Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle 7-14-23

Key prosecution witness says synagogue shooter proud of his killing, not delusional

Secure Community Network sets up local command post during synagogue shooter trial

By Chronicle Sta and Union Progress Sta

The second phase of the synagogue shooter trial — the penalty eligibility phase — continued last week and this week with expert witnesses testifying about the mental health of the defendant.

He was found guilty on all 63 counts last month and is now on trial to determine if he’s eligible for the death penalty.

To show that he is, the prosecution has to prove he had the intent to kill.

The defense wants to convince the jury that he was delusional and could not form that intent. To bolster that contention, the lawyers have presented experts who say brain scans and other tests show he’s schizophrenic.

Prosecutors have presented their own experts to counter that diagnosis.

If the jury decides that he is eligible for death, jurors will move to the final phase of determining his sentence: Life in prison or execution.

Here is a recap of the testimony of Days 7-9 of the trial’s second phase. For more extensive and up-to-date coverage, go to pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.

Day 7

Ryan Darby of Vanderbilt University Medical Center was the prosecution’s first witness in the eligibility phase of the trial and directly contradicted defense experts who

said the defendant is schizophrenic.

Darby discussed his three-hour evaluation of the defendant and his interpretations of MRI and PET scans of the shooter’s brain. He also provided background on the defendant’s personal history and belief system.

The defense has argued that he suffers from schizophrenia, epilepsy, delusions and other abnormalities.

Darby pushed back on those conclusions.

In particular, he testified that the white-matter lesions found in the defendant’s brain, which defense experts had presented as potential evidence of a disorder, were not abnormal and instead potentially caused by risk factors such as smoking, obesity, high cholesterol or drug use. The shooter was a daily cigarette smoker who relied on prescription pain medications and heroin, and experimented with cocaine.

He confirmed testimony from other experts that there is no way to definitively tell whether a person has schizophrenia from a brain scan. He also reported disagreements among doctors who examined the defendant’s EEG scans as to whether signs of epilepsy were present.

Darby outlined the defendant’s personal history, which the shooter described during the May 2023 evaluation. Growing up, he was interested in cars, guns and “blowing stuff up” — to the point that one of his hobbies as a child

By David Rullo | Sta Writer

As the synagogue shooter trial proceeds, Pittsburgh has some extra help ensuring its Jewish community remains safe.

The Secure Community Network has set up a temporary command post down the hall from Shawn Brokos, security director for the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh.

A rotating team has been scouring the dark web for activities or phrases that might pose a threat to the community. Of particular interest are phrases that refer to the trial, Tree of Life, or other terms that might relate to Pittsburgh.

And while the online research could be done at SCN’s headquarters in Chicago, Brokos said having a team situated in the city provides an immediacy to the work.

“It’s in real time,” she said. “What I like is Erin [Fagan, community security associate] and I can pick something up, come down here and say, ‘What have you seen on this?’ or ‘What do you know about that?’”

Please see Network, page 10

 A view of the Joseph F. Weis Jr. U.S. Courthouse, downtown

Photo by Alexandra Wimley/Pittsburgh Union Progress

 From left: Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh Community Security Director Shawn Brokos, SCN National Director and CEO Michael Masters, Federation Security Associate Erin Fagan and SCN National Security Director Brad Orsini

Photo by David Rullo

Headlines

Pittsburghers visit Israel, West Bank as part of pilot program

— LOCAL

By David Rullo | Staff Writer

—

Rabbi Amy Bardack returned to the States in mid-June after spending time in Israel, including visits to East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

The rabbi was joined by several other Pittsburghers for the trip, as well as members of a Reconstructionist synagogue in Detroit.

Organized by Shleimut, the nine-day excursion included stops in Tel Aviv and Jaffa, Kibbutz Ein HaShofet, Jerusalem, including a visit to East Jerusalem and a visit to the West Bank, including Bethlehem, Hebron and Ramallah.

According to a June 27 article in the JTA, “Shleimut’s focus is on Israeli and Palestinian human rights activists and progressive groups, and has little engagement with right-wing or pro-settler Israeli organizations.” The organization’s website states that “Shleimut’s Israel/ Palestine program supports communities and leaders to approach Israel/Palestine through their spiritual and social justice values.”

Bardack, who is the spiritual leader of Congregation Dor Hadash, had visited the country eight times. This trip, though, was unique.

“I had never visited those areas or learned from a Palestinian guide. We were nine participants in a van,” she said.

The trip wasn’t simply a sightseeing tour, Bardack said that Shleimut has several pre-travel meetings meant to focus participants on the excursion’s mission. Questions included: Who are you, where did you come from, what does Israel mean to you and what are your fears.

The trip wasn’t political in nature, she said. “We were going to show up as Jews not as people with political persuasions.”

The group attended the Tel Aviv Pride Parade and joined in protests against proposed changes

to the judiciary in Jerusalem, spent time in an Arab village and at the Kotel, visited the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, shared Shabbat in East Jerusalem, visited checkpoints and the separation wall, called on a 100-acre farm surrounded by Jewish settlements, went to a center for nonviolence in Hebron, and explored Ramallah.

Along the way, Bardack said they met with a fourth-generation non-violent peace activist living on a kibbutz, learned about Palestinian art and toured Hebron with Breaking the Silence — a group of soldiers who left the military after being troubled with orders they were given.

The trip, she said, was a revelation, illustrating that behind the television images of rocks being thrown and burning tires, there is a culture that includes people holding jobs, facing socio-economic issues, going to university and dealing with the pressures of modern life.

“It’s so much more varied than we think in our often removed way of what these places are like.”

Bardack said it was important for her to be seen as a rabbi rather than political activist during the trip.

“The only Jews, or certainly rabbi, some of

these Palestinians met were settlers who were lighting their fields on fire or uprooting their fruit trees,” she said.

She recounted what was for her a powerful moment — meeting a man who was suffering and saying the Mi Shebeirach.

“I told him I was a rabbi because I knew that the only rabbis he had ever met didn’t treat him with dignity, and I wanted him to experience a rabbi who saw his humanity,” she said.

Bardack is under no illusion about who the trip allowed them to meet.

“We met with non-violent activists,” Bardack said. “We met with intellectual thought leaders, people with Ph.D.’s. We met with Israeli Jews who were committed to their own activism. We didn’t meet with people who were more extreme, and that was very explicit.”

Wendy Kobee lived in Israel for almost three years in the mid-80s. She was interested in going back to the country and having conversations with Jews and non-Jews about Israel and Palestine and to get more current information.

She said that she still has friends in the country with whom she speaks.

“I received photographs of their terrified faces when they had to be in a bomb shelter with gas masks on when they were shelling,” she said. “I wanted to see what it seemed like now because of what the conversation in the United States is now about Israel.”

Kobee was encouraged, she said, to meet with some Palestinians whose approach to ending the conflict is civil disobedience. It remains her hope that that approach can become the majority approach.

The Pittsburgher was emphatic, “I am not an anti-Zionist and I am not anti-Israel.”

She said the trip gave her information that will allow her to have more nuanced conversations about the realities in the country within her social group.

It was beneficial, she said, to take the journey with rabbis.

“Every day they put a Jewish values and Jewish learning structure around our experience. It was very grounding to take this trip in the context of Jewish culture, teaching, learnings and spirituality,” she said.

The trip was Richard Weinberg’s first to Israel. He said he has a lifelong interest in the issues of the relationships between Jews and Arabs and Jews and Palestinians.

“It was an opportunity for me to hear the perspectives of many different people,” he said. “It was important for me to be able to go to Israel and see the actual experiences of Arabs and people in the occupied territories. That was important to me.”

A powerful experience for Weinberg was a guided tour in Hebron that included a stop in what had been a bustling marketplace but was cordoned off after a 1994 attack by Israeli IDF soldier Baruch Goldstein, preventing Palestinians from going there.

“It’s basically a ghost town now,” he said. He said they visited both the gravesite of

Please see Israel, page 11

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p Sam Weinberg, Rich Weinberg, Wendy Kobee and Rabbi Amy Bardack at Solomon’s Pools, whose ancient aqueducts provided water to Jerusalem during the Second Temple period. The pools are located in the Palestinian-controlled area of the West Bank (Area A).

Photo provided by Amy Bardack

Cantor Toby Glaser brings a new song to Rodef Shalom

conversion students and those who didn’t have the typical Jewish summer camp experience.

By David Rullo | Staff Writer

Toby Glaser is Rodef Shalom Congregation’s first full-time cantor. He’s excited to be in Pittsburgh and the possibilities that exist in his new role.

“Obviously, I will have a lot of involvement in the music, but Rabbi [Sharyn] Henry is the only full-time rabbi, so I imagine there will be a huge amount of pastoral care,” he said. “My background is in adult programming, and they haven’t mentioned that yet, but I would love to do some adult programming and young adult groups.”

Glaser, 35, is a native of Melbourne, Australia, who spent time in both New York and San Francisco before accepting the cantorial role at the Reform congregation in Pittsburgh’s Oakland neighborhood.

Glaser served at Congregation Sherith Israel in San Francisco after graduating from Hebrew Union College’s Debbie Friedman School of Sacred Music. He spent four years at the New York school and one year studying in Jerusalem, where his landlord was a familiar name to most Jewish Pittsburghers: Rabbi Danny Schiff, the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh’s community scholar.

Glaser said the connection was happenstance. Schiff was in Melbourne and met Glaser, who said he was moving to Jerusalem. The rabbi asked if he needed a place to stay and Glaser took him up on the offer.

“He hosted me for a few Shabbat dinners,” Glaser said. “He’s a very learned man.”

Glaser’s parents immigrated to Australia from Europe; his grandparents were all Holocaust survivors. His household was mostly secular and he credits music for starting him on his path to deeper spiritual engagement.

In high school, Glaser played drums in various jazz and rock bands, as well as dabbling on the saxophone and clarinet. He was awarded a choral scholarship in high school that included free singing lessons. When he was in college, he sang with a few opera companies and conducted a children’s choir.

“My singing teacher also taught the cantor of the local Reform synagogue. I started working there on the side and found it very fulfilling,” he said.

During this period, Glaser’s father died. He received support from the local Jewish community.

“I discovered what it meant to have a Jewish communal home,” he remembered.

Glaser next went to Israel on Birthright

before a trip to New York City. While in Jerusalem, he visited the Hebrew Union College and met its director, who was in from New York. He urged Glaser to apply to the school since he would be in the States. The future cantor took him up on the offer and was accepted into the school.

and worked with the kids doing Torah study. From there, I took the plunge and went to cantorial school.”

Glaser said that, for him, music is intrinsically tied to Judaism, calling it an “integral part of Jewish prayer.”

As an example, he pointed to the Elohai N’shamah prayer.

“I had that sort of ‘What does Judaism mean to me?’ and ‘What does a relationship with God mean to me?’ I think that’s something conversion students really struggle with, especially if their partner is Jewish and it’s important for them to practice their faith. What Judaism can mean in their lives is something I really relate to,” he said.”

As for his musical direction, Glaser said he feels free to assimilate music from across the entire connection, pointing out that for decades, a lot of the music used in services was influenced by Debbie Friedman and similar artists. Their music, he said, was a reaction to the sort of static organ-led music formerly associated with the Reform movement.

“I think we can use whatever we want,” he said. “I do use traditional melodies and I use contemporary stuff. There’s a lot of exciting stuff like Joey Weisenberg, which is based on traditional modal music, which I think is really exciting. The real job of the cantor today is to be like a DJ. Everyone has their opinion about what they like to use and what they don’t like to use.”

Glaser will not only be leading the music during Shabbat and holiday services, but he has also started practices with the congregation’s choir. As the congregation’s first full-time ordained cantor — Rodef Shalom previously employed cantorial soloists — he will also assist with b’nai mitzvah training.

He’s also starting to think beyond the synagogue’s walls, as well.

“I would love to collaborate with other cantors in Pittsburgh and other musicians and do a concert series at some point,” he said. “It’s exciting because it’s a new template and we can really make what we want of it.”

When he’s not thinking about spiritual and liturgical music, Glaser has another interest that occupies his time.

“I have a real passion for languages,” he said. “I did Yiddish summer school and love Yiddish language and culture. I try to learn art and folk songs. It’s a huge tradition that’s been sort of swept under the rug.”

There was still a small amount of doubt in his mind, though, and, at the last minute, Glaser decided to take a year off to see if he was still interested. During his gap year, Glaser interned with a rabbi in Melbourne, which only deepened his desire to become a cantor.

“I loved the work, loved the day-to-day,” he said. “I helped plan the Purim carnival

“Judaism sees the soul entering the body every morning,” he said. “I like this idea that we sing the soul into existence every morning. I think sharing that kind of breath energy with other people, singing the same melodies and syncing up is really powerful and a part of Jewish worship.”

Given his secular background, Glaser said he’s able to connect easily with

He said that Melbourne has a large Yiddish community which allowed him to perform at a Yiddish cabaret during a vacation from cantorial school.

“It’s definitely interesting stuff,” he said.

Glaser was welcomed by Rodef Shalom at Shabbat services on July 7 and 8. PJC

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

p Cantor Toby Glaser

Photo courtesy of Cantor Toby Glaser

Glaser said that, for him, music is intrinsically tied to Judaism, calling it an “integral part of Jewish prayer.”

Headlines

Holocaust Center educator learns best practices at national summer seminar

— LOCAL —

By Abigail Hakas | Staff Writer

Emily Loeb, the director of programs and education at the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh, joined 27 other educators in Newark, New Jersey, in June for the 2023 Jewish Foundation for the Righteous’ Alfred Lerner Summer Institute for Holocaust Educators.

Loeb was the only Pennsylvania educator attending.

The Summer Institute is an academic seminar where middle and high school teachers or Holocaust Center educators like Loeb attend daily lectures from noted scholars and discuss how to best teach the material to students.

Loeb, a granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, worked with the Holocaust Center for five years as a volunteer generations speaker. After working as the donor relations manager for a few months, she joined as director of programs and education in May.

“As the granddaughter of survivors,” Loeb said, “I feel that it is critical that people know what can happen when we don’t address identity-based hate and build a more civil and humane society.”

The intensive five-day seminar, which ran from June 24 to June 28, kept Loeb busy.

Seminar days started at 8 a.m. and ran as late as 7 p.m. Holocaust scholars presented three to four lectures each day, diving into topics like the construction of Auschwitz or how to teach the Holocaust through artifacts.

Educators were given a 900-page book, additional readings and films to watch before the seminar. Months of preparation went into those five days, Loeb said.

But Loeb came to the discussion with more than just an academic’s perspective.

When Holocaust scholar and Northwestern University professor Peter Hayes discussed the “five I’s” of the Holocaust — indifference to Jews’ suffering; personal interest; intimidation; indoctrination; and intoxication with power — Loeb connected the discussions to her grandparents’ experience.

“I thought about how my grandparents’ neighbors were buying meat for my grandmother’s family and the Nazis realized [it]. They would say, ‘We know that you’re buying meat for someone; you need to stop.’ And I’d be like, ‘Oh, that’s that example of intimidation,’ and I could see how those theoretical concepts that Peter Hayes identified were 100% applicable to my own family’s situation,” Loeb said.

After a lecture, the educators discussed how the content could be taught to students. Loeb listened intently to ascertain what teachers needed from the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh.

“All of those conversations are going to be really helpful for the Holocaust Center,” Loeb said. “I’m really excited that we’re going to be able to provide resources to our local teachers that are easily implementable into the classroom.”

An upcoming training for educators about teaching the Holocaust through the humanities at Chatham University is an example of how the center hopes to provide those resources to local teachers.

The Jewish Foundation for the Righteous provides financial support to people who

rescued Jews during the Holocaust. The JFR’s summer seminar is named after Alfred Lerner, the founding chairman of MBNA Corp., who advised JFR and supported its programming.

The seminar has three main goals: giving teachers a graduate-level education on the Holocaust; creating connections between teachers to learn best practices; and providing them with additional resources for teaching, according to JFR Executive Vice President Stanlee Stahl.

Genealogists preserve memories in Port Vue cemetery

By Adam Reinherz | Staff Writer

The quest to prevent erasure prompted two genealogists to painstakingly preserve the history of a Jewish cemetery in Port Vue. Between December 2021 and May, Chuck Fuller and Rich Katz photographed illegible gravestones, gently removed lichen, researched early 20th-century Jewish life and pieced together a largely forgotten story.

Without this work, Katz said, the people buried there would have been “lost to time.”

More than a century before Fuller, a non-Jewish White Oak resident, gently washed the site’s one readable marker and confirmed a trove of local Jewish history; a band of western Pennsylvanians consecrated the surrounding area. On Oct. 11, 1903, the Calvary Cemetery in Port Vue was dedicated. Four years later, the property’s eastern edge was bought by Kesher Israel Congregation of McKeesport.

Between 1907-1917, about 28 Jews were buried in a space later described as “Kesher Israel Cemetery.”

The well-kept site, Fuller explained, consists of two nearly uniform rows of markers. Following Kesher Israel’s dissolution in the 1930s, the space was overseen by neighbors. In 2020, the Jewish Cemetery and Burial Association of Greater Pittsburgh began maintaining the space.

Despite any documentation formally linking Kesher Israel with the specific land, JCBA called the site “Kesher Israel Cemetery.”

Fuller and Katz set out to confirm Kesher

Israel’s connection to the burial site.

Part of the difficulty was that despite scouring hundreds of related documents, the congregation’s name didn’t appear on any materials “found to date,” Fuller said.

The two genealogists built family trees of people affiliated with Kesher Israel. Fuller and Katz noticed that while most of the death records from the era said “Port Vue,” one said “Port Vue Cem.”

Without any other Jewish cemeteries in Port Vue, it could be assumed the burial ground belonged to Kesher Israel, but further proof was needed, Katz told the Chronicle from his home in Torrance, California.

Fuller returned to the site and observed the

two rows of neatly kept graves. One marker had a partially obscured date. Fuller photographed the inscription and sent the image to Katz.

The Jewish Californian noticed the Hebrew letters vav and zayin — the last two letters of the word Tamuz, a month on the Jewish calendar — and Hebrew letters indicating the Jewish year 5671, as well as the English date July 16. Katz then put the Hebrew and English characters together, confirmed the dates on hebcal. com and realized the stone was from a burial that occurred on July 16, 1911 (20 Tamuz 5671).

“Then came the tricky part,” Fuller said. The genealogists had a record indicating that 2-year-old Jennie Zvibel had died on July 16, 1911. Zvibel’s family was affiliated with Kesher

Israel, and although the toddler’s date of death matched the scant information on the partially legible monument, more proof was needed to pair Kesher Israel with the Port Vue cemetery.

Fuller noticed that the memorial in question was “covered heavily in bright yellow lichen,” he said.

Removing the plantlike fungus that typically forms on walls, rocks and trees wasn’t simple. Even with the gentlest of products and brushes, there was a possibility of further disturbing the headstone. Fuller and Katz debated their options. They reached out to Barry Rudel, JCBA’s executive director, who advised them to cautiously adopt necessary measures.

After carefully spraying, washing and brushing the stone, “we got the engraving that tells the story,” Fuller said.

Alongside the toddler’s Hebrew name was her father’s — Antzil — the same name that appeared on Jennie Zvibel’s death certificate, which also marked “Port Vue Cem” as her place of burial.

By proving that Zvibel was interred on that piece of land in Port Vue, the genealogists used the cemetery’s name to identify others buried there.

Through death records, Fuller and Katz learned that most of the deceased were children. That realization explained an earlier dichotomy. Despite a pristine area, nearly all of the stones were illegible — not because of negligence but because of the poor quality of the markers themselves.

“These were children’s stones, and often young parents didn’t have a lot of money to

p Fellows at the 2023 Alfred Lerner Summer Institute for Holocaust Educators

Photo courtesy of the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous

p Gravestone of Jennie Zvibel

Photo by Chuck Fuller

Please see Seminar, page 11

Please see Cemetery, page 11

“All we’re trying to do is provide some record that allows people to preserve the memory of their families.”

–CHUCK FULLER

Getting to know: Lillian (Ellie) Feibus

By Abigail Hakas | Staff Writer

When Lillian “Ellie” Feibus started college, she had no intention of following in the footsteps of her mother, Lois Feibus, a preschool teacher.

Instead, Ellie Feibus wanted to pursue international law, but a developmental psychology class made her realize that it was “education or nothing.” Now Feibus, 36, is the director of Rodef Shalom Congregation’s Sidney & Shirley C. Rapport Family Center.

“My favorite part about the job, I can already answer this, is working with educators who are truly passionate about children and truly passionate about what they do,” said Feibus, who assumed her new role in late June. “It’s an absolute honor, especially as a member of the Orthodox community, to be working in a non-Orthodox environment and feel so accepted and so loved and so cherished.”

Feibus succeeded Miriam “Mimsie” Leyton, who was the preschool’s director for 26 years. While Leyton wasn’t directly involved with the search process, she had much to say about Feibus’ character after a week of onboarding.

“We made an instant connection,” Leyton said. “It was really easy. I could see right away that she and I were of the same mind about

about her work, has a strong work ethic and is informed by what’s best for children.”

Feibus, her late mother and Leyton all share the philosophy that education is best done through play-based learning.

“Everything a child needs to know at a young age — negotiating, sharing, understanding other people’s opinions — these social concepts that really are what make us people, can be learned through play, through exploration, through child-led questioning,” Feibus said.

What that looks like in action is not a freefor-all unstructured day, but rather a system that is built around the child’s interests and passions.

“We listen to the children, and we take their opinion into account and we look to who they are at a very — I call it the soul level,” she said. “In past places where I’ve worked, it’s always been a challenge because education has become so heavily state-run and you have to follow everything to a T. And with play-based, yes, you’re following a model and you’re following certain guidelines, but you’re really just following the child.”

Feibus’ philosophy is inspired by the way her mother taught. As a child, Feibus lived in Wilkes-Barre and attended Wyoming Seminary, a nearby preparatory school where her mother taught her preschool class. When Feibus told her

Jewish prisoners inspired by video ‘sermonettes’

Fred Erick Sims knows Vogel’s messages well.

By Justin Vellucci | Special to the Chronicle

For 33 years, Rabbi Moishe Mayir Vogel has helped incarcerated Jews keep the faith — and nurture it through Torah study.

This June, though, marked the third anniversary of something unexpected in Vogel’s tenure: teaching in a way to fit the unusual molds of COVID-19.

“In a very dark place, even a small candle throws a lot of light,” Vogel told the Chronicle. “We give (inmates) the strength to live another day.”

“A rabbi goes in and we talk to the inmates — these are sacred moments,” he added. “When COVID came, the prisons were hardest hit. There was no way of getting in.”

So, the Aleph Institute, whose northeast division Vogel runs in Squirrel Hill, adapted.

The nonprofit Jewish organization set up a makeshift studio, and Vogel started videotaping 10- to 15-minute weekly “sermonettes”— short moral lessons combined with Torah study, to be broadcast on prison channels a few hours each week.

Some prisoners viewed the Jewish programming messages in their cells, some — as in those at Allegheny County Jail — in pods.

In short, though, they were a hit.

“(Inmates) haven’t got the challenges of the person on the street — it’s a whole different world,” Vogel said. “The videos are tailored to that community.”

“Wherever we are, we can bring godliness into our life.”

The Ohio native was serving time in a Pennsylvania prison more than a decade ago for two misdemeanors — receiving stolen property and a DUI — and heard through another inmate about the Aleph Institute.

Sims’ mother was Jewish, but he had not grown up practicing the religion.

Sims learned about Aleph Institute “right about the time that I had actively decided to make teshuva, to go back in and explore my Jewish heritage, specifically in a religious sense,” Sims said.

Sims first moved to Pittsburgh in 2007 but went back to prison briefly on a parole violation. Today, after returning to Allegheny County in 2012, he lives in McKees Rocks and works as a home improvement contractor.

In prison years ago, Sims was paging through some literature and saw Vogel’s name.

“I thought, ‘This must be a guy who’s a tzadik,’” he said. “I wanted to be around someone who was a positive person and could guide me.”

Vogel taught Sims about the Torah, as well as a lot of things he realized he previously knew.

“After learning about Judaism and studying the work of rabbis, I understood my mother was very culturally Jewish and she imparted to me and my siblings a lot of Jewish culture, a lot of Jewish values,” Sims said. “I found Rabbi Vogel to be very understanding — he deals with people who have lost their way (and) he realizes how soul-crushing the penal system is in the United States.”

“It was very important to me, in my development, that an organization like Aleph Institute existed,” he added. “I had some

stumbles. But it served as a beacon, a beacon of hope, to live a better life.”

Vogel has talked to people like Sims for more than three decades.

“I hope I know the message they want — or they need,” Vogel said. “The message of the Torah is appropriate wherever we are.”

“It’s painful work — you see a lot of pain and suffering. But it’s very rewarding,” he added. “This is what inmates look forward to the whole week, the whole month: someone to listen to them, someone they can talk to.”

“They’re human beings ... They’ve sinned but they are human beings and they need help. Every human being can bring godliness to the world, even to the darkest places.”

Vogel started to follow the path to prison ministry decades ago.

An 11th-generation Englishman, Vogel traveled as a kid with his father in 1970 from Manchester, England, to Brooklyn, New York, to meet with Rebbe Menachem Mendel

mother she wanted to be Galileo when she grew up, her mother handed her a telescope — really a toilet paper roll — and a robe.

For every dream Feibus had, her mother found a way to encourage it. When she wanted to be like Vivaldi, her mother signed her up for violin lessons. When she wanted to be Van Gogh, her mother got her an easel. Now, Feibus shows that same enthusiasm to her students.

“My approach to the children in my class is if they’re interested in it, I have to learn about it,” Feibus said. “So, if they want to talk about polar bears, I need to know everything there is to know about polar bears. I become an expert in everything. Ask me about dinosaurs, I know it all.”

But it’s not all play for Feibus, a self-described workaholic. Her typical day starts with checking in with educators, greeting the families and their children as they enter Rodef Shalom and observing the educators during classes before she begins planning for the fall.

Feibus graduated from Chatham University with a degree in elementary education and earned a master’s in progressive leadership from Bank Street College in New York. She worked at the Carriage House Children’s Center in Squirrel Hill, where she got her first taste of play-based learning outside of her mother’s teaching.

“I think that I love to play,” Feibus joked about

Please see Feibus, page 11

Schneerson — the Lubavitcher Rebbe — one of the most influential Jewish leaders of the 20th century. Schneerson quizzed Vogel on the Mishna related to God’s justice system.

In 1991, Vogel, then living near Schneerson in Crown Heights, met with the Rebbe again and presented him with a note bearing a list of places to explore.

Schneerson circled “prison ministry.”

“The Rebbe gave me a blessing that this is what I should spend my life doing,” Vogel said. “It was so interesting that years [after the 1970 visit] this became my work.”

Vogel sees a future in the video messages he provides to prisoners, as well as his visit to prisons in Pennsylvania and Ohio.

“This program, even though COVID has sort of officially come to an end, we continue to do it,” he said.

“It’s an incredible tool.” PJC Justin Vellucci is a freelance writer living in Pittsburgh.

p Ellie Feibus

Photo by Abigail Hakas

p Rabbi Moishe Mayir Vogel

Photo by Toby Tabachnick

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

q SUNDAYS, JULY 16 – DEC. 3

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

q SUNDAYS, JULY 16– DEC. 17

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.

q MONDAY, JULY 17

Making Mighty Muses is a novel way to relax, recharge and renew your spirit. In this workshop inspired by the Nine Muses of Greek Mythology you will create your own personal muses to foster your creativity and spark. Workshop facilitator Emily Harris offers story-based programs filled with imagination, improvisation and play. Free. 5:30 p.m. 10.27 Healing Partnership, Squirrel Hill JCC, Room 316. 1027healingpartnership.org/event/mightymuses-makeshop.

q MONDAYS AND WEDNESDAYS, JULY 17 – AUG. 2

There has never been an age in Jewish history without internal Jewish controversies. In the six-part series Contemporary Jewish Controversies, Rabbi Danny Schiff will lead robust discussions about

significant Jewish controversies that echo across the contemporary Jewish landscape, including Zoom prayer, intermarried rabbis, the death penalty for acts of terror against Israelis and much more. $85. Mondays and Wednesdays. 9:30 a.m. jewishpgh.org/event/contemporaryjewish-controversies/2023-07-17.

q MONDAYS, JULY 17 – DEC. 18

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

q WEDNESDAYS, JULY 19 – DEC. 20

Join AgeWell for an intergenerational family dynamics discussion group. Whether you have family harmony or strife, these discussions are going to be thought-provoking and helpful. Led by intergenerational specialist/presenter and educator Audree Schall. Third Wednesday of each month. Free. 12:30 p.m. South Hills JCC.

q WEDNESDAY, JULY 19

Join Chabad of South Hills for a Rosh Chodesh Ladies Lunch and Learn. Explore the Hebrew month of AV-Year of Hakhel. 11:30 a.m. $15. 1701 McFarland Road. chabadsh.com/lunch.

Young children and their grownups are invited to join Rodef Shalom Librarian Sam Siskind for a story in the Biblical Botanical Garden followed by a crafty activity. Free. 1 p.m. 4905 Fifth Ave. rodefshalom.org/garden.

q WEDNESDAYS, JULY 19– DEC. 27

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.

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.

q TUESDAY, JULY 25

Women are invited to explore the teachings of “Tanya” in a monthly women’s growth group Chabad of Squirrel Hill, 7 p.m. chabadpgh.com.

Join Chabad of the South Hills for a ladies’ night out. Design your own board using wood-burning techniques (no experience necessary) and enjoy a delicious fruit smoothie bar. 7:30 p.m. $20. 1701 McFarland Rd. chabadsh.com/ladies.

q FRIDAY, JULY 28

Eberle Studios presents two films by Sheila Chamovitz. In “Skokie: Rights or Wrong,” Sheila examines free speech via the controversial events of the ACLU defending a Nazi march in a Jewish neighborhood. “Murray Avenue: A Community in Transition” is an elegy for the changing culture of the Squirrel Hill neighborhood, told through a look inside now-vanished Jewish-owned business. These moving films will both be presented on 16mm, and Chamovitz will discuss her work following their screening. 7:30 p.m. Free. 229 E. 9th Ave. pghsoundandimage.com.

at the movies in the Samuel & Minnie Hyman Ballroom. Watch “iMordecai” and stay for a virtual question-and-answer with writer-director Marvin Samel. $10/per person, in advance. Walk-ins, $15/per person. To purchase tickets, visit bethshalompgh.org/imordecai-movie.

Rendezvous in Rodef Shalom’s Biblical Botanical Garden for a free live jazz performance from the Craig Davis Quartet with drinks and hors d’oeuvres. 7 p.m. 4905 Fifth Ave. rodefshalom.org/garden.

q THURSDAY, AUG. 3

Facilitated by local clergy from Jewish and Christian backgrounds, the Jewish/Christian Dialogue is a monthly discussion exploring topics of similarities and differences. 12 p.m. Free. 4905 Fifth Ave. rodefshalom.org.

q SUNDAY, AUG. 6

Rendezvous in Rodef Shalom’s Garden for a free live performance with The Boilermaker Jazz Band. Join for drinks and hors d’oeuvres, as they bring the swinging sounds of the jazz age back to life. 6 p.m. Free. 4905 Fifth Ave. rodefshalom.org/garden.

q WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 9

q SUNDAY, JULY 30

Join Congregation Beth Shalom for an afternoon

Join the Chronicle Book Club!

The Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle invites you to join the Chronicle Book Club for its July 16 discussion of “Call It Sleep” by Henry Roth. From the Jewish Book Council: “When Hen ry Roth published his debut novel ‘Call It Sleep’ in 1934, it was greeted with considerable crit i cal acclaim though, in those troubled times, lackluster sales. Only with its paper back publi cation thir ty years lat er did this nov el receive the recognition it deserves and still enjoys. Hav ing sold­to­date mil lions of copies worldwide, ‘Call It Sleep’ is the magnificent story of David Schearl, the ‘dangerously imaginative’ child coming of age in the slums of New York.

“First published in 1934, and immediately hailed as a master piece, this is a novel of Jew ish life full of the pain and honesty of fami ly relationships. It holds the distinc tion of being the first paper back ever to receive a frontpage review in The New York Times Book Review, and it became a nationwide bestseller.”

Your Hosts:

Toby Tabachnick, editor of the Chronicle David Rullo, Chronicle staff writer

How and When:

We will meet on Zoom on Sunday, July 16, at noon.

What To Do

Buy: “Call it Sleep.” It is available from online retailers including Barnes & Noble and Amazon and 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.

Happy reading! PJC

Toby Tabachnick

Join members of the community for the annual Jewish Heritage Night as the Pittsburgh Pirates battle the Atlanta Braves. This year, an optional pre-game meal is available in the Picnic Park from 5:30-7 p.m. from Elegant Edge Catering. Each game ticket purchased will also include a limited edition Pittsburgh Pirates Hebrew T-shirt. 7:05 p.m. $16-44. PNC Park. jewishpgh.org/event/jewishheritage-night. PJC www.pittsburghjewishchronicle.org

Legal Affairs

Dangers of over-reliance on AI in the legal profession

Artificial intelligence programs like ChatGPT are transforming the world as we know it. While people worldwide are using these programs to solve math problems and generate travel itineraries, these tools also have the potential to revolutionize the workplace.

In the legal field, AI tools have the potential to transform the profession. From summarizing complicated legal theories to analyzing data, AI tools may enable lawyers to perform a variety of tasks with greater speed, accuracy and efficiency. Blind reliance on the current AI programs, however, presents serious risks. Recently, two New York lawyers faced potential sanctions after they submitted a ChatGPT generated court brief that cited to six “nonexistent cases” and “bogus quotes” that ChatGPT in-vented. This forces us to pause and look at the potential benefits and pitfalls of utilizing AI in the legal field.

At the outset, AI-powered tools can automate time-consuming tasks, such as legal research, document review, and even due diligence. By automating repetitive tasks,

AI can save lawyers significant time and reduce costs associated with legal proceedings. If legal research, document review, and contract analysis can be completed faster and more efficiently, law firms can handle more cases and allocate resources effectively. Streamlining these processes also allows lawyers to focus on more complex and strategic tasks.

potential for more accurate legal research, contract analysis, and case prediction. This enables lawyers to make well-informed decisions, build stronger cases, and identify patterns and trends that may be missed by human analysts.

But as the New York lawyers learned, using AI does not come without risks. AI systems lack the ability to exercise human judgment,

The reliance solely on AI may also overlook critical legal factors and ethical considerations. The New York case has caused some to question if lawyers need to disclose their reliance on AI tools in the course of their work, particularly if the AI system ultimately provides incorrect legal advice or recommendations. Law firms will also need to give careful consideration to the privacy and security challenges that arise when utilizing these tools to handle confidential and sensitive information and data.

Ultimately, the use of AI in legal proceedings offers the potential for significant benefits, including enhanced efficiency, improved accuracy, and time and cost savings for clients. Lawyers utilizing AI tools, however, must weigh the limitations and potential risks associated with AI, and, in these early phases of the AI tools must carefully review any information or documents generated by these tools. If used correctly, AI will likely serve as a valuable tool that augments the capabilities of legal professionals by improving their overall efficiency and accuracy. PJC

AI algorithms can also process and analyze vast amounts of legal information and data with precision and consistency, reducing the risk of human error. By extracting valuable insights from large volumes of documents, court cases, and precedents, AI has the

intuition and empathy, meaning that these tools sometimes struggle to accurately replicate nuanced interpretation of the law and to contextualize important decisions. AI tools may also fail to explain the rationale behind specific outcomes.

Andrew Zashin writes about law for the Cleveland Jewish News, where this first appeared. He is a co-managing partner with Zashin & Rich, with offices in Cleveland and Columbus.

Guest Columnist

Andrew Zashin

From summarizing complicated legal theories to analyzing data, AI tools may enable lawyers to perform a variety of tasks with greater speed, accuracy and efficiency. Blind reliance on the current AI programs, however, presents serious risks.

Legal A airs From trailers to marijuana — or, how the dormant Commerce Clause became sexy

that [the Commerce] Clause also prohibits state laws that unduly restrict interstate commerce.”

Supreme Court case involving Iowa state law and different types of trucks/trailers used to ship cargo over the nation’s roads.

No longer can lawyers — or laymen

— continue to overlook the dormant Commerce Clause, a doctrine of U.S. constitutional law that prevents states from favoring their own residents over others and/or from interfering with interstate commerce.

Not only was this doctrine at the heart of an important U.S. Supreme Court case decided this past term, it also has been the basis for multiple, recent legal challenges to laws regulating modern industries and innovations, such as the nascent U.S. cannabis industry.

As such, the dormant Commerce Clause — the discussion of which at one time was largely confined to law school classrooms — is now a popular topic in the courtroom and the boardroom as well.

The dormant Commerce Clause grows out of the U.S. Constitution’s “Commerce Clause,” which provides that “Congress shall have Power … To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States ….”

The U.S. Supreme Court — as Justice Samuel Alito, Jr. explained in 2019 — has “long held

In Tennessee Wine & Spirits Retailers Association v. Thomas, Justice Alito also stated that “[t]his ‘negative’ aspect of the Commerce Clause prevents the States from adopting protectionist measures and thus preserves a national market for goods and services.” It is “[t]his interpretation,” he wrote, that is “generally known as ‘the dormant Commerce Clause.’”

“Traditionally, the dormant [C]ommerce [C]lause was considered an arcane aspect of American constitutional law,” wrote Northwestern University law professor Martin H. Redish in a 1987 Duke Law Journal article that he co-authored with Shane V. Nugent.

Although, as Professor Redish and his co-author observed 30-plus years ago, “the dormant commerce clause has been the subject of a resurgence in both scholarly and judicial concern,” it nonetheless largely still has remained — in the words of Ken Kozlowsi, director of the law library of the Supreme Court of Ohio — “a subject most lawyers have not heard mentioned since law school.”

Even when taught in law school, dormant Commerce Clause case law hardly seemed glamorous. A textbook example — literally — of this constitutional doctrine is Kassel v. Consolidated Freightways Corp., a 1981

Recently, though, the dormant Commerce Clause seems to have gone a little more “mainstream.” Far from arcane, today one might even call dormant Commerce Clause jurisprudence not just relevant but — dare one say it? — “sexy.” It has been the focus of multiple cases deciding current “hot” topics.

For example, several courts have focused on this doctrine when addressing challenges to state laws that give preference to in-state applicants when awarding licenses for cannabis dispensaries and grow facilities. Although it ultimately came to a contrary conclusion, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington observed just earlier this year: “Following Tennessee Wine, many federal courts have considered states’ cannabis licensing residency requirements. The majority of federal district courts to consider the issue have held that the dormant Commerce Clause applies and that their states’ respective residency requirements violate it or likely violate it.”

For example, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri concluded in 2021 that a Missouri law — which required an applicant for a license to operate a medical marijuana facility in that state to be “majority-owned by

SPONSORED CONTENT

WILL AND ELDER LAW MYTHBUSTERS

persons who have been Missouri residents for at least one year” — likely would succumb to a dormant Commerce Clause challenge because it was “facially discriminatory against out-ofstate economic interests.”

The dormant Commerce Clause also has been applied to disputes involving modern technology and the law, such as ones involving “anti-spoofing” laws. “Spoofing,” according to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, “is when a caller deliberately falsifies the information transmitted to [a] caller ID display to disguise their identity.”

Last year, the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina found, after considering another prong of the “dormant Commerce Clause analysis,” that South Carolina’s “AntiSpoofing statute is in violation of the Commerce Clause via prohibited extraterritorial legislation because it may regulate commerce located entirely out of state.”

The Supreme Court’s opinion in National Pork Producers Council v. Ross — which was issued in May — is likely to limit the scope of this doctrine, at least under this additional, “extraterritorial” prong of the analysis. In National Pork Producers, the Court rejected any suggestion that there was an “‘almost per se’ rule forbidding enforcement of state laws that have the ‘practical effect of controlling

Please see Sampson, page 11

This is one in a series of articles about Elder Law by Michael H. Marks., Esq. Michael H. Marks is an elder law attorney with offices in Squirrel Hill and Monroeville. Send questions to michael@marks-law.com or visit www.marks-law.com.

• Receiving long term care services means you’ll have to spend down all your money:

FALSE - With the right planning, we can almost always save money for a long term care or disabled patient. Also, it’s never too late to try, even if you’re already on the doorstep or in a long term care facility. With basic or sophisticated lawful strategies that work, you don’t have to spend it all, though part that you keep may be in the hands of your family or others for you.

• It’s easy for a beneficiary, or for someone left out of a Will, to challenge or overturn a Will:

FALSE – Most Wills and legal documents, especially when made with an attorney, are done properly, ethically and legitimately. However, even when there are grounds to challenge a Will, such as undue influence, lack of testamentary capacity, forgery, duress, mistake, et cetera, there are hurdles to overcome for the challenger to prevail in court. First, they are usually subject to an increased burden of proof or standard of persuasion, called “by clear and convincing evidence,” which can be difficult to meet (and it’s assessed pretty subjectively by a Judge). Another barrier is that, except in the strongest of cases, a challenger has to pay his attorney up front, win or lose, rather than only on a contingent fee basis.

• If you die without a Will your estate gets forfeit to the State of Pennsylvania:

FALSE – Under Pennsylvania’s law of inheritance, when you don’t leave a Will your “heirs” inherit from you –essentially, your next of kin, in various proportions.

• Your Medicare or health care insurance will pay

for you to be in a nursing home or in long term care: FALSE – except for the initial SHORT term care, Medicare and most health insurances don’t pay for nursing home assisted living or long term care. That’s when patients and their families may need Medicaid, VA benefits AND an elder law attorney’s proactive, affirmative planning strategies to first make sure care is paid for, and to protect and save as much as possible at the same time.

• You don’t need a Power Of Attorney if you’re married:

FALSE. If your spouse is disabled and cannot act for themselves, just because you’re married does NOT mean that you can sign their name for them, for many kinds of financial transactions (e.g. with securities or retirement accounts) unless you have a Financial Power Of Attorney giving you permission to act for them. Instead you have to go to court and bring proceedings before a Judge to be officially appointed as a legal Guardian. As you can imagine, it takes longer, costs more and is a lot less flexible when the Judge and the Court are in charge.

• You also need a POA for Health Care and Living Will to make medical decisions for your spouse or family:

FALSE. This one’s wrong in the opposite way! Under PA law, even without a Health Care POA appointing you as a Health Care Agent, your next of kin can act as what’s instead called your Health Care Representative. But if there’s disagreement in the family about decisions, a hospital administration may still require legal / court intervention to sort it out.

• Joint, Transfer-on-Death or In-Trust-For assets avoid PA Inheritance tax; only assets passing under a Will are subject to Pennsylvania inheritance tax:

FALSE - TOD and In Trust For accounts are fully taxed for Pennsylvania inheritance tax. For joint

accounts made joint more than a year before death, only the fractional portion of the person who died is subject to tax (e.g. half of an account with two depositors). The tax rate varies from 0% for spouses and charities, to 4 1/2 percent for descendants and their spouses, 12% for siblings, and 15% for others.

A Will has to be notarized:

FALSE – you can sign a valid will without notarization – but using an attorney to do it right includes proper signing, witnessing and Notarization. (A Financial POA in PA DOES REQUIRE proper execution to be effective, though, including Notarization.)

Trusts are only for rich people:

FALSE – the word “trust” describes a very wide variety of usages, but many middle class folks can benefit from utilizing a trust, such as to direct and control inheritances later while avoiding extra probate steps, safeguarding benefits for a special

needs family member, or protecting your own assets against the cost of long term care.

If you give someone POA they can do whatever they want:

FALSE – your Agent under a Financial POA has a legal “fiduciary duty” to act properly for you. If they don’t, you can easily revoke it if you’re still capable, AND the courts in PA will (almost) always review and supervise someone else handling your assets or monetary affairs.

If you put assets into a trust you lose all control:

FALSE – Most of my clients who create trusts are usually the Trustees of their own trusts, in charge of their own trust - and most often the beneficiaries as well, entitled to use, withdraw, spend and enjoy their own money from their trust.

WATCH THIS SPACE FOR FUTURE EXCITING NEWS ABOUT MARKS ELDER LAW!!!

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

We help families understand the strategies, the benefits, and risks involved with elder law, disability and estate planning.

Guest Columnist

Michael H. Sampson

Headlines

BBC apologizes for anchor saying ‘Israeli forces are happy to kill children’

The BBC apologized for an on-air interview in which one of its anchors told former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett that “Israeli forces are happy to kill children,” JTA.org reported.

The journalist, Anjana Gadgil, was interviewing Bennett on July 4 about the Israel Defense Forces’ incursion into the Palestinian West Bank city of Jenin. Twelve Palestinians, including some children, and one Israeli were killed in the operation, which lasted two days.

Israel conducted the operation to root out terror cells in the city and maintains that all of the Palestinian dead, regardless of age, were militants. Near the beginning of the 8-minute interview, Bennett repeated that message, to which Gadgil responded, “Terrorists, but children. The Israeli forces are happy to kill children.”

Bennett responded, “It’s quite remarkable that you’d say that because they’re killing us. Now, if there’s a 17-year-old Palestinian that’s shooting at your family, Anjana, what is he?”

“While this was a legitimate subject to examine in the interview, we apologize that the language used in this line of questioning was not phrased well and was inappropriate,” a BBC spokesperson

said, adding that the network has endeavored to cover Jenin in an “impartial and robust way.”

Israel says Elizabeth Tsurkov, Russian-Israeli Middle East analyst, is being held by Shiite militia in Iraq

Elizabeth Tsurkov, an expert on refugees and a Middle East analyst who has Russian and Israeli citizenship, has been held for months by a Shiite militia in Iraq, according to the Israeli government, JTA.org reported.

“Elizabeth Tsurkov is an Israeli-Russian dual citizen who has been missing in Iraq for several months and is being held by the Shiite militia Kataib Hezbollah,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said on June 5 in a statement. “Elizabeth Tsurkov is still alive and we hold Iraq responsible for her safety and well-being.”

Tsurkov, 36, is a non-resident fellow at the Washington D.C.-based New Lines Institute, a foreign policy think tank. She is also a doctoral student at Princeton. The statement from Netanyahu’s office describes her as “an academic who visited Iraq on her Russian passport, at her own initiative pursuant to work on her doctorate and academic research on behalf of Princeton University in the U.S.”

The New York Times reported that she was kidnapped in late March shortly

Today in Israeli History

— WORLD —

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

July 14, 1555 — Paul IV orders Jews into ghetto Pope Paul IV issues an anti-Jewish decree, Cum Nimis Absurdum. The Jews of Rome are forced into a ghetto along the Tiber River. Jews also must wear yellow head coverings and are barred from owning property.

July 15, 1908 — Philanthropist

Max Fisher is born

Max Fisher is born to Russian Jewish immigrants in Pittsburgh. His Detroitbased Aurora Gasoline grows to have more than 700 gas stations. He devotes his charity to Jewish causes, Israel and Detroit.

July 16, 1948 — Violinist Pinchas

Zukerman is born

Grammy-winning classical musician and conductor Pinchas Zukerman is born in Tel Aviv. He begins playing the violin by age 8, and by 14 he is studying in New York under the sponsorship of violinist Isaac Stern.

July 17, 1888 — Nobel-winning author S.Y. Agnon is born

Author Shmuel Yosef “Shai” Agnon is born in Buczacz, Galicia. He makes aliyah in 1907. He receives the Nobel Prize in literature in 1966 for a body of work commemorating Eastern Europe shtetl life.

July 18, 1290 — England expels

its Jews

King Edward I orders the expulsion of England’s 4,000 Jews, who had settled there in significant numbers only in the 11th century. Jews are not allowed back until 1656.

July 19, 1940 — 1st JNF chairman

Max Bodenheimer dies

Max Bodenheimer, the first Jewish National Fund chairman, dies five years after immigrating to Jerusalem. He attended the First Zionist Congress and became close to Theodor Herzl.

July 20, 1949 — Syria, Israel sign armistice

after leaving a cafe in a middle-class Baghdad neighborhood.

Kataib Hezbollah, the group that has allegedly kidnapped Tsurkov, is separate from the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah, though both are connected to Iran, according to The New York Times. Kataib Hezbollah led a 2019 attack on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad.

British town where antisemitic blood libel theory was born could get Jewish heritage center

When the mayor of the British city of Norwich apologized last spring for the historic assault on local Jews that took place nearly 900 years ago, it was hailed as a major step. Now the city could go even further — by handing its oldest non-church building over to its local Jewish community, JTA.org reported.

Norwich is encouraging local Jewish leaders to apply for the lease on Jurnet’s House, the 12th-century structure that was originally the home of Isaac Jurnet, a Jewish moneylender. The house was closed in 2020 because of mold but had previously been used by the city as an educational space with a bar in the medieval vault; its lease will become available again next year.

It was in Norwich, in 1144, that the first known case of the blood libel took place. The antisemitic lie — that local Jews killed Christian children to use their blood for ritual purposes — has endured since, spurring massacres and pogroms in Europe and

infusing contemporary conspiracy theories including QAnon.

Rubble from Munich synagogue razed on Hitler’s orders found during construction work

Construction workers in Germany have uncovered rubble from Munich’s main synagogue, which Nazi leader Adolf Hitler ordered demolished 85 years ago, The Times of Israel reported.

The remains of the synagogue included columns and a stone tablet with some of the Ten Commandments, which was once above the ark that house Torah scrolls.

The head of the Jewish Munich Museum said that seeing the rubble, particularly the Ten Commandments, “was one of the most moving moments in 30 years of working in Jewish museums.”

The synagogue was demolished in June 1938, five months before the Kristallnacht pogroms throughout Germany, because Hitler said it was an “eyesore.” It was then turned into a parking lot and is now the site of a department store.

The rubble was later used by the company contracted to demolish the synagogue, Leonhard Moll, for renovation work on a river dam, along with the fragments of other buildings destroyed in World War II. The pieces from the synagogue were found during fresh renovation work on the dam. PJC

— Compiled by Andy Gotlieb

DEAR VALUED CUSTOMERS,

We at Murray Avenue Kosher take the health and safety of our customers very seriously. Unfortunately, some aspects of the store were overlooked resulting in a recent failed health inspection. We are aware that this was due to our lapses in attention and take full responsibility.

We are working diligently with the Health Department to ensure that all issues are resolved as quickly as possible. Anything that is our responsibility has either been completed or has begun the process of being rectified. We have also been in contact with the landlord in order to repair all areas that are his responsibility.

1949.

Israel signs an armistice with Syria, the last of four Arab nations to sign such agreements in 1949. The pact creates demilitarized zones between the countries and a U.N.-staffed buffer zone. PJC

Please accept our sincere apologies for any concerns this may have caused. We assure you that we are fully dedicated to preventing such occurrences in the future. Thank you for your support and understanding.

Saul, Beth & Aryeh

p Two Syrian and two Israeli police officers are stationed outside the armistice signing in

p Pope Paul IV was noted for holding extremely anti-Jewish views.

Headlines

Trial:

Continued from page 1

was making homemade bombs with friends and creating explosions in empty courtyards.

He became a truck driver as an adult and worked long hours on the road. He gradually developed an interest in politics, and by 2017, he was immersed in far-right online circles, devoting his free time to watching YouTube videos and seeking out social media networks.

Darby noted that the defendant denied experiencing any sort of mental impairment.

The defendant’s descent into far-right media led him to Christianity, which he initially discovered in a flyer for a local church, and to the “great replacement” conspiracy theory. The theory posits that white people are being gradually replaced in a concerted effort through factors such as immigration. The shooter saw himself as a “soldier in that war,” Darby testified.

Darby described the defendant’s planning process for the shooting and provided information on the shooter’s state of mind before, during and after the attack. He began his planning in April 2018 and researched extensively, ultimately deciding to target Congregation Dor Hadash due to its support of HIAS, a refugee advocacy organization.

“This was not impulsive,” Darby said. Further, the defendant described his state of mind during the shooting as “calm, focused and goal-directed,” Darby testified.

The neurologist concluded that the defendant was not mentally impaired in any way at the time of the shooting.

Asked by U.S. Attorney Eric Olshan whether he felt the shooter was capable of forming the intent to kill a person, Darby answered yes.

Day 8

Park Dietz, a forensic psychiatrist who has evaluated a number of high-profile defendants, testified that the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter does not have a mental illness.

Dietz, a professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at UCLA’s medical school, first came to prominence as an expert witness in the 1982 trial of John Hinckley Jr. — President Ronald Reagan’s would-be assassin. Dietz has since evaluated several other mass murderers, including Jeffrey Dahmer, Dylann Roof, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (responsible for the Boston Marathon bombing) and Ted Kaczynski (aka the Unabomber).

From May 21-23, 2023, Dietz conducted a psychiatric evaluation of the shooter. Dietz said that throughout almost 15 hours of interviews,

Network:

the defendant had a calm demeanor and was “very responsive.”

When Dietz asked him if he knew the purpose of the interview, the defendant replied, “I am being held a POW in a war. There is a war on white people orchestrated by the Jew, and I am a soldier in that war.”

Contrary to the findings of defense experts, Dietz determined that the shooter does not have schizophrenia, does not have epilepsy, has the mental capacity to engage in substantial planning and premeditation, and has the capacity to form the intent to kill.

In forming his conclusion that the defendant does not have schizophrenia, Dietz noted that he was not diagnosed with the condition until after the murders; that he did not have delusions or exhibit thought disorders during the interviews; that, besides a brief hallucination when he was feverish at the age of 5, he had never had a hallucination; and that he was prescribed no medications for schizophrenia after his diagnosis.

Day 9

As his testimony continued Monday, Dietz said the shooter told him his only regret was that there weren’t “dozens and dozens more in there. They can kill me if they want but the score is still 11-1.”

His main point was that the shooter was not psychotic during the killings but rather acting on a set of “cultural beliefs” fomented by online immersion into the white separatist movement.

Essentially, the defendant blames Jews for an influx of immigrants that he feels threaten the white majority in America. Dietz said he had three goals in carrying out the synagogue massacre: To stop anyone aiding HIAS, an immigrant aid organization; to scare others who might want to help immigrants; and to bring attention to the “great replacement” theory.

In talking to the defendant, Dietz said, “I understood his reasoning.”

He said the shooter suffers from a schizoid personality disorder, but he said that is not the same as a mental disease like schizophrenia.

Asked by Assistant U.S. Attorney Soo Song why the defense would see the shooter differently, Dietz said that the defense medical experts might not have been familiar with the idea that Jews are behind the “great replacement” theory. To an outsider, he said, it does sound crazy. But Dietz said that the shooter’s belief system is shared by a subculture in America that dates back decades.

Dietz mentioned two books on a reading list

that the defendant posted online which reflect his beliefs — Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” and “The Turner Diaries,” a 1978 novel about a revolution in America that leads to a race war by whites against minorities and Jews.

Dietz said the defendant had only read the first chapter of “Mein Kampf” but said, “Hitler wasn’t wrong.”

As for “The Turner Diaries,” which Dietz said he first brought to the attention of the FBI in the 1980s because of its white supremacist theme, the book makes mention of “mud people” in reference to mixed races. Dietz said the shooter had a similar term — “cappuccino people.”

The defendant’s views were cemented online with the like-minded, Dietz said, but they are not evidence of mental illness.

“I couldn’t find a single example of a delusional belief,” he said.

The shooter’s beliefs even permeated his relationship with his mother, one of the few people with whom he had a close relationship despite a difficult upbringing. In a recorded jail call played for the jury, he is heard telling her that history shows republics only last 250 years with the implication that the U.S. is nearing the end of its lifespan. Dietz said he was making a historical observation that others have made and was concerned with preserving white culture.

Dietz said the defendant has not shown delusional behavior in any of his interactions.

While being processed at the Allegheny County Jail after the shootings, for example, a video showed him coherently answering questions.

“He was at all times calm and cooperative,” Dietz said.

A jail psychiatrist also determined that the defendant had “cultural beliefs” but was not psychotic, Dietz said.

The careful planning leading up to the synagogue attack also showed how his mind worked, Dietz said.

He started preparing in April 2018 after concluding that Jews were behind an immigrant invasion. He’d heard the idea on right-wing radio for several years before that but decided to act on it after watching CNN and other mainstream media outlets.

He considered other targets, including Barbara Lerner Spectre, founding director of Paideia, the European Institute for Jewish Studies in Sweden, but she was overseas. Other targets were too far away or too hard to attack.

Dietz said the defendant was “engaging in a calculus” of getting the “biggest bang for the buck” and settled on Congregation Dor Hadash

because it supported HIAS and was nearby and vulnerable.

“It became his primary target when he ruled out the others,” Dietz said.

When the shooter, after the massacre, learned that Dor Hadash had been aiding refugees in Congo, he commented that the congregation “had not learned its lesson” from his murderous spree.

Dietz said the gun enthusiast also went into technical detail about his AR-15 and his Glock pistols, noting that he said he deliberately used Israeli-made ammunition in the attack.

The shooter also took satisfaction in the efficiency of his attack, Dietz said, praising himself for his ability to reload his weapons and stay calm. He criticized other mass shooters in California and Atlanta for their lack of training and planning.

One concept he discussed was the idea of being a “gray man,” meaning keeping a low profile to ensure success. He was critical of an attacker in Youngstown, Ohio, who planned to kill Jews but drew attention to himself with online comments.

“I think he was proud that he succeeded in staying a gray man,” Dietz said of the defendant.

To that end, the shooter said he didn’t case the synagogue but did all his research online so police couldn’t track his car.

Dietz said the shooter told him he selected Saturday for his attack after checking an online Dor Hadash calendar indicating Saturday was a busy day. Dietz said he asked him if he ever had doubts that he would follow through.

“I kind of put myself in the position where I had to,” the defendant said.

His car lease was up, he explained, and he would soon lose his vehicle and his ability to get to the synagogue.

So he chose Oct. 27.

Dietz said he also explained that he left three-quarters of his ammo in his car for use against a secondary target. Once inside, he found more victims than he expected and thought about going back to get more bullets, but decided to use what he had.

Dietz said all those calculations showed the shooter knew what he was doing.

“It’s my view,” he said, “that he did have the capacity to form the intent to kill his victims.” PJC

This story is part of ongoing coverage of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting trial by the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle and the Pittsburgh Union Progress in a collaboration supported by funding from the Pittsburgh Media Partnership.

Continued from page 1

The Federation/SCN hybrid team also tracks the witnesses testifying during the trial and checks online to see if anyone is chatting about them.

SCN was founded in 2004 under the auspices of the Jewish Federations of North America and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. It is the central group dedicated exclusively to the safety and security of the American Jewish community, working with 146 federations, 50 organizations and more than 300 independent communities, according to its website.

SCN National Security Director Brad Orsini — who formerly served as the director

of community security for Pittsburgh’s Federation — noted that the organization monitors between 1,000 and 1,200 people of interest every day.

“We’re happy to share that number,” he said, “because I think it’s important. These are real numbers. These are real people. This is actionable intelligence that we’re monitoring and feeding back out to security directors and law enforcement, just to make sure everybody’s connected.”

That information is also shared with the National Threat Operations Center at the FBI.

The SCN is the only nonprofit organization in the United States tied directly to the NTOC, according to Orsini.

The SCN, Orsini said, is not the arbiter of whether something is an actionable threat. Instead, the goal is to get as much intelligence

to law enforcement as possible.

An intelligence analyst working in the Pittsburgh command post (whose name is being held for security reasons) said that often includes specific threats — time, dates and/or locations. Analysts also look to see if they can find a larger narrative online.

“A lot of times, what you’re doing are these deep social media dives to get a full picture,” the analyst said.

The number of threats that are mitigated, Orsini said, is significant.

“It’s an alarming number of threats that end up with someone in handcuffs,” he said — approximately one person every other week.

That’s just from the work of SCN and the various community security directors, Orsini said. He stressed the importance of community members reporting suspicious activity to the

Federation and local law enforcement.

Michael Masters is SCN’s national director and CEO. He started in the position in December 2017. Several months earlier, SCN launched an initiative providing grant funding to local federations for training, tools and resources to protect those inside Jewish community centers, synagogues, schools, senior centers, summer camps and other centers of Jewish life.

As part of that initiative, a security training session was held at Tree of Life Congregation shortly before the Oct. 27, 2018, attack. Congregant Steve Weiss told radio station WESA that it was because of the training provided by Orsini that he knew not to hide where he could be found. Weiss instead ran

Please see Network, page 11

Headlines

Network:

Continued from page 10

from the building and survived the attack.

Orsini also convinced Tree of Life’s Rabbi Jeffrey Myers to carry a cellphone on Shabbat. As a result, he was one of the first people to call 911 when the attack began.

Masters said that during the second week of October 2017, he and Orsini talked about creating a team of security professionals that could be deployed for support if an incident occurred in a Jewish community.

“I don’t think either he or I would have envisioned the community we were going to support was his own,” Masters said.

By Oct. 27, 2018, Masters said, Pittsburgh, under the guidance of the Federation, already had started to think more deeply about security: More than 45 facilities had undergone security assessments, and more than 6,000 people were

Israel:

Continued from page 2 Goldstein and the Tomb of the Patriarchs. He was bothered to see Goldstein’s tombstone venerate him as someone “described as a Jewish martyr with clean hands and pure heart.”

Despite the troubling nature of much of what he saw, Weinberg said the trip reconnected him with Israel.

“I’m much more attentive. I’ve got a subscription to Haaretz. I’m reading the news regularly,” he said. “It’s also reconnected me to all of the progressive Jews attempting to figure out ways to move towards a more multiethnic place where Jews and Palestinians can live with mutual respect and allow everyone to thrive.”

Seminar:

Continued from page 4

trained in more than 130 training sessions. Additionally, tabletop exercises were completed with various law enforcement agencies.

“I think this community made substantive investments in preparedness,” he said.

The result: The Pittsburgh Jewish community was able to reopen day schools, synagogues and community centers the Monday following the attack.

“That wasn’t an accident,” Masters said. “It happened because of the work, time and dedication that went in.”

The theme “Pittsburgh Strong” has been a guiding force since the massacre, and SCN has worked to instill the lessons learned following Oct. 27, 2018, Masters said.

“The commitment of members of this community to develop out our command center, to develop out our technology platform, ‘Project Rain,’ that we use on a national level, was all born out of the commitment of people

Ilana Sumka, the founding director of Shleimut, said the program split time evenly between Israelis and Palestinians, tracing the region from the 1940s, including the Shoah, founding of the state of Israel, alongside what Palestinians call “the Nakba/Catastrophe for Palestinians, through to the present day.”

“Nakba” is an Arabic term referring to the events of 1948 and the founding of the state of Israel.

During the trip, participants met with leading Israeli and Palestinian civil and human rights activists working for equity, safety, dignity and self-determination for all.

Sumka said trips like these provide an opportunity for rabbis and Jewish community members to decide for themselves how they want to be involved in the region.

“Visiting Israel on a hasbara program like

Loeb said. “These are the things that [make] you think, ‘Oh, yeah, we don’t really talk about that piece.’”

in this community and their drive to act,” he said. “So, an incredible amount of tragedy but a validation of how we need to think about security. I’d like to think in doing that we can honor the memories of those taken from us.”

Thanks to the work SCN is doing, Masters said, in the past six months approximately 227,000 “risk events” were evaluated, with more than 4,400 directly referencing proximity to or touching a Jewish institution — including more than 607 referrals to federal law enforcement.

Weeding through the most vocal threats to find the most violent requires a professional perspective, Masters stressed.

Or, to put it another way: “Howlers, often howl, they don’t hunt,” he said. “And hunters often hunt, they don’t howl.”

SCN’s goal, Masters said, is to allow the community to sleep soundly and to let those who wreak violence and hate know that the organization is out there and that

it won’t give in.

Brokos said she is happy for SCN’s support, which gives her the time to concentrate on issues unrelated to the trial.

Of course, nothing helps more than community involvement, she said.

“Anybody who remotely looks like they may not belong, even if it’s something very innocent, let us know,” she said.

Orsini agreed, saying law enforcement has a mantra: “Bad guys practice at being bad.” PJC

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

This story is part of ongoing coverage of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting trial by the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle and the Pittsburgh Union Progress in a collaboration supported by funding from the Pittsburgh Media Partnership.

The Shleimut program offers an authentic way to engage with the political realities on the ground by offering a balanced educational experience with both Jewish Israelis and Palestinians,” she said.

Bardack said that often, there’s a fear that if people experience a tour like they will become anti-Israel or disengaged from their Judaism. That’s the opposite of what she felt.

Birthright is political in that reinforces the status quo of Israeli state oppression of Palestinians by failing to acknowledge half the population living under Israeli state control.

said the priority is the teachers and students.

“There were a number of Jews in our group who were in their 30s visiting Israel for the first time,” she said. “They witnessed violence, some very disturbing things from a human rights and humanitarian level and they came away more committed to Judaism, or said, ‘I’m going to get my master’s in Jewish studies.’” PJC

David Rullo can be reached at drullo@ pittsburghjewishchronicle.org

those needs while providing really high-quality programming.” PJC

“One of the things that Stanlee would say is, ‘How many of you guys teach about rescue?’”

Cemetery:

Continued from page 4

Of the approximately 28 people buried at Kesher Israel Cemetery — stone erosion and insufficient documentation preclude a definite number — Fuller and Katz identified 16 Jews. The genealogists uploaded their

Feibus:

As for how this will change Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh’s programming, Loeb

“I think it’ll help us reconnect to serving the teachers the best we can,” she said. “And listening to and learning what the teachers and students need to orient our center’s education to

information to findagrave.com and detailed corresponding data within a report titled “The Jewish Cemetery in Port Vue.”

Fuller and Katz’s efforts weren’t spurred

Abigail Hakas can be reached at ahakas@ pittsburghjewishchronicle.org. invest in a stone on a child who lived a day, a month or a few years,” Fuller said.

“All we’re trying to do is provide some record that allows people to preserve the memory of

Once these people are forgotten, Katz said, “they are lost.”

Safeguarding the tale of Kesher Israel Cemetery required a data-based approach, and “we have to thank our wives because we spent a lot of time on this.” The takeaway, though, is in the details, he continued: It’s critical to document family history; otherwise, it’s “lost to time.” PJC

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

the impact play-based learning has had on her. “No, I think that it’s allowed me, as a grown-up, to continue to have wonderment about the world, to continue to ask questions and be open.”

Before coming to Rodef Shalom, she helped the Goddard School set up a franchise in

Sampson:

Continued from page 8

Continued from page 5 commerce outside the State,’ even when those laws do not purposely discriminate against out-of-state economic interests.”

That said, the dormant Commerce Clause remains very much alive. Even Supreme Court

Pennsylvania. Building the franchise school from the ground up was a “completely different being,” according to Feibus, but the clerical work she did to run the school was a stepping stone to the leader she wants to be at Rodef Shalom.

In her spare time, Feibus is working on a series of children’s books based on her childhood play and relationships with her family.

“Children are the future. It’s so true. This work

Justice Neil M. Gorsuch wrote in National Pork Producers that “[a]ssuredly, under this Court’s dormant Commerce Clause decisions, no State may use its law to discriminate purposefully against out-of-state economic interests.”

Indeed — contrary to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit’s observation in 2021 that “[w]hile the dormant Commerce

is vital. Appreciating, loving, honoring, caring for the next generation is so important,” she said. “This is our future. We have to invest in it.”

Looking to that future, Feibus doesn’t plan to make any changes to the Family Center without prompting from the community.

“In terms of pedagogy or methodology, it’s totally right where I am,” she said. “I think that the changes that will be implemented

Clause is not yet a dead letter, it is moving in that direction” —any report of the doctrine’s demise has been greatly exaggerated. In fact, even after National Pork Producers, the potential for the dormant Commerce Clause to continue to have a significant effect on legal disputes involving the cannabis and other newer industries and issues remains great. PJC

are things that will be directed by the families and the educators. I have a huge commitment to transparency, so I definitely won’t make any changes without the parents and the educators and the greater Rodef community being involved in making this decision.” PJC

Abigail Hakas can be reached at ahakas@ pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.

Michael H. Sampson — a graduate of Taylor Allderdice High School, the School of Advanced Jewish Studies, and Community Day School — is a Pittsburgh-based attorney, who, in addition to other work, routinely advises plant-touching, non-plant-touching and ancillary business across the cannabis industry.

p Burial markers at Kesher Israel Cemetery Photo by Chuck Fuller

p Shleimut delegation participants, including rabbis and congregants, in Bethlehem at the Separation Barrier

Photo provided by Shleimut

An economic Iron Dome protecting Israel

Guest Columnist

Julie Paris

On July 6, I had the honor of joining Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire as he signed an executive order that prevents the governor’s agencies from contracting with or investing in companies that boycott Israel. Anti-BDS laws and policies such as these function as an economic Iron Dome against Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS), a global campaign to isolate and boycott Israel, in order to end its existence.

Thirty-six states (including Pennsylvania) now have similar anti-BDS laws, and one additional state has a non-binding resolution. Despite their popularity, anti-BDS laws remain subject to opposition and misinformation by a small but loud group of actors, such as the United Nation’s Human Rights Council’s Commission of Inquiry (COI) on Israel. The discriminatory COI was created to keep Israel permanently on trial in the international community and has become embroiled in multiple antisemitic scandals.

In its latest report, the COI falsely suggested that our states’ anti-BDS laws suppress free speech and are subject to foreign influence. These false claims aroused the ire of legislative leaders. Representatives and senators from 42 states (including Pennsylvania’s own Rep. Dan

Frankel and Rep. Mary Jo Daley) responded with a public letter on July 6, rejecting the COI’s “authority, legitimacy, and findings,” and condemning the COI for its “unwelcome intrusion into [their] states’ affairs and demo-

cause and helped more people, including me, to understand just how essential anti-BDS laws are — both practically and morally. Anti-BDS laws protect state interests (i.e., business) and prevent states from being complicit in discrimination

both at home and abroad.

Discrimination is always wrong, and state-sponsored discrimination is particularly egregious, making anti-BDS laws that much more important. The COI’s suggestion that these laws impede free speech is absolutely false. Supporters of BDS are free to continue expressing their opinions and boycotting Israel. What they are losing is the privilege of entering into contracts or investments with state governments. Anti-BDS laws have been challenged in U.S. courts, including the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld Arkansas’ anti-BDS law as constitutional (see Arkansas Times v. Waldrip). This court remains the highest court to date to rule on anti-BDS legislation. The challenges failed because the laws do not impinge on First Amendment rights.

cratic processes.”

Another response to the COI’s double standards and antisemitism came from Sununu, who invited Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, to attend the signing ceremony of his executive order. Addressing Sununu, Erdan said: “Your crucial step is creating an economic Iron Dome that ensures our shared progress and prosperity. But not only are you defending our shared interests. You are also fortifying the moral Iron Dome protecting the values of truth, justice and morality.”

However incorrect the COI’s statements might have been, they have emboldened the anti-BDS

Nonbinary genders beyond

(i.e., national-origin discrimination against Israelis). This is why such laws have received support all over the country and across the political aisle.

All too often, BDS activists, through their boycott and divestment campaigns, prioritize isolating Israel at all costs, including at the expense of our communities and local businesses. They pressure businesses into abandoning trade with Israel, regardless of how profitable that trade might be. Anti-BDS bills defend against BDS activists’ attempts to sabotage our own economy in the name of their obsession with a foreign policy that discriminates against Israelis,

Sununu’s executive order also aims to help us identify antisemitism by adopting the world’s leading definition of antisemitism — the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition, considered the “gold standard” and most widely-accepted definition of antisemitism. As the IHRA working definition of antisemitism confirms, “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination” is generally to be considered as antisemitism, and it is exactly what BDS’ founders and leaders advocate. Omar Barghouti, the outspoken founder of BDS, has said, “We oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine ... [only] a sellout Palestinian would accept a Jewish state in Palestine.” Barghouti

Please see Paris, page 13

“Genderqueer” and “nonbinary” are contemporary terms for people who don’t fit neatly into male or female categories. But acknowledging that not everyone fits neatly into those two groups has a much longer history than you might suspect.

As a scholar of Judaism and gender, I find that people across the political spectrum often assume religion must be inherently conservative and unchanging when it comes to sex and gender. They imagine that religions have always embraced a world in which there are only men and women.

But for Judaism — and for many other religious traditions, too — history shows that’s just not true.

More than two terms

Traditional Jewish sources discuss the categories “man” and “woman,” but these aren’t the only designations rabbinic texts use for sex and gender.

Rabbinic literature, the body of texts

written by Jewish leaders in antiquity, includes several other categories. In these texts, a person with both sets of external genitalia is called an “androgynos,” a term borrowed from Greek. A person with neither is called a “tumtum,” and a person who loses his male sexual organs is called a “saris.” There is also a term for someone whose

Rabbah believed that God had made an androgynos.

One rabbi explained: “In the hour when the Holy One Blessed Be He created the first human, He created an androgynos, as it is written, ‘male and female He created them.’”

Genesis Rabbah continues with another rabbi’s argument that God made the first

others, such as Sabbath candle lighting, apply only to women.

However, some halakhic traditions also recognize that not every person’s body fits that binary.

The Mishnah, a text compiled in the third century C.E. which includes halakhic material, roots its interpretations in the categories men and women, yet also affirms the idea that sex and gender go beyond those terms.

sex assigned at birth is female but does not develop to female sexual maturity — in some cases, because they develop “male” traits: an “aylonit.”

For example, Genesis Rabbah, a collection of creative Biblical interpretation from late antiquity, records an interpretation of a creation story in the biblical book of Genesis in which God forms the first humans. Genesis 1 includes the phrase, “Male and female He created them,” which many readers interpret to mean that God created a man and a woman.

But some of the rabbis quoted in Genesis

human with two fronts: a female face and body facing one way, and a male face and body facing the opposite direction. Only later did God split the two, in this rabbi’s reading.

Though the specifics of their interpretations differ, both put an androgynos at the center of God’s creation.

Applying the law

Jewish law, or halakha, is based on a gender binary. For example, some commandments, such as studying Torah or not shaving sidelocks, apply only to men;

For example, a section called Mishnah Bikkurim explains: “There are some ways the androgynos is like men, and some ways he is like women, and some ways he is like men and women, and some ways he is like neither men nor women.” Another section of the Mishnah explains that, like women, neither a tumtum nor an androgynos is obligated to go to the Temple in Jerusalem as part of certain religious festivals. Meanwhile, an androgynos must dress like a man, and a priest cannot marry an aylonit unless he already has children.

As these examples suggest, gender diversity is woven throughout rabbinic traditions. Yet there is still a hierarchy, with men holding positions of the highest religious obligation.

It is also important to note how these

Please see Imhoff, page 13

‘male’ and ‘female’ would have been no surprise to ancient rabbis, who acknowledged tumtums, androgynos and aylonot

Guest Columnist

Sarah Imhoff

At a time when Jews comprise roughly 2.4% of the population but suffer nearly 60% of all religiously-motivated hate crimes, preventing state-sponsored antisemitism is more important now than ever in America.

Rabbinic texts illustrate that there is no magical time in the past when every person fit easily and naturally into gender categories.

Chronicle poll results: Taking race into account in admissions decisions

Last week, the Chronicle asked its readers in an electronic poll the following question: “Should universities take race into account in admissions decisions?” Of the 222 people who responded, 49% said, “No”; 36% said, “Yes”; 14% said, “It depends”; and 1% said they didn’t know. Comments were submitted by 63 people. A few follow.

Race is just one factor to dictate admission status. I don’t think it’s the most crucial aspect. Income levels should dictate admissions decisions much more so.

It really should be based on the goals of the university. Diversity should a goal of all institutions of higher learning.

Admission should be purely on merit. The most qualified students should be accepted regardless of race, religion or other such factors.

Such discriminatory practices used to be used to exclude Jews. You don’t end discrimination by practicing discrimination.

Paris:

Continued from page 12

and others who are engaged in promoting BDS consider all of Israel as Palestine.

At a time when Jews comprise roughly 2.4% of the population but suffer nearly 60% of all religiously-motivated hate crimes, preventing state-sponsored antisemitism is more important now than ever in America.

The passing of anti-BDS legislation along with the adoption of the IHRA working definition of antisemitism is a significant step forward in fighting institutional antisemitism and having bipartisan legislators from across the country make it clear that U.S. states, and not international bodies, determine U.S. law, sends a critical message to biased bodies such as the UNHRC. For the sake of American pluralism, democracy

Imhoff:

Continued from page 12

categories differ from the ways people understand gender today. A nonbinary person in the 21st century does not have the same experience as a tumtum in late antiquity. The idea of “aylonit” does not map clearly onto any common gender identity today. Even the term “androgynos” is not quite the same as intersex. And none of the rabbinic categories match current ideas about trans identity.

Forging a future

In spite of this textual tradition, many observant Jewish communities today still tend toward a gender binary. In most Orthodox synagogues, for example, a physical partition divides the worship space into two sections: one for men and one for women. Halakhic rulings about whether and how parents should support medical interventions on intersex children suggest they should be raised as male or female, not

Should universities take race into account in admissions decisions?

Most important to look at merit, of course, and also give consideration to socioeconomic issues. And eliminate legacies who get first consideration.

and prosperity, we must take notice and oppose the UN COI’s false statements about our state’s anti-BDS laws. As Americans, we must continue to ensure that our state governments do not use our hard-earned tax dollars to fuel discrimination, such as the BDS movement’s antisemitism, but instead continue to fight back by supporting anti-BDS legislation and the adoption of the IHRA definition across the nation. Even more important, Congress must take up the COI Elimination Act to send a strong message to the UNHRC that the U.S. will not fund antisemitic discrimination. PJC

Julie Paris is the Mid-Atlantic regional director of StandWithUs, an international nonprofit and nonpartisan education organization that supports Israel and fights antisemitism. Learn more at standwithus.com.

as an androgynos or tumtum.

In other Jewish communal spaces, however, traditional texts have become a resource for contemporary LGBTQ+ Jews. Some look to these texts to affirm their beliefs that Judaism has always seen gender diversity as a spectrum. Others use these texts to see themselves within Jewish tradition. Still others use these examples to call for change in the present, countering antiLGBTQ+ positions.

Many of these Jews recognize that the diversity of sex and gender in these ancient texts is different from gender identity today, but they believe the past can still serve as an important tool in the present.

Rabbinic texts illustrate that there is no magical time in the past when every person fit easily and naturally into gender categories. PJC

Sarah Imhoff is a professor of religious studies at Indiana University. This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news organization dedicated to sharing the knowledge of experts.

Absolutely! As a beneficiary of a quota system, I heartily support all measures aimed at improving and maintaining diversity in our society.

It’s a balancing act of what needs to be done in order to correct the wrongs of the past. If we don’t, then history is bound to repeat itself.

Not under any circumstances should a check-the-box/quota system be used. I agree with the U.S. Supreme Court that personal experience overcoming prejudice or similar personal circumstances should be included — as that relates to the merit of the applicant.

We still haven’t corrected historic wrongs. There is a bias in all things favoring whites. Before we can be truly color blind, we need to address historic inequality and frame a system by which non-whites — and by the way, the poor — are given the opportunity to succeed in all fields.

Praise for a colleague

Affirmative action is still racism. You can not pick and choose which racism is good racism and which is bad racism.

There’s too much systemic racism in our history that put people of color at a huge disadvantage. This helps even the playing field and gives them a chance.

Race is a human construct, often — if not mostly — used to quantify and separate human beings who have all been declared “good” by the Creator. We should stop counting, deciding, favoring, hating because of, and referring to, race in all places at all times and in all things. PJC

Compiled by Toby Tabachnick

Chronicle weekly poll question: How do you prefer to eat ice cream? Go to pittsburghjewishchronicle.org to respond. PJC

— LETTERS —

Thank you for publishing the recent interview with Leslie Hoffman (“The Exit Interview: Leslie Hoffman,” June 23). As a colleague and friend, I want to thank Leslie publicly for her executive director contributions to both Temple Emanuel of South Hills and the broader Pittsburgh Jewish community. Like other very successful retired Pittsburgh synagogue executive directors, Leslie represents the best of the profession. She combines patience with wisdom, the ability to navigate change with vision and the understanding of the power of a covenantal community. I will miss her as a colleague but value her continued friendship.

Drew Barkley Executive director, Temple Sinai Squirrel Hill

The value of going through the trial

While in Toronto for a summer meeting of the American Board of Criminal Lawyers, I had a chance to read the Chronicle’s editorial, “The end of Phase 1” (June 23). How ironic it was that I finally got a chance to read the editorial while there. Well done! I love the point the Chronicle made about the importance of the trial and am glad the prosecution didn’t agree to waive the death penalty so that we now have a historic record of this abominable massacre. Quite frankly, that point hadn’t occurred to me.

You are, of course, right that the rule of law must be followed. However, I remain unalterably opposed to the death penalty. But it is the law. Thank you for this excellent editorial.

Stan Levenson Shadyside

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Life & Culture

On the lamb

— FOOD —

By Jessica Grann | Special to the Chronicle

If you asked me for a list of the five foods that I wouldn’t want to live without, lamb would be No. 1. I never tire of lamb in any form.

I love kofte (think meatballs, but bigger) and kofte kebabs as much as I like more expensive cuts like a rack of lamb. I’ve never had lamb kofte turn out dry. Ground lamb will give you all the flavor that you’re hoping for but is more budget-friendly when cooking for your family. You can get creative with how you cook these. You can grill, broil or pan-fry kofte: The most important thing is having the right mix of spices. I admittedly don’t have grilling skills myself so if my husband is home, he will grill these for me, but if it’s a late night I cook them indoors. I think that grilling kofte does give it a small advantage taste-wise, but I’ve never had a complaint about the flavor when broiling or pan-frying it. Lamb has a high fat content, which is precisely why it turns out so juicy.

If ground lamb is hard for you to find, you can replace it with ground beef; just be sure that you buy beef with the highest fat content. The flavor will be different with ground beef, but it will still be tasty.

Ingredients:

2 pounds of ground lamb

2 large eggs

4-5 cloves of fresh minced garlic

2 teaspoons of Aleppo pepper or smoked paprika

2 teaspoons of ground coriander

2 teaspoons of cumin

1 ½ teaspoons of kosher salt

I find ground meat easier to work with when it has been allowed to sit for a bit on the counter. You don’t want it to reach room temperature, but take it out of the fridge 30-45 minutes before preparation.

Place the lamb in a large bowl and make a well in the center. Add the eggs and spices and mix it by hand, being careful not to overmix. I prepare a large sheet pan lined with parch ment paper before I form the kofte.

Putting ground meat onto skewers does require a little bit of skill, but the more that you do it, the easier it becomes. I use a large handful per skewer, and this makes 6-8 skewers depending on how thin or thick you make them. Take a handful of lamb in one hand and push the skewer sideways into the lamb in your hand in the middle of the skewer. Then use both hands to form it around the skewer, moving evenly both up and down the

skewer so that it’s as even looking as possible. If you don’t have skewers or this seems a little daunting, you can simply make patties. This recipe will make about 18 patties. You can form them into a rounded, lentil-shaped hamburger or into a wider torpedo shape

smoother-looking exterior.

Whichever way you choose, place each piece onto the sheet pan and cover the tray with plastic wrap. Refrigerate it for 45 minutes to an hour. This is a really important step. The mixture will become firmer, and that will keep

so I recommend a digital thermometer when cooking any meat, chicken or fish. Most of us do not live in a place where meat is freshly butchered or fish is freshly caught, so it’s even more important that it’s cooked appropriately for your own safety.

Ground meat of any kind needs to be cooked longer than, say, a roast, so while I like roasted lamb medium-rare, I prefer ground lamb that is medium-well. Cook this to your preference, but ground lamb should always reach an internal minimum temperature of 160 degrees. I prefer to take it up to 175-180 degrees before removing it from the heat. It’s difficult to give you precise cooking times because there are so many variables like the heat source, the thickness of the kofte, etc. I go by internal temperature and by sight.

If you’re grilling these, you will want your coals to be low and even. Lamb has a high fat content and that can cause your grill to flare when the fat drips out and hits the coals. Flaring will cause a charred exterior but a raw interior, so turn them often and don’t take your eyes off the grill.

You can also broil these in the oven on the high broiler setting- I usually turn them once after 8-10 minutes of cooking and check the internal temperature after another 5 minutes. If you think that your broiler is cooking them too quickly, move your oven rack down one slot so that the tray is further from your burner.

that is a little more tapered at each end and wider in the middle. If you find that the lamb is sticky when being formed, just rinse your hands quickly under water and continue. That little bit of added water can make a very big difference and also will give you a

it from sticking or falling apart, especially if you’re grilling them. Sometimes I give them a final finish when the meat is cold again. I just smooth out any rough or uneven spots with my hands before cooking them.

I am a bit obsessive about food temperature,

If you wish to pan-fry patties, I suggest medium heat in a heavy-bottomed pan like cast iron. Add a tablespoon or two of an oil with a high smoke point, such as avocado oil. This oil is only needed to sear the first batch. Lamb releases a lot of fat as it’s cooked, so that will end up being your natural cooking oil.

I sauté them for 4-5 minutes before turning them over and I check the temperature after another 3-4 minutes. Lamb is forgiving so the kofte will still taste delicious even if it’s overcooked a bit. Use a slotted spoon to remove the kofte from the pan and set it to drain on a plate covered in paper towels.

This is one of my most loved recipes. My guests go crazy about it. Most recently someone said that they wish that they served lamb kofte at weddings instead of dry chicken — everyone would be much more satisfied. The spice mix is perfect; It’s not too spicy or overpowering.

You can serve this on a plate with rice and vegetables or pop them into a pita. I suggest tahini or a pareve tzatziki sauce made with nondairy yogurt if you’re serving them in a pita. Add a Greek or Israeli salad and you have a perfect meal.

Enjoy and bless your hands! PJC

Jessica Grann is a home chef living in Pittsburgh.

p Kofte

Photo by Jessica Grann

p Kofte ready for cooking

Photo by Jessica Grann

The spice mix is perfect; It’s not too spicy or overpowering.

Life & Culture

Following an international conference, two Jewish master gardeners spread the seeds of learning

— GARDENING —

By Adam Reinherz | Staff Writer

Local Jewish thumbs grew greener, as two master gardeners joined nearly 1,000 fellow horticulturalists at the International Master Gardener Conference in Overland Park, Kansas. The June 18-22 gathering enabled Lauren Mallinger and Elaine Silver-Liberati to view captivating designs and learn from soil experts, planting strategists and celebrated arborists.

Along with touring “gorgeous” local spaces, Mallinger, 69, attended workshops on orchids, cacti and photography.

The conference facilitated an “exchange of ideas,” she said. “You get to meet all kinds of people — people from everywhere from Oregon to South Dakota or North Dakota — and you get to pick their brains about what works for them.”

Mallinger, who earned her master gardener designation from Penn State University in 2014, said she plans on incorporating lessons gleaned into her work at the Edible Teaching Garden. Located near Construction Junction in Pittsburgh’s East End, EGT features fruits, vegetables, herbs and pollinator-friendly plants.

Mallinger co-chaired the garden for five years. These days she volunteers alongside several fellow master gardeners at the site at least once a week.

“It’s a nice way to get together with people who have a common interest in gardening,” the Squirrel Hill resident said. There’s a social component to the work, but Mallinger and her fellow soil scrapers are also interested in reaping data along with persimmons, peaches, blueberries and pears.

“We are there to analyze the fruits and vegetables and make sure we are applying appropriate interventions if there are bugs and diseases,” she said.

Weeks ago, the group discovered spotted lantern flies in the garden.

Native to China and first detected in Pennsylvania in 2014, spotted lanternflies are a “threat to many fruit crops and trees,” according to the Department of Agriculture.

Mallinger said the volunteers made an organic compound to counter the invasive insect, but the species is “very pervasive.”

Whether combating harmful elements or collecting bountiful crops and plants, Mallinger relishes her efforts at EGT.

Some of the harvest goes to the master gardeners, but most of it is “distributed quietly” to local organizations, she said. “You’re not allowed to sell it. We just kind of give it away.”

Gifting benefits the community, but so does the lot itself.

“Creating a green space in your own neighborhood is beautiful to see,” she said. “People need to go outside, feel nature and breathe. Life is very busy.”

Silver-Liberati, 76, similarly touted the benefits of gardening. The Jewish Gibsonian became a master gardener through Penn State University in 2019 and has been active in the

Shaler Garden Club since 2020.

Founded in 1921, the group hosts monthly meetings for both novices and experts.

Silver-Liberati credited the club with providing “data-based” information that spurred her love of native plants and influenced her attitude toward familiar shrubs and trees, including butterfly bushes, burning bushes and Bradford pears.

So many things that people like are actually “invasive,” she said.

Spending time at the Shaler Garden Club, like attending the International Master Gardener Conference, is a chance to keep learning, Silver-Liberati explained.

“You get so many ideas, you see how people design things and you see that there’s been a real change in gardening,” she said.

Decades ago, she continued, having a giant lawn or integrating certain exotic plants demonstrated “you had made it in the world … but now with climate change we are seeing that whole approach isn’t working and is contributing to the problems we have.”

Faculty from Cornell University’s Turfgrass Program pointed to America’s sizable residential lots when noting “what we do with our lawns matters.”

A healthy ground cover can capture and store carbon, reduce soil erosion, filter air pollutants, reduce noise pollution and increase real estate values.

“By cultivating a dense vigorous lawn,” noted the educators, “you create an attractive environmental asset.”

Silver-Liberati said that conversations with master gardeners both at the Shaler Garden Club and at the international conference, often hinge on data, though “you can’t help but bring spirituality into the mix.”

The Jewish Gibsonian remembers visiting her grandmother on Phillips Avenue in Squirrel Hill.

Inside her home was a needlepoint that read, “Peaceful is my garden, contentment is my lot.” Outside the house, Silver-Liberati’s grandmother grew vegetables.

“As a kid, you wanted to hide behind the tomato plants,” she said. “I was just playful.”

Being outdoors and tending to seeds became generational. Silver-Liberati’s parents maintained a garden. Silver-Liberati has a patch of bee balm, butterfly weeds and blueberries. Her three children cultivate their own gardens, and her grandchildren have even taken to planting seeds and nurturing future growth.

“Gardening is inspiring. It teaches you patience, and it gives you hope,” Silver-Liberati said.

There are also the psychological benefits. According to Texas A&M researchers, plant-related hobbies help reduce anxiety and stress, decrease depression, bolster memory retention, enhance self-esteem and improve “happiness and life satisfaction.”

Modern science has affirmed the merit of being outdoors, but the value was recognized centuries ago, Silver-Liberati explained.

Jewish teachings, both biblical and rabbinic, describe the importance of planting seeds, avoiding grafting and caring for nature. Another tradition, she continued, articulates a similar sense.

The great Roman statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero once sent a letter to his bookish friend Marcus Terentius Varro. In it, Cicero discussed metaphysical principles and what was “possible” in the world. Before concluding, Cicero wrote, “If you have a garden in your library, everything will be complete.”

As pollinators made their way through Silver-Liberati’s outdoor space, she told the Chronicle that Cicero’s quote perfectly sums up the morning conversation.

“I’m sitting out here drinking coffee,” she said. “It’s like a retreat.” PJC

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

p Master gardeners Lauren Mallinger and Elaine Silver-Liberati in Overland Park, Kansas

Photo courtesy of Lauren Mallinger

p Elaine Silver-Liberati's perennial garden

Photo by Elaine Silver-Liberati

Life & Culture

‘Jammers’ and ‘blockers’ skate into JCC with Steel City Roller Derby

— SPORTS —

By Justin Vellucci | Special to the Chronicle

Jamie Fargo was just three years out of Pitt’s law school, practicing in her mid-20s as an associate attorney for the Pittsburgh firm Anstandig, McDyer and Yurcon, P.C., when she took a leap — refining her athleticism and leadership skills by joining the then-newly formed Steel City Roller Derby.

Fargo even took on a new identity, adopting the faux-evil nom-de-guerre Ally McKill, a play on the lead attorney from the TV series “Ally McBeal.”

“The vibe was definitely different — I think it had this sort of punk rock aesthetic,” said Fargo, now senior counsel for PNC Bank, a Mt. Lebanon resident and the last remaining founding member of the league still active in games. “I think there’s still elements of that. But, over time, it became more and more athletic.”

Fargo, who is not Jewish, will be among a pack of women to trek to the Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh in Squirrel Hill on July 23 for a special roller derby exhibition game and free skate event.

The game will take place in the JCC’s Kaufmann Gym from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., with the free skate to follow. More than 100 people already have registered, according to the JCC.

The event is free to attend. The only thing that requires payment is a skate rental, for those who need one.

JCC sales director Elie Golin — who grew up in Squirrel Hill and attended Community Day School — is looking to shake up things in his native neighborhood.

In December, Golin helped organize a JCC event at the Schenley Park ice rink; more than 220 people attended.

“This year,” Golin laughed, “I decided to up the ante.”

During the free skate portion of the July 23 event, Steel City Roller Derby team members will be available to teach skaters their signature moves, Golin said. There will be a food truck outside, and free Rita’s ices inside.

“This just came to me, thinking of different fun things we can do for every age range,” said Golin, whose father, Jordan Golin, leads Jewish Family and Community Services in Squirrel Hill. “We want to show there’s literally something for everybody at the JCC.”

There are a variety of roles on the local roller derby league’s A team, dubbed “Steel Hurtin’,” Fargo said.

Each of the two competing teams has

up to four “blockers” and two “jammers,” Fargo explained. A game-day line-up is 15 players deep.

Every time a jammer from one team manages to skate past the pack of the other team’s blockers, they get a point, Fargo said. The team with the most points wins.

Pittsburgh Indoor Sports Arena back in June, though, Fargo appeared as a jammer. She got a kick out of throwing a monkey wrench into the game’s plans.

“I think our coaches like to see that,” she laughed. “Throw something at the other team they don’t expect.”

— Steel Hurtin’ and its B team, Steel Beamers — played at a now-closed rink in Glenshaw. They now play at PISA in Cheswick.

Fargo and others travel with the team to compete outside Pennsylvania, too. Their last game this season will take place in September in Colorado. The team also played at a tournament in the United Kingdom, she said.

“It’s really given me the opportunity to develop leadership skills — we have to do this all ourselves,” Fargo said.

“There’s a lot of things that keep me coming back,” she added. “As long as I’m still having fun, I’m going to keep doing it.”

Fargo is usually a blocker — or a “pivot,” someone who can switch between roles through possession of a helmet.

At a Steel Hurtin’ home game at the

The roller derby league’s season runs from March through August or September, Fargo said. For the first 10 years of the league’s existence, the Pittsburgh teams

To register for the event, go to jccpgh.form stack.com/forms jcc_steelcityskate_2023. PJC

Justin Vellucci is a freelance writer living in Pittsburgh.

p Steel City Roller Derby

Photo by Ray Durkin

In December, JCC sales director Elie Golin helped organize a JCC event at the Schenley Park ice rink; more than 220 people attended.

Israeli government advances judicial overhaul push, spurring ‘day of disruption’ by protesters

Seeing the big picture

Whaaaaaat?!?!? [Insert needle scratch sound here.]

There are a lot of headscratching moments in the Torah, but for my money none is greater than this moment in Numbers perek (chapter) 32, Parashat Matot. After suffering in Egypt, after receiving Torah, after 40 long years of struggle and marching, battling enemies, facing hunger, worries over water, the moment has arrived. The Israelites — we, the Jewish people — have finally arrived at the Land of Israel. We have stopped marching and set up a final camp before we enter the Land of Israel that we dreamed of for 40 years, that our fathers and mothers dreamed of for hundreds of years. We finally will be under the thumb of no one, finally free to live as free people.

And then comes the needle scratch.

The tribes of Reuben and Gad have cattle, and the land where everyone is waiting is really good for cattle. Could we, the leaders

that life for Palestinians in the West Bank is very difficult. It’s worse than difficult, but let’s not get distracted. You add these new policy suggestions on top of the current policies involving the West Bank and a tipping point is reached by many American Jews who just want to wash their hands of Israel and be done with it.

But I think that might be an overreaction. It would be a baby-with-the-bathwater situation. A lot of Jews love being part of the Jewish people. We love Klal Yisrael, this notion that we are all one big people. We love the notion that we were all — all of us — there at Sinai to receive Torah (and it matters little if you believe it literally, metaphorically, or spiritually). We love the phrase “Kol Yisrael Arevim Zeh-la-Zeh,” all of Israel is responsible for each other. Yet if we turn our backs on modern-day Israel because of what the current government does, we risk turning our backs on half the Jews in the world. Participation in Klal Yisrael shouldn’t be revoked due to a Jew’s citizenship. I know many Jews who are very mindful not to be Ashke-normative so that they can lift up Jewish culture of Mizrachi Jews and Ethiopian Jews but at the same time are

By Ben Sales | JTA.org

TEL AVIV —  In the face of mass protests, the Israeli government has resumed its effort to weaken the country’s judiciary, advancing a bill that would strip the Supreme Court of its ability to strike down government decisions it deems “unreasonable.”

Early on Tuesday Israel time, following a long and heated debate, Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, voted 64-56 to move the bill forward. The bill must pass two more votes to become law.

Tuesday’s vote ends a period of more than three months during which the government, headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, paused the overhaul effort to conduct negotiations with the parliamentary opposition. That pause began after a series of mass protests and civil disobedience by the overhaul’s opponents, as well as warnings from a range of world leaders and other dignitaries who say it will endanger Israeli democracy by sapping the Supreme Court of much of its power and independence. The court reform’s proponents, meanwhile, say it will curb an overly activist judiciary and enable the right-wing coalition to govern.

In recent weeks, Netanyahu has said the negotiations failed and has pledged to push forward a scaled-back version of the overhaul package. That has prompted renewed opposition from the legislation’s opponents both at home and abroad. On Sunday, President Joe Biden said on CNN that he hopes Netanyahu will “continue to move toward moderation in changing the court.”

In Israel, large crowds of protesters took to

the streets in recent days, a continuation of protests that have occurred weekly since the proposed judicial overhaul was unveiled at the beginning of the year. Last week, a crowd of protesters gathered in the main terminal of Ben Gurion International Airport, and on Saturday night, more than 100,000 people massed in Tel Aviv in opposition to the overhaul. Ahead of the vote on Monday night, protesters gathered outside the Knesset, and a few were forcibly ejected from the building by security.

Protest organizers say Tuesday’s demonstrations will be far bigger. Dubbed a “Day of Opposition,” it will see protesters return to the airport and block roads, as organizers have called on businesses to strike in solidarity. A major mall chain said it would close in support of the protests but later backtracked and said stores could open if they wished. A number of universities have said students would not be penalized for missing class to protest on Tuesday.

The law that was advanced in an initial vote on Tuesday would remove the Supreme Court’s ability to strike down decisions by nationally elected officials because they are “unreasonable.” That power was last used to invalidate the cabinet appointment of Aryeh Deri, a leading haredi Orthodox politician and key Netanyahu ally, because he had been repeatedly convicted of crimes.

Before Netanyahu paused the overhaul effort in March, his government advanced several other pieces of the overhaul in initial votes, including measures that would have given the governing coalition full control of Supreme Court appointments; removed its power to strike down quasi-constitutional laws; and enabled the Knesset to preemptively shield laws from judicial review. None of those measures have yet to advance further. PJC

of the two tribes ask, stay here?

Of all the ungrateful, selfish, self-absorbed, inconsiderate requests, Moses says to them! We are about to enter the Land of Israel — and are probably going to war — and you want to just la-dee-dah sit it out over there with your cattle?

No, no, the tribal leaders respond. We will send troops from our tribes with you. We will help you settle. It’s just that after everyone is settled, our Reubenites and Gadites will come back over here to this side of the Jordan. We’ll help because we are all Israelites. We are with you as you settle the Land of Israel. But after you are all set, we would just rather live here.

I imagine you, dear reader living in Pittsburgh, could easily finish this d’var Torah yourself with thoughts of being supportive over here while half the world’s Jewish population lives over there. And that would be fine. But let’s go a little bit deeper, shall we?

It’s no secret that a lot of Jews are very concerned about the political policies put on offer by the current government of Israel. It is also no secret that policies by various governments of the state of Israel have made life for Palestinians very difficult. We can argue whether those policies are just or necessary another day, but let’s just agree

ready to turn their backs on Israeli Jews which is — what shall we call it? — Diasporanormative, and that doesn’t seem right.

There has to be a way to make it clear that we Jews in America actually care about the lives of the Palestinians in the West Bank. At the very same time, we care about the lives of Jews who live in Israel, and, at the very same time, decry the anti-democratic policies suggested by the current government. Surely we can be sophisticated enough to care for our people, to support the idea of self-determination for the Jewish people, and be livid at the anti-democratic policies being protested. The tribes of Reuben and Gad figured it out. They were in for the big picture, not so in for the details.

The analogy is not perfect, far from it, but our parasha this week reminds us not to make grand statements without nuance. It reminds us we can advocate for this and support that at the same time and in our own way. It reminds us that we should never give up on our people — actual people — and raise our voices to leadership. We can do both. We have to do both. PJC

Rabbi Larry Freedman is the director of the Joint Jewish Education Program. This column is a service of the Greater Pittsburgh Jewish Clergy Association.

www.pittsburghjewishchronicle.org

Rabbi Larry Freedman Parshat Matot Masei Numbers 30:2 – 36:13

We love the phrase “Kol Yisrael Arevim Zeh-laZeh,” all of Israel is responsible for each other.

p Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Avi Ohayon / Government Press Office

BERNFELD: Bunny Bernfeld, 70, of Squirrel Hill, died Tuesday, June 27, 2023. Bunny was admired by family and friends for her beauty, wit, intelligence and generosity. An avid baker and sweet tooth, she loved to share her baked desserts with those she loved, even by mail when at a distance. Her jelly cookies were a treasure. Born into a musical family, she was a gifted singer. In the late 1970s, she sang and recorded with her late brother Martin who performed as King Solomon and subsequently as Martin Solomon and the Hurricanes. She fostered a love of music in her son, Joshua, teaching him to play the piano at an early age. A graduate of Carnegie Mellon and a senior executive at an investment bank in New York City, he is Bunny’s proudest accomplishment. A lifelong resident of Pittsburgh, Bunny attended Falk and Winchester Thurston Schools. She then graduated magna cum laude from the University of Pittsburgh where she majored in speech communications. In her later years, Bunny worked in office management for Pitt and Carnegie Mellon. She also worked for the Giant Eagle. In addition to her son, Bunny is survived by her older brother Lawrence, an attorney in New York City, her sister-in-law Ginny, and several cousins, nieces and nephews, as well as a beloved group of close friends. Funeral and interment are private. Arrangements by John A. Freyvogel Sons, Inc. freyvogelfuneralhome.com

DAMESHEK: H. Lee Dameshek, M.D., age 86, of Pittsburgh, passed away peacefully at home on Saturday, July 1. Dad, Lor, Pop-Pop was born in Baltimore on March 16, 1937, and was raised in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, by his late parents, Sam and Rose. He loved growing up with his brothers, Allan (Nancy) and the late Fred (Jackie). He graduated Franklin & Marshall College and the Tufts University School of Medicine. He completed his internship and residency at Presbyterian University Hospital and was a hematology fellow at Ohio State University Hospital. He practiced hematology and oncology at Presbyterian University Hospital in Pittsburgh from 1969 to 1997. He was clinical instructor and professor for many great physicians through the years. He served as staff president at Presby and as president of the Allegheny County Medical Society, as well as on the board of directors for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society of Western PA and as vice president for the American Cancer Society. He was a force in the Pittsburgh medical community. Caring for hundreds of patients over the years was his superpower. He saved many lives and helped those he could not to die with dignity. The countless letters he received from these patients and their families upon his retirement are a testament to his legacy. His greatest joy came from his four children and 13 grandchildren — and when the Red Sox won the World Series. He shared his pride of his family’s accomplishments, big and small, with anyone who would listen. Throughout his life, Lee was an avid sports fan — enjoying (sometimes suffering with) the Red Sox and Celtics, Pitt, the Penguins and Steelers. He served as team doctor to Pitt football and Penguins hockey for many years — and passed his love of the teams on to his children and grandchildren. Lee was lucky to spend retirement between Pittsburgh and Scottsdale, Arizona, as well as frequently visiting his children and grandchildren. For someone who adored eating so much, it is funny that he never knew how to read a menu. You could always find him watching the latest game or MSNBC, which is ironic since he could never figure out how to operate the TV remote. He served as the faithful Tooth Fairy Witch and family birthday card artist and author. Among his favorite people were Ted Williams, Frank Sinatra, Mario Lemieux and Bill Russell. He enjoyed many golf matches, including seven holes-in-one, with good friends at Green Oaks CC, Westmoreland CC and around Scottsdale. The ultimate gift to Lee was to marry funny, caring, loving Michelle (Zubasic). Over the years, they shared cruises, trips to Barcelona, England, and Italy — and treasured family holidays and trips to Hilton Head, Cape Cod and Bethany Beach. They loved the simple pleasure of taking in a movie and grabbing an early dinner. They are luckier than most to have had 57 years together. He is survived by Michelle, brother Allan (Nancy), and loving children, Lynne (Brian) Shine of Buffalo, New York; Amy (Mark) Brumbaugh of Oakmont, Pennsylvania; David (Beth) Dameshek of Encino, California; and Debbi (Eddie) Francl of Elgin, Illinois. His 13 grandchildren all had the wonderful opportunity to know and love their Pop-Pop, singing and skipping with him. His favorite job was to dance and sing them to sleep as babies. As they grew, he loved playing games and watching movies and sports with them. Pop-Pop was much loved and his memory will be a blessing — he will be sorely missed. We hope wherever he is now, there is a full cup of hot decaf coffee — and no cinnamon in sight. Services were held privately with his family. Donations in Lee’s memory may be made to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society of Western Pennsylvania (givenow.lls.org/give/HLD). Arrangements entrusted to Ralph Schugar Chapel, Inc., family owned and operated. schugar.com

KLEIN: Gloria Klein died peacefully at home, surrounded by family and love, on July 4, 2023, at age 94. She was born on Dec. 7, 1928, in Philadelphia to Marcus Berman, a lawyer, and Jeanette Berman, a nurse. Her childhood was marked by loss, first with the death of her mother when she was 11, then her only sibling, David, in WWII when she was 16, and finally her father when she was 18. She graduated from the Philadelphia Museum School of Art, and soon after went on a blind date with Alfred Klein, who became her beloved husband for 72 years. Thank goodness for her boundless energy! She quickly put it to good use when her first pregnancy was a birthquake of triplets (Carol, Michael and Judy). She gave birth to Terri six years later. They moved to Pittsburgh in 1955 for Al’s job at Westinghouse. Gloria created a warm, welcoming household. She ensured that our family ate breakfast and dinner together, and there was always room for a friend or two. She was a celebrated cook and baker. She sewed many of her daughters’ clothes as well as her own. She made pottery in her tiny basement. The cookie jar she made was always full of her homemade cookies. She also cared for her invalid stepmother who lived with our family for decades. In the midst of all this, she returned to college to earn a teaching degree, and she worked as an art teacher in the Wilkinsburg Public Schools for many years. Upon retirement, she traveled the world with Al and continued making art. She reveled in family gatherings, including yearly beach trips to North Carolina with the ever-expanding Klein clan. At our last vacation together, there were four generations of Kleins bobbing about in the Atlantic Ocean. Just like the ocean, Gloria buoyed us all up. Only Parkinson’s disease could slow her down. Gloria’s husband, Al, died four months ago. Gloria is survived by her children Carol (Michael Larter) of Chapel Hill, North Carolina;  Michael (Louisa Barnhart) of China Village, Maine; Judy (Malcolm Dalglish) of Bloomington, Indiana; and Terri (Dan Gup) of Pittsburgh; grandchildren Naomi, Tema, Ben, Mia, Nathan, Hannah, Sophia, Emily and Noah; and great-grandchildren Miriam, Lila, Silas, Althea and Addison. We are deeply grateful to the marvelous caregivers whose attentive care allowed her to spend her last several years at home: Mili Pedreira, Barbara DeBruce, Jeanette Steele, Shannon Turk, Charlette Aziz, Monique Miles and Vivian Andrews. A memorial service was held at Temple Sinai. If you wish, you may make memorial contributions to a cause meaningful to you. Arrangements entrusted to Ralph Schugar Chapel, Inc, family owned and operated. schugar.com

LINZER: Mildred Linzer, age 92, of Pittsburgh, and Bal Harbour, Florida, died peacefully in her sleep on Saturday, June 24, 2023. Millie was the beloved wife of the late Jack Linzer, who predeceased her in 2019. Devoted and caring mother of Don (Helane) Linzer and Caryl (Steve) Brown. Loving grandmother of Michael Brown, Alissa Gaon, Laura Brown, Katherine Linzer, Joanna Linzer and Andrew Linzer. Millie was a loving soul, a gracious hostess, and always expressed gratitude for her family and her life. A private family graveside service was held. Contributions may be made to Classrooms Without Borders, 4905 Fifth Avenue, ALC3, Pittsburgh, PA 15213. Arrangements entrusted to Ralph Schugar Chapel, Inc., family owned and operated. schugar.com

OSACHY: Marilyn “Mickey” Unger Osachy, on Friday, July 7, 2023. Beloved wife of the late Saul Osachy. Loving mother of Dr. Lisa Osachy of Pittsburgh and Rabbi David (Rose) Osachy of Jacksonville, Florida. Mother-in-law of Dr. Jonathan Touster. Sister of the late Burton Unger and late Elaine Unger Goldberg. Grandmother of Jacob and Daniel Osachy and Sarah Touster. Also survived by cherished cousins, nieces, nephews, grand-nieces and nephews, many treasured friends, and her beloved caregiver Sidney Erickson. The daughter of Sara and Bill Unger, Mickey was born and raised in Squirrel Hill, with most family members living within a few blocks. She kept strong family ties throughout her life, including hosting 20 relatives every year for Thanksgiving. Nothing was more important to her than her family. Mickey had a big personality, a great sense of humor, a sharp wit and enjoyed having fun. She was a member of several mahjongg groups and once played in a Jewish bowling league. She liked playing cards, poker and going to the casino. She enjoyed attending the symphony, the theater, art museums and Phipps. She used to volunteer as a driver for Meals on Wheels. She loved beautiful things and collected antiques. Her work history includes being an assistant buyer at Kaufmann’s, working at Abigail’s Antiques and several clothing stores. She was a great salesperson as she was a true extrovert. She loved talking to people and made friends everywhere she went. She also started her own business, Dignified Furniture Sales, running estate sales. Mickey was an avid reader and library patron,

Jewish Association on Aging gratefully acknowledges contributions from the following: A gift from ... In memory of...

Anonymous Rhea Mark

Yetta Speiser

Reggie Bardin

Karen & Allison Broudy

Herbert Speiser

Lilian & Joe Wells

Jacob Stein

Judy Foster Ben Foster

Edward M Goldston

Amy R Kamin

Dr Herbert Kramer

Ivan Marcus

Susan Melnick

Maxine & Larry Myer

Marvin Perer

Toby Perilman

Marcia & Joel Platt

Jay Silberblatt

Eileen E Snider & Family

Dr Susan Snider & Family

Brenda Winsberg

Max Goldston

Samuel Honig

Martin M Kramer

Joseph Marcus

Samuel Natterson

Milton Myer

Ethel R Perer

Gertrude Stalinsky

Robert Platt

Meyer Silberblatt

Mildred E Snider

Wilma Shlakman

Harry Winsberg

Contact the Development department at 412-586-2690 or development@jaapgh.org for more information.

THIS WEEK’S YAHRZEITS —

Sunday July 16: Ella Amper, Marian S Beck, Samuel H Bigler, Tillie Dentel, Harry Louis Diamond, Sidney Elinow, Celia M Elovitz, Meyer Feldman, Theresa Fried, Fannie Gross, Jacob M Hepner, Helene Rose Hyman, Harry Latterman, Samuel Lederman, Benjamin Love, L J Marks, Tillie Michaelson, Philip Recht, Samuel Sanford Rosen, Celia Schlesinger, Louis Shapira, Nathan Sniderman, Herbert Speiser, Rose Stern, Frank Sussman

Monday July 17: Yetta Burke, Anna Goldberg Cody, David M Fineman, Sigmund Fleisher, Sylvia Goldstein, Edith Lena Kaplan, Joseph Konigsberg, Harold Levy, Rose Liberman, Sylvia Weiner Markovitz, Theodore Marks, Samuel Recht, Sam Rosen, Sarah Rosenthal, Abraham Saffran, Mollie Slutsky, Isadore Sobel, Freda Tauberg, Bertha Harris Wolf

Tuesday July 18: Dr Nathan Ashinsky, Sarah L Blumenthal, Samuel J Cramer, Rae R Granowitz, Leon Robert Greenberg, Tiby M Grinberg, Louis Kitman, Milton Myer, Fannie Dvinsky Pollock, Jacob Stein, Alexander Udman, Joseph H Wells, Rebecca Siegel Wilner, Mildred Marlin Wolovitz

Wednesday July 19: Leonard Barmak, Yolana Berger, Saul Cazen, Ben W Closky, Celia Cohen, Rose Freed, Mildred “Mitzie” Gold, Max Goldston, Jacob Herring, Max Levenson, Jacob Liberman, Harry Louik, Abram Morgan, Essie Rogalsky Rosenfield, Samuel Ruben, Hannah Rubenson, Sidney Schwartz, Ben Shapiro, Sarah Shapiro, Wilma Shlakman, Ida Shoag, Frances Siegman, Eva Simon, Abraham B Slesnick, Edward Irving Stein, Jack Wolf

Thursday July 20: Louis Gerson, Ruth Wein Gordon Herskovitz, Samuel Honig, Benjamin Lebby, Fay Levin, Charles Gershen Lisowitz, Florence B Perilman, Sarah Rosenberg, Manuel Siniakin, Samuel Nathan Unger, Marcus D Wedner, Louis M Witkin, Meyer Zarkin

Friday July 21: Frank Burnstein, Matel Cooper, Rae Danovitz, Charles Goldberg, Edwin Goldberg, Louis Harris, Mollie Lappin, Anna Levenson, Harry Levine, Nathan Lewis, Harry W Liebman, Sol Rosenblum, Ruth Rebecca Sherman, Meyer Silberblatt, Elizabeth Young

Saturday July 22: Norman Amper, Samuel Fargotstein, Hilda Goldstein, David Lee Greenfield, Esther F Horelick, Martin M Kramer, Jessie W Levenson, Ruth Grinberg Lincoff, Merle M Pearlman, Dorothy S Pollock, William S Winer

especially loving mysteries. She also loved animals and had many cats and dogs through the years. Services were held at Ralph Schugar Chapel, Inc. Interment Temple Sinai Memorial Park. Contributions can be made to Humane Action Pittsburgh (humaneactionpittsburgh.org) or to a charity of your choice. schugar.com

SIEGEL: Arlene Siegel, age 92, died peacefully on July 4, 2023. Beloved wife of Franklin Siegel. Loving mother of Kathy (Mark) Rosenberg and Lee Siegel. Cherished grandmother of Julia (Alex) Klein, Erica Rosenberg and Zakary Rosenberg. Also survived by nephew Avram Feldman. Graveside service and interment were held at Homewood Cemetery. Contributions may be made to Alzheimer’s Association, 2835 E. Carson Street Suite 200, Pittsburgh, PA 15203. Arrangements entrusted to Ralph Schugar Chapel, Inc., family owned and operated. schugar.com

WINNECOUR: Lewis A. Winnecour, on Tuesday, July 4, 2023. Devoted husband of the late Diane Black Winnecour and loving partner for many years to Marsha Mintz. Beloved son of the late David and Frieda Winnecour. Beloved father of Joshua (Meg) Winnecour, Ronda J. (Judge Keith Lundin) Winnecour, Michele (Peter Brown) Mintz Brown, David (Karen) Mintz and the late David (surviving spouse Susan) Winnecour. Loving Papa to Sam Foreman (fiancée Stacia Komosinski), Juniper Diane Winnecour, Joshua Brown, Rachel Brown and Eliza Mintz. Born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Lewis was an Eagle Scout, Korean War combat infantry veteran, self-made titan of the scrap metal industry, patient and devoted caretaker, religious school teacher, extraordinary chef, dedicated Patriot Guard Rider, loyal friend and role model to all those who had the opportunity to know and love him, and a beloved pillar of the Chabad of the South Hills community. Lewis was an extraordinary man who helped all whose lives he touched better understand the meaning of a life well lived. His memory is a blessing for us all. He will be greatly missed. Graveside service and interment were held at Mt. Lebanon Cemetery/Temple Emanuel section. Contributions may be made to Chabad of the South Hills, 1701 McFarland Road, Pittsburgh, PA 15216. Arrangements entrusted to Ralph Schugar Chapel, Inc., family owned and operated. schugar.com PJC

Consumer alert posted at Murray Avenue Kosher

The Allegheny County Health Department posted a consumer alert at Murray Avenue Kosher following an inspection on July 5.

The Health Department’s report included several violations, including three classified as high risk.

The high-risk violations included food found in a walk-in cooler that was exposed to dripping water from an unknown source, dry food in a box exposed to condensation from an air conditioner and water dripping into a bowl of cooked meatballs (that were discarded) from a condenser inside a display case.

Letters

Letters Testamentary on the Estate of Mary Elizabeth Pepmeyer, deceased, of 128 Hartle Road, Shaler, Allegheny County, PA, 15116, No. 02-23-04431, have been granted to William Edward Pepmeyer, Jr., 1829 Middle Road, Glenshaw, PA 15116, who requests that all persons having claims against the Estate of this Decedent make known the same in writing to him or his attorney, Thomas E. Pan-daleon, Esq., 6824 Thomas Boulevard, Pittsburgh, PA 15208, and all persons indebted to this Decedent make payment to the same.

In addition, a black mold-like substance was observed on the ceilings and walls of both walk-in coolers; a dead mouse was

found in the basement and kitchen, along with droppings along the wall; and the improper cleaning of food contact surfaces and utensils was cited.

Murray Avenue Kosher co-owner Aryeh Markovic told the Chronicle that they are working on the issues.

“Most of them have already been corrected,” he said. “We hope to have this all resolved with the Health Department later this week.”

Rabbi Moishe Mayir Vogel of the Vaad Harabonim of Pittsburgh said that the organization, which certifies kashrut institutions in the city, does not do the work of the Health Department.

“Our trust in management is beyond and over,” he said. “We trust them 100% to deal with any issue that needs to be addressed.” PJC

—David Rullo

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4 Bedroom 2 bath home with central air, Renewal by Andersen windows and Owens Corning roof. E xtra storage on first and very convenient location.

Is Barbie Jewish? The complex Jewish history of the doll, explained

— TOYS —

By Shira Li Bartov | JTA

Long before the craze over the upcoming “Barbie” movie, most people could conjure an image of the doll: She was the beauty standard and the popular girl, a perky, white, ever-smiling brand of Americana.

She was also the child of a hard-nosed Jewish businesswoman, Ruth Handler, whose family fled impoverishment and antisemi tism in Poland. And some see the original Barbie as Jewish like Handler, a complex symbol of assimilation in the mid-20thcentury United States.

The doll’s latest revival comes in Greta Gerwig’s hotly-anticipated “Barbie” movie, written by Gerwig and Noah Baumbach and featuring a star-studded cast, including Margot Robbie as Barbie, Ryan Gosling as Ken and Will Ferrell as a fictional CEO of Mattel. The expected blockbuster could collect at least $70-80 million in just its opening weekend of July 21-23, according to The Hollywood Reporter, fueled in part by a relentless marketing machine.

But this in-crowd doll was born from an outsider. Here’s its Jewish history.

The origin story

Ruth Handler was born in 1916 in Denver, the youngest of 10 children. Her father, Jacob Moskowitz (later changed to Mosko) had escaped conscription in the Russian army like many Jews at the turn of the century, and landed in the United States in 1907. Her mother Ida, who was illiterate, arrived the next year in the steerage section of a steamboat. Jacob was a blacksmith and moved the family to Denver, where new railroads were being built.

Ida was sickly by the time she gave birth to Ruth, so the baby was sent to live with her older sister Sarah. It was in Sarah’s Jewish community of Denver, when Ruth was 16 years old, that she met Izzy Handler at a Jewish youth dance, according to Robin Gerber, a biographer who wrote “Barbie and Ruth: The Story of the World’s Most Famous Doll and the Woman Who Created Her.” She fell in love immediately with Izzy, a penniless art student wearing a torn T-shirt.

At age 19, Ruth decided to drop out of the University of Denver and move to Los Angeles, where she found a job as a secretary at Paramount Studios. Izzy soon followed her.

“As they drove across the country, she asked him to change his name to Elliot,” said Gerber. “She had felt the antisemitism at that time, in the 1930s, and she really felt that they’d be better off with a more Americanized name.”

The couple never renounced their Judaism. On the contrary, they eventually helped found Temple Isaiah in Los Angeles and became longtime contributors to the United Jewish Appeal. But Ruth was pragmatic, and she would not forget how police officers had stopped her car in Denver to make antisemitic remarks.

Against the pleadings of her family, who knew Elliot was poor, Ruth married him in 1938. She continued working at Paramount, while he enrolled at the Art Center College of Design and took a job designing light fixtures — but they quickly became collaborators. Elliot began making pieces from Lucite in their garage, such as bookends and ashtrays, and Ruth was thrilled to sell them. They were complementary business partners: Elliott was a quiet creative who shied away from ordering in a restaurant, while Ruth was vivacious and unafraid, a risk-taker who said her first sale felt like “taking a drug,” according to Gerber.

World War II challenged their business, as President Franklin Roosevelt restricted plastics to military use. Together with their friend Harold “Matt” Matson, the Handlers pivoted to making wooden picture frames and dollhouse furniture. They found success and named their company Mattel, a combination of Matt and Elliot’s names.

In 1946, Matson sold his share and Ruth Handler became the first president of Mattel. The company soon branched into toys, including a child-sized ukulele called the Uke-A-Doodle, a Jack-in-the-Box and toy guns. Since the design department was entirely male, many of its early toys targeted little boys.

One day, while watching her daughter Barbara — who would become Barbie’s namesake — Ruth had a new idea. She observed that Barbara and her friends were playing with paper dolls and pretending to be adult women. In the 1950s, the only dolls on the market were baby dolls, presuming that girls wanted to play at being mothers. But Barbara and her friends wanted to play being the dolls.

On a family trip to Switzerland in 1956, she spotted a curvaceous adult doll called Bild Lilli. This toy, based on a seductive comic strip character in the German tabloid Bild, was designed as a sexual gag gift for men. Ruth saw her as a blueprint for Barbie.

An adult female doll for children was so novel that Mattel’s designers and even Ruth’s husband dismissed the idea, saying that mothers would never buy their daughters a doll with breasts. Ruth kept pushing until the first Barbie, decked in a black-and-white swimsuit and heels, debuted at New York’s

Toy Fair in 1959.

Sure enough, plenty of mothers said the doll was too sexual — but their daughters loved it. Ruth communicated directly with children by bringing Mattel to television, making it the first toy company to advertise on Disney’s “Mickey Mouse Club.”

“She completely shifted the way we buy toys,” said Gerber. “Up to that point, children only saw toys when their parents handed them a catalog. But when toys came to ads on television, then kids were running to their parents and saying, ‘I want that thing on TV.’”

Mattel sold 350,000 Barbies in its first year. Striving to keep up with demand, the company released her boyfriend in 1961 and named him after the Handlers’ son, Kenneth.

Is Barbie feminist? Sexist? Assimilationist? Jewish?

Barbie’s rail-thin figure sparked backlash from feminists in the 1970s. “I am not a Barbie doll!” became a chant for marchers at the 1970 Women’s Strike for Equality in New York. Advocacy groups such as the South Shore Eating Disorders Collaborative have said that if Barbie were a real woman, her proportions would force her to walk on all fours and she would not have enough body fat to menstruate. In the 2018 film “Tiny Shoulders: Rethinking Barbie,” Gloria Steinem said, “She was everything we didn’t want to be.”

Handler said that Barbie represented possibilities for women. Women could not open a credit card in their own name until 1974, but Barbie could buy any outfit to fit any career. Her fashion represented the future: Astronaut Barbie came out in 1965, four years before Neil Armstrong walked on the moon and 18 years before Sally Ride became the first American woman in space. Ken may be Barbie’s boyfriend, but in more than 60 years, she has not married or had children.

In Ruth’s memoir “Dream Doll: The Ruth Handler Story,” she wrote, “Barbie has always represented the fact that a woman has choices. Even in her early years Barbie did not have to settle for being only Ken’s girlfriend or an inveterate shopper. She had the clothes, for example, to launch a career as a nurse, a stewardess, a nightclub singer.”

But years before the feminist discussion, the question of how American Jews could or could not relate to Barbie said a lot about their place in the United States at the time. Handler created Barbie in 1959, when many Jews were wrestling with the concept of assimilation. Although they continued to face discrimination in the postwar period, they also had newfound security — a life they had never identified with, according to Emily Tamkin, the author of “Bad Jews: A History of American Jewish Politics and Identities.”

Suddenly, like so many others, they were moving to suburban, white-picket fence America — Barbie territory.

So, much like the iconic fashion of Ralph Lauren, a Jewish designer who changed his last name from Lifshitz, or the Christmas Carols of Irving Berlin, a Russian Jewish immigrant born Israel Beilin, Barbie would paradoxically become core to the American ideal that Jews were seen to assimilate

into, said Tamkin.

“The thinking goes, if you’re safe and secure and in suburbia, is that really an authentic Jewish life?” Tamkin told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “And while they’re having this communal and individual struggle, Ruth Handler really enhances the Americana that they have this ambivalence about.”

But was the original Barbie actually Jewish herself? Susan Shapiro, the best-selling author of “Barbie: 60 Years of Inspiration,” thinks so.

“I think Ruth just assumed that Barbie reflects her, in a certain way,” Shapiro told Kveller in 2019. “Barbie was supposed to be all-American, and I think Ruth really considered herself to be very assimilated in America. But she did face antisemitism at Paramount Pictures, and her family fled Europe because of antisemitism.”

The doll doesn’t fit the rubric of stereotypes about Ashkenazi appearance — after all, her first form copied a German sex doll that “looks very goyishe,” said Gerber. (Non-white Barbie ethnicities were not introduced until the 1980s.)

Tiffany Shlain, who made a 2005 short documentary “The Tribe” about the history of Jews and Barbie, is herself a blond, blueeyed Jewish woman (who wrote the film with her husband, serendipitously named Ken Goldberg). She was often told that she didn’t “look Jewish.”

“Right now, we’re in a real renaissance of seeing all the different ways Jews look, and there’s no ‘look,’ there’s no one ideology,” Shlain said.

Regardless of what American buyers think, Barbie has been labeled “Jewish” by discriminatory bans. In 2003, she was temporarily outlawed by Saudi Arabia’s religious police, who posted the message: “Jewish Barbie dolls, with their revealing clothes and shameful postures, accessories and tools are a symbol of decadence to the perverted West.” Iran has also repeatedly cracked down on the sale of Barbies since declaring them un-Islamic in 1996.

Will the new movie address any of this?

It’s unclear.

Gerwig’s collaborator (and partner) Baumbach is Jewish but doesn’t often reference that fact in his movies, which include “The Squid and the Whale” and “Marriage Story.” The film features a few Jewish cast members, including Hari Nef, a trans actress and model who has appeared in shows such as “Transparent,” “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” and “The Idol.”

Details about the movie’s plot have been scarce, but it seems to involve characters leaving a make-believe Barbie world for the real world.

The wide diversity of the cast — which features several different actors playing Barbie and Ken — also seems to be a commentary on Barbie’s white, all-American roots.

“We were able to cast people of different shapes, sizes, differently abled, to all participate in this dance — all under this message of: You don’t have to be blonde, white, or X, Y, Z in order to embody what it means to be a Barbie or a Ken,” said actor Simi Liu, who plays one of the Kens. PJC

p Ruth Handler holds a 40th anniversary Barbie in 1999. Jeff Christensen/Getty Images

Community

From Warsaw with love

Emma Kaufmann Camp staff-in-training participants visited Warsaw, Poland. The teens learned that before World War II the city boasted more than 400 synagogues. In an effort to beautify Warsaw, participants joined a local Polish artist and spray-painted parking barriers. The designs paid homage to four synagogues that were destroyed during the war.

Not your average shul dinner

Shaare Torah congregants enjoyed an evening of conversation while celebrating their shul. Led by Cleveland-based facilitator Marc Ehrenreich, more than 180 congregants exchanged engaging and humorous biographical questions and answers in an effort to strengthen community. The June 11 program was titled, “Not Your Average Shul Dinner.”

Beautifying the community

Repair the World Pittsburgh PeerCorps teen cohort and their families honored the memory of Rose Mallinger, one of the 11 people murdered during the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, by painting flower pots and cleaning the Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh’s Levinson Patio.

Checking in on Friendship Circle

A rainy Sunday resulted in quality time indoors at The Friendship Circle of Pittsburgh. Attendees of the July 9 program enjoyed brunch, games and music.

p Isabel Jacobs and Haley Levine

p Shaare Torah President Josh Sunshine; Co-Chairs Marti Herskovitz, Beverly Siegel (front), and Beverly Brin; Executive Director Jeff Margolis; and Vice President Danny Shaw

Photos by Amos Azaria

p Jacqueline Harris, Zoe Blum and Ronnie Greenberg

p Shaare Torah honorees: Shalom Kohanbash, Leah Kohanbash, Lisa Young and Jonathan Young

p Always forward, never back

Photo courtesy of The Friendship Circle of Pittsburgh

p Mallinger’s daughter, Andrea Wedner, seated right, is joined by fellow volunteers. Photo courtesy of Repair the World Pittsburgh

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