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December 22, 2017 | 4 Tevet 5778
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Candlelighting 4:39 p.m. | Havdalah 5:43 p.m. | Vol. 60, No. 51 | pittsburghjewishchronicle.org
Jewish parents of nonwhite children nurture multiple identities
NOTEWORTHY LOCAL Doing justice to disco
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Jewish frats’ lofty goals can be too much for local chapters By Toby Tabachnick | Senior Staff Writer
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Jazz musicians team up to celebrate diversity and social justice.
her hands under my chin and stared into my eyes, and I knew that she knew she was different from me.” Maclachlan and her husband, Rob, adopted Sarah from China when she was just 5 months old. About two years later, they returned to China to adopt their second child, Melody. As a Jewish family raising nonwhite children from a different country, the Maclachlans, like many other families in Pittsburgh, juggle multiple identities. These families face issues that are largely absent among more traditional Jewish families, such as celebrating different cultures and finding peer groups for their children with similar backgrounds. After moving from Phoenix to Pittsburgh
he death of a young man at Penn State’s chapter of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity last February sparked grief and outrage across the country as reports came in about the sequence of events that horrific night. After 19-year-old Timothy Piazza had been coaxed to drink excessive amounts of alcohol at a party at the fraternity house, he fell down a flight of stairs, but no one called for help for at least 12 hours. Video recordings show that Piazza was given 18 drinks within 82 minutes, according to prosecutors. Twenty-six Beta Theta Pi brothers have been charged in relation to Piazza’s death. Just last week, a grand jury investigating issues of hazing at Penn State issued a report averring that university leaders were aware of pervasive dangerous practices in the Greek system but ignored them. Hazing deaths and hospitalizations tragically are nothing new in Greek life. The fraternity culture incites excessive alcohol use, and despite university and national fraternity policies intended to curb it, individual chapters too often go rogue. Jewish fraternities are not immune to the call of the culture, although two of those fraternities, Alpha Epsilon Pi (AEPi) and Zeta Beta Tau (ZBT), having been operating full force on a national level to emphasize values of leadership and loyalty. “Our policies have always been pretty clear, and it appears to me, and pretty much anyone who has looked at it, the events that took place at that incidence at Penn State would not have been in accordance with our policies,” said Jonathan Pierce, AEPi’s media spokesperson. Since Piazza’s death, AEPi has not altered any of its policies, Pierce said.
Please see Adoptees, page 17
Please see Frats, page 20
Page 3 LOCAL The price is right Yeshiva Schools purchases New Light building. Page 4 LOCAL Doctors do Christmas
Clockwise from upper left: The Maclachlan family, when Sarah and Melody were younger; the Schwarcz family; Joy Katz and her son, Chance; and David Schwarcz. Photos provided By Toby Tabachnick | Senior Staff Writer
I They work so their colleagues don’t have to. Page 6
n 1983, the Jim Henson Company produced a television special called “Big Bird in China.” Based on the television series “Sesame Street,” the show featured Big Bird and his friends traveling to China to find the Phoenix bird. The show was distributed on video in 1987. In 1996, Nancy Maclachlan began working really hard to find a copy of that tape. She wanted her daughter, Sarah, who was just shy of 2 years old, to watch it. When she finally found it and played it for Sarah, everything changed. “I will never forget that moment,” said Maclachlan, who lives in Upper St. Clair and is a member of Beth El Congregation of the South Hills. “Sarah was watching the show, then turned to me and cupped
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Headlines Researcher shares startling and unsurprising data about girls — LOCAL — By Adam Reinherz | Staff Writer
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he amalgamated voices of 10,678 girls resounded at Community Day School, as Lisa Hinkelman, founder and executive director of Ruling Our eXperiences, shared unsettling and often unsurprising data from her recent study titled “The Girls’ Index.” The research, which was conducted between 2016 and 2017, provides “a first-ofits-kind, large-scale, national survey designed to develop a deeper understanding of the thoughts, experiences, perceptions, beliefs, behaviors and attitudes of girls throughout the United States,” said Hinkelman, a former faculty member at Ohio State University. She explained that although considerable material regarding economic or health trends, drug use or other at-risk behaviors exists regarding the fifth- through 12th-grade demographic, little is known about “what’s happening in girls’ lives that’s shaping them into the women they become” or the social and emotional states encountered by today’s youth, such as their feelings on “confidence, body image, friendships, pressure, leadership, career aspirations, school, academics, technology and social media.” For more than an hour, Hinkelman unpacked her findings, as approximately 40 attendees digested the data. Between fifth grade and 12th grade, the percentage of girls who describe themselves as confident declines more than 25 percent from 86 percent to 60 percent. The ramifications for such loss are reinforced by additional numbers, as in fifth grade, 23 percent of girls feel that they are not “smart enough
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p Jenny Jones, left, of Community Day School and Judy Greenwald Cohen of the Jewish Women’s Foundation of Greater Pittsburgh pose for a photo at CDS.
Photo courtesy of Community Day School
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for their dream job,” but by high school this figure doubles to 46 percent. Even for those ninth- through 12th-graders who receive a 4.0 GPA or higher, 30 percent reported that they “do not think they are smart enough for their dream careers,” she said. The decrease in confidence, which ultimately augments girls’ professional trajectories, is fueled by multiple factors, including puberty, but mostly pressure, explained Hinkleman, who noted that such duress stems from a desire to attain perfection, maintain particular appearances, achieve academic success and adhere to the demands of parents and friends. The latter, specifically what Hinkelman termed the role of relationships, is critical, as, in contradistinction to confidence measures, the rate of conflict boosts between girls throughout the high school years, and “as relationships become less supportive and trusting, sadness and depression increases.” Part of the problem is that “we don’t help girls navigate healthy relationships,” said the researcher before castigating cultural staples. “Communication, assertiveness, boundary setting, where are girls learning these skills? ‘The Bachelor’ is part of our social currency.” Shows that pit girls against one another in the hopes of attaining a stranger’s selection promote the message that you should “do whatever you can do to get that attention.” There must be better means of introducing assertiveness; nonetheless, one cannot discount the volume of responses indicating that girls avoid standing up for themselves for fear of being seen as “bossy” or “people not liking them,” Hinkelman said. While the researcher intermittently engaged her audience with brief biographical musings and semirhetorical inquiries, Please see Girls, page 21
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Headlines Chanukah, social justice go hand-in-hand for these local musicians — LOCAL — By Lauren Rosenblatt | Staff Writer
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panning the decades, from the civil rights movement in the 1960s to the disco era in the 1980s to activism today, two local Jewish artists are using music to tackles issues of social justice at home. Liz Berlin, a musician with the Pittsburgh rock band Rusted Root, and Phat Man Dee, a local jazz artist, teamed up to create a collection of social justice themed songs, focusing on issues from the Black Lives Matter movement and the Dakota Access Pipeline to fascism and activism at large. With a combination of original songs and covers of classic activism anthems — including “Ball of Confusion” by the Temptations, “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor and “For What It’s Worth” by Buffalo Springfield — the duo, with several guest performers, aimed to create an album that would address how they felt about the times in which we are living. “It’s 60 Pittsburgh musicians coming together to protest what is happening in the world,” Mandee said. “This was a way we could use our art to go, ‘Hey, we’re not OK with this.’”
For Berlin, the music, and the creative way of thinking about protest and activism, helped her to “clarify how I feel about things.” The artists debuted their collection of music at the Shine the Light with Social Justice Disco at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh on Dec. 14. The event, sponsored by the American Jewish Museum and the Center for Loving Kindness and Civic Engagement, featured Berlin and Mandee’s entire album as well as performances by several of the local musicians who collaborated with them — including the Sague family, the Coe family, Pastor Deryck Tines and the Lemington Gospel Chorale and two poets, Ezra Smith and Christina Springer. Springer, who grew up in Squirrel Hill and participated in an original arrangement of the song “I Can’t Breathe” for the album, said Berlin and Mandee allowed the artists to have their own voice in the project and “took responsibility as allies to every community.” For her individual performance, Springer focused on battling racism from within. “If you’re not careful, it doesn’t matter who you are, white supremacy will sneak up on you and crawl inside,” she told the audience. “And it is our job every day to sort of clean house and look inside.” Racism and inequality was a central tenant
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p Pittsburgh jazz artist Phat Man Dee, foreground, performs with local musician Liz Berlin at the Jewish Community Center. The duo collaborated on a social justice-themed album that will be released in the spring. Photo courtesy of the Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh
of the concert — Mandee wrote the original song ‘Jim Crow is Alive and Well’ about police brutality and other injustices against people of color, and Berlin rewrote the lyrics of the Bee Gees’ ‘Stayin Alive’ to replace the traditional “ha ha ha ha” with “black lives mat-ter.”
PITTSBURGH JEWISH CHRONICLE
“We’re not in a post-racial society. Racism is happening right now,” Mandee said. The artists also focused on unequal treatment for immigrants. The social justice Please see Musicians, page 16
DECEMBER 22, 2017 3
Headlines Yeshiva Schools purchases former home of New Light Congregation
Photo by Lauren Rosenblatt
Yeshiva Schools, the cost was significantly cheaper than the alternatives explored, noted Chezky Rosenfeld. At one p oint, Ye s h i v a Schools considered renting p Rabbi Yisroel Altein File photo space throughout the neighborhood or even building on its Forbes Avenue campus to satisfy its growing needs; however, after running the numbers, neither option was as financially reasonable as buying New Light, said Chezky Rosenfeld, who estimated that the property plus renovations will ultimately cost “around $2 million to $3 million.” A capital campaign will begin shortly, said Yisroel Rosenfeld, who said that the opportunity to expand would have been impossible without the assistance of the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh. Although neither Rosenfeld anticipates formally moving classrooms to the Beechwood Boulevard space until next year, both rabbis expect Chabad of Pittsburgh to begin using the site shortly. The Chabad entity, which is led by Rabbi Yisroel and Chani Altein and functions largely from the Forbes Avenue property, offers classes, programs and weekly services. “We are excited to begin using the space,” said Yisroel Altein. While the parties are thrilled about the possibilities that lie ahead, the transition process is also something to be cheered, said those involved. “We are very glad that it’s staying within the community,” said Cohen, who along with members of New Light Congregation dedicated their new home at Tree of Life*Or L’Simcha several weeks ago. “We are so happy to see that it’s remaining in Jewish hands and will be used as both a synagogue and a school,” said Yisroel Rosenfeld. “That’s the future, the children.” PJC
able. For the members of New Light, it was the “best” deal presented, said Cohen. For
Adam Reinherz can be reached at areinherz @pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.
— LOCAL — By Adam Reinherz | Staff Writer
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hanukah was extra bright at Yeshiva Schools last week, as the Pittsburgh-based Lubavitch educational center added a new light to its stable of properties. Apart from its Forbes Avenue and Wightman Street spaces, Yeshiva Schools now owns the former home of New Light Congregation at 1700 Beechwood Blvd. in Squirrel Hill. The transaction, which was completed on Dec. 15, allows the Orthodox Jewish day school to “expand on our tight spaces,” said Rabbi Yisroel Rosenfeld, Yeshiva Schools’ dean. Given increased enrollments and projected growth, the move was necessary, added Rabbi Chezky Rosenfeld, the schools’ director of development. Despite the price becoming public information at the end of the month, Rosenfeld declined to say how much the school paid for the property. “We have waiting lists for our Early Learning Center and girls high school,” he said. “We needed space for the short term and the long term.” “Every inch” has been maximized at Yeshiva Schools, agreed Chezky Rosenfeld. “We took our library and made it into two classrooms. We took office space and made it into classrooms. What this acquisition does is give us a breather all around the place.” Although last week’s closing marked the end of a two-month negotiation, the deal began more than a year ago. “The very first time we had a conversation was February 2016. At that point, the building was not for sale,” said Stephen Cohen, co-president of New Light Congregation. “We were doing our due diligence around town. We knew that New Light was struggling with membership and approached them and told them that if and when it was available, we’d be interested,” said Chezky Rosenfeld. More than a year passed, but “about six months ago they called and said that they were ready to talk.”
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p New Light Congregation’s building gets a new life with its purchase by Yeshiva Schools. File photo
p Yeshiva Girls School’s existing building
Ultimately, the purchase price, which neither party shared, was mutually agree-
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Headlines Columbia professor comedically recounts history of Jewish humor — LOCAL — By Adam Reinherz | Staff Writer
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he irony of Jeremy Dauber’s performance is that in deciphering the intricacies of jokes, he was still funny. With an audience of nearly 100 laughing along in Levy Hall at Rodef Shalom Congregation, the Columbia University professor, and author of “Jewish Comedy: A Serious History,” employed six chronological quips to detail the cultural and historical evolution of Jews and Jewish comedy. “Comedy, especially great comedy, is rude, messy and offensive,” said Dauber at the onset of his Dec. 6 remarks. What comedy does is share “uncomfortable truths. These are the kinds of jokes I want to tell tonight.” Thus, beginning with a bit about whistling herring nailed to a wall, Dauber launched into a disquisition covering questions of language, syntax and “smart aleck sensibility.” But more so than rhetoricizing vagaries, the academician — whose research requires binge watching seasons of “Seinfeld” — detailed comedic instances stemming from as early as centuries ago. “In the Bible is the greatest Jewish joke ever told,” said Dauber, who then recounted not only an episode between the biblical
p Jeremy Dauber talks about Jewish comedy at Rodef Shalom Congregation.
Photo by Adam Reinherz
judge Ehud and the Moabite king Eglon, but also the linguistic puns involved. It was a surprising analysis that illuminates alternative portions of sacred writings, as “the comedy in the Bible isn’t the type of comedy we generally associate with Jewish comedy,” he said. “Nonetheless, nowhere better than the Book of Esther do we see the traditional reactionary Jewish sentiment of ‘just because you’ve killed us and disrupted everything, you think you’re in charge of us? Shmucks!’” Throughout the 40-minute address, Daubert repeatedly invoked Mel Brooks’
Chai
material for further substantiation. The narrative approach eased the presenter’s progression into more modern periods, as the jests that began with biblical blasts morphed into humorous weavings of the Disputation of Barcelona, the firing squads in Eastern Europe and the poverty during the Great Depression. With each joke something new is revealed not only about its subject, but also about its audience, said Dauber, who added that the Diasporic people’s transformation throughout the generations is a process reflected in its humor.
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“I never thought about Jewish comedy that way, going all the way back,” said Lynne Jacobson of Squirrel Hill, who, like fellow listeners, applauded the speaker’s style. “There were themes and concepts and struggles” that he shared; it “wasn’t just punchlines,” said Rabbi Jeremy Markiz after the event. Using five or six jokes to tell a story was a “very Jewish way of communicating,” added Matt Sandler of Friendship. Dauber’s Rodef Shalom address was the second installment in a five-part congregational series titled, “A Conversation with the Author.” In partnering with the Jewish Book Council, the Shadyside congregation has joined more than 100 organizations nationwide in hosting such activities, explained Mayda Roth, Rodef Shalom’s development director. Because of the diverse set of authors featured, the series should attract a range of interested parties, said Seth Glick, network coordinator. Following a winter hiatus, “A Conversation with the Author” series continues at Rodef Shalom Congregation on March 21 at 7 p.m. with writer Ruby Namdar, who will discuss his 2017 novel, “The Ruined House.” Registration for the free event is available at rodefshalom.org/authors. PJC
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Headlines For Jewish medical professionals, working on Christmas is tradition — LOCAL — By Adam Reinherz | Staff Writer
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ews and Christmas have a long and storied history. Notably documented by “Saturday Night Live” in a 2005 TV Funhouse cartoon, “Christmastime for the Jews,” Dec. 25 is an annual period of possibility for many Jewish people. While savory Chinese spreads, trips to the theater and cozy activities are traditional markings of the Yuletide day, for several Steel City Jewish residents Navidad is another night, or day, of labor. Avital Isenberg, an occupational therapist at Forbes Hospital, habitually spends the holiday at work. “I’ve been at my job for six years and have always done it,” said the Squirrel Hill native. Mylynda Massart, a family practitioner with UPMC, said that she “of course” will be working this Christmas. “I want the Jewish holidays off so it seems only natural that I would cover my partners’ holidays that are important to them.” It is a sentiment shared by Brian Goldwasser, medical director of Pittsburgh’s Lung Institute.
p Dr. Mylynda Massart poses for a photo after delivering a baby.
p Dr. Robert Davis works Christmas “with pleasure.” Photo courtesy of Dr. Robert Davis
“There are times when I need to be off and we want someone to cover for us; it’s sort of payback,” he said. But apart from the desire to reciprocate religious kindnesses between faith-based individuals, treating Christmas like any other day offers something more for many Jews.
With so many people away from work, “it’s the best time to get to know all of your other Jewish colleagues in the hospital,” said Benjamin Zussman, a neurosurgery resident and endovascular fellow at UPMC. For the past five years, while others have rightfully retreated, Zussman has gladly
Photo courtesy of Dr. Mylynda Massart
THE JEWISH FEDERATION OF GREATER PITTSBURGH PRESENTS
ambled the hospital floors. Yet, even as a medical student — when the school calendar granted him days away — Zussman eagerly arrived each Christmas Day. “It was a perfect time to scrub in on Please see Christmas, page 16
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UNDERSTANDING JEWISH TEENS:
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Calendar q REGISTRATION NOW OPEN Mitzvah Day, a long-standing tradition in Pittsburgh in which the Jewish community comes together to provide services to different organizations throughout the entire community, takes place over two days, with projects on Sunday, Dec. 24 and Monday, Dec. 25. This will be the 17th annual Mitzvah Day, named for the Hebrew word for “good deeds” or “acts of loving kindness.” The event is coordinated by the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh’s Volunteer Center, which provides a network of meaningful opportunities to connect volunteers with organizations and people in need. Visit jfedvolunteer.org/about-mitzvah-day/ for more information and to register. >>>Submit calendar items on the Chronicle’s website, pittsburghjewishchronicle.org. Submissions will also be included in print. Events will run in the print edition beginning one month prior to the date. The deadline for submissions is Friday, noon. q REGISTRATION NOW OPEN The Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Mass., is now accepting applicants for three programs for recent graduates, college students and high school students: the 2018 Steiner Summer Yiddish Program; the 2018-19 Yiddish Book Center Fellowship Program; and the 2018 Great Jewish Books Summer Program. Visit yiddishbookcenter.org/educationalprograms for more information about each program and the deadlines for applications. q THROUGH FRIDAY, DEC. 22 Chai Lifeline Toy Drive. Donate toys to benefit sick children. Unopened toys only. Drop-off location is by the front desk at Hillel Academy of Pittsburgh, 5685 Beacon St. q FRIDAY, DEC. 22 Ugly Sweater Chanukah Shabbat from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. at Moishe House. Grab your favorite ugly sweater and join us for Kabbalat Shabbat with latkes, doughnuts and dreidels. A Shabbat dinner will be served following services. Visit tinyurl.com/y9tn2pye for more information. q SUNDAY, DEC. 24 MoHo Does Jewish Christmas from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. at Moishe House. Got nothing to do on a random December Sunday night? How about a tradition as old as the Torah itself? Come to the Moishe on Christmas Eve for a cozy night in with a movie and Chinese food. Visit tinyurl. com/y9lngxhh for more information. B’nai Emunoh Chabad will hold its fifth annual Sunday Chinese all you can eat buffet catered by Elegant Edge Catering Company from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. at 4315 Murray Ave. The buffet is under the strict supervision of the Vaad Harabonim of Pittsburgh. Reservations are required for seating at 5 p.m., 5:15 p.m. or 7:30 p.m.; RSVP at ElegantEdgeCatering@gmail. com or call 412-385-2332. There is a charge. q MONDAY, DEC. 25 Pomegranate Catering will hold an all you can eat kosher Chinese buffet in the Riverview Towers dining room from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. at 52 Garetta St. Reservations are required; RSVP at Pomegranatepgh@gmail. com. Payment is by cash or check only. q TUESDAY, DEC. 26 Radical Trivia Night with Moishe House from 8:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. at the book-themed bar,
The Library, at 2304 E. Carson St. Visit tinyurl. com/yd8dyarv for more information. q MONDAY, JAN. 1 TO
WEDNESDAY, FEB. 28
The Zionist Organization of AmericaPittsburgh District announces the 56th year of its Israel Scholarship Program to assist local students traveling to and studying in Israel. The program is designed to encourage and assist student participation on approved educational trips to Israel. Up to three $1,000 scholarships are available to students who will be entering the junior or senior year of high school in the fall of 2018. Applicants must be Jewish and permanent residents of Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Butler, Fayette, Washington or Westmoreland counties. All applicants must be participating in an approved program and submit an application to ZOA. Priority may be given to those who have never visited Israel or have not received a ZOA scholarship in the past. Applications will be accepted beginning Jan. 1. In addition, the Anouchi Research Scholarship of $750 is available to full-time college students who have completed at least one year and graduate students. Applicants may submit a proposal based on a topic of individual interest. Research proposals for the Anouchi scholarship will be reviewed. The awardee will be required to complete a paper on his/her topic upon return from Israel. Contact ZOA Executive Director Stuart Pavilack at 412-665-4630 or pittsburgh@zoa. org for more information or to establish a scholarship. q FRIDAY, JAN. 5 Mostly Musical Shabbat: A Sensory Friendly Experience at 7 p.m. at Temple Sinai with Rabbi Jamie Gibson, Rabbi Keren Gorban, Cantor Laura Berman and the Temple Sinai Band the first Friday of every month. Contact Judy Mahan at 412-421-9715, ext. 110 or Judy@templesinaipgh.org for more information or to request an accommodation or visit tinyurl.com/ydx9rh32.
q TUESDAY, JAN. 9 Behind Enemy Lines. Spend an evening with Marthe Cohn as she tells her story of being a spy in Nazi Germany. The Chabad of the South Hills program will be held at 7 p.m. at the Crowne Plaza Pittsburgh South, 164 Fort Couch Road. Cohn was born in France in 1920. As the Nazi occupation escalated, her sister was sent to Auschwitz while her family fled to the south of France. At 24, she joined the Intelligence Service of the French 1st Army. Utilizing her perfect German accent and Aryan looks, Martha posed as a German nurse desperately trying to attain word of a fictional fiance. She traveled the countryside and approached troops sympathetic to her plight thereby obtaining vital information about troop movements for the Allied commanders. For her service, at the age of 80, she was awarded the Croix de Guerre, France’s highest military honor. Cohn is now 96 years old and travels internationally sharing her story and has no plans of slowing down. There is a $5 charge. Register before Dec. 25 at chabadsh. com, 412-344-2424 or rabbi@chabadsh.com. q THURSDAY AND SATURDAY,
JAN. 11 AND 13
The Beyond: Microtonal Music Festival, sponsored by the University of Pittsburgh’s Music on the Edge series and the Andy Warhol Museum, will include two concerts that feature klezmer clarinet virtuoso David Krakauer. The first, an orchestra concert at Carnegie Music Hall at 8 p.m. will include the premiere of Mathew Rosenblum’s work, “Lament/Witches’ Sabbath,” a clarinet concerto that chronicles the Rosenblum family’s escape from Ukraine in 1919. The second concert, at 8 p.m. at the Andy Warhol Museum, features Krakauer’s powerhouse klezmer group, Ancestral Groove. This will be the closing event of the three-day festival that celebrates cultural roots. Visit music. pitt.edu/mote/beyond for more information about the concerts and festival. q THURSDAY, JAN. 18 Chabad of the South Hills will hold a new monthly course for women, Pause and Effect: A Shabbat Outlook, by the Rosh Chodesh Society. Classes will be held on the third Thursday each month at 10 a.m. There is a $5 charge. Visit chabadsh.com or contact barb@ chabadsh.com for more information. q FRIDAY, JAN. 19
q SUNDAY, JAN. 7 AgeWell at the Jewish Community Center will hold a Senior Singles Group from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. in room 202 at 5738 Forbes Ave. Socialize in a friendly and welcoming environment. Light refreshments will be served. There is no fee to participate. Contact Debbie Marcus at 412-339-5405 or dmarcus@ jccpgh.org for more information. q SUNDAY, JAN. 7 Beth El Congregation of the South Hills will hold a viewing of the film “The Voyage of the Saint Louis,” a dramatic documentary based on the true events of 1939. The evening will begin
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with a wine and cheese reception at 7 p.m. and will conclude with a short Q&A discussion led by Rabbi Alex Greenbaum. This program is presented by the adult education committee and is open to the community. There is a $5 charge. Visit bethelcong.org for more information and call 412-561-1168 to RSVP in advance.
Community potluck dinner at 5:45 p.m. at Temple Sinai with an entrée of baked blueberry chutney chicken prepared by Chef Drew. Bring a nondairy side dish, salad or dessert (enough for 8-10 people). Shabbat service follows at 7 p.m. There is a $5 charge. Contact Judy Lynn Aiello at 412-421-9715, ext. 124 or judylynn@templesinaipgh.org or visit tinyurl.com/ydh2wuva to register. Young Adult Shabbat after hours at 8:30 p.m. at Temple Sinai, a wine and cheese mix and mingle with young adults (ages 21-45). There is no charge. Visit tinyurl.com/ycno9zd4 for more information and to RSVP.
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q SATURDAY, JAN. 20 Shabbat Searchers: Exploring Sacred Spaces at 5 p.m. in the Rodef Shalom sanctuary. This is a pilot program exploring offsite Shabbat experiences for those who prefer life off the beaten path. Every other month the group will gather for an alternative Shabbat experience focusing on how one can view, use and be in sacred spaces. The program launches from Rodef Shalom’s home sanctuary before setting off to explore around the city. Contact frischer@ rodefshalom.org for more information. q TUESDAY, JAN. 23
AND THURSDAY, JAN. 25
The Pittsburgh OASIS Intergenerational Tutor Program is seeking volunteers (50plus) to tutor in Pittsburgh and Woodland Hills School Districts in grade K-4. An hour a week can change a child’s life. A two-day training class will be conducted from 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at 411 Seventh Ave., Suite 525 (Duquesne Light Building). No teaching experience is required and all training, materials and clearances are provided free of charge. Contact John D. Spehar, Pittsburgh OASIS Tutoring program director at 412-3937648 or jdspehar@oasisnet.org for more information or to register. OASIS is an affiliate of Greater Pittsburgh Literacy Council. q NOMINATIONS DUE BY
FRIDAY, JAN. 31
The Shore-Whitehill Award nominations are open for 2018. The Shore-Whitehill Award, created in 1996, is named for Robert Whitehill and the late Barbara Shore and celebrates volunteers who promote inclusion of people with disabilities in the fabric of Jewish life through advocacy or direct service to individuals and families. Organizations that nominate awardees receive a grant of $1,000 to help underwrite the costs of a recognition event and/or inclusion activities. Awardees receive an original sculpture by the late Sylvia Plutchok, who was a Pittsburgh-based artist. The Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh and Jewish Residential Services give the award annually. Visit jrspgh.org/shore-whitehill for the nomination form and contact Jewish Residential Services at shorewhitehill@jrspgh. org or 412-325-0039 for more information. q APPLICATIONS DUE
MONDAY, FEB. 12
Central Scholarship & Loan Referral Service (CSLRS), the financial aid program that JFCS administers for the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh, announces that the application period for academic year 20182019 scholarships is now open. CSLRS is the result of combined efforts of the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh and other organizations, agencies and scholarship endowment funds. Scholarships provide need-based financial aid to local Jewish students enrolled in accredited post-secondary institutions. Visit the centralscholarship.org to learn more and access the online application or contact Alayne Lowenberger at 412-4227200 or alowenberger@jfcspgh.org for more information. CSLRS staff must interview firsttime applicants. PJC
DECEMBER 22, 2017 7
Headlines Why Jewish day schools are breathing a little easier on tax bill — NATIONAL — By Ron Kampeas | JTA
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ASHINGTON — Lawmakers finalizing the proposed tax overhaul reportedly have removed a provision that had sent shivers through the graduate student and Jewish day school communities. The House version of the reform bill, which was drafted by the Republican leadership, had removed the qualified tuition credit. The credit exempts from taxes the free tuition that private schools, including Jewish day schools, often extend to the children of employees. However, the Senate version maintained the credit. Last week, Bloomberg News reported that the proposal in the House of Representatives to remove the credit was dropped from the reconciled version of the House and Senate bills. Master’s and doctoral students who supplement their education by working at their universities are compensated in part by tuition waivers, which have been tax exempt for decades. Removing the exemption, as House Republicans had proposed, would have had students looking at tax increases of four- to seven-fold, according to an estimate. “Grad Students Are Freaking Out About the GOP Tax Plan” was the headline in Wired inJCanSale article that quoted a number of students QuarterPg_Eyetique 12/20/16 11:28 AM
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who indeed seemed staggered by the prospect. Unnerved, too, were Jewish day schools, according to two umbrella Orthodox groups that lobbied hard to keep the credit. The tax break has been key to attracting top staff to the day schools, according to the Orthodox Union and Agudath Israel of America; staffers get free or reduced tuition for their own children. Taxing that tuition would make it hard to hire qualified teachers, the groups said. “Many K-12 schools in our community (and others) are only able to attract quality teachers by providing discounts on tuition for their children,” said a letter sent Dec. 7 by the Orthodox Union’s Washington office to Sen. Orrin1 Hatch (R-Utah), the chairman of the Page
Senate Finance Committee, and Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas), the chairman of the House tax-writing Ways and Means Committee. Of the 1,004 Jewish day schools in the United States listed by J Data, the database run by the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis University, 731 are Orthodox. A publicist for the Conservative movement, to which the Solomon Schechter schools are affiliated, did not return a request for comment in time for publication. Dave Sloan, the president of the Modern Orthodox Berman Hebrew Academy in Rockville, Md., said school staffers could have taken hits ranging from “thousands of dollars to tens of thousands of dollars,”
depending on their number of children. “It will be incumbent on our institution to true that up,” or compensate the teacher, Sloan said in an interview before the news broke that the credit would not be removed. “It’s not an extinction-level event, but it creates pressure on our budget to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars.” Berman, with 700 students, has tuitions ranging from $16,000 to $23,000, depending on the grade. Agudath Israel of America raised another flag about the proposal: Compensating the teachers for the tax hike through salary increases would place them in a higher tax bracket, which could also have deleterious effects. “Its elimination can result in higher taxable incomes that would make them ineligible for health insurance and other social service benefits — a devastating loss,” said the draft of a letter Agudah was set to send to the conference committee, the gathering of lawmakers and staffers that reconcile the House and Senate versions. President Donald Trump has said he wants to sign the bill before the year is out. It’s not clear whether a separate proposal in the Senate version favored by the Orthodox movements had survived the reconciliation. That proposal, introduced by Sen. Ted Cruz, (R-Texas) would have made a portion of 529s, the tax-free savings accounts for college tuition, available for religious day school tuitions. PJC
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Headlines Israel’s first Arab Rhodes scholar has the chutzpah to love her country recommendations, and drafting bills and resolutions. She also helped draft the senator’s speech decrying President Donald Trump’s ban on travel to the United States from seven Muslim-majority countries in which he invoked his own Jewish immigrant ancestors. However, none of Najami’s previous accomplishments made joining the exclusive ranks of Rhodes scholars — they were extended last year to include Israelis for the first time — any less exciting. She said
Israel, for example, she has made the case that it hurts all Israelis — including some of the Arabs it is supposed to help. “As an Arab Israeli, I would like to tell them, ‘No thank you,’” she said. “Academic boycotts especially prevent us from exchanging and challenging ideas, and that is something we want here.” Her Israel advocacy has helped make her something of a hero to many Jews. “Lian is a prime example of why the alle-
out for Israel,” she said. “I tell them I’m coming from an agenda of really wanting to let the Arab-Israeli voice be heard, and to make sure By Andrew Tobin | JTA the Arabs in Israel are treated equally to Jews.” Like most Arab Israelis, Najami said she EL AVIV — Lian Najami, Israel’s first is a proud citizen of her country but would Arab Rhodes scholar, is the kind of not call herself a Zionist. However, she person who can be optimistic about does not identify as Palestinian, she said, just about anything — including having a explaining that she has not endured the needle stuck in her spine. same hardships as her family members living As she waited in a Haifa hospital in the West Bank. Wednesday morning She is adamant that Israel for a lumbar puncture, should be a democracy for Najami expressed hope all its citizens, and is critical that the procedure would of ways she sees it failing finally put a name to her to live up to this ideal. As degenerative neurological an example, she said Israel disorder. After that, she fails to invest sufficiently said, anything was possible. in Arab communities “Once we know what and denies Arabs equal it is, we should be able to access to land. treat the symptoms better, To Najami, Israel is at and maybe one day we its best in her hometown will find a cure,” she said of Haifa, where Jews and in a telephone interview. Arabs live together. She “I’m really excited to see said growing up there, in where the world is going a highly integrated neighto take me next. borhood, gave her an early “As an Israeli, I guess understanding that coexisI have that chutzpah,” tence is possible. Her first she added. “I always friend was a Jewish girl. have in mind: What can “When I got older and I do from here?” people would come and When Najami, 23, won say, ‘Oh, Jews are like this the prestigious Rhodes or Arabs are like this,’ and scholarship last month, it stuff like that, I would be was the latest of many affirlike, ‘Wait a second, Rita mations of her relentlessly is Jewish but she’s nothing forward-looking worldview. like what you’re saying, so The honor, which provides maybe you shouldn’t be a free education at Oxford p generalizing people and Lian Najami speaks at an Israeli Independence Day student gala at Boston University, in Boston. Photo by Nir Landau for Combined Jewish Philanthropies stereotyping,’” Najami said. University, was also an opportunity to advance her advocacy work to Najami and her fiancé, Joe Ryan-Hume make Israel a more inclusive place for people — a Scottish man with a doctorate in Amerlike her: a disabled Arab Muslim woman. ican political history whom she met while Najami has become a sought-after public interning in Congress — are making plans speaker on behalf of her country. In recent to move to England this summer. In the fall, years, the Haifa native was a featured speaker Najami will start a master’s degree at Oxford, on leading U.S. campuses like Harvard and where she will study comparative politics Brown, at the Forbes 30 Under 30 Summit with a focus on inclusion policy. She said she EMEA in Israel, and at events in Germany hopes to bring some of the lessons she learns organized by the Israeli Embassy. back to Israel. Her message: Arab Israelis, who make Najami’s seemingly relentless positivity up some 20 percent of Israel’s citizenry, can applies to everything, from her approach succeed in the Jewish state. She has held to the Israeli-Arab conflict to her personal herself up as living proof. life. Dealing with a neurological disorder — LIAN NAJAMI “I was able to get a great education in from a young age, she said, has taught her Israel, and my social worker really gave me a she “could not stop crying” after getting gations that Israel oppresses its minorities to focus less on grievance and fear and lot of help and confidence in dealing with my the news, and her father is still bragging to are false,” said Karen Berman, the CEO of more on solutions. disability, or what I like to call my different friends and acquaintances. the American Society of the University of “I got this chronic illness at the age of 12, ability,” she said. “My family is very happy for me to be the Haifa. “To see someone like her receive the when I was dancing, and running and playing In addition to her public speaking career, first Arab Israeli to break that barrier and Rhodes Scholarship is truly a testament that football, and suddenly I couldn’t,” she said. which has been facilitated by her fluency send a message to the Arab society within this is a true meritocracy. “I could have easily played the victim, but I in five languages (Hebrew, Arabic, English, Israel that there is nothing to stop them,” she “And on a personal level,” Berman added, decided to just not focus anymore on who I German and Spanish), Najami graduated said. “I keep getting phone calls from my dad “she’s just so lovely and inspiring.” was, and start focusing on what’s ahead of from the University of Haifa in 2016, where saying, ‘OK, I’m with this person,’ and then On the other hand, some Arabs have crit- me and who I can be. she studied political science and inter- he hands over the phone for me to explain icized Najami for allegedly choosing Jewish “That is also how I look at Israel today. national affairs. the whole thing again.” nationalism over the Palestinian cause — What we should be looking at is, how do we This year, she interned in Washington for Fortunately, Najami is a polished speaker. and whitewashing Israel’s oppression of Arab advance from here? How do we incorporate U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) analyzing When it comes to the boycott, divestment Israelis and Palestinians. all the people who live in this country and counterterrorism strategies, making policy and sanctions (BDS) movement against “They don’t understand why I need to speak find a way to live together?” PJC
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“ My family is very happy for me to be
the first Arab Israeli to break that barrier
and send a message to the Arab society within Israel that there is nothing
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to stop them.
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PITTSBURGH JEWISH CHRONICLE
DECEMBER 22, 2017 9
Headlines — WORLD — From JTA reports
Mahwah, N.J., withdraws bid to ban eruv A New Jersey township has rescinded a proposed ordinance that would have prevented the construction of an eruv. The Mahwah Township Council voted last week to withdraw a measure that would have prohibited the posting on utility poles of “other matter,” which would include the white PVC pipes used to demarcate the artificial boundary. According to Jewish law, the eruv allows Jews to push and carry objects outside their homes on the Sabbath and holy days. The council also repealed an ordinance to rescind a ban on non-state residents using the township’s parks. Instead it introduced an ordinance that would allow “residents and non-residents alike” to use township parks. In October, the state sued Mahwah over the ordinances, which it says illegally targeted Jews. Another lawsuit was filed by the Eruv Association, which puts up and maintains the eruv, against the Bergen County town and nearby Upper Saddle River and Montvale for illegally “inhibiting Jews from practicing their religion.” Township Attorney Brian Chewcaskie said at the meeting that legal counsel had recommended the Township Council rescind the ordinances as a “strategic move” in order to
counter the lawsuit, according to northjersey. com. Council members were instructed not to comment on the vote or the lawsuit, according to the report. Residents of Mahwah, which borders New York state, had expressed concern that the eruv would bring an influx of haredi Orthodox Jews to the community. They also claimed it would change the character of the township and its services. Billionaire Barry Sherman, wife strangled to death, autopsy finds Billionaire philanthropist Barry Sherman and his wife, Honey, were strangled to death, autopsies revealed. Toronto Police released a statement late Sunday that said the cause of death was “ligature neck compression.” The investigation into the deaths of Barry Sherman, 75, the founder and chairman of the generic drug maker Apotex, and his wife, 70, has been turned over to Toronto homicide detectives, according to reports. The couple’s bodies were found Friday night, Dec. 15, hanging from a railing that surrounded their indoor pool. Police labeled the deaths “suspicious.” There were no signs of forced entry into their Toronto-area home, which had been placed up for sale recently for an asking price of about $5.4 million. The bodies were discovered by the real estate agent, who let herself in with the key that had been given to her.
Police reportedly had been considering the possibility that the deaths were a murder-suicide, something their family condemned in a statement issued Saturday. “Our parents shared an enthusiasm for life and commitment to their family and community totally inconsistent with the rumors regrettably circulated in the media as to the circumstances surrounding their deaths,” the statement said. “We are shocked and think it’s irresponsible that police sources have reportedly advised the media of a theory which neither their family, their friends nor their colleagues believe to be true.” Barry Sherman is the 15th richest Canadian, according to Canadian Business magazine, with an estimated wealth of $4.77 billion Canadian, or $3.65 billion. In addition to donating some $39 million to the United Jewish Appeal, Sherman was a fundraiser for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party. Honey Sherman sat on the boards of several Jewish organizations, including Mount Sinai’s Women’s Auxiliary, the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. The couple donated millions to local hospitals, schools and charities. Sinking Sea of Galilee to get infusion of desalinated water Israel is preparing to pump desalinated water into the Sea of Galilee.
The state’s Water Authority recently started work on the $300 million project, which will take about two years to complete, Israel’s Hadashot TV news reported Monday. With Israel apparently approaching a fifth consecutive dry year, the Sea of Galilee has dropped to dangerously low levels. This has increased the lake’s salinity and harmed the quality of the water, which constitutes a quarter of Israel’s potable supply. The Water Authority is also overseeing projects to pump out saltwater from the lake in order to maintain its potability. The authority says it is extracting about 17,000 tons of salt each year. In October, the Water Authority warned that the Sea of Galilee was at a dangerously low level and expected to reach “the lowest level ever recorded.” The project could lead to a rise in national water tariffs. Miami-area village passes landmark anti-Semitism ordinance A Miami-area village council passed an ordinance that helps police define and investigate anti-Semitic acts as hate crimes. The Bal Harbour Village Council unanimously passed the ordinance, which the Miami Herald reported is the first of its kind for a municipality. The ordinance passed last week by the Please see Briefs, page 17
This week in Israeli history Dec. 25, 1918 Anwar Sadat is born
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Born into a family of 13 children in Mit Abu al-Kum, Egypt, Sadat is a member of the Free Officers movement that overthrew Egypt’s monarchy in 1952. As Egypt’s president, he signs a historic peace agreement with Israel in 1979.
Items provided by the Center for Israel Education (israeled.org), where you can find more details.
Mazel Tov!
Dec. 22, 1948 Julius Holmes conveys Britain’s fear of communism in Israel to US government
In a cable to the State Department, U.S. Chargé d’affaires Julius Holmes recounts British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin’s concerns that “within five years, Israel may be a communist state.”
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Dec. 23, 1789 French National Assembly debates citizenship for Jews
Following the French Revolution and the Aug. 26, 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man, the issue of Jewish rights is debated in the French National Assembly for three days with no conclusion.
Dec. 24, 1969 Israel smuggles Sa’ar Class missile boats out of Cherbourg
Israeli teams are sent to France to work in local shipyards. The Mossad established a “front” shipping company to buy the remaining boats and then return them to Israel.
PITTSBURGH JEWISH CHRONICLE
Dec. 26, 1864 Yehoshua Hankin is born in Ukraine
Yehoshua Hankin, one of the most distinguished land purchasers of the Yishuv (Jewish settlements in Palestine), is born in Ukraine in 1864. Hankin makes aliyah to Israel with his father in 1882.
Dec. 27, 2008 Israel responds to rockets from Gaza with Operation Cast Lead
Nearly 12,000 rockets are fired from the Gaza Strip into Israeli civilian areas over eight years. On Dec. 27, 2008, Israel responds with Operation Cast Lead.
Dec. 28, 1917 Ronald Storrs is appointed military governor of Jerusalem
British General Edmund Allenby appoints Ronald Storrs as military governor of Jerusalem. PJC
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Headlines Israelis are flocking to this Silicon Valley community center programs for Israeli immigrants, from job application workshops to a counseling center with 150 volunteers. Crucially, said Jacobs, every program is funded by ticket sales and donations from Israelis — a strategy that teaches them that Jewish life in the United States costs money. “We don’t need to get the money from Americans for Hebrew-speaking programs
tailored to secular Israeli sensibilities. The Yom Kippur eve service, which drew 500 people, included works by modern Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai and rock singer Berry Sakharof in addition to traditional prayers like Kol Nidre. Likewise, its Torah study program on the first night of the Shavuot holiday — a mainstay of traditional synagogues — featured
The programs have been so successful that the JCC has received requests from unaffiliated American Jews to duplicate them — By Ben Sales | JTA except this time in English. And several ICC programs are meant not only for Israelis but ALO ALTO, Calif. — With a foot also as a “bridge” to American Jews. The in the tech world and another in ICC puts on an annual book fair with works Jewish culture, the JCC in Palo Alto in Hebrew and English, and runs a Sukkot has transformed itself into a hub for local program where families erect mini huts on Israeli expatriates. the JCC campus. Its annual conferLocated on a sprawling 8.5-acre ence, titled “Zionism 3.0,” attempts campus, the place known formally to examine Israeli political issues as the Oshman Family Jewish without getting bogged down in Community Center has done us vs. them debates. what many mainstream Amer“A lot of them are very secular, ican Jewish institutions are still and for most of them being Jewish attempting: attracting Amerwas not a conscious thing [in ican Israelis, numbering in Israel],” said Tova Birnbaum, the the hundreds of thousands, to JCC’s director of religious content, programs at a legacy organization. about local Israelis. “We’re introCalled the Israeli Cultural ducing them to a concept of Connection, or ICC, the suite of Judaism as a culture.” Israeli programs at the JCC draws Creating a subdivision specifimore than 20,000 people annucally for Israelis fits into the larger ally to its classes, seminars and framework of the Palo Alto JCC, concerts. They and their children which acts less as the headquarters celebrate holidays, keep up their of a single organization than as a Hebrew and Israeli identity, and neighborhood of several groups inch closer to the institutions and targeting different sets of Jews. A norms that have long organized cafe without kosher certification the American Jewish community. sits not far from an Orthodox girls’ “We try to bring them in in school. There’s an old-age home, Hebrew and build a community a theater, a gym, a ga-ga (Israeli around them,” ICC director Ronit dodgeball) court, a kids’ rec room Jacobs said. “Our biggest piece is and multiple outdoor pieces of art. the second-generation children of p The JCC also likes to think of Children participate in a Yom Kippur havdalah event at the Palo Alto JCC. Photo by Ilyanne Photographic Art itself as part of the tech world that Israelis living here, and Israelis that are here for over three years, that draws so many Israelis to Silicon they can understand what it is to Valley. An incubator for new be a Jewish Israeli outside of Israel.” Jewish nonprofits and an organizaSecular Israelis who grew up tion advancing Israelis in tech both without synagogue are unlikely have offices on the campus. And to start attending services here, JCC executives repeat the indusaccording to surveys, while Israelis try’s buzzwords — they “move fast are also not conditioned to paying and break things,” JCC CEO Zach high tuition fees for Jewish day Bodner said — though one of the school and camp. main ways the center participates “Israelis have such a good and in tech is by encouraging entreprerich life, they don’t need to speak neurs to “unplug” on Shabbat and English,” said Oded Hermoni, spend time with family. who co-chairs an organization “The greatest tech innovation of for Israeli entrepreneurs and has all time was Shabbat,” Bodner said. invested in drawing Israelis closer “In this moment of time and geogto the American Jewish commuraphy, one of the most important nity, sitting on the board of the things we can offer is a break local Jewish federation. “They can from technology.” live in their ghetto all the time. Eventually, Jacobs hopes, Israelis They don’t need to assimilate.” will increase their involvement in The ICC gets around the Israeother Jewish communal instituli-Jewish divide by offering traditions. But for now, she and the JCC tional Jewish programs with an are happy to see them keep flowing Israeli twist. Its Hebrew school through the door. is geared to kids who speak the “It’s a gateway, definitely a language at home. A leadership p Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, addresses the audience. Photo by Michelle Shabtai gateway,” she said of the JCC. “We training program by the Israelidon’t want the Israeli community American Council, called Gvanim, Hebrew to make it happen,” Jacobs said. “There’s secular Israeli lecturers like Dov Elbaum, to be closed off — the opposite. We feel for “shades,” focuses on how to maintain an been enough successful [Israeli] people here a public intellectual who used to be obser- there’s so much in common between the Israeli identity in the United States through in the valley who can support what we’d like vant, and Yochi Brandes, who grew up Jewish community and Israelis. If we bring studying and discussing classic Jewish texts to do for the Israeli community in Hebrew.” haredi Orthodox and is now an author and them together, they can actually learn so like the Talmud. It also offers guidance The center’s religious programming is also commentator on religious issues. much from each other.” PJC
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DECEMBER 22, 2017 11
Opinion Devil’s bargain — EDITORIAL —
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n its quest to secure a deal with Iran to freeze its nuclear ambitions, the Obama administration derailed a U.S. law enforcement campaign targeting drug trafficking into this country by the Iranianbacked Hezbollah organization. That’s the conclusion of a report by Josh Meyer published by Politico last weekend. It makes for unsettling reading and shows how complicated — and morally compromising — it can be to reach a strategic goal. “The campaign, dubbed Project Cassandra, was launched in 2008 after the Drug Enforcement Administration amassed evidence that Hezbollah had transformed itself from a Middle East-focused military and political organization into an international crime syndicate that some investigators believed was collecting $1 billion a year from drug and weapons trafficking, money laundering and other criminal activities,” Meyer wrote. According to the report, the Obama administration made a devil’s bargain to keep the Iran deal on track. “As Project Cassandra reached higher into the hierarchy
If the Obama team really did impede a potential Hezbollah prosecution in order to advance the Iran deal, it is probable that significant Israeli and U.S. interests and concerns were sacrificed in order to reach that goal. of the conspiracy, Obama administration officials threw an increasingly insurmountable series of roadblocks in its way.” There were other factors to consider. One was Hezbollah’s multiple roles as a terrorist group, militia and crime syndicate on the one hand, and a Lebanese political and social welfare organization on the other. Another was the not-always-overlapping priorities of the various U.S. agencies and the State Department when it came to Hezbollah.
“Nowhere was the tension between law enforcement and diplomacy more acute than in dealings with Hezbollah, which was fast becoming a key part of the Lebanese government,” Meyer wrote. Not all the interviewees in the Politico report agreed with the criticism against the Obama administration. A former senior member of the national security establishment said Cassandra may have been closed for lack of evidence or out of concern for
interfering with intelligence activities. “What if the CIA or the Mossad had an intelligence operation ongoing inside Hezbollah and they were trying to pursue someone against whom we had impeccable [intelligence] collection and the DEA is not going to know that?” the official said. “The world is a lot more complicated than viewed through the narrow lens of drug trafficking.” That may be true, but criticism of what appeared to many to be President Obama’s and Secretary of State John Kerry’s blind pursuit of a nuclear deal with Iran is nothing new. It’s what made some of those in our community who nevertheless supported it experience moments of pause and deep reflection. Now comes the Politico story, which appears to provide a better picture of what may have been going on behind the scene. It is a picture that, if true, is very disturbing. Devil’s bargains are a near constant in the world of realpolitik. But if the Obama team really did impede a potential Hezbollah prosecution in order to advance the Iran deal, it is probable that significant Israeli and U.S. interests and concerns were sacrificed in order to reach that goal. PJC
When women rabbis say ‘#MeToo,’ communities must pay attention Guest Columnist Rabbi Hara Person
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n a recent talk at Temple Emanuel in New York, former first lady Michelle Obama spoke about how women live with tiny cuts that build up over time, cuts that we endure without noticing, even as we bleed. That is what it is to be a girl and a woman in this world, she said, urging women to own our scars, and to find power and healing in doing so. The last weeks have been a sobering reminder that sexual misconduct is rampant in every profession, not just in the entertainment industry or in politics. It is a reminder, as if we needed a reminder, that to grow up a girl is to expect, if not accept, unwanted comments, remarks, touching and assault. As women, in our personal lives and professional careers, we all have our stories, our workarounds and our scars. The conversation about sexual harassment and sexual assault in our society comes at a time when the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the professional organization of Reform rabbis, stands ready to launch the Task Force on the Experience of Women in the Rabbinate. This need became evident in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election, the publication of “The Sacred Calling: Four Decades of Women in the Rabbinate” and a study we undertook on rabbinic
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professional satisfaction. Although women have been Reform rabbis for 45 years, it is painfully obvious that these issues are still a fact of everyday life. The rabbinate is no exception to the conversations going on in the wider world about women’s experiences. It is the rare female rabbi who, if married to a man, has not been asked if her husband is also a rabbi. Or the joke we all hear: If the wife of a rabbi is a rebbetzin, what do you call the husband of a rabbi? (Lucky.) While seemingly harmless, such comments nonetheless undermine the credibility and authority of women as rabbis. And the comments don’t stop there. There are these lines, uttered at board meetings or during the oneg or even at a funeral, like, “I’ve always wanted to kiss a rabbi,” or, “If rabbis looked like you when I was a kid, I would have come to synagogue more.” There’s a kind of sliding scale to the comments, from bad to worse. “Rabbi, please cross your legs when seated on the bimah, otherwise it’s too distracting.” “Rabbi, are you pregnant? Your breasts look bigger.” And so on, and so on. Women rabbis are counseled to wear lipstick or told not to wear lipstick. We are told that our clothing choices are too revealing or too dowdy. Our shoes are too sexy or too old fashioned. Our voices are too soft or too strident. We’re too emotional or we’re too cold. We’re called by our first names while the male rabbi is called Rabbi Last Name. We’re called kiddo, babe, sugar, sexy, honey. We’re advised to get home quickly from a board meeting so that we can make our husbands happy.
And it isn’t just laypeople. There are stories as well of rabbis in positions of power preying on younger, more vulnerable rabbis, inappropriate touching or comments during supervisory sessions, and jokes that are not in the least bit funny. In only four short decades since the first ordination, there are now nearly 700 women members of the CCAR, the first rabbinic organization in history to admit women as full members. In this time, women rabbis have made profound progress. The adoption in the 1980s of egalitarian liturgical language and gender-neutral God language in our prayer books and Haggadot opened up prayer and Jewish practice in important new ways. The development of new life-cycle rituals allowed for the sanctification of experiences previously outside traditional Jewish practice. The publication of the groundbreaking and award-winning “The Torah: A Women’s Commentary” highlighted and canonized feminist Torah scholarship. However, women rabbis still experience substantial obstacles: gender-based bias, inappropriate comments, sexual harassment, sexual assault, lack of proper institutional support, undermining behavior, and issues related to contracts, pay equity and parental leave. Intertwined with these challenges are issues of sexuality and gender nonconformity. The CCAR already has in place a robust ethics code and rigorous ethics process to address instances of rabbinic misconduct. Whether these experiences happen in congregations, in communal or institutional
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settings, in rabbinic school or student placements; whether they happen with colleagues or with laypeople, when complaints are reported, they are responded to with the seriousness that they deserve. WRN, the Women’s Rabbinic Network, has been tackling these issues for decades and is currently spearheading an important project on pay equity with Women of Reform Judaism. But we must do even more to create safe and sacred communities for both those who are participants in those communities and those who serve them. The time has arrived to open a communitywide conversation beyond the ethics process about these experiences, and examine the way that women in the rabbinate face systemic and ongoing challenges. The responsibility to strengthen the Jewish community and enhance the professional and personal lives of Reform rabbis is central to the mission of the CCAR — it is our ethical and professional mandate to address these deeply troubling challenges. The Task Force on the Experience of Women in the Rabbinate will study the realities facing women in order to identify their root causes and potential solutions. It will engage our membership, laypeople and partner Reform institutions. Ultimately it will create change for the good and bring healing, hope and greater strength to our rabbinates and the communities we serve. PJC Rabbi Hara Person is chief strategy officer for the Central Conference of American Rabbis and publisher of CCAR Press.
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Opinion Israeli Americans can be the glue that builds a stronger Jewish community Guest Columnist Adam Milstein
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he Israeli-American Council’s fourth annual National Conference in Washington, D.C., last month felt like a long-overdue family reunion. Enveloping warmth and a powerful sense of togetherness, the love for Israel was infectious, radiating to and from all the participants. In the corridors of the Washington Convention Center, teenagers spoke with unique pride about their hybrid IsraeliAmerican identity, rooted in the idea that they are deeply connected to their home in America while maintaining a strong affinity to their Jewish homeland in Israel. Groups of Jewish-American and Israeli-American young professionals exchanged business cards and then headed to a packed dance floor, moving and shaking the steel floors of the convention center to the beat of Israeli music. A young Jewish couple — the man from New York, the woman from Tel Aviv — joined with their 2-year-old and hundreds of other young families in a circle with picture books in Hebrew and English. Groups singing Israeli songs blended with panel discussions about what it means to be Israeli and Jewish in America, centered around the idea that we were connected by the Israeliness in our character and the
love for Israel in our heart. Many echoed the sentiment that Israeli Americans and Jewish Americans are one family, need each other and complement each other. This sense of unity extended to the event’s political conversations. The politicians at the conference held views that spanned the ideological spectrum. They shared these radically different views on stage — in very frank conversations. All received thundering applause from the mixed crowd. In the many conference sessions and events, it was clear that Israeliness is a unifying force that can overcome political disagreements. We live during a time of growing gaps and serious challenges in the Jewish community — both inside American Jewry and between Israel and the Diaspora. How do we address a declining Jewish population in the face of assimilation? How do we overcome divides among our different denominations, political orientations, ethnic backgrounds and geographic centers? How do we ensure that Israel is not a wedge that divides our community, but rather the glue that holds us together and strengthens us? The nearly 3,000 participants in the Washington conference suggested the role that Israeli Americans can and do play as important partners for American Jewish institutions in addressing these questions, and as bridge builders to the State of Israel and its people. There are three unique value propositions that Israeli Americans — and groups like ours that represent them — can bring to the
table for the Jewish community. The first is our Israeliness, a character and multifaceted quality that brings together many aspects of our identity: Jewish values, the Hebrew language, Israeli culture, pride in our history and heritage, the unique accomplishments of the Jewish people and the State of Israel, and above all, a belief that “All the people of Israel are responsible for one another.” Through Israeliness, our community is bringing new people into our communal conversations and re-engaging others from a wide variety of backgrounds. We understand the importance of Israel not just as a vibrant country and proud culture, but as a crucial part of our spiritual beliefs as Jews. We speak Hebrew at home and at shul — the same language with two unique and intertwined purposes. Our community offers new ways to engage with Israel and Judaism itself. The second value proposition is our deep love for Israel, rooted in personal experience and an appreciation that it is not just the homeland of the Jewish people, but a source of our pride, common history, culture, courage and strength. We recognize that Israel isn’t perfect but accept and support it without any preconditions. As a result, Israeli Americans are uniquely equipped to advocate for Israel. The Israeli-American Council, for example, has worked to advocate for laws that keep states like California, Nevada and Texas from allowing taxpayer funds to support groups that discriminate against Israelis with economic boycotts. In partnership with
existing organizations like AIPAC and Jewish federations, the Israeli-American Coalition for Action and the Israeli-American community have acted to advance bipartisan support for the Taylor Force Act, the Israel Anti-Boycott Act and other important pieces of legislation. The third value proposition is our willingness and ability to think outside the box. Israeli Americans have much to learn from the American Diaspora community about how Jewish culture and community can flourish outside of a Jewish state. Yet we are also contributing fresh perspectives that have brought a range of programs to American Jewish life — initiatives that are engaging not only Israeli Americans, but also Jewish Americans of all ages. By uniting Israeli Americans and partnering with existing Jewish-American institutions, we believe that we can strengthen the American communities we live in and build their connection to Israel. Our vision for the coming decades is optimistic: Where some see challenges and gaps, we see promise and opportunity to reignite Jewish life, re-inspire Jewish pride and courage, and reimagine our existing institutions so that they serve the next generation in our community. By working together as one big Jewish family, Israeli Americans and Jewish Americans of all backgrounds can forge the future we desire. PJC Adam Milstein is co-founder and chairman of the board of the Israeli-American Council.
— LETTERS — Realizing a real peace Union for Reform Judaism president Rabbi Rick Jacobs said that his organization cannot support President Donald Trump’s decision to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem absent a comprehensive plan for a peace process.” (“Reform Jews at Biennial take on issues of equality at home, in Israel,” Dec. 15). What is a comprehensive peace plan? The sad history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that more than once, well-wishing leaders have proposed rather “comprehensive peace plans”. President Bill Clinton devised the Oslo Accord; Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin declared, facing an intifada, that “we must fight terrorism as if there’s no peace process and work to achieve peace as if there’s no terror,” and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert prepared comprehensive maps delineating Jerusalem into two capitals of two states. Former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry prepared a peace plan that addressed most, if not all, of the “red lines” of Israel and of the Palestinians. None of those experienced statesmen succeeded, and the neophyte Jared Kushner has a plan? What went wrong? A comprehensive answer will require a book, or a long pamphlet. In this limited space I will examine one aspect, the role of the leaders on both sides, Chairman Yasser Arafat, President Mahmud Abbas and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. None were “negotiating” in good faith. Yasser Arafat was basking in the glory of world-class “freedom fighter.” Only he could address the U.N. General Assembly wearing military fatigues and a gun holster! Aid money was pouring in, a significant portion of which ended in his personal Swiss bank accounts. Why would he give up such an intoxicating status to become the prime minister of a failing state? Mahmud Abbas is not that glamorous but was elected to a four-year term as president in 2005. Netanyahu publicly supported a two-state solution in June 2009 in his famous Bar Ilan speech, but he made no real effort to advance the concept. Ever since, Netanyahu has fearlessly guarded his prime minister position. He has been held hostage by the religious right and by the Settlers Party, which consider the two-state solution an affront to God’s promise to His Chosen People. A comprehensive plan will not bring peace. Peace will be realized when the real powers on both sides are ready to negotiate a true, lasting settlement. Ram Kossowsky Pittsburgh PITTSBURGHJEWISHCHRONICLE.ORG
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Life & Culture In the shadow of Wrigley, Chicago’s newest kosher deli pitches cured meats and good deeds — FOOD — By Ellen Braunstein | JTA
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HICAGO — Baseball gloves and caricatures of famous ballplayers adorn the walls of Milt’s Extra Innings — no surprise for a deli that’s a short drive from Wrigley Field, the fabled home of the Chicago Cubs. But look closely and the picture becomes a little more unexpected: The memorabilia on the walls celebrate Jewish greats and not-so-greats like Sandy Koufax, Philadelphia Athletics first baseman Lou Limmer, and the catcher and sometimes spy Moe Berg. And there among the collection of bobbleheads, right next to former catcher Brad Ausmus, is Moses — that Moses — gripping a set of tablets. The latest addition to the redevelopment of the neighborhoods around Wrigley is a kosher deli that is a celebration of Jews and America’s pastime — as well as a place where Jewish adults with intellectual disabilities can find meaningful work experience. Restaurateur and real estate investor Jeff Aeder recently opened Milt’s Extra Innings next door to his kosher Milt’s Barbecue for the Perplexed, which for five years has donated all profits to Jewish causes. Milt’s Extra Innings will follow suit, donating all profits to Keshet, a Jewish agency serving children and adults with intellectual challenges in the Chicago area. The owner of a 5,000-piece collection of Jewish baseball memorabilia, Aeder is showcasing a small fraction of artifacts that celebrate 170 Jews who have played in the major leagues. A mural timeline on a wall tracks the history of Jews in the sport from 1860 until today. Among the framed collectibles near the deli counter are a jersey worn
p Deli worker Zahava Auerbach poses next to an exhibit at the Jewish baseball museum at Milt’s Extra Innings in Chicago. Photo by Ellen Braunstein
by Koufax from 1963, his best year, Detroit slugger Hank Greenberg’s game-used bat and a mitt used by Berg. “Baseball is a great metaphor for the Jewish experience in America,” Aeder said of his niche Jewish Baseball Museum, where his entire collection lives, for the moment, online. The website includes a quote from author Jonathan Eig saying that in baseball, like Judaism, members of a “tribe … pass along a collective sense of identity — where we come from and who we are.” “We’re telling the story of Jews in America through baseball,” Aeder said. Extra Innings branches away from the barbecue fare next door by offering fresh meat sandwiches, prepared salads and side dishes. The deli, offering catering and takeout, is small, seating only 14. The deli fare
ranges from soups to schnitzel to whitefish salad and sweet potato salad. The workers cure their own meats and sell them in vacuum-sealed pouches. A Shabbat menu offers traditional fare like cholent and chicken. Extra Innings was a response to customers, general manager Stephen Kriesler said. “Our customers appreciated a kosher restaurant but wanted more than barbecue,” he said. “For almost four years we thought about what other foods we could do. Then the restaurant next door left and the space became available.” Most of the deli workers at Extra Innings are associated with Keshet and its GADOL program — Giving Adults Daily Opportunities for Living. They have an intellectual disability but are high functioning, Kriesler said. Overseen by a job coach, “They can hold
a job, learn tasks, be able to communicate with people, and help prepare and serve the food,” he said. Deli worker Shmuel Emanuel, 24, describes his work as fun. “I like making the sandwiches and working with my co-workers,” he said. Debbie Harris, Keshet’s director of adult programming, said, “We are excited to bring together people of all abilities to work side by side and create a new community. Most of all, we are grateful to Jeff for his incredible vision and are so pleased to be his partner in this new endeavor.” Aeder views the deli as a partnership between the community and the restaurants. “Hiring primarily special needs adults to work in the restaurant, we’ve given them an opportunity to live a fulfilling life,” he said. The neighboring kosher-certified restaurants are not in an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood, so the clientele is diverse, Aeder said. “We created something for all of us to be proud of. The success of it is dependent on the community viewing it as their own,” he said. “And I think that the patrons gain something from the experience of interacting with each other.” Redevelopment around Wrigley Field includes a new five-story headquarters for the Cubs, a seven-story hotel, a new residential and retail complex, and an annex to the famed park that will include retail and restaurant space. It doesn’t hurt that the Cubs won the World Series in 2016 — ending a historic 107-season drought — and made it to the National League Championship Series this year. “I’m a huge Cubs fan,” Aeder said, “and being able to throw that into the equation was great.” PJC
A classic play sounds more American when it is performed in Yiddish — THEATER — By Andrew Silow-Carroll | JTA
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EW YORK — Everything I love about the playwright and screenwriter Clifford Odets is found in the opening line of his 1935 play “Awake and Sing!”: “Where’s advancement down the place?” The line is said by Ralph, the thwarted son in a struggling Bronx Jewish family in the heart of the Depression, in that wonderful, weirdly Yiddishesque language Odets created for Broadway and Hollywood. It means something like “I can’t get a promotion at work!” — but there’s no music in a sentence like that. It’s the music heard in Odets’ 1957 screenplay for “The Sweet Smell of Success,” in which the sleazy denizens of New York’s
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hustling PR man played by Tony Curtis. “In brief, from now on, the best of everything is good enough for me!” And if it takes you a minute to figure out what a character like Ralph or Sidney is saying, that was part of the point: Odets created a version of English that sounded both familiar and alien because he wanted his working-class Jewish characters to sound both familiar and alien. Odets made his name in the ’30s in the proudly leftwing Group Theatre writing kitchen-sink dramas that transformed his own poor Jewish upbringing into a universal call for justice and fair play. When plays like “Awake and Sing!” and “Golden Boy” opened on p A scene from the New Yiddish Rep’s staging of “Awake and Sing!” featuring, Broadway, they thrilled and scandalized from left, Ronit Asheri, Moshe Lobel, Lea Kalisch, David Mandelbaum and audiences with their risque content and Eli Rosen. Photo by Pedro Hernandez occasionally radical politics. nightclub society sound like they’re speaking “My experience I can give you in a So what happens to “Awake and Sing!” Shakespeare translated into Yiddish then nutshell, and I didn’t dream it in a dream, back into English. either — dog eat dog,” says Sidney Falco, the Please see Play, page 15 PITTSBURGH JEWISH CHRONICLE
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Life & Culture More than 60 years later, ‘The Changelings’ still resonates — RETRO BOOK REVIEW — By Hilary Daninhirsch | Chronicle Correspondent
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ousing integration and the knee-jerk reaction of white flight is the central theme in “The Changelings,” a timeless novel by Jo Sinclair that is relevant today, more than 60 years after its publication in 1955. Although there are now laws to protect all citizens from housing discrimination, the themes of pervasive racism and the underlying fears that propel it are timely issues. The story takes place in an Ohio town in 1945 and revolves around a close-knit working class neighborhood that is mostly Jewish, although one Italian family lives on the street as well. When a floor in a house becomes available for rent, the neighbors all worry that the owners will rent the rooms to black families (i.e., “The Black Ones”). The deep-rooted fear is that of the unknown — who are these people? Will they bring crime to the neighborhood? Will their moving in change the culture of the neighborhood so that it is not longer predominantly Jewish? Will the synagogue be forced to shut its doors? The changeling and main protagonist in the novel is Judy Vincent, a young Jewish preteen girl who befriends Clara, a black teen whose family is trying to find a decent place to live. One night when Judy’s gang of clubhouse friends betrays and humiliates her, she bumps into Clara, who was watching silently. The chance meeting changes Judy’s life and perspective, as she eventually realizes that nothing much differentiates Clara from herself, other than Clara’s religion and skin color. This realization later gives her
the courage to confront her father, who has shunned his other daughter and grandson because of an intermarriage. Even with a considerable number of characters in the book, most were well fleshed out with distinct personalities and mannerisms. Sinclair shifts the narrative’s focus throughout the story to five other neighborhood families, all of whom have similar, vehement reactions to the notion of an integrated neighborhood. Each family has their secrets, their shameful pasts. Reading their stories calls to mind the Anna Karenina principle made famous by Tolstoy: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” One such family is the Goldens. Besides having a daughter who is mentally challenged, one of their older teenage sons has been ill his whole life and can do little else but watch the world go by from his sickbed. Jules, 17, befriends young Judy and writes her a poem called “The Changelings,” which was revelatory for Judy, as she comes to realize that she has an identity and values separate from the adults in her life, some of whom have not been good role models. “I’m the changeling in my house — the way Jules has it in my poem. I’m not scared. I’m not going to run around crying and hating people. Spying to see who is going to do me dirt. See? I’m not going to talk their language. I’m going to be free, so I can go out in the world. And — and beautiful. That’s in the poem. You can’t be free if you’re scared of everybody, can you?”
When one of the neighbors on the street witnesses what she thinks is a black man having relations with one of their own, she spreads the word, causing the entire neighborhood to erupt in a panic. This also leads to an extreme reaction when, later, a black man is beaten up when he simply asks a homeowner if there were any available rooms for rent. When Judy sees that no one is stepping forward to help the bleeding man, she springs into action. That is arguably the pivotal moment in her life where she leaves her childhood behind, with the uncomfortable realization that the adults around her are flawed. The book is mostly from the perspective of the Jewish families; other than Clara, of whom the reader only gets a limited glimpse of her story, the black people in the book are nameless, only referred to as “The Black Ones” or the “Schwartze.” It is hard not to wince when reading certain portions of the book, particularly the extreme reactions of the Jewish neighbors at the mere prospect of a black neighbor. These are the same people who put money in pushke boxes regularly. These are the same people who themselves fled their countries of origin due to anti-Semitism. But that is the point — to make the reader as uncomfortable as Judy as she grapples with the realization that she and Clara represent the next generation whose obligation it is to cross boundaries, to reject the social norms of their communities and families and fight these injustices.
Play: Continued from page 14
when you lose Odets’ conceit, of characters speaking English as if they are speaking Yiddish? That’s the challenge of a new staging of the play by New Yiddish Rep at Manhattan’s 14th Street Y, where a 1938 translation of the play by Chaver Paver is being staged through Dec. 24. Performing Odets in Yiddish might sound both redundant and self-defeating, but it works. Thanks to an excellent cast and a sudden relevance for the play Odets couldn’t have dreamed of, something is definitely gained in the translation. I don’t speak Yiddish, but know enough Hebrew and Leo Rosten that I can hear how a Yiddish sentence gets from here to there. (The New Yiddish Rep production is presented with English supertitles projected above the stage.) Characters wail, flatter, gripe, coo, criticize and crow in the mameloshn. It’s a music all its own. You do miss cockamamie Odets lines like “In life there’s two kinds — the men that’s sure of themselves and the one who ain’t! It’s a time you quit being a selling-platter and got in the first class.” (What’s a selling-platter?
p Luzer Twersky and Ronit Asheri perform in “Awake and Sing!” at Manhattan’s 14th Street Y. Photo by Pedro Hernandez
Who knows — but you get the point!) But you gain something else: a connection to the Jewish past — and the political present. The Jewish past is coded into Yiddish — not just because it is the language that Bubbe and Zayde spoke, but because it is a river that swept up and grew swollen on the history of the Jews going back to the Israelites. When Jacob, the fiery Marxist grandfather in the
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play, slips from Yiddish to quote Isaiah (and gives the play its title), the Hebrew recalls how Cynthia Ozick once described a similar moment in Sholem Aleichem’s Tevye stories: “the six scant Hebrew syllables instantly call up ... the full quotation, the tremor or memory aroused by its ancestral uses.” The Bergers have always been a Jewish, if highly assimilated family; the Yiddish reminds you
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Despite this, there were many tender moments and meaningful passages, including the poetry written by the dying Jules. One stanza in a poem called “Die Schwartze” was particularly eloquent: “Now comes The Black From out the secret dark cell of my heart. Now comes The Black Enemy, unnamed, unseen, For I fear his name, his face, For I will not admit his name is mine, His face is mine! Now comes The Black to overwhelm me, From out the sky, from out the street, From out the heart of me!” The novel was likely a bold one in its day, a powerfully, unflinchingly forthright novel that was predictive of a rapidly changing, multi-ethnic America. This is an intense, captivating and astute book that is applicable today. It is a book that deserves to be dusted off of library shelves and be re-examined in light of present-day issues of racism. Jo Sinclair was born Ruth Seid in 1913 in Brooklyn to immigrant parents and grew up in Cleveland. She chose her pen name as it was both gender- and ethnically-neutral, as she strove to publish in a male-centric publishing world. Nonetheless, although she spent much of her life writing, she published only four full-length novels as well as a memoir. Sinclair died in 1995 at the age of 82. “The Changelings,” which was reissued in 1985, won an award sponsored by the Jewish Book Council. Sinclair also won the Harper Prize for her first novel, “Wasteland.” PJC Hilary Daninhirsch can be reached at hdaninhirsch@gmail.com.
how Jewish they are. As for the present: No play about immigrants can avoid sounding topical in this age of travel bans and deportations. The Bergers may speak Yiddish at home, but let you know they speak English out in the world. They’ll lapse into English when they need to, as when Ralph is on the phone with a girlfriend, or when they want to, as when the conniving boarder Moe delivers his tag line, “Don’t make me laugh!” An “insurance policy” is an insurance policy, and “Teddy Roosevelt” is Teddy Roosevelt. A younger character like the daughter Hennie toggles between Yiddish and English, and is reluctant to marry a “greenhorn” (or “griner” in Yiddish), an immigrant only three years off the boat. This is the immigrant’s anxiety: eager to fit in, and sometimes disdainful of newer immigrants who remind them of their vulnerability. It’s impossible to watch a struggling family crowded into a small apartment, speaking a “foreign” language, and not be reminded of the different families, from other countries, who would replace them. This is a play about immigrant dreamers meeting a harsh reality. The Yiddish in this “Awake and Sing!” makes it a more particular story and, Odets would no doubt kvell, a more universal one. PJC DECEMBER 22, 2017 15
Headlines Musicians: Continued from page 3
disco was in collaboration with the art series “Out of Many: Stories of Migration” that is currently on display at the JCC. The exhibit highlights the American immigrant and migrant experience through photographs and essays, focusing on Pittsburgh’s particular immigration stories. After meditating at the exhibit, Mandee wrote the original song ‘How Far We Have Come’ about the immigrant experience as a “beacon of hope” for themselves and more, but also as a journey that has just begun. Mandee said she already had several social justice-themed songs that didn’t fit in to her normal jazz routine but didn’t plan to compile them into an album until April Fool’s Day a year and a half ago. She jokingly posted a Facebook status about a collaboration with Berlin, whom she has known for several years and works with at the Afro American Music Institute
p Social Justice Disco performers pose for a photograph after their concert. Sixty local musicians are included on the album. Photo by Lauren Rosenblatt
teaching music to children. At first, fans were excited about the prospect — and then angry to learn it had
only been a joke. In response, Berlin, who co-owns Mr. Smalls Theatre and Funhouse in Lawrenceville, told
Christmas:
p “It’s the best time to get to know all of your other Jewish colleagues in the hospital,” says Dr. Benjamin Zussman, a neurosurgery resident and endovascular fellow at UPMC. Photo courtesy of Dr. Benjamin Zussman
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Lauren Rosenblatt can be reached at lrosenblatt@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.
The holidays were split into 10 days with residents given either five-day blocks off for Christmas or five-day slots for New Year’s, he said. “We would work the whole 10 days straight. It was sort of the deal with being shomer Shabbos.” Although he may not need to this year, Eisenberg’s husband has taken double shifts during Christmas or around the holidays to ease the workload, the occupational therapist said. “I have covered for non-Jews in the past,” said Rob Davis, medical director of Wesley Family Services. “I respect their holiday.” Lest anyone praise Davis for his selflessness or sacrifice, the western Pennsylvanian psychologist was quite clear that providing coverage on Christmas was far from burdensome. “I do it with pleasure, it’s not a hardship at all. The worst thing it will do for me is interrupt a movie.” PJC
Continued from page 6
cases,” he said. “If the residents were off, you got to do more because it was less crowded in the OR.” Along with Christmas, the days before and after are similarly spent in service, said several Jewish workers. Eisenberg, like her husband who is a pharmacist at Allegheny General Hospital, more than willingly tacks on extra tasks during the holiday season. “We’re happy to help out,” she said. Massart agreed. But with many individuals deservedly departing during the latter half of the last month, staffs are sometimes stretched, said the professionals. Goldwasser, a Sabbath-observant individual, recalls the seasonal span during his residency.
Mandee they would be performing at the opening of a new section of their club. A year and a half later, they have recorded their album and are preparing to release it in the spring. The JCC concert, which served as the debut performance of their collection, fell on the third night of Chanukah. At the event, Rabbi Ron Symons, senior director of Jewish Life at the JCC, had each performer light a candle and answer the question, “What lights your light?” The responses ranged from watching future generations learn and follow traditional practices to friends and family supporting them. By the end of the night, they had lit eight candles. “The message of Chanukah is that each light can light many and that nothing gets diminished,” Symons said. “The light just keeps shining brighter and brighter in all its diverse glory.” PJC
ffective Jan. 3, City Councilman Dan Gilman (D-District 8) will become Mayor William Peduto’s chief of staff. The move reunites the two politicians, as Gilman previously served as Peduto’s chief of staff while the latter was the eighth district’s councilman. Gilman, a Shady Side Academy and Carnegie Mellon University graduate, will replace outgoing Chief of Staff Kevin Acklin, who on Dec. 7 announced that he would return to the private sector. “Dan is the perfect person to continue my and Kevin’s work the last four years to make Pittsburgh a city for all. In fact, he’s been
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integral to that work all along,” Peduto said in a statement. “I am grateful to Dan and his family for taking this next step in his public service to the city.” Given Gilman’s Dan Gilman File photo appointment, a special election for the council seat will be convened by the president of City Council. The eighth district encompasses Oakland, Point Breeze, Shadyside and Squirrel Hill. PJC — Adam Reinherz
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Headlines Adoptees: Continued from page 1
when Sarah was a toddler, the Maclachlans began decorating their home with Chinese art and objects and enrolled Sarah at a Chinese school, where she learned Mandarin. “She made Chinese friends, which was very important,” Maclachlan said. “She couldn’t just keep being the ‘other.’” Sarah took Chinese dance. The family talked about the Chinese holidays “and celebrated them on some level,” Maclachlan said. “Some we couldn’t because we don’t believe in all the gods, but I told her about them.” At the same time, the family celebrated its Judaism. The girls (now 22 and 24) attended Beth El’s religious school and celebrated their bat mitzvahs at the congregation. They have both a strong Chinese and a strong Jewish identity, Maclachlan said. Still, that Sarah is different did not go unnoticed by her public school classmates. “When she was in high school, kids would laugh sometimes and say, ‘You’re not just Chinese, you’re a Chinese Jew.’ They didn’t mean it in a bad way, and Sarah laughed too. She was just so different from the norm at Upper St. Clair High School. She didn’t care, but it was noted.” Immersing adopted children in the culture of their countries of origin is a relatively new phenomenon, according to Frayda Cohen, an anthropologist and senior lecturer at the University of Pittsburgh who has studied foreign adoption. “It used to be based on the assimilation model,” she said, noting the onslaught of Korean adoptions in the 1980s with that era’s emphasis on the “melting pot.” “As Korean adoptees grew up, the pretending they were the same as white kids was not really sufficient,” Cohen said. In contemporary adoptions, different people have different ways of addressing the child’s need to be connected to their country of origin. That need is there even among white adoptees from foreign countries who do not appear visibly different in racial appearance from their adopted family, according to Cohen.
Briefs: Continued from page 10
five-member council took effect immediately. It points to the State Department’s 2010 definition of anti-Semitism but gives law enforcement discretion in determining whether to call a crime a hate incident. Under the ordinance, police officers may consider whether a crime had an anti-Semitic motivation and investigate it as a violation of the ordinance in addition to state and federal hate crimes laws. Mayor Gabriel Groisman, who worked to pass the measure, told the Miami Herald that since there is no codified definition of anti-Semitism, police departments throughout the United States have a hard time identifying and investigating hate crimes. While there have not been any recent
“ Rob and I are a part of Vietnamese history now, a part of Vietnam, as Chance is part of American history, a part of the U.S.
”
— JOY KATZ
“I love that it’s a camp for Jewish kids of color,” Katz said. “It will be great for Chance to be around kids like himself, other kids of color and other Asian kids. We are very excited there are resources like this that do this work for our family.” Chance’s family “deliberately seeks out welcoming communities,” Katz said, adding that they decided not to enroll Chance at a local Jewish day school once they heard the school had been marketing to other families about its diversity, using Chance as an example. “They were bragging about us and we hadn’t even enrolled,” Katz said. “That turned us off. We didn’t want to be their example.” Chance now goes to the Waldorf School, where there is a lot of socioeconomic diversity and a lot of adopted children, according to Katz. There are not, however, a lot of Jewish children there. “I have high hopes for Camp Be’chol Lashon,” she said. “If he makes friends there, we will be able to stay in touch with them.” For Ilana and Dan Schwarcz, reinforcing their son David’s Mexican ancestry also is a priority. “It’s very important to us that David (who is 7 and a first-grader at Community Day School) understands and honors his ethnicity,” Ilana Schwarcz wrote in an email. “We keep a strong relationship with his birth family — writing emails, sending pictures, holiday and birthday presents, etc. We know that someday David will want to meet them, and we want this relationship to be as strong and respectful as possible.” The Schwarczes have located Mexico on the map together, eat Mexican foods, look at Mexican art and discuss their son’s birth heritage in general. “I think one of our jobs in life is to be a bridge,” Schwarcz said. “Davey has the opportunity to be a bridge between Hispanic and non-Hispanic people, Jews and non-Jews, between Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and unaffiliated Jews. I hope that he uses this opportunity to increase understanding and peace between different people.” PJC
About 16 years ago, Cohen, while living in China and doing research, adopted a daughter, who she is raising to appreciate her Chinese heritage as well as to be a proud Jew. The mother and daughter speak some Chinese in the house and “make a big deal about Chinese New Year and the holidays,” Cohen said. At the same time, Cohen and her daughter regularly attend services at Beth Shalom Congregation, to enforce their Jewish identity. Cohen did not, however, opt to send her daughter to Jewish day school. “One reason was that I knew she would be an outlier,” Cohen said. Instead, Cohen enrolled her at Colfax Elementary, “where there were a couple other kids adopted from Asia. There was also a diversity of family forms, people like us, different kinds of families (Cohen is a single parent).” While her daughter receives an occasional comment about her dual identity at CAPA, where she now attends high school, “nothing has been too harsh,” Cohen said, adding that their family has been warmly embraced by the Beth Shalom community. For Joy Katz and Rob Handel, the Vietnamese heritage of their son Chance belongs to them as well. “We don’t see Chance’s biological ethnicity as only ‘his,’” said Katz. “Rob and I are a part of Vietnamese history now, a part of Vietnam, as Chance is part of American history, a part of the U.S. So, our efforts to
offer him Vietnamese culture are also efforts to engage with it ourselves.” That is not to say their “efforts, or the meaning of them, is the same,” Katz stressed. “Only that we are all in this family, these places, together.” Katz and Handel adopted Chance when he was about 3 months old. At the time, they lived in New York City and knew many other families that had adopted children from Asia and Southeast Asia, so they knew they “wouldn’t be alone.” Then they moved to Pittsburgh. “It’s different in Pittsburgh,” Katz said. “There is racial diversity, but not as much so. We have had to be more intentional about the friends we make. We have to be super thoughtful about how we do race, and that’s OK too.” Katz and Handel have always been open with their son about his adoption, looking at photos and talking about Vietnam. They have retained close ties with the other families who adopted children from Vietnam when they did, and each summer they attend a Vietnamese camp in Massachusetts. But they are also planning for Chance to attend Camp Be’chol Lashon, a multicultural Jewish overnight camp in the San Francisco Bay Area for campers from all over the United States. The camp aims to teach about global Jewish diversity, while building community leaders and inspiring a love of Judaism, according to its website.
Toby Tabachnick can be reached at ttabachnick@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.
anti-Semitic acts in Bal Harbour, which has fewer than 3,000 residents, there have been several in neighboring municipalities. The village is home to a large number of Jewish families. In December 2015, the village became the first major municipality to pass an ordinance against the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. More than 20 U.S. states have passed such legislation.
ritual calling for their deaths, Israel’s Ynet news website reported. Posters also were hung in the city, which has a large and growing haredi Orthodox population, giving the women’s personal details including their addresses, phone numbers and the names of their children. The posters urged people to call the women and stop agitating against the signs, according to Ynet. The women lodged a complaint with the Beit Shemesh police. Earlier this month, the Supreme Court rejected an appeal by the municipality of a lower court order in July to remove the signs. The high court ruled the signs must come down by mid-December, with the justices saying they exclude women from the public sphere. The court also ordered the Israel Police to prevent new signs from being put up to replace the old ones.
On Dec. 14, the municipality attempted to remove the signs for the second time in less than a week, but were blocked by protesters, who immediately began to replace the signs. Beit Shemesh was first ordered to remove the signs in 2015, when the high court said that they “cause serious harm to human dignity, equality, personal choice and autonomy,” Ynet reported. Two years later, when the signs were not removed, the women who filed the original lawsuit turned to an administrative court to enforce the ruling. Beit Shemesh has seen conflict between haredi and non-haredi and secular residents over restrictions on women’s dress and gender-segregated seating on public buses. In a widely publicized incident in 2011, an 8-year-old Orthodox girl was spat on by haredim on the way to school for her perceived immodest dress. PJC
Women who sued to remove Israeli city’s modesty signs gets death threats At least two of the women who asked Israel’s Supreme Court to remove signs in Beit Shemesh that demand women dress modestly have been targeted with death threats. The women said they received calls last week threatening them with a kabbalistic
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DECEMBER 22, 2017 17
Celebrations
Torah
Engagement
‘Do not fear, have hope’ Rabbi Jeremy Markiz Parshat Vayigash Genesis 44:18-47:27
I
Lipkin/Gleitman: Alyse and Gary Gleitman of Monroe, N.J., and Andrew and Hilari Lipkin of Youngstown, Ohio, are pleased to announce the engagement of their children, Scott Gleitman and Rachel Lipkin. Scott graduated from the Ohio State University with a bachelor’s degree in communications. He is human resources specialist at Highmark Inc. Rachel graduated from Ohio State University with a degree in political science and subsequently received her master’s degree in public administration. She is the director of Women’s Philanthropy at the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh. The couple became engaged on Dec. 8. Their wedding is planned for spring 2019 in Youngstown.  PJC
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n the last few weeks, Google put out a video entitled, “Year in Search 2017.� In it, we discover that all year long, we’ve been asking “how� — highlighting the many questions we asked this year with that word. In it, we are reminded of the wildfires, the hurricanes and the refugees our world had to tend to this year. We are also reminded of the struggles we shared, more individually, from how to protect our homes from floods to the #MeToo movement and how we can help. The question that Google poses, highlighted and standing alone is, “How to be fearless?� Fear is a complex emotion, core to survival and humanity. It has kept us alive and keeps us focused. Famously quoted, President Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “There is nothing to fear but fear itself.� He tells us that our fears compound, being afraid of fear. I was listening to a podcast by Tim Ferriss, who spoke of a television show he put together years ago entitled, “Fear{Less}.� I was struck deeply by the name, and it resonated upon reading the parashah. Of all the things that happen in our story, it is this week that God says to Jacob, “Fear not to go down to Egypt� (Gen 46:3). God tells him that despite his misgivings about heading into Egypt, he should not fear. This statement is said many times in the Torah. Abraham and Isaac are both told not to fear by God, along with Hagar. Moses reminds the people, and Joseph reminds his brothers. It is said enough times for us to notice. I want to highlight that the language is, do not fear. It could have said many other things: “Have no fear� or “be fearless.� But it doesn’t. It says, “Do not fear.� I believe that the Holy One is telling us, “Do not fear only, also have hope.� And when we look at our lives, reflecting on how each of us searched the internet and Torah for answers, we know this to be true. Each of us has a purpose and a mission in our lives — the thing, action, career, subject of study that brings out the excitement and passion in us. It is the thing that drives us forward. It is the hard work that it brings out in us, for if something is worth doing, it takes time and effort. It is the little mira-
cles that appear like lights in the dark. And it is the destiny, like Jacob and his people who went down into Egypt knowing that hardship was ahead but with the knowledge that it will end. It is the message of this season that we must strive to be a light in the darkness, to be better human beings than we were before and to take the time to do so. The question we’re left with, the question we’ve all been searching is: How?
It is the message of this season that we must strive to be a light in the darkness, to be better human beings than we were before and to take the time to do so. We accomplish all this with faith and trust not just with the Divine, but with each other. Learning how to talk to one another, engaging with the idea that each of us is doing our best and trusting that we will be there for each other when it matters. We do this by loving one another. When things are hard and hate fills the world, we must strive to give ahavat hinam unconditional, freely given love to one another. For it is this love that binds us together. Lastly, we do the hard work, physically, spiritually and relationally to get us where we need to be. It means saying “I’m sorry,� “I was wrong� and “I can do better.� It means that where there were breaks, we can put bandages. For in the end, I believe that God is saying to each of us through Jacob, “Do not fear, have hope.�  PJC Rabbi Jeremy Markiz is director of Derekh and Youth Tefillah at Congregation Beth Shalom. This column is a service of the Greater Pittsburgh Rabbinic Association.
SPECIAL OCCASIONS DESERVE SPECIAL ATTENTION The more you celebrate in life‌ the more there is in life to celebrate! SEND YOUR SIMCHAS, MAZEL TOVS, and PHOTOS TO: announcements@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org
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Obituaries DAVIDSON: Ruth K. Davidson passed away on Thursday, December 14,2017, after a long courageous battle with cancer. She was born October 31, 1926, the daughter of the late Dr. Robert and Ida Kaplan. She graduated McKeesport High School, June 1944 and the University of Pittsburgh, June 1948. Beloved wife for 65 years of Harry S. Davidson; Loving mother of Gerald (Debra Kocar) Davidson of Brookline, Mass., Scott H. Davidson of Wayne, Pa., Lori D. Sachs of Detroit and Richard M. (Carol) Davidson of Ashburn, Va. Sister of James M. (Marcia) Kaplan of Pittsburgh; Sister-in-law of Lois D. Engel of Silver Spring, Md., and Georgia C. Davidson of Pittsburgh; Grandmother of Rachel (Benjamin Tornatore) and Hannah Davidson of New York, N.Y., Evan (Mika) Sachs of Detroit, Mindi Sachs of New York, N.Y., Alexandra Davidson of Pittsburgh, and Danielle, Victoria, and Casey Davidson, all of Ashburn, Va. Also survived by nieces, nephews, and many beloved extended family members. Ruth was a lifetime member of Hadassah, an active member of Women of Temple Sinai, and an avid bridge player. Services were held at Temple Sinai. Interment at Beth Shalom Cemetery. Contributions in Ruth’s memory may be made to Temple Sinai, 5505 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15217, Hebrew Free Loan Association, 4307 Murray Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15217 or Jewish Association of Aging, 5757 Bartlett Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15217. Arrangements entrusted to Ralph Schugar Chapel, Inc. MYERS: Barbara “Bobby” Wolfson Myers, on Sunday, December 10, 2017. Wife of the late Lee Myers. Mother of Hattie Myers (David Neuwirth) and Rachel Myers (Peter Mueller). Grandmother of Eva and Henry Neuwirth and Sophie Mueller. Loving aunt to David (Nancy) Myers and Barry Myers (Robin Gross). Bobby dedicated her life to helping others. She worked as a physical therapist at Kane Hospital. She was an active member of Temple Emanuel of the South Hills. She loved art, music and theater and supported many arts organizations in Pittsburgh. For the last years of her life, she was a resident at Sunrise of Upper St. Clair where she found a community and had many loving friends. For those that knew her well, Bobby’s intelligence and sense of humor will be sorely missed. Services were held at Ralph Schugar Chapel, Inc. Interment at West View
Cemetery of Rodef Shalom Congregation. Contributions may be made to Quantum Theatre Inc., 218 N. Highland Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15206 or PICT Classic Theatre, P.O. Box 42360, Pittsburgh, PA 15203 or Temple Emanuel of South Hills, 1250 Bower Hill Road, Pittsburgh, PA 15243. REICHBLUM: On Thursday, December 7, 2017, Diane Westerman Reichblum passed away at her home in Skokie, Ill. She was preceded in death by her husband, Bob Reichblum, both natives of Pittsburgh. Diane is survived by her devoted mother, Ruth Westerman and husband, Bob Myers, of Providence Point; devoted daughter, Rachel Reichblum of San Francisco; her fiancé, Dan Rosensweig; and loving son, Justin, of Skokie. Diane graduated from Taylor Allderdice High School and Boston University. She is also survived by devoted brothers, Jeff (Teri) Westerman of Encino, Calif., and Mark (Ellen) of Owings Mills, Md.; in-laws Audrey and Charles Reichblum of Pittsburgh; Amalie and Bill Reichblum; and many nieces, nephews, and cousins. Burial was in Memorial Park Cemetery, Skokie. SCHWARTZ: Marilyn Schwartz, on Thursday, December 14, 2017. Beloved wife of Norman Schwartz. Loving mother of Jay (Ling) Schwartz and Jon (Barbara) Schwartz. Sister of Burton Lieberman and Greta (late Victor) Katz. Grandmother of the late Marissa Schwartz. Services were held at Ralph Schugar Chapel, Inc. Interment at Kether Torah Cemetery. Contributions may be made to the Jewish Association on Aging, 200 JHF Drive, Pittsburgh, PA 15217.
Jewish Association on Aging gratefully acknowledges contributions from the following: A gift from ...
In memory of...
Anonymous ........................................................ Milton Moses Anonymous ...................................................Gust Oppenheim Marlene Alpern ........................................... Nathan Greenberg Irvin Beck .............................................................. Mollie Beck Faye Bleiberg .................................................. Bessie Bleiberg Faye Bleiberg .................................................... Max Mallinger Faye Bleiberg ......................................................Morris Krantz Charlotte Bluestone ........................................Leon Bluestone Susan Cohen...............................................Blanche Schwartz Sylvia & Norman Elias ....................................... Gertrude Elias Sylvia & Norman Elias ..........................................Joseph Elias Sylvia & Norman Elias .......................................... Dorothy Brill Sylvia Elias ............................................................ Samuel Brill Bonnie Friedman ..............................................Ernie Friedman Lucille C. Gordon ............................................ Irving E. Cohen Samuel Granowitz.......................................Eleanor Granowitz Harry Green ....................................................Sidney H. Green Alvin & Gloria Greenfield .............................Eleanor Granowitz
A gift from ...
In memory of...
Danny & Sharon Greenfield ........................ Marvin L. Olender Jean Horne & Family ..................................Sheldon A. Cohen Larry Kanterman ................................................Philip Eatman Dr. Herbert Kramer .........................................Sarah E. Kramer Stephanie & Alan Letzt................................ Gertrude Schugar Jack Levine ........................................................ Max T. Levine Dr. Penn Lupovich .............................................. Rita Lupovich Robert & Judi Miller ............................................Silvia Cramer Ferne Rogow...................................................Leon Bluestone Ferne Rogow.....................................................Morris Vinocur James C. Ruthrauff .......................... Charlotte June Ruthrauff Goldie Samuels ..................................................... David Miller Karen K. Shapiro ...................... Samuel Levy & Ann Tergulitza Patricia Green Shapiro ................................ Henry Elias Green Gertrude W. Supowitz .................................Albert J. Supowitz Leroy Supowitz ................................................Murray S. Love Sybil Wein & Family..............................................Sophie Wein Carol Yahr........................................................ Matilda Barnett
THIS WEEK’S YAHRZEITS — Sunday December 24: Berul Amstey, Fannie Berner, Florence G. Davidson, Joseph Goldhammer, Ethel J. Greenberg, Helene Tumpson Horewitz, Albert Marcus, David Miller, Edwin L. Miller, Fannie Pecarsky, Fannie Robinson, Maida Rothaus, Seymour Schwartz, Esther Levy Shapiro, Matthew Teplitz, Ida Sack Tobias, David Weinberger, Morris Wolf Monday December 25: Bess B. Aberman, Abraham Boodman, Henry E. Green, Esther Ruth Karpo, David Labowitz, Reuben B. Lando, Laura Roth Miller, Jerome Myers, Samuel Roth, Samuel Shaffer, Tillie Shussett, Edward H. Talenfeld Tuesday December 26: Celia Anish, Mollie Gilberd, Ida L. Gusky, Israel Herring, Eva Katz, Rose Levine, Lib H. Levy, Stanley Myles Perilman, Milton Henry Platt, Elsie Wintner Rosenberg, Minnie Stein Wednesday December 27: Florence Burechson, Linda Elmaleh, Joseph L. Friedman, Anne B. Goldston, Harry Gordon, Fred Gottesman, Freda Halpert Gross, Irvin Grossman, William M. Kahanowitz, Bessie Levine, Joseph A. Mervis, Bessie Recht, Max Selkovits, Joseph Sigal, Harold Sylvan Soltman Thursday December 28: Herbert Burechson, Nelson Carl Cotlov, Sylvia S. Cramer, Lena Diznoff, Fanny R. Goldstein, Jerome S. Goldstein, Seymour Kramer, Leah Krauss Lenchner, Simon Linton, Abe Robin, Esther Rothman, Anna Ruben, Edward F. Stein, Estelle Strauss, Eleanor Lee Swartz, Sophie Wein, Rose Weinberger Friday December 29: Minerva Aschkenas, Rose Fruhlinger Berger, Avrom Dobkin, Miriam L. Gallow, Harry Green, Max Greenberg, Rose Kalser, Harry Kaufman, Louis Levin, Jack I. Mallinger, Esther Marks, Helen Rosenbloom, Louis Silverblatt, Florence Silverman Saturday December 30: Mary Dine, Saul Franklin, Diane Friedman, Eleanor Glasser, Lena Goldstein, Saul M. Gordon, Tillie Green, Rena R. Labbie, Herbert Lenchner, Lillian M. Levick, Samuel Moses, Leonard Rofey, Lilly E. Rosenberg, Zelda Sadowsky, Hyman Schwartz, Marion Segal, Rachel Seidenstein, Kenneth Zapler
Are you the type of person who always takes advantage of the valet? When dining out, do you notice how oen your glass is refilled? If so, you’ll appreciate the service you get at our funeral home. We go the extra mile because it’s our way of doing things. We don’t just provide a service, we provide full service. We’re sure you’ll appreciate the difference.
SUKOLSKY: Charlotte Spero Sukolsky, born October 25,1931, in Pittsburgh, died December 14, 2017, in West Palm Beach, Fla. She was predeceased by her parents Sidney and Gloria Spero, sister Vivian (Jack) Marcuson and a son Kit (Angela) Sukolsky. Survived by her sister Claire Bergad of Pittsburgh and brother Sander Spero of Palm Springs, Calif.; her children Marc (Ellen) Sukolsky, Robert (Karen) Sukolsky, Caryn (Don) St John, Singer Island, Fla.; 10 grandchildren; and 16 great-grandchildren. A memorial service was held at MorseLife. Memorial contributions may be given in Charlotte’s memory to MorseLife, 4847 Fred Gladstone Drive, West Palm Beach, FL 33417. PJC
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DECEMBER 22, 2017 19
Headlines Frats: Continued from page 1
“Our policies were already pretty strict in terms of no underage drinking, no hazing certainly, no forced activities like that,” he said. “So, our policies haven’t changed, but what we have done is re-doubled our efforts to make sure our undergraduates are aware of what they can and should be doing, and we are working to make sure everybody is aware of our policies and is complying with them.” Still, AEPi was one of five fraternities at Penn State last spring that had logged an alcohol violation, according to a university report; and in 2010, Penn State’s chapter of AEPi faced hazing and furnishing charges after members allegedly forced recruits to binge drink to the extent that two were sent to the hospital, according to a report in The Daily Collegian. AEPi has a mandated “non-hazing” fiveweek pledge program, Pierce said, “to educate our incoming members about the fraternity and about the history of our values and the responsibilities of becoming a brother.” Pierce admitted that sometimes chapters engage in hazing anyway, but when that happens, international AEPi steps in to intervene. “When there have been issues and we are aware of them, we put an end to them right away,” Pierce said. Such intervention can include suspending the chapter, or suspending chapter leadership. “College is a time of learning,” he said. “We believe our members can make good decisions, and we hope that they do, and when they don’t, we try to correct them.” Pierce stressed that AEPi, which is on 190 campuses all over the world, emphasizes the merit of Jewish values among its undergraduates. “We are not only the largest of the traditionally Jewish fraternities, but we are really the organization that has put its Jewish culture and its Jewish values out front,” Pierce said. “That’s our first and foremost goal. Our mission is to develop the future leaders of the Jewish community. “One of the things we have been working on, is to try to go back to some of those shared Jewish values, things like making sure our undergraduates are thinking about things like being their brothers’ keepers, and we are getting good reception on that. We think that message is getting through. Our goal is to provide leadership within the campus on issues of tikkun olam, certainly on Israel advocacy, on educating the campus about anti-Semitism and about the need for tolerance.” Another Jewish frat at Penn State, ZBT, has been recognized by the university as a “model chapter, and most recently, at their re-chartering ceremony, the administration indicated that ZBT certainly is a model at Penn State,” said Laurence Bolotin, executive director of ZBT. “And a big reason for that, I believe, is the decision we made in 1989 to eliminate pledging all together.” Leaders of ZBT “believe that pledging can create a two-tiered membership that can lead to hazing, and we believe the tragedy that we saw at Penn State and Louisiana State [death of a freshman pledge in Sept. 2017 at Phi Delta Theta], at Florida State [death of a pledge of Pi Kappa Phi in Nov. 2017] all appeared to have something to do with the 20 DECEMBER 22, 2017
p Pictured in the top photo are members of the University of Pittsburgh’s AEPi. Above is a group photo of the Carnegie Mellon University chapter. Photos provided by Jonathan M. Pierce, APR, president, Pierce Communications
pledge process,” Bolotin said. “It’s my opinion that the pledge process is broken,” Bolotin said. “When ZBT removed pledging from our organization and replaced it with a four-year brotherly development program, we did that because we believe that earning your membership is something you should do every day you’re in the organization, even beyond your undergraduate years by doing good things to benefit yourself as well as the fraternity, by doing well academically, by giving back to the community. In our case, by giving back to the Jewish community. By building your brothers up instead of breaking them down. “Alcohol should play no role in the pledging process,” he said. “As far as our chapters in Pittsburgh and at Penn State, they are both relatively newly re-chartered chapters and they are succeeding largely because they are recruiting men who aren’t interested in the pledge process, and they are looking for men who want to be treated as equals.” Nonetheless, ZBT has had its share of alcohol-related issues, despite its national
no-pledge policy. Just last June, Florida State University’s ZBT chapter was suspended for six years following an investigation into hazing allegations. Emory’s ZBT chapter faced sanctions for violations of the school’s anti-hazing policy and its alcohol and drug abuse policy. ZBT is no longer recognized by Miami University because it violated the school’s conduct code for hazing and is suspended until next May. “When we are made aware of chapters that are violating our policies, we immediately execute an interim suspension while we have an opportunity to investigate,” Bolotin said. “If we find that our chapters are violating our stance against hazing and pledging, they’re likely to be closed. There are cases where if we are able to rehabilitate the chapter, and the chapter brothers are willing to work with us, then we will work with them. We take a very strong stance on that.” As a Jewish fraternity, “we want to make sure the Jewish community sees ZBT as a value-add, one that helps develop leaders for the Jewish community, and [we want to] make
PITTSBURGH JEWISH CHRONICLE
sure our undergraduate brothers know that, whether they are Jewish or not,” Bolotin said. Just two months following the death of Piazza, the Penn State chapter of the third Jewish fraternity, Sigma Alpha Mu, lost its recognition for two years for violating university rules related to alcohol use during Parents’ Weekend on April 1, 2017. “Sigma Alpha Mu knowingly violated every rule that was imposed,” said Damon Sims, Penn State vice president for Student Affairs, according to a report in Penn State News. “This behavior is not consistent with our University values and is in direct opposition to the changes required if we are to have a healthy, successful and sustainable Greekletter system at Penn State.” While Sigma Alpha Mu’s communication director initially agreed to respond to emailed questions from the Chronicle, that fraternity failed to reply after the questions were forwarded. PJC Toby Tabachnick can be reached at ttabachnick@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.
PITTSBURGHJEWISHCHRONICLE.ORG
Headlines Girls:
“The Girls’ Index,” reports that 30 percent “The currency is different,” she said. Social daughters are 11 and 9, “Every component of of sixth-grade girls acknowledged that “teens media is not going anywhere and “the exact their lives involves social media. It’s different Continued from page 2 their age send sexually explicit texts and skills girls need in real life are the same skills from when I grew up.” Hinkelman agreed. Social media is the most photos to one another,” and “by 12th grade, girls need in social media.” In that vein, this percentage rises to 75 percent. Girls report parents should strive to increase listening significant difference between now and when the digital elephant in the room remained. “I had the luxury of finding my own iden- pressure to send nudes and say, ‘If you don’t and avoid judgmental communication with the project first began nearly a decade ago, she THE JEWISH CHRONICLE JUNE 5, 2014 — 21 said. “It is the one thing that overlays everything. tity absent the opinions of everyone else,” send a picture, they’ll just ask the next girl,’ and their children, said the trained counselor THE JEWISH CHRONICLE JUNE 5, 2014 — 21 which It doesn’t discriminate based on socioeconomic she said before tackling technology. “Social ‘girls want to feel pretty and sexy, so sharing before sharing a link to her research, The pics is the way that some girls do that.’” is available at bit.ly/thegirlsindexreport.FOR SALE status or school; it is so present in their lives.” media is the pervasive element of the culture Jewish The FOR SALE The topic was important to address, said Although fear of lasting implications has Confidence and trust can be gained through that can’t be isolated. We judge our appearChronicle Jewish Avi Baran Munro, head of school at CDS, who been widely employed to discourage sexting, sensible discussion, she said. “Take the data and ances, our bodies, our relationships, based on Chronicle $ right to you?” thanked the Jewish Women’s Foundation, the best go ask your girls: Does this seem what people are putting out into the world.” society has not properly addressed 210,000 FOR RENT FOR RENT FOR RENT $ the Jewish Community Center of Greater Although a subsequent READY question-and-anThough not causal, there is a correlation means of dealing with such phenomena, said TO DOWNSIZE? 210,000 FOR RENT FORFifth RENT Ave. FOR RENT 5125 There is an inherent irony when swer session was negatedREADY in favor ofYOUR allowing Pittsburgh and Jewish Family and Commubetween time spent with social media and Hinkelman. SPENDING TOWERS RIVERVIEW TO DOWNSIZE? 2 & 3 Bedrooms WINTERS IN THE SOUTH? 5125 Corner Fifth of Ave. Way”children with smartphones Hinkelman Your “Live Life parents provide additional time to present, nity Services for supporting the program. depression, she said, as “girls who spend SPENDING YOUR TOWERS RIVERVIEW 2Fifth & 3 Bedrooms Come see IN thisTHE 2 BR, 2 Bath unit and Wilkins WINTERS SOUTH? Corner of Way” “Live Life living Convenient with to manyconverse of the updates already Spacious parents remained both It was a welcome pleasure, said Judy Greenoutretirement ofYour a self-described concern for safety only several eight or more hours per day using techCome this 2 BR, 2 Bath unit Fifth and Wilkins 6315 Forbes Ave. for seniors (62+) that is affordable. donesee including neutral kitchen, 1500-2250 square feet livingthe device is often a tool for retirement Convenient with many of the updatescarpeting already Spacious with”Finest the presenter and among themselves. wald Cohen, executive director of the Jewish that nology are five times more likely to report One Bedroom anddiscover Studio to both baths, windows, Luxury Living Shadyside” 6315 Forbes Ave. is affordable. (62+) that for seniors done neutral kitchen, 1500-2250insquare feet available apartments andincluding more!! Building amenities in the Heart of The lecture was “informative but not Women’s danger, added. being sad or depressed nearly every day.” Studio Bunny WolffFoundation. “We’re happy to have Bedroom and One she both baths, windows, carpeting 412-661-4456 Luxury Living ”Finest in Shadyside” include exercise room, party Squirrel Hill available apartments 412.782.3700 x238 or more!! Building amenities www.kaminrealty.kamin.com tour yourwho To schedule the Heart of room, pool, pretty patio. surprising,” said Anatand Talmy, whose twin Bunny this Wolff opportunity to educate our community For those simply believe1,inthat the soluAdditionally, increased use of social 412-661-4456 2 & 3 BR Apts. 412.855.9213 at include exercise room, party Squirrel Hill 412-521-7876 call 412.782.3700 x238 or www.kaminrealty.kamin.com tour your schedule To room, pool, pretty patio. CALL TODAY for Berkshire Hathaway about issues affecting women and girls.” PJC the daughters are 10. media is associated with a decrease in users’ tion is “taking away” a child’s 1,cellphone, 2 & 3 BR Apts. 412.855.9213 at 412-521-7900 Garetta St. 52412-521-7876 appointments to see! Home Services call CALL TODAY for 12 andBerkshireVisit Hathaway rulingyourexperiences.org Lydia Blank, whose daughters are impact could be devastating, as girls likelihood to trust other girls, maintain52 social for 412-521-7900 Garetta appointments to see! Home Services FOR RENT St. FOR SALE “I’m not totally surprised by her more information. that if they are not engaged online, 2, agreed. supportive friendships and enjoy attending reported DEADLINE NOTICE FOR RENT Beautiful 1, 2, “they & 3 Bedroom Apartments! FOR SALE ” said the Highland Park resident. are invisible” to their peers and that findings, school, said Hinkelman prior to confronting DEADLINE The deadline for all NOTICE copy and art – Beautiful 2, & 3 Bedroom Apartments! Spacious1, Floorplans, In-suite Washers/Dryers, “It’s and both troubling and revealing that theySunjust part offor alladvertising, the associated element of sexting, which she “sometimes Adam Reinherz can be reached at areinherz print and classified Newly Remodeled Kitchens*, Formal DRs, Deck,post so they Theare deadline copy artpress – Spacious Floorplans, In-suite Washers/Dryers, releases, simcha advertising, announcements Social Room, Fitness Center, Garage Parking, print and classified press Newly Remodeledthe Kitchens*, Formal DRs, Sun”Deck, there’s Jason Neiss, whose @pittsburghjewishchronicle.org. conversation, said Hinkelman. called “the new flirting.” – is noon Fridayall this data,” said ~ ~ Oakland & Shadyside Area
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Real Estate Directory Real Estate Directory
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(approx 1810 ft.) In a Bundled Golfsq. Community In a Bundled Golf Community 3 Br's/2 full baths, over sized kitchen with office stainless steel sized appliances,custom wood 3 space, Br's/2 full baths, over kitchen with office “Spicebush” located in Hilton Head’s most cabinetry, granite tops,master bathroom space, stainless steelcounter appliances,custom wood “Spicebush” located in Hilton Head’s most prestigious plantation, “Sea Pines”. completegranite w/ duel sinks, custom mirrors cabinetry, counter tops,master bathroomand prestigious plantation, “Sea Pines”. lighting, w/ lrg. duel stall shower, lrg. walk-in closet with complete sinks, custom mirrors and 2 bedroom/2 bath; full kitchen; w/d; deck; sleeps 6; lighting, stall shower, lrg. walk-in closet with custom lrg. shelving. SHADYSIDE 2 bedroom/2 full kitchen; w/d;tennis deck; sleeps 6; • $1,985,000 duplex within abath; cul de sac; pool and on property; custom shelving. duplex within a cul de sac; poolfrom and tennis on property; 2nd. bathroom has newmini cabinetry,quartz, custom perfect condition; 1 block beachNEW and golf. Spectacular Brandon LISTING! Smith 6 bedroom manse home on a most desirable street. The home has 2nd. bathroom has new cabinetry,quartz, custom perfect condition; 1 block from beach and lighting and mirror. beengolf. meticulously restored.lighting Enjoy magnifi cent wood and marble floors, detailed plaster moldings, a floating staircase, “High” Trading Weeks (II and RCI) and mirror. antique fromwhich the enormous and French doors. Lush, private garden GreatLight roompours with in lanai looks out windows onto a lake “High” Trading Weeks (IIApprox. and RCI) Annual Maintenance Fees: $750 brass fixtures throughout. Great with lanai with which looksmore. outsunset onto aviews. lake and room the golf course, with A 3-car garage and gorgeous much There is a possibility of purchasing an additional Annual Maintenance Approx. $750a large terrace and fountains. Anxious to Sell. NowFees: Living in Florida. and the golf course, with gorgeous sunset views. Anxious to Sell. Now Living in Florida. lot that is adjacent to this property. This is truly a find. FFF ASKING PRICE—One Dollar!!! FFF FFF ASKING PRICE—One FFF + legal closing feesDollar!!! SQUIRREL HILL • $499,000 + legal closing fees SELL IT FAST IN THE CLASSIFIEDS Call Barbara at 772-781-1212, ifNEW interested. LISTING! 4 bedroom, 3.5 bath with fabulous master suite, bath and walk-in closet also 2nd CLASSIFIEDS SELL IT FAST IN THE Call Barbara at 772-781-1212, if interested. Wonderful large
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This Historic home has been totally updated with many of the original This Historic home has been totally updated with many of the original characteristics remaining, including the beautiful wood paneling, marble characteristics remaining, including the beautiful wood paneling, marble fireplaces, gorgeous hardwood hardwoodfloors floorsthroughout. throughout.The Thespacious spacious fireplaces, mantels mantels and and gorgeous kitchen and the the bedrooms bedrooms and andbaths bathsare areexquisite. exquisite.There Thereisis kitchen is is top top of of the the line line and exceptional with aa lovely lovely deck, deck, slate slatepatio patioand and33car cargarage. garage. exceptional outdoor outdoor space space with Call Call for for appointment. appointment.
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Wonderful open floor room, plan with 10' ceilings, wood burning fireplace in aInwonderful great room. One of four town EXQUISITE 3 bedroom condo-Completely renovated with magnificent built-ins. unit balcony,great in-unit laundry.Building has many amenities -pool,guest unitthat balcony,great room, in-unit laundry.Building has many amenities -pool,guest suites, library,party room and much pool more.&High end court. unit ready move-in. homes enjoy their own swimming tennis Do for not miss this rare opportunity. suites, library,party room and much more. High end unit ready for move-in.
MURDOCH FARMS - $525,000 SQUIRREL HILL/NORTH OF FORBES • $975,000 MURDOCH FARMS - $525,000 FIRST TIME OFFERED! Great 4 bedroom 2 bath and 2 1/2 baths home with integral FIRST TIME Great 4 bedroom 2 bath and 2 1/2 baths garage onOFFERED! one of Pittsburgh's finest streets. Magnificent livinghome roomwith withintegral fireplace,
5529 Dunmoyle: 8 much br,streets. 4½ bath home. living dining rooms, first floor family room, wonderful garage on onefirst ofSpectacular Pittsburgh's finest Magnificent living withand fireplace, floor den and more. This is theFormal homeroom you want. first floor den and much more.This is the home you want. rear porch that is the expanse of this grand home. Beautiful architectural features — woodwork, windows, high SQUIRREL HILL- SUMMERSET - SUMMERSET SQUIRREL HILL ceilings and much more. AT FRICKPARK PARK- $569,000 - $569,000- SOLD - SOLD AT FRICK FIRST TIME OFFERED! Spectacular 4 BR , 2 full Baths and 2- 1/2 bath town home. FIRST TIME OFFERED! Spectacular 4 BR , 2 full Baths and 2- 1/2 bath town home. METROPOLITAN • $1,350,000 Owner thought CONDOMINIUM of every detail. Beautiful amenities through out the entire home, Owner thought of every detail. Beautiful amenities through out the entire home, even the bonus of two washers and dryers. Enjoy resort living as the home is
even the bonus of two washers andcustom-designed dryers. Enjoy resort spacious living as thepenthouse home is NEW LISTING! Rare three bedroom directly across from the pool and the fitness center. DON'T MISS THIS! in one of Pittsburgh’s most distinguished directly across from the pool and the fitness center. DON'T MISS THIS!
buildings. Floor to ceiling windows bring natural light into the large living and dining areas with access to a lovely SHADYSIDE - $230,000 SHADYSIDE - exquisite $230,000 outdoor deck. The large well-appointed eat-inHeights. gourmet kitchen has a pass thru to the dining room. The FIRST TIME OFFERED! 3 bedroom townhome on Maple Beautiful yard, FIRST TIME OFFERED! 3 bedroom townhome Maple Heights. Beautiful yard, builtins, central integral garage master suite includesgreat agreat luxurious bath and aon huge dressing builtins, central air,air, integral garage . . room closet. The amenities of the building include 2 parking spaces, two guest suites, catering kitchen, wine and storage lockers, library, conference/party room, a SHADYSIDECONDO CONDO- $195,000 - $195,000 - SOLD SHADYSIDE -the SOLD resistance pool,OFFERED! and an extensive exercise area. air, Outdoors, serene grounds boasts a putting green, koi pond, FIRST TIME Chic and cozy.2 central laundry room in unit,balcony FIRST TIME OFFERED! Chic and cozy.2 BR,BR, central air, laundry room in unit,balcony and garage. PET FRIENDLY! GREAT LOCATION! waterfall and a gazebo. and garage. PET FRIENDLY! GREAT LOCATION!
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284,500 CALL 412.657.2766 2ND FLOOR CONDO (approx 1810 sq. ft.) 2ND FLOOR CONDO
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DECEMBER 22, 2017 21
Community A techie kind of Chanukah More than 200 people came out for the STEAM Festival of Light on Sunday, Dec. 10. The event, hosted by Community Day School and PJ Library Pittsburgh, was an afternoon of science, technology, engineering, art and math in celebration of Chanukah. The event was funded by a grant from the SteelTree Fund of the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh’s Jewish Community Foundation. Families circled through stations to explore the science and beauty of light, building modular robots using Cubelets, exploring light through prisms, creating Lego/K’NEX dreidels, watching a Chanukiah being created using a 3-D printer and designing lightgenerating circuits using the Arduino electronics platform. The event culminated in a large-scale electronic candlelight-building challenge with guest judges from Uber, Argo AI, Carnegie Robotics and other technology firms in the region.
t From left: Milana Greg, fourth grade, and Zev Adelson, third grade
p Milana Greg, fourth grade
p Sasha Svoboda, first grade
p From left: CDS parent Michael Bails; Ella Levy, kindergarten; Shira Levy, third grade; and Liron Ohayon, fourth grade
p Jason Neiss and his son, Joshua Neiss, first grade
Photos courtesy of Community Day School
Saying thank you The Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh hosted a private donor event on Nov. 29 for individuals whose generosity has helped to establish and grow the Center. The Center revealed its new memory room, which included a newly lit memorial sculpture. The event featured live music from teenagers from Center of Life, an outgrowth of the Keystone Church of Hazelwood. Center of Life is a neighbor and frequent collaborator of the Center.
p Center of Life teens perform.
22 DECEMBER 22, 2017
Photos courtesy of the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh
p Center of Life director Tim Smith speaks with Holocaust survivor Harry Schneider.
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Community History lessons The Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh hosted historian Debórah Dwork on Dec. 7 for a teacher training and public lecture.
p Debórah Dwork’s evening lecture took place at the University of Pittsburgh’s Frick Fine Arts Building and focused on youth resistance through writing and song. Photos courtesy of the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh
t The teacher training focused on hidden children after the Holocaust.
Hadassah Bingo
Good deeds!
More than 100 Jewish women from the South Hills and the Pittsburgh area came together on Dec. 7 for the first South Hills Hadassah event in more than 10 years at the South Hills Jewish Community Center. South Hills Bingo Mania, an evening of bingo, wine, food, fun and prizes, was presented by Hadassah of Greater Pittsburgh in partnership with South Hills Jewish Pittsburgh, the Beth El Congregation Sisterhood and the Women of Temple Emanuel.
The Young Peoples Synagogue in Squirrel Hill held its annual Chanukah Chesed food and clothing drive.
u Ellen Toker drops off clothing.
t Dr. Irving Oppenheim donates cooking oil for the Squirrel Hill Community Food Pantry.
p Event chairs Shelly Seigel, left, and Debra Moidel
Photo courtesy of South Hills Jewish Pittsburgh
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Photos courtesy of Young Peoples Synagogue
DECEMBER 22, 2017 23
24 DECEMBER 22, 2017
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