Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle 5-10-24

By David Rullo | Sta Writer

For many, Yom Ha’atzmaut may feel different this year.

The holiday commemorates the Israeli Declaration of Independence on May 14, 1948, and is marked by a variety of observances, both here in the United States and in Israel.

This year, Yom Ha’atzmaut occurs in the shadow of Hamas’ terrorist attack on Oct. 7 that killed nearly,1,200. Another 240 people were taken hostage. More than 130 people are believed to still be in Gaza.

Across the country, anti-Israel protests and rallies have taken place on college campuses, some of which have included antisemitic chants and even pro-Hamas slogans.

neighbors and an uncertain future.

For Kim Salzman, Israel and overseas director at the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh, now is the perfect time to commemorate Israel.

“There’s no better time to come out and support Israel than,” she said. “It’s really important for the community to unite together behind Israel and send a clear message that we’re united and we’re not going anywhere.”

She said that what happened on Oct. 7 was a look into what would happen around the world if there wasn’t a state of Israel.

By David Rullo | Senior Sta Writer

Is the Pittsburgh Jewish community being held to a different standard than other groups that use public space in the city? Some think so and are frustrated by what they perceive as a lack of equity demonstrated by city officials and politicians.

In Pittsburgh, an anti-Israel encampment comprised of University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University students, as well as outsiders not affiliated with the schools, took over Schenley Park for nearly a week.

As a result, while many will celebrate the creation of the only Jewish state in the world that is the lone democratic country in the Middle East, for others it feels more like May 15 when Israel was forced to accept that independence meant a war with its

“Jews around the world need Israel, and Israel needs all the Jews around the world,” she said. “We have a shared destiny, and neither can have a future without the other.”

To that end, the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh is planning a commemoration of Israel’s Independence Day on May 19. The celebration begins at Beth Shalom’s parking lot on the corner of Beacon Street and Shady Avenue. Community members will meet at 12:45 p.m. A Stand with Israel march will begin at 1 p.m. walking down

Case in point: the Schenley Plaza encampment created by anti-Israel protesters on April 23, shortly after the group was forced to vacate the University of Pittsburgh’s property outside of the Cathedral of Learning on Forbes Avenue.

According to Maria Montaño, communications director and spokesperson for Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey, the group “Pitt Divest from Apartheid” was granted use of the space as a protected First Amendment activity for which there is no charge.

Et odictiumqui andae amusam quistium si de net voloritat Page X

Ovit, ommodi remos ero

Fodictiumqui aut entis andae asimuss

Yom HaShoah

 Attendees at last year’s community Yom Ha’Atzmaut story danced the Horah at Temple Sinai. Photo provided by David Dvir

 Protesters were granted the use of Schenley Plaza at no cost, something that has some people crying foul. Photo by Jim Busis

Headlines

Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh commemorates Yom HaShoah

By David Rullo

Toccur this month, on May 6 at Chatham University’s Campbell Memorial Chapel.

Remembrance Day, will be followed by Yom HaZikaron and Yom Ha’atzmaut on May 12 and 13 and took place amid the backdrop of Israel’s war against Hamas terrorists in Gaza and rising antisemitism in the United States.

of Programs and Education Emily Loeb opened the commemoration by recalling the words of Moshe Baran, a survivor.

important, he said, ‘To celebrate Yom HaShoah is to celebrate life,’” Loeb said.

Lebowitz shared that Yom HaShoah had been commemorated in Pittsburgh since at least 1978, two years before the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh was founded.

bers those who lost their lives during the Holocaust, those who survived and the sacrifices people made to survive or help others survive.

acknowledged the rise in antisemitism and around the world and the plight of the Israeli hostages held in Gaza.

ipants from across the city and the surrounding region, opening with the piece “A Shturemvint (A Storm Wind)” performed by the Community Day School Student

Subscriptions:

SUBSCRIPTIONS

subscriptions@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org 412-687-1000, ext. 2

TO ADVERTISE

advertising@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org 412-687-1000, ext. 1

EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT

Email: newsdesk@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org

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, Judith Kanal, Cátia Kossovsky, Charles Saul, Derek Smith

GENERAL COUNSEL

Stuart R. Kaplan, Esq.

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

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

David Rullo, Senior Staff Writer 412-687-1000 drullo@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org

ADVERTISING

Amy Weiss, Account Executive (412) 613-0697 aweiss@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org

PRODUCTION

Jeni Mann Tough Production Manager Carl Weigel Art/Production Coordinator Subscriptions subscriptions@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org 412-687-1000, ext. 2

Published every Friday by the Pittsburgh Jewish Publication and Education Foundation 5915 Beacon St., 5th Floor Pittsburgh, PA 15217 Phone: 412-687-1000

POSTMASTER: Send address change to PITTSBURGH JEWISH CHRONICLE, 5915 BEACON ST., 5TH FLOOR PITTSBURGH, PA 15217 (PERIODICAL RATE

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

p Allan Tissenbaum lights a candle in memory of the 6 million Jewish victims of the Shoah.

Photo by David Rullo

Israeli and Pittsburgh teens gain mutual understanding during Diller Mifgash

By Adam Reinherz | Senior Staff Writer

Aschool year typified by contention and violence is closing with a quest for friendship.

Since Oct. 7, Israel’s teens have attended classes while the country fights Hamas. During the same span, Pittsburgh’s Jewish teens have faced rising antisemitism at home, including defacement of private property and vandalization of Pittsburgh Allderdice High School.

During time together last month, Israeli and Pittsburgh teens largely avoided discussing hardships wrought by conflict, political extremism or destruction. Instead, high schoolers in the Diller Teen Fellows program celebrated Shabbat, explored western Pennsylvania and discussed shared interests and Jewish identity.

The annual Jewish Community Mifgash seminar in Pittsburgh is part of Diller’s yearlong program. Pittsburgh fellows meet once or twice a month for Sunday workshops, complete four overnight weekend retreats and reconvene with the Israeli cohort in the Jewish state for three weeks during the summer.

Despite the ongoing war clouding this year’s Mifgash, organizers determined that Oct. 7 wasn’t to be broached during initial conversations in Pittsburgh, according to Rebecca Kahn, director of teen leadership at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh.

“Not because we don’t think it’s important, but because we thought it was more important that they build connections together that are based on things beyond a traumatic experience,” she said.

Forcing conversation between Israeli and American teens “doesn’t make sense,” Kahn continued.

“Our experiences are so otherworldly different,” Point Breeze resident and Diller Teen Fellow Gabe Seldin said. “It’s very, very, impossible, sometimes, to make connections and relate with that subject.”

For high schoolers, meaningful relationships

are forged through dialogue “in a way that feels safe and comfortable,” Kahn said.

Several participating teens praised Diller’s approach and said that preliminary days of casual conversation between Israelis and Pittsburghers led to heftier exchanges later into the April 9-18 Mifgash.

Throughout the 10 days, nearly 20 visiting Israeli teens stayed in Pittsburghers’ homes, ran errands together and chatted. The young adults also jointly traveled to West Virginia for Shabbat at Emma Kaufmann Camp.

At camp, on car rides or inside the Squirrel Hill JCC, the high schoolers talked.

“I saw that being Jewish is difficult no matter where you are,” Misgav resident Carmel Bash said.

“It was definitely hard to speak up at first about how I felt about different things, but as this Diller experience has gone I’ve been definitely more open and able to speak my opinions,” Moriah Neiss, a Squirrel Hill resident and Diller Teen Fellow, said. “We’re all getting closer, and things are coming out more naturally.”

“I know that I’m learning more about them and they’re learning more about us. And

it’s really nice to understand where they’re coming from and how their life is back home,” she added.

Creating these connections is critical, Kahn explained.

Within the Jewish state, 11% of adults aged 65-plus hold unfavorable views of the U.S. The number jumps to 18% among those ages 18-29. On the other side of the ocean that disparity swells: Although 27% of older adults have an unfavorable opinion of Israel, the number balloons to 56% among the younger demographic, according to Pew Research Center.

Though generational divides characterize one aspect of American-Israeli relations, Oct. 7’s “traumatic effect” on Diaspora youth sheds additional light.

A First International Resources and Impact Research survey of 1,989 BBYO members indicates that since the war’s start, Jewish students have “been singled out, discriminated against, harassed online and lost friends simply because of their Jewish identity.” Discrimination has occurred “at school, nline and during extracurricular activities.”

was motivated to join this year’s cohort by a desire to articulate his lived experience.

“I think when the seventh of October started, during the first two months, everyone in the whole world came together and did things for Israel and for the soldiers in Gaza. But I think that’s faded during the past few months,” he said. “Fighting in Gaza continues, people are still losing friends and family, and the hostages are still there.”

The situation in Israel requires Ben Shimon and his fellow Israeli teens to be “emissaries,” he continued. “We are here to talk about it, to get everyone to know how it is, and to say that the war isn’t over, it isn’t ending, people are still fighting and people should know that.”

“It was something we were so afraid to talk about, and for months we couldn’t talk about it. But right now, we feel like we should talk about it because if we don’t it’s not going to be on the surface, it’s not going to be in conversations, and it could fade away to history,” Bash said.

For both the Israelis and Pittsburghers, time together yielded new insight.

Casual conversations during car rides led to questions about the war Seldin never before considered.

“I was just thinking what if anything like that happened here. How different would my response be,” he said.

Leaving Israel and encountering other young adults reinforced that, “Around the world, people can connect,” Ben Shimon said. “There is good and there is going to be good.”

Each participant reiterated that the Mifgash had little to do with parsing tragedy or deciphering conflict — weighty subjects were only broached because genuine bonds were established earlier in the week.

“I think it’s really special that we’re all able to connect,” Neiss said.

At the heart of the endeavor is a mutual understanding that “we’re still teenagers,” Bash said. “We came here to have fun, meet other teenagers, see things and go shopping.” PJC

Adam Reinherz can be reached at

p From left: Diller Teen Fellows Carmel Bash, Gabe Seldin, Shahar Ben Shimon and Moriah Neiss gather during the Jewish Community Mifgash. Photo by Adam Reinherz

p Diller Teen Fellows meet with ECDC students at the Squirrel Hill JCC. Photo courtesy of Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh

p Israeli and Pittsburgh teens gather for Shabbat at Emma Kaufmann Camp. Photo courtesy of Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh

Headlines

By Adam Reinherz | Senior Sta Writer

Rare is a writer who produces a pageturner. More unusual is an author who does so book after book, yet Zoje Stage, a Squirrel Hill resident and master novelist, has gifted fans another chilling read.

“Dear Hanna” follows Jacob, Joelle and Hanna, a young phlebotomist closer in age to her teenage stepdaughter Joelle than to her husband Jacob, a real estate agent. Tucked away in a stately home on Beacon Street, the Squirrel Hill family enjoys an unremarkable existence complete with errands, movie nights and meal preps. Several hazardous events alter the clan’s quotidian ways.

Those familiar with the writer’s style should find the threats less surprising than delightfully expected. For years, Stage has delivered readers heady tales of complicated characters — primarily mothers and daughters — who don’t as much shatter under pressure than wither within a bell jar.

“I’ve said this to people before that if I was only allowed to write one type of story, I would write mother-daughter stories,” Stage said. “I don’t want that to be the case. But if they were like, ‘OK, your brand is so small that you can only write one thing,’ I would write mother-daughter stories.”

The elaborate bond Stage maintained with

her mother produced endless opportunities for literary mining.

“It’s just given me so much fertile ground to think of in terms of what it’s like to be a daughter, and what it’s like to be a mother, and how complicated those relationships are,” she said.

Stage is the USA Today bestselling author of “Baby Teeth.” She followed its 2018 release with “Wonderland,” “Getaway,” “The Girl Who Outgrew the World,” and “Mothered.”

“Dear Hanna” returns to characters introduced in “Baby Teeth” but doesn’t function as a predictable sequel.

“People had always wanted to know more about Hanna, and what happened to her, but I had a lot of hesitation about continuing her story,” Stage said. “I felt like a number of people really wanted ‘Baby Teeth 2.0,’ and there was no way I was going to write that.”

After the initial novel’s release, Stage committed to leaving its characters alone.

Then, COVID-19 arrived. Stuck at home, like others, she developed an interest in true crime.

“I started getting intrigued by some of the psychology of the people I was seeing,” she said.

Stage read Martha Stout’s “The Sociopath Next Door” and became captivated by its premise.

A sociopath isn’t necessarily a criminal or killer but someone “without empathy or remorse,” Stage said: “I really wanted to understand that if Hanna is a sociopath — and we sort of saw how she was functioning as a child — how would that manifest as an adult?”

Stage brainstormed, gathered a notebook and employed an “abstract” process, which she described as more personalized than hammering on a keyboard.

“It tends to be something that happens later in the day, like when I’m done doing whatever my other work is, and I’m reading, or I’m watching TV, and my mind just wanders,” she continued. “At some point, I have a lot of notes that I’ve jotted down that I’ve plugged into a file on my computer and start to see if there’s a story developing. Once I have certain pieces, I can start to build out from that.”

Certain elements, like Pittsburgh, routinely appear in Stage’s writing.

“I love Squirrel Hill. Squirrel Hill really ruined me for life. I grew up here, and I was used to a neighborhood where I could walk to anything I wanted. And I never learned to drive. Maybe if I lived somewhere else, it would have been more urgent,” she said.

Stage lived in California, New York and Arizona but desperately missed her old setting.

“It was such a shock to realize that they don’t have little neighborhoods like Squirrel Hill, which has everything you could possibly want plus a place to live,” she said.

Eventually, Stage returned home.

She admitted to “romanticizing” the area, but said, “It’s partly because I can envision it very well. I know what the feel of this neighborhood is. I know what the look of it is. I know what the mood of it is. I know what things are when you’re walking up Murray Avenue, or walking across Forbes Avenue, or walking the residential streets.” The mores

Calendar

Submit calendar items on the Chronicle’s website, pittsburghjewishchronicle.org. Submissions also will be included in print. Events will run in the print edition beginning one month prior to the date as space allows. The deadline for submissions is Friday, noon.

 THURSDAY, MAY 9

The Healing with Nature Mosaic Project is designed to respond to the human experience of grief and loss through the healing power of nature and of creative expression. The six-week, 10-session program facilitated by mosaic artist Laura Jean McLaughlin will guide participants in the collective creation of a community mosaic mural, gathering shattered pieces together to tell a story of community healing and resilience. Saturday, 1-3 p.m. Thursday, 4-6 p.m. Frick Environmental Center, 2005 Beechwood Blvd. Registration required. 1027healingpartnership.org/ healing-with-nature-mosaic-project.

 FRIDAY, MAY 10–SUNDAY, MAY 12

Film Pittsburgh’s JFilm Festival, Pittsburgh’s largest Jewish cultural event, will showcase 16 engaging and thought-provoking, Jewish-themed, independent feature films from around the world. For more information or to purchase tickets, visit FilmPittsburgh. org or email info@filmpittsburgh.org. 7 p.m. $18. filmpittsburgh.org.

 SUNDAYS, MAY 12–JUNE 9

Join Congregation Beth Shalom and Tiferet Project for seven weekly yoga sessions in the Zweig Library that explore the week-by-week countdown from Passover to Shavuot. The countdown links the freedom and liberation of Passover with the revelation and responsibility of Shavuot. 10 a.m. 5915 Beacon St. bethshalompgh.org/tiferetyoga.

 SUNDAYS, MAY 12–DEC. 29

Join a lay-led online parshah 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.

 MONDAY, MAY 13

H. Arnold and Adrien B. Gefsky Community Scholar Rabbi Danny Schi presents Torah 2. Understanding the Torah and what it asks of us is perhaps one of the most important things that a Jew can learn. In Torah 2, Schi will explore the second half of Leviticus and all of Numbers and Deuteronomy. 9:30 a.m. $225. Zoom. jewishpgh.org/event/torah-2-2/2023-10-09.

Join Congregation Beth Shalom as they mark Israel's Memorial Day with a solemn ceremony for those who have given their lives in her defense, followed by a sing-along concert of Israeli music and folk dance as the mood changes to celebrate Israel's 76 years of independence. Dessert will be served. Free. 7:30 p.m. 5915 Beacon St. bethshalompgh.org



MONDAYS, MAY 13–DEC. 28

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

 TUESDAY, MAY 14

Understanding and explaining Israel’s current position requires knowledge of history. In the 10-part course, A History of The Arab-Israel-Iran Conflict: All You Need to Know, Rabbi Danny Schi will provide a full overview of the regional conflict that Israel has experienced over the last century. The cost of taking a course is never a barrier to participation. If price is an issue, please contact the organizer of this course so that we can make the cost comfortable for you. $145. 8 p.m. jewishpgh.org/series/history-of-the-arab-israel-iran-conflict.

 WEDNESDAY, MAY 15

Join Chabad of South Hills for a senior lunch and a question and answer session with Ashley Sharek of

Entrusted Legacy Law. 1 p.m. $5 suggested donation. 1701 McFarland Road. chabadsh.com

Join the Squirrel Hill AARP for its May meeting at Rodef Shalom Congregation. The New Horizon Band of Greater Pittsburgh will perform following the meeting. For further information, please contact President Marcia Kramer at 412-656-5063. Refreshments will be served. All seniors are welcome. 1 p.m. 4905 Fifth Ave.

 WEDNESDAYS, MAY 15–DEC. 18

Temple Sinai’s Rabbi Daniel Fellman presents a weekly Parshat/Torah portion class on site and online. Call 412-421-9715 for more information and the Zoom link.

Bring the parashah alive and make it personally relevant and meaningful with Rabbi Mark Goodman in this weekly Parashah Discussion: Life & Text 12:15 p.m. For more information, visit bethshalompgh. org/life-text.

 WEDNESDAYS, MAY 15, 29; JUNE 26; JULY 10, 24; AUG. 7, 28; SEPT. 4, 28

Chabad of Monroeville invites you to spend an hour playing mahjong and other games. Play, shmooze, learn a word of the Torah, say a prayer for Israel and, of course, nosh on some yummy treats. Free. 7 p.m. RSVP is required: SusanEBurgess@gmail.com, or text or call 412-295-1838. 2715 Mosside Blvd. jewishmonroeville.com/mahjong.

 WEDNESDAYS, MAY 15; JUNE 19; JULY 17: AUG. 21; SEPT. 18; OCT. 16; NOV. 20; DEC. 18

Join AgeWell for the Intergenerational Family Dynamics Discussion Group at JCC South Hills the third Wednesday of each month. Led by intergenerational specialist/presenter and educator Audree Schall. The group is geared toward anyone who has children, grandchildren, a spouse, siblings or parents. Whether you have family harmony or strife, these discussions are going to be thought-provoking, with tools to help build strong relationships and family unity. Free. 12:30 p.m.

 THURSDAYS, MAY 16

fought Nazis in the French Resistance and later made a new life in America. The couple is expected to join the presentation virtually. This program is courtesy of the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh Generations Speakers Bureau. Free. 6 p.m. Butler Area Public Library, 218 N. McKean St., 16001. butlerlibrary.info

 THURSDAYS, MAY 16–DEC. 5

Join Beth El Congregation of the South Hills for Hope & Healing on Zoom the first Thursday of each month, a 30-minute program led by Rabbi Amy Greenbaum. Chant, breathe, pray for healing and seek peace. Call Beth El at 412-561-1168 to receive the Zoom link. 5:30 p.m. bethelcong.org.

 SUNDAY, MAY 19

Join Tree of Life Young Jewish Community for a tour by trolley of the historic Hill District. Eric Lidji, archivist of the Rauh Jewish Archives, will be the guide through the area’s Jewish sites. Snacks included. This event is for individuals in their 20s and 30s. 1 p.m. Meet in Rodef Shalom’s parking lot, 4905 Fifth Ave. $10. treeoflifepgh.org/event/bustour.

Join the entire Jewish community for the best adult Israel Independence Day party in the ‘Burgh. Enjoy hora music and dancing, Israeli kosher food, photo booth, DJ Israeli music, face painting and more. 7 p.m. $45; $25 for students. JCC Pittsburgh, Levinson Hall. 412friendsofzahal.org.

 THURSDAY, MAY 23

Join The Branch for the May Family Forum Meeting “Arts and Community.” The Family Forum is a parent-driven e ort to support families of adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities by providing education, resources and the benefit of personal experience. 6:15 p.m. Sally and Howard Levin Clubhouse, 2609 Murray Ave. First Floor. RSVP by May 20 to akarabin@thebranchpgh.org

 SUNDAYS MAY 26; JUNE 9, 23; JULY 7, 21; AUG. 4, 18; SEPT. 1, 15, 29

Join Deborah Stueber for Edith and Kurt Leuchter: A Story of Love and Resilience. The couple are Deborah’s parents who survived the Holocaust,

Chabad of Monroeville invites you to BLT (Bagel, Lox, Tefillin), an in-person tefillin club followed by breakfast. No prior experience necessary. Tefillin available for use. 9 a.m. 2715 Mosside Blvd. RSVP appreciated at chabad@jewishmonroeville.com. PJC

Join the Chronicle Book Club!

The Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle invites you to join the Chronicle Book Club for its June 9 discussion of “We Must Not Think of Ourselves,” by Lauren Grodstein. From Amazon.com: “Inspired by a little-known piece of history — the underground group that kept an archive to ensure that the lives of Jewish occupants of the Warsaw Ghetto in World War II were not lost to history — this is a heart-wrenching novel of love and defiance that People calls “gripping, emotional, and against all odds, hopeful.”

Author Lauren Grodstein will join us for the meeting!

Your Hosts:

Toby Tabachnick, editor of the Chronicle

David Rullo, Chronicle senior staff writer

How and When:

We will meet on Zoom on Sunday, June 9, at noon.

What To Do

Buy: “We Must Not Think of Ourselves.” It is available at area Barnes & Noble stores and from online retailers, including Amazon and Barnes & Noble. It is also available through the Carnegie Library system.

Email: Contact us at drullo@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org, and write “Chronicle Book Club” in the subject line. We will send you a Zoom link for the discussion meeting. Registration closes on June 7.

Happy reading! PJC

— Toby Tabachnick

Headlines

effort to express opposition to the IsraelHamas war in the context of broader anti-Israel sentiment generally,” said Rosensaft.

By Cathryn J. Prince | Times of Israel

NEW YORK — There was a time when the most contentious issue before the Yonkers City Council was how to deal with an $86 million deficit.

That all changed in late October when pro-Palestinian groups started pushing the council to adopt a cease-fire resolution on the Israel-Hamas war, which began after thousands of Hamas-led terrorists invaded southern Israel, murdered some 1,200 people and took 253 hostage. Weeks of debate followed, much of it vitriolic, and a resolution was drafted before ultimately being shelved on April 10.

“It’s not that I don’t want peace in the Middle East or the hostages released, it’s that it’s symbolic,” said city council president Lakisha Collins-Bellamy. “We can’t enforce the resolution; it has no teeth. It’s not like [US] President [Joe] Biden is going to say, ‘Look, Yonkers passed a resolution, let’s end the war.’” Since Richmond, California, became the first city in the United States to pass a cease-fire resolution on Oct. 25, more than 100 municipalities nationwide, including Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit and Toledo, have followed suit. However, because local governments have no authority over international conflicts, the resolutions are symbolic at best — and the hearings that lead up to the votes often devolve into outright hate speech.

“In many instances, it’s a case of virtue signaling as opposed to taking a sophisticated approach,” said Jeremy Burton, CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston. “The harm comes in the six to eight hours of a hearing where really hateful, divisive, ugly stuff gets said. It’s like they plop hate speech in the middle of the room and walk away.”

The proliferation of hate speech is all part of a strategy, according to Menachem Rosensaft, an adjunct professor of law at Cornell Law School, lecturer in law at Columbia Law School, and general counsel emeritus of the World Jewish Congress.

Municipalities and the public should understand that these resolutions are “clearly part of an extremely well-coordinated

“These resolutions cannot be considered in the abstract — they are being pushed by the very same individuals and groups that have organized the virulently anti-Israel and largely antisemitic demonstrations,” said Rosensaft.

“It is also noteworthy that these same municipalities are not calling for Russia to end its war against Ukraine — in other words, the anti-war sentiment of the resolutions’ sponsors is limited to the Israel-Hamas war in a way that would benefit Hamas.”

Tearing communities apart

In late January, the Massachusetts cities of Somerville and Cambridge passed ceasefire resolutions after a period of “brief, very divisive, harmful public debate,” Burton said. Although Cambridge acknowledged Hamas as a terrorist organization and called for a negotiated cease-fire rather than an unconditional one, it held its final hearing online out of fear that anti-Israel protesters — who were calling on demonstrators to show up via social media — would disrupt the proceedings.

The town of Brookline, Massachusetts, won’t vote on its proposed resolution until the end of May, which means repeated hearings — and more time for members of the public to spew hate speech and further divide the community, Burton said. He added that stymying hateful rhetoric brushes up against government interference in free speech, which is unconstitutional.

Meanwhile, about 1,000 miles away in Bloomfield, Indiana, just outside the college town of Bloomington, Alvin Rosenfeld described local city council meetings focusing on a cease-fire resolution as hate-filled.

“In terms of impact on events 6,000 or 7,000 miles away, they’re meaningless. In terms of their impact on the community, it’s changed the climate. There is more tension and more unease. A number of speakers said extreme and hideous things, and no one on the council said, ‘You’re out of bounds,’” said Rosenfeld, the founding director of Indiana University-Bloomington’s Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism.

For example, during an April 3 city council meeting in Bloomington, where a

 Allegheny County Council hears from residents about a resolution calling for a cease-fire in Israel's war with Hamas.

Photo by David Rullo

Headlines

Report: Saudi Arabia to normalize relations with Israel

Saudi Arabia has decided to normalize relations with Israel and is debating the timing of the announcement, a foreign diplomat familiar with the details told Haaretz on April 30, JNS.org reported.

According to the source cited in the article by the daily’s diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Lis, Riyadh is discussing whether to make the move in the coming weeks or after the U.S. presidential election this November.

“ The question is when, and the decision on the timing should be made within days,” the diplomat said.

While the Biden administration has been pushing to connect a pathway to Palestinian statehood as part of the Saudis joining the Abraham Accords, the source said that the kingdom would only demand guarantees on progress toward achieving that goal in return for establishing diplomatic ties with Jerusalem.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke about progress toward a JerusalemRiyadh detente at the World Economic Forum special meeting in the Saudi capital on April 30, emphasizing the importance of a Palestinian state despite former Israeli foreign minister Eli Cohen saying last August that it was not a major obstacle for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who met with Blinken on the sidelines of the summit.

Riyadh put U.S.-brokered Israeli normalization talks on ice after the Oct. 7 Hamas-led massacre in the northwestern Negev and amid the ensuing war in Gaza but has maintained that a deal is still on the table.

Warsaw synagogue firebombed

Warsaw’s Nożyk Synagogue, the only Jewish house of worship in the Polish capital that survived the Holocaust, was hit with three firebombs overnight Tuesday, JNS.org reported.

The attack caused slight damage and no injuries, according to the Associated Press.

Polish Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich told the AP that the synagogue was spared “by tremendous luck or miracle.”

Israel’s Ambassador to Poland Yacov Livne said, “Outrageous antisemitic attacks such as this cannot be tolerated. The perpetrators must be found and punished.”

Polish President Andrzej Duda condemned the “shameful attack,” adding, “There is no place for antisemitism in Poland! There is no place for hatred in Poland!”

Columbia University being sued over failure to protect Jewish students

Columbia University is facing a class action lawsuit accusing it of failing to keep Jewish students safe amid the wave of anti-Israel protests that have disrupted the Ivy League campus, JNS.org reported.

The anonymous student plaintiff filed the lawsuit on Apr. 29.

It acknowledges the right to peaceful protest and open debate at colleges. However, the lawsuit alleges that multiple demonstrations have gone beyond acceptable bounds, “intimidating and harassing Jewish students and faculty members” as well as “inciting demonstrators to engage in hate speech” and even “committing acts of violence,” according to the New York Post

The filing says the protesters have “called for terrorist attacks against the United States and

Today in Israeli History

May 13, 1975 — Israel, U.S. Sign Economic Pact

the State of Israel.” It describes Jewish students being physically attacked and targeted with “pro-Hamas hate speech” by aggressive factions within the protest movement.

The lawsuit accuses Columbia of effectively condoning this behavior through inaction, allowing an extremely unsafe environment to fester on campus for Jewish and pro-Israel students.

In a brief statement, a Columbia spokesperson said the university was aware of the litigation but cannot comment on pending legal matters. The spokesperson claimed that safety, open inquiry and tolerance for differing perspectives “have always been top priorities” for the institution.

Israel releases latest stats on survivors ahead of Holocaust Remembrance Day

Israel’s Holocaust Survivors’ Rights Authority released up-to-date data on survivors in the country on May 1, noting that 133,362 Shoah survivors and victims of antisemitic harassment during World War II live there, JNS.org reported.

About 96% of the survivors were children (under the age of 18) at the time of the Holocaust and were born after 1928.

“ The average age of Holocaust survivors is currently 87, the oldest of whom is a 111-year-old native of Tunis, the youngest 78, born about 10 months after the end of World War II,” the authority said. About 61% are women.

A total of 35,436 of the Holocaust survivors were born in Europe, of whom 13,881 were born in Romania. They constitute the largest group among the survivors in Israel (39%).

Fourteen percent, or 4,965, were born in Poland, 3,579 in Bulgaria (10%), 1,645 in Hungary (4.6%) and 5,647 in the former Soviet Union (15.9%). Only 2.8% of survivors, 1,016, were born in Germany.

Haifa is the city with the most survivors, (9,060), followed by Jerusalem (8,468), Tel Aviv (7,033), Ashdod (6,747), Netanya (6,642) and Beersheva (5,633)

Colombia cuts diplomatic ties with Israel

Colombia’s president announced on May 1 that his country will be breaking off diplomatic ties with Israel due to the ongoing war against Hamas in Gaza, JNS.org reported.

“Here in front of you, the government of change, of the president of the republic, announces that tomorrow we will break diplomatic relations with the state of Israel for having a government, for having a president who is genocidal,” said President Gustavo Petro in Bogota.

In response, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz tweeted: “The president of Colombia promised to give a reward to the murderers of Hamas — and the day has come. History will remember that Gustavo Petro decided to side with the most despicable monsters known to mankind, who burned babies, murdered children, raped women and kidnapped innocent civilians.”

He went on to say that bilateral relations between the countries had historically been warm, and that “not even an antisemitic and hate-filled president will be able to change that. The state of Israel will continue to protect its citizens without fear.” PJC

— Compiled by Andy Gotlieb

(israeled.org), where you can find more details.

May 10, 2010 — Israel Is Invited to Join OECD

The 31-member Organization for Economic CoOperation and evelopment invites Israel to join, which it does May 27. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu credits the drive and ingenuity of Israel’s citizens.

May 11, 1953 — Dulles Travels to Middle East

Secretary of State John Foster Dulles begins a fact-finding mission to Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, India, Pakistan and Libya. He says President Dwight Eisenhower is not beholden to American Jewish interests.

May 12, 1965 — Israel, W. Germany Begin Diplomatic Ties

Israel and West Germany establish official diplomatic relations, completing a process of increasing connections that began with Israel’s acceptance of Holocaust reparations in 1952. Egypt, Iraq and Syria then cut off relations with West Germany.

The United States and Israel sign a broad economic agreement at the end of a summit chaired by U.S. Treasury Secretary William Simon and Israeli Foreign Minister Yehoshua Rabinowitz in Washington.

May 14, 1947 — Soviet Envoy Backs One-State Solution

Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko addresses a special U.N. General Assembly session on Palestine and calls for the British Mandate to give way to one state shared by Jews and Arabs if they can get along.

May 15, 1941 — Palmach Is Founded

The Haganah forms the Palmach as an elite division to protect Jews in Mandatory Palestine from any attack by the Axis powers or Arabs during World War II. After the war, the Palmach smuggles in refugees.

May 16, 1967 — Egypt Tells Sinai Peacekeepers to Leave

Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser effectively orders the United Nations to withdraw its peacekeeping force from the Sinai, removing a crucial obstacle to war between Egypt and Israel, which begins 20 days later. PJC

p Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu joins OECD

Secretary-General Angel Gurría at the induction ceremony on May 27, 2010. OECD

p Palmach commander Yitzhak Sadeh (left) and Yigal Allon review troops in 1948.

Stage:

Continued from page 5

are “just deeply implanted in my head, so it’s very natural for me to place my characters in that world.”

Often, Stage’s characters are Jewish. Hanna, Jacob and Joelle’s affiliation is familiar, the author said: “I wanted to have these characters where they weren’t heavily, heavily, observantly Jewish, but it’s such an inherent part of their life that it’s

Cease-fire:

Continued from page 7

cease-fire resolution was being debated, some residents hurled white supremacist invective. Other speakers closed their remarks with “Heil Hitler.” Another speaker asked if he was “supposed to feel bad that these parasites are finally getting some karma. People need to wake up and realize Zionism is Judaism, Judaism is communism, and it’s a religion of sickness and evil.”

Beyond the bigotry, Rosenfeld said the council shouldn’t be working on these resolutions in the first place.

“When you want to serve on the city council, we [voters] don’t ask you about your foreign policy. You’re supposed to fix the holes in the street and make sure

something that’s just present.”

Establishing the story’s cultural backdrop is akin to writers or creators who nonchalantly “make references to Christmas,” Stage explained. “I just wanted to have an experience with a Jewish family where they might not be the most observant, but these are just inherently things that are part of their lives. And I wanted them to seem as natural as any other culture.”

Stage, who is speaking at the Greater Pittsburgh Festival of Books on May 11, is happy to talk about her process and past novels. She’s more guarded, though, about future endeavors.

the buses run on time,” he said.

That foreign policy lies outside the purview of city councils is of little import to Mohyeddin Abdulaziz of the Arizona Palestine Solidarity Alliance. He said the passage of a resolution on the local level sends a message to the Biden administration.

“I always thought to call for a cease-fire was a reasonable call. This conflict is killing people on both sides and a cease-fire is an opportunity to end the killing and the genocide,” Abdulaziz said. Although Abdulaziz said he thinks both the Israeli government and Hamas are “violent and oppressive,” he holds Israel responsible for the conditions that created Hamas.

Which ‘hostages’ exactly?

Aside from demanding an unconditional cease-fire, Abdulaziz said the resolutions

“I’m honestly so superstitious about my work — that until I finish it, I’m never completely confident that it’s going to work,” she told the Chronicle.

“Dear Hanna” will be published on Aug. 13. The cover is finalized and the text is going through final proofing. So, what about this other project Stage has thought about for the past year?

“All I’ll say about it is it’s an eco-horror story,” she said. “I’m very obsessed with animals and protecting the animals and the wildlife on this earth. I feel like

pushed by his group call for the “return of all the hostages” — referring not to the 133 kidnapped Israelis still being held by Hamas but to Palestinian security prisoners convicted of terror-related crimes serving time in Israeli jails.

To combat such confluence of terminology, the JCRC of Greater Boston has created a set of guidelines for local governments that may be considering such resolutions.

For example, the JCRC guidelines suggest that any cease-fire resolution should unequivocally state that Hamas is a designated terrorist organization that violated an existing cease-fire on Oct. 7 and is guilty of war crimes for targeting Israeli civilians and using Palestinian civilians as human shields. Additionally, according to the guidelines, resolutions should acknowledge Israel’s right to defend itself from terrorism

humans have really overstepped.” When pressed for further details about the upcoming novella, the writer kept mum. As for herself, she said, “I’m a very intuitive person. I have no formal education at all. Most of what I learn, I learn by observation. And I am absolutely devoted to watching documentaries because I like that they give me more exposure to real people than I would ever get in the course of my life.” PJC

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

and to exist.

In early January, Bridgeport became the first city council in Connecticut to pass a cease-fire resolution.

City Councilmember Maria Pereira was the only member of the allDemocrat council to vote against the resolution — both because Bridgeport has no sway over foreign policy and because of its language.

“We have no authority over international affairs. If you want to express your support for one, contact your senator or representative,” Pereira said. “Before Oct. 7, I would have considered myself proPalestinian. I don’t support the Israeli prime minister or sending taxpayer money to the war, but how can you kill 1,200 Israelis, some of whom are American, and pretend you’re the victim?” PJC

CELEBRATECDS

WearethrilledtoinviteyoutohonorAvi'sretirement after20yearsofleadershipandcommunitybuilding!

JoinusforourAnnualMeetingaswellasdrinksand dessertbartobidfarewelltoAviandcelebrateher enduringinfluenceonourschool.Welookforwardto sharingthisspecialmomentwithyou.

JUNE 03 MONDAY 7:00P.M.

Headlines

Yom Ha’atzmaut:

Continued from page 1

Beacon Street and Murray Avenue, finishing at the entrance to the Jewish Community Center on Darlington Road.

Participants are encouraged to wear blue and white to show support for Israel during the walk, which will include no live music out of respect for those counting the Omer.

Once the promenade reaches the JCC, there will be a live concert in the Katz Performing Arts Center, featuring the band HaShayara made up of men and women from Kibbutz Eshbal in Misgav which, along with Karmiel, are part of Pittsburgh’s Partnership 2Gether program.

Since Oct. 7, HaShayara has traveled around Israel performing for Israel Defense Force soldiers, as well as evacuees in hotels. The concert will feature Israeli and American music, as well as storytelling about their experiences.

The event will include different familyfriendly, Israel-themed activities at in the JCC’s gym, hosted by the area’s Shinshinim and local organizations.

“There’s going to be food we’re giving away for free, Israeli tattoos and lots of Israeli-themed activities,” Salzman said, noting that the entire event is free.

The celebration is scheduled to wrap up by 3:30 p.m.

A separate, adult-only event will also take place May 19 at the Jewish Community Center’s Levinson Hall from 7-11 p.m.

Protest:

Continued from page 1

The city’s “Regulations for Special events” defines First Amendment activity as “all expressive and associative activity that is protected by the United States and Pennsylvania Constitutions, including speech, press, assembly and/or the right to petition.”

In Part III, section b of the regulations, it states that permits for First Amendment activities “intended to respond to current events and depending for its value on a timely response shall be evaluated by the mayor’s designee no later than two business days from the receipt of a completed permit application by the Special Events Committee.”

The Chronicle has reached out to the mayor’s office asking if a permit application had been submitted more than two days before the protest that started on Pitt’s campus. We have not received a response before our publication deadline.

Montaño said that many of the spaces used at the park require a rental fee, including the use of the “oval tent” which is billed at $300 an hour or $1,400 for more than four hours.

Rental of park space also often requires organizations to have general liability insurance, “due to the risk of personal injury and property damage under certain circumstances.”

It is not known if “Pitt Divests from Apartheid” was required or had insurance to cover their use of the public space.

The perceived double standard between what was allowed by the Gainey

The party will feature DJ AdamBomb playing Israeli dance music, kosher food and traditional Israeli cuisine, alcoholic drinks, face painting, a photo booth, Horah dancing and other activities.

The event is organized by Israeli native and Squirrel Hill resident David Dvir. Dvir is known to many in the community for organizing the weekly “Bring Them Home Now” vigils in support of the hostages still being held by Hamas in Gaza and is co-funded by

a pattern that will repeat on May 19, as the celebration will take place less than seven hours after the end of the week’s rally that will remember the IDF soldiers that have died and the hostages.

Dvir is proud of his Israeli heritage and very appreciative and thankful to be living in the United States and said he “loves everything about Pittsburgh.” He doesn’t shy away from his identity. When protesters began protesting at the Cathedral of Learning

“I don’t feel that we need to hide from anybody. We need to be proud.”

– DAVID DVIR

412 Friends of Zahal Pittsburgh PA and the Israeli Community of Pittsburgh.

Dvir said he believes that, after so much darkness, the community deserves to have an event like the Yom Ha’atzmaut celebration.

In fact, he said, the Purim celebration he held was proof of the community’s need for a positive outlet from time to time.

“It was one of my wildest parties ever,” he said. “We had more than 240 guests at the Purim party. People danced non-stop. We had 150 people making a huge Horah dancing circle. It was so uplifting.”

Just hours beforehand, he noted, the community gathered for the weekly vigil,

administration and the cost of Jewish organizations to use parts of Schenley Plaza was highlighted in an April 28 letter to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette by Ben Koby, co-president of the Carnegie Mellon University Jewish Graduate Student Association.

He noted that those encamped at the park did not pay rent and violated various park ordinances including “prohibitions on camping, staking items into the ground, noise, smoking and vaping.”

The group, he alleged, didn’t allow Jewish students who support Israel onto the grass where they camped.

Koby noted the cost to rent the plaza for a day is $8,000. He said that when University of Pittsburgh students wanted to rent a tent at the park for a single day in memory of those murdered and kidnapped by Hamas on Oct. 7, they were billed almost $600 and had to obtain permits.

This, he wrote, is a clear double standard.

Koby told the Chronicle that his concern is that the city isn’t enforcing its own rules.

“It really crystallizes this view that there’s impunity going on, and it just gives this view of chaos and the breakdown of law and order,” he said. “I think that’s terrifying.”

He said that the buck ultimately stops with Gainey, but that at the end of the day, it’s the city that’s ultimately responsible.

The graduate student said that his takeaway is that “it doesn’t really matter what the rules are. It matters who enforces the rules.”

Sofia Rubin is a former University of Pittsburgh student now living in Israel.

After Oct. 7, she created a vigil of 1,400 flameless candles in the shape of the Star of David in the tent at the park.

before moving to Schenley Park, he, along with his wife, son and community members drove to the university with U.S. and Israeli flags and a bullhorn. They sang patriotic, American songs and waved their flag.

“I don’t feel that we need to hide from anybody,” he said. “We need to be proud.”

He said it’s important to celebrate Israel right now.

“We don’t need any sort of restrictions or to be afraid of hurting someone’s feelings by mistake. I don’t buy it and never will,” he said.

Despite the difficulties, Dvir said he wants peace. He said that after Oct. 7 he

“For me to use that tent, I had to acquire a permit, I had to pay a $500 fee to use a tent for 24 hours. I had to get permission from City Parks, which is run by the city government, or else I couldn’t use that tent,” she said. “It wouldn’t have been legal.”

For Rubin, finding $500 in the budget of an undergraduate student was hard and she had to go out and locate donors. She expressed frustration that others were able to use the plaza at no fee.

Rubin was also bothered by the appearance of Summer Lee and other political figures at the encampment, which she said appeared to give the appearance of the state sanctioning the protest and choosing sides.

The city government, she said, allowed the encampments because they believe in an oppressor/victim mentality in which the Palestinians are seen as the victims and they view the protesters as students simply sitting on the grass. She takes issue with that characterization.

“One of my friends was called a dirty Zionist, among other things, and told that Oct. 7 never happened,” she said. “They said it was all Israeli propaganda. These are the things you hear.”

Rubin also disputes the idea that the protesters were simply a group of concerned students. Rather, she views them as an extremely well-structured and funded organization.

“They had all these camps and flyers and everything. They had it all planned. They’re getting funding from these massive pro-Palestinian organizations such as the Students for Justice in Palestine, among others, which are getting funding from Iran

was talking to a Muslim friend who he told Hamas’ terrorist activity attempted to separate the two.

“We want to be friends. We have similar bonded families. We like to dance,” he said. “We like to host guests, have similar food, we like the same music and what happened tried to create a huge gap between us. He agreed.”

Tickets for the 18-plus party are $45 in advance and $55 at the door. More information can be found at eventcreate. com/e/israelindependencedaypgh.

Before the community celebrates the creation of Israel, Federation will host a Yom HaZikaron ceremony on May 12 at 8 p.m. at the JCC in Squirrel Hill.

The somber day is Israel’s official Remembrance Day dedicated to fallen soldiers, but the commemoration was extended to honor civilian victims of terrorism, as well.

Salzman said the event, appropriate for adults and youth, aged 14 and above, will focus on the victims of terror and fallen soldiers since Oct. 7.

“This will be a solemn ceremony recognizing fallen soldiers and victims of terror. It’s going to be a difficult ceremony because of everything that’s happened in the past seven months,” she said.

More information about Federation’s Yom HaZikaron commemoration can be found at jewishpgh.org/event/yom-hazikaron-2. PJC

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

and Qatar,” she said.

The Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh set up a Seder for Hostages on April 18 under the tent at Schenley Plaza. Adam Hertzman, associate vice president of marketing, said that the organization rented the space.

“We needed to use the pavilion itself,” he said. “There were items we rented or borrowed, there were food items that we wanted to give away. We weren’t going to buy food or kosher wine or grape juice that we were going to discard afterward; it had to go to a usable cause,” he said.

Hertzman said he understood the need for the city to charge rent. He pointed out that it would be helping with Federation’s Yom Ha’atzmaut event on May 19 and would be closing a street for a community march.

“Which is a lot more time-consuming and complicated,” he said, “in terms of their resources than other public demonstrations would be, and they are still accommodating.”

Hertzman understood the concern of the students though and noted that while there is a need for free speech, when it is threatening, intimidating or threatening violence then there is an issue.

“Which is what we’ve seen on some college campuses across the United States,” he said. “Some of the public protests are really abhorrent. I think it’s important for all Americans to support free speech and it’s critical for the Jewish Federation, for all Jews, in my opinion, to condemn loudly and publicly the hateful rhetoric that we’re seeing.” PJC

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

The war against the Jewish story

How has it come to this? How is it possible that Israel, rather than radical Islamism, would become the villain on liberal campuses? That thousands of students would be chanting “from the river to the sea” even as the Hamas massacre revealed that slogan’s genocidal implications? That the most passionate outbreak of student activism since the 1960s would be devoted to delegitimizing the Jewish people’s story of triumph over annihilation?

This moment didn’t happen in a vacuum. The anti-Zionist forces in academia have been preparing the ground for decades, systematically dismantling the moral basis of each stage of Zionist and Israeli history.

The attack began on the very origins of Zionism, which was transformed from a story of a dispossessed people re-indigenizing in its ancient homeland into one more sordid expression of European colonialism. (Europe’s post-Holocaust gift to the Jews: leaving us with the bill for its sins.)

Next, the birth of Israel in 1948 was reduced to the Nakba, or catastrophe, a Palestinian narrative of total innocence that ignores the ethnic cleansing of Jews from every place where Arab armies were victorious and the subsequent uprooting of the entire Jewish population of the Muslim world. Post-1967 Israel was cast as an apartheid state — turning Zionism, a multi-faceted movement representing Jews across the political and religious spectrum into a racist ideology and reducing an agonizingly complex national conflict into a medieval passion play about Jewish perfidy.

And now, with the Gaza War, we have come to the genocide canard, the endpoint in the process of delegitimization.

To turn Israel into the world’s arch-criminal requires three forms of erasure. The first is of the connection between the land of Israel and the people of Israel. In the anti-Zionist telling of the conflict, a 4,000year connection that has been the heart of Jewish identity and faith is irrelevant, if not contrived outright by Zionists.

The second is the erasure of the relentless war against Israel, placing its actions under a microscope while downplaying or entirely ignoring the aggression of its enemies. There is never any context to Israel’s actions. Only by erasing Hamas’ atrocities can Israel be turned into the villain of this war.

In focusing on Israel’s actions and dismissing those of Hamas, campus protesters are providing cover for October 7 denialism. This is a new version of the Holocaust denialism prevalent in parts of the Muslim world: The atrocities didn’t happen, you deserved them and we’re going to do it again (and again).

Holocaust – the uniqueness not only of the event itself but of the hatred that made it possible — was often lost.

Antisemitism is not merely the hatred of Jews as other but the symbolization of The Jew — that is, turning the Jews into the symbol for whatever a given civilization defines as its most loathsome qualities. For Christianity until the Holocaust, The Jew was Christ-killer; for Marxism, the ultimate capitalist; for Nazism, the defiler of race. And now, in the era of anti-racism, the Jewish state is the embodiment of racism.

Holocaust education was intended, in large part, to protect the Jewish people

The challenge of our generation is to defend the story we inherited from the survivor generation.

On a recent trip to New York, walking along Broadway on the Upper West Side, I saw dozens of defaced posters of kidnapped Israelis. Rather than tear down the posters, the vandals had blacked out the Israeli faces — a literal defacement. And a useful metaphor for the anti-Zionist assault on our being.

The third form of erasure is dismissing the history of peace offers presented or accepted by Israel and uniformly rejected by the Palestinian side. No offer — an independent Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza, the re-division of Jerusalem, the uprooting of dozens of settlements — was ever sufficient. It is hard to think of another national movement representing a stateless people that rejected more offers of self-determination than the Palestinian leadership.

The ease with which anti-Zionists have managed to portray the Jewish state as genocidal, a successor to Nazi Germany, marks a historic failure of Holocaust education in the West.

This moment requires a fundamental rethinking of the goals and methodology of Holocaust education. By over-emphasizing the necessary universal lessons of the Holocaust, many educators too easily equated antisemitism with generic racism.

The intention was noble: to render the Holocaust relevant to a new generation. But in the process, the essential lesson of the

from a recurrence of the antisemitism that reduces Jews to symbols. Yet the movement to turn Israel into the world’s criminal nation emerges from a generation that was raised with Holocaust consciousness, both in formal education and the arts. And this latest expression of the antisemitism of symbols is justified by some anti-Zionists as honoring “the lessons of the Holocaust.”

Unlike the Iranian regime, which clumsily tries to deny the historicity of the Holocaust, anti-Zionists in the West intuitively understand that co-opting and inverting the Holocaust is a far more effective way of neutralizing its impact.

Many, perhaps most, of the campus protesters are likely not antisemitic. They may have Jewish friends or be Jewish themselves. But that is irrelevant: They are enabling an antisemitic moment.

What is under assault is the integrity of the mid-20th century Jewish story, of a people rejecting the self-pity of victimhood and fulfilling its most improbable dream: renewing itself, in its broken old age, in the land of its youth. The shift from the lowest point Jews have known to the reclamation of power and self-confidence is one of the most astonishing feats of survival not only in Jewish but world history. It is that story that is being distorted and trivialized and demonized on liberal campuses.

I recently completed a lecture tour of some of the most Jewishly problematic campuses, from Columbia to Berkeley. In meetings with Jewish students, I was repeatedly told about a pervasive atmosphere of hostility toward Israel, even among many otherwise apolitical students. While the protests are an immediate threat to Jewish well-being on campus, the far deeper problem is the impact of the anti-Zionist campaign, linking the name “Israel” with racism and genocide. The vulgar protesters are a small minority, but they are shaping the attitudes of a whole generation.

By focusing only on the immediate threat of the protests, we risk repeating the mistake we’ve made over the last decades of failing to adequately confront the systematic assault on our story.

We are losing a generation, but we haven’t yet lost. Like other radical movements, anti-Zionism could go too far in its righteous rage, potentially alienating the majority. Perhaps that process has already begun.

The challenge of our generation is to defend the story we inherited from the survivor generation. We need to tell that story with moral credibility, in all its complexity, frankly owning our flaws even as we celebrate our successes, acknowledging the Palestinian narrative even as we insist on the integrity of our own.

We desperately need new strategies to counter the anti-Zionist assault. A good beginning would be the creation of a brain trust, composed of community activists, rabbis, journalists, historians, public relations experts, that would devise both immediate responses to the current crisis and a longterm strategy, emulating the decades-long patient work of the anti-Zionists.

The Jews are a story we tell ourselves about who we think we are; without our story, there is no Judaism. It is long past time to mount a credible defense of our mid-20th century story, which continues to sustain us as a people. PJC

Yossi Klein Halevi is a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, where he is co-director, together with Imam Abdullah Antepli of Duke University and Maital Friedman, of the Muslim Leadership Initiative (MLI), and a member of the institute’s iEngage Project. His latest book, Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor, is a New York Times bestseller.

‘50 Completely True Things,’ a Palestinian-American’s call for compromise, strikes a chord on social media

Last fall, Mo Husseini wrote a series of propositions — what he called “50 Completely True Things” — about the Israel-Hamas war and posted it on the social media site Threads.

Identifying himself as “a Palestinian American who is tired of stupid people,” Husseini set out to puncture myths on both sides of the conflict, suggesting that neither Palestinians nor Israelis had a monopoly on truth, justice or the moral high ground.

“This isn’t an essay in Foreign Affairs, you know? This is an idiot sh!@posting on the internet in trying to leverage a sense of humor to point out the delusions on both sides,” Husseini said in an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Monday, using internet slang for

aggressive, often ironic social media content.

“It’s not my place to decide what happens between Palestinian and Israeli negotiators,” he told JTA. “What matters to me is helping people, and getting past the delusions.”

The post — witty, profane and anguished — got a polite if unspectacular response on Threads, which is owned by Meta.

Three days ago Husseini re-upped the post as an essay on the self-publishing site Medium, and in the days since its readership has soared. Husseini has seen his once modest following

on Threads grow to over 16,000. The essay on Medium has been read more than 3,500 times. It’s been shared countless times on Facebook, a platform where Husseini barely had a presence before the weekend.

Many of those sharing the post are Jews who seem eager to read and identify with an essay that seeks common ground in a polarizing debate, and, as one Facebook user commented, “tried to push through some

Andrew Silow-Carroll

Yossi Klein Halevi

Opinion

Chronicle poll results: Encampment at Schenley Plaza

Last week, the Chronicle asked its readers in an electronic poll the following question: “Do you think the City of Pittsburgh should have allowed the antiIsrael encampment at Schenley Plaza?” Of the 383 people who responded, 69% said no; 24% said yes; and 7% said they weren’t sure. Comments were submitted by 100 people. A few follow.

They shouldn’t be allowed to camp. But they are otherwise entitled to protest provided that they comply with the rules of the space — no matter how misguided their cause.

There are appropriate ways to voice concern. Creating a toxic atmosphere that removes the ability to peacefully debate actual facts is simply un-American and not in the spirit of Pittsburgh.

They have a right to protest regardless of whether I (we) liked the message. It’s a public space. If they abuse the right, then they should be kicked out.

Freedom of speech should not include terrorizing another religious group.

Do you think the City of Pittsburgh should have allowed the anti-Israel encampment at Schenley Plaza?

These are lawless antisemitic mobs.

Yes, but they should have been required to get the appropriate permit like anybody else.

The students are so uninformed. It’s terrible. But we do a terrible job educating them as well.

Stating that they support a Palestinian state, or want a cease-fire is not antisemitic.

In the U.S. free speech is allowed. Also, the city of Pittsburgh resolved the issue quietly, and by negotiation. Kudos to us.

the Patriot Front) would have been quickly dispersed had they attempted an illegal encampment. The same should have happened promptly with this antisemitic pro-terrorist pack of liars.

Free speech is the foundation of democracy!

Everything ended quietly and well. There was no violence. People protested peacefully. They have that right. The city handled it all very professionally.

of the double talk and extremism.”

Husseini offers plenty to trigger partisans of all stripes, from campus protesters to pro-Israel groups. He notes that there “are sh!@y and awful people” on all sides of the conflict, that Israelis and Palestinians have both committed “acts of terror and violence,” and that their respective governments do not necessarily speak for their people.

Many of the essay’s short declarations refute some of the shibboleths of partisans: He undercuts, for example, the far-left assertion that the conflict is a clash between white supremacists and people of color, and mocks the far-right Zionist view that the Palestinians have no legitimate claims to a state of their own.

As for the war, Husseini condemns the Oct. 7 attacks and writes that Hamas has earned “every f!@king thing that the Israeli military throws at them.” At the same time, he laments the enormous toll on civilians in Gaza. “What is happening in Gaza to civilians is f!@king awful, and not the smartest thing for Israel to do, and some aspects of Israeli military activity may be war crimes, and it doesn’t have to be genocide for it to be tragic,” he writes.

The essay also rejects calls, increasingly popular on the pro-Palestinian left, for a onestate liberal democracy of Palestinians and Jews. “[T]his wonderful future has about as much chance of happening in the near term as this 5’8” 53-year-old Palestinian has of being a starter for the Golden State Warriors,” writes

As long as these things are calling for the elimination of the Jewish state (aka genocide) and are hostile to Jewish people, they should be banned.

To exercise freedom of speech is one thing but what these people are doing goes beyond that basic right. They are asking and supporting the murdering of Jews and the destruction of the state of Israel. So, no. Such protesters should not be allowed.

Husseini. “A two-state solution is the only workable one.”

Josh Feigelson, president and CEO of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, was so taken with the virality of the post that he asked his Facebook followers to explain why they had shared or recommended the piece.

These demonstrations are being orchestrated by antisemitic instigators. There should be no place for this anywhere, let alone in the universities. We are appalled that these demonstrations are happening in our country!

The park belongs to all of us and anybody should be able to express an opinion in a polite and nonobstructive way. This was not that.

Any other group spouting hate speech (e.g., fascist white nationalist groups like

without creating a reciprocal reality for Israelis.”

Brous called that essay “one of the most compelling articles I have read about this conflict in the past decade.” (The novelist Michael Chabon shared Brous’ sermon with his 27,000 followers on Threads.) Brous compared Husseini to Rep. John Lewis, the late

“It’s not my place to decide what happens between Palestinian and Israeli negotiators. What matters to me is helping people, and getting past the delusions.”

– MO HUSSEINI

“It felt like a novel Palestinian voice that I wanted to amplify — his publicly affirming Israel’s existence and Hamas’s atrocities, along with the failures of all sides,” responded a Massachusetts rabbi.

“I chose to post it because it speaks to the broad center, which I believe is both the ‘silent majority’ of Zionists and Palestinians and the only possible way out of this conflict,” wrote a Jewish educator.

Husseini also got a boost earlier this month from Rabbi Sharon Brous, the high-profile leader of the Los Angeles congregation IKAR. She quoted another essay by Husseini in her Shabbat sermon on May 4, which is posted to YouTube. In that essay, Husseini asserts that “true long-term freedom, security, and self-determination for Palestinians cannot exist

congressman and civil rights leader.

Husseini, however, is neither a politician nor an activist, but a design and creative director who lives in the Seattle area. “This has nothing to do with my job,” he said of his posts on the war.

Husseini’s father was born in Jerusalem, the descendant of a branch of a well-known Palestinian Muslim family. Mo Husseini grew up in Kuwait, and after boarding school in the United Kingdom studied political economics at the University of California, Berkeley. He turned to filmmaking after graduation, working at George Lucas’ Industrial Light & Magic and eventually directing and supervising visual effects for commercials. He currently works for a firm that creates events and brand awareness for major companies.

Would they have permitted the KKK to have an encampment there? The Hamas supporters are just as vile as the KKK members.

While I realize that far too many people will cry out that it is their right to gather and protest, I truly believe that it incites more hatred, intolerance and violence. PJC

— Compiled by Toby Tabachnick

Chronicle weekly poll question: Are you planning on going to a celebration for Yom Ha’atzmaut, Israel’s independence day? Go to pittsburghjewishchronicle.org to respond. PJC

Silow-Carroll: Continued from page 12 We invite you to submit letters for publication. Letters must include name, address and daytime phone number; addresses and phone numbers will not be published. Letters may not exceed 500 words and may be edited for length and clarity; they cannot be returned. Send letters to: letters@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org or Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle, 5915 Beacon St., 5th Floor, Pittsburgh, PA 15217 We regret that owing to the volume of correspondence, we cannot reply to every letter.

“I’m not a representative of an organization. I don’t speak for Palestinians,” he said in an interview Monday from his Seattle-area office. “And I don’t certainly speak for Jews.”

“50 Completely True Things,” he said, “came from a deep sense of frustration that everybody knows the answer, especially that the correct answer is a democratic state with equal rights for everybody. And that is fantastic in an idealized world where the Nakba didn’t happen and the Holocaust didn’t happen. But the reality is that everybody is very aware of what the solution is, and that solution is fundamentally two states.

“This idea that the Israelis are just going to have to pack up and leave starts to be a symbolic struggle against reality,” he added. “There’s no one here with clean hands and in the context of that, I think it’s incumbent on people to find a way that acknowledges reality.”

Husseini said 90% of the responses to his “Facts” essay have been positive. As for the negative reactions, he dismisses the idea that in acknowledging pain on the Israeli side and culpability on the Palestinian side he is “normalizing” Israel and Zionism.

“I don’t need to ‘normalize’ Israel,” he said. “The state of Israel is normalized. It’s there. Do I wish it didn’t exist the way it exists now, do I have problems with Israel politically? Yes. But I also have those feelings about every state in the world. But if the question is where people can just live their lives, then you have to acknowledge reality.”

PJC

Andrew Silow-Carroll is editor at large of the New York Jewish Week and managing editor for Ideas for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Life & Culture

Stuffed grape leaves

By Jessica Grann | Special to the Chronicle

It’s really hard to get good dolmades, or grape leaves, out and about. I’ve never been impressed with the canned kosher options and we don’t have any local kosher restaurants that serve them, so I learned to make them many years ago.

I enjoy making these with meat in both the Turkish and Syrian style, but I especially love the flavor of Greek vegetarian dolmades. These are stuffed with rice and herbs and cooked in a lemony olive oil broth. They are perfect for warm weather and can be served cold or at room temperature.

If you’ve ever made stuffed cabbage then you have the skills to make stuffed grape leaves —they’re just a little smaller and take a bit of patience.

I’ll share detailed instructions below to help you learn how to form these rolls. If you have another set of hands to help, the preparation will go by much more quickly. Set up an assembly line either way. It’s easier to lay out, fill and roll many at once than to fill and roll one at a time.

Ingredients:

1 32-ounce jar of grape leaves in brine

Half a large onion, finely chopped, about 1 cup

⅔ cup olive oil, plus 2 tablespoons, divided

½ cup fresh dill, finely chopped

¼ cup fresh flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped

2 tablespoons fresh mint leaves, finely chopped

½ teaspoon coarse kosher salt

⅛ teaspoon black pepper

¼ cup toasted pine nuts, optional

2 large lemons: 1 juiced, about ¼ cup of fresh juice; 1 thinly sliced

3-4 cups cooking water

Coarse kosher salt to taste

Buy the 32-ounce jar of grape leaves stored in brine. I commit to using the entire jar because it’s much easier to make and freeze half than it is to pull everything out and make another small batch. The sizes of the leaves can vary and you can’t use the tiny ones. Others have tears and can’t be used. Set those aside to line the pot. I feel good if I can get about 50 pieces rolled out with one jar.

need a bit of patience to get the first out of the jar. I drain the water so that I can see if there are two or three rolls in the jar. Gently pull one roll out with as little damage to the leaves as possible, and then take the rest from the jar.

Unfurl the grape leaves and set them in a pot or casserole dish.

Pour a kettle of boiling water over them, cover the pot and let it rest for 10 minutes.

Remove the lid and allow the water to cool until you can comfortably touch them.

Drain the water, then separate the grape leaves into the ones with stems, the ones without, and a third pile for rest that are torn or too small to use. Take the pile with stems and use kitchen shears to nip out the stem and the very base of the stem as it grows into the leaf; cut a small, inverted triangle and discard the stem. Add these to the pile of regular-sized grape leaves without stems and cover with a tea towel because they tend to tear if they dry out.

Use a mesh strainer to rinse the rice. Measure one cup of long-grain rice into the strainer and rinse under cool water for about a minute before setting the rice in the strainer aside to drain. You can do this an hour before making the grape leaves so that the rice can air dry before you parboil it.

Finely chop one large onion. Sauté it in a pot with 2 tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat for 10 minutes or until soft and translucent. Stir the rice into the onion and sauté for 2 minutes, then add 1 cup of water to the rice.

TIME TO EAT GREEK

Sunday, May 12 to Saturday, May 18

Enjoy wonderful Greek food, pastries & lively dancing

SERVING HOURS

Sunday: Noon to 8p

Monday to Thursday: 11a to 9p

Friday: 11a to 10p (music till 11p) Saturday: 1p to 10p (music till 11p)

the heat to low, cover the pot and cook for 10 minutes. Remove the lid, stir the rice and remove the pot from the heat. This step is to parboil the rice, and it’s important so as to ensure that you don’t have hard rice filling in your finished product. Partially cooking the rice also helps keep the dolmades together.

Add the dill, parsley, mint, salt and pepper to the rice and mix well.

Allow the rice to cool enough to handle before stuffing the grape leaves. If you’d like to use pine nuts, add them at this time.

Place each grape leaf shiny-side down with the veins of the leaf facing toward you.

There are two ways to stuff grape leaves. You can make them shorter and chunky, or long and thin. The long and thin version is another level of skill, so for ease, I’m giving instructions for the smaller version. You will need to adjust the amount of rice filling depending on the size of the leaf. For grape leaves that are about the size of a female hand, use 2 teaspoons of filling. For larger leaves use 1 tablespoon of filling. Be careful not to overstuff the leaves or they won’t stay together.

Use a measuring spoon to scoop the desired amount of rice and place it toward the bottom of the leaf near where the stem was cut off.

Fold the bottom part up and forward about an inch, rolling it around the filling.

Fold the right, then left, sides of the leaf in toward the center, then roll up the rest of the leaf.

On average, each piece should be between 2 and 3 inches long and about 1 inch wide.

Set aside, seam down, until all the pieces are complete, then discard any unused rice mixture. You can freeze grape leaves raw to use at a later time.

Line a baking tray with parchment paper, place what you want to freeze seam down and pop the tray in the freezer. Once frozen you can put these into an airtight container and thaw them to cook as needed.

Technique is just as important as the ingredients used and, in this case, it’s actually more important. Using the right pot or heat level can be the difference between a perfect dolma and a mediocre one.

Use a medium-sized saucepan or small soup pan, something about 4-5 quarts in size. I use an enamel pot that is about 10 inches wide by 5 inches high. I’ve made these in sauté pans or in bigger soup pots without the best result. It’s

important that the grape leaves are snug in the pan so that they don’t unravel while cooking and a smaller pot does the trick.

Line the bottom of the pot with one or two layers of the smaller and torn grape leaves. Press them up onto the side of the pot as well. If the leaves are damp they will stick. I’m never happy with the results when I skip this step, so just lay a few leaves out across the bottom and up the side if possible, as this layer will protect your rolls. Place a layer of grape leaf rolls across the bottom of the pot. Always place these seam down. Tuck them in as tightly as possible but in a single layer. Keep in mind that these will grow larger as the rice expands so you want to have a little room for movement. I usually fit 20-30 pieces per layer.

Place a few pieces of thinly sliced lemon over the layer of dolmades, then cover this layer with a few more loose grape leaves. Alternate the direction of the rolls for the second layer. Repeat until you’ve placed all of the grape leaves into the pot. I typically get two layers in my pot. Pour the olive oil and fresh lemon juice over the prepared grape leaves.

Lay a few more slices of lemon across the top layer and sprinkle with kosher salt, then add another layer or two of loose grape leaves over the entire top of the pot.

Take a glass or china plate that covers most of the diameter of the pot and place it upside down over the grape leaves. If the plate is slightly too large, do not force it — just choose a smaller plate like a salad-sized plate.

Gently pour water into the pot until it reaches the plate.

Put the heat to medium and bring the pot to a gentle boil before reducing the heat and putting the lid on the pot. The plate will keep the dolmades compact and submerged in the cooking liquid.

Simmer for 2 hours, checking the water level every half an hour. The rice is only parboiled. and it will expand as these cook so you need to watch it so the pot doesn’t dry out. If at any point before that the bottom looks dry, add a cup of water.

Ninety minutes into the cooking time, you should have about 2 inches of water in the pot, which will mostly cook off by the time these are ready.

These need to be cooked low and slow so that the leaf is tender to eat. You could make the best filling in the world, but if the leaves are tough then nobody will enjoy them.

Turn the heat off and allow the pot to rest covered for half an hour.

Remove the lid and allow these to cool to room temperature.

Use tongs to lift the plate from the pot, keeping in mind that it was submerged in olive oil, so have a tray to move it onto so it doesn’t drip oil everywhere.

Allow to cool to room temperature before serving or refrigerating.

When I serve or store these, I discard the cooked lemon slices and add some fresh ones to the top of the layer.

An extra drizzle of olive oil also helps to preserve them and a batch lasts 3-4 days in the fridge. You will be so happy that you put the time and effort into making these from scratch. Enjoy and bless your hands! PJC

Jessica Grann is a home chef living in Pittsburgh.

p Stuffed grape leaves

Photo by Jessica Grann

Prime Stage Theatre presents “Witness for the Prosecution”

By David Rullo | Senior Staff Writer

It’s no mystery: Erica Fox Zabusky loves the theater.

“It was my sixth-grade play that got me started with singing and I was trained as a singer, but singers have to act, too,” she recounted.

If her name sounds familiar it’s not surprising. When she’s not gracing the stage in acting and singing roles, Zabusky serves as the operations manager at Classrooms Without Borders.

The position, she said, is often intensive, intense and challenging — words that could also describe her work in the theater, something she’s pursued both professionally and with community theater productions for most of her life.

Since that initial sixth-grade play, Zabusky’s resume has read like a road map of theater, both local and abroad. She performed with the Pittsburgh Opera Chorus and as part of the Pittsburgh New Works Festival, at the Pittsburgh Playhouse’s original location in Oakland and on the South Side at the City Theatre.

Along the way, she sang at the Salzburg Cathedral Choir before moving to and performing in Hamburg, Germany, before moving back to the United States where her focus shifted from singing to acting.

“I started acting because there weren’t always roles in musical theater for ‘mature women,’” she said. “It had always been there, but I never really explored it because I was so focused on singing.”

The move to acting roles might have been for practical reasons, but Zabusky said the transition has given her more of an opportunity to flex her theater muscles. She said there’s more range to the characters in straight acting than in musical theater, which tends to often have stereotyped characters.

“There’s is much more opportunity to put your stamp on it, as opposed to singing the notes that a composer has written and I really find that a challenge, but it’s also rewarding,” she said.

Zabusky found her newest challenge with Prime Stage Theatre’s production of Agatha Christie’s “Witness for the Prosecution,” where she plays Janet Mackenzie.

The play, she said, is just as relevant today as when it was written, touching on issues of xenophobia and anti-foreigner sentiment, women’s roles in society and the expectations of what women should or shouldn’t do.

AFTER 76 YEARS, WE’RE STILL FIGHTING FOR A JEWISH STATE.

“Even though it’s a play written in the ‘50s, it has many themes that are timely today,” she said. “It’s surprising and sad that these things are still taken for granted — how women are supposed to be in society and how foreigners are viewed. This really brings a lot of those to the fore.”

Prime Stage, she said, produces thoughtprovoking work that takes on various social issues that look at historical situations from different perspectives.

David Nackman, who portrays Myers in the production, said that “Witness for the Prosecution” examines social issues in a way many Agatha Christie plays do not.

“She took on a whole range of social issues — xenophobia and misogyny and the imbalance in the judicial system and in the way our perception can be warped by our biases, and differences in class, all of those factors play out on the stage in the courtroom,” he said.

Like Zabusky, Nackman has spent his life in the theater.

“I did the whole New York City actor thing,” he said. “I was on Broadway. I started my career in the national tour of Neil Simon’s “Biloxi Blues” and then went on to do that role in regional theaters around the country.”

After building a theater career, Nackman shifted careers and founded Performance of a Lifetime, an international company that trains business executives in communicating and working with teams using the tools of an actor and improviser.

The Pittsburgh transplant said that in the years leading up to the pandemic, in addition to running Performance of a Lifetime, he was doing a lot of experimental and avant-garde work.

“In the last couple of years, I’ve gotten much more active in the community theater scene, to the point of bouncing from one production to another and having a ball,” he

said. “I’m also looking to get back into directing. Next season, I’ll be working with a company called the Theatre Factory in Trafford.”

He said that the Pittsburgh theater community is close, which lends itself to experience and continuity.

“We’re passionate about it because we love getting in front of an audience that is there to see a show,” he said. “They’re there because they want to support their community and support their family and friends and they want to be told a story that takes them out of whatever crap they’re going through.”

“Witness for the Prosecution” Director Ponny Conomos Jahn is an example of the continuity of the Pittsburgh theater community.

Conomos Jahn grew up in Upper St. Clair and has worked as an actor, instructor and stage director for nearly three decades. She co-founded the Prague Ensemble Theatre and worked at the Little Lake Theater in a variety of roles, acted at the Pittsburgh Public Theater and directed at the South Park Theatre.

Her work with Prime Stage began several years ago when a friend was directing a work and asked her to audition. She was cast in a role and transitioned to help the company, working as its educational coordinator for a season.

Directing a work by Agatha Christie is a true passion project for Conomos Jahn.

“I was a kind of literary nerd. I have a dramatic literature background. So, for me, it was really cool and fun to have an opportunity to interact with an Agatha Christie play which I have never directed before,” she said. “She is one of my all-time favorite authors.”

In fact, she said it the drama of Christie’s novel is partially responsible for Conomos Jahn’s involvement with theater.

“I’ve always enjoyed the procedural murder mysteries set in the 1930s,” she said.

One of the things the director hopes will come through in the production is the humor of “Witness for the Prosecution,” which Conomos Jahn said is “honestly hilarious.” Zabusky, too, said there’s a lot of laughter to be found in the work.

“I think it has a lot more comedic moments than one might expect,” she said.

Prime Stage Theatre presents “Witness for the Prosecution” from May 3-12 at the New Hazlett Center for Performing Arts. PJC

David Rullo can be reached at drullo@ pittsburghjewishchronicle.org

p From left: David Nackmann, Erica Fox Zabusky, John Reilly and Jacob Wright in Prime Stage Theatre’s “Witness for the Prosecution” set in 1950s London Photo by Laura Slovesko

CARNEGIE MUSIC HALL • MAY 2, 2024 • 7:00 PM

LEFT ALONE RHAPSODY

THE MUSICAL MEMOIR OF PIANIST JOHN BAYLESS MAY 2–12, 2024

Torah Celebrations

Birth Announcement

Bryan and Kristen Weinberg of Newman, Georgia, are proud to announce the birth of their daughter Dakota Lynn Weinberg, born Sunday April 21, 2024 — 7 pounds, 11 ounces and 20 inches long. Dakota’s big sister is Haley Danielle Weinberg. Proud grandparents are Sandra and Mark Mason of Watkinsville, Georgia. Great-grandmother is Sandy Weinberg of N.M.B, Florida. Dakota is named after her late grandmother Debbie Weinberg. By coincidence, Dakota and her late grandmother, Debbie, had the exact same weight and height at birth: 7 pounds, 11 ounces, 20 inches long.

B’nai Mitzvah

Eli Eidinger was called to the Torah to celebrate his bar mitzvah on Saturday, April 6, 2024. Eli is the son of David Eidinger and Holly Blattler Eidinger of Squirrel Hill, the grandson of Marshall and Linda Eidinger of Fort Lauderdale, Florida and Donald and Brenda Blattler of Hannibal, Ohio. Eli is a 7th grader at Community Day School. He plays on the CDS basketball, soccer and ultimate frisbee teams. In his free time, he enjoys basketball, flag football, and spending time with his friends and family. For his bar mitzvah project, Eli volunteered with and raised money for the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank.

What does it mean to be holy?

Leviticus 19:1 – 20:27

he Hebrew word for holy or holikodesh — f inds its way into our Jewish lives in ways many Jews remember or recognize. We discuss (the weekday) versus kodesh (Shabbat ). We daven the Kedusha for Shacharit. In this week’s Torah portion, Kedoshim, God tells the Israelites, ” — you will be holy — and details the many things the Israelites must do or are forbidden from doing to maintain an acceptable level of holiness in God’s eyes.

In Or HaChayim, a medieval mystical commentary, we learn that the use of the future tense in this verse — tihiyu — implies that

Zakary Bennett Goldsten will be called to the Torah as a bar mitzvah at Beth El Congregation of the South Hills on May 11, 2024. Zakary is the son of Shannon and Eric Goldstein of Sewickley; the brother of Brooke, Gavin and Jakob Goldstein; and the grandson of Sheila and Mark Grenadier of Mt. Lebanon, and Karen and Allan Goldstein of Highland Beach, Florida and Sewickley. Zakary is a seventh-grade student at Sewickley Academy. He is a member of the middle school basketball team, plays the guitar and enjoys boating, traveling and computers and technology.

will become a bat mitzvah on May 11, 2024, at Congregation Beth Shalom. Joining her on the bimah for this special day will be parents Jen and Josh, sisters Rachel and Sammy, and grandparents Lynne and Alan Grusby plus Sandi and Gerry Steiman. Marissa is a seventh-grader at CAPA Middle School in downtown Pittsburgh, majoring in visual arts. She enjoys playing basketball on the school team, along with drawing, painting and sculpting. For her mitzvah project, she will be volunteering at the Western Pennsylvania School for Blind Children by conducting an original art class weekly. During “Showcase Your Talent Tuesdays,” Marissa will design different projects with tactile media for the children to create.

Jacqueline Gindler of Atlanta, Georgia, formerly of Pittsburgh, is happy to share the news of her daughter ’s graduation from the Physician Assistant Program, Master of Science in Physician Assistant Studies, at the City University of New York’s York College. Lily completed her undergraduate studies in biology and sociology at Stern College for Women, Yeshiva University and has accepted a position in the Department of Plastic Surgery at Kings County Hospital Center, New York. Lily is the granddaughter of the late Lorraine (Gindler) Solstein. PJC

threatening, outlining all actions that would undermine our holiness! Additionally, while some directives are still relevant in our modern times, many no longer apply to our modern-day and/or more liberal sensibilities.

Instead, let’s imagine more positive actions and ways of being that allow us to tap into our innate holiness.

So, we return to our initial question: What is holiness? And how can we take small steps each day to strive toward the holiness God envisions for us beyond what this parsha outlines?

In his iconic book “I and Thou,” Jewish philosopher Martin Buber finds holiness in relationships and by recognizing the hidden divinity in each of us. As humans, we can be God-like by exercising our power to sanctify moments and objects.

This reflection on holiness through this week’s parsha pairs beautifully with the

During these meditative and reflective days, I pray that we find sparks of holiness within ourselves and others in our daily lives.

holiness is an ongoing process, that we must live in the ways of Torah each day, and that it is not one that we can ever master completely.

Rambam (Teshuva 7:5) teaches that at the end of the Jews’ time in exile, Jews will do teshuvah and immediately be redeemed, implying that, as Jews, we will become holy upon the arrival of the Moshiach.

In this parsha, there are only a few positive commandments we should follow to achieve holiness, most notably: praising Adonai as our God; obeying all of God’s laws and commandments; honoring the elderly; living a life of justice; loving the stranger who lives beside us; and living in the land of milk and honey.

Similar to the Ten Commandments, much of this parsha defines holiness as things we should not do, and the punishment we would endure should we engage in these forbidden activities, such as: laying with a man as one does with a woman; various detailed circumstances of adultery; and engaging in sexual relations with a menstruating woman.

How strange that in a parsha about achieving holiness most of the text is quite hostile and

spiritual journey of counting the Omer that we recently embarked upon during Pesach and continues until the revelation of the Torah on Shavuot. During these meditative and reflective days, I pray that we find sparks of holiness within ourselves and others in our daily lives.

What are some moments in your relationship with others that have felt holy to you recently? How can we grow and learn from our past words and actions to engage with others in a way that allows us to feel God’s presence in our work and personal connections? Where have you observed holiness in our world?

If you’d like to share your moments holiness with me, I’d be honored to receive them. Email me at cantorgreene@gmail.com. I’d love to hear from you.

Shabbat Shalom. PJC

Cantor Stefanie Greene is the conductor of the Pittsburgh chapter of HaZamir: The International Jewish Teen Choir. Teaching Jewish Music, Israel, and Torah. This column is a service of the Greater Pittsburgh Jewish Clergy Association.

Cantor Stefanie Greene

Parshat Kedoshim

Obituaries

BIGLER: Born on Long Island, New York, on April 11, 1931, Bette Bigler died peacefully on April 23, 2024. She graduated from Pennsylvania College for Women (now Chatham University) in 1952. She married Harold Bigler in October 1952, and they were happily married for 65 years until Harold’s death in 2018. She is survived by her loving sons, Clifford (Colleen) and Marshall Bigler, her grandchildren, Brian Bigler and Chauncey Bigler, nieces and nephews, and many close friends. Graveside services were held at Westview Cemetery of Rodef Shalom Congregation on Sunday, April 28, 2024 at 1 p.m.

FORMAN: Lois Berman Forman, Feb. 23, 1947 – April 30, 2024. Lois died in Coconut Creek, Florida, surrounded by loved ones. Beloved wife of the late Alan Stanton Forman; loving mother of Sean Forman (Pamela) and Nicholas Forman (Sheryl); and grandmother of Jonah, Lila, Scott, Spencer and Micah. Born in Pittsburgh and raised in East Liverpool, Ohio, Lois earned a bachelor’s degree from Point Park College (now University). Lois lived in Pittsburgh and was active in the Jewish community, serving on the boards of Hadassah, ORT and the sisterhood at Parkway Jewish Center. After moving to Florida in 2009, she was involved in numerous activities including serving as an assistant building director and treasurer of the Nature & Arts Club in the Wynmoor community. Service and interment were held at Homewood Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, contributions in Lois’ memory may be made to Congregation Beth Emeth, 12523 Lawyers Road, Herndon, VA 20171 (bethemeth.org) or the Jewish Federation of Howard County, 10630 Little Patuxent Pkwy, Suite 400, Columbia, MD 21044 (jewishhowardcounty.org). Arrangements entrusted to Ralph Schugar Chapel.

GARBER: Lawrence Joseph “Larry” Garber, age 76, of Allison Park, passed away peacefully surrounded by family on April 28, 2024. Beloved husband of 53 years to Nancy Weiner Garber; loving father of Robin (Jeremy) Palay and Carolyn (Andrew) Lefkowits; grandfather of Samantha, Caleb, Chloe and Alexander; brother of David (Cindy) Garber and Robert (Tess) Garber, and the late Harvey Garber; son of the late Saul “Bookie” Garber and Marian Langsner Garber. He is also survived by many loving family members and friends. Larry was a 1966 graduate of Butler High School, 1970 graduate of Kent State University, and a veteran of the US Army. He was the proud owner of Pittsburgh Auto Parts & Sales in Butler. He was a past president of Temple Ohav Shalom, formerly North Hills Jewish Community Center, past president of the NHJCC Men’s Club, past president of Western Pennsylvania Automotive Dismantlers and Recyclers Association and served on the boards of the National Kidney Foundation and Passavant Hospital. He loved his card nights with the guys, an early tee time, scalding hot soup, and he was a life-long Steelers fan. Services were held at Temple Ohav Shalom, Allison Park. Interred at Temple Ohav Shalom Memorial Garden. Please make all memorial contributions to a charity of the donor’s choice. Professional services entrusted to D’Alessandro Funeral Home and Crematory Ltd., Lawrenceville. http://www. dalessandroltd.com.

KESSLER: Elinor “Teddi” Kessler, 95, of Tampa, Florida, and formerly of Hollywood, Florida, and Pittsburgh, passed away on April 16, 2024. She was predeceased by her parents Samuel and Yetta Frishman, sister Roselle Snyder (Sam) and husband David Kessler. Teddi is survived by her loving daughter Wendy Sigal (Markus) and son Joel Sigal (Debbie); grandchildren Justin Sigal (Megan) and Emelee Mihalick (Nik); six great-grandchildren Luke, Cooper, Jax, Leo, Wyatt and Jett, whom she adored. Teddi is also survived by her niece Barbara Snyder who was like a second daughter. The family suggests donations in Teddi’s memory be made to Humane Animal Rescue of Pittsburgh or Hadassah.

LUBIN: In loving memory of Marilyn “Mickey” Lubin, Phoenix, Arizona, April 28, 2024. Marilyn “Mickey” Lubin suddenly, but without pain, bid farewell to this world. She leaves behind a legacy woven with memories of laughter, joy and her undeniable beauty. Born March 21, 1934, in Pittsburgh, Mickey was the youngest of three siblings. She was predeceased by her beloved sister and brother, Lona Bess and Edwin Langue. Mickey was a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, where she met and married her first husband, and father of her four

Please see Obituaries, page 20

Bernice

Susan and

Contact the Development department at 412-586-2690 or development@jaapgh.org for more information. THIS WEEK’S YAHRZEITS —

Sunday May 12: Bella H Cohen, Edith Pichel Davis, Sheila Dobrushin, Paul Leipzig, Abe I Levinson, Saul Mandel, Louis M Myers, Morris B Pariser, Wolf Shoag, Joseph M Swartz, Louis Wolf, George Zeidenstein

Monday May 13: Max Azen, Gilbert Bernstein, Sonia Firestone, Herman Frankel, Lena Sanes Goldman, Barbara Gross, Solomon Hahn, Shirley Lebovitz, Donald Lester Lee, Harriet Berkowitz Linder, Harold Leo Lippman, Sam Littman, Moss A Ostwind, Hilda Stern Press, Samuel Raphael, Dr William Reiner, Carl Rice, Goldie Rosenshine, Scott Samuels, Rev Meyer Schiff, David Shussett, George Teplitz

Tuesday May 14:Harry Broff, Katie Elpern, Lottie Fleisher, Arthur Goldsmith, Jack Goldstein, Joseph Goldston, Sam Goldston, Yosef Goldston, Beate Gruene, Pearl Katz, William Kliman, Selma Neiman, Imre Neubauer, Jacob Schulman, Sidney Yecies, Rose C Zapler

Wednesday May 15: Pauline Schlesinger Americus, Louis Berlow, Ida Rose Diamond, Julius Goldberg, Dr Joseph Irwin Greenberger, Samuel Judd, Rose Markowitz Klein, Jerome J Levenson, Rose Marks, Melvin Murman, John Rothman, Freda B Saltsburg, Sol Sieff, Yetta Weinberger, Minnie Gertrude Wolf, Harry Yecies

Thursday May 16: Harry Auerbach, Joseph Braun, James A Eckstein, Lena Fish Freedman, Sidney Friedman, Samuel Laskowitz, Louis P Rosenberg, Vivian Baltin Rosenthal, Ruth E Sherman, Morris Zeff

Friday May 17: Stanley Friedlander, Isadore Gerber, Ida Ginsburg, Penina Reva Goldberg, John J Klein, Sam Klein, Samuel Mermelstein, Hymen Oawster, Rachel Racusin, Marcus Schwartz, Fay L Sidler, Rita W Silverman, Milton Snyder, Esther Supowitz

Saturday May 18: Isaac Adler, Paul Beerman, Pearle G Conn, Fred Gluck, Michael N Lutsky, Rose Mannison, Max Neustein, Fannie Rapoport, Morris Rosenberg, Dr Herman A Saron, Albert Schwartz, Florence Simon, George Simon, Philip Sugerman, Jay Weinthal, Norman Leonard Weissman

Obituaries

Obituaries:

Continued from page 19

children, Norman Bress. After her divorce, Mickey enjoyed a second chance at life, love and a wonderful marriage of 24 years to Samuel Lubin. Together they traveled, played lots of golf and enjoyed their many friends and combined new family of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.  After Sam’s death in 2012, Mickey remained close to Sam’s family and is survived by his daughter Carol, and sons Rick and David (Libby) along with their children and grandchildren. Mickey is also survived by her son Neil (Kathy) Bress, Suzy Schuman, Jody (Itamar) Stern and Amy (Howard) Neukrug. She is also survived by grandchildren Michael (Michelle) Bress, Allyson Bress, Zac and Toby Schuman, Ellie and Ari Stern and Joe and Sarah Neukrug, as well as great-grandchildren Luke and Logan. In addition, Mickey leaves behind her beloved nieces and nephews Charlee Geisler (Paul Stark), Carol Smith, Natalie Leighton, Jeffrey (Jill) Langue and all of their children and grandchildren, as well as her adoring cousins and many cherished friends. She had a good long life and was able to spend her final days in the glow of having just turned 90, celebrated by her friends and family and so much love. May her memory be a blessing. A celebration of life will be held on Sept. 6, 2024, in Phoenix, Arizona. Contributions can be made in her memory to the ASPCA, the Shermer Art Center or charity of your choice.

O’CONNOR: Judith Levine O’Connor, age 79, wife of 42 years to the late Mayor Bob O’Connor.  Survived by their children, Heidy O’Connor Garth (David Kadosh), Father

Lara Diamond is the president of the Jewish Genealogy Society of Maryland and JewishGen’s Subcarpathia Research Director. She will lead two dynamic sessions on Jewish genealogy.

Through May 27, each individual session is $10. Or pay $18 for both sessions which includes a free 1-year membership in Jewish Genealogy Society of Pittsburgh.

Terrence O’Connor, and Allegheny County Controller Corey O’Connor and his wife Katie. Judy was the daughter of the late Joseph Levine, and the late Joseph and Evelyn Klemp. Survived by her brothers Larry (Pam) Levine, Buddy Klemp, and brother-in-law Jake Pelled. Her sister, Deedee Klemp Pelled, predeceased her. Bubbie to Kennedy, McKenzie, and Delaney Garth, Molly and Emmett O’Connor, and great granddaughter Chavie Hart. Judy is also survived by many loving nieces, nephews, cousins and friends. Judy’s unparalleled love for life was evident wherever she went, including walking the streets of Squirrel Hill, assisting on the campaign trail, and hosting the annual Bob O’Connor Cookie Cruise. Her heroic fight against ALS will inspire others for years to come. However, Judy’s most important accomplishment was being an amazing wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, aunt, sister and friend to all. She loved hosting the holidays and family celebrations and going to Wildwood, New Jersey. Judy will be greatly missed by all. Services were held at Ralph Schugar Chapel Inc. Interment Calvary Cemetery. If you would like to make a donation in Judy’s memory, please consider the Bob O’Connor Foundation, 4217 Windsor St., Pittsburgh, PA 15217 or The ALS Association of Western Pennsylvania Chapter, 416 Lincoln Ave., Millvale, PA 15209. www.schugar.com

Florence “Faige” Sherman, on Saturday, May 4, 2024. Beloved wife of the late Alex M. Sherman. Loving mother of Michael Steven Sherman. Sister of the late Anita Ruth Cohen, Miriam C. Miller and Morris “Mashe” Cohen. Also survived by nieces and nephews. Services were held at Ralph Schugar Chapel. Inc. Interment Beth Shalom Cemetery. Contributions may be made to Make-A-Wish Foundation, 707 Grant St., #3700, Pittsburgh, PA 15219 or a charity of the donor’s choice. www.schugar.com PJC

Jewish Genealogy Society of Pittsburgh presents Jewish Genealogy Day

June 2, 2024

Jewish Genealogy 101

10:30am12:00pm

A comprehensive overview of resources available for Jewish genealogy.

Virtual on Zoom and In-Person at the Rauh Jewish Archives at The Heinz History Center

12:001:00pm Break

(No lunch provided - bring your own or check out one of the many restaurants in the neighborhood.)

Defying Expectations: The Story of a Jewish Woman Who Took on the Russian Empire

1:003:00pm

A story that illustrates how much can be learned from seeking out nontraditional documentation.

Virtual on Zoom and In-Person at the Rauh Jewish Archives at The Heinz History Center

Learn more about these and other upcoming programs at https://www.pghjgs.org/programming. PGHJGS members get into all our programs for free!

Real Estate

Life & Culture

By Adam Reinherz | Senior Sta Writer

Comedian Steve Solomon has heard 10,000 nights of laughs, but he’s hoping for at least one more. On May 19, Solomon will perform “My Mother’s Italian, My Father’s Jewish & I’m in Therapy!” at the Palace Theatre in Greensburg.

The long-running show features its writer and creator, Solomon, humorously recalling and reenacting episodes from his life.

“I use 20 or 30 characters. I do their voices. I change positions,” he said by phone from Georgia. “People just relate. They know somebody like that, and that’s what makes the show work.”

The 90-minute performance delivers fast laughs and pearls of wisdom.

“It’s a lot of fun, a great deal of fun,” he said. “I remember when my grandmother died, I said, ‘Pop, what can you tell me now?’ And he said, ‘Son, I’ll tell you what my father told me: Never ever take a sleeping pill and a laxative at the same time.’”

For nearly two decades, Solomon’s anecdotes have entertained theater-goers.

Off-Broadway performances began at Little Shubert Theatre in November 2006. After transferring to the Westside Theatre, the production ran until August 2008 and included more than

Since 2008, Solomon has taken the

“Now we are at 10,600 performances,” he said. The sum is less a “pat on the back” than an acknowledgment of how much fun he’s had

Every audience presents a new opportunity, and Greensburg is no different, Solomon said: “These are the sharpest people. These are the kinds of people — the Pennsylvanians, the New York, New Jersey people — they get it. They get it fast, and they get it.”

“The timing of the show is much faster in that region,” he continued. “They’re street-smart people. If I do the same show in Arkansas, the show runs very slowly because I got to give

them time to process.”

Solomon grew up in Brooklyn’s Sheepshead Bay. Largely populated in the late 20th century by Russian and Jewish immigrants, the area afforded the comedian countless opportunities to hear and impersonate different dialects and cadences.

Mimicry remains a big part of Solomon’s show.

He said he does so admiringly and without relying on “shock.”

“I’m lovable on stage,” he continued. “I don’t argue. I don’t scream.”

The most important thing, he said, is being relatable.

He told the Chronicle he went to The Home Depot to buy a fan.

“Right on the box there’s a big letter that says lifetime warranty,” he said.

Solomon brought the box to the front of the store. While checking out, he was asked by a cashier if he wanted to pay more for extended coverage.

“I said, ‘I’m sorry, it’s got a lifetime warranty.’”

The employee replied, “Yeah, but you can get an extra two years for only $14.”

Bits like that fuel the show’s success, Solomon said, “because everybody can relate.”

Developing and performing accessible humor means understanding an audience’s dynamic, he explained.

“One of the biggest problems that I see with a lot of young comics is they don’t know how to

work an audience. They get up there and they spit material out, and they step on their own punchline,” he said. “They shout or they keep saying the F-word 360 times and that becomes stale after a while.”

Solomon said that years of touring have enabled him to hone his delivery while also knowing when to pivot.

“Do I break the fourth wall? Occasionally. If somebody’s in the front sleeping, they’re gonna get it. I’ll finish a really good joke, and I’ll walk to the edge of the stage and say something like, ‘Listen, I’m sorry to bother you, but you should wake him up. There’s some good stuff happening.’ And then I take those steps back and I go back into character,” he said. “I’m not tap dancing.”

After decades of telling stories, Solomon is eager to continue the run in Greensburg. He wants western Pennsylvanians to “be happy,” he said. “Don’t think about politics. Be healthy and laugh. It’s good for you.”

As for whether Solomon can bring those chuckles, the comedian maintains that 10,600 performances have afforded a glimpse of what attendees can expect.

“They’re going to walk out of the theater wiping tears from their eyes, holding their sides from belly laughing,” he said. “That’s how proud I am of that piece.” PJC

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

 Comedian Steve Solomon is coming to Greensburg on May 19. Photos courtesy of Steve Solomon

Community

Bring them home

Community members gathered on the corner of Murray Avenue and Darlington Road to demand the release of an estimated 130 hostages held by Hamas. The May 5 demonstration marked 212 days since civilians were taken captive by Hamas terrorists.

Lights, camera, JFilm

Film Pittsburgh’s JFilm Festival began by screening “Left Alone Rhapsody: the Musical Memoir of Pianist John Bayless” at the Carnegie Music Hall on May 2. The event, which included a Q&A with director Stewart Schulman and film subject John Bayless and a mini concert by John Bayless, was sponsored by the Arthur J. and Betty F. Diskin Cultural Endowment Fund of the

Four more cups

Rabbi

p James Hayes, Republican candidate for Congress in the Pennsylvania 12th District, speaks during the May 5 event.

Photo by Jim Busis

p Residents hold signs as community members demand the release of the hostages.

Photo by Jonathan Dvir

p

Bayless, Paula Davis, Roberta Brody, Kathryn Spitz Cohan and Anita Srikameswaran

Macher and Shaker

p From left: Panel organizer Jack Gordon; Peter Smith of the Associated Press; Niraj Warikoo of the Detroit Free Press; panel moderator Ann Rodgers of the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh; Betul Tuncer, editor-in-chief of The Pitt News; and PJC Editor Toby Tabachnick

Photo courtesy of Jack Gordon

After a mock Israel National Trail was created inside Temple David’s social hall, Shinshin Lidor

p

Photo courtesy of Rabbi Barbara Symons

Shmuel Weinstein of Chabad House on Campus led a pre-Passover mock seder for students and faculty at Robert Morris University.

p In every generation, there is gefilte fish. Photo courtesy of Chabad House on Campus