HAKOL LEHIGH VALLEY The Voice of the Lehigh Valley Jewish Community
FEBRUARY 2014 | TEVET/SH’VAT 5774
Ariel Sharon remembered as warrior statesman By Ron Kampeas Jewish Telegraphic Agency
BOWLING FOR FUN Young Adult Division hits the lanes. See page 5.
AZA VOHK! (WHAT AT WEEK!) Lehigh Valley’s Stein family enjoys week of KlezKamp. See page 17.
WHAT HAPPENS AT 2 A.M.? Find out from lone soldier, Sami Meir-Levi. See page 21.
Ariel Sharon, one of Israel’s last warrior statesmen, whose military and political careers were woven into his nation’s triumphs and failures, has died. Sharon, 85, died Jan. 11 at the Sheba Medical Center near Tel Aviv after eight years in a coma. “He went when he decided to go,” said his younger son, Gilad, who has become the fierce guardian of his father’s legacy. Sharon was among the last of Israel’s founding fathers, fighting in every Israeli military conflict in the first three decades of the state. As a military general, Sharon helped turn the tide of the Yom Kippur War with Egypt in 1973. As defense minister, he plunged his nation into the crucible of Lebanon in 1982, an engagement that nearly cut short his career after he was found to bear indirect responsibility for the massacre of Palestinian refugees at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon. But Sharon would rise from the ashes of that calamity to an astonishing about-face as prime minister, orchestrating the evacuation of thousands of Israeli settlers from the Gaza Strip after spending the bulk of his career championing the settlement enterprise. As prime minister, Sharon began the construction of Israel’s controversial security fence in the West Bank. His overriding concern, Sharon always said, was to protect a nation built on the ashes of the destruction of European Jewry. “I arrived here today from Jerusalem, the capital of the State of Israel, the only place where Jews have the right and capability to defend themselves
No. 364 com.UNITY with Mark Goldstein 2 Women’s Division
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partner and rival Shimon Peres. As agriculture minister in the first Likud government, from 1977 to 1981, Sharon vastly expanded Jewish settlement in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, areas conquered in the 1967 Six-Day War. In 2005, he led the disengagement from Gaza, overseeing the evacuation of nearly 10,000 Israelis from 21 communities in Gaza and four settlements in the northern West Bank. “Sharon did what no one on the left was able to do,” said Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of the progressive magazine Tikkun. “Split the right, marginalize the extremists who believe that holding on to the biblical vision of the Land of Israel is a divine mandate, and acknowledge that a smaller Israel with defensible borders is preferable to a large Israel that requires domination of 3 million Palestinians.” Born Ariel Scheinermann in 1928 to Russian-speaking parents in the village of Kfar Mala in the central part of prestate Israel, Sharon for much of his career was known more for his impetuousness than his
Ariel Sharon Continues on page 18
Sharing and creating summer traditions
Natalie and Julia Sams, last day of Camp Harlam. By Annabel Williams JFLV Marketing Intern Robby Wax remembers the first day he dropped his oldest son, Ben, off at Pinemere Camp in Stroudsburg seven years ago. Having already spent time there with his father as a child, Ben, then 8, was begging to go. “While Ben was ready, I became a complete mess,” Wax said. “I cried in my bedroom the morning of drop off.” Seven years later, Wax said Pinemere is Ben’s “favorite place in the world.” The Wax family values Pinemere for its diverse activities, which mean both Ben and his younger brother Danny can find programs that suit their interests. Ben is able to participate in flag football, tennis and street hockey, and Danny enjoys performing in the camp show, woodworking
Continues on page 12 with our special camp section
JTS Professor with local connection Shamma Friedman wins Israel Prize JTS Press Release Editor’s Note: Professor Friedman is the father of Adina Re’em and
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by themselves,” he said in a May 2005 visit to Auschwitz to mark 60 years since the Holocaust. He forged affectionate bonds with Diaspora Jewish leaders, interspersing his English with Yiddishisms and often urging them to emigrate to Israel. “Sharon worked his entire life for the unity of the Jewish people,” said a statement from the Jewish Federations of North America. “He was closely engaged with Jewish communities around the world, and acutely aware of their needs and aspirations. In all his leadership roles, and especially as prime minister of the Jewish state, Sharon engaged with Jewish communities across the Diaspora.” Ideological loyalties meant little to the man known in Israel simply as Arik. In 1973, he helped cobble together the Likud party from a coalition of interests that had little in common except that they had been frozen out of government for decades by the ruling Labor party. A generation later, in 2005, he bolted from Likud to form Kadima, a centrist party that attracted lawmakers from Likud and Labor, including his old
Camping through the generations:
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father-in-law of Rabbi Moshe Re’em of Allentown’s Temple Beth El. Mazel tov to the entire family! The Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) is proud to announce that Shamma Friedman, Benjamin and Minna Reeves Professor of Talmud and Rabbinics at JTS, will receive the 2014 Israel Prize at a ceremony to take place on Yom Ha’atzmaut (Israeli Independence Day), which falls on May 6. The Israel Prize is Israel’s highest honor, awarded to those who are preeminent in their fields and have made extraordinary contributions to Israeli life and culture. “Professor Friedman was selected in light of his remarkable endeavor to research
the various forms of talmudic literature,” wrote the prize committee. “He has acquired an international reputation as a leading figure in the study of the Mishnah and Tosefta in questions regarding the literary structure and development of the text of the Babylonian Talmud, the development of motifs in Aggadic literature, lexicographical studies of rabbinic language and the study of rabbinic literature from the time of the Geonim and Rishonim.” Friedman has been at JTS since 1958, when he enrolled in The Rabbinical School and, following ordination, became one of the first two JTS students to earn a PhD. He joined the JTS
faculty in 1964. “I am greatly encouraged by winning the Israel Prize,” Friedman said. “It gives me additional strength to face the challenges that lay ahead in researching talmudic literature. Receiving the Israel Prize is another expression of how much I enjoy my work and how each day I am rewarded anew by discoveries found in this vast tract of knowledge.”