Voices

The Jewish Press

(Founded in 1920)

Margie Gutnik

President

Annette van de Kamp-Wright

Editor

Richard Busse

Creative Director

Susan Bernard

Advertising Executive

Lori Kooper-Schwarz

Assistant Editor

Gabby Blair Sam Kricsfeld

Staff Writers

Mary Bachteler

Accounting

Jewish Press Board

Margie Gutnik, President; Abigail Kutler, Ex-Officio; Danni Christensen; David Finkelstein; Bracha Goldsweig; Mary Sue Grossman; Les Kay; Natasha Kraft; Chuck Lucoff; Joseph Pinson; Andy Shefsky and Amy Tipp. The mission of the Jewish Federation of Omaha is to build and sustain a strong and vibrant Omaha Jewish Community and to support Jews in Israel and around the world. Agencies of the Federation are: Community Relations Committee, Jewish Community Center, Center for Jewish Life, Jewish Social Services, and the Jewish Press. Guidelines and highlights of the Jewish Press, including front page stories and announcements, can be found online at: www.jewishomaha.org; click on ‘Jewish Press.’ Editorials express the view of the writer and are not necessarily representative of the views of the Jewish Press Board of Directors, the Jewish Federation of Omaha Board of Directors, or the Omaha Jewish community as a whole. The Jewish Press reserves the right to edit signed letters and articles for space and content. The Jewish Press is not responsible for the Kashrut of any product or establishment.

Editorial

The Jewish Press is an agency of the Jewish Federation of Omaha. Deadline for copy, ads and photos is: Thursday, 9 a.m., eight days prior to publication. E-mail editorial material and photos to: avandekamp@jewishomaha.org; send ads (in TIF or PDF format) to: rbusse@jewishomaha.org.

Letters to the Editor Guidelines

The Jewish Press welcomes Letters to the Editor. They may be sent via regular mail to: The Jewish Press, 333 So. 132 St., Omaha, NE 68154; via fax: 1.402.334.5422 or via e-mail to the Editor at: avandekamp@jewishomaha.org. Letters should be no longer than 250 words and must be single-spaced typed, not hand-written. Published letters should be confined to opinions and comments on articles or events. News items should not be submitted and printed as a “Letter to the Editor.” The Editor may edit letters for content and space restrictions. Letters may be published without giving an opposing view. Information shall be verified before printing. All letters must be signed by the writer. The Jewish Press will not publish letters that appear to be part of an organized campaign, nor letters copied from the Internet. No letters should be published from candidates running for office, but others may write on their behalf. Letters of thanks should be confined to commending an institution for a program, project or event, rather than personally thanking paid staff, unless the writer chooses to turn the “Letter to the Editor” into a paid personal ad or a news article about the event, project or program which the professional staff supervised. For information, contact Annette van de KampWright, Jewish Press Editor, 402.334.6450.

Postal

The Jewish Press (USPS 275620) is published weekly (except for the first week of January and July) on Friday for $40 per calendar year U.S.; $80 foreign, by the Jewish Federation of Omaha. Phone: 402.334.6448; FAX: 402.334.5422. Periodical postage paid at Omaha, NE. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to: The Jewish Press, 333 So. 132 St., Omaha, NE 68154-2198 or email to: jpress@jewishomaha.org.

We need your support

ANNETTE VAN DE KAMP-WRIGHT

Jewish Press Editor

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been low-key putting the Centennial Endowment on your radar. By growing our endowment, we do two important things. One: we set money aside for the future, — funds that will generate interest years down the road. When the current staff is no longer here (and someday we will all retire) the Press will live on. The second reason is even more important: planning for the future means assuming and trusting there is a future. And that is something we all desperately need to do. Enough of the nay-saying, no more doom and gloom. Yes, papers have been disappearing left and right for years. Yes, people read more online, advertising isn’t going well, we have heard (and said) it all. But we need to have a positive attitude. There is a great community here, the world is starting to open up again, we still have many stories to tell. Besides, this community is vibrant; think of all the stories that haven’t happened yet. For those stories, we need this paper. So we are not going anywhere. It’s tough to ask for funds, even for those of us who work in the non-profit world and should be used to it by now. As one of the last Jewish communities who enjoy a weekly paper, we will most likely have to make some tough decisions in the coming decade. Do we continue to print weekly? Do we charge for subscriptions? Should we consider a paywall on our digital issue? How can we change with the times, and not be too big a drain on the Annual Campaign? Or, should we avoid considering a newspaper a ‘drain’ and instead, be proud that a portion of campaign dollars goes to sustaining a weekly Press? How do we best continue our mission of telling the story of us? Many if not all of these questions are a little uncomfortable, but they must be asked and answered nonetheless. Until we do, we continue to battle rising print and mail costs and diminished advertising. I believe there is great value in a weekly print edition. Of course, I am more than a little biased, but I also know I am not the only one. We’ve practically lived our entire lives online these past years. From work meetings to education, remote offices and ordering our shopping for nocontact delivery, we’ve isolated ourselves. We’ve had to, but it has left scars. At the Press, we very early on decided that putting a paper in your hands, something you can touch, something that takes up physical space, was essential. Now that we are slowly coming out of our isolation, we are more aware than ever that we need to feel connected. It’s who we are as human beings. For all our talk about ‘community,’ we now actually have some very personal and painful data to teach us why we care about each other so much.

Sunday, May 1, we will celebrate our now 102year existence. We will eat and drink and come together; listen to music and dance and enjoy each other’s company. And it’s just one party, but it will become part of the tapesty of Jewish Omaha stories. We’ll take the photos and write the post-story, the images will find their way to various social media. It is one tiny thread, sure, but all threads, no matter how small when they are alone, are essential to the bigger picture. We hope you continue to support us while we weave them together. If you do, I promise I’ll stop mixing my metaphors. I also promise we will bring you a quality paper week after week. Please check out page 9 and send your endowment contribution in. Your gift will support this agency for many years to come. Alternatively, if you are reading this online, you can go to: https://app.mobilecause.com/form/LWqByw?v id=rhy1d.

This year, I was a refugee spending a joyful Passover in Berlin. Next year in Kharkiv.

TANYA BORODINA

BERLIN | JTA Until last month, Tanya Borodina, 44, headed every day to the Shaalavim Jewish Lyceum, a school affiliated with the Conservative, or Masorti, movement in Kharkiv, Ukraine. When the city came under Russian shelling, Borodina and her young daughter fled, ending up in Berlin, where the sister Masorti community swung into full gear. This year, mother and daughter were among 40 people attending a Passover seder at Berlin’s Fraenkelufer Synagogue, run by volunteers from Germany’s Limmud.de Jewish learning program. For Borodina, who has been teaching via Zoom, the closing prayer was: Next year in Kharkiv. I want to share my story: Maybe it will inspire someone, maybe it will upset someone. I have an ordinary family: me, my husband, Andrei Barkovsky and our child, Allochka, now 10 years old. I was born in Ukraine, in the city of Donetsk, but in 2014 the war in the Donbas began. On July 23 we grabbed a package with documents and our little Alla (then 2 years old) and we fled from the war. We arrived in Kharkiv — a large, beautiful, peaceful city, the original capital of Soviet Ukraine. We left everything in Donetsk — an apartment, our belongings, toys, photographs — and started our lives from scratch. It was not easy: to find an apartment, to issue documents for immigrants, to find a job, a kindergarten, a school. But we coped, slowly adjusted our lives: My husband immediately found a job in auto repair and I was invited to teach Hebrew and Jewish tradition at the Shaalavim Jewish Lyceum. As it turns out later, these were the brightest eight years of our life in Kharkiv. On Feb. 24, our peaceful life there ended, as if an hourglass had been turned over. I still remember how a peaceful city woke up at 4:30 in the morning from explosions and the roar of shells, tanks passing through the streets. I had deja vu. My family and I had run away from the war in 2014, but it turned out that the war was chasing us and overtook us in Kharkiv. Now we were learning to live in wartime conditions: There were no calendar dates or times. Just “day one of the war,” “day two,” “day 15.” Everyone hoped that this was not true, that everything would end soon, that Kharkiv would not be bombed. This is a terrible word: war. It does not even fit in

my head that this is possible in the 21st century. We tried to survive inhuman conditions: without water and heating, without vegetables and fruit. Stores closed, public transport stopped running in the city, and in a panic people bought all the food and medicines in pharmacies. We decided that the safest place in our house is the hallway, so our whole life was spent there. We slept there, ate there, Alla played there. In order not to completely disrupt our child’s psyche, we put headphones over her ears, so she could not hear the explosions outside. Everyone texted each other: How are you? And we looked forward to an answer, any answer, because this was a guarantee that the recipient was alive. Many people simply lived in the subway. Many were in cellars. We didn’t go outside for a month. You didn’t know when the shelling will start. All you could hear from friends is that their house was blown up, or the school was hit, and most importantly, that people were dying, ordinary peaceful people who were going to get food or standing in line for humanitarian aid. It’s scary, very scary: trembling in the knees, pain in the stomach and heart. Many people began to leave. Many others stayed, especially old people, sick people, those who could not walk. The other teachers and I organized our own volunteer headquarters, to help our families who remained in Kharkiv. We prepared and brought food, groceries, medicines, stationery and other products and delivered them to addresses across our devastated city. That is how we lived until March 26, when my husband said: You must leave the war zone, you have 15 minutes to pack. It was the most difficult decision of my life, because it is forbidden for men to leave Ukraine. Our train from Kharkiv to Lviv, as it turned out later, was the last evacuation train from our city. My husband, who is 51 years old, just stood there and cried. I always thought that he did not know how to cry at all. The moment when the train started moving and began to pick up speed especially hit us all. He was standing there, and I was on the train with the baby. It turned out that my whole life could fit in a backpack. It feels like a dream, that now I will wake up, and everything will be fine, as before. After 17 hours on the train, you don’t feel your legs and arms any more. All the food and water are gone. The train stops for one minute. Lights must not be turned on for safety reasons. And from outside we hear sirens, sirens. Kyiv is being bombed, Lviv is being bombed. We arrive in Lviv at midnight to learn that all the free buses leave at 9 a.m. There is a curfew. We need to go further. We buy a ticket to Warsaw and wait 12 hours at the border. The phone is constantly ringing: “How are you?” “When are you coming?” “Let us know.” What we dream of — probably like everyone else — is that the war ends quickly. I want to see and hug my husband, wipe away his tears and say everything will be fine: We are all alive.

Tanya Borodina is a mother and Hebrew teacher from Kharkiv, Ukraine.

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

Safe in Berlin after their odyssey from Kharkiv, Ukraine, from left: Tanya Borodina, Marta Kraynyukova, Alla Borodina, Alice Kraynyukova

and Julia Kraynyukova. Credit: Masorti Germany

Idina Menzel, Ilana Glazer, Rachel Bloom and several other Jewish celebs discuss antisemitism on YouTube show

EVELYN FRICK

This article first appeared on Hey Alma. It’s fun and exciting when our favorite celebrities regale us with the minutiae of their lives. What color were the balloon arches at Jenny Slate’s bat mitzvah? How does Morgan Spector react to being the object of the internet’s thirst? But when our favorite celebrities speak out on issues that matter, that’s a special kind of heartening. In Recipe for Change: Standing Up to Antisemitism, a YouTube special released on Thursday produced by The SpringHill Company, a whole cohort of Jewish celebrities are doing just that. Featuring (seriously, prepare yourself for this starstudded list) Idina Menzel, Ilana Glazer, Rachel Bloom, Skylar Astin, Michael Twitty, Hannah Einbinder, Alex Edelman, Tommy Dorfman, Josh Peck, Hari Nef, Michael Zegen and more, Recipe for Change brings together this group to discuss the current global rise of antisemitism. In the special, the celebs are divided into three Shabbat dinners and are each given a scroll. As they dine on delicious looking Black and Middle Eastern-inspired Jewish food, they open their scrolls to discuss the tough questions they pose like, “Have you ever experienced antisemitism?” and “Could the Holocaust happen again?” For Mrs. Maisel actor Michael Zegen, the latter question prompted memories of intergenerational trauma. “My grandparents on my mother’s side were Holocaust survivors,” he remembered. “My grandfather essentially lost his whole family. His father was shot on the way to the trains because he had a

club foot and couldn’t keep up. So they shot him.” But the dinner conversations aren’t about only antisemitism. Rather, some of the scrolls focus on Jewish joy, asking, “What makes you proud to be Jewish?” and, “Tell me you’re Jewish without telling me you’re Jewish.” Other scrolls prompt discussions about Jewish identity, like whether Jews of European descent are white. In a moment of perfectly blended humor and a confession of Jewish assimilation, Idina Menzel revealed, “I have to come clean, so my real spelling of my name is M-EN-T-Z-E-L. Which everyone would say ‘Ment-zel’ and I had a lot of self-hatred about that for some reason. And then [I] wanted this cool sounding [name], so I took the ‘t’ out, which didn’t help anybody say it right.” Ultimately, Recipe for A large group of Jewish celebrities participate in Recipe for Change: Change couldn’t be coming Standing Up to Antisemitism. Credit: SpringHill Company at a better time. Debuting right before Passover, and when many Jewish families will be gathering at their own tables, this special will easily prompt important discussions for many Jews, as well as allies to the Jewish community. Recipe for Change also succeeds in its radical inclusivity. Instead of just focusing on what Jewishness and antisemitism mean to cisgender, straight, Ashkenazi Jewish men, the special very purposefully makes room for the voices of Black Jews, Mizrahi Jews, LGBTQ+ Jews and Jewish women. What results are conversations that are as thoughtful and poignant as they are full of laughter and Jewish pride. 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.

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