January 7, 2022 | 5 Shevat 5782
Candlelighting 4:52 p.m. | Havdalah 5:55 p.m. | Vol. 65, No. 1 | pittsburghjewishchronicle.org
NOTEWORTHY LOCAL Revisiting the JFK assassination Cyril Wecht shares findings in new book
Jewish Pitt professor helping bring Afghan scholars to Pittsburgh
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Retired rabbis don’t fade away, they just continue to serve
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By David Rullo | Staff writer
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not taken seriously.” Leading up to the fall of Kabul on July 15, Sadr said that “social life became suffocated,” and that he feared for his safety and that of his family. He was cautioned that he might be a target of the terrorist organization or those sympathetic to the government who were unhappy with his criticism. He was urged to change his daily travel. He began altering his routine, forgoing his car for public transportation, bikes and travel by foot. He also was told to consider leaving the country. The academic, who has a Ph.D. in international relations, said the limitations put in place to combat COVID-19 helped because he was able to work from home, but other restrictions went beyond movement. “I could not speak freely,” he said. “Freedom of expression and freedom of thought were really coming under threat.”
abbi Eli Seidman believes that rabbis don’t really retire. “Rabbis, who really love their jobs and the mission of their jobs, retire from what they do but not from who they are,” he said. Rabbi Sara Rae Pe r m an a g re e d , quoting a magnet on her refrigerator: “Old rabbis never die, they just get gray around the temple.” “There’s a lot of Rabbi Eli Seidman truth to that,” she said. Seidman retired in 2020 after serving for 25 years as the director of pastoral care for the Jewish Association on Aging. After leaving the JAA, he spent time visiting Jewish patients at UPMC Rabbi Sara Rae Mont e f i ore an d Perman UPMC Presbyterian hospitals, as well as veterans at the Pittsburgh VA Medical Center. He also volunteered at the East End Cooperative Ministries food bank and prepared lunches for seniors at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh in Squirrel Hill. The rabbi’s in-person volunteer work paused, though, when he and his wife left Pittsburgh at the end of October 2021 to spend the winter with their daughter in California. The pair traveled the storied Route 66 at a casual pace, visiting big cities and small towns. “We did all of the cheesy, corny, touristy things,” Seidman said. “We visited the big
Please see Afghans, page 12
Please see Rabbis, page 12
LOCAL Putting community first during COVID JCC’s Jason Kunzman honored Page 4
LOCAL Richard Rattner says goodbye to Shadyside
Omar Sadr (left), Jennifer Murtazashvili and Zalmai Nishat at a conference in Afghanistan Photo provided by Jennifer Murtazashvili By David Rullo | Staff Writer
O William Penn Tavern moving to Lawrenceville Page 5
mar Sadr felt beset from all sides. The ethnic Tajik scholar living in Afghanistan had been an outspoken critic of the corruption of the country’s government and what he called its “ethnocentrism and ethnic chauvinism.” At the same time, the Taliban was steadily advancing toward Kabul — where Sadr lived with his family — killing human rights activists, government bureaucrats, professors and media members in urban centers where they gained control. Things became bleaker after the United States-Taliban agreement was finalized in February 2020, setting a timetable for U.S. withdrawal. “We were warning in different academic debates and media debates that the Taliban’s intention was not a political settlement,” Sadr told the Chronicle. “Rather, they wanted what they call a ‘final victory,’ but we were
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