Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle 1-20-23

Holocaust Center opens ‘Revolving Doors’ exhibit at Chatham

Worthington man removes Nazi imagery from Beaver billboard, remains defiant

hen visitors first enter the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh’s Gallery at Chatham University, they are confronted by a large Torah scroll under glass. That is purposeful, according to Lauren Bairnsfather, the Holocaust Center’s executive director.

“Rabbi Jeffrey Myers [rabbi of Tree of Life

Congregation] said that Judaism has survived for thousands of years because it is portable,” Bairnsfather said. “That book tells us what we need to know. You can roll it up and take it with you. This survived antisemitic attacks. It survived migration. It gives me hope.”

It is also an apt physical metaphor for the Holocaust Center’s newest exhibit — the first in

By David Rullo | Sta Writer

Last weekend, John Placek removed a slide of a swastika from a digital billboard he owns located on the corner of Route 422 and Bonniebrook Road in Summit Township. The swastika had been placed next to the words “FBI CORRUPT & DANGEROUS THE GESTAPO.”

The Worthington businessman said that he heard from a friend that a local Holocaust survivor found the imagery upsetting.

“My intent was not to offend anybody or create grief and hardship for people or bad memories,” Placek said. “So, what I did was — out of respect for her — I removed it.”

Placek’s decision to remove the swastika concerned only this particular billboard at this particular time, he told the Chronicle. When asked if he would commit to no longer using Nazi imagery on his billboards, Placek replied: “I’m not saying that.”

The billboard owner said that he would do whatever was necessary to get “the word of

A tree created by a local artists, surrounded by yahrzeit candles, after the Oct. 27, 2018, massacre in Pittsburgh

Photo by David Rullo

 A business owner removed Nazi imagery from his billboard after complaints from a Holocaust survivor.

Photo by Natalie Byers

New Greenfield campus — and wellness — showcased at Yeshiva Schools event

By Justin Vellucci | Special to the Chronicle

Alocal day school’s focus on a “wellness culture” is leading to its second mental health and wellness-focused livestream in as many years.

Yeshiva Schools of Pittsburgh will host a fundraiser titled “Wholly Chinuch: Building A Home for Wellness” on Monday, Jan. 30, at the future site of Yeshiva Schools’ boys school in Greenfield.

The dinner for donors and fundraiser

team leaders — which features live entertainment from Tali Yess and a conversation with Orthodox wellness expert Rabbi Shimon Russell — will be followed by a livestream from the Greenfield Avenue campus, according to Masha Shollar, the school’s director of institutional advancement.

This is the second year Yeshiva Schools has kicked off a fundraiser with a livestream but its third year raising money for the Elaine Hashimi Wellness Division, Shollar said. That department, which Yeshiva Schools leadership said is unique among Orthodox Jewish day schools, provides a broad range of programs, from teen mentoring to free therapy.

Last year’s livestream engaged a New York studio team, but this year will focus on Yeshiva Schools’ soon-to-open, new facilities, according to Shollar. It will be broadcast live through media sponsor Chabad Online and, afterward, be posted for wider viewing on YouTube, she said.

Rabbi Yossi Rosenblum, who heads Yeshiva Schools of Pittsburgh, said the Elaine Hashimi Wellness Division isn’t just special among Orthodox communities.

“I think it’s pretty unique to any day school in that it’s integrated,” Rosenblum told the Chronicle.

Rosenblum said there is the work of the wellness division — such as counseling and

training —but that also has led to a “wellness culture” at the school.

He is excited for “Wholly Chinuch.”

“We’re bringing in Rabbi Shimon Russell; he’s a well-known expert in the field and wrote a book called ‘Raising A Loving Family,’” Rosenblum said. “And hopefully we’ll raise some money to support our mission.”

The boys school Greenfield campus, which will be one of the stars of the Jan. 30 fundraiser, is under renovation, Rosenblum said, and should be ready for an August opening to kick off the 2023-’24 school year. PJC

Justin Vellucci is a freelance writer living in Pittsburgh.

Word search puzzles used at Colfax to teach Holocaust

Wein said she was offended “as a parent and as a Jew.”

By Justin Vellucci | Special to the Chronicle

At least one Jewish parent is upset over word searches featuring phrases such as “gas chambers” and “corpses exhumed” that a Pittsburgh Colfax middle school substitute teacher is using to educate students about the Holocaust.

Lindsay Wein said that her Colfax eighthgrader came home with the first word search distributed by a substitute English teacher about two weeks ago. Another followed last week.

The word searches featured simple phrases, like “Jew,” “Nazi” and “Holocaust,” along with more specific ones, such as “slaughtered bystanders” and “Final Solution.” Wein provided the two word searches for the Chronicle to review.

p Word search puzzles distributed at Colfax Images provided by Lindsay Wein

“I just thought it was odd they were giving them a word search — I felt a word search was very inappropriate material for teaching the Holocaust,” said Wein, a

Squirrel Hill mother of four. “There’s tons of teaching resources online. I mean, we’re in Squirrel Hill, for God’s sake. … It struck me as really wrong.”

Colfax is not supposed to use word searches “for any part of the middle-school instructional practices, nor is the material a part of the school district’s curriculum or intervention program,” Pittsburgh Public Schools spokesperson Ebony Pugh told the Chronicle.

“The Pittsburgh Public Schools is committed to ensuring students access culturally responsive materials that validate and affirm their cultural and ethnic identities,” Pugh said. “The substitute teacher is receiving additional school-based and district-level support related to culturally responsive teaching following the incident.”

Wein isn’t fully satisfied.

“This is bigger than just me,” she told the Chronicle. “This is a whole grade — I don’t even know if this is teaching.” PJC

Justin Vellucci is a freelance writer living in Pittsburgh.

Jim Busis, CEO and Publisher 412-228-4690 jbusis@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org

EDITORIAL

Toby Tabachnick, Editor 412-228-4577 ttabachnick@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org

Andy Gotlieb, Contributing Editor

BOARD OF TRUSTEES

Evan H. Stein, Board Chair Gayle R. Kraut, Secretary

Evan Indianer, Immediate Past Chair Gail Childs, Dan Droz, Malke Steinfeld Frank, Seth Glick, Tammy Hepps, Cátia Kossovsky, David Rush, Charles Saul

GENERAL COUNSEL

Stuart R. Kaplan, Esq.

Adam Reinherz, Staff Writer 412-687-1000 areinherz@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org

David Rullo, Staff Writer 412-687-1047 drullo@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org

ADVERTISING

Phil Durler, Senior Sales Associate 724-713-8874 pdurler@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org

POSTMASTER: Send address change to PITTSBURGH JEWISH CHRONICLE, 5915 BEACON ST., 5TH FLOOR PITTSBURGH, PA 15217 (PERIODICAL RATE POSTAGE PAID AT PITTSBURGH, PA AND AT ADDITIONAL MAILING OFFICES) USPS 582-740

Manuscripts, letters, documents and photographs sent to the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle become the property of this publication, which is not responsible for the

or loss of

The Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle does not endorse the goods or services advertised or covered in its pages and makes no representation to the kashrut of food products and services in said advertising or articles. The publisher is not liable for damages if, for any reason whatsoever, he fails to publish an advertisement or for any error in an advertisement. Acceptance of advertisers and of ad copy is subject to the publisher’s approval. The Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle is not responsible if ads violate applicable laws and the advertiser will indemnify, hold harmless and defend the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle from all claims made by governmental agencies and consumers for any reason based on ads appearing in the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle

‘Paths of the Righteous’ profiles non-Jews making positive impact on Jewish community

By David Rullo | Staff Writer

Ari Mittleman remembers the last Saturday of October 2018 as a punch to the gut.

The Pennsylvania native, who worked for eight years as part of Sen. Bob Casey’s senior staff, was deeply affected by news of the shooting at the Tree of Life building.

“Walking to synagogue with my father, going to a Jewish day school in Allentown, in my worst nightmares, I could have never imagined this would happen,” Mittleman said.

Six months to the day after the massacre at Tree of Life, another terrorist attacked a synagogue in Poway, California. Mittleman remembers that period as a dark time filled with sleepless nights and a search for clarity.

Inspiration came a few weeks later when a Black firefighter visited Mittleman’s community in Maryland to discuss his time as a volunteer putting out wildfires in Israel during his vacation.

That’s when Mittleman realized “there are good, inspiring meaningful actions that are happening by non-Jews that are not household names who are doing it just because it’s the right thing to do,” he said.

Mittleman, who said he never dreamed of being a writer when he was a child, decided to profile eight individuals who have gone above and beyond for the Jewish people. Their stories are featured in his book, “Paths of the Righteous: Stories of Heroism, Humanity and Hope.”

The four men and four women Mittleman profiles include Black, white and Latino people from Africa, Europe and North America, and include a writer, physician, politician and priest, among others.

The book’s premise, Mittleman explained, is that “it’s pretty damn dark out there. FBI and hate crime statistics back that up. So, who are the non-Jewish lights helping out the community?”

Each essay, he said, is a 4,000-to-5,000-word

profile of both the people and their work.

The subjects, Mittleman said, were all people he had heard speak in person or on podcasts or with whom he attended conferences — all of diverse backgrounds.

“There are a lot of great allies of the Jewish community that are deeply spiritual,” he said.

Most of the subjects profiled were everyday people who could have found more lucrative things to do with their careers, Mittleman said. In some cases, they were ostracized for their actions but acted anyway simply because it was the right thing to do.

The author is excited about some of the opportunities the book has provided. He said he will visit the European Parliament to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Jan. 27 and will bring some of those

he profiled along with him.

“It’s going to be pretty wild — a Black firefighter from Broward County, South Florida, a Croatian medical doctor and a German attorney. That’s a bad joke,” he said with a laugh. “It’s going to be interesting seeing these folks who have never met one another but have the same kind of innate values and a certain compass on stage together.”

The book’s lessons, Mittleman said, may sound cliché, but they are true — people have to remain positive, despite the rise in antisemitism.

“Too often, past is prologue, but as we head into the new year, we have to remain positive in these uncertain times,” he said.

Mittleman will discuss “Paths of the Righteous” on Monday, Jan. 23 at the City of Asylum on Pittsburgh’s North Side.

Kelsey Ford, City of Asylum’s director of programs, said the organization is bringing Mittleman to Pittsburgh to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day because the book’s message of building community and supporting one another fit with its mission.

The event will be moderated by Mittleman’s friend Dan Gilman, chief of staff and senior adviser to Duquesne University President Ken Gromley. Before his time at Duquesne, Gilman was former Pittsburgh Mayor William Peduto’s chief of staff.

“We’re really excited to bring all different folks together and to hear Ari and Dan speak about Ari’s book and folks outside the Jewish community stepping up to lend a hand and build cross-culture communities,” Ford said.

The program is free, in person and livestreamed. Tickets are available at cityofasylum.org/program/paths-ofthe-righteous. PJC

David Rullo can be reached at drullo@ pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.

p Ari Mittleman

Photo courtesy of Ari Mittleman

Getting to know: Casey Weiss

By Justin Vellucci | Special to the Chronicle

— LOCAL —

The road hasn’t necessarily been long, but it has been rather busy.

Casey Weiss, the newest assistant principal for fifth- through 12th-graders at Hillel Academy, said the roots of her daily inspi ration date to September 2013, when she started teaching preschoolers at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh.

“Ever since then, I haven’t stopped,” said Weiss, a Squirrel Hill resident who grew up in nearby Shadyside. “I’ve had a lot of energy my whole life. And I feel I don’t work when I’m with kids. It’s corny, but it’s true.”

Keeping track of Weiss — the second-eldest daughter of Jewish community stalwarts Amy and Lou Weiss, and the sister of journalist Bari Weiss — is a job in and of itself.

A firefighter’s wife and mother of two, Weiss spent her last seven years before coming to Hillel this autumn teaching fourth-grade English at Pittsburgh Colfax Elementary School. She also is an adjunct professor at Carlow University in the education department.

At Hillel, she’s quite busy. In addition to teaching seventh-grade boys English, Weiss is crafting a new guidance counseling program, mentoring teachers and creating assessment tools to help streamline processes for kids

when they enter Hillel for the first time. She plans professional development opportunities for Hillel staff and is organizing a summer internship program for its high school students — another thread in her growing web to prepare her students for life after Hillel Academy.

And she is the Yeshiva University Model UN coach for Hillel Academy’s team.

Weiss loves Hillel Academy. It’s no coincidence her two children, Kobi and Maya, are

HOW WE

Equipped with only pencils and rubber bands, eighth graders compete to design and construct the strongest catapult. By following supply and time constraints, students embrace efficiency and creativity in the engineering process.

olled there.

“I think Pittsburgh has an unbelievably diverse Jewish community,” said Weiss, a Community Day School alumnus and a member of the inaugural graduating class of American Hebrew Academy in North Carolina. “And I think it’s amazing at Hillel — there are so many types of Jews here.”

Tamara Sanders-Woods worked alongside Weiss for several years at Pittsburgh Colfax Elementary School, where Sanders-Woods has served as principal for the past eight years.

“She was very good at using data to drive instruction,” Sanders-Woods said of Weiss. “Casey, you don’t have to tell her what to do. She’d just lead things.”

“The kids who had the most need for support [at Colfax], she’d help them during her own lunch — she had a great relationship with the kids, always positive,” Sanders-Woods added.

“She’s a hustler — she just knows how to get the job done and is great with kids,” said Weiss’ cousin, Ben Kander, an entrepreneur who started Welly, a water bottle company, about seven years ago. “She’s fearless, but she has a lot of empathy.”

When Weiss isn’t hustling, she’s taking doctoral-level classes in educational leadership at Duquesne University — she’s about halfway through her doctorate — and recently completed a principal’s certification for K-12 students at Carlow University. She also has a master’s degree in food studies and a

bachelor’s degree in U.S. history from Chatham University.

That educational zeal is tangible. At Hillel, she’s piloting a course in women’s stories in U.S. history, focusing on characters like former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman in America to receive a medical degree.

“There’s been a lot of change in the last four months, I’d say,” Weiss laughed. “Hillel’s an amazing school.”

Weiss also has a fan in Rabbi Sam Weinberg, Hillel Academy’s head of school.

“Casey’s amazing — she’s the best,” Weinberg said. “The way I put it: It’s not every day talented people like Casey fall into Hillel Academy … She’s charismatic, and she cares about the kids. She wants them to do well.”

Weinberg plays down his familiarity with the Weiss family, quipping “Pittsburgh’s a small town and everyone knows everyone.”

But Sanders-Woods took that sentiment a step further. Sanders-Woods said she didn’t know the local involvement of the Weiss family until three years into Weiss’ tenure at Colfax. That made sense, she said.

“Casey wants to establish her own name and her own mark for her life,” she said. “I’d have her back time and time and time again — without hesitation, I’d have her again!” PJC

ENGINEER

BECAUSE “HOW” MATTERS

How will you give your child the tools to engineer success?

Justin Vellucci is a freelance writer living in Pittsburgh.

p Casey Weiss Photo courtesy of Casey Weiss

Supreme Court to hear case on Sabbath observance

By Mike Wagenheim | JNS

The Supreme Court agreed on Jan. 13 to hear a case involving religious accommodations in the workplace.

An appeal in the case of Groff v. DeJoy was filed by Gerald Groff, an Evangelical postal worker who refused to work on Sundays, his sabbath, going so far as to offer to work make-up shifts and to transfer branches in order to maintain his day of rest.

The Pennsylvania man says he was forced from his job in 2019 after the burden was placed on him by the U.S. Postal Service to regularly find replacements following the service’s agreement with Amazon which instituted Sunday deliveries.

The Postal Service deemed this insufficient and multiple disciplinary actions were taken against him. Facing termination, Groff chose to resign.

The appeal asks the high court to overturn a 1977 ruling in the case of Trans World Airlines v. Hardison, which said public and private employers can’t be required under a federal job-discrimination law to bear more than a minimal cost.

Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, as amended in 1972, employers must accommodate their employees’ religious beliefs unless doing so causes an “undue hardship.”

The National Jewish Commission on Law and Public Affairs (COLPA) filed an amicus curiae “friend of the court” brief, written by constitutional scholar Nat Lewin, on behalf of Agudath Israel of America and other Orthodox Jewish organizations.

Lewin wrote that “changes in American society and in the understanding of the Establishment Clause [of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution] justify rejection and repudiation today of a legal rule that perpetrates great injustice and harm on Sunday observing Christians like [the] petitioner and on Jewish, Moslem and Seventh-Day Adventist members of America’s workforce.”

The brief points out that due to the ruling in Hardison, religious employees have a more difficult time receiving legal accommodation than those who request so on the basis of age, gender, disability, sexual orientation, pregnancy or paternity.

Rabbi David Zwiebel, Agudah’s executive vice president, wrote that “the history of American Jewry cannot be told without marking the struggle for Sabbath observance. Due to Hardison, countless people have given up or even lost employment opportunities for jobs for which they were

eminently qualified. ... We urge the Supreme Court to rectify this and protect the religious liberties of Americans in the workforce.”

Groff’s case was initially heard in U.S. district court, where Judge Jeffrey L. Schmehl, a Barack Obama appointee, said Groff had received treatment equal to that of other employees and that Sunday service was critical to the Postal Service’s business. Groff also lost in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

the high court since it last rejected a religious worker’s rights case.

Justice Samuel Alito spoke publicly last summer, controversially claiming that religious liberty is “under attack” in the United States because people don’t value religion enough to afford it special protection. Alito authored a 77-page concurring manifesto in a case last year, claiming that the Free Exercise Clause of the Constitution’s First Amendment demands more protection for

court should consider overruling Hardison.

In September, the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America (Orthodox Union) — the nation’s largest Orthodox Jewish umbrella organization — joined the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists in filing an amicus brief.

Nathan Diament, Orthodox Union executive director for public policy, said at the time, “I grew up hearing stories about Jews having to find a new job every

‘Ordained by God’

“Observing the Sabbath day is critical to many faiths — a day ordained by God,” said Randall Wenger of the Independence Law Center. “No one should be forced to violate the Sabbath to hold a job.”

After the Supreme Court declined to take up similar cases in recent years, the Groff case will be heard in the coming term. Several sitting justices have vocally supported an expansion of faith-based rights. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a conservative justice from a devout Catholic background, was added to

religion against government than case law currently requires.

Justice Neil Gorsuch penned the majority opinion in a case last year backing a public high school football coach who says he was fired for engaging in visible prayer at midfield, overruling decades of precedent on issues of religion and state.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote a 2022 majority opinion which ruled that Maine must pay to subsidize tuition at some religious schools.

Alito, Gorsuch and Justice Clarence Thomas have all previously said the high

Sunday because no business would keep a Jewish worker who observed the Sabbath. It remains true today that too many employers exploit the Supreme Court’s 1977 ruling to refuse to accommodate an employee’s religious practice.”

Diament added that “whether you’re Jewish, Muslim, Christian or any other religion, Americans shouldn’t have to choose between their career and their conscience.”

The named respondent in Groff v. DeJoy is Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a Donald Trump appointee who remains in office under Joe Biden. PJC

p Then Seventh Circuit Judge Amy Coney Barrett speaks at the White House after President Donald Trump’s announcement that he nominated her to succeed the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court, Sept. 26, 2020. Screenshot via JNS

“Observing the Sabbath day is critical to many faiths — a day ordained by God. No one should be forced to violate the Sabbath to hold a job.”

–RANDALL WENGER

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 FRIDAY, JAN. 20 – FEB. 28

ZOA Pittsburgh is now accepting applications for its Scholarship to Israel Program from any local Jewish teen who will be a junior or senior in high school in September of 2023 and is participating in a qualified, structured, study trip to Israel. Applicants will be evaluated on their involvement in Jewish organizations, volunteerism and on an essay about Zionism and Israel. Three $1,000 scholarships will be awarded. Applications will be accepted through Feb. 28. For information and applications, please contact ZOA Executive Director Stuart Pavilack at stuart. pavilack@zoa.org or 304-639-1758.

q SATURDAY, JAN. 21

Join Temple Sinai for a special concert with musician Eliana Light. Great for all ages. Free and open to the public. Registration required. 7 p.m. templesinaipgh.org/event/ElianaLight.

q SUNDAY, JAN. 22

At Chabad of Squirrel Hill’s Bat Mitzvah Club learn about appreciation for our matriarch, Leah, and design your own professional thank you cards. Geared for Jewish girls of all backgrounds in grades 6 and 7. $95 for the year. 4 p.m. 1700 Beechwood Blvd. chabadpgh.com.

q SUNDAYS, JAN. 22 – FEB. 12

Chabad of Squirrel Hill presents the six-week program Jewish Children’s Discovery Center Children will explore captivating stories of our heroic Jewish fathers and mothers and bake delicious desserts that relate to each one. 10:30 a.m. 1700 Beechwood Blvd. $75. chabadpgh.com.

q SUNDAYS, JAN. 22 – MARCH 5

Join a lay-led online Parashah study group to discuss the week’s Torah portion. No Hebrew knowledge 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, JAN. 23

Women are invited to explore meaningful messages from this month’s Torah portion on Zoom at Chabad of Squirrel Hill’s Rosh Chodesh Gathering. 7:30 p.m. Register at chabadpgh.com for Zoom link.

q MONDAYS, JAN. 23; FEB. 6; FEB. 20; MARCH 6

Join the 10.27 Healing Partnership in the South Hills for Arts in the Community, a collaborative series of therapeutic art workshops with JFCS. This art-based mindfulness program is free and open for all who are interested. The group will explore ways making art can help regulate the nervous system, promote playfulness, imagination, and connect us more deeply to our bodies, emotions, thoughts and worldviews. Attendees will come together in community as we explore different art mediums, share our personal experiences, and reflect on how art can influence us all. South Hills JCC, 345 Kane Blvd. Register at forms.gle/qPu933puGg5fQQK2A.

q MONDAYS, JAN. 23 – MARCH 6

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

q MONDAYS, JAN. 23 – MAY 15

Understanding the Torah and what it asks of us is one of the most important things a Jew can learn. But most Torah classes begin in Genesis and never finish the first book. If you want a comprehensive overview of the whole Torah, Torah 1 is the course for you. In

the first year of this two-year Zoom course, Rabbi Danny Schiff will teach Genesis, Exodus and the first half of Leviticus. In the second year, he will complete Leviticus and cover Numbers and Deuteronomy. $225. 9:30 a.m. foundation.jewishpgh.org/torah-1.

q TUESDAYS, JAN. 24 – FEB. 7

Join Emily Harris from Spirited Fun Improv, AgeWell, and the 10.27 Healing Partnership for a series of four safe and lively events where participants can stay curious, build friendships and lighten up. Improv is PLAY – in a supportive, lighthearted space. 12:30 p.m. JCC of Greater Pittsburgh, Third Floor, 10.27 Healing Partnership Suite. To register, contact Maddie Barnes at mbarnes@jccpgh.org at 412-697-1186.

q TUESDAYS, JAN. 24 – MARCH 7

Join Temple Sinai for a weekly Talmud class with Rabbi Daniel Fellman. Noon. On site and online. For more information and for the Zoom link, contact Temple Sinai at 412-421-9715.

q WEDNESDAY, JAN. 25

Learn how to use the technique of Mindfulness Doodling to process emotions, slow down and calm your nervous system in a creative way. Facilitated by Lauren Braunn. 11 a.m. 10.27 Healing Partnership Suite, 5738 Forbes Ave., Pittsburgh, PA 15217. To register, visit forms.gle/KEmP3yzeP9Ycw9nu6.

Enjoy a tasty lunch while exploring meaningful messages from the month of Shvat at Chabad of Squirrel Hill’s Lunch and Learn. noon. $18. 1700 Beechwood Blvd. chabadpgh.com.

q WEDNESDAYS, JAN. 25; FEB. 8, 22

Hadassah Greater Detroit invites you to “Beyond Shtisel: A Closer Look at the Hasidic World,” a fourpart virtual series learning about different Hasidic communities, discussing some provocative issues, and viewing videos of Hasidim in their home environments. Gain an understanding of what the life of Hasidim is really like. 7 p.m. $10 per session or $35 for all four sessions. hadassahmidwest.org/GDShtisel.

q WEDNESDAYS, JAN. 25-MARCH 2

Join Chabad of the South Hills for “Book Smart,” a six-part page-turner that courses through Judaism’s most important titles and the authors who inscribed them. From the Five Books of Moses to the 63 tractates of the Talmud, Book Smart proves that we are called the People of the Book for a reason. 7:20 p.m. At Chabad of the South Hills, 1701 McFarland Road or Zoom. chabadsh.com/civicrm/event/info.

q WEDNESDAYS, JAN. 25-APRIL 19

Participate in weekly gentle yoga with a skilled and caring yoga instructor experienced in trauma-informed care. Experience an hour of gentle and calming yoga and learn yoga you can do at home and in stressful situations, including while seated. 3 p.m. 10.27 Healing Partnership suite inside the Squirrel Hill JCC. Facilitated by Susie Balcom, and open to everyone. Register here: https://forms.gle/JQtgrutJyByaMM5K6.

q FRIDAY, JAN. 27

Join Chabad of the South Hills for Friday Night Live, a new and refreshing Shabbat experience for everyone — families, couples, singles, young and old. Traditional and easy to follow for newcomers and the experienced, alike. Learn the “how tos” of praying and sing along to the melodies. Followed by Kiddush and an array of cocktails and traditional dishes of different themes, international tastes and aromas. 5:30 p.m. 1701 McFarland Road. chabadsh.com.

q SUNDAY, JAN. 29

With a combination of classroom learning and active chugim (electives), the Joint Jewish Education Program religious school teaches the fullness of our heritage in a fun, joyful and

personal way. Come see what they’re all about at their open house and info session. Open to all prospective families with children entering grades K-8. 10:30 a.m. Rodef Shalom Congregation, 4905 Fifth Ave. jjep.org.

The Jewish Genealogy Society of Pittsburgh and the Rauh Jewish Archives at the Heinz History Center presents “Share and Share Alike: The Rules of Genealogical Privacy” with Judy G. Russell. Register online. Free for JGS-Pittsburgh members; $5 for general public. 1 p.m. For more information, contact the Rauh Jewish Archives at rjarchives@heinzhistorycenter.org.

Gather with other teen girls from the neighborhood for Chabad of Squirrel Hill’s Teen Cooking Club. Bake desserts for Our Giving Kitchen, a local organization that offers food for those in need. 3:30 p.m. chabadpgh.com.

Join Temple Sinai and award-winning author Lisa Barr on Zoom to discuss her book, “Woman on Fire.” 6 p.m. Free. Register at templesinaipgh.org/event/LisaBarr.html.

q MONDAY, JAN. 30

Join Beth El Congregation of the South Hills for an evening with award-winning author and expert on antisemitism Jud Newborn. He will discuss the topic “The White Rose Anti-Nazi Resistance and Heroes Today in the Fight for Democracy.” The event will begin with a wine and cheese reception, followed by the lecture. Virtual options are available. 7 p.m. 1900 Cochran Road, 15220. Free. forms.gle/xeMTmZ3ZBfQqshzh9.

q WEDNESDAY, FEB. 1

Join the 10.27 Healing Partnership for Wellness Wednesday, a rotating series of wellness practitioners including meditation practitioners, acupuncturists, reiki-infused sound bathing, somatic healing, vibro-acoustic harp therapy, and more. 6:30 p.m. 10.27 Healing Partnership suite on the third floor of the Squirrel Hill JCC, 5738 Forbes Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15217. 1027healingpartnership.org.

q THURSDAY, FEB. 2

Women are invited to bake grape-shaped challahs in honor of Tu B’Shvat at Chabad of Squirrel Hill’s Loaves of Love. $10. 7 p.m. 1700 Beechwood Blvd. chabadpgh.com.

q THURSDAY, FEB. 2; MARCH 2; APRIL 6; MAY 4; JUNE 1

Join local clergy from Jewish and Christian backgrounds for the Christian Jewish Dialogue, a monthly discussion exploring topics of similarities and differences. Noon. Rodef Shalom Congregation. rodefshalom.org.

q THURSDAY, FEB. 2 & 16; MARCH 2 & 23; APRIL 13 & 27

This bimonthly Refaeinu healing circle is led by Sara Stock Mayo, a spiritual leader, trained drama therapist, musician and poet. The space will be open to anyone who seeks to create community in shared healing rituals, Jewish texts and music, art making and embodied wellness practices. 10.27 Healing Partnership Suite, JCC of Greater Pittsburgh. 7 p.m. To register, visit forms.gle/pAJoXvNXSJ9Ks3ow9.

q SUNDAY, FEB. 5

In “Media Bias Against Israel,” the award-winning Canadian Israeli journalist Matti Friedman examines undue focus and distorted coverage of Israel in modern media. 10 a.m. Zoom. $12. jewishpgh.org/ event/media-bias-against-israel-with-matti-friedman.

q SUNDAY, FEB. 5-DEC. 4

Join Chabad of Squirrel Hill for its Men’s Tefillin Club Enjoy bagels, lox and Tefillin on the first Sunday of the month. 8:30 a.m. chabadpgh.com.

q MONDAY, FEB. 6

Join the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy and the 10.27 Healing Partnership to celebrate Tu B’Shevat in nature

www.pittsburghjewishchronicle.org

on a meditative and gentle forest bathing journey through Frick Park. Meet at the Frick Park Environmental Center, encounter nature, form warm connections and end with a Tu B’Shevat seder and tea ceremony. 1 p.m. To register, visit support.pittsburghparks.org/site/ Calendar?id=104461&view=Detail.

q TUESDAYS, FEB. 7 – MAY 2

In “Israel Literature as a Window to Israel Society,” Rabbi Danny Schiff will facilitate an encounter with Israeli society through the pens of Israel’s leading writers, discovering voices that are original, contemporary and honest. This 10-part Melton course takes you on a literary journey offering a fresh examination of the ever-relevant issues faced by Israeli writers. Together, learners will read poetry and prose that is challenging and self-critical, gaining insights into the Jewish national psyche. 9:30 a.m. $160. jewishpgh. org/event/israeli-literature-as-a-window-to-israelisociety/2023-02-07.

q WEDNESDAYS, FEB. 8 – MAY 24

Registration is now open for “Melton Core 1: Rhythms and Purposes of Jewish Living.” This 25-lesson course will take you through the year’s cycle — the life cycle traditions and practices that bind us together. Explore not just the what is and how is of Jewish living, but the why is that go with them. 7 p.m. $300 per person, per year (25 sessions), includes all books and materials. Virtual. foundation.jewishpgh.org/melton-core-1.

q SUNDAY, FEB. 12

The Jewish Genealogy Society of Pittsburgh and the Rauh Jewish Archives at the Heinz History Center present: “Researching Your Roots with LitvakSIG.” Join Carol Hoffman who will survey Litvak genealogical records available online. Free for JGS-Pittsburgh members; $5 for the general public. Noon. heinzhistorycenter.org/event/jgs-pittsburghpresents-researching-your-roots-with-litvaksig.

q FRIDAY, FEB. 17-SATURDAY, FEB. 18

Join the National Council of Jewish Women for the first Repro Shabbat since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Stay tuned for details on their weekend packed full of events. jewsforabortionaccess.org/reproshabbat.

q THURSDAY, FEB. 23

Tammy Hepps, historian of the local Jewish community, and Dan Bouk, historian of science, will use the publication of Bouk’s “Democracy’s Data: The Hidden Stories in the U.S. Census and How to Read Them” as an opportunity for the wide-ranging discussion Data, Democracy, and the Census: History and Genealogy in Conversation. The two will look at the ways seemingly bland statistics of the census bureau are actually a rich trove of research material for data scientists and everyday Americans alike. They will demonstrate how close-reading historical census data can acknowledge and honor lives lived at the margins of U.S. society, whether those lives belonged to Jewish people in Homestead or queer folk in Greenwich Village. 5 p.m. Kresge Theater, College of Fine Arts at Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Ave, 15213.

Join the Jewish Fertility Foundation for their Kickoff Event, an evening of desserts, drinks and celebration. Free. 7 p.m. JCC Pittsburgh, Levinson Hall. jewishfertilityfoundation.org/KICKOFF.

q SUNDAY, FEB. 26

Answer the call and be a part of something Super. Represent your favorite Jewish Pittsburgh agency at the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh’s Super Sunday. The organization with the most participants will receive $1,800. There will be three sessions beginning at 9:30 a.m. 2000 Technology Drive. For more information and to register, visit jewishpgh. org/event/super-sunday. PJC

‘Misinformed’ intermarriage rumors distress some Conservative rabbis

By Arno Rosenfeld | The Forward

Anumber of prominent Conservative rabbis wrote a letter to the Rabbinical Assembly last year declaring their strong opposition to what some feared was an imminent shift in the movement’s posi tion on intermarriage.

The movement, to which 17% of American Jews belong, has long forbidden its rabbis from presiding at marriages between Jews and non-Jews. But some of its rabbis are performing them anyway, alarming their more traditionally minded colleagues, and setting off a heated Conservative inter marriage debate.

“Various rumors had been flying around that the Conservative movement, or the Rabbinical Assembly, wanted to change its position on this issue,” said David Golinkin, an influential Conservative rabbi in Israel, who spearheaded the letter.

But Rabbi Jacob Blumenthal, chief of the Rabbinical Assembly, the movement’s membership group of approximately 1,700 rabbis, said in an interview that there was no “immediate plan” to change its policy on officiating marriages between Jewish and non-Jewish partners.

“The premise of the letter is misinformed,” he said.

Blumenthal said that while the organization has a committee examining its standards, the goal is to clarify how Conservative clergy should operate within the existing rules. He said the Rabbinical Assembly wrote back to the group of rabbis explaining this distinction.

“We want to focus on how rabbis can invite individuals and couples into conversations around creating a Jewish home in a space that is not judgmental,” he said. “And how we can, for example, help the couple and their families celebrate this milestone event.”

Blumenthal, who also leads the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, the movement’s network of about 600 synagogues, said that “best practices” the committee may recommend might

include things like helping couples install a mezuzah at their home.

Golinkin said that if that was the scope of the committee’s work, he had no concerns.

“I’ll just say, if that’s the case and those are the issues being discussed by the subcommittee then I think no one would have a problem with that,” he said. “Reaching out to people who are intermarried is a mitzvah.”

‘No decisions’

The Forward learned about the letter’s existence, and Golinkin’s role, from an anonymous source. But the letter itself and the full list of signatories has been kept private. Golinkin chaired Rabbinical Assembly’s law committee in Israel for 20 years, and other rabbis who signed the letter are believed to include two past presidents of the Rabbinical Assembly and other prominent rabbis.

The question of intermarriage, over which Conservative rabbis can be ejected from the Rabbinical Assembly for performing, has strained the movement in recent years. Some rabbis have left over the issue, while others perform such ceremonies quietly.

Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove, leader of Park Avenue Synagogue in New York City, said in a November sermon that he had been lobbied during the Rabbinical Assembly’s recent convention to sign onto letters for and against intermarriage. He

declined to do either.

“I’m no prophet, but based on my experience last week, I predict the question of rabbinic officiation at interfaith marriages will come to a head in the Conservative movement in the next two or three years,” Cosgrove said.

Rabbi Harold Kravitz, president of the Rabbinical Assembly, announced a series of listening sessions last year, starting in December and running through at least the end of January, about the issue of intermarriage.

In his email to Rabbinical Assembly members detailing those meetings, he said that the committee working on the issue “did not begin with any assumptions about an outcome.”

“No decisions have been made, other than a commitment to engage colleagues in a respectful set of conversations,” Kravitz said.

Blumenthal said the committee would conclude its work around June. PJC

This story originally appeared in the Forward (forward.com). To get the Forward’s free email newsletters delivered to your inbox, go to forward.com/ newsletter-signup.

p `Rabbi Harold Kravitz, president of the Rabbinical Assembly, has called for a respectful dialogue about intermarriage among the 1,700 Conservative rabbis that are members of the association. Photo courtesy of the Rabbinical Assembly via the Forward

This year’s ‘Jewish Nobel’ is a group prize, going to Jewish activists supporting Ukraine

By Philissa Cramer | JTA

Aprize established to honor a single inspiring Jew with a lifetime of achievements has been awarded this year to a nameless group whose work is ongoing: Jewish activists in war-ravaged Ukraine.

The Genesis Prize Foundation said the war in Ukraine required a change in the approach it has taken since creating the prize, known by some as the “Jewish Nobel,” a decade ago.

“Recognizing the extraordinary nature of events dominating the past 11 months, The Genesis Prize Selection Committee has decided to depart from the usual custom of awarding the prize to a single Jewish individual,” the group said in a statement.

It added, “Instead, the Committee has elected to announce a collective award to Jewish activists and NGOs who were inspired by the brave citizens of Ukraine and their courageous president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and chose to act on their Jewish values by standing up for freedom, human dignity, and justice.”

The group is also not awarding the traditional $1 million prize that recipients have donated to charity; instead, it says it plans to “continue to make grants to NGOs to alleviate the suffering in Ukraine, as we have done since the beginning of the war.” Those groups have included the JDC, which has distributed emergency aid across the country; United Hatazalah of Israel, which trained Ukrainians in emergency first aid; and Natal, an Israeli trauma response group, according to its Facebook page.

The goal of the prize, its co-founder and board chair Stan Polovets told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, remains to stimulate Jewish giving by raising awareness of particular needs.

“Freedom is one of the most important values of the Jewish people. And this is a country that’s fighting for its freedom. It has a president who has shocked everyone by his resilience and courage,” he said about Ukraine. “We think that the Jewish community worldwide needs to be supportive to the extent it can.”

In going with the group prize, Genesis circumvented the potential pitfalls of honoring Zelensky himself. The Genesis Prize Foundation held Zelensky up as a Jewish hero last October, when its cofounder and board member Natan Sharansky, the former Soviet dissident and 2020 honoree, visited him in Kyiv. Sharansky, who lives in Israel, has been a leading advocate for Israel to dedicate more

resources to Ukraine.

But honoring Zelensky, Ukraine’s most prominent Jew, could have made for an uncomfortable situation at the Genesis Prize’s glitzy

–STAN POLOVETS

awards ceremony: In his efforts to secure more resources for Ukraine’s armed forces, Zelensky has also openly criticized Israel for not being as forthcoming as he would like. (Israel’s particular geopolitical interests have confounded the country’s response to the war since its start Feb. 24, 2022.)

And while some have called Zelensky a “modern Maccabee,” he has not always signaled pride about being Jewish, which prize recipients are expected to show, saying in 2019, “The fact that I am Jewish barely makes 20 in my long list of faults.”

Polovets declined to comment on the selection process. The Genesis Prize has never

The temporary departure from the Genesis Prize Foundation’s regular approach extended beyond who was chosen as the recipient. The group opened nominations publicly but then did not release a shortlist for a public advisory vote as it has in recent years. It also decided not to hold its traditional awards ceremony in Jerusalem that has in the past been an unusual convening of Diaspora Jewish leaders, Israeli government officials and celebrities. (Last year, the Knesset dissolved itself the night of the ceremony, when Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla was being honored; the politicians did not attend.) While the changes made sense for the unusual moment, Polovets acknowledged

awardee to guide where donations go, his organization could receive an unusual number of unsolicited applications for aid.

The group will begin discussions about where to direct its giving in about a month, according to foundation officials. That will also be the first anniversary of Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

The tweaks to the selection process are not the first changes at Genesis induced by the war: The three Russian billionaires who helped start the prize stepped down from the board of the related Genesis Philanthropy Group last March, after being targeted by Western sanctions in response to the invasion. PJC

gone to a current political office-holder; politician and businessman Mike Bloomberg was honored after he left the New York City mayor’s office.

potential downsides, including confusion about the Genesis Prize brand and the lack of a celebrity spokesperson for the year’s cause. He also said he anticipated that without a single

p Natan Sharansky, the Genesis Prize cofounder and board member, visits with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelesnky in Kyiv in October 2022. Photo courtesy Genesis Prize Foundation

“Freedom is one of the most important values of the Jewish people. And this is a country that’s fighting for its freedom.”

Jewish tennis champion Dick Savitt dies at 95

Dick Savitt, the Jewish tennis champion who won both the Australian Open and Wimbledon Championships in 1951, died Jan. 6 at 95 at his home in New York, JTA.org reported. He was the first Jewish athlete to win either tournament.

Savitt won both championships in 1951 when he was only 24. He was the second American man to win both competitions in the same year. The New York Times ranked him the No. 1 player in the world.

That same year, the 6-foot-3 righty also reached the semifinals of the U.S. National Championships and the quarterfinals of the French Championships, now called the U.S. Open and French Open, respectively.

Savitt became the first Jewish athlete to appear on the cover of Time Magazine on Aug. 27, 1951.

In 1952, Savitt retired from tennis. He returned part-time to competitive tennis a few years later and in 1961 won gold medals in men’s singles and doubles at the Maccabiah

Games in Israel.

Savitt is a member of the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, the National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame and the International Tennis Hall of Fame.

Number of Russian Jews down sharply in last decade, pre-Ukraine war census reveals

An exodus of Jews from Russia since President Vladimir Putin invaded neighboring Ukraine has drawn widespread attention over the last year. But according to statistics released recently by Russia’s statistics bureau, the country’s Jewish population had fallen sharply long before the tanks began rolling, JTA.org reported

The statistics, published last month by Russia’s Federal State Statistics Service, showed that just 82,644 people identified themselves as Jews on the national census, conducted in 2021.

In contrast, Russia’s previous census, conducted in 2010, showed nearly 160,000 people who identified as Jews or belonging to related groups — suggesting a decline by more than half over the last decade. During the same period, Russia’s total population grew by 3.5%.

The numbers don’t account for the mass exodus of Russian Jews since the onset of the war in Ukraine, estimated to be more than 20,000 in the first six months after the invasion. The exodus suggests that Russia’s Jewish population could total fewer than 60,000 people.

Emhoff to lead Holocaust remembrance efforts in Europe

The White House announced on Jan. 12 that Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff will travel to Europe this month to participate in Holocaust remembrance events, JNS.org reported.

Today in Israeli History

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

Jan. 20, 1942 — ‘Final Solution’ planned at Wannsee Nazis convened by Gestapo head Reinhard Heydrich in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee draft the plans for the Holocaust’s “Final Solution” to European Jewry through deportation to deadly labor camps and mass murder.

Jan. 21, 1882 — BILU founding launches First Aliyah BILU, whose name comes from Isaiah’s “Beit Yaakov lekhu venelkha” (“House of Jacob, let us go”), is founded by 30 students in Ukraine, setting the groundwork for the First Aliyah of Zionist immigration.

Jan. 22, 1979 — Munich mastermind is killed

Ali Hassan Salameh, the chief of operations for the terrorist group Black September, is killed by a Mossad car bomb in Beirut in revenge for the killing of 11 Israeli Olympians in Munich in 1972.

Jan. 23, 1950 — Knesset declares Jerusalem the capital

The Knesset votes 60-2 to adopt a Cabinetdrafted resolution d eclaring Jerusalem the capital of Israel.

Mapam and Herut abstain. The no votes are two Communists who favor an international status for Jerusalem.

Jan. 24, 1965 — Syria arrests Eli Cohen

Syrian police arrest businessman Kamel Amin Tha’abet at his Damascus home and charge him with espionage. Tha’abet is actually successful Mossad agent Eli Cohen, who is hanged May 18, 1965.

Jan. 25, 1904 — Herzl meets with Pope

Theodor Herzl meets with but fails to sway Pope Pius X during a two-week trip to Italy. “We cannot give approval to this movement,” Pius says of Zionism. “We could never sanction it” because of Jews’ rejection of Jesus.

Jan. 26, 1919 — Weizmann warns of catastrophe Chaim Weizmann makes the Zionist case in a letter to Gen. Arthur Money, who heads the British military administration in Palestine. Without a secure home, Weizmann says, Jews face “a terrible catastrophe.” PJC

Emhoff, the husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, is set to visit Krakow, Poland, from Jan. 26 -29. On Jan. 27, Emhoff, joined by U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism Deborah Lipstadt, is slated to visit the Memorial and Museum at AuschwitzBirkenau. He will also participate in a wreath-laying ceremony and attend the annual commemoration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Emhoff and Lipstadt will then head to Berlin, where on Jan. 30-31 they are to attend a meeting of special envoys and coordinators working to combat antisemitism.

As the first Jewish spouse of a U.S. president or vice president, Emhoff has become increasingly vocal about his Jewish background and about the rising antisemitism in the country.

Last month, he led a roundtable with Jewish leaders at the White House. Addressing the topic of rising Jew-hatred, he said, “I understand the weight of this responsibility — I do. … And as second gentleman, let me reiterate, I will not remain silent. I’m proud to be Jewish, and I’m proud to live openly as a Jew. I am not afraid. We cannot live in fear. We refuse to be afraid.”

Ancient ostrich eggs found in Israel shed light on early humans

The Israel Antiquities Authority recently uncovered a number of ostrich eggs dating back thousands of years during an excavation near an ancient fire pit in the Negev desert, JNS.org reported

“We found a campsite, which extends over about 200 square meters, that was used by the desert nomads since prehistoric times. At the site, we found burnt stones, flint and stone tools as well as pottery sherds, but the truly special find is this collection of ostrich eggs,”

IAA Excavation Director Lauren Davis said.

“Although the nomads did not build permanent structures at this site, the finds allow us to feel their presence in the desert. These campsites were quickly covered over by the dunes and were re-exposed with the sand movement over hundreds and thousands of years. This fact explains the exceptional preservation of the eggs, allowing us a glimpse into the lives of the nomads who roamed the desert in ancient times,” she added.

Ostriches were common in the region from early prehistoric periods until they became extinct in the wild during the 19th century. Their eggs have been found in archaeological sites from several periods, reflecting their importance as a raw material.

“We find ostrich eggs in archaeological sites in funerary contexts, and as luxury items and water canteens. Naturally, they were used as a source of food: one ostrich egg has the nutritional value of about 25 normal chicken eggs!” IAA researcher Dr. Amir Gorzalczany said.

First 7-Eleven opens in Israel

Israel has its first 7-Eleven convenience store, Globes reported.

The store opened on Dec. 11 in Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff Center, a year after Electra Consumer Products announced a 20-year franchise agreement with the U.S.-based convenience store chain.

By the middle of 2023, seven more stores are scheduled to open, most of them in Tel Aviv with one in Hod Hasharon. Thirty stores are set to open by early 2024.

The Tel Aviv store will sell about 2,000 products, including 80 that are 7-Eleven brand products made in Israel. International brands such as Slurpee also will be available. PJC

Compiled by Andy Gotlieb

Join the Chronicle Book Club!

The Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle invites you to join the Chronicle Book Club for its Feb. 5 discussion of “Waking Lions” by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen. The novel was a joint winner of the prestigious 2017 Jewish Quarterly Wingate literary prize. From the New York Times: “Eitan Green, the protagonist of the Israeli author Ayelet Gundar-Goshen’s novel ‘Waking Lions,’ is a respected neurosurgeon who has been forced by a professional dispute to relocate from Tel Aviv to Beersheba, a desert town where dust is everywhere, ‘a thin white layer, like the icing on a birthday cake no one wants.’ Speeding through a remote area in his S.U.V. late one night, he hits an Eritrean man walking by the roadside. And when he decides that the victim is beyond help, he impulsively flees the scene.... ‘Waking Lions’ is a sophisticated and darkly ambitious novel, revealing an aspect of Israeli life rarely seen in its literature.”

Your Hosts:

Toby Tabachnick, editor

David Rullo, staff writer

How and When: We will meet on Zoom on Sunday, Feb. 5, at noon.

What To Do

Buy: “Waking Lions.” It is available from online retailers including Barnes & Noble and Amazon (new and used editions). There are also several copies available in the Carnegie Library system.

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 discussion meeting.

Happy reading! PJC

Tabachnick

— WORLD —

p BILU pioneers work the fields of Moshava Gedera in 1910.

p The King David Hotel and YMCA are seen in Jerusalem in 1950.

—

p Dick Savitt at the Wimbledon Championship on July 6, 1951, in London Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images via JTA.org

Toby

its new gallery space at Chatham.

“Revolving Doors” includes a selection of artwork and artifacts from the Holocaust Center’s collection, juxtaposing Jewish cultural life with persistent antisemitism across time and the devastating impact of the Holocaust on global Jewry. It also examines antisemitism today, including artists’ responses to the Oct. 27, 2018, attack at the Tree of Life building.

History is a pattern of assimilation and antisemitism for the Jewish people, hence the title “Revolving Doors,” Bairnsfather said.

“Revolving Doors” is also the title of a series of collages by surrealist artist and photographer Man Ray. Ray, the eldest child of Russian Jewish immigrants who changed their name from Radnitzky to Ray due to antisemitism, was born in Philadelphia but spent much of his life in Paris, a city he was forced to flee in 1940 because of World War II.

The Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh maintains all 10 prints in Ray’s “Revolving Doors” series and features one as part of the new exhibit.

The exhibit attempts to do a lot of things in a very small space, Holocaust Center manager Jackie Shimshoni Reese explained.

“We’re not just talking about the Holocaust,” she said, “but what were the factors that led up to it and what came after it because there’s a really big misconception that antisemitism started in 1933 and that it ended in 1945, and that Hitler came out of nowhere and that the Nazi policies were these original things. None

Billboard: Continued from page 1

God around. If I need to get people’s attention, I will do that. I don’t do it with malice or meanness. My goal is to have God put back in our country, God put back in our schools along with the Pledge of Allegiance, and God put back in American lives because God is in control, not the government.”

Placek added that the swastika has been used for thousands of years in different cultures as a sign of goodness and that it was hijacked by the Nazis.

Despite his protestations that the swastika could be interpreted as something other than a symbol of hate, Placek said he believes there is an equivalency between the Gestapo and the FBI. To illustrate his point, Placek pointed to the arrest of a Philadelphia man for alleged violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act.

“When you arrest a man who is a clergy, and he’s standing in front of an abortion clinic and is arrested because he’s against

of that is true.”

Illustrating the point, “Revolving Doors” opens with antisemitic broadsheets published in 18th-century France that tell the legend of the Wandering Jew and the myth of Jews crucifying Jesus.

Other artifacts in the exhibit include a work uniform and a large bronze eagle removed from a Nazi train by a Pittsburgh soldier.

Never far from the vulgarities of the Holocaust is the reality that antisemitism and genocide didn’t begin or end with Nazi atrocities.

An illustrated sign, starting in white and ending in black, lists the “Ten Stages of Genocide”; each of these stages occurred during genocides of the latter half of the 20th century and first quarter of the 21st century. Ceiling

abortion by the FBI — not in front of the clinic, but at his home where he has seven children watching the FBI put cuffs on their father. That’s wrong. That’s the Gestapo. That’s what I’m trying to illustrate,” he said.

Placek went on to say there was a need to get America “straightened out,” pivoting to the LGBTQ+ community.

“The gays, bisexuals, transexuals, the queers … My God tells me that’s prohibited and they are the Antichrist. I’m going to go after them, and it’s not going to be popular,” he said.

Placek sees a similarity between the Gestapo and the FBI incarcerating people, pointing to those arrested on Jan. 6, 2021, whom he claims continue to be held without charges.

“Yeah, I think there’s a parallel between the Gestapo and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, no doubt about it,” he said.

In August, Placek faced criticism for similar messages on billboards he owns near his businesses in Worthington.

At the time, he told the Chronicle that it wasn’t his intention to offend anyone, but he

tiles overhead help to symbolize these stages, moving from solely white, to white with tiles of black, to pure black, then back to white and black tiles intermixed.

An exhibit highlighting the cyclical nature of antisemitism wouldn’t be complete without acknowledging the massacre at the Tree of Life building on Oct. 27, 2018. The shooting has disrupted and changed Jewish life in Pittsburgh in unexpected ways, including the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh leaving its former part nership with the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh to become part of the new Tree of Life organization, whose goals include the elim ination of hate and antisemitism.

A large replica of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette front page from Nov. 2, 2018, featuring the beginning of the Mourner’s Kaddish in Hebrew as its headline, is displayed on a back corner wall. It speaks to both the tragedy of the attack as well as the sense of community experienced by all of Pittsburgh in the days following the attack.

A large wooden tree surrounded by 11 yahrzeit candles is exhibited next to the paper’s reproduction, as well as a photo of Rabbi Jeffrey Myers.

Bairnsfather said exhibits like “Revolving Doors” are important because the physical items on display prove the story of the Holocaust.

“That’s why it’s so important to have artifacts and be sure that we counter denial by showing this indeed happened — because we don’t want to believe humans are capable of that,” she said. “The Nazi universe was a perverse ethical universe. We cannot understand it on the basis of how we see the world now. It’s something completely different. So, when we

thought the raid at Donald Trump’s Mar-aLago home was comparable to the Nazis murdering more than 6 million Jews and stealing their property.

“In my mind, they’re equivalent,” he said. “I know you don’t want to hear this. What happened to the Jewish people, it was criminal. You’re talking to an old colonel from the Army. I served 22 years defending the Constitution of the United States of America. I’m pro-Israel and everything. I’m not antiJewish, but I was trying to make a statement that you can’t just go and do that to people.”

In 2019, following the acquittal of former East Pittsburgh Police Officer Michael Rosfeld in the fatal shooting of Antwon Rose II, Placek displayed photos of both Rosfeld and Rose with the message: “Legal System Works, Justice Served, Get over it.” Another sign featured the billboard owner’s face with the message, “I’m white and Proud of it.”

The owner of both a gas station and pool company, Placek lost his Sunoco affiliation following the Antwon Rose controversy.

Lauren Bairnsfather, executive director of the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh, said it is

have questions about how humans could do this to other human beings, we have to understand it’s not how we live now — and this is true anywhere genocide has happened.”

“Revolving Doors” will open to the public on Jan. 23 at the Holocaust Center Gallery at Chatham’s Jennie King Mellon Library. The exhibit can be viewed Monday through Friday, noon to 3 p.m., and the Holocaust Center will eventually add weekend hours. School field trips to the exhibit will begin in February.

The Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh is seeking volunteers to serve as docents for organized tours of the exhibit. Those interested can visit mailchi.mp/hcpgh/call-for-volunteers. PJC

David Rullo can be reached at drullo@ pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.

important that Placek understand the swastika is a symbol of hate and antisemitism.

“The Nazis persecuted many different minority groups,” she said. “It’s not a symbol that you use to prove a political point.”

Bairnsfather said that Placek’s billboards are evidence of why what the Holocaust Center does is so important.

“To make sure there’s a deeper understanding of what those symbols mean and why it’s dangerous to use them to prove a political point. You’re recalling a genocide,” she said.

Placek’s messages, she said, are just one way to trivialize the Holocaust and prove there is still a lot of work left to be done.

For his part, Placek plans to push on with his controversial billboards but believes they may cause the FBI to target him soon.

“Watch, they’ll be hitting me next,” he said. “I mean they’ll be putting handcuffs on me and haul me off to jail because I have to state my own opinion.” PJC

David Rullo can be reached at drullo@ pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.

p Man Ray’s “Revolving Doors” series inspired the name of the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh’s new exhibit.

Photo by David Rullo

p A large Torah at the entrance of the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh’s new “Revolving Doors” exhibit

Photo by David Rullo

The Nation’s antisemitic spin on Kenneth Roth

Guest Columnist Jonathan Greenblatt

The headline of the article was damning: “Why the Godfather of Human Rights Is Not Welcome at Harvard,” screamed the boldface on the website of the Nation. The article, published Jan. 5, went on to breathlessly describe how Kenneth Roth, the longtime former head of Human Rights Watch, was denied a fellowship at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

The reason? According to the article, it was his perceived “anti-Israel bias” — particularly his tweets on Israel — that raised a red flag to the decision-makers at the school. This, according to Kathryn Sikkink, professor of human rights policy at the Kennedy School. Sikkink told the Nation she was surprised the dean himself had gotten involved in the appointment. She claimed her efforts to convince the school’s dean to reverse his decision fell on deaf ears.

Why? The Nation article draws its own conclusions. And this is where the author diverges from journalism and begins a long trip down the antisemitic rabbit hole, moving from coverage of the appointment itself into the realm of conspiracy theories about Jewish control, power and financial influence.

This is where an exploration of who is antiRoth became a case study in how antisemitic tropes can infect even a journalist of author Michael Massing’s standing.

Massing, who, according to his online bio,

is currently writing a book “about money and influence” constructs a multilayered conspiracy theory around the denied appointment, which is grounded in a series of suppositions about wealthy pro-Israel Jewish philanthropists working themselves into positions of power at the prestigious Kennedy School.

Massing writes that, in order to get the “context of (the dean’s) decision,” Professor Sikkink referred him to an article by Peter Beinart in The New York Times. Beinart, hardly an unbiased observer of the Jewish community when it comes to Israel, had suggested in that piece that the “campaign against ‘antisemitism’ … has become a threat to freedom. It is wielded as a weapon against the world’s most respected human rights organizations and a shield for some of the world’s most repressive regimes.”

In sum, Beinart’s opinion piece castigated the country’s leading Jewish groups, including ADL, the American Jewish Committee and others, for falsely accusing human rights organizations of antisemitism and allegedly squelching freedom of speech in the process.

This criticism from Beinart was nothing new; for years he has wrongly accused ADL and other pro-Israel groups of using the antisemitism charge as a weapon. He and others have ignored the long history of many of these groups, including Human Rights Watch, for their disproportionate and almost obsessive focus on Israel. Tellingly, neither Massing nor Beinart bother to address the upsurge of antisemitism that accompanies these kinds of reports. They also ignored the weaponization of HRW’s reports, which effectively delegitimize Israel’s existence, deeming it a pariah state to be placed in the company of the worst regimes in history.

But in this particular case, how did Beinart’s article provide evidence that ADL and other Jewish groups had gotten involved in the process for Kenneth Roth’s appointment?

Well, it didn’t at all.

But Massing and the Nation helpfully connect the dots for the reader: It’s really all about Jewish money and influence, about David and Goliath. Look at the tiny Carr Center at Kennedy (eight person staff and 32 fellows), whose survival from year to year is “precarious” as its mission “often sits uncomfortably with the institutes that deal with defense policy, military strategy and intelligence gathering,” writes Massing. And those larger, well-funded institutes? Massing chooses to highlight their backing by pro-Israel Jews. Just look at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, funded by wealthy Jewish backers, he writes. Or the Center’s RecanatiKaplan Fellowships, funded by “superrich” donor Thomas Kaplan.

Next, the article points to a 2017 book by Daniel Golden about spy schools, citing a chapter that shows how members of the foreign intelligence services flock to the Kennedy School because it offers “a conduit to the highest echelons” of the U.S. government. That’s completely unsurprising, this being Harvard, one of the foremost research universities in the world. But guess who most prominent among those in the highest echelons of the U.S. government, according to Massey?

Yep, you guessed it: Israelis and Jewish donors.

From here, the article further devolves into Jewish macher name dropping: Leslie Wexner, Jeffrey Epstein, Robert Belfer, David Rubenstein — noting their supposed close ties

to the big Jewish organizations.

It’s a textbook case of classic antisemitism: It’s not the leadership of the Kennedy School that made this decision, oh no. It’s the powerful and monied Jewish elite that really influences things behind the scenes. In short, the article plays into the classic antisemitic trope of Jewish power and control – without providing any evidence that any of these Jewish donors or groups played any role in influencing the decision to derail Roth’s fellowship.

At a time when more and more Americans are buying into antisemitic tropes, it’s deeply disturbing that the Nation is providing fodder for the antisemitic notion that Jews have too much power in the U.S.

Yet, it is not surprising. As the leading journal of the far left for decades, the Nation has a history of virulent opposition to Israel, publishing inflammatory rhetoric and prominent critics of the Jewish state, including the co-founder of the BDS movement Omar Barghouti, who has expressed the view that there should be no Jewish state at all. And the Nation appointed Mohammed El-Kurd, an anti-Israel polemicist who has compared Israelis to Nazis and used the blood libel trope, as their “Palestine correspondent” in 2021.

Harvard is one of the most esteemed institutions in the country. Its leadership is entitled to select its fellows based on whatever measures they choose. But its critics should be able to do better than concoct anti-Jewish conspiracies to explain away their failings. PJC

Jonathan A. Greenblatt is CEO and National Director of the Anti-Defamation League. This column first appeared on The Times of Israel.

Allowing rabbis to officiate intermarriages will alienate the Conservative movement from its own members

Columnist Roberta Rosenthal Kwall

Acontroversy involving interfaith marriage is once again in the news.

The Forward reported that a group of prominent Conservative rabbis last year wrote a letter urging the Rabbinical Assembly to retain its ban on member rabbis performing marriages between Jews and non-Jews. The letter was ostensibly motivated by rumors of an imminent change in policy that turned out to be false. But the issue of lifting the ban continues to surface in the media, and remains contentious in many Conservative circles.

As a legal scholar specializing in the intersection of Jewish law and culture — and a lifelong member of Conservative synagogues — I am glad the rumors turned out to be false. I fear that lifting the ban on intermarriage would not only eviscerate whatever meaningful differences currently exist between Conservative and Reform Judaism but also drive away most traditionally observant Conservative Jews.

Let me be clear: I am glad that religiously liberal denominations have lower barriers to entry. There should be a place for every family who wants to affiliate with a Jewish community to do so. But it is impossible to fathom how Conservative Judaism can maintain credibility as a movement if it allows its clergy to officiate intermarriages.

Keeping Jewish law relevant to modern Jews

Throughout its history, Conservative Judaism has sought to strike a balance between adherence to Jewish law and looking outside Jewish tradition to ensure the ongoing relevance of its rulings.

While it is true that most Conservative Jews do not live completely within the halachic system, a core group is serious about following Jewish law according to the movement’s standards. Others value the law in theory, even if not always in practice.

The movement’s rabbinic leadership has always taken the observance of halacha seriously. And on intermarriage, tradition is clear: Jewish law prohibits the marriage between a Jew and a non-Jew. In addition, Jewish membership is determined by matrilineal descent, and any rabbi who violates either

of these standards can be expelled from the Conservative movement.

If the Rabbinical Assembly were to lift the ban on its rabbis officiating at intermarriages, it would also need to consider whether to discard the matrilineal descent standard.

The movement’s leaders might want to consider the Reform movement’s experience in this regard. In 1983, the Reform movement ruled that all children with one Jewish parent are “under the presumption of Jewish descent” if they publicly manifest a positive and exclusive Jewish identity.

In 1995, the Reform movement grappled with the parameters of its position and issued a legal ruling in response to a question from a congregation concluding that a child raised in a dual-religion household did not meet the criteria for a presumption of Jewishness.

By 2019, a survey by the Center for Radically Inclusive Judaism showed that in 20% of Reform congregations, some children are receiving formal religious education in another religion, and in 22% of Reform congregations, some or all of the clergy are co-officiating at interfaith weddings. This same survey also shows more liberalization when it comes to the extent to which non-Jews can participate in certain ritual activities.

Inclusive in practice

Not officiating, though, does not mean closing the door. Many people may not realize that the Conservative movement has already taken important steps to welcome intermarried couples. In 2017, the umbrella synagogue arm of the movement passed a resolution allowing non-Jews to join Conservative synagogues. In 2020, the movement hired an interfaith specialist to provide support for intermarried couples belonging to their member synagogues.

I recently spoke with a Conservative rabbi who told me that 10% of his congregants are intermarried, and these individuals feel very supported in his congregation despite his personal opposition to lifting the ban. This observation comports with my substantial anecdotal experience gathered from Zoom talks at close to 100 Conservative synagogues over the past couple of years.

Conservative rabbis must also consider that lifting this ban will likely cause a portion of their most seriously observant members to affiliate elsewhere. Marrying Jewish is an important family goal for more than a few Conservative Jewish parents, and this change will severely compromise their ability to send this message to their children. In addition, this

Guest

Chronicle poll results: The COVID era

Last week, the Chronicle asked its readers in an electronic poll the following question: “Is the COVID era over?” Of the 285 people who responded, 84% said no; 9% said yes; and 7% said they didn’t know. Comments were submitted by 92 people. A few follow.

It appears that the majority of the population has capitulated to the virus, accepting COVID as if it were just another minor ailment. We don’t know the full impact of infection(s) and what we do know is not encouraging. I’m in a minority of people who are still social distancing, masking in stores and only going to restaurants when outdoor dining is available. I lost two elderly family members (pre-vaccine 2020) who were otherwise healthy.

The severity of the illness is over; however, sadly, in years to come, when people finally realize the long-term negative effects of the vaccine, the era will continue.

I wish it was but is not. Will it ever end? It’s become exhausting. How many boosters can we get? I think I’m done with COVID boosters.

Jacobs op-ed title gets it wrong

The title of Rick Jacobs’ op-ed is as disingenuously humorous as a line from a Mel Brooks movie (“Why we’ll fight Israel’s new extremist political agenda with the determination of the Maccabees,” Jan. 6). You plan to fight “Israel’s extremist political agenda” just like the extremist Maccabees fought the Hellenists? Maybe you ought to understand two simple facts. Fact No. 1 is that the Maccabees were more like the Taliban than you would be comfortable admitting. In fact, the first man they killed was a Hellenized Jew. Fact No. 2 is that you, dear Mr. Jacobs, represent the Hellenized Jews.

Diana Connan Forgy Pittsburgh

‘A basket of deplorables’

The Republican Jewish Coalition has expressed disgust with newly elected Republican U. S. House member George Santos, who was welcomed into its fold based upon one of his countless lies, including the one in which he claimed to be the Jewish descendant of Holocaust survivors (“RJC CEO: George Santos ‘will not be welcome’ at our events,” Jan. 6). Was the coalition expecting honor and integrity from someone who was present at the infamous “Stop the Steal” rally of Jan. 6, 2021 — one who later boasted of writing “a nice check” to defray the legal fees of the rioters who pummeled police officers, desecrated the Capitol and threatened the lives of lawmakers and the former vice president?

The Republican Party is unrecognizable from what it was in a better era. Newly elected House Speaker Kevin McCarthy attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election even after the insurrection, and he has elevated to a prominent place in the party Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the notorious and dangerous friend of antisemites, white supremacists and QAnon conspiracy theorists. So much for McCarthy being the “patriot” and “man of God” he was characterized as by one of the individuals who nominated him for speaker.

Not all, but much of the Republican Party of today, and of which I used to be a member, is comprised of, as Hillary Clinton might say, a basket of deplorables.

Oren Spiegler Peters Township

As a hospice volunteer, I assure you COVID is not over. There is an increasing number of people — not all elderly — who, sadly, are dying.

My paternal grandfather died in the 1918 flu pandemic. As a result, I am very hesitant to take the COVID virus lightly. I continue to wear a mask when out, and I continue to be cognizant that the threat remains a very real one.

COVID will never be over. Our willingness to live with daily limitations is — or soon will be, it seems.

I define the COVID era as that period of time when our lives were significantly changed to protect our health and that of our families, neighbors and communities. COVID is here to stay but we have learned to manage it.

It is time to put away the ridiculous, useless masks and get back to regular living.

Life is not bilateral

Ignoring COVID has not made it go away.

Enough is enough. This sickness is no worse than many of the flus we experience. Some demographics are more susceptible than others. We did not have to shut down, and we no longer need to fear it.

Time to move on.

COVID-19 will probably always be with us. We have to protect ourselves and find ways of dealing with it. We all must think of others and not only ourselves to combat and control it as we have with many other diseases.

COVID is permanent at this point. Get vaxxed! PJC

Toby Tabachnick

Chronicle weekly poll question: Should George Santos be forced to resign from Congress? Go to pittsburghjewish chronicle.org to respond. PJC

The letters to the editor in the Jan. 13 Chronicle, basically about the polarization of Zionism, really struck a chord with me — an ugly tritone chord.

All of life is not bilateral! Why does it seem we all keep operating only from two sides — not even on a spectrum, more like a tug-of-war rope with the ends full — and that we just continue arguing about who is “correct?”

None of us is two-dimensional, black-or-white, up-or-down, left-or-right in attitude. We all have multiple points of view about many things — that can be charted in threeor four-dimensional charts — and no political idealist can responsibly represent an entire community by claiming to support the extreme in a two-dimensional continuum.

Checks and balances in any governmental system are meant to slow things down and keep us balanced, in equilibrium, such that all can thrive.

Every day in prayers we say that the angels call to one another in praise of the Almighty — they call “zeh el zeh” — and to demonstrate it we turn from one side to the other and back again, as if angels stand in a line and speak only to their neighboring angels. Maybe that is true, but I prefer to picture them flying about and calling to each other in at least six dimensions. Why limit our vision?

We must stop this (human) polarization to bilateral extremes and the attitude that we must wipe out the opposition, or free society will fall. We must learn to accept everyone as members of our communities. All Jews (Reform, Orthodox, unaffiliated, married to non-Jews, descended from Jews, whatever) are members of the Jewish people. All Americans are equal Americans, and Israelis are Israelis. People are all people.

Exclusion by legislating, judicial decisions, battles, etc., is wrong. These exclusions serve nothing but elevating the egos of those who “believe” in some ethic or moral that not all agree with, and they exclude those who should be full members of the society.

Exclusion proliferates, even as we call for “inclusion.” When we legislate against something that not everyone agrees is bad (Reform Jews, abortion, secular education, LGBTQ rights, etc.), or when we legislate for something that not everyone agrees is good (gaining territory by military attack on others, gerrymandering inequality, unfair tax laws, etc.), we are enacting divisive things into law. This only furthers the separation and the fights that ensue, and divides us unnecessarily.

Kwall:

Continued from page 13

change will impact the movement’s camps and youth groups, likely weakening their ability to create an environment with the type of religious cultural norms and messaging many Conservative Jewish parents still value, and to which they presently devote substantial financial resources.

Equally significant, this change will negatively impact those Conservative rabbis and their families who do not want to officiate at interfaith weddings. Several years ago, a prominent Reform rabbi told me that her colleagues who do not officiate at intermarriages will either not get jobs or will have difficulty retaining their current positions.

Currently, the Conservative movement is a big tent. Traditionally religious Jews feel at home, and so do Jews who are less observant but still interested in affiliating institutionally with synagogues that maintain stronger religious norms.

Lifting the ban on performing intermarriages is likely to result in diluting the halachic brand of Conservative Judaism and destroying the movement’s much-needed centrist religious space. PJC

Roberta Rosenthal Kwall is the Raymond P. Niro Professor at DePaul University College of Law. She is the author of “Remix Judaism: Transmitting Tradition in a Diverse World,” “The Myth of the Cultural Jew: Culture and Law in Jewish Tradition” and “The Soul of Creativity.” This story originally appeared in the Forward. To get the Forward’s free email newsletters delivered to your inbox, go to forward.com/newsletter-signup.

Again, life is not bilateral. The answer is multidimensional thinking and leaning together into a central balance rather than continually tipping one way and the other.

Audrey Glickman Squirrel Hill

Correction

A step was omitted in the kosher pasta Bolognese recipe which appeared in the Chronicle’s Jan. 6 issue. One cup of pareve milk substitute should be stirred into the sauce after the tomato paste is added and before it is set to simmer for 2 or 2½ hours. The Chronicle regrets the omission. PJC

WALK OF FAME

Linda and Ken Simon

The Wilson Group

RED CARPET

A&L BMW, Jaguar, Land Rover & The Lamfrom Family PNC Bank

Leonard Silk and Andrew Stewart/ Silk & Stewart Development Group

THE OSCAR GOES TO…

Anonymous

Bev and Zack Block/Block & Associates, LLC

Sandra Block and John Suhrie

Highmark® Blue Cross Blue Shield

Andrea and Brian Ruttenberg

Stacey and Scott Seewald

Lori and Bob Shure

YOU’RE A STAR

Anonymous (3)

Erica and Billy Goodman

Paula Garrick Klein

Nancy and Woody Ostrow

Hilary Tyson and Charles Porter

Nancy Bernstein and Rocky Schoen

Suzanne and Brian Schreiber

UPMC & UPMC Health Plan

HOLLYWOOD SIGN

Anonymous

Aladdin Food Management Services, LLC

Ceeva, Inc.

Debbie and Bill Demchak

Ellen and Jack Kessler

Lamar Advertising

Cindy Goodman-Leib and Scott Leib

Oxford Development Company

V.I.P.

Anonymous

Lauren and Scott Americus Deborah and David Baron Deborah and Sam Berkovitz BNY Mellon

Nancy and David Brent

Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney, PC Barbara and Gerald Chait

Clark Hill, PLC Dickie, McCamey & Chilcote Elyse and Martin Eichner

F.N.B. Wealth Management

Gallagher Home Health and Hospice

Lauren and Drew Goldstein Jan and Mitchell Hoffman Carole and Jerry Katz

Lauren and Jason Kushner

Kerry Bron and Robert Levin Dory and David Levine

Sarita and Rob Mallinger

Nikol and Stanley Marks

Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle

The Reingold Family

Jeffrey Markel and Carol Robinson

S&T Bank

Diana and Saul (z"l) Spodek

TABLE Magazine

The Donald and Sylvia Robinson Family Foundation

SHOWTIME

Anonymous (3)

Cheryl Gerson Americus

B&R Pools & Swim Shop

big Burrito Restaurant Group

Rachel Firestone and Jason Binder

Brandywine Agency, Inc.

Cathy Reifer and Samuel Braver

Betsy Levine-Brown and Marc Brown

City Paper

Common Plea Catering

Entertainment Unlimited

Event Source

Stefani Pashman and Jeremy Feinstein

Mary Pat and Eric Friedlander

Karen and Jack Friedman

Giant Eagle Caryle Glosser

Ina and Larry Gumberg

Jake Goodman and Sean Shepherd Hens and Chicks

Anna Hollis and Gregg Kander

Karndean DesignFlooring KMA Design

Dana and Jason Kunzman

Lobos Management

Marbury Group

Marsha and Bernie Marcus Mosaic Linens

Lori and Louis Plung Geri and Steve Recht

Rothschild Doyno Collaborative

Barbara and Daniel Shapira Square Café

Jennifer and Josh Steiman

Jackie and Evan H. Stein

Elizabeth Goldberg and Michael Weisberg WYEP/WESA

MOVIE MAGIC

Anonymous

Nancy and Nadav Baum

Gail and Norman Childs

Ellen and Jeff Cohen

Andrea and Andrew Eller

Fragasso Financial Advisors

Nancy and Dan Garfinkel Carol and Ted Goldberg

Beth Goldstein and Jeremy Goldman/ Goldstein Tax Prep

Jen and Joe Goldston Teddi and David Horvitz

Laura and Jonathan Kessler

Susan and Michael Kurtz

Susan and Louis Leff

Larry and Claire (z”l) Levine

Patty and Stanley Levine

Lisa Zeidner Marcus and Jon Marcus

Amy Jaffe Mason and Grant Mason

MBM Contracting, Inc.

Elliott Oshry

Laura and Jeffrey Parker

PJ Dick Incorporated / Trumbull Corporation / Lindy Paving

Karen and Tony Ross and Family

The Rubinoff Company

Judy and Allen Silk Marcia and Melvin Solomon Rabbis Barbara and Ronald Symons University of Pittsburgh

Vigliotti Landscape and Construction, Inc. Walnut Capital Marcie and Matthew Weinstein Martha and John Wolf Jr. Lynn and Marc Zelenski

LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION

Anonymous

Allegheny Roofing and Sheet Metal Company, Inc.

Sharon Dilworth and Dr. David Baker Bally Design, Inc.

Baptist Senior Family

Laurie Moser and Stewart Barmen

Arlene and William Brandeis Emily and Howard Bromberg

Beth Schwanke and Eric Bukstein

Barbara and David Burstin

Amanda and Aaron Cantor

Susie and Dana Craig

Marion Damick and Dean Damick

Sarah and Michael Della Vecchia

Neil DiBiase and Chris Smith

Dipcraft Fiberglass Panels

Dodi Walker Gross and Daniel Edelstone

Reverend Janet Edwards

Julie and Josh Farber

Federated Investors Foundation, Inc.

Fireman Creative

Fort Pitt Capital Group

Rosalind Chow and Jeffrey Galak

Ruth and Alan Garfinkel

Julie and Ed Gelman

The Glickman Family

The Glimcher Group

Amy and Bob Gold Goldblum Sablowsky, LLC

Ellen Teri Kaplan Goldstein and Michael Goldstein

Deborah and Matthew Graver

Green Leaf Landscaping & Lawncare, Inc.

Kaylea and Jack Greenberg

Mary and Skip Grinberg

Cynthia and John Halicky

Linda and Steve Halpern

The Hanover Insurance Group

Jenn and Matt Harinstein

Harry S. Cohen & Associates, P.C.

Rabbi Josh Heller and Wendy Heller

Rebecca Pomerantz and Lucas Heller

Vicky and Steve Hoffman

Jennifer and Larry Honig

Rebecca and Aaron Hurowitz

Mardi and Bill Isler

Carol and Ian James

Nancy and David Johnson

Janice Kelly and Steve Hankin

Loreta Matheo-Kass and Robert Kass

Kline, Keppel & Koryak, CPAs

In Memory of Elaine Belle Krasik (z"l)

Lynn and Dale Lazar

Julie and Jason Lichtenstein

Lieber Hammer Huber & Paul, PC

C.J. and Bob Liss

Michelle and Martin Lubetsky

M&D Properties, Inc.

M & J Electrical Contracting, Inc.

Fara and Andy Marcus

Wendy and Peter Mars

Karin Greenberg and Ed Mistler

Marcie Mitre and Ken Levin

NuGo Nutrition

Sharon Werner and Eric Olshan

Marni and Jon Pastor

Pittsburgh Oral Surgery, P.C.

Melissa and Peter Rackoff

Nancy and William Rackoff

RHRS- Ruzomberka Holland Smith, Inc.

Jerry Rosenfeld

Ilana Diamond and Roni Rosenfeld

Rick Soria, RealtorColdwell Banker Realty Shadyside

William and James Rudolph

Katie and Tut Rutherford

Cathy Green Samuels and Michael Samuels

Fern and Steve Schwartz

Pat and Alan Siger

Joanne and Ben Simon

Rachael and Alex Speck

Marcia M. Stewart

Carol Tabas

Isabel Chernoff and Marc Tobias

Wagner Agency, Inc.

Arlene and Richard Weisman

Amy and Lou Weiss

Weiss Provision/ Smallman Street Deli Lee Wolf

*as of 1/11/2023

Mediterranean-flavored tuna salad

Mediterranean-flavored tuna salad Ingredients:

2 cans of solid albacore tuna, drained

By Jessica Grann | Special to the Chronicle

January is a time when a lot of us hit a reset button on our eating habits, and I find having fresh, flavorful options available and ready to eat are a big help in making healthier choices.

Tuna is easy to whip up, but it can get boring when you make the same old recipe every time.

My Mediterranean-flavored tuna salad recipe is light and refreshing. It has lots of chopped vegetables mixed in with the tuna to make it much more filling.

I often serve it scooped into romaine lettuce leaves, so it’s like having a green salad with a twist. I add fresh dill, fresh lemon juice, crunchy fresh veggies and olives right into the tuna mixture. I do use mayonnaise to bind it, but I use much less than you would in traditional tuna salad.

This makes for a nice light lunch or dinner but is filling as well. I like to make two cans of tuna at a time, but you can halve or double this recipe easily depending on how many people you’re serving. Leftovers can be kept refrigerated for about two days.

½ cup of diced cucumber

½ cup of diced bell pepper

½ cup of diced cherry or grape tomatoes

¼ cup of olives. I use Kalamata because

I love Greek flavors, but you can use green olives or capers if you prefer

1½ tablespoons of freshly chopped dill

1 teaspoon of sliced green onion

1 tablespoon of fresh lemon juice

3 tablespoons of mayonnaise

A dash of salt and pepper

Drain the tuna, and flake it into a mixing bowl. Add the lemon juice with a dash of salt and pepper, and mix well. This helps the lemony flavor to soak into the tuna. I next mix in the fresh dill and green onion to be sure that the herbs are evenly distributed before adding the veggies.

Dice the cucumber, pepper, tomato and olives. Add them to the bowl with 3 tablespoons of mayonnaise and mix well. I don’t recommend using larger tomatoes because they have more water in them and will make the tuna too wet.

You can serve this immediately or cover and refrigerate it to eat later. I scoop it into romaine lettuce leaves the way one would when eating tabbouleh, but you can absolutely use a wrap or

make a sandwich if that’s your preference. I love using the lettuce leaves because it adds the crunch factor and makes the entire meal low-carb.

I hope this gives you something new,

refreshing and low-carb to enjoy. Bless your hands! PJC

Jessica Grann is a home chef living in Pittsburgh.

Mediterranean-flavored tuna salad

Photo by Jessica Grann

Globetrotter’s travels strengthen ties home

Adam Reinherz | Staff Writer

Veronica Nijensohn is 5,361 miles from Buenos Aires, but little reminders bridge the distance.

She scrolls through photos of her niece. Nijensohn, 33, messages family members on her iPhone. Engagements with fellow landsmen spur memories of Argentina.

Nijensohn is a stage manager for Cirque du Soleil Entertainment Group. She and 116 other artists, engineers and Cirque staffers treated Pittsburghers to five shows in four days earlier this month.

Though the Jan. 5-8 stay was brief, Nijensohn told the Chronicle she used her time wisely. She visited Randyland and the National Aviary, learned about Pittsburgh and documented her stay with beautiful photographs.

Before becoming a stage manager with the acrobatic company, Nijensohn studied photography. Her photos, which she edits with Snapseed and posts on Instagram, document sites worldwide. The images capture snowfalls, street scenes and reflections cast by skyscrapers. Unlike the perfectly prepared movements of Cirque’s dancers, Nijensohn’s photos detail beautiful blips or unexpected views.

“I keep my eyes open when I’m walking, and I see stuff,” she said.

Nijensohn deflected praise for her photographic ability and continued, “I just pay attention. Things are there, you just need to see them.”

Since officially joining Cirque in April 2022, Nijensohn has seen the world. She’s visited Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Poland and numerous countries spanning east and west. The next several months will be spent between the United States and Canada.

One of the gifts of globetrotting is its ability to further bonds with relatives in Argentina, she explained.

“Part of my family is very religious — I have two cousins who are very religious — so I’m really close to that,” she said. “Sometimes it’s hard to connect to Judaism, but I try.”

During a European tour, she stopped in Auschwitz. Over Rosh Hashanah, she found a synagogue in Vienna. On Yom Kippur, she attended services in Manchester. Weeks ago, she was in Montreal when a random person gave her a menorah.

Nijensohn celebrated Chanukah by bringing the menorah back to her hotel. Terrified of triggering the smoke alarm, however, she ignited the flames in her bathroom, she said with a laugh.

Touring the world with Cirque is demanding, and there isn’t much time off, but there are opportunities to create meaningful Jewish experiences, she noted. “Every time I do something closer to Judaism, I feel closer to my family, even if I’m far away from them.”

Whether speaking with fellow synagogue-goers or random menorah-gifters in the street, it’s fun interacting with other landsmen, Nijensohn said: “It’s good to meet other people that basically have the same beliefs as you.”

There are obvious differences between Jewish communities and individuals everywhere, but being able to see so much is “really good,” she said. “It’s very enriching. It really helps me grow as a person.”

Nijensohn told the Chronicle that she’s the only Jewish staffer touring with Cirque

and that interacting with colleagues from numerous cultures and nationalities is a treat.

“I’m a stage manager. I always compare it to an orchestra director, where everyone knows what they need to do, but you organize it so it synchronizes and goes well together,” she said. “There’s a lot of scheduling, a lot of taking care of the artists, but it’s basically a mixture between the artistic and the technical side of the show.”

Nijensohn works with every Cirque staffer, but said her team consists of three other stage managers, including a general stage manager, a coach who oversees the acrobatic elements of the show and an artistic director, who serves as Cirque’s artistic head: “It’s not just me, it’s a team effort.”

The commonality, among both her team and the larger staff, is that virtually no one is a native English speaker — Nijensohn’s first language is Spanish; her second language is French; then she speaks English — and because almost everybody is conversing in a non-native tongue, nobody is judging your

grammar, she added.

Cirque is now in New England. At the end of January, it will head to Norfolk, Virginia, before venturing to Texas, Oklahoma, Washington, Oregon and then New Jersey and Ohio in June.

Nijensohn is eager to continue traveling. She encouraged people to see the show and said that those interested in pursuing similar career paths should reach out about shadowing staffers.

“Never stop studying,” she said. “Try to make connections.”

Traveling the world is a pleasure, and as a Jewish person an amazing way to contribute to people everywhere, she said. “I think art is a different way to light the world. You can light the candles, but also every time you go to a show, you go to a museum, you take a picture, it’s a different way of lighting the world. It’s not only on Chanukah, you can do it all year.”

PJC

Adam Reinherz can be reached at areinherz@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.

Every Friday in

news JEWS CAN USE.

news JEWS CAN USE.

Every Friday in the and all the time online

Every Friday in the and all the time online

and all the time

@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.

@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.

@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.

For home delivery, call 410.902.2300, ext. 1.

For home delivery, call 410.902.2300,

For home delivery, call 410.902.2300, ext. 1.

p Cirque Du Soleil “Corteo”

Photo by MajaPrgomet

Hitler is alive and in hiding in final season of ‘Hunters,’ Amazon’s series about Jews killing Nazis

By Andrew Lapin | JTA

Spoilers for the first and second seasons of “Hunters” follow.

When Amazon Prime released the first season of “Hunters” in 2020, it advertised its Nazi-hunting TV show as “Inspired By True Events.”

That was true only in the loosest possible sense of the term. Starring Al Pacino and Logan Lerman and produced by Jordan Peele, “Hunters” told a bloody, souped-up, almost entirely embellished story of a Jewish-led team of multiracial Nazi hunters in the 1970s trying to stop a “Fourth Reich” from rising in the United States.

The show was immediately controversial: Series creator David Weil, the grandson of Holocaust survivors, had to defend his show from the Auschwitz Memorial, which harshly criticized “Hunters” for — among other scenes — depicting a human chess game at Auschwitz that never took place.

Despite all that, “Hunters” still had some basis in reality. There were, in fact, a handful of Jewish Nazi hunters active across the Americas at that time, most famously Simon Wiesenthal (played in the series by Judd Hirsch), who did succeed in bringing several prominent Nazis to justice.

Three years later, “Hunters” has, similarly, used the historical record as a mere suggestion for its second and final season, which debuts Friday and tells an outrageous story about hunting Hitler himself. Here’s how viewers can separate fact from fiction in season 2.

Hitler in Argentina

The end of the first season hinted that things were about to go seriously off the rails, as the “real” Hitler and Eva Braun were revealed to be happily alive and hiding out in Argentina — seemingly validating decades’ worth of baseless conspiracy theories about the Nazi leader’s supposed escape from his Berlin bunker in 1945. (Also throwing things for a loop: the reveal that Pacino’s character, who had presented himself as the hero’s Holocaustsurvivor grandfather, was secretly the Nazi “butcher” they had been hunting in disguise, and the man they killed after a season-long

hunt was the real survivor.)

In the second season, the disbanded Hunters reunite in 1979 to follow Hitler’s trail to Argentina, where many real-life Nazis did hide out. Meanwhile, in flashbacks to 1975, Pacino’s Nazi “butcher” works furiously to cover his tracks as he poses as a successful Jewish businessman and philanthropist in the United States.

Hitler-survival conspiracy theories seem to, well, keep surviving. In the decades since the war’s end, many conspiracy theories regarding Hitler’s fate have proliferated, and a good number of them coalesce around the unsupported claim that he, like other top Nazi commanders, was ferreted out of Germany and into South America via a secret underground network. “Hunting Hitler,” a recent top-rated History Channel docuseries, milked three seasons out of the idea.

But of course there were Nazis who successfully escaped persecution at Nuremberg by fleeing to South America, and “Hunters” crafts its Hitler narrative on the scaffolding of their real-life stories. The most infamous case involved death camp commander Adolf Eichmann, who hid in Argentina until Mossad agents uncovered his location and kidnapped him in 1960’s Operation Finale to stand trial in Jerusalem.

The Kreisky-Peter-Wiesenthal Affair

In the universe of the show, the fake Meyer played by Pacino is friends with Wiesenthal, a seasoned Nazi hunter. When the two meet in 1975 in an early episode of the second season, Meyer congratulates Wiesenthal on his recent success in Austria.

This is a reference to a real-life 1975 political scandal, in which Wiesenthal and a team of researchers revealed the past Nazi activities of Austrian politico Friedrich Peter as the country’s Jewish chancellor, Bruno Kreisky, prepared to offer Peter’s right-wing party a role in his ruling coalition.

Wiesenthal’s actions led to a falling-out between him and Kreisky, who variously called him a “Jewish fascist” and a member of the Gestapo. But the Nazi hunters declared victory over having rooted out the S.S. past of a prominent postwar politician. (Peter’s party never joined the coalition.)

‘Reclaiming’ Jewish-owned businesses in Europe

In an early scene of the second season, one of the disguised hunters walks into an Austrian candy shop in 1979 and innocently inquires how long the shopkeeper has owned it. The store has been in his family for generations, comes the reply.

But, the hunter muses, there is a strange

indentation on the doorpost — almost like a mezuzah. Could the shop have, in fact, been Jewish-owned before the Nazis came to power?

It turns out the hunter is right, and the shopkeeper will pay dearly for his denials. Again, the general arc of this narrative starts with real history, as there are countless examples of Nazis having seized Jewish-owned properties and businesses and destroyed the records of Jewish ownership, making it nearly impossible for surviving Jews after the war to reclaim their properties.

Frank Sinatra’s Jewish activism

As part of Al Pacino’s character’s disguise as a Holocaust survivor in postwar America, he becomes an active philanthropist to Jewish causes. At one point, he can’t help but brag that he convinced Frank Sinatra to make a hefty donation.

In fact, the famous crooner, despite not being Jewish himself, was a vocal and documented supporter of Jewish causes. He was presented with awards from Hebrew schools; visited Israel many times and helped build a youth center in Nazareth; owned a $10,000 yarmulke; and even gave his son, Frank Sinatra Jr., the Jewish middle name of Emmanuel.

After Sinatra’s death, to avoid paparazzi, his body was hidden in a Los Angeles Jewish funeral home for decades. PJC

p Logan Lerman and Jerrika Hinton in the second season of Amazon’s “Hunters.”

Photo courtesy of Prime Video

A moment of clarity

and Eric Kline of Mt. Lebanon are thrilled to announce the engagement of their daughter, Jennifer Kline, to Will Walker, son of Wendy Wagner and Mike Walker of Cleveland. Jennifer’s grandparents are the late Harold and Libby Perlman, Phyllis Perlman, and the late Abe and Pearl Kline. She is a producer at Wondery, Amazon’s podcast studio, where she is a creative lead on kids and family shows. Will’s grandparents are Marianne and the late Rhys Wagner and the late William and Loreta Walker. Will received his master’s degree in theological studies and graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School. He is an attorney at Latham & Watkins. The couple recently relocated from New York to Los Angeles. They will wed in August. PJC

Israeli scientists say substance prevents cancer’s spread in mice with 90% success

kill cancer cells,” he said.

Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and said to them, “I have sinned this time. The Lord is the righteous One, and I and my people are the guilty ones. Entreat the Lord, and let it be enough of God’s thunder and hail, and I will let you go, and you shall not continue to stand.” (Exodus 9:24-28)

Over and over we have seen this pattern: Pharaoh disregards Moshe’s warning. Then, when he and his people suffer from the plague, he agrees to let the Israelites go free — only to renege on his promise as soon as the plague stops.

desperate to say whatever it took to end this destructive plague. The hail crushed and burned people, animals and crops in an already devastated Egypt.

Those same cynics will point to the fact that, when the plague stopped, Pharaoh again reverted to his pattern of reneging on his word.

But perhaps, for one brief moment, Pharaoh glimpsed the truth that G-d created the universe and He alone controls all things. Pharaoh’s words seemed to be a retraction of his previous position. Back in 5:2, we are told, “And Pharaoh said, ‘Who is the L-rd that I should heed His voice to let Israel out? I do not know the L-rd, neither will I let Israel out.’”

Although G-d hardened his heart, and he refused to release the slaves, for one moment Pharaoh glimpsed these truths.

By Nathan Jeffay | The Times of Israel

Israeli scientists are aiming to produce the world’s first preventative drug designed to stop tumors causing secondary cancer and say the active ingredient has shown more than 90% effectiveness in mice.

The Bar Ilan University research team produced a peptide — a chain of amino acids — made to stop cancer cells from entering the blood and therefore halting them from moving around the body.

They have published peer-reviewed research showing that it successfully prevented metastasis in mice, meaning it prevented the spread of diseased cells that can cause secondary cancer.

Cells from many solid tumors develop invadopodia — feet-shaped structures that jut out of their surface. They function like battering rams, forcing their way through tissue to help cancer cells enter the bloodstream and metastasize in other organs.

But invadopodia only spring into action when they are “activated” by the coming together of two proteins. Prof. Jordan Chill, co-author of the study, said that the Bar Ilan breakthrough was to find a peptide that stops this protein interaction.

“We believe that this can prevent the activation of the invadopodia and, therefore, inhibit metastasis. I expect that it could be used in addition to chemotherapy or other treatments that

The effectiveness rate reported means mice with breast cancer that received the peptide were at least 90% less likely to develop secondary tumors than the control group.

Though the study focused on breast cancer, the team says it expects the peptide to be effective on all solid tumors — meaning cancers other than those of the blood, bone marrow or lymph nodes.

Previous research shows that 12% of patients with a breast cancer diagnosis go on to develop metastatic disease, for which the five-year survival rate is 26%. Chemotherapy is used to kill as many cancer cells as possible, but it doesn’t prevent any cells that get left behind from becoming active.

“Our advance is very exciting, as today there are no drugs in production that prevent metastasis, [or] in other words exist especially to stop cancer from spreading,” Dr. Hava Gil-Henn, co-author of the study, told The Times of Israel.

“Most drugs are focused on shrinking tumors once they develop. We are taking a preventative approach, which could save many from a second illness and save many lives.”

Chill said that the next challenge is to develop the peptide into a drug, with dosing mechanisms that can deliver it to the right location in the human body.

“So far, we have the arrowhead of the missile; now we need to develop the whole missile,” he said. PJC

But in this week’s Torah portion, during the seventh plague, the plague of hail, Pharaoh calls Moshe and asks him to take away the plague, saying, “This time, I and my people have sinned. Hashem is righteous and we are guilty…” (Exodus 9:27)

Now, under the pressure of this plague, Pharaoh seems to acknowledge that the G-d of Israel does indeed exist and that he and his people have sinned against Him.

Why now? Why did Pharaoh acknowledge G-d during this specific plague? The cynical among us will say that Pharaoh was

Deep inside of every person there is a spark of Divinity that knows the truth. Pharaoh had to admit, as it is echoed in this week’s haftorah, “that all the inhabitants of Egypt shall know that I am Hashem.” (Ezekiel 29:8).

May the time come soon when we, too, shall see all of the world’s inhabitants acknowledging this fundamental truth. Shabbat shalom. PJC

Rabbi Eli Seidman is the former director of pastoral care at the Jewish Association on Aging. This column is a service of the Greater Pittsburgh Jewish Clergy Association.

Rabbi Eli Seidman Parshat Va’eira Exodus 6:2 - 9:35

CHARNY: Dr. E. Joseph (Joe) Charny, a longtime resident of Pittsburgh, died in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 10, 2023, due to complications of a stroke, compounded by Alzheimer’s disease. He was 95 years old. Born in Philadelphia in 1927, Joe was the middle of three sons of first-generation immigrants from Odessa in tsarist Russia. After serving in the U.S. Army in Italy in the immediate aftermath of World War II, Joe graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Swarthmore College and received his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. In 1954 he and his wife, Peggy, whom he met at Swarthmore, moved to Pittsburgh where Joe continued his medical studies with a residency and internship in psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Western Psychiatric Institute. Joe taught psychiatry at Pitt medical school and Western Psychiatric for many years, as well as being a psychoanalyst in private practice. After leaving Pitt, he practiced privately full time and then completed his career as director of clinical services at Woodville State Hospital. After his retirement in 1989, Joe devoted the rest of his life to various volunteer causes, notably WQED, the Pittsburgh chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and the Community Day School. He became active in the family synagogue, Tree of Life, as a devoted “morning minyanaire,” as well as serving on the board of directors of the congregation, including as board president. Even before retiring, Joe and Peggy were avid international travelers, including a landmark 1979 visit to see her birthplace in China immediately after the country re-opened to international tourism. His photographs of their travels both local and international adorned their homes. Joe was a classical music enthusiast, attending the Pittsburgh Symphony and various chamber music ensembles for many decades. Joe was at Tree of Life preparing for Shabbat services on Oct. 27, 2018, when an antisemitic gunman entered the synagogue, murdering 11 people and wounding others. Joe was able to escape. In the aftermath of the shooting, he gave numerous local and national media interviews reflecting on his experience and was also featured in the documentary “A Tree of Life.” Joe was predeceased by his wife, Peggy (2013), and his son David (2000). He is survived by his son Joel (Anne), his daughter Sharon Woschitz (Heinz), two grandchildren and a great-grandchild. Services and interment were private. Those wishing to honor Joe’s memory are encouraged to make donations in his name to the Pittsburgh chapter of the ACLU (aclupa.org) or Tree of Life Congregation (treeoflifepgh.org). Arrangements entrusted to Ralph Schugar Chapel, Inc., family owned and operated. schugar.com

HORNSTEIN:

Jay Lambert

Hornstein, dearly beloved brother and uncle, passed away on Jan. 13, 2023. Jay was a gentle soul; kind, thoughtful and generous to a fault. He was an avid sports enthusiast and all-around good person who overcame many adversities in his life. He loved his family, especially his young nieces and nephews. Jay was the dearly beloved son of Joseph Hornstein and Dorothy Hornstein; dearly beloved brother of Marshall Hornstein, ShereenBeth (Paul) Rosenberg and Val (Cynthia Pepper) Hornstein; dearly beloved uncle

of Zachary Hornstein, Reid (Emma) Rosenberg, Jed Rosenberg, Olivia Hornstein, Rose Hornstein; and dearly beloved great-uncle of Simon Noah Rosenberg and Elise Claire Rosenberg. Jay will be greatly missed by his family, his friends, and to all who knew him. He was, indeed, a special man. Services were held at Shaare Torah Cemetery. Arrangements entrusted to Ralph Schugar Chapel, Inc., family owned and operated. schugar.com

KATZ: After a valiant battle with leukemia, Gary A. Katz, age 65, of Pittsburgh, passed away on Wednesday, Jan. 4, 2023. Born on May 12, 1957, in Buffalo, New York, he is the son of Bernice and the late William Katz, beloved husband of Amy Spiegel Katz; loving father of Jordan, Adam and Evan Katz; cherished grandfather of Cole and Sage Katz; brother of Jeffrey Katz and Susan Rothschild; also survived by nieces and nephews. Family and friends gathered for a celebration of life on Saturday, Jan. 14. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, Gift of Life Marrow Registry or 412 Food Rescue. Arrangements entrusted to Pittsburgh Cremation and Funeral Care, Robinson Township.

LEVINE: Ruth Levine, 99, passed away in the company of her beloved son and daughter-in-law on Thursday, Dec. 29, 2022. She was born Ruth Katz on Oct. 14, 1923, in what was then Czechoslovakia, the first of five children of the late Samuel and Fanni Katz. At the age of 3 she immigrated with her parents to McKeesport, Pennsylvania, where she grew up. On March 19, 1949, she married Henry Levine and together they raised three sons, first near New Castle then later in Upper St. Clair, Pennsylvania. They were happily married until his passing on Jan. 27, 1992. Ruth was an avid traveler, voracious reader, dedicated employee of the state of Pennsylvania, and volunteer at St. Clair Hospital for over a decade. Her favorite pastimes were those that kept her moving, including swimming daily well into her 80s and running after her granddaughters. She was exceptionally proud of her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren and was deeply involved in their lives. Ruth is survived by her children Gary Levine (Lisa Redpath), Larry Levine (Winnie Hou), and Barry Levine; granddaughters Rebecca (Michael) Murphy and Melissa (Theodore) Waddell; great-grandchildren Samuel, Eli and Lilah; and several nieces and nephews. She will be deeply missed by her family. In addition to her parents and husband, Ruth was preceded in death by her sister Beatrice Fibus-Davis and her brothers Sydney, Leon and Max Katz. A funeral service was held at 2 p.m. on Thursday Jan. 12, at the Mt. Lebanon Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made to St. Clair Hospital, 1000 Bower Hill Road, Pittsburgh, PA 15243 in her name.

SAMUELS: Morton “Morty” Samuels, age 95, of Boynton Beach, Florida, passed away peacefully surrounded by love and family on Jan. 10, 2023. Born March 10, 1927, in Pittsburgh, cherished son of the late Fanny and Simon Samuels, beloved husband for 63 years to Eileen Catz Samuels. Devoted father of Lynn (Greg) Signer, Barry Samuels and Lisa Kotler. Loving grandfather of Romy and Jack Kotler as well as his sweet puppies Cody and Cooper. Brother to the later Leonard Samuels and sister-in-law of SandieCatz Papa. Morty will be missed by many good friends and family members. A lifetime Steelers fan and a proud Pittsburgher. He also enjoyed golf, gardening, reading the Wall Street Journal from cover to cover and was an avid investor. His world was his family, and he lived each day to the fullest. A graveside service took place at Eternal Light Memorial Gardens on Thursday Jan. 12. Those wishing to honor Morton’s memory with a memorial contribution are kindly asked to consider Palm Isles Pap Corps, Attention Laura Telzer 7299 Summertree Terrace Boynton Beach, FL 33437 or to a charity of your choice.

Cindy

Alan

Anne

Michael

Ann

Shirley

Shirley

Obituaries:

Gertrude

Julius

Bessie

Diane

Sunday

Lindner, Ilene Grossman Mattock, Bernard Peris, Leah Rosenfeld, Beatrice Rita Weil Ruben, Esther Sadowsky, Anna L. Saville, Max Schlessinger, Gertrude Shakespeare, William Solomon, William Spokane, Morton Stein, Rose Wedner, Mary Sulkes Wolk

B.

Monday January 23: Sylvia S. Berger, Frances Levenson Carey, Ruth H. Cohen, Fanny Eisenfeld, Harry T. Feinberg, Nochim Gelman, Philip Goldblum, Samuel E. Klein, Norma Marks Klein, Samuel Levine, Estelle E. Martin, Jacob Alex Miller, Harold J. Pasekoff, Dr. George Raffel, Anna Shapiro, Sophie Shapiro, Anna Sigesmund, Chaim Silberblatt, Yetta Singer, Henry Solomon, Elder H. Stein, Albert J. Supowitz, Rose Tabor, Louis Tenenouser, John D. Whiteman, Goldie H. Zacks

Tuesday January 24: Isabelle Pitler Backer, Mollie Beck, Samuel Darling, Sidney H. Green, Florence Hiedovitz, Paul Ibe, Max M. Jacobson, Fannie Klein, Rose Klein, Regina Kossman, Geraldine Lerner, Blanche L. Schwartz, Bernice Semins, Russell Tanur

Wednesday January 25: Samuel Baem, Harry N. Bailiss, Sara T. Davidson, George J. Fairman, Joseph Gray, Dr. John J. Horwtiz, Sara R. Jacobson, Sam Kaufman, Max Kweller, Fannie Kwalwasser Lazar, Morris Levy, Harry Meyer, Mary Myers, Lt. Louis Newman, Harry Pretter, Mollie Samuel, Florence Stone, Pauline Strauss, Jennie Walk, Victoria Zimmer

Thursday January 26: Gertrude Berenfield, Nathan Bilder, Paul Carpe, Joel David Cohen, Lillian Cook, Minnie Farber, Morris Fleshman, Samuel J. Frankel, Paul Freedman, Jennie Glick, Sanford K. Greenberg, Lipa Haimovitz, Edward Hertz, Anna Harr Krause, Harry Lautman, Madelyn Platt, Dorothy Rosenthal, Dr. Eugene J. Schachter, Gertrude Silberman, Jacob W. Simon, Alvin Weinberger, Esther Pakler Weiss

Friday January 27: Irving E. Cohen, Nettie Galanty, Phillip Harris, Edith Lazear, Rheba Markley, E. Harry Mazervo, Oscar Robbins, Rebecca Rosenfeld, Gertrude Schugar, Pauline Silberblatt, Abraham Ulanoff

Saturday January 28: Rebecca Broudy, Rubin Davidson, Leonard A. Fleegler, Raymond Goldstein, Jacob Graff, William Randall Greene, Anna Grossman, Sarah Haimovitz, Tina Kaminsky, Anna Kart, Rose Klein, Betty Kuperstock, Anne Bilder Mallinger, Joseph Cliff Ruben, Ida Seminofsky, Sherman Shore, Jack C. Siegel, Al W. Wolf, Rose Blattner Zionts

SINGER: Susan Mahler Singer, writer and longtime Squirrel Hill resident, passed away Jan. 13 at the age of 81. Suzy was a writer first and foremost and always. In the early 1960s she wrote a children’s book called “Kenny’s Monkey” that was published by Scholastic Books and went on to sell more than 1 million copies; the book sales paid for the down payment on the longtime family home on Shady Avenue in 1966. Over the next four decades she was always writing book drafts or poetry and keeping a journal on the hearty IBM Selectric that sat on her desk, or later on the computer that she begrudgingly adopted. She was always ready to share a new poem she had written or to talk about a book she was reading. Suzy was devoted to her two sons, Shepherd (Roee) and Paul and their families. Even as she was losing the ability to have full conversations, she would still end every phone call, “I’m so proud of all you do.” Her apartment was full of photos of her two sons and their families, and she always loved getting more. Suzy’s life was harder than she deserved. When she was a child, her family was riddled with mental illness; when her parents divorced, neither was capable of taking custody so they put her and her sister in an orphanage. When she was about 14 she was kicked out of school and her grandmother took her in. She married Marshall Singer when she was only 18 and he was 27; they were divorced by the time she was 35. She was in and out of psychiatric hospitals all her life, and held a string of secretarial positions until she had to give up work in the early 1990s. In 2015 she suffered an infection and sepsis that dramatically curtailed her abilities, and she ultimately had to give up her apartment and spent the last several years moving through steadily rising levels of caregiving. Born and raised Jewish, she spent some time in her 40s exploring other religions, but she ultimately returned to the faith and found a loving home with Congregation Dor Hadash, where she loyally attended for many years. Her Judaism was a central part of her identity and her social life. The family gives thanks to Community Life, an organization that helps seniors remain in their communities by providing care and services in their homes; and to the Reformed Presbyterian Home in Pittsburgh where Suzy received dignified and compassionate care for the last year of her life. Mostly the family is eternally grateful to a small cadre of caregivers at these organizations who treated Suzy with such kindness and dignity. Suzy’s last decade was only possible because of the care and support of these wildly underpaid angels, and there is no way we can even begin to thank them for what they gave. In lieu of flowers, the family encourages donations to Community Life (commlife.org/make-a-donation/) or the Reformed Presbyterian Home (rphome.org/give/). Services were held at Ralph Schugar Chapel. Interment Dor Hadash Section of Homewood Cemetery. schugar.com PJC

Jewish Association on Aging gratefully acknowledges contributions from the following:

In memory of...

January 22: Blanche Stein Banov, Matilda Barnett, Irene Bloom, Florence Ravick Fishkin, Goldie Friedman, Herman Friedman, Harry

Harris, Jennie Hoffman, Albert Lebovitz, James Leff, Mathilda

Contact the Development department at 412.586.3264 or development@jaapgh.org for more information.

Anonymous Abe Zwang

Marlene Alpern

Nathan Greenberg

Dava Berkman Esther Berkman

Barbara & Frank DeLuce Albert Shaer

Meyer Grinberg

Rachel Grinberg

Cheryl Kalson Max Kalson

Sharon Knapp Nettie Galanty

Maeola Kobacher Louis Rapport

& Harold Lebenson

Phillip Harris

& Stephanie Letzt

Schugar

& Michael Levin

Gertrude Shakespeare

Maas

& Dorothy Maas

Jean Metzger

Jeremias Becker

& Jacob Notovitz

Mollie Samuel

Lisa Pollack Alex Pollack

E. Preny

M. Bleiberg

E. Preny

S. Friedman

Rachel Richman Hy Richman

Herbert Shapiro Anne Deutch Shapiro

Karen K. Shapiro Ann Tergulitza

Yvonne & Barry L. Stein Elder H. Stein

Leroy Supowitz Murray S. Love

Martin & Linda Supowitz

Albert J. Supowitz

Brenda Winsberg

Frances Gusky

A stunning Lawrenceville home o ers 4 levels of luxurious finishes and unparalleled city views. The dazzling hardwood floors and an open-concept layout make living and entertaining easy. The kitchen is a chef’s paradise with stainless steel appliances, Glacier White Quartz countertops, a large island with seating, and crisp white kitchen cabinets elevated with a pop of color from the handmade backsplash tiles and mosaic inlays. Three spacious bedrooms, 3.5 contemporary-styled baths, and thoughtful storage throughout. The top-floor bonus room features French doors to a private balcony with exceptional vistas of downtown and beyond. Enjoy the convenience of dedicated 2-car garage parking equipped with an EV charging outlet. Convenient to public transportation, the Universities, Hospitals, High-Tech corridors, restaurants and shopping. LERTA Tax Abatement.

SHADYSIDE • $695,000

North Woodland Rd. Townhome. Unique custom built sophisticated 4 levels. Lower Level has a great wine cellar, storage, int garage, and a side room which could be an office. First floor has a great room kitchen, dining and living area, plus 1/2 bath. This room leads to an unbelievable courtyard and luscious grounds with a sprinkler system. Next level- large room with a whimsical full bath. Top level has a great master area, with master bath and laundry, Smashing steel and glass staircase, dramatic lighting. Terrific acrhitectural details.

Israel’s 2023 Eurovision song entry: ‘Unicorn’

By JNS

Israel’s entry for the 2023 Eurovision Song Contest is called “Unicorn” and will be released in full next month, the Kan public broadcaster announced on Tuesday.

The song will be performed at this year’s contest in Liverpool in May by Noa Kirel.

“With all of Israel behind me, I am

embarking on this journey to bring great pride to this country. Thank you for this incredible honor….I am already starting today to work [on my Eurovision performance], and as you know about me, to work hard. Cross your fingers and fasten your seatbelts!” said Kirel in August, when she confirmed she would represent Israel at the event.

In July, she was chosen by a panel, convened by Kan, to represent Israel in the competition. However, she initially expressed hesitation about accepting the offer and said she would need time to

consider the opportunity before deciding.

The Eurovision Song Contest is an internationally televised songwriting competition composed of three live shows: the First Semi-Final, the Second Semi-Final and the Grand Final.

All songs must be original and no more than three minutes in length, lead vocals must be performed live, and no more than six performers can take to the stage during any one performance.

In each show, after all songs have been performed, each country with entrants

gives two sets of points (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 and 12) to their favorite songs; one set is given by a jury of five music industry professionals from a given country, and one set is given by viewers watching the show in that country. Viewers vote by telephone, SMS and through the official app.

The five countries in each semi-final with the most points advance to the final, along with last year’s winner (Ukraine) and the “Big Five”: host nation the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy and Spain. PJC

Sunday Swim Day

On the road

Before

Intergenerational gaming

competing in a Cleveland, Ohio-based tournament, Hillel Academy of Pittsburgh’s Girls High School Basketball Team posed for a photo.

p Home is where the hoop is.

Photo courtesy of Hillel Academy of Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh Diller Teen Fellows visited seniors at Weinberg Terrace.

p Bingo brings together the generations.

Photo courtesy of Jewish Association on Aging/Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh

Rodef Shalom Congregation’s Youth Group spent winter break preparing 100 meals for community members in need with Our Giving Kitchen PGH.

p Great group doing great things

p Helping is the best recipe.

Photos courtesy of Rodef Shalom Congregation

Families enjoyed a Sunday Swim Day at the South Hills branch of the Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh.

p Splish splash, so much fun

p Stay cool, swim on Sundays. Photos courtesy of Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh