Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle 10-21-22

Service, commemoration and study planned in memory of lives lost on Oct. 27, 2018

Documentary about the attack at the Tree of Life building premieres on HBO

By Adam Reinherz | Sta Writer

Fouryears after the attack at the Tree of Life building on Oct. 27, 2018, two organizations are enabling community members to serve and commemorate.

The 10.27 Healing Partnership and Repair the World Pittsburgh are organizing numerous volunteer events in memory of the 11 Pittsburgh Jews murdered that day.

Members of Tree of Life Congregation, Congregation Dor Hadash and New Light Congregation were worshipping at their respective Shabbat services in the Tree of Life building when a gunman entered and opened fire. Six other people were seriously wounded in the attack, including four first responders.

This year’s service opportunities, which are scheduled through the end of October, include beautifying local spaces, donating blood and packing books.

Each project, said Maggie Feinstein of the 10.27 Healing Partnership, ensures the

“voices of the three congregations and families and survivors are honored and reflect what we’ve learned over the last three years: This was an attack on the Jewish community, and the lives should be a blessing for the entire community.”

Annie Dunn, a senior program associate of Repair the World: Pittsburgh, said four themes — civic engagement, community care, environmental stewardship and honoring loved ones — guide the volunteering opportunities, and that many of the projects were planned in collaboration with those principally affected by the events of Oct. 27, 2018.

In Judaism, after a loved one dies, it’s common to say, “May their memory be a blessing,” Dunn noted. This year’s projects seek to honor the “commitments, passions and service” that each of the 11 people who died shared with the community throughout

By David Rullo | Sta Writer

Filmmaker

Trish Adlesic’s “A Tree of Life: The Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting” is a deeply personal portrait of those who survived the horror of the Oct. 27, 2018, massacre.

Told through first-person accounts, the film documents the violence and terror that unfolded that day — but it is also a story of survival and strength seen through the eyes of survivors, family members of those who were killed and the community.

This style of storytelling was important to the director. Adlesic said that she knew

Estate Planning Planned Giving

Crusader against antisemitism

LOCAL

Renowned Jewish opera singer comes to Pittsburgh

Helene Schneiderman sings Yiddish songs for benefit performance

Courtesy of Sunshine Sachs Morgan & Lylis

Repair the World Pittsburgh volunteers

outdoor space. Photo courtesy of Repair the World Pittsburgh

Chani Altein revisits pandemic challenges in new book for young adults

Hill — relied on her teenage daughters to ensure the dialogue and sentiments in “Home Sweet Home” tracked.

By Adam Reinherz | Staff Writer

Community members have largely left the dark days that began in March 2020, but author Chani Altein is asking readers to return in the name of friendship.

“Home Sweet Home,” a new book published by Judaica Press and penned by Altein, focuses on four young girls navi gating the simultaneous pressures of teenage harmony and familial responsibility in the early days of the pandemic.

Though no stranger to writing from the eyes of a young adult, Altein said the literary process of tackling COVID-19 via a youthful prism was both relatable and illuminating.

Socializing was extremely important to Altein when she was a teen.

“I was someone who always thought my family was boring,” she said. “I always wanted to be with friends whenever I could.”

Altein channels those attitudes through her novel’s protagonist. “Home Sweet Home,” which primarily follows Esti through challenges that both young and older readers will likely remember, charts a teenager’s evolution and realization that family is truly a gift, the author said.

Reaching that recognition makes for a sweet narrative ending, but the chapter-bychapter path is marked by familiar pangs and discourse. Beyond her memories, Altein — an author of nine novels, a Jewish educator and the co-director of Chabad of Squirrel

“I am reminded on a constant basis, not from my own personal self, but from the girls I live with, what teenage life could be like,” Altein said. “Sometimes I just asked them, ‘Does this make sense? Is this some thing that would be realistic?’”

Using those in-house editors allowed Altein to perform a “kind of reality check” against her writing while also generating a “fresher” read for teens. It’s one of several narrative tactics that she’s adopted over time. Since authoring her first work more than a decade ago, Altein — like the characters she’s created — has learned much about the craft and herself.

One of the things she’s learned is that the more one writes, the more her writing improves, she said.

There’s also a maturity in knowing that the written word isn’t necessarily the published word.

“It’s very idealistic to say, ‘I don’t care what the constraints are of the publishing company, whatever, I’m just going to write what I’m going to write.’ But that doesn’t actually get your book published,” she said.

Seeing one’s words in print requires certain conformities, Altein explained.

It’s important to make sure “your book is catered and appropriate for the audience — despite whatever it is that I would like to write about, or how I feel or what I’m passionate about,” she said.

Writing, Altein continued, is a “joyful” experience; part of the pleasure stems from seeing its impact.

In response to her “Mimi” books — a trilogy concerning a shy middle-schooler sandwiched between a set of “lively” older twin sisters and active younger twin brothers — Altein once received a meaningful piece of fan mail.

The letter was from a woman saying that whenever her daughter “needs a little escape or is feeling sad,” she turns to one of those books, Altein said. “I was so touched. That’s why I write.”

Following “Home Sweet Home,” Altein has an idea of what she’d like to work on next. She said she’d love to build the story

out and write a book from each of the other three girls’ perspectives on friend ship and family during the early days of the pandemic.

Altein has some advice for children interested in seeing their work published someday. Keep reading and writing, she said, but in addition to that, one must be “disciplined.”

“Set goals for yourself,” she said, “and stick to them.” PJC

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

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p Pittsburgh author Chani Altein with her new book, "Home Sweet Home"

Photo courtesy of Chani Altein

“I am reminded on a constant basis, not from my own personal self, but from the girls I live with, what teenage life could be like.”

-CHANI ALTEIN

Getting to know: Shayna Yogman

By Justin Vellucci | Special to the Chronicle

Shayna

Yogman’s war with antisemitism and bigotry has taken many forms.

Yogman, who is Jewish, conducted research that aided the civil prosecution of white supremacists involved in the 2017 Unite the Right events in Charlottesville, Virginia — a headline-grabbing incident nationwide. The case resulted in a multi-mil lion dollar verdict against the extremist groups and leaders.

She studied the subject, too, first at Rutgers University, and then, later, graduating with two master’s degrees — one in sociology from the University of Pittsburgh, and one in religious studies from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.

Yogman also worked for nine years at the Anti-Defamation League, first in its national office in Manhattan, and then in leadership roles in New Jersey and Colorado.

“ADL was a professional dream come true because I was able to channel my

passion for inclusivity and battling bigotry,”

Yogman, who lives in Greenfield, told the Chronicle. “I worked in a wonderful environment, with brilliant people, doing incredible things. And I felt I had a hand in actually fighting white supremacy.”

Yogman started with the ADL the day after she completed undergraduate studies at Rutgers, she said.

Yogman’s next chapter is unfolding at the University of Pittsburgh, where she is pursuing a law degree. A first-year student, the national firm Frost Brown Todd recently awarded Yogman its Zenobia Harris Bivens Diversity Scholarship. It was one of only seven scholarships awarded by the firm nationwide.

The granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor who escaped Auschwitz and returned multiple times to liberate others, Yogman said she plans to keep fighting antisemitism — but has yet to determine the specific direction of her law career.

“I will commit myself to doing pro bono work in this area,” Yogman said. “I feel I bring a set of skills and experience that will help fight white supremacy in the courts.”

“As far as the main part of my future law practice, I’m not set on anything and am open to what seems like a strong fit,” she added, citing the Frost Brown Todd honor. “I champion inclusivity and justice. And I seek out opportunities to support

Local librarian pens Holocaust-era novel

ultimately, Berlin and became fascinated by a museum in the latter city called The Topography of Terror.

By Justin Vellucci | Special to the Chronicle

JulieTulba loves words — and how history can unfold through them.

The Butler County Community College librarian has surrounded herself with words for much of the last decade — first as a librarian, and second as an aspiring historical fiction scribe.

“I’ve always loved books,” said Tulba, who lives in the Pine/Gibsonia area and relocated from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh at 18 to attend Chatham University. “That’s probably the biggest cliché ever.”

Tulba’s mother was a high school librarian in inner-city Philadelphia, and Tulba earned a graduate degree in library sciences from the University of Pittsburgh to enter the same field. Before starting at Butler County Community College in 2021, she worked as an online refer ence librarian and also for Butler Public Library.

But what really gets Tulba talking is her side hustle as an author. She recently published a book of historical fiction partially set in 1930s Nazi Germany and has another book in the pipeline about the Vietnam War.

“I think, ever since I was a little child, I had an inventive imagination,” Tulba told the Chronicle. “And history has always been a great passion of mine.”

Tulba’s Holocaust novel, titled “The Dead Are Resting,” stemmed from a visit to Europe in 2019. Due to ongoing “yellow vest” movement strikes in France, she rerouted her trip through Amsterdam and,

At The Topography of Terror, she saw what she called “sickening” photos of Holocaust-era Nazi troops, many of them smiling and celebrating at a spa not far from the Auschwitz concentration camp. Tulba became compelled to write something around the photos and created a protagonist who discovers deep truths about her Holocaustsurvivor mother.

Tulba wasn’t a fan of Holocaust novels that ended when the camps were liberated; she wanted to create characters she could probe and examine after the war.

“World War II and the Holocaust — it’s definitely the area of historical fiction that people are craving,” Tulba said.

“My book focuses on the aftermath, the time after the camp’s liberation … and I think that’s what makes my book interesting.”

Copies of Tulba’s book, which is her second, are circulating through the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh system, at the community college where she works and are available for purchase online.

Tulba admits history and travel have often gone hand in hand for her.

“I loved history from a very young age,” she said. “Family vacations almost always had a visit to something of historical significance [and] history was a huge part of my upbringing.”

A vacation — specifically, a trip to southeast Asia in 2020 — also led to Tulba’s newest book, a work on the Vietnam War titled “Red Clay Ashes.” That work involves a female heroine, a war reporter looking for something beyond government-

those values.”

Frost Brown Todd established the FBT Diversity Scholarship Fund in 2010 and awarded its first scholarships to students that same year, according to its website.

The scholarship was recently renamed the FBT Zenobia Harris Bivens Diversity Scholarship in honor of their late colleague, who was a tireless advocate for the many people and causes she championed during her lifetime.

“Through [Yogman’s] work with the Anti-Defamation League, research on extremism and white supremacy, service to the community, and impressive academic record, she has embodied the goals of this scholarship,” said Dan Craig, senior associate and member of the Law Student Diversity Scholarship Committee. “Given her demonstrated service to the cause of diversity, we at Frost Brown Todd believe that Ms. Yogman will be an invaluable addition to the legal commu nity and drive it towards a more diverse, inclusive and equitable future.”

PJC

Justin Vellucci is a freelance writer living

Rex Hotel.

Where else will Tulba find inspiration for her historical fiction? And what will people find in her books?

“So many individuals regard history

as drudgery,” she said. “I’d like to think books like mine … can change that mindset.”

PJC

Justin Vellucci is a freelance writer living in Pittsburgh.

p Shayna Yogman

Photo courtesy of Shayna Yogman

p Julie Tulba

Photo courtesy of Julie Tulba

Zoe,’ a Pittsburgh film with universal themes

By David Rullo | Sta Writer

was certain where he would set

“Dear Zoe.”

was never to going to film

the popular hardware chain Busy Beaver, and his family attended Rodef Shalom Congregation where the future filmmaker had his bar mitzvah.

anywhere

he said. “It had to be Pittsburgh. I wanted it to be authentic.”

Philip Beard’s novel of the same name is set in two unidentified Pittsburgh communities. In Beard’s mind, those neighborhoods were Aspinwall and Braddock, along with Kennywood Amusement Park. When Lhormer adapted the work, he decided to substitute Squirrel Hill for Aspinwall but kept the other two locations.

Lhormer read the novel at the suggestion of his friend screenwriter Carl Kurlander, who is perhaps best known for his work on the film “St. Elmo’s Fire.” Lhormer said his mind immediately went to the eastern Pittsburgh neighborhood where he grew up when he read the book.

“I pictured Squirrel Hill immediately and a particular section of Squirrel Hill that was traditionally referred to as Murdoch Farms, around Bennington Avenue, Inverness Avenue and Fair Oaks Street.”

Lhormer, who co-produced the film with his wife, Brenda, and lives in California, has deep Pittsburgh roots. His father founded

He credits his dad, who grew up in Clairton, Pennsylvania, with helping to select the second location, which in the book is simply identified as a dirty, gritty, old mill town.

“I asked my dad where I should set this part of the story, and he said there’s only one place to do it. You have to do it in Braddock,” he said. “I went and poked around, and he was right.”

Lhormer said that other potential partners wanted the motion picture to be filmed in different cities that were offering tax credits and experienced film crews, such as Providence, Rhode Island, Youngstown, Ohio, and even Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

“It was always going to be Pittsburgh, as far as I was concerned,” Lhormer said. “We’re loud and proud — this is a Pittsburgh story.”

The Steel City connections run deeper than Lhormer’s roots or author Beard’s ties.

The Lhormers originally hired Melissa Mark, a Carnegie Mellon University professor who teaches screenwriting, to pen the script. Mark’s credits include “The Bread, My Sweet,” filmed in the Strip District.

Unfortunately, because of a medical emergency with her family, Mark had to withdraw from the project. Lhormer, who had practiced creative writing since college decided to finish the script.

The movie was filmed in 2019 and is an adaptation, rather than a literal translation, of Beard’s novel.

The story centers on 15-year-old Tess Denunzio, who decides to spend the summer with her father in Braddock, leaving Squirrel Hill, and her mother and stepfather who are grieving the loss of Tess’ younger sister, Zoe. It is told in the form of a letter written by Tess to Zoe.

Beard said the initial idea for the story came about from a habit he had of keeping notes in a recipe-card notebook.

“I carried it around since I was 18 and, going back 20-plus years now, I was taking notes in the voice of my stepdaughter who was 15 at the time and having her, through this voice, ruminate on the challenges of both adolescence and having these two very different fathers and moving back and forth between those two lives,” Beard said. “At the same time, there were a couple of horrific incidents involving children in our

community who died very suddenly under very bizarre circumstances. I had two much younger daughters, and it made me afraid every time they went out the door.”

Beard said the actual Pittsburgh locations aren’t too important to the story.

“It could be any town, anywhere where there’s sort of distinct socio-economic differences between these two communities,” he said. “I envisioned Aspinwall and Braddock … but you get these contrasting elements between the beautiful front lawns and these smoking steel mills.”

Lhormer said the universality and nostalgic nature of the story stuck with him and his wife, who had worked together producing the film “Bottle Shock” in 2008 and were co-founders of the Napa Valley Film Festival.

“We were both so taken with it,” he said. “It was easy to think back to being a teenager and getting into an argument with one or both of your parents and having little brothers and sisters, your little cabal, to gang up on Mom and Dad, threatening to run

Poster provided by Zin Haze Productions

Renowned Jewish opera singer to perform Yiddish and German

at Pittsburgh Opera

By Justin Vellucci | Special to the Chronicle

Thevoice is a powerful vehicle for the Schneiderman family.

At the Auschwitz concentration camp in the 1940s, Judith Schneiderman — then Judith Rosenberg of Rachov, Czechoslovakia — sang to her Nazi captors to curry favor with them and was awarded with her survival.

Today, Helene Schneiderman, one of Judith’s four children, sings at a German opera house and is coming to Pittsburgh later this month.

“My mother saved her life by singing,” said Schneiderman, speaking by phone from Stuttgart, Germany. “We grew up without grandparents, aunts, uncles — we grew up knowing our past. It’s with us every day.”

That history informs Schneiderman’s work in opera, and it will inform the selection of pieces for a concert recital set to take place on Oct. 26 in the Steel City.

Schneiderman, a renowned mezzosoprano, will sing selections ranging from Yiddish traditions and modern Jewish composers to the American songbook at a fundraiser for the Pittsburgh Opera, which is being hosted at the Shadyside home of Nachum Golan and Steve Hough.

While in Pittsburgh, Schneiderman also will sing the role of Marcellina in Pittsburgh Opera’s production of “The Marriage of Figaro,” from Nov. 5-13 at the Benedum Center.

The evening recital, though, will be interesting, Schneiderman told the Chronicle.

She plans to sing in German and Yiddish, to show parallels and similarities between the languages and their compo sitions, and will do selections from four Yiddish operettas. Schneiderman also will sing selections by Jewish American composers such as George Gershwin and Leonard Bernstein for an audience of about 30 people.

“I chose this music because it was close to me,” Schneiderman said.

Judith and Paul Schneiderman, who met at a displaced persons’ camp in Germany after the war, emigrated to the U.S. around 1947 and had four children. Among Schneiderman’s siblings are two doctors and a Hollywood-based artist.

“So many families got started again” at the displaced persons’ camp, Schneiderman said. “Someone who lost everything finds love and, in three weeks, moves to America and starts over.”

The family — Judith was Czech, though

her hometown today is in Ukraine; Paul was Polish and a survivor of the Nazi’s Buchenwald and Dachau camps — lived on a farm in Raritan Township, New Jersey. Schneiderman later would go on to first study music at a Princeton, New Jersey, conservatory not far from her home, and moved to Germany to find a permanent spot in a state-funded opera house.

Schneiderman’s parents were supportive of her moving to Germany some 40 years ago despite the traumas they experienced during World War II.

“I felt like it would hurt my parents,” she said. “But they said they loved me more than they hated anybody.”

Judith Schneiderman’s story — which her daughter said resembles “The Diary of Anne Frank,” with a happier ending — was turned into a book more than a decade ago.

And a Schneiderman still sings.

“We are very grateful to Helene for this special recital,” Christian Cox, the Pittsburgh Opera’s director of marketing and communications, said. “Having an artist of her caliber give such a personal performance in an intimate setting is a rare occurrence. It’s going to be a magical evening.”

Schneiderman wholeheartedly agrees.

“It’ll be fun,” she said.

There is still limited seating available for the recital. For more information, contact Torey Gricks at 412-281-0912, ext. 225, or tgricks@pittsburghopera.org. PJC

Justin Vellucci is a freelance writer living in Pittsburgh.

p Helene Schneiderman

Photo by Matthias Baus

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 SATURDAY, OCT. 22

Comedian Sheba Mason, daughter of Jackie Mason, headlines the Taylor Nathan Memorial Comedy Show Fundraiser. All funds raised go to Highmark’s Caring Place, a center for grieving children, adolescents and their families who have had a loved one die. $30. Tickets are available online and at the door. 7:30 p.m. Jewish Community Center, Robinson Building, 5738 Darlington Road. ComedyForTaylor.eventbrite.com.

q SUNDAY, OCT. 23

Join Classrooms Without Borders for Beyond the Umschlagplatz: Remembering the Warsaw Ghetto, the fourth and final program in the series Grossaktion Warsaw: 80 Years Later. 2 p.m. cwbpgh.org/event/beyondthe-umschlagplatz-remembering-thewarsaw-ghetto.

q SUNDAYS, OCT. 23-NOV. 27

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

q MONDAYS, OCT. 24 -NOV. 28

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

q MONDAYS, OCT. 24-MAY 15

Understanding the Torah and what it asks of us is perhaps one of the most important things a Jew can learn. But most Torah classes begin in Genesis and never finish the first book. If you want a comprehensive overview of the whole Torah, Torah 1 is the course for you. In the first year of this two-year Zoom course, Rabbi Danny Schiff will teach Genesis, Exodus and the first half of Leviticus. In the second year, he will complete Leviticus and cover Numbers and Deuteronomy. $225. 9:30 a.m. foundation. jewishpgh.org/torah-1.

q TUESDAY, OCT. 25

Join the JCC of Greater Pittsburgh for Fitness and Wellness Day. This year’s focus is on programs that help keep adults healthy and fit and to showcase what local organizations are doing in their communities to promote health and fitness. Free. 9 a.m. 5738 Forbes Ave. Proof of vaccination required. For more information, visit jccpgh.org.

q TUESDAYS, OCT. 25-NOV. 15

Join Rabbi Danny Schiff for “The Afterlife: Jewish Views on What Happens After We

Die.” In this Zoom course, learn Jewish approaches to the nature of the afterlife from ancient times to the present day. $45. 9:30 a.m. foundation.jewishpgh.org/theafterlife-jewish-views-on-what-happensafter-we-die.

q WEDNESDAY, OCT. 26

Jewish Fertility Foundation of Pittsburgh invites anyone interested to attend a support group facilitated by Robin Freyburg via Zoom. 7 p.m. jewishfertilityfoundation.org/support.

q WEDNESDAYS, OCT. 26-NOV. 30

Bring the parashah alive. Study the weekly Torah portion with Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman. 12:15 p.m. bethshalompgh. org/life-text.

Join Temple Sinai to study the weekly Torah portion in its hybrid class available on Zoom. Open to everyone. Noon. templesinaipgh.org/event/ parashah/weekly-torah-portion-classvia-zoom11.html.

q WEDNESDAYS, OCT. 26-MAY 24

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

q THURSDAY, OCT. 27

Join the Pittsburgh Jewish Community for a Commemorative Ceremony for Oct. 27, 2018, to reflect and support each other in memory of the antisemitic attack on our loved ones and community. 4 p.m. Prospect Drive, Schenley Park. Visit 1027healingpartnership.org for updates and details on the ceremony, as well as Torah study and commemorative service events leading up to the ceremony.

q THURSDAYS, OCT. 27-DEC. 15

Register now for the virtual course “Melton: Social Justice – The Heart of Judaism in Theory and Practice.”

This 10-part Melton course highlights the Jewish call to action and provides a practical approach for achieving lasting change. Drawing from classic and modern texts, the course explores the communal connection that compels us to support the most vulnerable. 7 p.m. foundation. jewishpgh.org/melton-social-justice-theheart-of-judaism-in-theory-and-practice.

q SUNDAY, OCT. 30

Come check out the Shaare Torah SHULastic Book Fair for great books, fun raffles and even a princess appearance. This is a fundraiser and donations will be accepted in the form of books, board games and toys until Wednesday, Oct. 26, in a bin outside of the shul for donations.

Contact office@shaaretorah.net with questions or if you want to volunteer. 11 a.m. Shaare Torah Congregation, 2319 Murray Ave.

q TUESDAY, NOV. 1

Join Classrooms Without Borders for Talk Back Session America and the Holocaust with Michael Berenbaum. Berenbaum will discuss the PBS documentary, “America and the Holocaust.” 4 p.m. cwbpgh.org/ event/talk-back-session-america-and-theholocaust-with-michael-berenbaum.

q WEDNESDAY, NOV. 2

The National Council of Jewish Women presents Designer Days 2022, Celebrating the Life and Style of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg VIP Preview Party. $45 online; $50 at the door. Snacks, desserts, drinks and more. 5 p.m. 125 51st Street. ncjwpgh.salsalabs.org/ designerdays22/index.htm.

q THURSDAY, NOV. 3

Join Rodef Shalom Congregation for “Kaufmann’s: From Peddlers to Prosperity” with archivist Martha L. Berg in a conversation with Marylynne Pitz and Laura Malt Schneiderman of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about their new book on the family behind the famed Kaufmann’s department store. 7 p.m. 4905 Fifth Ave. rodefshalom.org/kaufmanns.

q TUESDAYS, NOV. 8, 15, 22

Join New Light Congregation for their November Lecture Series: Pittsburgh is our Home. Classes will be in person and on Zoom. Free. 7 p.m. Registration required to receive the Zoom link. To register, please send an email to janet@ newlightcongregation.org or register online at newlightcongregation.org. For a complete list of subjects and speakers, visit newlightcongregation.org.

q THURSDAY, NOV. 10

Classrooms Without Borders presents a post-film discussion of the film “Munich” with Francine Zuckerman, moderated by Avi Ben Hur. 3 p.m. cwbpgh.org/event/ post-film-discussion-after-munich.

q SUNDAY, NOV. 13

Join the Jewish Genealogy Society for “Jewish Genealogy 101: The Ganze Mishpokhah (The Whole Family).” Learn where to start and how to explore your relatives’ lives in this all-day seminar led by Emily Garber. Free for JGS-Pittsburgh members; $10 for the general public viewing online and $15 for the general public attending in person. Boxed lunch is an additional $20. 10:30 a.m. Online or at the Heinz History Center, 1212 Smallman St. heinzhistorycenter.org/event/jewishgenealogy-101-garber. PJC

Author Jerry Stahl to join Nov. 12 Chronicle Book Club meeting

The

Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle is pleased to announce it will host play wright, screenwriter and author Jerry Stahl on Nov. 12 as the Chronicle Book Club discusses Stahl’s new book, “Nein, Nein, Nein!: One Man’s Tale of Depression, Psychic Torment, and a Bus Tour of the Holocaust Antiquities and Other Stories.”

From the Jewish Journal: “There’s a laugh on almost every page of ‘Nein, Nein, Nein,’ but for all his wit and somewhat skewed perspective, Stahl never loses sight of the gravity of the places he visits ... Stahl’s book shows the thought processes of a man feeling at his lowest soothing his ‘shpilkes’ by expe riencing one of the most sobering, draining tours one can possibly imagine. For him, it’s cathartic, and readers might find it to be the same for them.”

Your Hosts

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

How It Works

We will meet on Zoom on Sunday, Nov. 12, at noon. As you read the book, we invite you to share your favorite passages on a shared document you will receive when you register for the meeting.

What To Do

Buy: “Nein Nein Nein.” It is available from online retailers, including Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

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

Happy reading! PJC

— Toby Tabachnick

Israel’s government approves maritime accord with Lebanon, dismissing claims the deal is weak

By Ron Kampeas | JTA

Israel’s

government has approved a historic maritime accord with Lebanon, as both countries are under pressure to get the agreement signed before October ends and their leaders may change.

The Israeli and U.S. governments pushed back against claims that the deal ceded too much to Lebanon.

The details of the deal are not yet in place, but Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid said Wednesday at a press conference, hours after his cabinet approved the deal, that Israel had declined two last-minute Lebanese demands.

Lebanon had wanted to remove from the agreement Israel’s freedom to secure a line of buoys installed by Israel as a functional border, and Lebanon did not want Israel to get income from a gas field that the Lebanese plan to launch on their side of the border.

The final deal preserves the buoy option and gives Israel dividends from the gas field, Lapid said. “Israel will receive approximately 17% of the revenues from the Lebanese gas field, the Qana-Sidon field, if and when they will open it,” he said.

Lebanese President Michel Aoun also approved of the deal. “The final version of the offer satisfies Lebanon, meets its demands and preserves its rights to its natural wealth,” his official Twitter account said.

The deal is a first for Israel and Lebanon, a country still technically at war with Israel. It lacks the normalization component of Israel’s agreements in 2020 with four Arab countries under the Abraham Accords and is not as comprehensive as the peace deals Israel signed with Egypt and Jordan and the Palestinian Liberation Organization.

Implementation is not guaranteed; both governments are lame ducks. Aoun is ending his term as president, and Lapid faces an elec tion on Nov. 1. Some reports have said the sides plan to sign the agreement on Oct. 20.

Israel’s hawkish opposition parties, led by the Likud’s Benjamin Netanyahu, believe Lapid gave up too much territory, and have indicated they may launch legal challenges to the deal. Hezbollah, the terrorist militia that retains a great deal of power and influence in Lebanon, and which rejects any engagement with Israel, has not yet weighed in on the deal, although it has previously indicated it would support it.

Similar criticism has come from right-wing pro-Israel groups in the United States and from Republicans, led by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who allege that Lapid folded under Biden adminis tration pressure.

Lapid and his defense minister, Benny Gantz, deny they faced any pressure to sign the deal, and said that if anything, it would tamp down tensions; Hezbollah had been threatening to attack Israel if it launched a gas exploration plat form in waters designated under Israeli control under the agreement. Now that Lebanon has signed off on the agreement, that is less likely,

Gantz said, in part because income from the gas fields could wean Lebanon’s government off of Hezbollah and its Iranian patrons.

“This important agreement serves Israel’s interests and establishes a new security equa tion,” said Gantz, who last week, when the deal looked shaky, heightened Israel’s alertness on the northern border. “It has the potential to reduce Iran’s influence on Lebanon.” Gantz was quoted on Twitter by Tal Schneider, a reporter for Times of Israel.

Notably, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the powerhouse lobby that tends to be hawkish but that also in most cases follows Israel’s lead, praised the deal, albeit in cautious terms.

“AIPAC welcomes the U.S.-brokered deal between Israel and Lebanon that demarcates Israel’s maritime border and recognizes its economic rights to natural gas fields in the Eastern Mediterranean,” it said on Twitter. “We commend the Biden administration for working with the Israeli government to reach this historic agreement.”

David Schenker, who led negotiations during the Trump administration as the assis tant secretary of state for Near East affairs, said Israel’s apparent concessions to Lebanon were stunning. He said Israel at that time claimed territory north of the buoy line, which it has now relinquished.

“As per the new agreement, Lebanon will attain virtually 100% of its initial negoti ating position,” Schenker, who now directs a program at the Washington Center for Near East Policy think tank, wrote in the Wall Street Journal. Schenker did not explain how he knew the details of the deal.

In a call with reporters, a senior Biden administration official ridiculed claims that Israel gave too much away and emphasized that Netanyahu, whom he did not cite by name, had not made any agreement at all.

“Many people have said over the last several days that a better deal could have been done for one side or the other,” said the official, who requested anonymity to speak frankly. “Others have claimed that they could have negotiated a better deal — some from the region, some from the United States. They were in power; they did not reach a better deal. And when those so-called ‘better terms’ for either side were on the table, they ended up not reaching and not concluding an agreement.”

PJC

From local events to world a airs, from

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p A view of an Israeli military base at Rosh Hanikra, known in Lebanon as Ras al-Naqura, at the border between the two countries on Oct. 4

Photo by Jalaa Marey/AFP via Getty Images

Ben Bernanke, the Jewish former chairman of the Federal Reserve, shared the Nobel Prize for Economics with two other scholars for their work in examining how banks function in economic crises.

Bernanke was recognized for an influ ential 1983 paper, written when he was a professor at Stanford University, that exam ined the Depression era to show how runs on banks during economic uncertainty tend to exacerbate and broaden a crisis. His theo ries helped inform his handling of the 2008 economic crisis and the bailout of major financial institutions at the time.

Sharing the prize for their separate research into bank collapse were two American scholars, Douglas Diamond and Philip Dybvig.

Bernanke, 68, was chairman of the Fed from 2006 to 2014 and was one of at least five Jewish chairmen of the body, which is the United States’ central banking system. His predecessor, Alan Greenspan, was Jewish, as was his successor, Janet Yellen.

Stanford apologizes for discriminating against Jewish applicants in the 1950s

An official investigation by Stanford University released on Oct. 12 confirmed longstanding suspicions that university

administrators acted to limit Jewish enroll ment in the 1950s while publicly denying that they were doing so, JTA.org reported.

In tandem with the report, Stanford’s pres ident, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, apologized to the Jewish community.

“This ugly component of Stanford’s history, confirmed by this new report, is saddening and deeply troubling,” TessierLavigne wrote. “As a university, we must acknowledge it and confront it as a part of our history, as repellent as it is, and seek to do better.”

Tessier-Lavigne also wrote that Stanford will work to ensure that it is welcoming to Jewish students today by increasing antibias training, creating a dedicated advisory committee, paying more attention to Jewish holiday cycles in university scheduling and other measures. The university’s first day of classes this fall took place on Rosh Hashanah.

Stanford convened the task force that produced the report after a historian published his discovery of documents left behind by Stanford’s admissions director from 1950 to 1970, Rixford Snyder, suggesting that Snyder was biased against Jews and interested in reducing their enroll ment at the university.

Early American Jewish novelist gets bridge named for her in her Massachusetts town

A Massachusetts town at the center of a high school antisemitism scandal last year has just renamed a bridge in honor of a

Today in Israeli History

pioneering but little-known Jewish woman writer who lived there during the 19th century, JTA reported.

Cora Wilburn, whose autobiographical novel “Cosella Wayne” is likely the first novel published in English by a Jewish woman in America, settled in Duxbury, south of Boston, as an adult and lived there until her death at age 82 in 1906.

Now, 116 years later, the town of Duxbury has dedicated the Cora Wilburn Bridge in her honor, renaming “Bridge D-14-009(49Q)” in tribute to the trailblazing resident whose novel and widely published poetry and essays left a mark in religious circles across the country from Spiritualism to Judaism.

Duxbury is where a high school football team was revealed last year to have used the terms “Auschwitz” and “rabbi” as foot ball calls. The coach was fired and the town commissioned an investigation that found evidence of longstanding antisemitism in the team culture.

Trader Joe’s drops ‘Israeli’ for its pearl couscous, citing supply chain change

Couscous lovers who frequent the grocery store Trader Joe’s may have noticed a change in the grain aisle: The chain’s brightly colored purple boxes of “Israeli Couscous” are now simply known as “Pearl Couscous,” JTA.org reported.

The Nosher, a sister website to the JTA, first reported the label change after word of it spread on the popular Facebook group

Kosher Trader Joe’s.

The move raised questions in the group about whether Trader Joe’s was trying to distance itself from Israel, a move that some companies have made for political reasons.

But a spokesperson for the company said it “recently switched to a new supplier for this product and it is now sourced domes tically rather than from Israel.” The product itself hasn’t changed, according to The Nosher’s report.

German extremist ‘dances’ on Holocaust memorial

A photo uploaded on social media shows far-right politician Holger Winterstein posing with his arms spread on one of the stone slabs that make up Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial for the more than 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis and their helpers, JNS.org reported.

The photograph was taken following a protest organized by Winterstein’s Alternative for Germany (AfD) party on Oct. 8.

AfD said it would take action against Winterstein, a county representative in Thuringia state, for his “extremely disre spectful behavior.”

The Israeli ambassador to Berlin, Ron Prosor, condemned Winterstein for appearing to dance on the coun try’s Holocaust Memorial, whose full name is the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. PJC

— Compiled by Andy Gotlieb

Oct. 21, 1967 — Warship Eilat is sunk

Forty-seven Israeli sailors are killed when the destroyer INS Eilat is sunk on a routine p atrol off Port Said, Egypt, by Sovietmade missiles launched from Egyptian boats in the harbor.

Oct. 22, 1952 — First ambassador to Britain takes office

Eliahu Elath, Israel’s first ambassador to the United States, presents his creden tials to Queen Elizabeth II as he is elevated from minister (a position he has held since 1950) to become Israel’s first ambassador to the United Kingdom.

Oct. 23, 1998

Oct. 24, 1915 — Husayn-McMahon correspondence starts

Sir Henry McMahon, the British high commissioner in Cairo, and Husayn Ibn Ali, the sherif of Mecca, begin an exchange of letters in which Britain promises to back Husayn’s bid to lead a restored caliphate if he helps against the Ottoman Empire.

Oct. 25, 1976 — World Chess Olympiad opens in Haifa

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the president of the International Chess Federation, Max Euwe, open the 22nd men’s and seventh women’s Chess Olympiad in Haifa despite a Soviet-led boycott.

Oct. 26, 1994 — Israel, Jordan sign treaty

Pathways to Parenthood

By Sharon Farmer, White House

— Wye River Memorandum is signed Benjamin Netanyahu, Yasser Arafat and Bill Clinton sign a m emorandum recommitting to the Oslo II agreement of September 1995 after nine days of negotiations at the Wye River Plantation in Maryland.

More than 4,500 people, including President Bill Clinton, witness Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Jordanian King Hussein sign a peace treaty at the Wadi Araba border crossing between Eilat and Aqaba.

Oct. 27, 1978 — Begin, Sadat win Nobel Prize

Forty-one days after signing the Camp David Accords, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat are announced as the winners of the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize. PJC

Supports in 3 major ways:

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

— WORLD —

WORLD —

p Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and President Bill Clinton consult during the Wye River Plantation conference in Maryland in October 1998.

p Sir Henry McMahon was the British high commissioner in Cairo during World War I.

Ben Bernanke, former Fed chair, shares economics Nobel

their lifetimes.

Dunn said that the 19 service opportu nities are intended to create meaningful experiences and build community.

She pointed to an Oct. 30 session coordi nated by Repair the World and the Pittsburgh Prison Book Project during which volunteers can spend an afternoon packing books and

educational materials requested by people incarcerated across Pennsylvania.

The project is an opportunity to “build solidarity across different communities affected by violence,” Dunn said.

Each of the service programs, which are listed on the 10.27 Healing Partnership’s website, provides a “different entry point” and a means of bringing people together, she added.

Feinstein said that during the last three years, the community has learned the value

of creating space for service and learning.

In addition to the service projects, there will be online and in-person Torah study available on Oct. 27. Additionally, on Nov.12 — the yahrzeit of the 2018 attack — in-person Torah study will be available in Squirrel Hill, Feinstein said.

Organizers said they understand that while service projects may speak to some, Torah study may speak to others.

There’s also the 2022 Commemoration for the lives lost on Oct. 27, 2018, Feinstein

noted. The outdoor program will be held at 4:30 p.m. on Oct. 27 on Prospect Drive in Schenley Park. Between the various offerings avail able, “we are hopeful that people will find something that they find to be healing and meaningful,” she said.

To view a list of planned activities, visit 1027healingpartnership.org. PJC

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

Continued

it was the firsthand accounts that mattered.

“In my heart, I knew that the only people who could tell this story were the ones who lived through it, and those who were left behind to endure the never-ending pain of losing their loved ones to such an unfathom able antisemitic tragedy,” she said.

“A Tree of Life” opens with survivor Audrey Glickman blowing the shofar from a rooftop across the street from the building that housed the three congregations targeted during the shooting — Congregation Dor Hadash, New Light Congregation and Tree of Life Congregation. That peaceful image is intercut with footage from outside the building during the attack. Audio heard on police radios helps convey the confusion and fear that morning and is interspersed with running commentary from many of the survivors and their relatives.

Firsthand accounts by Audrey Glickman, Anthony Fienberg, Michele and Diane Rosenthal, Carol Black, Barry Werber, Joe Charney, Andrea Wedner, Stephen Weiss and Dan Leger, as well as contemporaneous footage and radio clips paint the most complete picture of what took place inside the synagogue.

“As I got into the doorway, there were a series of probably four or five shots, and as I’m standing in the doorway, I can see shell casings bouncing across the floor in front of me,” survivor Stephen Weiss remembers approximately four minutes into the film.

That harrowing dialogue is followed by survivor Dan Leger, a nurse, discussing how he and fellow congregant, friend and doctor Jerry Rabinowitz, heard the gunshots and did the unthinkable: They moved toward the sound of gunfire to see if they could help. They were both shot. Leger was seriously wounded and Rabinowitz was killed.

Film:

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away, or maybe actually running away for a day. All that kind of stuff and the summer jobs at the ice cream shop and falling in love for the first time. It’s universally relatable. We completely connected with it.”

The film has won several awards including Best Performance: Feature Film-Youth and

The film doesn’t only retell the story of the terror of Oct. 27. Adlesic allows space for Werber, Rabbi Jonathan Perlman of New Light and Glickman to recount memories from their youth, telling the tale of a mostly peaceful Pittsburgh that integrated the Squirrel Hill Jewish community as one of its immigrant neighborhoods.

The portrait painted in “A Tree of Life” is one of a Jewish neighborhood that could have been placed in any city in the United States. We learn the mundane reasons survi vors decided to attend synagogue services that rainy Shabbat morning — Carol Black talks of deciding to attend shul instead of taking her weekly walk due to an injury. Her brother, Richard Gottfried, was killed in the massacre. Barry Werber, who typi cally attended services on Friday and Sunday, went to the synagogue that Saturday morning to mark the yahrzeit of his mother.

The quiet of a routine Shabbat is shattered by the gunman. The sometimes-tortured memories of survivors move the documen tary back inside the building in the moments immediately following the attack.

Black recounts hearing the “bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam” of rapid gunfire. Tree of Life custodian Augie Siriano, who had worked at the synagogue since 1993, said he “heard shots, saw magazines and smelled gunpowder” before running out the door.

Glickman remembers not having her cellphone with her after fleeing the syna gogue because her pockets were too shallow to hold it.

Leger tells of being shot, believing he would die, and the calm he found in memo ries of his life and his Jewish faith.

In one particularly chilling episode, Werber recounts being in a dark room when the shooter entered, stepping over the body of Melvin Wax, whom he had shot.

“I could see the long gun,” Werber said. “I knew the type. It was some sort of

automatic weapon.”

Following these firsthand accounts, viewers learn that the shooter targeted the building because of Dor Hadash’s partic ipation in HIAS’ (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) National Refugee Shabbat. And the documentary posits a direct correlation between the massacre and the anti-immigration rhetoric by Donald Trump and right-wing commentators like Tucker Carlson.

It also confronts the culture of gun ownership and white supremacist groups in America. Brad Orsini, former Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh Community Security Director and a former FBI agent, is shown teaching security training in the city. White supremacist groups, he says, are emboldened and feel empowered, he says, then adds: “I think too many people have guns that shouldn’t.”

Other controversies discussed in the film include former President Trump’s visit to the city following the shooting and the possi bility of the death penalty for the shooter.

“Executing him is too easy,” Black says. “I don’t want him to have it easy.”

“I always thought I was against the death penalty,” says Anthony Fienberg, whose mother, Joyce Fienberg, was murdered during the attack. “I’m a supporter of the death penalty in this case. Will that change anything? Probably not, except sending a message to those thinking of perpetrating this type of crime.”

Adlesic said it was important to confront these issues.

“In the film, the viewer is asked to consider the complex issues that drive antisemitism, racist hate rhetoric and hate crimes, gun control, a perspective on intersectional justice that considers everyone affected by white supremacy, and, ultimately, healing through the voices, thoughts and experiences of the survivors and the families of the slain,”

she said. “There are no ‘talking heads’ in this production, just the first-person exchange essential to create a connection with the audience and motivate change around some of the most difficult issues our society faces today: the exponential rise of antisemitism, white supremacy and racist hate.”

And while it would be easy to simply focus on the terror of the shooting and the memories of the survivors and the victims’ families, “A Tree of Life” also tells the story of the bravery of first responders and the strength and kindness of the community.

The documentary ends by highlighting the names of the 11 victims of the massacre: Joyce Fienberg, Richard Gottfried, Rose Mallinger, Jerry Rabinowitz, Cecil and David Rosenthal, Bernice and Sylvian Simon, Daniel Stein, Melvin Wax and Irving Younger.

The decision to end the film that way was part of the process Adlesic used when creating the documentary.

“The Hebrew phrase ‘zikhrono livrakha’ (may their memory be a blessing) has entered mainstream American conversation, shared among non-Jews as well as Jews, but in practice what does ‘may their memory be a blessing’ mean? What does it mean in the face of unspeakable loss? What does it mean when it is practiced by an entire community and city? Is it a condolence, a remembrance, a guide for a better future? ‘A Tree of Life’ was made with the sacred memory of the victims and the lives of the survivors at the center of every production and artistic deci sion,” she said.

Written and directed by Adlesic and produced by Pittsburgh natives Michael Keaton, Billy Porter and Mark Cuban, “A Tree of Life” premieres on HBO and HBO Max at 9 p.m. on Oct. 26. PJC

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

Best Narrative Feature at the Wood Hole Film Festival.

“Dear Zoe” stars Sadie Sink of “Stranger Things” as Zoe, along with Theo Rossi (“Sons of Anarchy”), Kweku Collins, Vivien Lyra Blair, Justin Bartha and Jessica Capshaw of “Grey’s Anatomy.”

The film will premiere in November during Children’s Grief Awareness Month.

“It’s a core issue that’s dealt with in

the story,” Lhormer said. “We wanted to align with that.”

“Dear Zoe” makes its red-carpet debut at the August Wilson African American Cultural Center on Thursday, Nov. 3, during an event featuring the film’s stars. Two days later, it will be shown at the Oaks Theater in Oakmont during a screening that will include a question-and-answer period with Brenda and Marc Lhormer. The movie will

then open at several local theaters including the Manor Theatre (featuring a ques tion-and-answer period with the Lhormers on Nov. 4 and 5), Waterworks Cinema (featuring novel author Philip Beard on Nov. 5), Cranberry Cinemas and Century Square Luxury Cinemas. PJC

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

What happens when nationalism seeps into Holocaust history? Look to Poland.

Guest Columnist Alex Rossen

Itraveled

to the Treblinka memorial site in Poland this past June. It’s an isolated wooded area that housed one of the largest death camps in Nazi-occupied terri tories. Standing in front of that memorial, which represented the mass grave of over 900,000 murdered Jews, I knew that, close by, was the site of a more recent battle waged between the Polish government and Polish historians over how the Holocaust ought to be remembered and taught.

A short distance from the main Treblinka memorial lies another monument in honor of Jan Maletka — a Polish villager who was shot and killed by the Nazis for offering water to Jews aboard the trains to Treblinka.

This monument was unveiled in November 2021 to great fanfare by the Polish govern ment, who heralded Maletka as a tragic hero of Poland, yet prominent historians like Jan Grabowski raised their eyebrows. Grabowski pointed out that in the absence of any evidence to suggest that Maletka acted out of virtue, the wealth of testimony left behind by Jewish victims detailing how Polish locals came to offer water only in exchange for money and valuables must be considered.

“None of this is to necessarily undermine the story of Jan Maletka and what is said to be the quiet act that cost his life,” Grabowski wrote. “There are no eyewitnesses left, so we will never know whether Mr. Maletka acted out of empathy for the dying Jews or not. But this huge memorialization effort obscures the full story.”

Nationalistic versions of history such as

the memorialization of Maletka usually occur when academically agreed-upon narratives of historic events become twisted and co-opted into a vehicle to advance a misleading and dangerous distortion. Therefore, as Poland’s memory of the Holocaust has become more and more inter twined with state-sponsored nationalism, it has also become a problem for everyone who desires to learn or teach about the Shoah.

Poland’s status as the hub of many of the most important collections of evidence in the study of the Holocaust, and some of the largest international Holocaust education programs, including March of the Living, have made the country an integral force in the preservation and dissemination of Holocaust history everywhere.

Analysis of state-sponsored Holocaust discourse in Poland can be broken down into the dichotomy between a “pedagogy of shame” and a “pedagogy of pride.” The current ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS) is enacting sweeping measures to dismiss or discredit the parts of the Holocaust that implicate the country (“pedagogy of shame”) while simultaneously promoting versions of the Holocaust that bolster Poland’s national image by showcasing its resistance efforts (“pedagogy of pride”).

Beginning with its rise to power in 2015, PiS successfully popularized the slogan “down with the pedagogy of shame.” The goal is to position Poland’s right wing as a shield protecting “patriots” from the “leftwing pedagogy of shame.” In this respect, much of the same could also be said of the United States, where discussions around race in the classroom are often suppressed with a similar strategic goal in mind. Adam Serwer argued in The Atlantic that the

objective of conservative efforts to change the curriculum on slavery “is not a more accurate history but one that justifies the present economic and racial hierarchy, and offers ... a ‘comforting alternative to the burdens of the past.’”

PiS party members have taken public stances to cast doubt on settled Holocaust history. In 2016, Poland’s then-education minister Anna Zalewska openly ques tioned the legitimacy of survivor testimony of crimes committed by Polish villagers against their Jewish neighbors during the Jedwabne pogrom. The 2018 Holocaust bill, which sought to make it a punishable crime to accuse the state of Poland of complicity in the Holocaust, was a far more blatant attempt to quell discussion around parts of the Holocaust that government authorities find uncomfortable.

Such stances by the PiS are deeply prob lematic. Grabowski noted that “pushing blame for the destruction of Jewish commu nities entirely onto Nazi occupiers obfuscates ... the very real problems of collaboration, bystanderism and local antisemitism that helped run the machine of the Holocaust.”

The newest testing ground for these distortive campaigns is the classroom. In the current school year, right-wing propaganda dressed up as objective truth is an increas ingly major component of grade school education, particularly with the Education Ministry’s first-time addition of a contro versial new history textbook by Wojciech Roszkowski. Roszkowski’s book has fallen under fire for presenting Poland as the biggest victim of World War II, for shifting blame for the Holocaust completely onto Nazi occupiers and for associating feminism with Nazism.

We Zionists are actually thriving at Berkeley Law

American historian Beth Holmgren pled in 2019 for a united global response against what she described as “neofascist national narratives.” She emphasized that “the time for shared resources, joint vigilance, and transnational advocacy is now.”

An honest narrative of the Holocaust cannot thrive under this “pedagogy of pride” propagated by the Polish state. Every year, thousands of teens from around the world make the journey out to Poland to partici pate in its annual March of the Living. For years, genuine historical introspection has been an integral part of the promise of that program, and of all of Poland’s memorials and museums dedicated to the Holocaust. Particularly as the number of living Holocaust survivors dwindles, the effective ness of programs like March of the Living will increasingly rely on accurate historical resources in Poland.

Studying the Holocaust teaches us to embrace empathy and reject indifference in the face of evil, and to understand that this responsibility does not end with our national border.

Poland is one of the world’s most important centers of global Holocaust study and discourse. A demise of honest Holocaust education there foreshadows the decay of empathy and accountability everywhere. PJC

Alex Rossen is a freelance writer, photog rapher, researcher and activist. He was one of four U.S. citizens selected to join Humanity in Action’s 2022 Warsaw fellowship cohort, where he co-created an initiative to raise awareness on the link between intergenera tional trauma and state violence. This article first appeared in the Forward.

In “Berkeley Develops Jewish-Free Zones,” an op-ed that ran in the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle, Kenneth L. Marcus is understandably alarmed at the adoption by several student groups at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law of a bylaw written by Law Students for Justice in Palestine (LSJP). The controversial measure promises to, among other things, prevent speakers who hold views in support of Israel or Zionism from being invited to campus. Like Mr. Marcus, we are Berkeley Law alumni and, like Mr. Marcus, we were upset to hear about these antisemitic inci dents. We graduated from Berkeley Law just three years ago (class of 2019). We were deeply involved with the Jewish community on campus — Olivia was co-president of the Jewish Students Association at Berkeley Law (JSABL) and led an itrek trip to Israel for 50 of her (majority non-Jewish)

peers during her third year of law school; Nir was treasurer of JSABL and a fellow at the Helen Diller Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies (the Institute) as an undergrad at Cal; and we both currently serve as advisory board members of the Institute.

We are troubled by Mr. Marcus’ attempt to disparage one of America’s most vibrant institutions that supports a strong Jewish community. We believe his reactionary article, and the national response that it led to, like the article from the American Association of Jewish Lawyers & Jurists (AAJLJ) writing that members of the AAJLJ should “think twice

before hiring a UC Berkeley Law graduate,” was shortsighted and contributed to more harm for Jewish students on campus.

First and foremost, let us be clear: What the nine student groups did was wrong, and the students that were part of that deci sion-making process should be ashamed of themselves. The logical effect of these bylaws is to discriminate against Jews, who over whelmingly consider Zionism to be an integral part of their identity. For LSJP members and other Berkeley Law students to profess that this BDS bylaw is merely “in support of Palestinian liberation” without acknowledging the tangible impact it will have

by excluding Jews is unbefitting of legal scholars at the best public law school in the country. We will not engage with LSJP’s hateful and meritless rhetoric — we would simply encourage them to treat the identity of 90% of the world’s Jews with as much respect as they give to other minority communities.

Mr. Marcus rightfully criticizes LSJP for attempting to exclude and silence Zionist voices, but he and others have painted Berkeley Law in broad strokes as an antisemitic hotbed. This does nothing to combat Jew hatred, which is a worsening trend across our institutions and country writ large. More importantly, it does not reflect the true experience of Jewish, Zionist students on campus. We won’t deny that in our three years at Berkeley Law, we experienced a number of antisemitic inci dents that contributed to what was, at times, a hostile climate for many Jewish students. Yet with support from the highest levels of the Berkeley administration, including Chancellor Carol Christ and Dean Erwin Chemerinsky,

Guest Columnists

Olivia Wittels and Nir Maoz

Chronicle poll results: Fall holiday season

the Chronicle asked its readers in an electronic poll the following question:

do you typically feel at the end of the fall holiday season?” Of the 138 people who responded, 32% said “spiritually refreshed”; 26% said “unaffected”; 18% said “humbled”; 17% said “tired”; and 7% said “something else.” Comments were submitted by 23 people. A few follow.

If you do not feel renewed and inspired, it’s time to change shul or attitude.

I ate too much.

It’s all just too much for women who want to be at temple with their husbands but then also must manage the children, the home and dress and socialize with the community. When do we work and/or study?

This year in addition to attending my syna gogue for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services, I attended services with Kesher Pittsburgh and a program at the JCC Center

Berkeley:

Continued from page 12

our Jewish community, Zionism and advocacy flourished, despite the bigotry from some of our peers. We would encourage Mr. Marcus not to fall into the same trap as our detrac tors, who frequently boil down nuanced and complex matters into sweeping, unsophisti cated generalizations.

We studied Jewish law with Professor Kenneth Bamberger and comparative consti tutional law with visiting Israeli Professor Amnon Reichman, and were invited to Shabbat dinners at the home of renowned

for Loving Kindness. The Kesher services and JCC program were spiritually refreshing.

For me, there is little spirituality involved in ANY religious service. I prefer to relax doing things that bring me satisfaction ... like any other day.

I feel sad because I know that the long winter is ahead.

Having observed three holidays almost consecutively is a bit much. I don’t observe Sukkot as much as the High Holy days.

Exhilaration for more religious participation.

Renewed.

Hoping to hold onto the intentions and inspiration throughout the year.

It is good to see how many people are returning to services. Glad to touch base with them.

corporate law professor Steven DavidoffSolomon. We attended frequent lectures on topical legal matters sponsored by the Institute, including a conversation with Israeli Supreme Court Justice Daphne Barak-Erez. LSJP protested many of these events — as is their First Amendment right — but their constant accusations of “apartheid” fell flat when other students were provided oppor tunities to hear lectures by Israeli-Arab scholars like Michael Karayanni, who were respectful, yet highly critical, of certain Israeli policies all while supporting Jewish selfdetermination and nationhood.

We both firmly believe that our experi ences combating antisemitism at Berkeley

I feel more connected to my Jewish faith and to appreciating the power of the holidays to try to be a better person.

Law have made us better lawyers. While always open to honest dialogue and constructive discussion, we remain stead fast and unwavering advocates for what we know to be just and true. Mr. Marcus crit icized Dean Chemerinsky for not taking action, yet if he took the time to talk to contemporary Jewish students, faculty and staff at Berkeley Law, among so many others, he would see firsthand the tremendous achievements and success of this incredible group. The Jewish community at Berkeley is not defined by the discrimina tion that it faces; rather, it shines in the light of the opportunities that it provides for dialogue, learning, open-mindedness, and tolerance.

Refreshed at the end of Yom Kippur, tired by the end of Sukkot

The High Holy days give me a feeling of peace and joy. I am always happy that my family joins in the synagogue attendance and shows enthusiasm for the services. Our great-grandsons ages 3 and 1 were with us this year and were awed by the sanctuary and the toy room! Hopefully awed enough to come again.

A form of renewal. I enjoy the bright, colorful foliage, crisp air and sun of early fall.

Drained. PJC

Toby Tabachnick

poll question:

We are proud to be Jewish, Zionist, Berkeley Law graduates. PJC

Olivia Wittels received her J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law and her B.A. from Cornell University. She is an attorney at a law firm in New York City, focusing on corporate and financial transactions. She is a member of AIPAC’s Young Leadership Council and is on the advisory board of the Helen Diller Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies. Nir Maoz, UC Berkeley, BA ’15, JD ’19, is a corpo rate restructuring attorney in Los Angeles and is on the advisory board of the Helen Diller Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies. This piece was first published by The Times of Israel.

Jews should vote for John Fetterman

I read your article on Jewish Republicans splitting their tickets and voting for Shapiro (“For many Pennsylvania Republicans, yes to Oz and no to Mastriano,” Oct. 14). Kudos to them! But candidly, the first time through I missed that the article referred to Jewish Republicans. In reading the article it sounded like an endorsement of Oz. Perish the thought! I will be voting for John Fetterman. I think it’s important that all Jews vote for him. Sadly, we are now in a time when we cannot afford to have Republicans in control of the Senate. Too many are xenophobic; some apparently are antisemitic. I’m old enough to remember a time when people complained that the parties were too alike. I miss not being able to split my ticket, but since 2000 I’m too fearful of what too many Republicans want for our country and the unwillingness of other Republicans to call them out. Please vote for Fetterman; our country’s values are at stake.

Barry Nathan Point Breeze

separation of church and state is a myth.

Mastriano is one of the most prominent election deniers (liars) in the country, and he engaged in a campaign to throw out 2020 votes for Joe Biden here in the commonwealth and in Arizona, a state which conducted a widely laughed-at ham-handed effort to re-audit the vote with the goal of finding fraud that does not exist.

Mastriano has a close association with QAnon, the purveyor of crackpot conspiracy theories, including the notion that there is a widespread Democrat syndicate which is engaging in child sexual exploitation and drinking the blood of children. He chartered buses to take individuals to the pre-in surrection Trump speech and was present on the Capitol grounds at the time that the riot erupted. Mastriano has had a close association with Gab, a social media website that attracts right-wing extremists including white supremacists and antisemites.

Mastriano is not fit to be governor

I have to wonder whether Doug Mastriano truly wants to be the governor of Pennsylvania as he alienates and inflames our Jewish community and many other prominent constituencies. It would be hard to imagine a more inept, pathetic, losing campaign than the one he has been conducting.

Mastriano refuses to answer questions from media outlets other than those identified with the far right. He declines to participate in candidate forums, not even accepting an invitation from the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry to attend a dinner at which he would be given the opportunity to present himself to the attendees, many of whom are conservatives inclined to vote for a Republican.

Mastriano is by any measure an extremist. He would unite with a Republican-controlled General Assembly to outlaw all abortion, placing the survival of the fetus over that of the mother. He would throw out all voter registrations and require Pennsylvanians to re-register. He would eliminate the mail-in voting option that he voted for before it was found to be unfavorable to Donald Trump. He would decimate the public school system by cutting in half state appropriations to it, an action which would hit poorer districts the hardest. Mastriano believes that climate change is “pop science.” He opposes the right of gay men and women to marry the person that they love. He says that a

Mastriano is likely to be trounced in next month’s election, as well he should be. It is not surprising that there is a large contingent of Republicans, including prominent members of the party, who have aligned with our honorable and accomplished state Attorney General Josh Shapiro. If we wish to keep Pennsylvania from becoming Alabama or Mississippi, voters of honor and integrity will cast their ballots in massive numbers for one of the foremost and nationally-renowned fighters to retain our democracy, a man who will bring Pennsylvania into modernity rather than one who would push it back to the Stone Age.

Oren Spiegler Peters Township

Flr., Pittsburgh, PA 15217

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We sent Donald Trump packing in 2020. But his legacy remains -- antisemitic hatemongers,malicious anti-science truth deniers, fake patriots and a Supreme Court that denies women reproductive freedom.

The tools of today’s Republican Party are fear, anger, resentment and bigotry. It is a home for racism and antisemitism. It opposes sensible gun safety steps that a wide majority of Americans support, in the face of one horrific slaughter after another. It attacks democracy itself.

On November 8th, we must defend against this existential threat by electing Josh Shapiro as Governor, Austin Davis as Lt. Governor and John Fetterman as US Senator, as well as these Democratic House candidates. They will fight to preserve our rights.

The signers of this ad are your friends and neighbors organized by Democratic Jewish Outreach Pennsylvania (DJOP.)

Please join DJOP’s collective effort. Adad your name to this list -- $60 per person, $100 per couple. It will enable us to run additional messages state-wide to elect democratic candidates.

Visit the “Donate” tab at www.djop.org to add your voice to ours. Thank you to our supporters!

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A will is the way

A Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle Special Section

Estate Planning Planned Giving

Almosteveryone knows where they want their money to go when they die — or at least they know where they don’t want it to go. However, according to a recent Gallup poll, less than half of American adults have a will. Why?

Some don’t want to think about their own mortality. Others think they are too young to “need” a will. As many estate planners will tell you, at a certain age clients change their vernacular when describing the terms of their will from, “if I die, I want it to go to ...” to saying, “when I die, I want it to go to ...”

Some people shelve preparing a will because, while they know who they want to name as their beneficiaries, they are not sure of the best way to leave their assets to those beneficiaries. They may worry about protecting their beneficiaries from creditors, divorce, taxes or even against the beneficiaries’ own spendthrift behavior. Still others may not prepare a will because they don’t want to pay a lawyer and don’t know how to prepare a will themselves.

When a person dies intestate — without a will — none of the reasons for failing to execute a will be comforting to the family members who are left to deal with the mess. The absence of a will can lead to uncertainty and bad feelings in families and even legal problems. As Benjamin Franklin said, “by failing to plan, you are

preparing to fail.”

A will is the legal document that dictates how your assets will be distributed. Having a will is the best way to ensure that your wishes are known to everyone who you care about and everyone who cares about you. Most people would agree that you are doing your loved ones a favor by making a will, but I would go a step further and say that it is crucial that you have a will as part of a comprehensive estate plan — one that fashions a plan of action for your assets both during your lifetime and upon your death, and that contemplates an array of matters including things like tax planning, lifetime spending, health care decisions, charitable giving and insurance needs. Such a comprehensive estate plan might include revocable trusts, irrevocable trusts, charitable trusts, living wills, health care powers of attorney and financial

powers of attorney.

One document that is rarely found in an estate plan but that I suggest everyone consider is an “ethical will.” Ethical wills (Hebrew: zava’ah) are documents designed to set out values and life lessons that you would like to impart to your family to guide them in the future. There are a number of examples of ethical wills in the Jewish tradition. In Genesis, Jacob’s instructions to his sons while he was dying is often cited as the first ethical will.

People continue to write ethical wills to express what they value, what their experiences have taught them and other important ideas they want to pass on to future generations. Unlike a will that deals with money and tangible personal property, an ethical will disseminates advice and wisdom.

One way to combine the action of a traditional will with the lessons of

an ethical will is through philanthropy. As the director of a community foundation, I have worked with many people to establish funds to support educational, religious and charitable organizations. These funds include endowments, donor-advised funds and private foundations. By establishing these types of funds, philanthropists demonstrate to their family what is meaningful to them. Moreover, when these fundholders include their family in the administration and grantmaking of these funds, either now or in the future, they not only make a statement about what they care about, but they educate and involve their family in the philanthropic work that mattered to them.

Regardless of whether you have a will or even a more complete estate plan, it is worth considering creating a legacy that reaches beyond your financial assets. Have you taken affirmative steps to ensure that you clarify and pass on your values, traditions, concerns and beliefs to future generations?

You can create this legacy in a number of ways including by drafting an ethical will or creating a charitable fund or entity to support those things that matter to you. If we all took this approach to estate planning, it would undoubtedly help to ensure a strong and vibrant Jewish future. PJC

Dan Brandeis, JD, is director, Foundation Resource Development at the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh.

itchaznong / adobe stock

Estates & Planned Giving

Give to yourself (and yourself and yourself)

Guest Columnist

Lidji

is you.

day, people like you contact archives all over the world. Some of you want to use the materials in the archive.

want information about your family, your community or your region. You want to understand the world you inherited, and you want to help your contemporaries understand it, so that you can pass along a better world.

Some of you want to add materials to the archive. You have things of lasting value, but perhaps you don’t have the space or wherewithal to keep those things forever.

Whether you are coming to see mate rials or coming to give materials, you are able to speak for yourself. You can express your needs. You can decide whether those needs have been met, and, if they haven’t, you can nudge until someone meets them.

The second constituency is also you. It is you in the past. Or more accurately, it is someone like you, someone who once gave

their most precious belonging to an archive.

Those people have asked us to care for their things with devotion. And while they cannot decide how we will view their things today, they can ask us to treat their stories in the same measured, thoughtful and respectful way that we would want our stories to someday be treated. But unlike you-today, you-in-the-past can never hold us to account.

in Pittsburgh to have many such organi zations, including the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh, Classrooms Without Borders, the Jewish Studies Department at the University of Pittsburgh, the Jewish Genealogy Society of Pittsburgh and the Jewish Cemetery & Burial Association, as well as many wonderful inde pendent initiatives.

All of these organizations are working

You will find yourself totally resituated in the universe. You cannot claim to be the central drama of existence when you are constantly yielding to the concerns of millions you will never meet. And yet, when every gesture you make is connected to someone else, you will find you are never alone. It is a path of trust and responsibility — trust in people you cannot thank and responsibility to people who cannot thank you.

In the marketplace of charity, history is always competing against present concerns. Some of these concerns are urgent, as we have seen in these past few years of economic upheaval. Some are not urgent at all, but they have the benefit of existing today, and there fore they can provide tangible gratification for those who support them.

The third constituency is you, once again.

It is someone like you, in the future, many decades from now, long after you and I and everyone else on Earth have passed along. It is someone coming to the archives seeking answers. That person is trusting in all of us to have preserved the records of our lives, as well as the lives of our ancestors.

But if we fail, we will never have to face their disappointment.

This three-part framework is the philosoph ical basis of an archive, as well as any other organization connecting people today with the experiences of the past. We are fortunate

to make your life richer, to help you make sense of yourself and your world. But that is only part of their mission. In a remarkably humbling way, they are also quietly asking you to set aside some small portion of your current interests to accommodate the inter ests of your ancestors and your descendants.

This is a radical and profound request. To fully appreciate it, try living it. For just one day, base every decision you make not on its value for you, and not even on its value for other people around you, but solely on its value for the people who came before you and for those who will come after you.

CONTENT

byJamesLange,CPAandAttorney with Julieanne Steinbacher, Esq.,LLM

M y daughter Erica has a disability that will prevent her from providing for herself. My wife, Cindy,and I worried endlessly, as do most parents of a child with a disability, about ensuring her safety and prosperity after we are gone.

Using just three strategies, we took care of that worry. Consequently, Erica will have close to an additional $1.9 million dollars measured in today’s dollars to support her over her lifetime. Using the same strategies, someone with a $500,000 IRA can provide their child with an additional $239,000.

The three strategies are:

1. Optimal Roth IRA conversion planning can make the biggest difference for many families with a disabled child. Around 68.5% ($1,297,500) of the $1,890,544 savings for Erica came from us doing a large Roth IRA conversion and a series of backdoor Roth IRA conversions and Roth 401(k) contributions.

2. We won our Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) appeal with the Social Security Administration formally establishing Erica’s sta-

tus as disabled. Her Eligible Designated Beneficiary (EDB) status will allow her to stretch distributions from our inherited Roth IRA over her lifetime. (We secured Erica’s status through SSDI but this can also be achieved with a successful SSI application.)

3. Finally, we drafted an optimized estate plan with appropriate wills, trusts, and IRA, 401(k), and Roth IRA beneficiary forms that will allow Erica to “stretch” most distributions from her inherited retirement accounts over her life.

Please note that the trust that we drafted for her meets the four technical conditions to qualify as an EDB.

Most trusts where the IRA or Roth IRA is the underlying asset funding the trust violate at

least one of the four conditions to qualify as an EDB. The potential penalty for that type of drafting error could be the loss of EDB status and result in massive tax acceleration. This mistake is quite common in other types of (nonspecial needs) trusts.

The four conditions apply to all trusts when the underlying asset is an IRA or Roth IRA and must be met to achieve a favorable payout (10year rule for designated beneficiary or life expectancy stretch for EBD vs. massive income tax acceleration). For grandparents, we love to combine our classic Lange’s Cascading Beneficiary Plan and a Special Needs Trust that meets the four conditions for the grandchild. We are also setting in place measures to en-

Opposite these immediate demands, the value of history can seem impossibly abstract. You can’t eat it. You can’t live in it. And yet, without it, the world would be hungry and homeless. It would be stripped of an eternal source of sustenance and shelter.

Such a lofty goal may never deserve all your charity, but it will always deserve some, even in hard times, even when the demands of the present seem bottomless.

PJC

Eric Lidji is the director of the Rauh Jewish Archives at the Heinz History Center. He can be reached at rjarchives@heinzhistorycenter. org or 412-454-6406.

sure that when we die, our estate is administered appropriately which will maximize Erica’s inheritance.

Plan now to protect yourdisabled child after your death. Here are some additional strategies to consider:

• Sometimes, a Special Needs Trust offers the best solution as it allows your child to receive benefits from your inheritance without jeopardizing his/her eligibility for government aid.

• Use an ABLE account to save and invest money for your disabled child in a tax-advantaged way and without affecting eligibility for government benefits.

• If your child inherits certain 401(k), 403(b), or other type of non-IRA retirement plans, consider planning for your child to convert the balance or a portion of the inherited retirement plan to an inherited Roth retirement plan when you pass. This little-known strategy is particularly profitable if you are in a high income-tax bracket and your disabled child will be in a low tax bracket.

When every gesture you make is connected to someone else, you will find you are never alone.

Estates & Planned Giving

Donations after death: Gifts that keep on giving

Sokol said a number of different types of legacy gifts can be left, including some deferred entirely until death.

By Cleveland Jewish News

Many

have philanthropy in their hearts. Throughout their lives, these people make sure to give back and support organizations that are important to them, whether it is congregations, hospitals or food banks. But how can someone continue to give even after they die?

Brian Sokol, chief development officer at the Menorah Park Foundation in Beachwood, Ohio, and Carol Wolf, assistant vice president of planned giving and endowments at the Jewish Federation of Cleveland in Beachwood, said there are ways to continue supporting organizations after death.

“Leaving legacy gifts in your estate to organizations of choice is very common,” Sokol said. “Most philanthropists do this in some capacity. Many donors make a legacy gift to an organization, then increase the amount over time, as they consider themselves to be an ‘investor’ in the organization and its mission, and are able to provide interim support during their lifetime.”

Sokol said it’s quite easy to leave a legacy gift to an organization. All that’s needed, he said, is to include the charity’s information and to have it acknowledged accordingly in your will. Or,

for a nonbinding pledge that is payable upon death, the pledge becomes due when your estate is being settled and is revocable at any time during your lifetime.

“The process starts when you either meet with your estate planning attorney to draw up your comprehensive estate plan, or when you make the designation and sign the letter of intent with the organization, reflecting that it will take effect after death and closure of the estate,” Sokol said.

Wolf said the main reason someone might give to a charity is because they’ve given to that charity their whole life and they want to support it in perpetuity after their death.

“It could be your day school, or the Jewish Federation, if you’ve given to the campaign for 50 years,” she said. “But what usually motivates people is that they want to leave some kind of a mark that they were here. They want to leave a legacy. They want their legacy to include more than just their family. They want it to be bigger.”

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“The most common is the bequest, a promise in your will to give a percentage or specific value from your estate to an organization of your choice, but also naming an organization as the beneficiary of any financial asset such as retirement plans, bank accounts and life insurance,” Sokol said. “In addition, there are legacy gifts that provide income during the donor’s lifetime, including charitable gift annuities and charitable remainder annuity trusts.”

Wolf said real estate, securities, stocks or artwork can also be left as a recent donor left Cleveland’s Federation all of her belongings, except for her house.

Additionally, she said this doesn’t have to be a one-time gift. She said you can leave $10,000 to the charity of your choice and ask it to create an endowment fund, keeping the principle intact. Wolf said the organization usually will name the endowment fund after the person.

“Each year, for example, we have a lot of campaign endowments,” Wolf said. “People pass away, they leave their money to the Federation. And then every year, a gift in their name goes to the Campaign for Jewish Needs. So, the gift itself comes to us one time, but because it creates an endowment fund. It keeps giving every year.” PJC

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.

After someone has died, the executor is the person appointed by the authorities to be in charge of winding up that person’s affairs and administering the estate, for the ultimate benefit of the beneficiaries.

If you are or will become appointed as an executor (or Administrator), you are entering a realm of many rules and sometimes rigid bureaucratic procedures.

An executor’s job is to do several things:

• Gather the assets, and sometimes sell something that needs to be sold;

• Pay the bills, debts, taxes and expenses that need to be paid; and

• Pass out what’s left over to those who are supposed to get it.

• Comply with estate and tax laws and account for their actions.

Paperwork, documentation, and official filings are required for the executor to record and report on what they are doing to accomplish these practical steps.

An executor is officially in charge of the “probate assets” that form the “probate estate” – that is, assets that were owned and titled and registered in the name of the decedent only.

“Nonprobate assets” are those left behind with a payon-death beneficiary named, or a joint depositor with right of survivorship or something similar, in connection with any one specific account, policy, IRA, etc. Those “non-probate”assets“ pass more or less directly to the named beneficiary or surviving joint owner, without the probate estate paperwork

and probate court filings.

Filings in probate court of the probate assets are one part of an executor’s job. The underlying purpose of the probate court and its filing requirements is so that the authorities can (at least in theory) supervise what the executor is doing, to make sure that the bills and creditors get paid properly, and to make sure that the remaining estate is distributed to the right people in the right way. If there’s ever an argument or disagreement, the probate judge can decide the dispute.

One way to avoid the burden of probate paperwork after you’re gone is by using a trust, such as a Revocable Lifetime Agreement of Trust, or socalled “Living Trust.”

An executor has a legal obligation and duty to act honestly and fairly, to preserve and maximize the value of the estate assets, to follow the requirements of the Will and other applicable law, to keep good records, to report and account to the authorities for their actions, and generally to do their job properly. The executor must also ultimately account to the beneficiaries, as well as to the authorities, for how they have performed their job, and account for all estate activity and the amount of the inheritance and distribution.

Also, preserving and maximizing the value of estate assets includes securing any real estate. If there is a home or other real estate in the probate estate, make sure to change the locks, confirm that it’s still insured, check the furnace during the winter to keep pipes from freezing, and collect the rents for rental property.

Safeguarding financial assets is equally important. As an Executor, your primary responsibility is to safeguard the principal value of assets. If financial assets are overly invested in wildly volatile investments, for example, it might be wise to change them to a more stable investment selection, to avoid losses.

An executor is not allowed to take advantage of their position to benefit themselves improperly, but is entitled to be paid compensation for services provided to the estate and the beneficiaries.

An executor’s job also includes taking care of Pennsylvania inheritance tax (and sometimes Federal Estate Tax), income tax issues, and undertaking the “nuts and bolts” of transactions such as selling assets, liquidating accounts, retitling or transferring ownership of property, and paying debts and expenses. For a married couple with an estate in the Federal estate taxable range – right now about $12 million per person, coming down to half of that in 2026 - filing a Federal estate tax return to claim the portability election can save huge amounts of taxes.

Perhaps the most important task of the Executor is communicating with stakeholders. People just want to be kept informed and know what’s

going on. Communicating about the estate administration process with the participants along the way can prevent confusion, suspicion and resentment.

In your own estate planning, think carefully about who you will name as executor, and as the backup or successor executor, too. Personally, I want someone with a good head and a good heart – a good head to deal with the money and business issues, and a good heart to deal with the people. You can also name more than one person as “CoExecutors” together.

At Marks Elder Law, every day we help people serving as executors, winding up the affairs of their loved ones and administering estates, with caring, trusting and professional skill and service. I invite your questions and feedback concerning this article or anything I can do to help you or your family.

plan for what matters the

the increasing costs of long-term care,

legal professional when planning for

future can help

make better decisions that

result in keeping more of your money.

strategies,

with

Michael H. Marks, Esq. michael@marks-law.com

Appreciating God’s world

Eva Rosa Friedlander, daughter of Eugenia and Dr. Robert Friedlander, will become a bat mitzvah at Rodef Shalom Congregation at 10 a.m. on Oct. 22, 2022. Eva is the sibling of Henry and Alexandra Friedlander and the granddaughter of Myra and Isaac Friedlander of Caracas, Venezuela, and Eva and Spilios Balodimas of Athens, Greece. Eva is an eighth-grader at Shady Side Academy and writes for the literary magazine, acts in the school musical and is on the sta of an international teen podcast.

She loves anything creative and to use her voice for positive change. In her spare time, Eva makes jewelry. is past summer, she taught jewelry making to refugees here in Pittsburgh. PJC

This week’s Torah reading, Bereishis, speaks of how God created heaven

earth. The great medieval commentator Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki, or Rashi, records an ancient tradition that all the vegetation and the foliage that God made remained beneath the soil and did not sprout until Adam was created. God waited, according to tradition, until there would be humans who could appreciate the need for vegetation and foliage and who would pray to God that He cause it all to grow.

we’ve got to learn to look beyond ourselves, to recognize that we’re part of a greater whole. We’ve got to learn to appreciate God, who gave us everything we have, and we have to learn to draw others into our world, too, to know that it is our job to be there for others and also to know that our own world is incomplete unless it has room in it for friends and family and all manner of people.

And then, too, we need to allow ourselves to feel vulnerable, to understand that we can’t do it all ourselves and we have to look to God for support and to pray to Him. That is also part of being human. And so, too, once we’ve drawn others into our life we’ll sometimes have to find the courage to accept their help.

God is perfect, and He doesn’t need our prayers. He doesn’t need our appreciation. But when He created the world, right at its inception He wanted to make sure that the idea of feeling and expressing one’s appreciation would be woven right into the fabric of Creation. Without appreciation, said God, there would be no world. And so all the greenery would wait until there were humans around to offer their thanks for it.

Each of us is at the center of our own world — that is part of being human. But

No person is an island, and God created us to rely on relationships, with Him and with other people.

Those attitudes are so very basic to our existence that God saw fit to incorporate them into the very fabric of Creation, right at the outset when He created the world. PJC

Rabbi Levi Langer is the dean of the Kollel Jewish Learning Center. This column is a service of the Vaad Harabanim of Greater Pittsburgh.

Rabbi Levi Langer Parshat Bereishit

Each of us is at the center of our own world — that is part of being human. But we’ve got to learn to look beyond ourselves, to recognize that we’re part of a greater whole.

FRIEDBERG: Elizabeth “Betsy” Friedberg. On Saturday, Oct. 15, 2022, Elizabeth “Betsy” Friedberg, of Melrose, Massachusetts, passed away surrounded by her loving family and a beautiful sunset. Born and raised in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Betsy settled in Melrose in 1985, where she and her husband Drew raised their two children, Laura and Ethan. She earned her BA from Kenyon College and MA from Boston University, and spent 37 years as a historic preservation planner for the Massachusetts Historical Commission, where she recently retired as director of the National Register Program. A lover of historic houses and her local community, Betsy also spent many years contributing her time, knowledge, and passion as a trustee of the Beebe Estate in Melrose. Betsy loved to express her creativity through her hobbies, from making pottery and quilts to tending to her gardens, whether at home or in her abundant plot at the Melrose Community Garden. A skilled cook and recipe connoisseur, she showed her love through food both comforting and inspired. Since childhood, she adored spending time on Cape Cod, where she loved walking and reading on the beach, admiring sunsets, rigorous antiquing, and sharing laughter, ice cream and lobster rolls with family. Betsy was an avid and curious traveler, though her favorite destination was always England, where she lived for a time in her youth and revisited on many memorable trips with family, including her honeymoon. Betsy’s warmth, kindness and generosity were unparalleled. Quick to laugh, she exem plified the importance of delighting even in the small things. Her memory and handmade crafts will be a blessing to everyone lucky enough to know and be loved by her. She will be deeply missed by her husband of 41 years Drew McCoy of Melrose, Massachusetts; children Laura McCoy (Tim Barrett) of Chicago, and Ethan McCoy of Cambridge, Massachusetts; siblings Aaron Friedberg (Nadège Rolland Friedberg) of Princeton, New Jersey and Susan Friedberg Kalson (David Kalson) of Pittsburgh; her nieces, nephews and grand-nephew, as well as many treasured friends. She was preceded in death by her beloved parents, Simeon Friedberg and Joan Brest Friedberg. If you wish, gifts in her memory may be made to the Foundation for Women’s Cancer, 230 W. Monroe St., #710, Chicago IL 60606 or  foundationforwomenscancer.org/support-us/donate/. Services and interment were private. Arrangements entrusted to Ralph Schugar Chapel, Inc., family owned and operated. schugar.com

HORNE: Arline Krutzel Horne, 94, on Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2022. Beloved mother of Howard K. Horne, MD (Sherri) and D. Stuart Horne (Kathy). Daughter of the late Charles and late Rose Krutzel. Sister of the late Howard Krutzel. Loving grandmother of Jacob Charles Horne, Charles G. Horne and Zoe Rose Horne. A special thank you to caregivers Renee Byers, Ruby Wallace, Tasha Kendrick and Janet Brunson. Arline grew up in New Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. She earned her undergrad degree in social work from the Carnegie Institute of Technology, now Carnegie Mellon University. Arline worked as a social worker for the Allegheny County Juvenile Court System. She then moved into a career in women’s fashion, working at her own fashion store in New Bethlehem, and later Kaufmann’s and Macy’s. Arline loved to read about the world and created many artistic works, including patchwork, needlework and floral work. While it was rare at the time, Arline courageously and successfully raised her two sons independently, with great love. Graveside services and interment were held at Beth Shalom Cemetery. Contributions may be made to the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (Attention: Leslie Dunn, MPH, ADRC Administrator, University of Pittsburgh, UPMC Montefiore, Four West 200 Lothrop Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15213) or Vitas Hospice (vitascommunityconnection. org). Arrangements entrusted to Ralph Schugar Chapel, Inc., family owned and operated. schugar.com

PETTLER: Joan M. Pettler, 98, of Friendship Village of Upper St. Clair, Pittsburgh, formerly of Chippewa Township and Beaver Falls, passed away on Oct. 12, 2022, at her home. Joan was born on Jan. 25, 1924, in New Brighton to the late I.W. Pettler and Eleanor (Wolk) Pettler. She graduated from Beaver Falls High School and later received her master’s degree from the University of Pittsburgh, where she worked in the publications department for two years. Then she was secretary to the traffic manager of Westinghouse Electric in Beaver for a number of years before becoming an elementary school teacher at Highland Suburban School District (Blackhawk School District in Chippewa Township) for 22 years. Joan was a member of the former United Jewish Community of the Beaver Valley, P.S.E.R.S., Hadassah, Council of Jewish Women and various other civic organizations. She was still participating in many activities at Friendship Village. Surviving is a brother, David W. Pettler, Naples, Florida; nephews, Steven Pettler and James (Sasha) Pettler, both of Mt. Lebanon; two nieces, Corrina Pettler, Myrtle Beach, Florida, and Lynda (Frank) Wolinsky and Gary, El Cerrito, California; great-nieces and great-nephews. She was preceded in death by a sister-in-law, Marti Pettler, and a nephew, Ted Pettler. A graveside service was held at Agudath Achim Cemetery, Patterson Township in Beaver Falls. Hill and Kunselman Funeral Home, hillandkunselman.com, is in charge of arrangements.

UBENSTEIN: Betty Lou Rubenstein passed away on Rosh Hashanah, Sept. 27, 2022. Born on Nov. 11, 1927, in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, Betty Lou was a beloved wife, mother and grandmother. She is survived by her children, Kathy Lampl, David (Dorothy) Lampl, Peggy (Dave) Lampl Elkind and grandchildren, Andrew (Melissa), Michael, Sarah, Matthew and Niko. She was predeceased by her husband of 28 years, Erwin “Ruby” Rubenstein. She is also survived by numerous nieces and nephews.

Betty Lou was the eldest child of the late Max and Mary Kaufman. She graduated Carnegie Tech as a music major in 1949. Betty Lou had many diverse interests: She was active in local politics, the Jewish community in Pittsburgh and later Latrobe, started the first Great Books chapter in Pittsburgh, sang with the Civic Light Opera and was very involved with the Brandeis University National Women’s Committee. Her dear sister Florie Krell predeceased her. She was an avid skier, tennis player and traveler crossing the country with Ruby in their motorhome. Her happiest places were sitting by the fire or wading in the stream at her home in Laughlintown. Private services were held graveside at the Pliskover Cemetery. Contributions may be made in her honor to The National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education, Seton Hill University, 1 Seton Hill Drive, Greensburg, PA 15601.

SCHUGAR: Helen Schugar passed away on Oct. 11, 2022, at the age of 96 with her daughter Debbie and granddaughter Courtney by her side. Helen will be missed for her loving heart, wonderful smile and selflessness. She was an innate caregiver, always worried about everyone but herself. Helen loved the arts and especially enjoyed going to the symphony with her husband and to the theatre with her daughter Debbie and granddaughter Courtney. Helen was born on April 8, 1926, to Jacob and Cora Slome. She was the beloved wife of the late Sidney Schugar, mother of Debra Strauss and Jeffrey Schugar, sister of Annabelle Flom and the late Shirley Schack, and grandmother of Courtney Chapman, Rebecca Schugar and Jaren Schugar. She was truly a gift to all who knew her. Private graveside service at Cneseth Israel Cemetery. In her memory, perform a random act of kindness this week. Contributions may be made to Make-A-Wish Foundation (secure2. wish.org/site/SPageServer?pagename=donate_today&chid=008-000) or the charity of your choice. Arrangements entrusted to Ralph Schugar Chapel, Inc., family owned and operated. schugar.com

Anonymous

Fienberg Anonymous

Richard Gottfried Anonymous

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Jerry Rabinowitz Anonymous Cecil Rosenthal Anonymous David Rosenthal Anonymous Bernice Simon Anonymous

Sylvan Simon Anonymous Daniel Stein Anonymous Melvin Wax Anonymous

Irving Younger Ronna

Ethel Pariser Sylvia

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Ainsman

THIS WEEK’S YAHRZEITS — Sunday, October 16: William Abrams, Mary Astrov, Peter Davidson, Edward A. Feinert, Abraham Hansell, Sylvia B. Karpo,Harry D. Linder, I. Edward Plesset, Jesse Rogers, Sara Sadie Sobel, Anna Sokol, Dr. Daniel Solomon, Fannie Stein, Mary Stoller, Harry Ulanoff, Donald Eli Witkin, Rose Zasloff

Monday, October 17: Jack Caplan, Morris Chaimovitz, Isaiah Cooper, Laurel B. Devon, Rose K. Freed, Harry Freedman, Pauline J. Isaacs, Sarah Jacobson, Rose Bigman Kalmanowitz, Dr. Paul Kaplan, Anna Klee, Ethel I. Krauss, Ida Magdovitz Krouse, Jacob Joseph Kurtz, Allen Lebovitz, Milton Lehman, Dr. Leonard M. Monheim, Samuel Rosenfeld, Emanuel Rosenthal, Edith F. Simon, Joseph Weintraub, I. Leroy (Lee) Yahr

Tuesday, October 18: Betty Ainsman, Harry Barash, Bernard M. Bennett, Ruth Mermelstein Cramer, Rhoda Fisher Jonas, Freda Leff, Jacob Levenson, Lillian B. Martin, Charles Monheim, Traci Michele Perilman, Sadie Schnitzer

Wednesday, October 19: Fagie Cohen, Oser Cohen, Robert Cohen, Edward Dobrushin, I. Louis Eckhouse, Morris Freeman, Israel Gershon, Dorothy Goldstone, Marlene Harris, Albert Hendel, Jacob Katz, Louis A. Livingston, David Miller, Eugene Moskovitz, Morris Pechersky, Peter Pink, Sarah Ruth Saul Rosenberg, Berde S. Ruttenberg, Sarah Sable, Myer Skirboll, Louis Stern, Rose Wyatt, Bertha Cooper Young, Henry L. Zacks

Thursday, October 20: Gabriel Abramovitz, Morris Beck, David Cohen, Evelyn Hepps Cushner, Fanny Davidson, Sarah Samuels Finkelhor, Bertha Handelman, Adolph Klein, Louis Klein, Bertha Kruman, Rhea K. Landau, Ruda Bella Rose, Mollie Finegold Ruttenberg, Israel Samuel, Jacob Schnitzer, Abe Shulman, Tibie Verk, Abraham Wechsler, Sigmund Yahr Friday, October 21: Yetta Angel, Benjamin Bondy, Herman Brown, Sarah Schnitzer Elling, Mollie Goldenberg, Sorly Cukerbaum Gordon, Jay Helfant, Miriam Shifra Heller, Benjamin Herskovitz, Jacob Kaufmann, Samuel Levinson, Anne B. Litman, Belle Rosenson, Meyer Rosenthal, Adolph Rutner, Samuel Shire, Morris Shulgold, Ben Spokane, Samuel J. Sugerman, Meyer Veshancey, Jacob Weinstein

Saturday, October 22: Phillip Americus, Dora Berenfield, Claire Ann Block, Fanny C. Caplan, Ethel Epstein, Ida Sadowsky Frankel,

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

of

of the late Louis Segneff.

Segneff of Chicago,

Jim Segneff, both of Pittsburgh.

was 96. Jean’s parents, David and Esther Busis; her husband, Harvey Simon; and her brother, Sidney Busis (Sylvia) preceded her in death.

an MA in education.

in-law

Carol Pearlman, as well as many nieces and nephews. Graveside

held at Beth Shalom Cemetery.

Shadyside

Foundation, 532 S. Aiken Avenue, #302, Pittsburgh, PA 15232.

Ralph Schugar Chapel, Inc., family owned and operated. schugar.com

SIMON: Jean Busis Simon passed away on Oct. 16, 2022, at home in Sarasota, Florida. She

Jean is survived by her sons, Kenneth (Janet Hahn), Edward, and Donald (Lea Black) Simon; her grandchildren, Eliza Simon (Micah Ratner), Jessica Daigle (Mark), and Zachary Simon (Lauree Tu); and her great-grandchildren, Caleb and Nathan Simon-Ratner, and Alexander and Claire Daigle.

Jean was born in Pittsburgh and lived there until she retired and started spending winters on Longboat Key, Florida, with Harvey. She graduated from Peabody High School and attended the University of Michigan and the University of Pittsburgh, earning a BA and

Jean loved learning, reading, and sharing her knowledge. She taught kindergarten and first and second grade for more than 25 years in the Pittsburgh Public Schools, notably at Liberty, Fulton and Davis elementary schools. After retiring in 1987, Jean became an expert on dinosaurs and led tours for schoolchildren at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. She also shared her passion for plants and flowers as a tour guide in Rodef Shalom’s Biblical Garden and at Selby Gardens in Sarasota. Jean traveled widely with her friends and husband until his death in 2000, and later with her companion, Sidney Simon, visiting nearly every state and more than 40 countries.

Jean was especially devoted to her family and friends. She regularly visited and hosted her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Warm, optimistic and interested in others, Jean maintained lifelong friendships and made new friends easily. Jean loved to entertain, to garden and arrange flowers, to play social and compet itive bridge (earning a life master), and to play mahjong. She regularly attended the symphony, theater and ballet. No matter how busy Jean was, she always found time to volunteer, including for Hadassah, Rodef Shalom, Selby Gardens and the Fund Shop at Plymouth Harbor.

The funeral took place in Levy Hall, Rodef Shalom Congregation; burial was at West View Cemetery. A Celebration of Life at Plymouth Harbor in Sarasota, Florida, will take place on a date to be determined.

In lieu of flowers, contributions in Jean’s memory may be made to Rodef Shalom’s Biblical Garden, Hadassah, or the Plymouth Harbor Foundation. PJC

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Holiday Cards 4 Our Military Challenge

Former Pittsburgher Laura Landerman-Garber is well into year 19 of the Holiday Cards 4 Our Military Challenge. Since Dec. 26, 2021, Landerman has collected 19,000 holiday cards for the 2022 Challenge. The cards help “decrease the distance that they feel from home and lessens the ache of loneliness and even, at times, despair at the separation from family and friends,” she said. Landerman credits her parents, Ed and Inkie Landerman, with helping her understand the value of gratitude, patriotism and tzedakah.

Getting stronger

Three Alaskan Jewish women — all former Squirrel Hill residents — have aliyahs together

p Sue Libenson (daughter of Harriette and Jerome), Barbara Sheinberg (daughter of Sorley and Herbert) and Saralyn Tabachnick (daughter of Gladys and Norman)

Photo courtesy of Barbara Sheinberg

So much s’chach

p Students from grades 6, 7 and 8 at the Joint Jewish Education Program went to Dillner Family Farms to harvest corn stalks for the sukkah at Rodef Shalom Congregation. While gathering approximately 300 stalks, students learned about the mitzvah of building a sukkah.

Photo courtesy of Joint Jewish Education Program

Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh has been hosting DEKA challenges and classes. The new program in the South Hills helps members on every fitness level find new

Photos courtesy of Jewish Community

p The Pittsburgh Penguins honored Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh CEO Jeff Finkelstein as one of 25 “Captains of Our Community” working to positively impact our community and our people. Photo courtesy of Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh

Photos courtesy of Holiday Cards 4 Our Military Challenge

p This year, Landerman, right, has delivered holiday cards to the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem and to U.S. military staff serving in Israel, with several of the appreciative messages written by Pittsburghers.