for Nebraska | 8110 Girard Plaza | Omaha, NE 68122

RON KAMPEAS WASHINGTON | JTA The White House’s top COVID-19 response coordinator said that Americans over 60 should be getting a second vaccine booster shot, citing Israeli data.

“The data out of Israel is pretty compelling for people over 60,” Dr. Ashish Jha said on Fox News Sunday. “People who have had that second booster shot four months after their first booster, what we saw was a substantial reduction not in just in infections, but in deaths.”

The Food and Drug Administration authorized second Pfizer and Moderna boosters for

people over 50 last month. But Israel, which launched the world’s first major second booster program in January as the Omicron variant of the coronavirus swept through the world, authorized it only for people over 60.

Jha also said Sunday on This Week with George Stephanopoulos that getting a second booster between the ages of 50-59 “is a much closer call.”

While an Israeli study found that the second booster’s “protection against confirmed infection appeared short-lived,” the shot’s “protection against severe illness did not wane during the study period.”

JEWISH PRESS READERS If you do business with any of our advertisers, please tell them you saw their ad in the Jewish Press. It really helps us!

Israeli police clash with Palestinians at Temple Mount SHIRA HANAU JTA Several Palestinians were arrested and 17 were wounded, according to Israeli news reports, after Israeli police entered the Temple Mount complex Sunday on morning. Jewish worshippers were allegedly blocked from entering the site by Palestinian worshippers.

The incident came just two days after violent clashes at the Temple Mount Fri- Israeli border police patrol in front of the Lion's day morn- Gate in Jerusalem's Old City, as Palestinians ing, during wait to be allowed to enter the al-Aqsa mosque which hun- compound, Apr. 17, 2022. Credit: Ahmad Gharabli/AFP via Getty Images dreds of Palestinians were arrested. The period leading up to the holidays of Ramadan, Easter and Passover this year has been marked by violence in Israel, with 14 people killed by Palestinian terrorists and 14 Palestinians killed in raids by the Israeli army in recent weeks.

Palestinian first responders said over 150 Palestinians were injured in Friday’s clashes and Israeli police said three of their officers were lightly injured. Palestinian rioters inside the mosque lobbed objects and explosive devices at police, who were positioned in the plaza outside the mosque. That prompted the rare entry by police into the mosque.

Five people were also wounded Sunday morning when Palestinians threw stones at a bus taking Jewish visitors to the Temple Mount site, according to Haaretz, which reported that more than 700 Jewish visitors had entered the site Sunday.

The Jewish Press | April 22, 2022 | B5

News LOCA L | N ATION AL | WO RLD

Update from Jan Goldstein JAN GOLDSTEIN JFO Programming and Campaign Consultant It seems almost impossible that nearly four months have passed since my return to the Federation.

Time moves quickly.

Who would have guessed that within these weeks that brought us to the eve of our first Passover Seder, the holiday that celebrates the freedom of the Jewish People, our world would be experiencing something so unimaginable to have robbed millions of their own precious freedom?

As many of us sat around the Passover table, I’m certain that everyone was be focused on the 4.6 million Ukrainian refugees who have fled their homeland (as well as those who have tragically lost their lives), very much like the Jews of the Exodus story, fleeing the powerful military might of the tyrant Pharaoh, with no place to go.

It’s such an old story, and one with which we Jews have become well acquainted throughout our own history. Sadly, this story continues on throughout other parts of our modern day world, as well.

But here is where our story - the story of the Omaha Jewish community – intersects with what is happening now. It’s also what has always amazed me about this special community.

When we hear the stories of the Ukrainians' plight, we step up together, just as we have throughout the years, in the face of other hardships, both foreign and domestic.

Our leadership has continually recognized our responsibility to help however we can, not only to take care of our own local Jewish community, but to help others outside our community during times of national disasters, in Israel and when-

ever Jews are in need.

Looking back at our Federation’s most recent history, we’ve done this for every Israeli war and operation – the Soviet Jewry movement, Ethiopian Aliyah to Israel (which continues even to this day), all of the Israel Emergency Campaigns, Hunger in the Soviet Union – and the list goes on. We step up every time, NO questions asked. Our leadership comes together – the Federation leading the way, together with our synagogues and organizations. And here is where we recognize the power of the collective.

This time, three weeks ago, when Jeff Kirshenbaum and Rabbi Steven Abraham announced they were joining the JFNA’s 72 hour trip to Poland to meet with refugees and bring medical and other supplies, our community stepped up even more, sending with them 28 duffel bags full of necessary items, as well as additional dollars for added purchases that we amassed.

I wish I could express the feelings as we watched parents with their kids and older adults bringing armfuls of supplies and the constant flow of Amazon boxes arriving continually from community members. These actions all declared loud and clear, “our Omaha community cares.” Thank you to all who helped organize this massive effort. It took countless hours on the part of our Federation staff and we owe them so much gratitude. Also, to our volunteer leaders and friends we called on to help make it all happen: it doesn't without all of you! And of course to all who have contributed so far to help our total grow to $216,143.

But our work is NOT done. And perhaps in the near future we might just be welcoming to Omaha some of those very individuals we are thinking of tonight. As we celebrated with our families and reflected on the many blessings we enjoy, we are grateful for community and our ability to live in a place that takes care of each other.

Primary Election

B6 | The Jewish Press | April 22, 2022

C AND I DATE STATE M E N TS

JOHN GLEN WEAVER U.S. Congress, District 1 Air Force Retired Lt. Col. John Glen Weaver is a Conservative Republican running to serve as the Congressman for the 1st District of Nebraska.

He has served all around the globe in national security roles, ranging from flying combat missions over Iraq and Afghanistan to the Pentagon advising the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He has extensive experience in the intelligence community and military dealing with issues in the Middle East, Russia, China, North Korea, Israel, Iran, and Cyber. He is a very strong supporter of Israel.

Most recently, John Glen served at Offutt AFB as the director of the Nuclear Command Post, leading a large team that directed nuclear operations. John Glen has 11 deployments and has deployed to numerous Middle East and Southwest Asia combat zones several times over the last 22 years, flying in combat on the Offutt based RC-135 collecting top secret intelligence. He speaks and majored in Russian and is very familiar with the threat Russia poses to our country. Additionally, he has two graduate degrees in Economics and Military Science.

John Glen is also a small real estate business owner and has a family farm that has been in the family for generations. He is a passionate instructor pilot and teaches for the University of Nebraska aviation program. Glen is a proud husband, father, and a Christian. He met his wife, Brianna, a physician at UNMC, in January of 2019. They have a daughter Bravery and a son due in July.

DON BACON U.S. Congress, District 2 I grew up on a farm baling hay, cleaning an-

imal pens, and working the fields. This taught me the value of a relentless work ethic and the importance of humility. I also learned that service to others is an expectation and that I owed my best to our country.

I worked my way through college, married my college sweetheart, and then joined the Air Force. I spent the next three decades serving this great nation, protecting our allies abroad and defending our families back home.

After retiring as a Brigadier General in 2014, I wanted to continue defending our great country. I taught leadership courses at Bellevue University before answering the call to run for Congress in Nebraska’s Second District. I talked with my wife and four children and spent months in prayer before deciding to run.

In 2016, I ran on my core principles: civility, honesty, and integrity. My team and I have worked diligently since then to bolster our national security, protect Israel, combat antisemitism, advocate for Nebraska small businesses and farms, and help reform the Foster Care system. Together, we have passed 14 of my bills over the last five years. Further, our Omaha office received the Democracy Award in 2021 for the best constituent services in the entire country and I was named the #1 elected official in America for seeking common ground.

I’ve spent almost my entire life in service to the people of the United States, and I’m excited to continue serving you. With so many major issues to tackle in the next two years, this election is crucial to the future of our community.

It has been an honor and a privilege to serve you. I am asking for your vote on May 10, and I’ll be grateful for your support.

RE-ELECT SENATOR JOHN ARCH

CHARLES W. HERBSTER Governor If recent history has taught us anything, it is that absent good leadership, the ship of state is adrift. Leadership is the commodity most needed in our elected officials, but unfortunately, finding true leaders in politics is a difficult task. That’s why I am running for Governor of Nebraska. I have those skills and am eager to give back to the state that has given so much to me.

As a fifth generation Nebraskan with deep roots in the soil of this state, I started with nothing and have built six companies from the ground up. I employ people all across the nation but always return home to Falls City where I was raised. My home is in Nebraska, and it’s time for Nebraska to have a true leader as Governor who holds a vision for a prosperous, safe and growing state. To accomplish this, we will all need to pull together to achieve significant change in a number of areas.

We need real tax reform. This means lowering the overall tax burden on Nebraskans. We need real education reform. This means advancing school choice options and empowering parents so that they can decide what is best for their children. We need real changes in how the state attracts and retains young people and how we can all work together to keep our wealth in the state. We need real efforts to bring the technology of the 21st century to every home and business in the state.

A real leader as Governor can make all of this happen. We need to make sure our elections are fair and free so that every single legal vote can be cast and counted.

I am asking for your vote on May 10. To-

gether, we can make the Great Life even better.

BRETT LINDSTROM Governor Brett Lindstrom is running for Governor to bring a New Generation of Conservative Leadership to Nebraska. Brett is laser-focused on keeping Nebraska’s economy competitive by slashing taxes, workforce development and recruiting and retaining talent.

To this end, Brett is the only candidate to release a comprehensive economic development plan which serves as a roadmap to keeping Nebraska competitive in a global economy.

As a State Senator, Brett has a record of fiscally conservative leadership. He has been responsible for some of the largest tax cuts in Nebraska history. In 2021 he passed the social security income tax phase, which will eliminate the state income tax for Nebraska’s over 300,000 seniors.

This year Brett is working on passing the single largest tax cut in Nebraska history, expediting the elimination of the social security tax, slashing income, and property taxes. Bretts will continue to slash taxes and keep our economy competitive as Governor.

Brett Lindstrom is a lifelong Nebraskan graduating from Millard West High School and following in the footsteps of his father and two uncles to play football for the Huskers. Brett enjoys spending his free time in Omaha with his wife, Leigh, and three young children, Colette, Barron and Olivia.

Brett hopes to earn your vote in the Republican Primary on May 10.

Continued on page B7 PAID ADVERTISEMENTS

ELECT

District 14 | Papillion and La Vista

PROMISES MADE... PROMISES KEPT • Helped create economic development and growth in Sarpy County • Cut taxes and provided historic property tax relief • Prioritized public safety • Fought to uphold our Nebraska values “Over the last four years we have had to overcome natural disasters and a global pandemic. In Nebraska, and especially in Sarpy County, we have not only overcome these challenges, we have continued to grow. I would appreciate your vote to keep working for Sarpy County and Nebraska,” Senator John Arch.

MARNI HODGEN State Board of Education District 8

A vote for Marni Hodgen guarantees a long-term safeguard for the hearts, minds, and innocence of our children.

District 14 Paid for by Citizens to Elect John Arch, 8614 S 100th Street, La Vista, NE 68128

www.marni4nekids.com | marni@marni4nekids.com Paid for by Friends of Marni Hodgen, 3606 N 156th Street, Ste 101-312, Omaha NE 68116

The Jewish Press | April 22, 2022 | B7

Continued from page B6 LELA McNINCH Governor Loyal to Nebraskans.

The past two years have been challenging and incredibly difficult for all Nebraskans as we have battled to get this pandemic under control and rebuild our economy from natural disasters, job loss and the loss of friends and family.

But it has also shown us the best of who Nebraskans are, in strength, resilience, generosity and unity.

The difficulties that have presented themselves in the state allow us to have an enormous opportunity to address the challenges we face in our future.

I am running for Governor because we need to think big, be persistent, and have a clear vision for our future. We need to be bold, driven and have the confidence to move Nebraska forward to bring in people and jobs to secure economic development and “The Good Life” for generations to come.

Now is the time to push Nebraska forward to a stronger, postCOVID-19 economy, demonstrating our faith, resilience, creativity, unity, and power as a State. People should use their circumstances as motivation to seek opportunity rather than allow their circumstances to define who they are. I am the candidate who will work to encourage people to accomplish this to help our State become even stronger.

As Nebraska’s next Governor, I will push for parents to have a voice in their child’s education and invest in quality education, which is the foundation of democracy. I will work to lower property taxes across the State, and fight to address the root cause of the growing overcrowding of prison populations.

I will work tirelessly to attract business and industry, to create the best jobs, encourage wage increases, and better benefits to help Nebraskans.

I bring wisdom, patience, honesty, transparency, motivation, encouragement, hope, and proven leadership to the office.

THERESA THIBODEAU Governor As a proud Nebraskan, our conservative values of hard work, service before self, commitment to God and community have made calling Nebraska home an easy choice.

Nebraska has blessed our family with amazing opportunities.

We raised our children here so they could have the same, family-focused upbringing that we did, and I started my own business to prepare the next generation of Nebraska students for success. Raising a family and running a business is tough, but we all work hard to provide our children and grandchildren with a better future. That’s the Nebraska way.

It’s a pivotal time for our state: We must address Nebraska’s decades-long tax and spending problem and grow our economy to keep our future leaders in Nebraska.

We must have real property tax reform instead of more bandaid fixes. Homeowners, farmers, business owners, families – we all deserve better.

I’ll demand parents have a say in what their kids are being taught. Our children deserve a quality education to prepare them for a life filled with opportunities instead of curriculum loaded with inappropriate sex education and divisive rhetoric.

Law enforcement must be fully funded and given the resources and training they need to protect us. Our country’s open border has resulted in crime spikes, increased drug and human trafficking and gang activity. I’ll fight efforts to release violent criminals back on our streets and keep our families safe.

I promise that I’ll fight back against radicals who threaten the safety of our communities and seek to strip away Nebraskan’s God-given rights. And, as Governor, I’ll always protect innocent life from conception until natural death.

With your support, we can send a strong message to the political establishment that Nebraska values are not up for negotiation! I would be honored to earn your vote on May 10.

BRAD VON GILLERN Nebraska Legislature, District 4 As a life-long Nebraskan, I am proud and humbled to be pursuing a seat in the Legislature, representing District Four, here in West Omaha. I was born in Lincoln, raised in Omaha, and

have lived in Nebraska nearly all of my life. My work, my family, and my service to God and His people have been the three intersecting circles of my adult life.

I have had the honor of leading one hundred employees in my twenty-one year career as President and CEO of Lueder Construction. In that time, I was compelled to serve my community in many ways as a volunteer to a number of organizations, all with a common theme of improving the lives of those in our community. My volunteer service was a precursor to my entrance into politics, where I believe the impact of my leadership will positively impact an even greater number of lives My wife Mary and I were high school sweethearts and celebrated our fortieth anniversary this year. We have four grown children, three “in-laws” and six grandchildren. They have

AARON HANSON FOR DOUGLAS COUNTY SHERIFF

SAFER NEIGHBORHOODS, FAMILIES. PRIORITIZING INNOCENT PEOPLE. BETTER OUTCOMES FOR ALL. Paid for by Hanson for Sheriff, 9204 S. 173rd St, Omaha, NE 68136

I would appreciate your vote on May 10

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blessed me in so many ways and continue to do so. The Proverb is true, “grandchildren are the crown of the elderly.”

The third circle I mentioned is my faith. I believe that people serve others for many reasons, some just because “it feels good.” I serve because I know that it is scriptural to do so and honors our Father when we bless others through our giftings.

I am a solid social and fiscal conservative and will do my best to control spending, ensure parental control of education, protect the citizens of our state, and protect the lives of the most marginalized in our society.

You can learn more about me at vongiller4ne.com. I’d be grateful for your support and vote!

Continued on page B8 PAID ADVERTISEMENTS

DISTRICT 4 VONGILLERN4NE.COM PAID FOR BY VON GILLERN FOR NEBRASKA 18370 HONEYSUCKLE DR. | ELKHORN, NE 68022

B8 | The Jewish Press | April 22, 2022

Continued from page B7 ELIZABETH HALLGREN Nebraska Legislature, District 6 Nebraska is at a crossroads. Individually we pay 52% more in taxes than our peer states, and we are working with a tax system that hasn’t been sustainably updated since the 1960s. This translates to less money in your pocket and a real financial disincentive to work, live, and operate a business in Nebraska.

Couple our high taxes with the fact that we have 40,000 unfilled jobs in our state with a historically low unemployment rate and the third highest labor participation rate in the country and the economic future of Nebraska is incredibly uncertain. Now is the time for our elected officials to get laser-focused on updating our tax system so that it serves our current and future

economic environment and to work on attracting and retaining a quality workforce.

As a fiscal conservative and business person, I will bring the right combination of experience and education to the legislature. Through my work with the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program and the University of Iowa’s Venture School I have helped over 300 hundred businesses grow and run efficiently. I understand how budgets and forecasts work and I know that it takes a team to accomplish big things.

I am also a mom. I want nothing more than to have my adult sons choose Nebraska to start and grow their families. But they won’t if we don’t have well-paying jobs across the state and a tax system that lets them keep as much money from their paychecks as neighboring states.

RE-ELECT

BOB EVNEN SECRETARY OF STATE I would appreciate your vote on Tuesday, May 10

Paid for by Bob Evnen for Nebraska 5555 South Street, Lincoln, NE 68506, Rich Herink, Treasurer

ELECT

Thank you to my supporters: Katherine Finnegan and David Gilinsky Alison Freifeld MD and Ken Cowan MD Jennifer and John Glazer Sandy and John Lehr

KayCarneForAssessor@gmail.com 402-571-3454 | www.KayCarne.com Paid for by Friends of Kay Carne, 1299 Farnam St., Suite 300, Omaha, NE 68102

My experiences working with small businesses, leading organizations, and engaging with economic drivers throughout the state provide me with unique qualifications to represent district 6. I’m the only candidate with the business experience and financial training necessary to bring home wins for reducing taxes and improving our business environment so that our children will live the Good Life here in Nebraska.

CHRISTIAN MIRCH Nebraska Legislature, District 6 My name is Christian Mirch. I am a proud husband, father, police officer and attorney. I attended Creighton University, but with a passion for public service I left Creighton a year before graduating to pursue a career in law enforcement with the Omaha Police Department. I served our city as an Omaha Police Officer for 10 years, where I worked in every precinct in our city, on every shift, and mentored at-risk youth in our community. I also served in the Criminal Investigations Bureau and Special Operations Section - Gang Unit, where I worked to suppress violent gang activity and prevent children from falling victim to gang recruitment.

While working as a police officer, I finished my undergraduate degree at Creighton and later attended Creighton University School of Law. After graduating from law school, I left the Omaha Police Department to clerk for the Chief Justice of the Nebraska Supreme Court. Today, I work as an attorney in Omaha helping small businesses start and find success. I continue to serve as a police officer for a rural community and serve on the Board of Directors for the Set Me Free Project, a non-profit focused on ending human trafficking.

I am running for legislature to lower taxes, increase public safety, and to reform our educational system ensuring student success and educational transparency. I believe that as a collaborative voice in the legislature, I will be a consensus builder and advocate for our community. We need to ensure that during the uncertain times facing our nation - with rising costs of healthcare, childcare, food, and housing - our representatives are focused on making Nebraska a better place to live, with a strong economy and more opportunity for all.

Please visit votemirch.com to learn more. I’d appreciate your vote on May 10!

MARILYN ASHER Nebraska Legislature, District 8 “Property taxes are crushing Omaha homeowners.” That’s the view of Marilyn Asher, a candidate for the State Legislature in District 8.

“Our state legislature has accomplished some good things in this area, but we need to do more if we are going to keep our state competitive in terms of attracting jobs that will keep our young people here,” she said.

Asher is also campaigning for a back to the basics approach to education. “American kids are falling behind and we need to focus on the basics if we’re going to compete globally,” she said.

A third issue of her campaign is full funding for police. We need adequate law enforcement to protect our neighborhoods.

“We can’t let isolated abuses result in less funding for police,” she said. “That just doesn’t make sense. The vast majority of police officers are hard-working honest men and women and they deserve our thanks.”

Although this is her first time running for public office, she has been active in assisting state senators with research and passing legislation.

Marilyn holds a Master’s Degree in Organizational Leadership, has been the volunteer coordinator for the Nebraska Correctional Youth Facility, as well as co-owner of a small business, specializing in home renovations. She and her husband Dallas have three children and twelve grandchildren.

“I am running because I care about the future of our kids and grandkids and for all the future generations of this great state,” Asher said. “The citizens of Nebraska are the second house of our state Legislature and we need our voices to be heard,” she said.

With the May 10 Primary just around the corner, Marilyn said she has purchased a new pair of walking shoes and is looking forward to going door to door to meet voters.

BOB BORGESON Nebraska Legislature, District 12 I am a long-time community leader and the State Director of SMART-TD, an employee organization representing over 1,200 railroad workers in Nebraska. My wife Mary Ann and I make our home in Millard. We have four children and six grandchildren.

My 42 years with Burlington taught me the value of a hard day’s work and the importance of making sure that working families are given the opportunity to have good paying jobs with benefits to provide for their families.

As your state legislator, I will work to help provide Nebraskans with those opportunities. I will find ways to reduce property taxes. I will focus on reliable funding for transportation and roads. I will work hard to create good paying jobs with benefits with the outcome of keeping our young people in Nebraska. I will work to provide adequate state funding for schools, and I will strive to be fiscally conservative with your tax dollars.

I want to work for you and would appreciate your vote May 10.

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CA NDIDATE STATEMEN TS

Continued from page B8 MERV RIEPE Nebraska Legislature, District 12 My story is one of growing up on a farm and joining the U.S. Navy as a hospital corpsman at the age of 17. I was honorably discharged and returned to Omaha.

Upon my return to Omaha, I attended the University of Nebraska at Omaha and received a degree in finance. I attended graduate school at The University of Iowa with a degree in health care policy/management. In Omaha, I served as a senior administrator at three hospitals: Lutheran, Bergan Mercy and Children’s.

In 2014, I was elected to the Nebraska Legislature as the Senator to represent Legislative District 12. While in the Nebraska Legislature my peers elected me Chairman of the Health & Human Services Committee. While Chair, we introduced managed care to Medicaid in an effort to manage costs and promote access as appropriate. I also was successful in direct primary care being signed into law that allowed for greater access to health care and cost efficiency.

In 2020, I was elected to the Ralston Board of Education. I promote parental authority, improved test proficiency and letting children be children without sex education in the elementary grades.

Upon my return to the Legislature in the 2022 election, I want to work with the Senator Linehan in an effort to clarify taxes as well as promote incentive for people and businesses to stay and come to Nebraska. I want to work on issues regarding nursing homes, mental health and shortages of critical staffing—teachers, health care workers, correction staff and more.

Please consider my experience both in business and the Legislature that would give me significant advantage representing voters. On a personal note, I am married, a father and grandfather. Learn more at voteriepe.com.

JOHN ARCH Nebraska Legislature, District 14 The story of the last four years for all Nebraskans is a story of coming together to overcome extreme challenges and not only persevering but striving. Together, as Nebraskans we have overcome historic flooding and natural disasters, and an unprecedented global pandemic. Throughout all of this, Senator John Arch has been a voice of reason, steadfast leader, and has kept the promises he made to voters when he first ran for office in 2018.

In 2018, Senator John Arch made several commitments to the voters of Nebraska. He pledged to fight for economic development to help create jobs and grow the economy, he pledged to put the safety and security of our citizens at the top of his priority list, pledged to lower taxes on our hard-working families and small businesses, and he pledged to uphold the Nebraska values we all hold so dear.

He has made good on all of these promises.

Additionally, as Co-Chairman for his first two years, and now as Chairman of the Health and Human Services Committee, Senator Arch has led the way in investigating and working to reform issues with the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services. His work along with that of those on the committee is leading to transformative change that will provide better services and greater accountability for those the department serves and the taxpayers who pay the bills.

State Senator John Arch is running for reelection to the District 14 seat in the Nebraska Legislature and he is asking the voters to send him back to Lincoln to continue the work he has started. Whether by early ballot or on May 10, John Arch would appreciate your vote.

District 14 is primarily made up of the cities of Papillion and La Vista in Sarpy County.

ELECT

CLARICE JACKSON Nebraska Legislature, District 18 Clarice Jackson is the Founder and Executive Director of Voice Advocacy Center - The Literacy/Dyslexia Screening, Teaching and Special Education Advocacy Program in Omaha, NE. Clarice is a lifelong Nebraskan, the mother of two wonderful children, Mekhi and Latecia (deceased), and is committed to making the Good Life obtainable for all.

Clarice serves as Councilwoman for The Learning Community of Douglas and Sarpy County District 1, on the Omaha Mayor’s Human Rights and Relations Board Member and Past Chair, is a Phoenix Academy Private School Board Member and one of the Governor-appointed Commissioners of African American Affairs for the State of Nebraska. Clarice brings a wealth and years of grassroots activism to her decision to run for Legislature on School Choice, Parental Rights, and Dyslexia and believes she is the right voice at the right time to represent the constituents in LD 18. Key issues she will address in the Legislature are: Parental Rights in Education/School Choice, Literacy/Dyslexia Reform, Police and Community Relations/Safety, and Property Tax and Overall Tax Relief.

Clarice believes every Nebraskan deserves freedom of opportunity and the right to prosper.

She believes every Nebraskan deserves the liberty to pursue their dreams and to feel safe in our communities. She believes people matter more than bureaucracies and special interests. She believes when we work together, we can overcome our challenges and become stronger. We can nourish stronger neighborhoods in District 18, grow stronger communities in the metro area, and build a stronger state. Clarice believes we owe that to every Nebraskan and to our future generations. Please visit ClariceJackson.com and Facebook.com/Jackson4NE to learn more.

STU DORNAN Nebraska Legislature, District 20 The Dornan family has lived in Legislative District 20 for 30 years and it would be an honor to represent you in the Nebraska Legislature.

My desire to serve in the Legislature is driven by my lifelong commitment to community service.

I believe we all have a responsibility to give back in whatever ways best utilize our abilities and interests.

Public service has always been an important part of my life. Through my work as an FBI agent, serving as Douglas County Attorney, and helping others throughout my legal career, I know the importance and impact of serving others.

My involvement in many community organizations, including having served on the Westside Board of Education, and current service on the boards of ESU #3, Community Alliance, as well as UNMC’s Board of Counselors, has provided me the background and experience necessary to address the issues facing our district.

As a community, we must continue to work together to address repeat offenders, provide meaningful opportunities for rehabilitative programs, institute and expand problem-solving courts, prevent additional crimes, and support and ensure justice for crime victims.

As part of our work, we must enhance our restorative justice approach for the betterment of our community.

Simply put, restorative justice reaches out to victims to heal their wounds to the extent possible. It encourages individuals who are tax burdens to become taxpayers.

My family and I are committed to the work required to be elected to the Nebraska Legislature. We welcome your support and vote in the May 10 primary election.

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ELECT

MERV RIEPE D I S T R I C T 1 2 S TAT E L E G I S L AT U R E

Paid for by McCarthy for Metro Committee, 945 No. 131 Court, Omaha, NE 68154

Paid for by Riepe for Legislature, 6232 South 79th Circle, Omaha, NE 68127

Primary Election

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C AND I DATE STATE M E N TS

Continued from page B9 JULIE FREDRICKSON Nebraska Legislature, District 20 “I am proud to advertise my candidacy for Legislator representing District 20. I have always supported strong relations and full support by the United States to Israel and acknowledge that the United States was founded on Judeo-Christian values.”

Julie Fredrickson has been a native to Omaha for over forty five years. She is a wife to Walter of 27 years, has three married daughters and seven grandchildren, all here in the Omaha area. Julie has been a Nebraska Realtor since 1997 and the broker and owner of Heavenly Home Sales, a faith based Real Estate Brokerage.

Julie’s charitable work in the Omaha area includes being a volunteer with Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Midlands, American Heart Association, Nebraska Children’s Choir and a longstanding member of her community church.

She founded and led the Omaha Tea Party Patriots and was the Nebraska Director of the Patriot Voices. She is a member of Anne Batchelder’s Republican Women’s Group, Nebraska Taxpayers for Freedom, We the Parents, Nebraskans for Founders Values and the Republican Party.

Julie hopes to bring a perspective of someone who has worked with the public and understands the discontent in Omaha voters with high taxes, unconstitutional mandates and the lack of parental rights present in todays schools. She asks for your vote so she can bring her strong conservative values to the unicameral.

RICK HOLDCROFT Nebraska Legislature, District 36 Rick Holdcroft is running for the Nebraska Legislature in District 36. District 36 was moved to Sarpy County as part of the 2011 redistricting. It includes Gretna, Springfield and portions of Papillion and Bellevue.

Rick’s top priority is to reduce the tax burden on our families by controlling spending and rebalancing our 50-year-old tax structure.

With 28 years of decorated military service including two assignments at U.S. Strategic Command, and with four children also serving in the military, Rick understands the sacrifices made by the servicemen and women who call Nebraska home and will be a champion for our veterans in the Legislature.

As a former aerospace executive who built a field office from the ground up with a nation-leading company, Rick knows what it takes to help local businesses succeed and create good jobs.

He’ll be an advocate for reducing the tax burden and incentivizing businesses to stay and grow in Nebraska.

Rick is a husband, father and grandfather who values family and faith as the cornerstones of the Good Life we enjoy in Nebraska. He will help our community maintain and uphold the values and principles important to our quality of life.

Rick was named the 2019 Knight of the Year for the Nebraska Knights of Columbus and received the 2019 Distinguished Service Award from the University of Nebraska Alumni Association. He remains active in several military service organizations and recently served on the commissioning board for the U.S.S. Omaha.

Rick is a strong Republican who will bring conservative values to the Legislature.

MIKE FOLEY Nebraska Auditor of Public Accounts A couple of weeks ago I joined with five other lieutenant governors from the United States and took a trade mission trip to Israel. What an extraordinary experience it was to learn of the history and remarkable accomplishments of the Jewish people.

We traveled throughout the beautiful country and learned so much of the history and struggles.

As part of our trip we met with the prime minister, former prime minister, current defense minister and numerous other high ranking Israeli officials.

The accomplishments of the Jewish people in building their nation are nothing short of amazing. The Jewish people face constant struggles and threats to their very existence yet press forward to be a major force for good in the Middle East.

Of particular interest to me was the work of a man who has become a good friend – Mr. Fischel Ziegelheim. Fischel is an orthodox Jew from New Jersey who came to Nebraska a few years ago. He purchased a distressed beef processing operation in Hastings then worked to turn the company into an efficient and profitable entity.

He then worked closely with the rabbinical authorities in Israel so that the company produces kosher beef products which are then shipped and sold to buyers in Israel. I have worked

closely with Fischel over the years to assist him in this endeavor and traveled with Fischel to meetings in Jerusalem where we worked out some regulatory matters to increase these kosher beef sales. I am so proud to be associated with this success.

ROBERT J. BORER Nebraska Secretary of State Retired Lincoln Fire & Rescue Captain, Robert J. Borer, of Lincoln, is the leading challenger on the 2022 Nebraska May Primary ballot for Secretary of State. Borer is the recipient of the first-ever Congressional Public Safety Officer Medal of Valor, the highest civilian distinction for courage and bravery.

“Since retiring two years ago, I have dedicated myself fulltime to fighting on the People’s frontline – holding local and state government officials and agencies accountable for actions that have negatively impacted our civil liberties,” Borer stated.

“Nebraska needs a Secretary of State who will hone our Constitution and prioritize people over politics. Nebraska deserves a Secretary of State who will stand up against the Biden administration who wants to tank our country by instituting nationalized elections. I will be a strong proponent for proper checks and balances and am looking forward to instilling integrity back into our state’s elections and restoring public trust.”

Bob believes the citizens of Nebraska deserve accountability and transparency from their elected and appointed public servants. Without election integrity, there is no consent of the governed, and we are no longer free citizens.

The pinnacle of his 27-year firefighting career was ascending 1180’ up a 1500’ TV tower with an “attempt to rescue” that earned him and his team the inaugural Congressional Public Safety Officer Medal of Valor. Born and raised in Nebraska, he is a graduate of Doane University, summa cum laude. Borer and his wife, Cheryl reside in Lincoln. He is the father of six bright, hardworking, wonderful children.

A vote for “The Better Bob” on May 10 is a vote to restore integrity to our elections and secure the “Good Life” for future Nebraskans.

For more information about Borer’s candidacy, please visit RobertJBorer.com.

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I h t 0 1 y a M e t vo

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Continued from page B10 BOB EVNEN Nebraska Secretary of State For nearly four years I have had the honor and privilege of serving as Nebraska’s Secretary of State. I respectfully ask for your vote again this year in my candidacy for re-election.

The office of Secretary of State involves many responsibilities, of which serving as Nebraska’s Chief Election Officer is a major part. But did you know that the Secretary of State is Nebraska’s Chief Protocol Officer – charged with the statutory responsibility to promote international trade, and the international exchange of education and culture?

For example, in February I led a trade mission of 25 Nebraskans to the UAE and Jordan. We had along UNL professors from the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources who are experts in agricultural technology, precision agriculture and water management. We also had Nebraska entrepreneurs who are looking to expand their businesses or attract sound foreign direct investment.

And we had leaders of Nebraska agricultural commodity groups.

Nebraska exports beef to the Middle East. The only Kosher beef processing plant in the U.S. that exports beef to Israel is located in Nebraska. Nebraska processors also ship Halal beef to the Middle East. I’m working to help our beef processors expand their Middle East markets.

The Secretary of State has many other responsibilities: chair of the State Records Board, which oversees Nebraska.gov, the state government website; chair of the Real Estate Commission; running business services; and much more.

Have you heard that Nebraska’s 2020 elections were fraudulent? That’s false. Our elections were fair and secure. I have investigated every claim about our elections that has been brought to our office – and many that weren’t. None of them are true.

Check out what I found in “Fake vs. Fact,” at sos.nebraska.gov.

I respectfully ask for your vote for my re-election as Nebraska’s Secretary of State.

MARNI HODGEN State Board of Education, District 8 Marni Hodgen was born and raised in Omaha. She graduated from Roncalli Catholic High School and received her B.A. from Doane College in Crete, Nebraska. Marni and her husband Patrick have been married for 13 years and have three energetic boys.

Last spring when the State Board of Education proposed a comprehensive sex education curriculum within the health standards, Marni became immediately concerned. She has been dedicated to providing public comment opposing comprehensive sex education over the last year. Despite an overwhelming 90% of parents concerned about the standards the State Board of Education has ignored the majority. This was the catalyst in Marni’s decision to run for State Board.

When elected, Marni will support local control and parental involvement. She will prioritize academics and push for transparency, including curriculum transparency. Marni has been a strong voice and leader and will work hard to redirect the board’s focus on what matters, education.

To find out more please visit www.marni4nekids.com.

KAY CARNE Douglas County Assesor/Register of Deeds I am Kay Carne, an Omaha native and citizen who wants to serve to improve our local government and community. As an honest, hardworking, experienced person, I will improve the function of the Assessor’s office and I am certainly a better choice than my opponents. This race will essentially be decided on May 10th, because there are three Republicans running, no Democrats, and only one person will advance from the Primary.

After growing up in Omaha, I graduated from Georgetown University with a B.S. focused on accounting. I then worked for a Big 4 accounting firm in the Financial Services sector, primarily in New York, for more than a decade. There, I led many teams on projects varying from an IPO, to valuation and accounting for mortgage-backed securities, to audits of Fortune 500 companies. With a passion to see a higher functioning government, I would like to use my skills to improve our Assessor’s office. With over $1.2 billion in property taxes collected from Douglas County property owners, assessing properties is an important function in our community to ensure this tax is fair and accurate.

As Douglas County Assessor, I would modernize this office and start that modernization with a new computer-assisted mass appraisal system that uses primarily comparable sales for assessments. Each property would be revalued annually, and thus the changes in property assessments would be generally smaller due to more frequent valuations. I would also focus more on public engagement, educating the public on the process and improving communication between the office and citizens.

I hope to earn your vote in the Republican Primary on May 10th. Please visit my website KayCarne.com to learn more or contact me with questions or thoughts on this office.

BRIAN GRIMM Douglas County Assesor/Register of Deeds I am the Chief Field Deputy for the Douglas County Assessor/Register of Deeds. I started my career with the office in 2006 as a Real Estate Lister and later achieved the titles of Real Estate Appraiser Tech I followed by Property Appraisal Information Analyst prior to being appointed to my current position.

The Jewish Press | April 22, 2022 | B11

I specialize in mass appraisal and computer modeling and am responsible for the valuation and data validity of 225,000 parcels within the county. I have successfully valued properties using accepted mass appraisal techniques each and every year since being appointed as Chief Field Deputy and continue to successfully value properties using the mass appraisal method to ensure fair and equitable valuations.

I earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Bellevue University specializing in Management of Information Systems and have continued to further my education through the completion of various mass appraisal classes and seminars. My wife, Kim, of 22 years is a Neonatal Nurse Practitioner at Methodist Women’s Hospital. We have two daughters, Reaghan and Ava. Reaghan graduated from Elkhorn South High School in 2021

where she was active in basketball and track as well as being a member of the National Honor Society. Reaghan is currently a freshman at Northwest Missouri State University. Ava is a freshman at Douglas County West High School where she is part of the cross country, basketball and track teams. When I am not at work, I enjoy cooking, spending time with family, and attending high school sporting events.

I am running for this office due to the critical nature of property valuations in this explosive real estate market. As the only candidate with mass appraisal experience, my 32,000 hours of hands on experience will ensure that property valuations will be fair and uniform throughout Douglas County.

Continued on page B12 PAID ADVERTISEMENTS

VOTE THOMAS FLYNN Douglas County Clerk of the District Court

27 years of dedicated service to Douglas County with proven results

https://flynnfordouglasclerk.com/ tom@flynnfordouglasclerk.com

Paid for by Committee to Elect Flynn Clerk

I STAND WITH ISRAEL Julie Fredrickson

Candidate in District 20 for the Nebraska Unicameral Paid for by Julie Fredrickson For Legislature

B12 | The Jewish Press | April 22, 2022

Continued from page B11 WALT PEFFER Douglas County Assesor/Register of Deeds Walt Peffer has 30 years of high-profile experience in business and government and is the only candidate for Douglas County Assessor that has negotiated complex multi-million dollar real estate transactions, setting valuations for both residential and commercial properties. He is also the only candidate for Assessor that has a Nebraska Professional Real Estate License and a State of Nebraska County Assessor Certificate.

Peffer served as Executive Assistant to four Omaha Mayors, developing multi-million dollar municipal budgets. He has also served as Director of Omaha’s Administrative Services Department, where he had oversight of over 100 employees and di-

rected all real estate activities – including the design and construction of new buildings.

Peffer is grateful to be endorsed by Congressman Don Bacon, former Governor Dave Heineman, City Councilmembers Aimee Melton, Brinker Harding, and Don Rowe, County Commissioners P.J. Morgan, Mike Friend, and Mary Ann Borgeson, former Douglas County Sheriff Tim Dunning, the Omaha Board of Realtors, and more.

Walt will listen to taxpayer concerns, and like two of the Omaha Mayors he worked for – P.J. Morgan and Ed Zorinsky – he will maintain an open-door policy.

Experience matters! It’s time to return fairness and transparency to the Assessor’s office. Vote Walt Peffer for Douglas County Assessor on May 10. Learn more at votepeffer.com.

Vote May 10

Chris TOOKER

Learning Community Council, District 3

Vote for...

Conservative principles and parental engagement

Paid for by Chris Tooker

Please Vote May 10th

LEE POLIKOV

S A R P Y C O U N T Y AT T O R N E Y

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT leepolikov@cox.net Paid for by Committee to Retain Lee Polikov County Attorney

DON KLEINE Douglas County Attorney It is an honor to serve the citizens of Douglas County as your Douglas County Attorney. We have assembled a great team of 63 lawyers who are responsible for processing and trying cases.

Most often these cases present complex and difficult issues. As their leader, I continue to mentor my team with the wealth of experience I have acquired throughout my career. Those experiences are vital in understanding how the system works and what can be done to improve in making Douglas County an even better place to raise families. I was born and raised in Omaha and strive every day to keep our community safe.

Keeping people out of the system and giving second chances is also an important aspect of our job. Douglas County has more problem-solving courts than any other county in Nebraska. Drug Court, Diversion, Mental Health Diversion, Young Adult Court, and Veterans Treatment Court all offer defendants an opportunity to address their underlying issues while holding them responsible.

As the Douglas County Attorney, I am also assigned the task of Coroner. I have worked very hard to improve our services to the residents of Douglas County. Our office continues to work with Live On Nebraska to ensure families’ wishes are carried out with organ recovery.

I am on the National Board of District Attorneys which allows me to work with lead prosecutors from across the country to solve problems that exist on a national and local scale. I am on the Board of our child advocacy center, Project Harmony, and have worked tirelessly to do everything possible to improve our ability to protect the most vulnerable. We collaborate with schools and superintendents to keep kids in school in an effort to address the truancy issues that often lead to crimes. I believe in using my experience to teach. I teach the police recruits, was an adjunct at UNO and currently teach at Creighton Law School.

I would appreciate your vote in November!

DAVE PANTOS Douglas County Attorney I am running for Douglas County Attorney to help bring about criminal justice reform and prison reform in our community. Our prisons are bursting at the seams and we now have the worst prison overcrowding problem in the country. As a result, we have a major public safety crisis because prisoners receive limited programming and end up reoffending when they are released. The current county attorney is just doubling down on mandatory minimum sentences. I want to focus on crime prevention and keeping low-risk, nonviolent offenders out of the system. I think we also need to address the huge racial disparities in prosecution and sentencing.

Every person in the state penitentiary costs you, the taxpayer, $43,000 per year. Wouldn’t it be great if we diverted low-risk offenders away from that system?

Here is some information about me and my background. I have been a lawyer for over 25 years. I ran Legal Aid of Nebraska for many years. I also served until recently as the Vice Chairperson of Metropolitan Community College’s Board of Governors. Every week I am in eviction court volunteering my time to defend poor tenants from going homeless. I have also served on many Supreme Court committees and commissions and boards. I’m married to Jill (she is a nurse at the VA Hospital) and have two 15-year-old sons in public school. I have my own private practice as a lawyer and I also teach as an adjunct professor at UNO. My team and I have knocked on thousands of doors in Douglas County already. What I hear at the doors is a common refrain – it’s time for a change. We need public safety, but we want it to be fair, just, and equitable.

Visit my website at www.davepantos.com.

Thank you for your support!

MARY ANN BORGESON Douglas County Board of Commissioners, District 6 It has been an honor to serve the residents of Douglas County. I have led the charge on implementing cost-saving programs such as the: Juvenile Home Monitoring Program which has saved taxpayers $28,601,393 and a total number of detention bed days saved from 1-1-2004 to 2-28-2022 = 194,860.

Douglas County’s Live Healthy Prescription, Health & Dental Discount Program which has saved over 150,000 citizens more than $4 million dollars on their prescription drug costs since June 2005. Adult Community Corrections Programs (Re-Entry Assistance Program, Work Release and House Arrest) have saved taxpayers $23 million dollars since 2012.

I have been a leader in addressing some of the hardest issues in county government: mental health, criminal justice, developmental disabilities, and aging issues. I have worked to hold the line on our spending, looked for meaningful and productive public/private partnerships and constantly strive for more efficient and effective ways to provide high quality services to our citizens.

I pride myself in working hard and being responsive every day to the citizens of our great County. I have as much passion today for representing Douglas County as I did when I first ran the County Board. As I launch my re-election campaign, I plan to continue to work hard and will always look for cost savings and ways to improve the services we provide to the taxpayers. I want Douglas County to be the county in which residents are proud to live!

I would appreciate your vote May 10!

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CA NDIDATE STATEMEN TS

Continued from page B12 THOMAS FLYNN Douglas County Clerk of the District Court I’m running for Douglas County Clerk of the District Court because my nearly three decades of dedicated service as a deputy sheriff makes me the most qualified candidate.

I have the experience of putting many of the clerk’s office responsibilities into actual action during the course of my duties. I have placed over 1,000 at risk juveniles in safe haven homes under juvenile ex parte orders. I have made over 5,000 criminal warrant arrests, as well as served thousands of board of mental health and protection orders. I have catalogued and inventoried countless pieces of evidence into property for safeguarding, chain of custody and future prosecution. I have testified in front of numerous juries and sat in on their selections and safeguarding them while doing their Civic duty, including being sequestered.

I understand the requirements of this office, why they are important and how they are used in the criminal justice system. I spent my career building relationships with elected officials, department heads, judges and attorneys, who interact with the clerk’s office on a daily basis.

I will bring a balanced conservative approach to the clerk’s office, both as an economic steward and an opportunity seeker.

I will place Douglas County in a position to embrace the challenges of the next generation. My office would be the most efficient county office with a continued focus on reducing taxpayer expense, but not to the detriment of a taxpayer’s experience. We would also take an innovative approach towards new technology, find ways to streamline the process, and will be open to different forms of payment.

Over the course of my 27 years with the sheriff’s office I have received several awards: Douglas County deputy of the year, 2007 and 2011; Medal of Honor, 2011; Medal of Valor, 2007; Purple Heart, 2011; and Nebraska Sheriff’s Association Deputy of the year, 2011.

AARON HANSON Douglas County Sheriff I’m Sgt. Aaron Hanson, a 25 year OPD veteran and father of four great kids. I was born and raised in Omaha and Douglas County, am currently the supervisor of the Fugitive Unit pursuing the Omaha Metro’s most dangerous fugitives with past assignments in the K9 Unit, Gang Unit and Uniformed Patrol. I

served as President of the Omaha POA for 6 years. Only I have the endorsement of Mayor Stothert, County Attorney Don Kleine and Todd Schmaderer. Like these great leaders, I know that to achieve true, long-term public safety we must have a perfect balance between being tough on crime, community trust and helping challenged people to get a second chance.

My priorities as Sheriff: Keep innocent people and families safe. This is the most critical role of government and I have been trained by the best, Chief Schmaderer. I have the most experience in this race as a crime prevention and violence disruption expert.

Have the backs of good and honest police professionals.

“Defunding the police” hurts police and citizens alike. I will not stand for it. We want our police and deputies to be professional and feel valued so that they can keep us safe.

Work to give worthy people a second chance. I have spent the last few years of my life working to help people who made mistakes get a second chance with a career in the skilled trades.

This will not only help those individuals by making them self-sufficient, it helps our community by making us safer, expanding our tax base and reducing our incarceration costs. Most importantly, it helps those individuals’ innocent children by giving them a more stable and safe home environment, disrupting generational cycles of poverty and creating generational wealth anew.

I’m asking for your vote.

WAYNE HUDSON Douglas County Sheriff In today’s ever-changing climate, communities need law enforcement personnel that can work with other leaders to safeguard citizens and present a positive image to the public. Law enforcement personnel must be guardians of the community as eloquently stated by the great philosopher Plato in his vision of a perfect society: “In a Republic that honors the core of democracy, the greatest amount of power is given to those called Guardians. Only those with the most impeccable character are chosen to bear the responsibility of protecting the democracy.”

As your next Douglas County Sheriff I will ensure all employees of the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office are held to the “impeccable character” standard, to include myself. There will never come a time you will ever question my honesty, my integrity,

and professionalism. Most of all you will never call into question my overall commitment to the citizens of Douglas County and the employees of the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office.

To learn more, please visit my website at hudsonfordcsheriff. com and my Facebook page @Hudson4DCsheriff.

GEORGE MERITHEW Douglas County Sheriff George Merithew is a native Nebraskan and life-long Republican who has lived in Omaha for over 30 years. George retired from the Omaha Police Department after 25 years, achieving the rank of Lieutenant. While at OPD, George served in every precinct and with almost every bureau. He served as a Detective Sergeant in the Major Crimes Unit before being promoted to Lieutenant where he served for over 11 years as the Administrative Lieutenant to the Chief and Deputy Chiefs. George worked on special projects such as the Body Worn Camera implementation and he created the OPD Limited English Proficiency policy, working closely with the Department of Justice to achieve compliance. George was responsible for creating the OPD Policies and Procedures Manual, which transformed the previous 2,000+ page SOP into the concise and current PPM of just over 1,100 pages. Additionally, George was a member of the Legislative Liaison Team where he reviewed legislative bills and testified at the Unicameral. George has a very strategic view of police work.

George is a 38-year member of the U.S. Army Reserves. He enlisted at 17 and served as a Nuclear, Biological, Chemical Defense Specialist, achieving the rank of Sergeant First Class (E-7).

George was commissioned in the Army Judge Advocate General Corp after graduating from Creighton University Law School.

During his military career, George has been activated five times, serving in Operations Desert Shield/Storm, Noble Eagle, Enduring Freedom as well as the Bosnian conflict and the War on Drugs. George currently serves as a Civil Affairs Lieutenant Colonel where he advised theatre level General Officers on public safety. George has extensive experience working domestic operations along with multiple state and federal agencies.

George is a fiscal conservative and firmly supports “Stand Your Ground” and Constitutional Carry laws. He does not believe these inalienable rights should end at any city border.

Continued on page B14 PAID ADVERTISEMENTS

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C AND I DATE STATE M E N TS

Continued from page B13 JOHN EWING Douglas County Treasurer John W. Ewing, Jr. is a name you’ve trusted for over 40 years to provide quality, professional service with integrity.

I started my career as a police officer on March 1st, 1982 and served this community with distinction. I rose to the rank of Deputy Police Chief prior to retiring at the end of 2006 to become your Douglas County Treasurer.

While running for office I promised to restore fiscal integrity, restore public trust in the office and utilize technology to serve you better and have delivered on those promises.

Systems have been put in place to ensure fiscal integrity. I have always been honest and transparent about your Treasurer’s Office and we have gone from a check or cash only office to online availability for almost every service, taking payments over the phone and offering debit and credit card services in the Customer Service Centers.

I would appreciate your vote in May and in November. Thank you for allowing me to serve you!!!

LEE POLIKOV Sarpy County Attorney To my many supporters who have shown trust and faith in my ability and philosophy to manage the Sarpy County Attorney’s Office: Thank You. Fortunately, I grew up in the 1950s, one block north of the Crossroads Mall. My family belonged to Beth Israel Synagogue, I graduated from Westside, and served as Prior of ƩAM in Lincoln. There I met Norman Krivosha, who greatly influenced my career path. As an undergraduate, I joined Army

ROTC, took Basic Training at Ft. Riley, KS, received an Educational Delay to complete UNLLaw, and then did Intelligence Officer Basic at Ft. Huachuca, AZ. Sarpy County tripled in population since I started 48 years ago with Sheriff Pat Thomas.

I planned for one year, but growth was exciting and challenging, so I stayed for 26 years. When the Supreme Court removed my predecessor, I was appointed to serve three years of the term.

The office needed rebuilding and preparation to grow. I inherited a terrific group of attorneys and staff, which has grown to 26 attorneys and 46 support staff. We have a Criminal Division, a very active Civil Division driven by fast-paced growth, a Juvenile and Child Support Enforcement Division and the best Victim Witness Unit in the state. I have been President of the Nebraska County Attorneys Association and now serve as a Vice President of the National District Attorneys Association. I love what we do for victims, families, and the community. Considering my sixth election, I think of Robert Morgenthau, famed District Attorney for Manhattan, who won nine elections and was 90 when he retired. At 85, a reporter asked if he was going to retire -- his answer was that he called his older brother who told him that this is a bad time to be out of work. I did the same and got the same answer.

JOHN S. McCOLLISTER MUD Board of Directors, SubDivision # 6 The Metropolitan Utilities District (MUD) must continue to provide safe and affordable natural gas and water to the City of Omaha. As a customer-driven utility, it is absolutely essential to maintain high levels of customer service. The

RE-ELECT

JOHN EWING

DOUGLAS COUNTY TREASURER Paid for by John Ewing for Douglas County Treasurer

lead pipe situation in east Omaha and the sewer relocation projects will require continued diligence and creative solutions by the MUD Board of Directors. The utility also needs to evaluate an opportunity to serve finished water to the City of Lincoln to the betterment of both cities.

Finally, the utility will need to participate in efforts to reduce its carbon footprint by expanded home weatherization programs for customers.

Climate change is an existential threat to the world. CO2 traps heat which results in more frequent and severe wildfires, hurricanes, heat waves, floods, droughts, and storms. Those living in poverty are the hardest hit by climate change, despite being the least responsible for its cause.

Renewable energy, wind- and solar-generated electricity are the lowest cost zero carbon producing sources of energy available. Passage of my priority bill in the Unicameral, LB824 in 2016, allowed wind and solar companies in Nebraska to thrive by removing 1930’s regulatory barriers. Since passage, these companies have invested over $3 billion dollars to build wind and solar electricity generating facilities in NE. Therefore, my decades of experience on the MUD Board and my two terms as a state senator sponsoring pro-environmental bills gives me a unique perspective to provide unrivaled leadership and experience to the MUD Board.

MIKE McGOWAN MUD Board of Directors, SubDivision # 6 I am the incumbent Republican candidate for the MUD Board of Directors, SubDivision #6. I grew up in Omaha, graduated from Creighton Prep High School and earned a BS

in Mathematics and a Master of Business (MBA) from Creighton University. I have been married to my wife, Mary, for 48 years. We have five children and seven grandchildren.

I worked 36 years for Northern Natural Gas Company here in Omaha. I really know and understand the Utility business. I have served on the MUD Board of Directors for nine years – serving as Chairman of the Board in 2012 and 2021.

My message is very simple. I am not a career politician, I only want to put my knowledge, experience and conservative values to work for the benefit of the Omaha ratepayers.

I am proud of our accomplishments as a Board. NO natural gas rate increases since 2017! On the water side, the biggest cost increases have come from the City of Omaha due to the federally mandated, unfunded sewer improvements.

In the last National Memphis Light, Gas and Power national survey, MUD ranked 2nd lowest of 40 national utilities in gas rates and 16th lowest in water rates. MUD’s bond ratings for both natural gas and water are very strong – saving ratepayers significant costs on bond borrowings. Cash reserves are very strong and the MUD employee Pension Plan is funded at 94%.

I truly know and understand the Utility business and wish to continue to put my knowledge and skills to work for the ratepayers for another six years.

I am very proud to state that I am supported and endorsed by Congressman Don Bacon, The Douglas County Republican Party and Nebraska Taxpayers for Freedom.

Continued on page B15 PAID ADVERTISEMENTS

The Jewish Press | April 22, 2022 | B15

Continued from page B14 JON TUCKER Metropolitan Community College Board, District 1 Jon Tucker is a husband and father of four children. He grew up in Elkhorn and has lived in the Omaha area all his life. He attended UNL and earned his Bachelor of Science Degree in Business Administration at UNO in 1991. His wife Joan works as a Speech Language Pathologist at Oakdale Elementary in the Westside Community Schools. Jon works for a multi-national technology corporation as an Enterprise Architect in their sales organization. Jon’s oldest children both graduated from Metropolitan Community College and have gone on to UNO for their bachelor’s degree.

Metro is an important pillar of the four counties it serves.

Jon’s children were able to use the CollegeNOW! program during their high school years. This immediately gave them college credit that eventually transferred to UNO. For parents, this welcomes a significant reduction in the cost of tuition.

Keeping the costs of college within more people’s means is one of Jon’s priorities for Metro. Historically, tuition at most higher education systems increase 7% per year. For families, this means a doubling of college tuition every 10 years. Metro relies on property taxes to help reduce the cost of tuition for our residents. Administrators need to balance the concentrated benefits with dispersed costs for enrolled students and the community.

Jon looks to use his business background along with his 25 years working in technology to ensure that Metro continues to be successful and that its students can be successful in their careers. Having a strong educational and training system here in our community makes our local business stronger by attracting talented individuals.

Please vote for Jon Tucker for Metropolitan Community College. For more information about Jon, visit JonTucker.com.

JOHN McCARTHY Metropolitan Community College Board, At Large My campaign will be focused on the crying need for young people to be educated in the trades. You’re probably aware of the disastrous lack of young people to enter the trades. It’s not only the heating and air conditioning trades where I’m a bit of an expert (or, so I think!), but in all trades.

The problem is going to get worse as electricians, plumbers, carpenters, HVAC techs, and all trades retire. The trades are great jobs, they pay well, they provide for stable families and benefit the entire community.

It is said that in the next few years, there will be a shortage of thousands of people in the trades to build and maintain our homes, schools and buildings. We must be able to educate and train the young generation.

NANCY KRATKY OPS School Board, District 6 My strengths in serving on the Omaha Public School Board include my experience and depth of knowledge of 53 years in OPS. I attended OPS from K-12 grade, student taught in OPS and taught for OPS for 33 1/2 years. My two children also graduated from OPS. COVID-19 has limited school visitations. Prior to COVID-19, I visited schools whenever a new principal was assigned. I think it is very important to hear the principal’s perspective, concerns and needs. Our expanded summer program is going to address the loss of learning during the pandemic.

The public is not always aware of our programs and services we provide for OPS families.

We currently have 52,000 students in OPS and 17 Alternative Centers plus a Career Center. The Career Center is located on the lower level of the TAC Building which also includes an automotive repair classroom and preliminary nurses’ training. The second floor includes a large meeting room and district offices.

The fourth floor has been converted into one of our Adult High Schools.

We have to strive for transparency and feature our strengths.

Greater Needs include: 1. Financial Literacy and in learning how to use just one credit card.

2. Correct language usage is necessary for both written and spoken form.

3. Suitable social skills.

4. Proper attire for various work environments.

By visiting schools there is the ability to question and ensure that proposals will ultimately benefit our student population.

CHRISTOPHER TOOKER Learning Community Council, District 3 An old Chinese Proverb states, “If your plan is for one year, plant rice. If your plan is for ten years, plant trees. If your plan is for 100 years, educate children.”

Education is the foundation of Omaha’s future and Chris Tooker is committed to improving education at all levels. Tooker is the only conservative candidate for Learning Community Council District 3; he opposes comprehensive sex education

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and believes parents should be engaged in their children’s education. A vote for Tooker supports conservative principles, fiscal responsibility, and family involvement.

Tooker graduated summa cum laude from Creighton University with degrees in financial analysis and economics. While attending Creighton, he led two teams to the national level of competition as President of the Mock Trial program, helped manage a portion of Creighton’s endowment, and mentored dozens of younger students as a resident adviser. Upon graduation, he worked in Corporate Audit at Union Pacific identifying millions of dollars in unbilled revenue and enhancing process efficiency in several departments. Since 2014, Tooker has helped businesses and individuals have a better relationship with their money as a Certified Financial PlannerTM profes-

sional. Since 2018, Tooker has also been teaching personal finance and insurance at Creighton University.

In the community, Tooker is active in the Omaha Real Estate Investment Association (REIA), and he previously served on the Board of Directors for both the Arthritis Foundation and Combined Health Agencies Drive (CHAD). Additionally, he will serve on the Downtown Rotary Foundation’s Board of Directors starting this summer. As a Past President of the Kiwanis Club of Omaha, Tooker remains dedicated to helping the most at-risk youth in our community. His passion for education and support for kids perfectly align with the Learning Community’s mission to measurably improve educational outcomes for children and families in poverty.

PAID ADVERTISEMENTS

Vote DAN RYBERG For

MUD METROPOLITAN UTILITIES DISTRICT Lifelong resident of Omaha; 47 years in MUD subdistrict 6a Retired Attorney Former Deputy Douglas County Attorney Former Executive Director of the Nebraska County Attorney Assn.

Former Hearing Officer for the Crime Victims Reparation Commission Former Hearing Officer for the Nebraska Equal Opportunity Commission MEMBER President; Korean War Veterans Assn. (Korean DMZ in 1968) American Legion Veteran of Foreign Wars ISSUES Transparency for the customers Maintain low rates during this inflation Renew America’s energy independence 1112 S. 113 Ct., Omaha, Nebr 68144 | ryberg4mud@gmail.com Paid for by Reberg4mud Committee

VOTE MAY 10TH George

MERITHEW Douglas County Sheriff

Paid for by Merithew for Sheriff Committee

B16 | The Jewish Press | April 22, 2022

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