Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle 2-4-22

February 4, 2022 | 3 Adar I 5782

Candlelighting 5:24 p.m. | Havdalah 6:25 p.m. | Vol. 65, No. 5 | pittsburghjewishchronicle.org

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Collapse of Fern Hollow Bridge For those with raises questions and awe long COVID, the diagnosis is just the beginning

NOTEWORTHY LOCAL There’s a new bagel in town

By David Rullo | Staff Writer

S

“I’m Canadian, so I know there’s certain things to do.”

She then drove to Schenley Park and walked with her dog, while her phone exploded with texts and calls. It was then she learned that the Fern Hollow Bridge — a bridge she drives across twice daily — collapsed near her home. The distinctive smell she noticed earlier came from a gas leak caused by the bridge collapse.

Police Chaplain Rabbi Elisar Admon, along with Mayor Ed Gainey and Rabbi Shimon Silver, visited the site early that morning.

“It looks crazy. It looks scary,” Admon said.

Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald, who also visited the site of the Jan. 28 calamity, said a report of the bridge’s collapse came in around 6:40 a.m.

Ten people suffered non-life threatening injuries related to the collapse, and there were no fatalities. Had the bridge collapsed 30 minutes later, Fitzgerald said, the event could have taken on greater severity, as there likely would have been more drivers, joggers and people walking their dogs nearby.

quirrel Hill resident Basya Nemoy tested positive for COVID-19 on Jan. 9, 2021. More than a year later, she still experiences shortness of breath, fatigue and brain fog.

“Pittsburgh has a lot of hills,” she said.

“I live on a street that’s pretty slopey. If I go out, I get short of breath and will be huffing and puffing.”

Andrew Neft first contracted COVID-19 in March 2020. At the time, he experienced no real symptoms other than a congested chest for a day and a slight fever.

Once he recovered, though, Neft began to smell phantom odors.

“I started to smell things that weren’t there, or something different, which is something they said can happen,” Neft said. “It attacks the neurological system.”

Neft experiences the phantom odor two or three times a week. The smell causes him to pause, he said, especially since it’s similar to an odor he experienced several years ago when a wire in his dryer was burning.

Both Nemoy and Neft suffer from long COVID. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, long COVID involves a range of symptoms that can last for months after first being infected. The symptoms can appear weeks after the acute phase of the infection and can present in people who experienced mild symptoms or were entirely asymptomatic.

A study at Penn State University found that more than half of the 236 million people diagnosed with COVID-19 worldwide since 2019 will experience some post-COVID symptoms up to six months after recovering from the virus, according to an October 2021 report in Science Daily.

Please see Bridge, page 14

Please see Long, page 8

Oakland’s Gussy’s Bagels & Deli Page 2

LOCAL Dr. Philip Fireman dies at 89 Researcher and pediatrician left his mark on immunology.

Page 3  The Fern Hollow Bridge collapsed on Jan. 28.

Photo by Nancy Zionts

LOCAL

By Adam Reinherz | Staff Writer

Baking for a cause

P

Bar mitzvah boy raises funds for refugees.

Page 4

oint Breeze resident Nancy D. Zionts was awoken by a startling sound the morning of Jan. 28.

It was 6:39 a.m., and Zionts first thought snow was falling from her roof. The sound didn’t stop though, so she wondered if the noise was coming from a snowplow on her street.

“I was trying to figure out if the problem was inside the house or outside the house,” she said.

Zionts opened her window and smelled gas, then received a message from a neighbor indicating there was a gas leak. She quickly began a pre-established routine — a 10-minute evacuation plan her family developed after Hurricane Katrina.

Zionts retrieved a suitcase, her passport, a change of clothes, dog food, extra blankets for her dog and the dog. As she headed out of her home, a firefighter had already arrived on her street, Briar Cliff Road, telling people to evacuate.

Zionts and her dog got in her car. She drove to a gas station and filled her tank.

“It’s an old survival mechanism,” she said.

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LOCAL Nurturing new leaders

LOCAL The prolific Oren Spiegler

THEATER ‘Pretty Woman’ at the Benedum

Headlines Gussy’s Bagels follows family recipe of cooperation — LOCAL —

By Adam Reinherz | Staff Writer

M

arketing and branding expert Robin Malpass was struggling to describe her brother’s Pittsburgh-based eatery.

Ninety days had passed since the Oaklandbased Gussy’s Bagels & Deli had opened and Malpass’ brother, Scott Walton, who serves as Gussy’s chef, couldn’t articulate what made the restaurant unique.

Walton kept saying it was a bagel place with really good food but wasn’t sure how else to describe the new family venture.

Malpass was losing patience. She and her son had partnered with Walton in opening Gussy’s, dividing responsibilities. Malpass’ role was marketing. Her son’s role was handling legal affairs. Walton’s role was cooking.

Everyone else was doing their job, but Malpass wasn’t sure how to brand a restaurant without identifying any distinguishing qualities.

Then everything changed, she said.

While speaking on the phone with Walton, he kept complaining about how long it takes to make the bagels, saying that it takes three or four days, that there’s a fermentation process involved, that there can’t be any sugar and that he only uses unbleached flour, Malpass said.

That’s when she did a double-take, suddenly recognizing that the uniqueness of Gussy’s bagels are the bagels themselves.

The irony, Walton told the Chronicle, is that it never dawned on him that there was anything particularly special about adopting an intricate and lengthy process.

Walton approaches bagel making the same way he approached creating fine cuisine during the past 30 years, he said. Before opening Gussy’s, he was chef and part-owner

 Chef Scott Walton, center, joined by employees Brandon Shannon, left, and Riley Klinger, right

of Acorn in Shadyside and Scarpino in downtown Pittsburgh, as well as an executive chef at Heinz Field. Years earlier, he served as executive chef and chef consultant at several Chicago-based restaurants, including Stoney Point Grill and Harry Caray’s Restaurant Group.

Walton’s attention to detail — whether in preparing a meal or sourcing ingredients — remains the same with Gussy’s as it was

with earlier ventures, he said. What’s nice about the bagel place, though, is that its lower prices mean the food is available to a larger clientele.

“I keep telling everyone it’s going to explode,” Walton said. “People are going to realize that the things that we’re doing are special. And while the cost is no different than anywhere else, the product is different.”

Bagels are $2 each. A dozen cost $18.

Photo courtesy of Robin Malpass

Sandwiches range from $14-$18, with the most expensive being the “Big Gussy,” a colossally unkosher creation consisting of pastrami, corned beef, white American cheese, horseradish, red onion, pickle, and “Gussy’s famous sauce” on a triple-layer of Old-World rye.

Walton is eager for customers to enjoy Please see Bagels, page 15

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Headlines Philip Fireman, pediatrician and researcher, dies at 89 — LOCAL —

By Ann Belser | Special to the Chronicle

D

r. Philip Fireman used to rent two floors of the old Holiday Inn in Wilkinsburg to house up to 60 people who volunteered to catch a cold for science.

The virus would be swabbed into their nose so that Fireman and his researchers could spend the next week studying their breathing and secretions while also making sure they stayed in the hotel.

Dr. Deborah Gentile remembers having to corral one escapee and once finding a subject’s friend hiding behind the shower curtain in a bathtub. But for the most part, the research subjects, who were paid for their time, were well behaved.

Fireman, a pediatrician who specialized in allergies, asthma and immunology, died at his home in Squirrel Hill on Jan. 13 of natural causes. He was 89.

He was born on Colwell Street in the Hill District on Feb. 28, 1932, the youngest of the four children of Anna (Caplan), who was born in Lithuania, and Nathan Fireman, a Russian native. The couple supported their family with a butcher shop and grocery.

Philip Fireman was a 1953 graduate of the University of Pittsburgh and a 1957 graduate of the University of Chicago’s medical school.

Following a year’s internship at Philadelphia General Hospital, he returned to Pittsburgh to complete his residency in pediatrics at the University of Pittsburgh and Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, where he spent the rest of his career splitting time between treating patients, research and teaching.

Fireman was an economic generator for the region. During his career, he garnered more than $200 million in grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), according to his sons.

Gayle Tissue, the former executive director at Children’s Hospital, met Fireman early in her career when she was working as a research coordinator there.

He had NIH grants starting in 1965 to examine the mechanisms that lead to hypersensitivity of the immune system — work that expanded to studying how people develop allergies — and then branched into 18 years of continuous NIH grants to study colds and ear infections.

Fireman’s curriculum vitae, which runs 26 pages, lists 134 peer-reviewed journal articles from 1961 to 2003. He also published 114 articles in reviews and symposia between 1957 and 2009 and 153 abstracts from 1961 to 2003.

He served as editor-in-chief of the American

p Dr. Philip Fireman on the cover of “Masters of Allergy”

Journal of Rhinology from 1991 to 2003.

He was on the board of directors of the American Board of Allergy and Immunology from 1987 to 1994, serving as chairman in 1992 and co-chairman in 1990 and 1991.

Fireman served on the executive committee of the American Academy of Allergy Asthma and Immunology from 1991 to 1999 and as the organization’s president in 1996.

At one point, Tissue said, the NIH was not well funded and turned down most of its grant applications, but Fireman figured out a work-around. He had a team who went through the rejections, looking at them for what would be funded, then submitted a new proposal tailored to the requirements.

Tissue said it was Fireman’s work, in part, that led her to start raising money through private donors because she knew the government was not funding all of the important research that needed to be done.

“He really had a presence at Children’s Hospital,” she said. “He not only cared for

Photo courtesy of the Fireman family

patients and their families. He also supervised research and a research team. He was also an educator.”

When Fireman wanted something, he was never arrogant, demanding or rude, but he pleasantly pushed for what he needed until he got it, Tissue said. And as a doctor working with patients, he had patience and optimism.

Often children would be in his exam room, struggling with their health. “Phil was a smiling face that looked right at patients and their families and he gave everyone the confidence that he was going to fix it,” Tissue said.

David May-Stein remembers the care that Fireman gave to his daughter when she was suffering from asthma.

“We struggled with finding the right doctor and the right combination of treatments,” May-Stein said. “Once we landed with Dr. Fireman, she immediately responded to the treatment plan.”

May-Stein said Fireman was up-to-date

on the latest treatments, but it wasn’t just his daughter the doctor cared for. Fireman also made David and his wife, Sheila May-Stein, feel better as well.

“He helped us to not feel helpless,” David May-Stein said.

Even years after their daughter had grown, whenever the May-Steins saw Fireman in Squirrel Hill, he would ask about her.

He was also well known for training younger doctors.

Gentile, who now specializes in allergy and immunology, started working in his laboratory when she was undecided about whether to study for an MD or a Ph.D. She decided on medical school and worked with Fireman all the way through, including as a postdoctoral fellow.

In his research, he would have volunteers stay in the hotel for seven to 10 days while their symptoms were monitored.

“His work showed that people who get colds, flu or RSV get enhanced allergy inflammation,” Gentile said.

She said the best lesson he passed along, though, was through example: He really loved his family and made time to spend with them.

His son, Paul Fireman, said his father left their house in Squirrel Hill early each day and walked to Children’s Hospital in Oakland, then would walk home for dinner by 6 p.m. After dinner, he would head to his study to continue working.

He also introduced his family to skiing while he was a visiting professor at the University of Lausanne School of Medicine in Lausanne, Switzerland, from 1972-’73, then continued to take his family on ski vacations.

In addition to the articles he published, he authored the textbook “Atlas of Allergies and Clinical Immunology” which is in its third printing and was translated into Spanish.

Fireman is survived by his wife of 64 years, Marcia; four sons, Paul and his wife, Gail, of Squirrel Hill, David and his wife, Tiffany, of Washington, D.C., Dr. Lee and his wife, Karen, and Dr. Mark and his wife, AnnMarie, of Midland, Michigan; and one daughter, Randi, and her husband, Richard Seid, of Larchmont, New York. He also is survived by 12 grandchildren and a great-grandson.

A funeral service was held on Jan. 14 at the Ralph Schugar Chapel, Inc. In honor of his memory, donations can be made in his name to the JCC Center for Loving Kindness (donate.jccpgh.org/donate) and the American Academy of Allergy Asthma and Immunology (AAAAIfoundation.org). PJC Ann Belser is the publisher of Print, a weekly newspaper for the people who live and work in East Liberty, Homewood, Larimer, Point Breeze, Shadyside and Squirrel Hill.

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Headlines Bar mitzvah boy’s bake sale raises funds for Afghan refugees — LOCAL —

By Adam Reinherz | Staff Writer

O

’Hara Township teen Eli Olifson baked 814 cookies, brownies and muffins, all to help recently resettled refugee and immigrant families.

The project, which Eli completed as a lead-up to his Feb. 19 bar mitzvah at Temple Sinai, was partly inspired by his own family’s story.

Eli’s great-grandparents were immigrants and, along with acknowledging their journey toward creating a new life in the United States, the teenager wanted to support other families facing similar challenges.

With the guidance of his mother, Jessica Olifson, Eli was directed to Hello Neighbor, a Pittsburgh-based nonprofit working to improve the lives of recently resettled refugee and immigrant families.

Hello Neighbor was a good fit, given its local ties and smaller size, Jessica Olifson said. Founded in 2017 by Pittsburgh native Sloane Davidson, the nonprofit helps refugees who have come to Pittsburgh find housing, receive access to food and acquire support for social services.

Eli said he knew the work of Hello Neighbor’s 19 staffers was critical after reading several stories about the difficulties Afghan refugees are facing.

With 2.6 million registered Afghan refugees around the world, and another 3.5 million internally displaced throughout Afghanistan, “the number of people fleeing will likely continue to rise,” according to the UN Refugee Agency.

When Eli began learning about the plight of Afghan refugees months ago, he decided that a bake sale would be the perfect bar mitzvah project to support Hello Neighbor’s work. Eli, then 12, enjoyed baking, had grown up with certain cherished recipes and already had a family cookbook.

p Some of the treats that Eli Olifson made

p Eli Olifson in his kitchen

Eli selected five of his grandmother’s recipes and added a sixth for good measure.

He then baked each of the six items and took pictures of his creations. With the help of his father, Alan Olifson, Eli created a website where people could place orders for blueberry muffins, ginger snaps, banana bread mini loaves, lemon squares, triple chocolate cookies and fudgy brownies.

The orders soon started rolling in. Friends and family members, even some from out of town, began requesting Eli’s treats. What Eli initially thought would be a small undertaking became a time-consuming endeavor. He spent weekends mixing, baking, packaging and delivering; out-of-town orders were shipped.

“It was pretty fun, but there were also

Photos courtesy of Jessica Olifson

times when it was pretty stressful,” he said.

Fortunately, the project occurred during late fall and didn’t overlap too much with baseball, Jessica Olifson said. The sport and cello — Eli is on book four of the Suzuki method — are among his many interests.

“Eli is an extraordinary young man,” Temple Sinai Rabbi Daniel Fellman said. “He is bright and engaging and, even more, he understands his obligation and his ability to help make the world better.”

Hello Neighbor’s founder and CEO Sloane Davidson agreed, saying, “As a native Pittsburgher, and as a kid who grew up volunteering and always involved in my community, seeing the way that Eli has stepped up to support his refugee and

immigrant neighbors is so inspiring. We have a lot to learn from the spirit of giving that Eli has cultivated, and I’m so thrilled to see his contributions being recognized.”

Eli said he’s happy that his 156 ginger snaps, 90 blueberry muffins, 52 banana bread mini loaves, 151 lemon squares, 189 triple chocolate cookies and 176 fudgy brownies have made a difference. Selling those items raised more than $2,900, with 100% of the proceeds going to Hello Neighbor.

Jessica said she learned a lot by watching her son take on such a sizable project amid managing school, extracurriculars and an upcoming bar mitzvah all during a pandemic.

“It showed me a great example of how kids can have a big impact when there are certain limitations,” she said.

Eli said he’s pleased with the project’s results and what he’s discovered.

“I’m inspired to bake more,” he said, “but definitely not that many recipes in a day.” PJC Adam Reinherz can be reached at areinherz@ pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.

‘A gentle man’: Beth El’s director of maintenance, Bill Stevens, retires after 25 years — LOCAL —

By David Rullo | Staff Writer

“E

very day at Beth El is a good day.”

For 25 years, visitors to Beth El Congregation of the South Hills were answered the same way by Bill Stevens when they asked how he was doing: “Every day at Beth El is a good day.”

Congregation members and synagogue visitors heard the familiar refrain for the last time on Jan. 29. Stevens, the congregation’s director of maintenance, retired on Jan. 30 after making a quarter-century of memories.

“I was working at Baptist Homes in Castle Shannon and came here part time because my eldest daughter was going to college, and I wanted to make some money to help her,” 4

FEBRUARY 4, 2022

Stevens recalled.

Within a month of taking the part-time position, Stevens was asked to join the staff full time.

“I left the nursing home to come here, which is the best environment in the world,” he said.

Beth El has provided a sense of family to Stevens. Last year, both he and his wife contracted COVID-19. Stevens recovered, but his wife died, and his friends at Beth El provided comfort.

“She’s in a better place,” he said.

As director of maintenance, Stevens serves as a jack-of-all-trades. A typical day, he said, might include cutting grass, shoveling snow and painting, as well as overseeing two employees.

Steve Hecht, Beth El’s former executive director who hired Stevens, described him

p Bill Stevens will retire after a quartercentury of service at Beth El Congregation of the South Hills. Photo provided by Bill Stevens

PITTSBURGH JEWISH CHRONICLE

as “a gentle man” who will be remembered for always saying yes to whatever was asked of him, no matter how much work might be involved.

“His work ethic is admired by all who know and love him,” Hecht said.

Stevens and Hecht developed a friendship over their 20-plus years working together, Hecht said.

“That is what I cherish most,” Hecht said.

“Bill has become one of life’s mentors to me. His outlook was not only admirable, but infectious.”

Stevens found joy not only in his work but also in learning about Judaism.

“When I first came, I heard someone say ‘baby naming’ and I thought, ‘This baby is 6 months old, why hasn’t it been named yet?’

Please see Stevens, page 20

PITTSBURGHJEWISHCHRONICLE.ORG

Headlines Federation to launch leadership institute — LOCAL —

By Justin Vellucci | Special to the Chronicle

T

he Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh is establishing a new leadership development institute to usher in the next generation of the region’s Jewish volunteers.

The institute, whose name is still undetermined, stems from research the Federation conducted in creating its new strategic plan, which the nonprofit adopted in 2021. One of the key goals of that plan is leadership development in local Jewish organizations.

“This is about people with real skills being able to build a program like this,” said Jeffrey Finkelstein, the Federation’s president and CEO. “It’s really true that our organizations are only as good as the people leading them.”

Due to the creation of the new institute, the Federation is closing its Volunteer Center.

“Strategic realignment and funding changes external to the Jewish Federation” led to that change, Federation officials said in a statement. The nonprofit obtained “multiyear financial support” to create the new institute.

In addition to providing leadership development, the institute will be a force in evolving volunteerism in general, according to Federation officials. Leadership development, in broader terms, also

might be explored by the institute.

No staffing decisions have been made for the new institute, Finkelstein said. The next step is hiring a director whose vision can help shape the program and its direction. “ That director needs to put a plan in place, and then we’ll be determining what the staff needs will be,” he said.

The Federation will continue to coordinate Mitzvah Day, the annual program that has run for more than two decades. Before the pandemic forced the event to become virtual, Mitzvah Day sent more than 1,000 volunteers to locations  The Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh throughout the region.

Finkelstein said some of the drive to who never forgot his working-class form the new institute came, in part, Cleveland roots. The businessman and through his reading the work of Morton philanthropist died in 2019.

Mandel, a CEO of a billion-dollar company “He taught that, ‘It’s all about who you have,

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Calendar Submit calendar items on the Chronicle’s website, pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.

Submissions also will be included in print.

Events will run in the print edition beginning one month prior to the date as space allows.

The deadline for submissions is Friday, noon. q FRIDAYS, FEB. 4, FEB. 25

Join Moishe House for a takeout Shabbat dinner. They will be lighting candles socially distanced and masked up, and then you will take home a Shabbat meal to remember.

6 p.m. RSVP at bit.ly/moho-020422. q FRIDAY, FEB. 4-MARCH 5

The Zionist Organization of America: Pittsburgh is accepting applications for its Israel Scholarship Program. Jewish teens participating in qualified programs, who will be a junior or senior in high school in September 2022, are eligible to apply. Three $1,000 scholarships will be awarded. Applicants will be judged on their involvement in Jewish organizations, volunteerism and on an essay about Zionism and Israel. Applications will be accepted through March 5. For information and applications, contact ZOA Executive Director Stuart Pavilack, at stuart.pavilack@zoa.org or 304-639-1758.

Death Camp – Genesis of Genocide.” The program is in partnership with Liberation 75, Remember the Women Institute, the Rabin Chair Forum, Classrooms Without Borders, the House of the Wannsee Conference Memorial and Educational Site and the Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Center. 2 p.m. classroomswithoutborders.org/rethinking-finalsolution-wannsee-conference-80-years-later.belzec-death-camp-ndash-genesis-genocide. q SUNDAYS, FEB. 6-FEB. 27

Join a lay-led Online Parashah Study Group to discuss the week’s Torah portion. No Hebrew knowledge is needed. The goal is to build community while deepening understanding of the text. 8:30 p.m. For more information, visit bethshalompgh.org. q MONDAY, FEB. 7

After the end of World War II, Berlin became a place of refuge for Jewish Displaced Persons.

They called themselves she’erit hapletah, “the last survivors.” Learn about this time as Classrooms Without Borders presents “Our Lives: Berlin as Refuge for Jewish Displaced Persons after 1945.” 3 p.m. classroomswithoutborders.org/our-lives-berlinrefuge-jewish-displaced-persons-after-1945.

q SATURDAY, FEB. 5

q MONDAYS, FEB. 7-MAR. 7

Join Moishe House when it visits the Mattress Factory. RSVP to save a spot and claim your ticket. 11:30 a.m. bit.ly/moho-020522-1.

Join Congregation Beth Shalom for a weekly Talmud study. 9:15 a.m. For more information, visit bethshalompgh.org.

q SUNDAY, FEB. 6

q TUESDAYS, FEB. 8-MAY 24

The Ghetto Fighters’ House presents “Rethinking the ‘Final Solution’ and the Wannsee Conference 80 Years Later: Belzec

Sign up now for Melton Core 2, Ethics and Crossroads of Jewish Living. Discover the central ideas and texts that inform our daily,

Join the Chronicle Book Club: ‘Plunder’

T

he Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle invites you to join the Chronicle Book Club’s Feb. 27 meeting, when we will be discussing “Plunder”

by Menachem Kaiser. From harvard.com: “Menachem Kaiser’s brilliantly told story, woven from improbable events and profound revelations, is set in motion when the author takes up his Holocaust-survivor grandfather’s former battle to reclaim the family’s apartment building in Sosnowiec, Poland. Soon, he is on a circuitous path to encounters with the long-time residents of the building, and with a Polish lawyer known as ‘The Killer.’ A surprise discovery — that his grandfather’s cousin not only survived the war, but wrote a secret memoir while a slave laborer in a vast, secret Nazi tunnel complex — leads to Kaiser being adopted as a virtual celebrity by a band of Silesian treasure seekers who revere the memoir as the indispensable guidebook to Nazi plunder.”

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We will meet on Zoom on Sunday, Feb. 27, at noon to discuss the book. As you read it, we invite you to share comments and join discussions in our Facebook group, Chronicle Connects: Jewish PGH. We invite you to join now if you are not already a member of the group.

What To Do

Buy: “Plunder.” It is available at Barnes & Noble at the Waterfront, Settler’s Ridge and Monroeville Mall, at Amazon.com and from other online retailers.

Email: Contact us at drullo@pittsburgh jewishchronicle.org, and write “Chronicle Book Club” in the subject line. We will send you a Zoom link for the meeting.

See you later this month! PJC

weekly and annual rituals, as well as life cycle observances and essential Jewish theological concepts and ideas as they unfold in the Bible, the Talmud and other sacred texts. $300.

9:30 a.m. foundation.jewishpgh.org/melton-2. q WEDNESDAY, FEB. 9

Classrooms Without Borders, in partnership with Liberation75, is excited to offer Confronting the Complexity of Holocaust Scholarship: Reflections on the Past, Present, and Future of Holocaust Studies.

In this nine-part series, participants will meet top scholars in the field and focus on their research and scholarship. 3 p.m. classroomswithoutborders.org/confronting_ the_complexity_of_holocaust_scholarship. q WEDNESDAYS, FEB. 9-FEB. 23

Chabad of the South Hills presents “Meditation from Sinai,” a new Jewish Learning Institute course on mindful awareness and divine spirituality to help you think, feel and live more deeply. $95. 7:30 p.m. 1701 McFarland Road or on Zoom. Call 412-5123046 or email rabbi@chabadsh.com for more information or to register. q

WEDNESDAYS, FEB. 9-MARCH 9

Bring the parshah alive, and make it personally relevant and meaningful. Study the weekly Torah portion with Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman. 12:15 p.m. bethshalompgh. org/life-text.

Join Temple Sinai to study the weekly Torah portion in its hybrid class available on Zoom.

Open to everyone. Noon. templesinaipgh.org/ event/parashah/weekly-torah-portion-classvia-zoom11.html. q THURSDAYS, FEB. 10-JUNE 30

The Alan Papernick Educational Institute Endowment Fund presents Continuing Legal Education, a six-part CLE series taught by Foundation Scholar Rabbi Danny Schiff. Earn up to 12 CLE credits. Each session is a standalone unit; you can take one class or all six.

8:30 a.m. With CLE credit: $30/session or $150 all sessions; without CLE credit: $25/session or $125 all sessions. For a complete list of dates and topics, visit foundation.jewishpgh.org/ continuing-legal-education. q THURSDAY, FEB. 10

Classrooms Without Borders presents “Ghosts of the Third Reich.” Post-film discussion with Claudia Ehrlich Sobral, Bernd Wollschlaege, Samson Munn and Avi Ben Hur. 3 p.m. classroomswithoutborders.org/ghosts-thirdreich-post-film-discussion. q WEDNESDAY, FEB. 16

Join the Squirrel Hill AARP for its next open meeting. All attendees are asked to bring at least two nonperishable food items which will be donated to the Squirrel Hill Food Pantry.

Hear Pennsylvania AARP Consumer Advocate Mary Bach share AARP’s views on consumer fraud. Bring your COVID card and masks.

Call Marcia Kramer at 412-656-5803 with questions. Rodef Shalom Congregation, Falk Library, 1 p.m.

Toby Tabachnick, editor of the Chronicle

— Toby Tabachnick

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PITTSBURGH JEWISH CHRONICLE

FEBRUARY 4, 2022

q THURSDAY, FEB. 17

Moishe House Pittsburgh presents Game Night.

7 p.m. RSVP at: bit.ly/moho-021722. q TUESDAY, FEB. 22

Join Classrooms Without Borders and in-house scholar Avi Ben Hur to learn more about the Arab-Israeli conflict. The goal is to make the subject accessible to educators and to give them the tools with which to grapple in the classroom with the subject at large and with breaking news. 2 p.m. classroomswithoutborders.org/ arab_israeli_conflict.

Join Jewish National Fund-USA for a series of interviews, panel discussions and more — all meant to facilitate a dialogue and expose the beautiful and diverse facets of modern Zionism and its positive impact on many aspects of our lives, no matter where we are on the globe. 7:30 p.m. jnf.org/events-landing-pages/ conversations-on-zionism. q WEDNESDAY, FEB. 23

Classrooms Without Borders presents Czech Embassy Series: Stories from the Middle East with Journalist Jakub Szántó. Szántó, spent years covering the region. He later published the book “Behind the Curtain of War,” which describes his eyewitness accounts from the front lines. In his talk, he will take viewers behind the scenes of wartime reporting. 3 p.m. classroomswithoutborders.org/stories-middleeast-journalist-jakub-szanto. q THURSDAY, FEB. 24

Classrooms Without Borders, in coordination with Tali Nates, founder and director of the Johannesburg Genocide & Holocaust Centre, and in partnership with the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage, Liberation 75 and the USC Shoah Foundation, is pleased to present the series Holocaust Museums and Memorials Around the World. 1 p.m. classroomswithoutborders.org/holocaust_ museums_and_memorials_around_the_world. q SATURDAY, FEB. 26

Join Moishe House and celebrate Havdalah — their last event in February. 3 p.m. RSVP: bit.ly/ moho-022622. q MONDAY, FEB. 28

Join the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh for Success in the Workplace: Engaging People of All Abilities, an event in celebration of Jewish Disability Awareness, Acceptance & Inclusion Month and Jewish Disability Advocacy Day. Inclusion of people with disabilities in the workplace is not only good for the community — it’s also good for business. Join the conversation exploring the benefits of a diverse workforce. 5:30 p.m. jewishpgh.org/event/success-in-the-workplaceengaging-people-of-all-abilities. q THURSDAY, MARCH 10

Join the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh for the free event Universal Early Childhood Education: What Could This Mean for Our Jewish Community? 7 p.m. jewishpgh.org/event/ universal-early-childhood-education-what-couldthis-mean-for-our-jewish-community-4. PJC

PITTSBURGHJEWISHCHRONICLE.ORG

Headlines Prolific letter writer Oren Spiegler on five decades of missives — LOCAL —

By Justin Vellucci | Special to the Chronicle

I

t all started with the minimum wage.

Oren Spiegler was living in Squirrel Hill in 1973 when the issue of raising the federal minimum wage — it was then $1.60, the 2022 inflation-adjusted equivalent of about $10 — sparked him to write a letter to the editor of the Pittsburgh Press, then one of the city’s two dailies.

The letter, which Spiegler wishes he had saved, was an auspicious debut, and the urge to write letters to publications bit him like a bug. What followed has been a voluminous career as a letter writer, with Spiegler appearing in everything from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and USA Today to Pennsylvania staples like the Pittsburgh PostGazette, the Tribune-Review, The Beaver County Times and, yes, the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle.

“I’ve been doing this for 49 years — I estimate I’ve had roughly 5,000 letters published in multiple, multiple newspapers and magazines,” said Spiegler, 65, who moved from Upper St. Clair to Peters Township in Washington County in 2019. “It’s a great joy to me — it’s a catharsis.”

Spiegler wakes up at 5 a.m. every day to start the ritual, combing over newspapers and other sources in print and online, looking over the issues, debating the ups and downs of particular bits of news. The actual letter writing — which he did for years in the morning before heading to his job as an unemployment compensation hearing officer — comes to him easily. He “semi-retired” from that job in December, leaving more time for letter writing but still works about 95 days a year for the commonwealth.

“I’ve always felt I’ve expressed myself well,” Spiegler told the Chronicle. “And I write quickly. People are surprised I can whip out a letter in five to 10 minutes. And I’m a quick typist.”

Spiegler, an only child from a small Jewish family, said his inspiration for writing is

rooted, in part, in his beliefs and identity as a Jew, which celebrate curiosity and learning.

“I think that lifelong learning stirs the mind, and I think that’s important,” he said.

“There’s always something to learn.”

Spiegler dabbles in national fodder like politics and foreign affairs, as well as state and local issues. One figure who continues to raise his ire is former President Trump.

“For the last five years or so, Donald Trump has been my main subject — that’s what I write about  Oren Spiegler Photo courtesy of Oren Spiegler most now,” he said.

delusional assertion that he was the rightful winner of the Nov. 3, 2020 election, a matter which he will attempt to re-litigate until he takes his last breath.”

But Spiegler, who jokes he has a photographic memory for facts and figures, also traffics in nuance. In a letter to The New York Times on Jan. 18 — his latest for the Times — he picked apart coverage of the hostage situation at a Colleyville, Texas, synagogue, and offered his perspectives as a Jewish American.

“While the outcome was the best possible

“I’ve always felt I’ve expressed myself well.

And I write quickly. People are surprised I can whip out a letter in five to 10 minutes.

”

And I’m a quick typist.

The subject has proven fruitful. And Spiegler pulls few punches.

“In reaching the conclusion that it will no longer recognize U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney as a member of its party, the Wyoming GOP has cemented the party’s stance of this era: 100% allegiance must be pledged to Donald Trump and his lies,” he wrote in his Wyoming Star-Tribune debut on Nov. 28, 2021, “particularly the one which places the country in continuing peril, his incessant and

— OREN SPIEGLER

under the circumstances, I am saddened and outraged that the country has experienced yet another senseless assault on peaceful people at worship that will surely haunt those involved and Jews throughout the country, and bring a heightened concern for safety to those of my faith who wish to be able to worship without fear,” Spiegler wrote.

“We live in a country in the midst of a new era of hatred and intolerance, including a rising level of antisemitism and anti-Asian

news JEWS CAN USE.

prejudice that manifests itself in harassment and assaults on innocent people who are simply going about their daily lives, posing no threat to anyone.”

A lifelong resident of southwestern Pennsylvania, Spiegler has gotten shout-outs from some big names outside of Pittsburgh.

In November 2011, the Chicago Tribune published a bio of Spiegler and other frequent letter writers they dubbed their “pen pals.” “[Spiegler] writes to multiple newspapers, big and small, throughout the country every single day,” the profile read. “Says certain publications have asked him to stop sending letters due to his frequency.”

Spiegler wrote a letter to the New York Observer in 2011 praising “60 Minutes” journalist Mike Wallace; Wallace later called Spiegler and left a voicemail.

“That was a thrill of a lifetime,” Spiegler said at the time, “hearing that inimitable voice of his.”

In May 2018, he topped that lifetime zenith — getting invited, along with other fellow letter scribes, to The New York Times newsroom. One woman from Clearwater, Florida, told Spiegler he and writer Ken Zimmerman were the only two people she was dying to meet. Spiegler was in journalistic heaven.

“That was the thrill of my journalistic life,” laughed Spiegler, who says The New York Times has been a more frequent publisher of his than his hometown Post-Gazette.

Thomas Feyer, letters editor of The New York Times called Spiegler “a frequent (and quite effective) letter writer to The New York Times — one of the Regulars, as we on the Letters desk like to call them.”

“As with many submissions, Oren’s are thoughtful, humane, well written and often right on the news,” Feyer told the Chronicle.

“His interests are wide-ranging — especially on politics and foreign affairs — and expressed clearly and succinctly. When there’s a major news story and we’re looking for a lead letter with sweep, we often find that Oren has written the perfect letter …

Keep those letters coming, Oren!” PJC Justin Vellucci is a freelance writer living in Pittsburgh.

Every Friday in the

and all the time online @pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.

For home delivery, call 410.902.2308.

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FEBRUARY 4, 2022

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Headlines Antisemitic images found in local library book

By David Rullo | Staff Writer

C

helsie Hart said she was jarred and concerned after a recent trip to the Carnegie Oakmont Library.

Hart ventured to the library to pick up Issa Rae’s “The Misadventure of Awkward Black Girl,” a title sent to the location as part of the interlibrary loan system. Inside, she found handwritten pages filled with antisemitic drawings and phrases inserted into the young adult novel. Swastikas, the Star of David, “Jewish Power” and “Reclaim the Sawstika [sic]” covered two pages.

Knowing the book was transferred from another library, Hart wondered how many people had opened it before she did, she said.

The 33-year-old Plum resident initially reported the incident to the library, but was unhappy with the response she received, she said. So Hart, who works as a minority mental health advocacy and therapy readiness professional and photographer, took to social media asking her followers for advice. Several suggested she report the incident to the media.

She spoke with Duquesne University classmate Talia Kirkland, who told the story on WPXI. Shortly after the report aired, Hart spoke with the Oakmont library’s director, Beth Mellor.

“She was super responsive,” Hart said.

“She let me know the steps the library was taking and said she would keep me updated about things.”

Mellor said was shocked and angry when she learned about the hate images and

p Antisemitic images were found in a local library book.

phrases inserted into the book.

“Shock that someone would do this and put it in a library book that was distributed, and angry that it happened at all,” she said.

“It was very upsetting.”

Mellor said the book was shipped to the Oakmont location from Carnegie Library’s Woods Run branch, and the page could have been added to the book anywhere along the line. She noted that if the pages had been slipped into the front or back of the book, the library staff would have found them as part of their typical handling of the book.

Mellor said when she was alerted about the hate language in the book, she immediately reached out to all 46 libraries in the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh and Allegheny Country

Photos courtesy of Chelsie Hart

Library Association systems that are part of the interlibrary loan system.

“We’re all connected. We’re a community.

We need to know what’s going on. They passed the information along to their staff and boards,” she said, adding that all of the libraries and their staff said they will look more thoroughly at books before lending them and when they are returned.

Mellor also reached out to the Jewish community, speaking with Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh Community Security Director Shawn Brokos. “We want to help create an awareness,” Mellor said, “so people keep an eye out and be more aware of things like this happening.”

Brokos said the Oakmont Library incident

Long: Continued from page 1

Dr. Michael Risbano, co-director of UPMC’s Post-COVID-19 Recovery Clinic, has studied COVID-19 patients to see if there is any residual damage or disease following their contracting the disease. He said there is not just one common symptom that brings patients to the clinic.

“The long COVID patients have something bother them — there’s a whole bunch of symptoms,” he said. “Most of their studies are normal. We do an echocardiogram of the heart, breathing tests, everything turns out pretty normal. They just don’t feel well.”

He said the patients comprise a heterogeneous group, meaning that not only do their symptoms differ but so do their backgrounds and the severity of their disease.

Risbano said the length of their symptoms differs as well.

“Someone might come in initially feeling poor, and three months later they feel better,” he said. “Other patients, it’s a year later that they start to feel better.”

The clinic sees patients experiencing a variety of symptoms, Risbano said, including fatigue, muscle aches, shortness of breath, cough, palpitations, fast heartbeat, brain fog, neurological issues, headaches, sleep issues and even anxiety and depression.

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FEBRUARY 4, 2022

“There are a lot of other things that drive this,” he said, noting that for some, the symptoms seem like PTSD. Risbano said there are probably connections that link long COVID sufferers and their symptoms, but the medical community hasn’t yet determined what those are.

“There’s a wide range, and we have to look at our data,” he said. “There’s nothing we can tell at the moment.”

Future health concerns raise additional questions, Risbano said.

“We’re concerned about that — that there might be long-term health issues that could

PITTSBURGH JEWISH CHRONICLE

was an excellent example of “see something, say something” from outside the Jewish community.

“They reported it and expressed anger that something like this would happen,” Brokos said.

“That resonated with me because hate symbols resonate whether you are Jewish or not.”

But for the spirit of community and the willingness to report incidents like this, Brokos said, “we would not be able to grow stronger and overcome these types of issues.”

Brokos said she wasn’t surprised to learn that hate symbols attacking one group of people were found in a book aimed at another minority community.

“I think anybody who is going to go to these lengths by putting these type of hate symbols in a book is looking to shock, and they’re looking for a reaction,” she said.

Hart said she was saddened to find the pages inside of a book by and about a Black woman.

“It seemed very strategic,” she said. “As somebody that deals in mental health and behavioral health, I know that thought becomes feelings, and feelings become actions.”

She said she hopes others will report incidents of hate when they see them.

“I just hope people understand that we all have to take a stand about things,” she said. “We all have to say things about hate speech. We all have to decry these things We can’t let this just happen, especially in Pittsburgh where we’ve already seen hate rear its ugly head.” PJC David Rullo can be reached at drullo@ pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.

evolve from this, even among people whose symptoms get better,” he said. “There’s going to be some benefit in following these patients.

It would behoove the medical community to continue building and developing databases of these patients and see what happens.”

Nemoy said she wasn’t surprised to have long COVID. She works in the medical field, and she knew it was a possibility. Still, she said, it’s stressful.

“It’s just frustrating,” she said. “Frustration that I’ve had the experience and that I continue with the symptoms rather than experience a change.”

Neft has found a way to help others with his experience. He’s part of a study conducted by the National Institutes of Health done through UPMC. He said he was contacted when he first contracted the virus and has continued with the study. The research is looking at the effect of the virus on people who were asymptomatic when they had the disease.

The South Hills resident said that despite the phantom smells, he hasn’t allowed long COVID to interrupt his life.

“It’s not disruptive because I won’t let it disrupt my life,” he said. “I’m so over this whole thing. It is what it is, there’s nothing I can do about it.” PJC David Rullo can be reached at drullo@ pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.

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Photo by Biserka Stojanovic via iStock Photo

— LOCAL —

Headlines The Great Resignation is fueling a rabbinic hiring crisis that could leave synagogues without leaders — LOCAL —

By Asaf Shalev | JTA

I

n early December, Judaism’s Conservative movement sent a disquieting message to dozens of synagogues looking for a new rabbi: Many of you won’t make a hire this year.

At least 80 Conservative synagogues anticipated rabbi vacancies — approximately one of every seven affiliated with the movement, the email said. At most, 50 to 60 rabbis would be looking for new jobs.

“We are not presenting this information to alarm, but rather to help you prepare for and navigate the challenges of this search season,” said the email, which was signed by the “career search team” of the Rabbinical Assembly, the Conservative movement’s rabbis association, and United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, the group that represents its nearly 600 congregations.

That email outlined a number of strategies that synagogues, rabbi applicants and movement organizations could adopt to mitigate the challenging job market. But last week, a new message indicated strongly that the mismatch remains acute.

Starting Feb. 1, the new letter said, the Conservative movement is suspending many of the rules that are meant to ensure that Conservative synagogues hire only rabbis trained at the movement’s seminaries or who have otherwise applied for and won admission to the Rabbinical Assembly.

Those rules are relaxed late in the hiring season in a typical year, but the accelerated timeline represents a concession that the movement, which has been shrinking for decades, is not fully situated to meet the needs of its congregations right now.

“We understand that this decision will be received with mixed emotions,” the latest email said. “This is yet another challenging year both in general, and for rabbinic search specifically.”

A confluence of factors has led to this year’s tight rabbinical labor market. But one of them seems to be that the Great Resignation — a mass wave of resignations across the United States triggered during the pandemic — has come for the rabbinate, with potentially major implications for American Jewish communities.

In what appears to be a blip, the first year of the pandemic saw fewer retirements of baby-boomer-aged rabbis. Rabbi Ilana Garber, the Rabbinical Assembly’s director of global rabbinical development, calls these rabbis “kind souls” who stayed because it was the right thing to do for their congregation during a time of crisis.

This year, there’s a bumper crop of retirements, while a thinning out of the next generation that was already underway continues. Denominational seminaries are ordaining fewer clergy, and fewer of those being ordained are choosing to assume the pulpit.

Another dynamic has emerged as the pandemic has worn on: More rabbis are choosing to retire early. And a significant

PITTSBURGHJEWISHCHRONICLE.ORG

p Rabbis are leaving their jobs in unusually large numbers as the pandemic enters its third year.

number of rabbis have decided to leave their congregational jobs mid-career, many times with no intention of serving in another pulpit again.

Some of them, in keeping with one theme of the Great Resignation, say they are no longer willing to tolerate unpleasant working conditions. One rabbi told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that “an atmosphere that stifles innovation, enthusiasm and initiative” and the “soul-crushing” experience of low participation in Shabbat and holiday observance in his community drove his decision to leave his synagogue.

Elsewhere, rabbis are seeking to capitalize on the growth of non-traditional work opportunities. One Conservative rabbi who had worked in a Long Island synagogue for eight years decided to leave to launch a consulting firm. Rabbis with more than a decade leading synagogues in New England and Minneapolis announced to their communities that they would leave their roles but remain in the area. And other rabbis told their congregations that they wanted to explore rabbinic work outside of the pulpit.

“Many rabbis have been working tirelessly through the pandemic and are seeking a position with life-work harmony,” the December letter cautioned synagogues.

“Make sure to communicate your congregation’s needs, while also understanding the burnout pervading the entire workplace in 2021, rabbinic and otherwise.”

To rabbis on the job market, they wrote, “please communicate from the outset the time off and mental health support you require to perform your best work for your future community.”

Garber said she understands rabbinic burnout well. After all, she was experiencing it herself when she left the West Hartford, Connecticut, synagogue where she worked for 15 years shortly before the pandemic to take the Rabbinical Assembly role.

She said she was missing simple things, such as sitting next to her family during services. But she also found that what had drawn her to the rabbinate — the responsibility of supporting Jews at their most vulnerable moments — was working against her.

“After a while, if you don’t take care of yourself, each of those vulnerable moments can chip away at you to the point where you’re just going through the motions and you’re broken,” she said.

The pandemic has exacerbated issues of work-life balance for many people. Rabbis, like others across many fields, have taught and counseled via Zoom from their own homes, eroding boundaries that can be tenuous in the best of circumstances.

Many have done so with small children at times attending virtual school from adjacent rooms.

Meanwhile, their roles expanded to include becoming health care consultants, responsible for keeping their communities safe from COVID-19, while the in-person gatherings that are the heart of rabbinic leadership have been constrained. More recently, the hostage crisis at a synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, offered a stark reminder that being a rabbi can entail physical risk, as well. “‘Can I continue doing this for 20 more years?’ If you knew how many good, fulfilled rabbis are asking this question in their souls,

PITTSBURGH JEWISH CHRONICLE

Photo by Getty Images via JTA

with their spouse or partner, and to one another, you would sense that seismic shockwave that potentially faces us,” Rabbi Lewis Kamrass wrote in eJewish Philanthropy in October. “It could even be going on within your own congregation or organization.”

Kamrass is president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, which represents 2,200 rabbis in the Reform movement, American Jewry’s largest denomination. Reform synagogues are also seeing an increased number of openings because of a surge in retirements this year, according to Rabbi Janet Offel, the director of consulting and transition management at the Union for Reform Judaism.

But it is within the Conservative movement where concern is sharpest. The Conservative synagogues hiring this year represent a broad cross-section of the movement, which is home to about 17% of American Jews, according to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center.

Some are growing and adding a second rabbi. Many are in regions that are attractive to Conservative rabbis because they offer Jewish day schools and kosher dining options.

But even some synagogues in major metropolitan areas appear to be struggling to find suitable candidates: A Conservative congregation in Montreal took the unusual step of buying a quarter-page ad in The Jerusalem Post this week to alert its readers that it is seeking a full-time senior rabbi.

Synagogues in areas with dwindling Jewish populations, where few amenities of Please see Resignation, page 15

FEBRUARY 4, 2022

9

Headlines — WORLD — From JTA reports

Barnes & Noble removes “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” from website

After a social media outcry, Barnes & Noble removed “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” from its website.

Twitter users began tweeting about an online listing on Jan. 25 selling the fabricated antisemitic text for $24.95 on the book retailer’s website. The retailer said in a statement that the book was fed automatically to the website from “standard industry databases” and that the company would “take prompt action to remove” the title.

A Barnes & Noble representative wrote that the bookseller does the “utmost to diligently monitor such submissions for violations of our content policy” and that the book was never stocked in its stores.

The Jerusalem Post reported that while Barnes & Noble was targeted on social media other major online booksellers, such as Walmart, Book Depository, Thrift Books and Hudson Books, were selling versions of the book.

Tennessee school board removes ‘Maus’ from its curriculum

A Tennessee school board voted unanimously to remove “Maus,” Art Spiegelman’s

graphic memoir about his father’s Holocaust experience, from its curriculum.

Board members raised objections about curse words, nude drawings and “not wise or healthy” content within it.

During a Jan. 10 board meeting, educators explained that “Maus” was the centerpiece for a months-long study of the Holocaust by eighth-grade English classes in McMinn County.

Board member Mike Cochran said he didn’t object to students learning about Holocaust history but questioned why “Maus” was an appropriate choice because it includes profanity and a drawing of the author’s mother naked. (Like the other Jews in the book, the author’s mother is rendered as a mouse.)

The district had agreed to redact the profanities and obscure the nude image, but the board voted unanimously to pull the book.

Spiegelman, who won a 1992 Pulitzer Prize for the book, told CNBC that the decision was “Orwellian.”

French antisemitic incidents climbed 75% in 2021

Antisemitic incidents in France increased by 75% in 2021, according to the French Jewish community’s main watchdog group.

SPCJ recorded 589 hate crimes against Jews in its annual report released on Jan. 26, including a 36% increase in physical

helping you plan for what matters the most

assaults over 2020.

Incidents targeting people accounted for 45% of all incidents in 2021. Ten percent of those were physical assaults.

One-fourth of all incidents happened inside or just outside the victims’ homes, typically perpetrated by a neighbor, SPCJ wrote.

Police arrest suspect caught on camera beating Orthodox Jews in London

In two separate incidents in the past week, two Orthodox Jews were assaulted in London, and a Jewish teenager was attacked in Milan, Italy.

On Wednesday, British police arrested a man who was caught on security camera footage assaulting two Orthodox men on the street in the heavily-Orthodox London neighborhood of Stamford Hill.

The man passes them by before circling back to deliver multiple punches and kicks, knocking down both men down to the ground. He also kicks aside a kippah that one of the victims lost during the beating.

The incident, which police said is being treated as a hate crime, prompted a rare statement by a senior police officer.

Superintendent Simon Crick noted that it had occurred on the eve of International Holocaust Remembrance Day. “On this most important day, this is an awful reminder that hate crime still exists,” Crick said.

Items provided by the Center for Israel Education (israeled.org), where you can find more details.

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Feb. 4, 1997 — Helicopter collision kills 73 Michael H. Marks, Esq. michael@marks-law.com member, national academy of elder law attorneys

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Feb. 5, 1890 — 1st Tu B’Shevat planting in land of Israel

Zichron Ya’akov educator Ze’ev Yavetz takes students to plant trees on Tu B’Shevat, starting a tradition in the land of Israel that the Jewish National Fund and teachers unions adopt in 1908.

Israeli soldiers launch an overnight raid on Sharafat, home to about 200 Arabs just south of Jerusalem, in retaliation for a deadly Arab raid into Israel. Nine villagers, including five children, are killed.

Feb. 7, 1974 — Gush Emunim is established

www.pittsburghdental.net Drdannygrey@gmail.com

Flyers blaming Jews for COVID-19 were found in multiple cities in Florida and near San Francisco the weekend of Jan. 22-23, less than two months after similar ones were found in at least eight states.

Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber, who is Jewish, saw some of the flyers while taking a walk and posted a photo of one on Twitter. The flyers were delivered inside plastic sandwich bags with small pebbles and listed names of Jewish public health officials, including Rochelle Wolensky, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Jeff Zients, the Biden administration’s COVID-19 czar.

The flyers also contained an advertisement for Goyim TV, a video website run by the Goyim Defense League.

The Jewish News of Northern California reported that Pacific Heights residents also found some flyers near their homes that weekend. PJC

a settler movement determined to establish a permanent Jewish presence in the lands captured in June 1967.

Feb. 8, 2005 — Second Intifada is declared over

Two CH-53 Yasur helicopters collide in the middle of the night over northern Israel while ferrying troops and munitions to the occupied zone in southern Lebanon, killing all 73 personnel on board.

Feb. 6, 1951 — 9 are killed in raid on Arab village

Rachel Eglash DMD (412) 793-2550

Flyers saying Jews have “COVID agenda” resurface in Florida, California

This week in Israeli history — WORLD —

With the increasing costs of long-term care, having the help of a legal professional when planning for your family’s future can help you make better decisions that can result in keeping more of your money.

Separately, the parents of a 12-year-old Jewish boy told police that he was beaten and hit with verbal antisemitic abuse by a group of teenagers near Livorno, a coastal city about 130 miles northwest of Rome.

Italian media quoted the attackers as saying, “You need to be quiet because you are Jewish,” and “you should die in the oven.”

Followers of Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook launch Gush Emunim (Bloc of the Faithful),

PITTSBURGH JEWISH CHRONICLE

A summit among Israel’s Ariel Sharon, the Palestinian Authority’s Mahmoud Abbas, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and Jordan’s King Abdullah II declares the end of the Second Intifada after more than 1,000 Israeli and 4,000 Palestinian deaths.

Feb. 9, 1953 — Soviet Embassy is bombed

The Soviet Union’s embassy in Tel Aviv is bombed, injuring three people, in an attack blamed on the Kingdom of Israel terrorist group. Despite Israeli apologies, the Soviets break off diplomatic relations.

Feb. 10, 1913 — Air Force builder is born

Charles Winters is born in Massachusetts.

Winters, who is not Jewish, obtains surplus U.S. military aircraft after World War II for secret shipment to form the core of Israel’s original air force. PJC PITTSBURGHJEWISHCHRONICLE.ORG

JCC Pittsburgh News EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT! JCC Makes BIG Changes to Big Night “The Roaring 20s” will not be a live-streamed virtual event, but we are replicating the Big Night experience with a roaring Thank You delivery to Sponsors and a fabulous Boom Time Auction.

PITTSBURGH,PA -- Recognizing the unpredictable path of the pandemic and the current spike in cases, the JCC has made the decision to cancel the raffle and the in-person portion of the 16th Annual Big Night, The Roaring 20s, planned for March 5, 2022.

You can participate as a sponsor, donor, advertise in the Big Night Ad Book and bid in our Roaring Silent Auction!

“The JCC is not cancelling Big Night but plans to create a celebration to thank donors and will continue to run the Boom Time auction of luxury items and experiences,” said Roaring 20s Cochairs Marcie and Matthew Weinstein and Sam and Josh Klein. “We are so excited to launch the Auction in February.” They added, “The in-person Big Night and the $25,000 Raffle will be back next year!”

Big Night is a swell way to support the JCC! Sponsors will receive a unique hand-delivered gift in appreciation of their support in lieu of event admission. All sponsors will receive ads in our ad book and recognition in gifts that will be distributed throughout our community, in print and digital advertising, and in JCC social media and publications. The Roaring 20s Tribute ad book is going to be a keeper this year; ad book purchasers can get their message to the community - such as a thank you to JCC Staff, a Mazel Tov to Big Night Chairs, or a business promotion.

For Sponsorships, Donations & Ads: bidpal.net/bignight22 Contact Fara Marcus • 412-339-5413 • fmarcus@jccpgh.org

PITTSBURGHJEWISHCHRONICLE.ORG

PITTSBURGH JEWISH CHRONICLE

FEBRUARY 4, 2022

11

Opinion Shoring up our ‘infrastructure’ — EDITORIAL —

T

he harrowing collapse of the Fern Hollow Bridge last week came just hours before President Joe Biden was scheduled to visit Pittsburgh to talk about the importance of shoring up our country’s infrastructure. To prove his point, the bridge came tumbling down, as if it had been a thespian waiting in the wings for her cue to take center stage and recite a critical monologue.

We are so grateful that injuries from the wreckage were relatively minimal, and that there were no fatalities. As local politicians noted last week, had the bridge collapsed just one hour later — during rush hour — the harm certainly would have been much greater.

Still, the consequences of neglecting the support of infrastructure couldn’t have been more striking. We hope our politicians, federal, state and city, are paying attention.

Our lives depend on it.

In the wake of the Fern Hollow Bridge catastrophe, we see an apt metaphor to our Jewish communal structure. Just as safe and up-to-date bridges, roads, power supplies and buildings are essential to our security, so are stable and innovating Jewish institutions necessary to support our best Jewish lives.

We fear that those institutions on which we depend to keep us Jewishly connected, spiritually inspired, and educated and informed, are being neglected.

We acknowledge there may be several factors that led to this neglect and lack of support, including organizations not responding to the changing trends and desires of younger Jews. Many organizations are aware of those trends, and would be happy to adapt and meet them, but are hobbled by the lack of funds to do so.

The pandemic has made the situation worse, but even prior to COVID, affiliation at area

congregations was plummeting. Just 19% of households were dues-paying members of local brick-and-mortar synagogues, according to the 2017 Greater Pittsburgh Jewish Community Study. Jewish Community Centers around the country, historically hubs for Jews to assemble for a variety of activities and events, also have been suffering from a significant downturn in membership and revenue.

Overall enrollment at our after-school Judaics programs has eroded, and some programs have closed entirely. Our day schools continually struggle to amass optimal funding; more funds to our schools would mean better resources and potentially more scholarships to those for whom paying tuition is a challenge.

And while the Chronicle’s recent fundraising campaign raised more than three times our goal — and we are so grateful for that support — the financial future of this newspaper still remains insecure.

We know that the Jewish community is not as financially invested in its institutions as it once was. And that financial support is crucial to ensure that our organizations not only survive, but thrive. There is so much our Jewish institutions could offer if they had adequate funding.

No, Jewish Pittsburgh is not crumbling.

But is it on solid ground?

How many times did we cross the Fern Hollow Bridge in recent years, by car or bike or foot, and not stop to notice its tenuous condition? If we had been paying attention, would we have seen that it needed repair?

Let us not wait for a “bridge” connecting our communal infrastructure to collapse to appreciate its value. Jewish Pittsburgh is special for so many reasons. It’s time take notice and ensure our Jewish institutions are sound, for us, and for the generations to come.

Our Jewish lives depend on it. PJC

The Amnesty report on Israel affirms the PLO’s 60-year ‘apartheid’ strategy Guest Columnist Dan Diker

A

new Amnesty International report, called “Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians: a cruel system of domination and crime against humanity,” is the latest in a series of political assaults on Israel by various “human rights” organizations, among them B’Tselem and Human Rights Watch.

The 211-page indictment is a voyage into an alternate reality. It concedes facts and ignores context. Its conclusions appear to have been drawn by its Londonbased activist-investigators before any research was conducted.

Amnesty’s use of “segregation,” “brutal repression” and “domination” to justify its “apartheid” labeling of Israel is reminiscent of Soviet- and Communist China-led political warfare campaigns of the 1970s.

Amnesty’s premeditated use of the term “apartheid” is meant to deny the Jewish

people indigeneity in the land of Israel, and recast Jews as the latest version of the Dutch Boers, who colonized and segregated Blackmajority southern Africa.

This subversive language, which formed the basis of the former Soviet-sanctioned international anti-Israel disinformation crusade, is employed throughout Amnesty’s report.

Politicized pseudo-legal buzzwords, such as “OPT”—“occupied Palestinian territories” — could have been taken out of the Soviet playbook.

Perhaps most significantly, the report reflects the decades-old strategy by Palestinian groups —whether Fatah, Islamic Jihad, Hamas or the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine; whether Islamist, nationalist or Marxist-Leninist — which have devoted the past six decades to assaulting and subverting the existence of the only democratic nation state in the Middle East. Their goal has been to replace the sole Jewish state with another Muslimmajority one, in line with Islamic law.

As early as 1961, Ahmad Shukairy, the PLO’s first chairman, a former Saudi ambassador to the United Nations, declared to

the U.N. General Assembly that Israel was practicing the “apartheid of South Africa.”

He also “Nazified” Israel, by accusing it of embodying Adolph “Eichmann in a state.”

Amnesty’s report parallels Shukairy’s denunciations of Israel, which preceded Israel’s so-called “occupation” of the West Bank by half a dozen years. In both cases, it’s Israel’s reestablishment in 1948, not its surprise victory in the 1967 Six-Day War over Arab marauders and unexpected winning of Jerusalem and historic Judea and Samaria from Jordan, Gaza from Egypt and the Golan Heights from Syria, that’s at the root of the delegitimization and defamation.

Yasser Arafat, Shukairy’s successor as PLO chief, would continue the assault on the fragile, practically indefensible, Jewish state.

He internationalized Israel’s criminalization, likening it to apartheid South Africa.

In his infamous 1974 U.N. “gun and holster” address, Arafat compared Zionism to apartheid and referred to them as the remaining evils of the 20th century. He and his Soviet sponsors successfully mobilized Third World and non-aligned countries to

pass UNGA Resolution 3379, “Zionism is Racism,” demonizing the notion of Jewish self-determination a mere three decades after the Nazi genocide of 6 million Jews.

The Amnesty document’s cancellation of Israel’s legitimacy mirrors the 1975 U.N. resolution, which constituted a key part of the PLO’s Marxist-Leninist “long war” strategy. The Soviet-backed and -directed disinformation campaign sought to isolate and undermine Israel as a “colonialist and imperialist” implant in the Middle East.

Arafat skillfully and deceptively branded Israel as a racist Western power, uprooting its identity as an indigenous Near Eastern civilization, in order to coalesce the Third World and nonaligned countries, and specifically African nations. By that act, he planted the seed of the “racialization” of Israel as a white supremacist entity that has borne fruit in today’s Western discourse.

He successfully fused Israel with apartheid South Africa, around whose condemnation and isolation the international community

It’s been some time now, probably the better part of two decades, that “so” has broken out of Mrs. Franklin’s coordinating conjunctions and been elevated to sentencestarting status. I simply cannot fathom it, and it never fails to startle me whenever someone starts a sentence with “so.” In fact, there are many distinguished folks who start nearly every sentence with it. I was recently watching Treasury Secretary Janet Yellin give a speech on the economy and lost the entire content of her message because I was distracted by her use of “so” to begin each and every one of her thoughts. It seems the higher up the food chain you go, the more frequent you get pummeled with it.

Academia cannot resist it, and the medical profession is especially afflicted. With each passing year I visit more and more doctors on a regular basis, and more often than not find myself admonishing them, as they are incapable of beginning any sentence unless they start it with “so.”

Now, if this all ended with “so” I could give in and move on, but “so” has now morphed into such craziness as “sure” and even “absolutely.” I recently visited a local eatery and asked the waitress if she preferred the garlic scrod or the eggplant parm, to which she began her reply with “absolutely,” followed

Please see Diker, page 19

Resurrecting ‘tucky’ Guest Columnist Josh L. Sivitz

S

hame on me: I don’t even know Mrs. Franklin’s first name. Then again, it was 1963, I was 15 years old and few, if any, in the Allderdice class of ’66, ever knew the first names of any of our teachers. Many of them were just eight or nine years older than we were, but to us, they seemed old enough to be our grandparents.

Mrs. Franklin was our English teacher, 12 FEBRUARY 4, 2022

and she was anything but ordinary. She was one of the very few whose voice got inside me, and I take it with me everywhere I go.

The thing about Mrs. Franklin was that she seemed to take it personally if you misused the English language.

Nowadays, the Mrs. Franklin within me rises up almost daily as the language gets butchered on a regular basis, mainly because of this crazy “so” thing. What is the deal with people starting sentences with “so”? Mrs. Franklin taught us that there were seven words known as coordinating conjunctions, and that they were never to be used to start a sentence. They are: and, but, for, nor, or, yet, and that nutty “so” word.

PITTSBURGH JEWISH CHRONICLE

Please see Sivitz, page 17

PITTSBURGHJEWISHCHRONICLE.ORG

Opinion Chronicle poll results: Beijing Olympics

L

ast week, the Chronicle asked its readers in an electronic poll the following question: “Will you watch the Beijing Olympics?” Of the 235 people who responded, 47% said yes. Twenty-four percent said no, because they were not interested or for another reason; 14% said they would not be watching because of the policies and actions of the Chinese government; and 15% said they were not sure if they would be watching. Forty-two people submitted comments. A few follow.

In addition to the Chinese government, I’m not watching because the Olympics shouldn’t be happening at all during a worldwide pandemic!

I always enjoy the Olympics. I do wish that they were somewhere other than Beijing.

The USA athletes deserve our support even if the reprehensible host country does not.

I just hope it’s a peaceful time for the Olympians. They have been preparing for this for a long time, and I would hate to see something happen to prevent it. This is their time to shine, and I’m looking forward

Will you watch the Beijing Olympics?

14%

with the athletes, the U.S. and other countries should have pulled out completely.

I virtually never watch television, with the exception of the last part of a Steeler game. My life is full of important things, and Olympics don’t make it to that list for me.

No, because of the policies and actions of the Chinese government.

I probably will watch some but certainly not all.

15%

47%

Not sure.

Yes.

24%

No, because I’m not interested or another reason.

to watching them.

We say, “never again,” about the Shoah. As Jews, we cannot tolerate the severe oppression of others, such as the Uighurs, by the Chinese government. While I sympathize

This is to glorify a repressive country ... a rehash of the Nazi Olympics.

Most likely, I won’t be watching the Olympics since I’m a millennial with a Netflix account who doesn’t watch much live TV. The fact that the Olympics are also taking place in China, where the pandemic ostensibly began (and was mismanaged), is also not a great look.

I always try to watch the Olympics, because I love seeing the different sports and the people from all different countries.

I have never been interested in the

Olympics. I get annoyed when I can’t watch my TV shows. Why can’t they broadcast them on a sports channel?

The Olympics is one of the great global events!

I think it is fine for the athletes to compete and meet each other. But I always am turned off by the pomp and politicization of the Olympic games. And when the games are hosted by an authoritarian government in the midst of a genocide, I don’t see why anyone would want to support the economic and political agenda of these games.

Mostly will watch ice skating. PJC — Toby Tabachnick

This week’s Chronicle poll question:

In light of last week’s bridge collapse, how concerned are you about the safety of the area’s other bridges? Go to our website, pittsburgh jewishchronicle.org, to respond. PJC

Confessions of a reluctant dish heiress Guest Columnist Ruth Efroni

M

y mother does not say the word “die.”

Instead, she says, “after a hundred and twenty.” By this logic, she has another 35 years to go. Which seems like a long time to me, but, at 85, my mother — a woman who packs her suitcase a week before the flight, sets the Passover table three days before seder, and sends greetings in the family WhatsApp the day before a birthday — has already embarked on a checklist of tasks for a “hundred and twenty.” And I’m not talking about the usual items people put on their bucket list, like bungee jumping or swimming with dolphins.

No, her list consists of crucial tasks, such as arranging all the drawers and cabinets, sorting all the documents, scanning all the photos from the old albums, and ... dividing up everything she has among me and my siblings. I think my mother imagines the Angel of Death

as a giant, grumpy, rather petty cleaning lady, for whom one needs to tidy up the house.

I hate these Inheritance Days. First, because it’s against my religion — the religion of denial.

I don’t like “hundred and twenty” in general and certainly not the “hundred and twenty” of my parents. I’m pretty sure that, despite the overwhelming statistics, I’m the outlier. It won’t happen to me, so there is no reason to prepare for it or talk about it or even think about it.

Second, I hate to be reminded that underneath my ascetic-spiritual-anti-capitalist exterior, I am actually quite materialistic and would die happy drowning in a sea of beautiful, useless objects.

The third reason is that I always want whatever my oh-so-discerning siblings choose. Not before they pick them of course, only after, when they’re already theirs. Then, all of a sudden, the once-hidden beauty of their baubles becomes apparent and I feel dissatisfied with mine.

My brother and sister are already waiting for me at our childhood home. Six different sets of cutlery have been spread out on the dining table as if the table has been set for ghost guests.

“Ta-dah,” my father calls out, pointing to the table with the ceremoniousness of a circus

— LETTERS — Standing together with the Jewish community

I am a retired state representative, state senator and Allegheny County commissioner. I am currently the executive director of Scenic Pittsburgh, a nonprofit organization advocating for our region’s scenic beauty.

My wife and I joined the Jewish Community Center, where she swims and I work out. Part of our motivation for joining this center, as opposed to many others, is that it is well run.

Another reason for joining is to stand in solidarity with our Jewish sisters and brothers at a time when it clearly is needed. The current surge of antisemitic spewing of hate must not be allowed to go unanswered by the rest of us.

We hope not to experience hate while visiting the center, but if it happens we trust that we will rise to meet it with our sisters and brothers.

Pittsburgh has been blessed with a strong and vibrant Jewish community which, in turn, has blessed the rest of our community with mitzvahs of great good for all of us.

PITTSBURGHJEWISHCHRONICLE.ORG

ringmaster. “Welcome to The Good China!”

He’s not sure how to handle these morbid rituals, and making me laugh can’t hurt.

Each set of dishes is represented by a delegation made up of dinner plate, salad plate and soup bowl nestled together. Next to each of them is a note in my mother’s handwriting containing technical and biographical specifications about the set.

Take, for example, the Dansk meat set that my American grandmother bequeathed to them. It is all white with relief patterns of fruit and vines. My grandmother brought the dishes to Israel with her when she made aliyah at the age of 90. “This set is complete, there are 14 settings!” My mother proclaims in admiration. This doesn’t surprise anyone. My grandmother was a scrupulously careful and highly efficient woman. I remembered how she would cut up the pot roast on my distinguished and highly capable grandfather’s plate as if he were a helpless baby. To this day I do not know if it was an act of indulgence and affection on her part or an expression of passive aggression. My brother pronounces his scholarly architectural opinion that “this

set is hideous.” My sister says he’s just saying this to lower the price ahead of negotiations.

“Now we’ll go in age order and everyone will choose the set they want,” my mother proposes. My sister chooses my mother’s beautiful, eclectic collection of blue china. Second in line, I choose the pinkish ones we use for Yom Kippur eve. “Are you sure?” my mother asked, “there are only the dinner plates left and maybe some serving utensils, nothing else.”

I know that this is the set my mother assembled slowly and surely for a whole year when, for every purchase at the supermarket, she received a coupon for a single plate. I wasn’t born yet, my father was a medical student, my mother taught Hebrew at Sunday school. They didn’t have two pennies to rub together. I imagine her in a brown, itchy minidress, with a short beehive ’60s hairdo, hesitant, embarrassed, speechless, so far from her parents’ house in Afula, slinking around among the dishes in the aisles of an American supermarket in Baltimore.

“Yes, this is the set I want,” I reply.

Please see Efroni, page 19

There were instances such as in Nazi Europe when Jews were forced to wear armbands.

A few leaders wore the same armbands in solidarity. We would like to think that the overwhelming majority of Pittsburghers would do the same today.

Thank you for what the Jewish community has done for Pittsburgh! We stand in support of you!

Mike and Audrey Dawida Pittsburgh We invite you to submit letters for publication. Letters must include name, address and daytime phone number; addresses and phone numbers will not be published. Letters may not exceed 500 words and may be edited for length and clarity; they cannot be returned. Mail or email letters to: Letters to the editor via email: letters@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org Address:

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Website address:

Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle 5915 Beacon St., 5th Flr., Pittsburgh, PA 15217 pittsburghjewishchronicle.org/letters-to-the-editor

FEBRUARY 4, 2022

13

Headlines Bridge: Continued from page 1

Councilman Corey O’Connor said he was surprised by the collapse, as the bridge was inspected in September. He called the inspection standards “too low” and said there needs to be a determination as to why the collapse occurred.

Fitzgerald noted that President Joe Biden was scheduled to visit Pittsburgh later that day to promote his infrastructure bill, and that the bridge collapse proves the necessity of federal investment in infrastructure.

“We know as an older industrial city with a lot of old bridges, and a lot of old infrastructure, that we need this,” Fitzgerald said.

“And this president, to his credit, has been the first president in decades, Democrat or Republican, that has been able to get a major infrastructure investment in this country.”

Biden visited the site of the bridge collapse that afternoon, shortly after he arrived

in Pittsburgh.

“I’ve been coming to Pittsburgh a long time,” Biden said, noting the large number of bridges in the city. “And we’re going to fix them all.”

When he arrived at the site of the collapse he was greeted by Admon, who on behalf of the first responders and officers blessed the president and the United States of America and thanked Biden for his visit.

Admon told the president how miraculous it was that only a few people were injured, and Biden agreed, the rabbi told the Chronicle.

Biden praised Pittsburgh’s emergency response teams, Admon said, and also shared his familiarity with the city and his love of the commonwealth during a 15-minute conversation.

“When the president came, I thought that he was just going to shake our hands and continue on, but the time we spent together was very nice,” Admon said. “He didn’t rush.

He was very humble.”

There’s a saying in Hebrew, Admon said,

p The Port Authority bus at the Fern Hollow Bridge collapse was safely removed from Frick Park on Feb. 1.

Photo courtesy of Pittsburgh Public Safety Department

“govah einayim,” which is used to describe someone who sees others at eye level without haughtiness or arrogance.

Biden acted with “govah einayim,” Admon said.

Before leaving the scene, Biden gave Admon a Presidential Challenge Coin.

Admon described the gift and his conversation with the president as “remarkable.”

“I was very excited to meet the president,” he said. “That’s something that doesn’t happen every day. Maybe it happens once in a lifetime.”

Despite earlier reports that the Jewish community’s eruv — a wire and stringbound structure that creates an enclosure and permits Jews to carry items and push strollers during Shabbat — was dismantled by the bridge collapse, Silver, who oversees the eruv, confirmed that the structure was still intact.

Silver said he immediately became emotional when he saw the collapsed bridge, as one day earlier, he drove over it to check the eruv and ensure that all of the wires,

strings and other pieces were secure.

“The bridge was perfectly fine,” Silver said.

Now, a day later, the bridge was in ruins.

With Shabbat just hours away, Silver said the community could rely on the eruv for now, but work will need to be done to the enclosure as soon as bridge repairs begin.

“We will have to do a reroute, and the checking will be twice as hard because we can’t get across the bridge,” he said.

The eruv budget is $45,000 a year, with costs going to pay qualified electricians for repairs, as well as to individuals who check the enclosure regularly, Silver said. It’s difficult to raise money for the eruv, but if 500 people paid $90 annually, the cost would be covered, he added.

Silver wasn’t sure what new expenses might be created once bridge repairs begin. For now, however, he is amazed at the miraculousness of the Jan. 28 events, saying, “Sometimes Hashem opens a window and lets you look in.” PJC Adam Reinherz can be reached at areinherz@ pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.

p A view of a car damaged by the bridge collapse

Photo by Adam Reinherz

p From left: Rabbi Shimon Silver, Rabbi Elisar Admon and Mayor Ed Gainey

 A view of the Fern Hollow Bridge collapse on Jan. 28

Photo by Adam Reinherz

PITTSBURGHJEWISHCHRONICLE.ORG

PITTSBURGH JEWISH CHRONICLE

Photo courtesy of Rabbi Shimon Silver

FEBRUARY 4, 2022

14

Headlines Bagels: Continued from page 2

the sandwich and other items from his menu, even if it isn’t the easiest time to own a restaurant.

The industry remains approximately 650,000 jobs — or 5.3% — below pre-pandemic staffing levels, according to the National Restaurant Association.

Walton said he’s managed to avoid some of those employment pangs thanks to his location. Being based in Oakland, between Atwood Street and Meyran Avenue, there’s an ample supply of college students looking to work a few hours several days a week.

With the restaurant’s identity now easier to define, Malpass — a Chicago-based marketer — is pleased with Gussy’s growth since its September opening and her brother’s ability to create delicious meals.

“Over the years, we’ve enjoyed the ride with Scott and the wonderful [dishes] we’ve gotten to enjoy because of him,” she said.

“I never thought in a million years that I would be a part-owner of a bagel shop in Pittsburgh, but the timing was right.”

Walton agreed, saying that once he

 An assortment of Gussy’s bagels

decided to leave Acorn — a decision driven by the pandemic and difficulty of providing fine food as takeout — he was trying to figure out what to do next.

“I feel like my family kind of saved me,”

Photos courtesy of Robin Malpass

he said. “My 100-hour work weeks are over.”

While the restaurant business is notorious for forcing its staff to adopt nocturnal habits, Walton said he’s experiencing a new normalcy to his life as a bagel guy.

Resignation: Continued from page 9

Jewish life are likely to be present for rabbis and their families, may be having even more trouble drumming up rabbinical candidates.

One synagogue in Kalamazoo, Michigan, told its congregants earlier this month that not a single application had come through the Conservative movement hiring system.

In more isolated communities, going without a rabbi could be a blow to organized Jewish life. And hiring a rabbi from outside the Conservative movement could change a synagogue community’s character — a reality that the most recent letter from the movement groups suggested guarding against.

“Please remember that non-RA rabbis may have a wide range of attitudes towards halakhah,” or Jewish law, which the Conservative movement prioritizes more highly than other non-Orthodox denominations, the latest letter to synagogues said.

“We urge you to ask questions about their policies to be sure that the rabbi’s views are consistent with Conservative Judaism and your community’s values and priorities.”

Within the movement, officials expect a substantial number of synagogues to end

 A synagogue in Montreal took the unusual step of placing an ad in The Jerusalem Post for its next rabbi on Jan. 28.

Screenshot via JTA

the hiring season without a new rabbi under contract. Their concern is so acute that a team of 25 leaders has convened to discuss a looming questions: If synagogues can’t be reasonably assured of rabbis from within the movement, why should they continue to pay

dues to belong to it?

“About a month ago we started really having some serious conversations about this when the numbers made clear to us that this was going to be something we needed to address for this year,” Garber said. “We

 Gussy’s storefront

No more late nights, he said. “Now I’m getting up at 4 a.m.” PJC Adam Reinherz can be reached at areinherz@ pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.

do very much believe in the movement and that we need to strengthen this movement and answer the questions of why should I affiliate with this movement?”

Part of the answer could come with how the Rabbinical Assembly and United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, which effectively merged in 2020, handle synagogues that end up without rabbis.

The December letter outlined a range of possibilities, including creating a “cadre of transitional rabbis” to hold positions for a short time; initiating rabbi-sharing and other “outside the box” staff structures; and launching virtual programs “to ease the pressure on clergy.”

Garber said the task force — which includes representatives from the movement groups; deans from the Jewish Theological Seminary and American Jewish University, the movement’s two seminaries; and rabbis and cantors from various synagogues — had alighted on a plan. She declined to share details but said “an exciting opportunity” will come into play when, in not too long, the search process is resolved and the synagogues without rabbis seek help.

“Then they come to us and say, ‘nu?’” she said. “And we’ll say, all right, we’ve got some options for you.” PJC

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FEBRUARY 4, 2022

15

Life & Culture Jewish actress makes national debut in ‘Pretty Woman’ — THEATER —

By David Rullo | Staff Writer

“P

retty Woman” actress Becca Suskauer sees a connection between her Jewish identity and Vivian, the main character in the musical making its Pittsburgh premiere at the Benedum Center on Feb. 1 and running through Feb. 6.

“I love the character because of her free spirit, how funny she is, how she doesn’t feel like she belongs in any of the worlds she finds herself,” Suskauer said. “Throughout it, she perseveres and survives. I think that’s the key word, ‘survives,’ that makes me think of my Jewish identity and the Jewish people.”

Jewish people endure, Suskauer said, despite a difficult past and the rise of antisemitism.

“I think we continue to move forward and support each other in our communities,” she said. “There’s always hope, and with Vivian there’s always hope.”

The Penn State graduate is not only the understudy for the role of Vivian, played

by Julia Roberts in the 1990 film, but also performs nightly in a few featured roles as part of the ensemble cast.

Suskauer’s journey to “Pretty Woman” began years ago with a singing role in a musical at her preschool graduation at Conservative Temple Beth David in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.

“I was obsessed with ‘Annie,’” Suskauer recalled. “It was my dream at 4 to play Annie.

I begged my teachers and my grandmother, Rose Rosenkranz, who was the principal of the preschool at the time.”

Both Suskauer and her older sister Talia followed similar paths in the acting world — middle and high school of the arts, performing arts camp at French Woods Festival, children’s theater and, in high school, StarStruck Performing Arts Center and Theater in Stuart, Florida. In fact, Talia is part of the touring cast of “Wicked.”

Suskauer followed her older sister to Happy

p Kelsee Sweigard, Olivia Valli and Becca Suskauer in “Pretty Woman,” which makes its Pittsburgh debut on Feb. 1 Photo by Matthew Murphy for MurphyMade

Valley where she earned her BFA in musical theater. During her time at Penn State, she portrayed another iconic character first seen on the silver screen — Vivian in “Legally Blonde.”

Before graduating, she was cast as Cathy in “The Last Five Years,” a role she performed wearing two masks and a plastic spacer because of the pandemic.

“That was crazy,” she said.

“Pretty Woman” is Suskauer’s first job with a national tour. Surprisingly, the actress hadn’t seen the film until the day before her audition, something she views as a plus.

“It was helpful because I had a fresh perspective,” she said. “I’m a huge Julia

Roberts fan and Richard Gere fan but hadn’t seen it. I love it now. I absolutely fell in love with it. I was so excited to audition, and once I was named as part of the show I was elated.”

Suskauer isn’t worried about the audience’s reaction to this new incarnation of the iconic movie, noting that the film is more than three decades old, and that the beauty of a live performance is that it encourages the cast to present their takes on the roles.

Still, she said, “paying homage to the original is incredibly important. There are some things where we’ll stay true to the original — but trying to replicate what someone did on screen is difficult.”

The 23-year-old said her parents played a large part in instilling her Jewish identity — and also in helping her and her sister believe they could achieve their dreams.

“My dad has a quiet confidence, like I do,” she said. “I love how he’s a proud Jew.” Her father is a judge in criminal court, and her mother is a criminal defense lawyer and a former president of the Florida bar.

Suskauer described her as a “strong-willed powerhouse” and a “very intensely loving woman with a big personality.”

“My mother is a huge part of my Jewish

18-20, including a community program hosted by Congregation Dor Hadash in collaboration with other organizations.

The Chronicle invites its readers to send bat mitzvah memories (100-300 words) along with photos (then and now) for

publication in its March 18 print issue and online. Send memories and photos to newsdesk@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org, and write “bat mitzvah’ in the subject line. PJC

Please see Actress, page 20

Share your bat mitzvah memories

W

hat are the most cherished memories of your bat mitzvah?

Next month marks the centennial anniversary of the first bat mitzvah in the United States.

On March 18, 1922, Judith Kaplan, the

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daughter of American rabbi Mordecai M. Kaplan, celebrated her bat mitzvah at the Society for the Advancement of Judaism in New York City.

Local congregations will be marking the occasion with events the weekend of March

— Toby Tabachnick

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Headlines Sivitz: Continued from page 12

by an endorsement of the eggplant which was riddled with all manners of “so.”

In 1963 we didn’t abuse the English language with “so,” “sure,” or “absolutely.” I vividly recall our Passover, Rosh Hashanah and Thanksgiving dinners and the topics which dominated the adult table. Khrushev was big, along with pushbutton transmissions, and Richard Kimble, not to mention Lt. Gerard, or the one-armed man — and when they didn’t want the kids at the off-tothe-side card table to know what they were saying, they used their favorite tactic: Yiddish.

There was mitn derinnen (in the middle of everything) and nisht geferlech (not so terrible). Oy veh was everywhere, and then there was my all-time favorite: “tucky.”

Now, tucky was a whole new ballgame. No one ever seemed to know what tucky meant. I asked my mother, father, and all four grandparents and they seemed to agree that tucky had no meaning. They told me it was a unique word that you “just kind of shoved in there” for emphasis. I mean this was nuts. If meaningless tucky wasn’t enough to confuse all of us at the kids’ card table, what really aroused our curiosity was why the capital of Arizona seemed to prompt more Yiddish than anything else, but I’ll leave that for another day.

Let’s get back to this tucky thing. It

appears that “so” is at this point baked into the culture, and since I simply cannot internalize it, I have decided to resurrect tucky, and yes, just shove it in there whenever I wish. Whenever someone starts a sentence with “so,” I make it my business to tucky them back. It’s as versatile a word as you will ever find, as you can use it as a noun, a verb, an adjective, or even an adverb. Tucky is my perfect antidote to “so,” although I must admit I still wonder where Mrs. Franklin is when we need her the most.

A word of caution: You can’t just tucky anywhere, as that could be hazardous. My wife and I were on a recent road trip to the beaches of South Carolina, when about seven hours into our journey we became

quite hungry. Upon departing the highway at one of the exits we discovered there were not many restaurants, but did manage to come across a Cracker Barrel where we decided to have dinner. About halfway through our meal, a Cracker Barrel patron sitting at the next table noticed my Pirates hat and asked, “So what do you think of the Buccos losing over 100 games this year?” Mitn derinnen, I had a senior moment, forgot my whereabouts, and replied, “Tucky awful.” To which he retorted, “Tucky me? Tucky you.” PJC Josh L. Sivitz lives in Pittsburgh’s South Hills. He is a past president and 10-time banquet emcee of the Western Pennsylvania Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.

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Torah

Bar Mitzvah

What really matters Joshua Michael Ummer, son of Brad and Erinn Ummer, will become a bar mitzvah at Adat Shalom during Shabbat morning services on Saturday, Feb. 5, 2022.

Grandparents are Michael and Joan Shapiro and Jim and Janet Ummer. PJC

The New Riverview names permanent executive director

T

“Jen’s goal is to enhance he Jewish Association Riverview’s strong tradition of on Aging announced providing exceptional services that The New Riverview to our tenants,” according to Apartment’s interim execua post on the JAA’s website. tive director, Jennifer McCay, “She will be building meanwill maintain that role in a ingful relationships within permanent capacity. the apartment complex and McCay has served as interim strengthening Riverview’s executive director of The New connections with our Riverview, an independent  Jennifer McCay living facility for seniors, Photo courtesy of community partners. the New Riverview “During Jen’s interim term, since July 5, following the she worked to continue the slow reopening departure of longtime executive director, of activities and events in light of COVID. Hannah Steiner.

She’s also been vital in implementing a McCay has spent most of her professional number of tenant-centric programs like ‘ A sk career working for the JAA, beginning in 1996 in its nursing department and, until the Nurse.’” PJC transitioning to The New Riverview, as the executive assistant to the president and CEO. — Toby Tabachnick

Rabbi Jessica Locketz Parshat Terumah | Exodus 25:1 - 27:19

H

ave you ever tried to assemble a piece of furniture without a picture of the final product? Or a puzzle without knowing what the completed image will be? While some may like the challenge of the unknown, for most it is difficult to proceed without an idea of what the ultimate creation is supposed to look like. The result?

What we end up building may not have been the intended outcome at all. That leads to the question: Does it really matter?

In this week’s Torah portion, Terumah, we read, “And let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them. Exactly as I show you — the pattern of the Tabernacle and the pattern of all its furnishings — so shall you make it” (Exodus 25:8-9). God wants the people to build a holy space for the divine presence and sets forth a lengthy and detailed description for the Tabernacle and its furnishings. For comparison’s sake, the passage in Genesis that retells the creation of the world is only 34 verses long and does not include much description. Here, however, the passage is nearly three times as long and specifies dimensions, building materials, decorative fabrics and the like.

Why all the detail? In Genesis, God created alone. There was no need for an elaborate plan. Here, it is a different story. The Tabernacle is to be the work of many people; from bringing the building materials to doing the actual construction, many individuals will be a part of the process. Therefore, God’s plans had to be clear enough for others to understand what had to be done.

But did the Israelites know exactly what they were creating? The text implies that Moses was shown God’s vision for the Tabernacle. It was, after all, meant to be an earthly replica of heavenly constructions. In theory, God could have shown an already existing structure and instructed the people to copy it, but there is no clear evidence that Moses was given an actual blueprint or image.

Instead, he was shown a detailed description of the finished product. Since the instruction was given in pieces, the people must have had conversations about the size and quality of the objects they were asked to build, uncertain

how it would all come together. When it was finished, perhaps it matched the divine image exactly, but maybe it didn’t. Was it built to the correct specs? Was it symmetrical? Did all the fabrics woven together match perfectly?

Did it really matter?

It does matter if the goal was perfection, a Tabernacle built exactly according to God’s specifications. It matters if the goal was to create the perfect dwelling for God’s presence. It matters if we dismiss all the factors that led up to that final product — the creativity of the builders, the unique gifts of the people, the camaraderie as both tried to interpret God’s words and intentions.

It matters if these verses describe only the physical Tabernacle that will be carried by the Israelites throughout their journey.

But there is more to it than that. These verses cannot just be about the tangible, physical nature of the Tabernacle, the ark constructed and carefully adorned, designed to carry the tablets of the Covenant at Sinai. Yes, this is meant to be where God dwells, God’s “home” if you will. And yet, we don’t truly believe that God can only be in one place; God is everywhere, and in everyone. Therefore, these verses must go beyond the physical and include the metaphorical Tabernacle as well.

The challenge is not only to build physical dwellings for God, such as the Tabernacle or a sanctuary, but also to build sacred space for God within our hearts. It has been suggested that the difference between the shorter and simpler description of the work of Creation and the longer, more detailed passage here reflects this difficulty. It was certainly not easy for the Israelites to build such a complex structure in the wilderness. It is not easy for us either — to make room for God in ourselves.

But the Israelites did the work and so must we.

For a piece of furniture, it is important to build the right thing so it lasts. For a puzzle, one needs to know if it is complete, if all the pieces fit together as they should. In our Torah text, it is not necessarily the completed Tabernacle that connects us, but rather, it is the process of creating holy space together, a place for God’s sheltering presence to dwell among us and within each of us. That is what really matters. PJC Rabbi Jessica Locketz is a rabbi and educator in Pittsburgh. This column is a service of the Greater Pittsburgh Rabbinic Association.

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Obituaries BERMAN: Howard M. Berman of Rockville, Maryland, formerly of Pittsburgh, on Jan. 28, 2022. Born on May 1, 1936, in Pittsburgh, he was the son of the late Jacob and Sara Berman and brother of the late Stanley Berman (Marilyn). He was the beloved husband of the late Zenita Miller Berman, and beloved father of Amy B. Hahn (Mark) and the late Ellen R. Berman. He was the beloved grandfather of Jennifer Hahn (Gavin

McNiven), Sylvia Hahn, Luis Hahn (Rachel Aebig Hahn), and Marco Hahn (Bianca Matira) and the beloved uncle of Michael Berman, Perry Berman, Brad Miller and the late Lee Miller.

He is also survived by his companion Robin Schwartzman. A graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, he was a biochemist and worked in the research labs of the Veterans Administration Hospital in Pittsburgh until 1971. He then

worked in research grant administration for the Veterans Administration in Washington, D.C. and then the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. He loved to travel and visited many interesting and exotic places around the world with his wife, Zenita, and then with his companion, Robin. He was a fan of the Pitt Panthers and Pittsburgh Steelers,

Penguins and Pirates. He was a member of Tikvat Israel Synagogue in Rockville, Maryland.

Services at Ralph Schugar Chapel, Inc. were held on Tuesday, Feb. 1, 2022, at 10 a.m. Interment at Shaare Torah Cemetery, Pittsburgh.

Contributions in his memory may be made to the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust (sheldrickwild lifetrust.org/) or to the charity of one’s choice. schugar.com PJC

Diker:

Mahmoud Abbas, Arafat’s deputy and current PLO and P.A. chairman, has continued Arafat’s legacy of labeling Israel an apartheid state, as was evident in his U.N. address in September.

The Amnesty report’s condemnation of Israel’s reestablishment in 1948 as a “system of oppression and domination” and “segregation” of Palestinians is also reminiscent of Abbas’ attempt in 2016 to sue Great Britain for its sponsorship of the 1917 Balfour Declaration and later by the Council of the League of Nations, which reaffirmed the historic connection of the Jewish people in “Palestine” and their right to “reconstitute” their national home there.

Abbas and the Palestinian leadership’s decades-old rejection of Jewish sovereignty fits neatly with the Amnesty report. It further echoes a statement last month by BDS leader Omar Barghouti, who has led the international campaign to eliminate Israel from the region. Barghouti reiterated that “Israel cannot be, as a settler-colonial apartheid state ... [it] cannot be a normal part of this region.”

The Amnesty indictment of Israel has unmasked the organization once again as a racist agency that engages in anti-Jewish bigotry in the name of human rights. This time around, its “findings” reflect, both in letter and in spirit, the 60-year-old PLO

eliminationist strategy of criminalizing and racializing Israel as a colonialist entity since its reestablishment in 1948.

Amnesty, like the PLO, continues to work toward their shared final solution: the cancellation of the one and only democratic Jewish majority nation-state, and its replacement with a 23rd Muslim-majority Arab state of “Palestine.” PJC

Continued from page 12

coalesced. The language, intent and much of the content in the Amnesty report reflect the PLO’s revolutionary strategy, based on its 1968 charter and later on its 1974 “plan of stages.”

Fast forward to 2001. Arafat mainstreamed his strategy at the first U.N.-sanctioned “World Conference against Racism,” hosted in Durban, South Africa. He and his nephew, the Palestinian Authority’s U.N. envoy, Nasser al Qudwa, guided the Durban NGO forum to declare Israel a “racist” and “apartheid” state.

Efroni: Continued from page 13

When my brother’s turn comes, he excuses himself to go to the bathroom for a moment.

My sister says he’s going to Google the prices of the expensive set and consult his wife on what to take. I ask him if he’s going to do a number one or a number two because we don’t have all day.

After all the good sets are handed out, my mom serves us soup on her everyday dishes.

My brother says the silverware is already his so we’d better be careful with the spoons. I say the used napkins are mine, so they’d better not dare throw them away. My mother remembers the linen napkins and asks if I would like to see them. “For God’s sake, why can’t we do this after a ‘hundred and twenty’ like normal people?” My mother replies that after a “hundred and twenty,” it’s just a division of property, but before a “hundred and twenty,” it’s a gift. And she’s more about the giving.

And also it’s the stories that come with it.

We are silent.

I looked up and saw my family sitting around the table and chattering like we did

when we were kids when no one thought about a “hundred and twenty.” Suddenly I did want to see my mother’s embroidered linen napkins, but I was too embarrassed to ask.

Then my dad asked who wanted his sweater. And we laughed again. I asked what else he had in the closet, and my mom said, “Oh, the closets! Let’s do a round of cabinets now so you’ll have where to put the dishes after a “hundred and twenty,’” and we said forget about it, we’re going home.

That night my mother called. It was already late and my heart jumped a little.

“What’s wrong, Eema?” I asked.

“When we put the dishes back in the cupboards a cup fell and broke. I think it’s from your set, Ruthie, I’m sorry.”

“Which set?” I asked.

“The very delicate china — thin, like a napkin,” she said.

“Oh, don’t worry about it,” I said. “It’s no big deal, thank God — that’s my sister’s set.” PJC Ruth Efroni, a writer, is head of TV content at Green Productions, a film and video production company. This piece first appeared on The Times of Israel.

Dan Diker is a senior research fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

He is director of the Project to Counter BDS and Political Warfare. This piece first appeared on JNS.

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19

Headlines Stevens: Continued from page 4

I’ve learned a lot about the Jewish religion in the background,” he said.

The South Hills resident said he’ll most miss interacting with the congregation’s members.

“I love these people like they are my own family,” he said. “It’s been really emotional for me.”

Those feelings are reciprocated in the Beth El community.

Ilene Cohen said Stevens ingratiated himself into her family’s lore during Thanksgiving 1997.

Each Thanksgiving, Cohen said, her entire extended family would gather together to celebrate — a tradition that extended back to 1921 when her great-grandfather, who immigrated in 1913, and his daughters were reunited in the United States.

In 1997, Cohen’s mother was ill but still wanted to celebrate the holiday with her family. A decision was made to have their meal catered and to host the dinner at Beth El. There was only one problem: an employee would have to be in the building during the meal.

Stevens was asked and initially declined.

But when he learned that it was for Cohen’s

Actress: Continued from page 16

life,” Suskauer said. “We bake challah together and talk about Judaism. She’s the reason I’m a strong Jewish woman.”

The actress misses attending Shabbat services with her family but has found other ways to embrace Judaism while on tour, she said.

mother, knowing how ill the matriarch had been, he decided to work on the holiday.

“He was willing to leave his family so we could all be together on Thanksgiving,” Cohen said. “He knew my mom was really sick.”

Cohen’s mother died the following Monday.

Rabbi Alex Greenbaum said clichés were written to honor Stevens.

“I don’t think they make Bills anymore,” Greenbaum said. “They broke the mold.

I’ve always said they could run the synagogue without me, and they did for a year before I got here, but they could not run it without Bill.”

Stevens knows every nook and cranny of the building, Greenbaum said, and he was a constant presence at the synagogue.

“I come in early in the morning and he’s here. I leave late at night and he’s here. He’s the most reliable person I’ve ever known,” Greenbaum said, before noting that he considered Stevens a true friend.

Stevens taught Greenbaum a valuable lesson when he first came to the congregation, the rabbi said.

“I was young, and I’d complain about having to get up and come to work,” Greenbaum said. “He corrected me and said that work was a privilege. He always looked at it as a gift. I started looking at the world in the same way. It wasn’t just lip service with him, he really believed it.”

Greenbaum said that Stevens was such a trusted member of the community that parents had no issue with him looking after their children, a claim Cathy Schuster confirmed.

When their youngest son, now 28, was 5, the family took two cars to the synagogue for Rosh Hashanah. After services ended the family split into their two vehicles to head home.

“When we got home, we realized that neither of us had taken our youngest son,” Schuster said. “This was before cellphones; we were in a panic. The synagogue didn’t answer their phone on yontifs. I remember making a terrifying ride back. I got there, there were no cars in the parking lot, everyone has gone. I go into the building and there is Bill. He and our son Ben are stacking chairs. I go up to Bill, and said, ‘I don’t know how we did this.’

He said, ‘I knew you’d come back for him.’”

Susan Seletz, Beth El’s president, said the congregation, which has been holding Shabbat services online due to COVID-19 concerns, hosted “A Shabbat to Say Goodbye to Bill Stevens” on Jan. 15.

“It was a very teary moment,” she said. “He really, really means a lot and has very much been part of the fabric of Beth El for 25 years.”

Seletz said that Steven’s care extended beyond the building.

“When my parents were still in their

“During Chanukah, I bought this little hanukkiah, and I would light the candles every night,” she said. “There are only a few Jewish people in our company, one of them being our leading man and Broadway legend Adam Pascal, who made this cute little Chanukah video with me.”

Suskauer said she isn’t sure what she’ll do when “Pretty Woman” concludes its tour. What isn’t in question, though, is her

commitment to Judaism.

“I am a Jew,” she said. “Every day that I wake up, every day that I walk outside, every time I talk to someone, I become more and more Jewish. There is no question about that.”

And if she isn’t sure what theater role comes next; for now, she’s happy to realize the ambitions of that Temple Beth David preschool graduate.

Jewish Stars down the Ohio The tombstones of Anna and Isaac Finesman are symbols of the two Jewish communities of Weirton and Steubenville. Side by side, with burials in the B’nai Israel Cemetery in Steubenville and the synagogues long closed, it is a privilege for the JCBA to now maintain these sacred grounds.

For more information about JCBA cemeteries, to volunteer, to read our complete histories and/or to make a contribution, please visit our website at www.JCBApgh.org, email us at jcbapgh@gmail.com, or call the JCBA office at 412-553-6469

house,” she remembered, “they would go to Florida for a month every winter. They arranged with him, because he’s such a sweetheart. He would always go to their house if they weren’t there. He would shovel their driveway. He was always just taking care of them. He often volunteered to help people.”

Chris Benton, Beth El’s current executive director, said that Stevens’ retirement is a profound loss for the congregation.

“Beyond caring for the building and leading our custodial team, Bill has been part of our communal sorrows and simchas for over 25 years,” she said. “Personally, Bill has been a true partner as I began my role of Beth El.” Stevens, 63, said he doesn’t have a game plan for the next few years but he and his grown children — two daughters and one son — think it’s the right time to retire.

While he might not be in the building daily anymore, Stevens said he’ll value the relationships he’s formed.

“I walked in here and after the first month I could tell you this was the place I wanted to be,” he said. “If you asked me if I knew I would retire from here, I honestly couldn’t tell you that, but this is my home. They treat me like family.” PJC David Rullo can be reached at drullo@ pittsburghjewishchroncile.org.

“My dreams and goals have started to come true,” Suskauer said. “It’s so thrilling and validating. I just turned 23, and it’s very cool and surreal. I think about that little 4-year-old girl, so full of dreams, she was very confident. I’m trying to tap into that little girl at 23.” PJC David Rullo can be reached at drullo@ pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.

10/27 defendant wants charges dismissed, argues unfair composition of grand jury

T

he man charged with murdering 11 Jews in the Tree of Life building on Oct. 27, 2018, is arguing that the charges against him should be dismissed, or that he should be granted a new grand jury to consider his indictment, because minority groups were not adequately represented on the jury which indicted him three years ago, according to a report by the Tribune-Review.

Specifically, the defendant argues that Black and Hispanic people were underrepresented in the jury pool, and that the grand jury that indicted him was all white.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty in this case.

The defense motion, filed Dec. 7 and

unsealed on Jan. 24, cites a study on death penalty cases that purports to show that “in the absence of Black male jurors, capital punishment was imposed in nearly 72% of cases where it was sought versus in nearly 43% when at least one Black man was on the jury,” the Tribune-Review reported.

Prosecuting attorneys responded that the defendant is not entitled to any relief because he cannot show “systemic underrepresentation” of minority groups in the Western District of Pennsylvania.

Senior U.S. District Judge Donetta Ambrose has not yet ruled on the motion. PJC — Toby Tabachnick

www.pittsburghjewishchronicle.org

JCBA’s expanded vision is made possible by a generous grant from the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh’s Jewish Community Foundation

20 FEBRUARY 4, 2022

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Life & Culture Coming to Broadway this spring, a bevy of Jewish themes and writers — THEATER —

By Mervyn Rothstein | The Forward

This story was originally published on Jan. 26 by the Forward. rom Richard Rodgers’ melodic music to Arthur Miller’s tragic dramas to Stephen Sondheim’s brilliant scores, Jewish artists have been essential contributors to Broadway theater.

This year’s spring season is a testament to that legacy, with a list that includes Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning Jewish playwrights and librettists. I talked to three: Harvey Fierstein, a winner of multiple Tonys who has revised the book for the first-ever Broadway revival of “Funny Girl”; Paula Vogel, who is reexamining her Pulitzer Prize-winning play “How I Learned to Drive” for its 25th anniversary and its Broadway debut; and Richard Greenberg, whose 2003 Tony Award-winning play “Take Me Out” tells of what happens when a Major League Baseball player comes out as gay.

First premiering in 1964, “Funny Girl” tells the partly biographical story of Fanny Brice.

The daughter of Hungarian Jewish immigrants, Brice rose from the tenements of the Lower East Side to show business fame in the Ziegfeld Follies in the first decades of the 20th century — only to languish in a doomed relationship with an infamous gambler. In the original production, Brice was portrayed

by Barbra Streisand, who soared to stardom from Flatbush, the then-Jewish neighborhood where she grew up. The revival’s star is Beanie Feldstein, whose movie credits include “Lady Bird” and “Booksmart.”

While critics raved about Streisand, they were much less enthusiastic about the musical’s book. “I don’t think it was ever really a classic book,” Fierstein, 67, said in a recent telephone interview. “I think they sort of gave up after Act One and just made it a Barbra Streisand concert for Act Two. It had its problems.”

So what has he done to improve things?

“When you rewrite, when you reshape, when you come in like this, the idea is to not give up any of the stuff that people want to see.

You’re coming in to fix something and hopefully not leave fingerprints, so that nobody really knows what it is you did.”

Asked what exactly he’s changed, Fierstein said, “I’ve restructured it somewhat, taken a song out, added a song, moved things around, but in such a way that you will get every thrill that you want from what you remember. There are things that have never been in ‘Funny Girl’ before that hopefully will be delightful.”

“It’s a terrific show, ” he said. “That score is such a fabulous score” — it includes the classic Streisand hit “People” — “and it’s a good-hearted show. It’s a heartbreaking relationship between two people who really wanted something to work out and it didn’t.”

Why has it taken so long for a Broadway revival — and why is now the right time? “The show has had its problems and nobody really felt like taking it on,” Fierstein said. “But we did. We did it in London. I rewrote the show

F

22 FEBRUARY 4, 2022

p Billy Crystal Photo by Gage Skidmore, creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>,

via Wikimedia Commons

p Havey Fierstein Photo by David Shankbone, creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>,

via Wikimedia Commons

and we put it up at the Menier Chocolate Factory where it was a huge hit. And we moved it to the Savoy Theater and then we took it on tour and then the plan was to bring it to New York. But then the pandemic hit and it delayed everything. But here we are now.”

“Funny Girl” was originally composed

by Jule Styne, with the lyrics by Bob Merrill and a libretto by Isobel Lennart. The revival’s director is the Tony-winning Michael Mayer (known for “Spring Awakening”), completing the all-Jewish creative team.

Fierstein, who has won four Tony awards in four different categories, played the iconic Jewish storyteller Tevye in the 2004 revival of “Fiddler on the Roof.” His Jewish heritage, he said, shows in the way that he thinks, in the way that he writes — being Jewish “figures into it all.”

“I was born and grew up in Bensonhurst,” he said, referring to the Brooklyn neighborhood. “I lived Jew-centric, because on one corner was the Jewish Community House and on the opposite corner was the Yeshiva of Bensonhurst. The rabbi walked past my house six times a day. I grew up in a household that spoke Yiddish. My mother and her friends rolled bandages for the Israel Defense Fund in the basement and for cancer care, and there was a woman with the tattooed numbers on her arm from the Sobibor concentration camp, so I grew up with that reality of the inhumanity against the Jews.”

Sure, he’s also an atheist. But as he sees it, that has nothing to do with his Jewish identity. “I’m a very Jewish person. Somebody said to me, ‘How can you be Jewish and an atheist?’ I said, ‘I guess you’ve never really met Jews.’” He laughed. “Because if you took three rabbis and put them in a room together, one of them would be an atheist.

Just so they could have a conversation.”

Paula Vogel’s “How I Learned to Drive” won a Pulitzer Prize when it premiered Off Broadway in 1997. Now the show, which explores a sexually abusive relationship between a young woman and her uncle, is making its Broadway debut with its original stars, Mary-Louise Parker and David Morse, and its original director, Mark Brokaw.

Vogel, 70, whose father was Jewish, is no stranger to Jewish themes. Her recent play “Indecent” riffed on Sholem Asch’s “God of

Vengeance,” an early-20th century play about a daughter of a Jewish brothel keeper who falls in love with one of her father’s prostitutes.

Like the iconic “How I Learned to Drive,” the play frankly addresses topics that are hard to talk about. Indeed, theater theorist Jill Dolan has noted that Vogel gravitates toward “sensitive, difficult, fraught issues.” Vogel, reached by phone for an interview, agreed.

“I think that’s true of every artist,” the playwright said. “This is what theater is made for — for us as a community, to examine the fraught issues that are hurting us.”

And this, she said, is where her father’s Jewish heritage has influenced her as a playwright and as a person. “What I knew from my father’s side of the family is that all topics were ripe for conversation at the dinner table.

No topic was barred. The whole purpose of having dinner was actually to have the arguments and the conversation. The food was nice too. But just this notion that if something is troubling us we need to examine it, we need to talk about it, we need to look at what our values are. And then we need to take action.”

Vogel is thrilled by this revival of “How I Learned to Drive,” noting that female playwrights rarely see their work revived during their lifetimes.

“Rather than doing this as a revival, we are doing it as a reexamination,” she said.

“We’re going to get back into the room, and we’re going to apply and share the insights and experiences we’ve had as artists and as human beings living in this world for the last 25 years.”

While 2022 is very different from 1997, the play’s central preoccupations will still ring true with modern audiences, Vogel said. “In a way, this is asking us to reexamine as audience members what I’m afraid never goes away, which is the use of sex as a kind of power — as an obsessional power.”

Richard Greenberg’s “Take Me Out” is another revival with modern themes. “When we first started talking about reviving ‘Take Me Out’ — it was several years before it happened — I thought, this is great,” Greenberg, 63, said in a telephone interview.

“It will be a diagnostic or an image of how far we’ve come. And then things happened, and people started saying to me things like, ‘It’s so relevant now again.’And I thought, that’s

PITTSBURGH JEWISH CHRONICLE

good for me but terrible for the world.”

“I didn’t expect it to have the relationship to the present it does,” Greenberg added.

“When we first did the play I thought we’d better do it quickly because there will undoubtedly be an active Major League Baseball player who comes out any minute now. And that still hasn’t happened. And the sort of fascistic trend in this country was not something I was expecting back then. And the kind of astonishing bald-faced racism.”

How has his Jewish heritage influenced his life, his writing, the way he looks at the world? “It’s probably not quantifiable, but it’s pervasive,” he said. “We were quite secular.

I did have a bar mitzvah. But all of history courses through us. And my parents, my family, were absolutely Jews.”

“There was the sound of the way they talked,” he said. “They were either first- or second-generation children of immigrants.

And you could hear it in the wit. You could hear it in the language. You could hear it in the constructions. You could hear it in the sprinkling of Yiddish that was supposed to keep me ignorant but didn’t, because I figured out what they were saying. The sound of the way the people I grew up with spoke has been going out of the world, and sometimes I’ve written plays just because I wanted to hear it again.”

A revival of Neil Simon’s 1968 comedy hit, “Plaza Suite,” starring husband-and-wife team Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker, will also debut this spring. In the three-act play, three couples, portrayed by Broderick and Parker, occupy the same Plaza Hotel suite at different times. John Benjamin Hickey is the director.

For Simon, who died in 2018, almost everything he wrote was implicitly, if not explicitly, Jewish. The speech patterns and rhythms, subject matter and concerns of his work were New York Jewish, as was he, so much that he once said Jewishness was “so deeply embedded in me and so inherent in me that I am unaware of its quality.”

Billy Crystal, who hails from Long Island, stars in and co-wrote the libretto for “Mr. Saturday Night,” the new musical version of Crystal’s 1992 comedy-drama film about the troubled life of a stand-up comedian. Music is by three-time Tony winner Jason Robert Brown and lyrics by Tony nominee Amanda Green.

The revival of David Mamet’s 1975 “American Buffalo,” about a junk shop, the American dream, American greed and a buffalo nickel, will star Laurence Fishburne, Sam Rockwell and Darren Criss.

Mamet won a Pulitzer Prize in 1984 for “Glengarry Glen Ross.”

These revivals all differ from their originals in one big way: They’re all premiering in a world plagued by coronavirus. Commenting on the situation, Vogel put what felt like a very Jewish emphasis on community.

“In the midst of COVID, plays need to give us a journey that’s collective,” Vogel said. “We’ve been isolated. We’ve been bearing the trauma and isolation alone. And to come together as an audience and have a common journey, where we go through the dark and enter into the light, I hope is going to be uplifting.” PJC PITTSBURGHJEWISHCHRONICLE.ORG

Community Nonprofit security grant

That’s cool and hot

The Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh hosted elected officials on Jan. 27 to announce $4.5 million in statewide funding to support the security of nonprofit organizations, including faith-based groups. The funding provides grants through the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency through Pennsylvania Act 83 of 2019.

10th-grade chemistry students from Hillel Academy of Pittsburgh visited the Pittsburgh Glass Center on Jan. 27. The visit provided students an opportunity to observe physical and chemical changes after learning about the topics in class.

p From left: Tali Kisilinsky, Tahara Reinherz, Gabby Reichman and Ayala Sahel Photo courtesy of Tahara Reinherz

Big discoveries at Community Day School p From left: Hank Butler, executive director, the Pennsylvania Jewish Coalition; Rep. Dan Frankel (D-23rd Pa. House District); Laura Cherner, director, Jewish Federation Community Relations Council; Sen. Kim Ward (R-39th Pa. House District, majority leader); Sen. Jay Costa (D-43rd Pa. Senate Dist., senate minority leader); and Jeffrey H. Finkelstein, president and CEO, Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh

Community Day School Middle School students participated in the 2022 CDS Science Fair, demonstrating grit, determination, creative inquiry, scientific knowledge, passion and communication skills for an expert panel of judges.

Photo courtesy of Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh

Kingpins Temple David Weiger Religious School students went bowling on Jan. 30.

p Curiosity is rewarding.

p From left: Arin, Gabby, Natalie and CJ Keough

p Science fair judge Eric Miller, left, listens to seventh-grader Benji Smuckler Photos courtesy of Community Day School

Macher and Shaker

Jeffrey Letwin was reelected to another term as chairman of the Port Authority of Allegheny County. Letwin is special counsel at Saul Ewing LLP. Photo courtesy of Port Authority

p From left: Mya Schloer, Sara Pechersky and Rosalie Moltz Photos courtesy of Rabbi Barbara Symons

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FEBRUARY 4, 2022

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