Volume XXIV, Issue II | www.jvhri.org Serving Rhode Island and Southeastern Massachusetts
Weddings
3 Shevat 5778 | January 19, 2018
A Birthright journey from participant to fellow BY LEAH GRAFF Being Jewish is a privilege. Throughout my journey with Judaism, this is a fact I have come to realize. From preschool at the Jewish Community Center through my confirmation at age 15, I was taught that being Jewish is special and a way of life to be cherished. This idea has held firm in my heart. It has been an anchor from which I have lead my life. Growing up, I knew someday I would go to Israel. But I did not expect to be invigorated by the country itself, as well as by the program that gave me my first Israel experience. When I was deciding where to attend college, a Hillel center on campus was very important. I
wanted to be able to meet other Jewish people, participate in programming and High Holy Day services. During my freshman year at the University of Rhode Island, I did just that. At the beginning of the spring semester, I learned that Hillel was planning a Birthright trip for the following summer. I jumped at the chance to fi nally go to Israel and see the place I had been learning about my whole life. With other participants from URI, I went through some introductory processes, and we were ready for our adventure. That fi rst trip to Israel seems as if it were another lifetime ago, but I can still remember every magical moment. It helped me grow in such a way that I cannot imagine where I would
Remember our roots
be today if I had not gone on that trip five years ago. From the minute we stepped off the plane at Ben Gurion Airport to the sad day when we said goodbye to “our soldiers,” every second is engraved on my soul forever. Our programming included all the classic Israel spots. We went to the Western Wall, where I cried tears of pure joy as my hand touched this magnificent wall fi lled with people’s hopes and prayers. For a few nights, we stayed on a kibbutz in the BIRTHRIGHT | 18 PHOTO | LEAH GRAFF
Leah Graff making a new friend during her Masa Israel Teaching Fellowship.
7 Israelis who have made a deep impact on life in America BY GABE FRIEDMAN
PHOTO | JTA, IMAGNO/GETTY IMAGES
A Jewish family in Jedrzejow, Poland, circa 1900. BY BEN SALES NEW YORK (JTA) – Jews were “undesirable.” They were “of low physical and mental standards.” They were “fi lthy.” They were “often dangerous in their habits.” They were “un-American.” So read a report submitted to the House Committee on Immigration in 1924, written by the director of the United Stated Consular Service and approved by the secretary of state. That
year, Congress passed a bill that drastically slashed immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe, responding to xenophobic feelings across the country. The bill didn’t mention Jews, but they were affected. In 1921, according to JTA at the time, 120,000 Jews came to America. After the law was passed, that number fell to around 10,000. The headline on that article was ROOTS | 22
JTA – When Natalie Portman was named the 2018 winner of the $1 million Genesis Prize, known as the “Jewish Nobel,” it was in part an acknowledgement of her Israeli roots. While the Oscar-winning actress mostly grew up in the United States, Portman – née Herschlag – is also Israeli. Her father, Avner Herschlag, grew up in Israel, and her mother married him there. The family moved to the U.S. when she was 3. Portman’s facility with Hebrew was on display when she directed and starred in the Hebrew-language fi lm “Tale of Love and Darkness,” based on the book by Israeli writer Amos Oz. She earned the Genesis Prize for “her commitment to social causes and her deep connection to her Jewish and Israeli roots,” said Stan Polovets, the Genesis Prize Foundation chairman. Portman is far from the only Israeli-in-America success story. Israelis have made significant contributions to just about every industry and facet of
PHOTO | SEAN GALLUP/GETTY IMAGES FOR BURDA MEDIA
Daniel Kahneman American life, from academics to pop music. Here are some of those who have had the biggest impact in American society while living 5,000 miles away from their first home. Daniel Kahneman – Economist, psychologist, author Human beings are not robots – sometimes they make irrational decisions, and they are always complex. That idea might sound like common sense, but before economist and psychologist Daniel Kahneman started his Nobel Prize-winning work in the 1970s, economics plugged people into equations just
as they would other sets of numbers. Kahneman’s work with his Israeli research partner Amos Tversky (he died from cancer in 1996) on concepts such as cognitive biases and prospect theory helped change that and effectively launched the field of behavioral economics – which in turn has influenced several other fields. His 2011 book “Thinking, Fast and Slow,” which summarized much of his research, has sold over a million copies around the world. Few have had such an outsized impact on multiple fields of knowledge as Kahneman, 83, a Tel Aviv native who grew up in France during the Holocaust and returned to Israel for college. He became a professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem before moving to Canada in the late ’70s and eventually settling at Princeton University in 1993. In 2002, he won the Nobel Prize in Economics for “having integrated insights from psychological research into economic science.” ISRAELIS | 11