P I T TS B U R G H
April 27, 2018 | 12 Iyar 5778
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Candlelighting 7:54 p.m. | Havdalah 8:57 p.m. | Vol. 61, No. 17 | pittsburghjewishchronicle.org
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NOTEWORTHY LOCAL Steel City’s Israeli ambassadors reminisce Jewish Agency shlichim form connections that endure well past their tenures. Page 3 LOCAL If he can do it …
Israel at 70 celebrated with Pittsburgh dance, study, games — and food heroes of the Haganah By Toby Tabachnick | Senior Staff Writer
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Famous refusenik offers uplifting message. Page 4 LOCAL A century of scoring strikes
Israel at 70 celebrants at the JCC in Squirrel Hill paint a joint mural that will be displayed at three local Jewish institutions when complete.
Photo by Toby Tabachnick
By Toby Tabachnick | Senior Staff Writer
Saul Kaufman, who just turned 100, is one colorful bowler. Page 5
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ricia Burkett was one of almost 200 revelers at the South Hills Jewish Community Center on April 16, celebrating the 70th anniversary of the independence of the State of Israel. But although she was enjoying the festivities, Burkett couldn’t help but think of where she would be just three days later: in Jerusalem, marking Yom Ha’atzmaut in the Jewish state. Burkett would be spending a few days in Jerusalem before heading to Karmiel/ Misgav along with other volunteers on a Partnership2Gether mission with the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh. “I’m leaving for Israel early tomorrow
morning,” said Burkett, the music of the South Hills Shalom Singers providing the perfect soundscape to the celebration. “I feel so honored to be going. I’m going to be packing soldiers’ backpacks, gardening and working in a special needs community. To me, that is the best vacation I could have.” Pittsburgh’s Scott Township is half a world away from Israel, but that didn’t stand in the way of the South Hills Jewish community celebrating Israel at 70 in a big way. The JCC was alive with Israeli-themed crafts, a Ga-ga tournament, face painting, a South Hills PJ Library Israel Walk, and performances by
rt Jaffe never thought of himself as a soldier, but as a patriot, recalled his son, Joel. Jaffe, who grew up in Butler, Pa., and moved to Pittsburgh in his later years, served as an intelligence officer in World War II, was on the shores on Normandy on D-Day, and was one of only a few soldiers to survive all six campaigns in France. But, in Jaffe’s own words — as captured in the 1998 documentary “Israel’s Forgotten Heroes” — the “one great thing [he] did was help found the State of Israel.” Jaffe, who passed away in 2015, was one of several Pittsburghers — and hundreds of American Jews — who heeded the call of David Ben-Gurion in the mid-1940s, urging experienced Jewish soldiers in the Diaspora to come to the Jewish homeland in anticipation of an invasion by Arab armies. Jaffe was studying at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem on the G.I. Bill following his service in the Second World War, when he was tapped to join the Haganah, Israel’s Jewish underground military organization. A scholar of classical languages, Jaffe found his niche in the Haganah as a translator of surreptitiously obtained Arab documents. He and his colleagues, said his son, would rummage through the trash at the Arab nations’ headquarters at night, where they would find crumpled up documents containing the questions and responses that the Arabs would be
Please see Israel, page 16
Please see Heroes, page 16
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