Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle 12-22-23 by Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle

December 22, 2023 | 10 Tevet 5784

NOTEWORTHY LOCAL Shining a light on antisemitism

Candlelighting 4:39 p.m. | Havdalah 5:43 p.m. | Vol. 66, No. 51 | pittsburghjewishchronicle.org

High school seniors rethink college applications as antisemitism rises

Former CMU student sues university over ‘anti-Jewish discrimination and retaliation’

Local teachers awarded for their work Page 4

By David Rullo | Senior Staff Writer

LOCAL A trip to strengthen Jewish peoplehood

Community mission to Israel in the works LOCAL

Page 5

Mental health on campus

Jewish Healthcare Foundation funds initiatives for student wellness LOCAL

Page 7

Keeping the community safe

Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh helps secure state funding Page 11

 College-bound seniors have a lot to consider after months of heated tension on campus. Photo by ijeab via iStock By Adam Reinherz | Senior Staff Writer

Two weeks after the Israel-Hamas war began, Squirrel Hill resident Josh Siebzener visited University of Pennsylvania’s campus. The Hillel Academy of Pittsburgh senior was among nearly 25 college-bound students invited to spend Shabbat at Penn Hillel in Philadelphia. Before encountering Locust Street or the LOVE Sculpture, however, Siebzener had spent weeks following social media posts of “attacks, outbursts or protests turned violent” at universities post-Oct. 7, he said. Four days after war erupted, an Israeli student at Columbia University was allegedly hit with a stick by a fellow student in front of the school’s Butler Library, the Columbia Spectator reported. On Oct. 15, a University of Toronto student was arrested and charged by Peel Regional Police after posting a “threatening and hateful” message, according to CP24. Two days earlier, a women’s bathroom at Drexel University was defaced with antisemitic graffiti, “by someone within our community,” the university’s president said in a message to students and colleagues. Between Oct. 7-23, the ADL Center on

Extremism recorded 312 antisemitic incidents (190 directly linked to the war in Israel) — a two-week sum representing a 388% increase from the same period in 2022. Siebzener visited Penn and gleaned a “firsthand perspective” by talking to students, he said. “I didn’t feel unsafe for a moment there, but in the weeks following the Shabbaton I felt confused again.” On Oct. 31, a Cornell University student was arrested after posting he was “gonna shoot up” a kosher dining hall, “stab” and “slit the throat of ” Jewish males on campus, decapitate Jewish babies and “rape and throw off a cliff any Jewish females,” according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Northern District of New York. One week later, CBS News Boston reported that during a solidarity demonstration for hostages held by Hamas, a UMass Amherst student punched a Jewish student holding an Israeli flag, then spit on the flag. On Nov. 10, hours after two women entered The Ohio State’s Hillel Wexner Jewish Student Center, took Israeli flags and yelled “derogatory words,” two Jewish students were assaulted near campus, ABC15 News reported. Please see College, page 10

n a 39-page federal complaint filed against Carnegie Mellon University last week, Yael Canaan, a Jewish student of Israeli descent, claims she was subjected to “pervasive anti-Jewish discrimination” during her time at the university. The five-count complaint, filed by the Lawfare Project on Canaan’s behalf, claims systematic antisemitic behavior and abuse beginning in 2018 by CMU faculty and administration. Canaan graduated from CMU in May 2023. Filed in the Western District of Pennsylvania, Canaan’s complaint takes aim at the university’s Statement of Assurance, which says the school doesn’t discriminate on the basis of “race, color, national origin, sex, handicap or disability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, creed, ancestry, belief, veteran status or genetic information.” Canaan claims these promises are false. The alleged abuse began when Mary-Lou Arscott, studio professor at CMU’s School of Architecture and associate head for design fundamentals, purportedly denied Canaan a homework assignment extension so she could attend an Oct. 29, 2018, memorial service for victims of the Oct. 27 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting. In 2022, the complaint alleges, Arscott commented on a project Canaan created about the conversion of a public space into a private space through an eruv, and said a wall in the project looked like the wall Israelis used “to barricade Palestinians out of Israel.” Canaan also claims that Arscott said she should instead focus on “what Jews do to make themselves such a hated group.” Canaan alleges she reported Arscott’s Please see CMU, page 10

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DECEMBER 22, 2023

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Appeal Community news is a shared responsibility Senior Staff Writer David Rullo

f you’re reading this appeal, you already know the value of the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle. You, my friend, are a regular reader. Why else would you be reading this column that has the word “Appeal” above it? As a regular reader, you’ve seen my byline. I know you have because you’ve told me. You’ve approached me at the JCC and at the grocery store. You’ve let me know what stories you’ve liked and those you think should have been written differently while I’ve been at temple or at the mall. In doing so, you’ve made it clear that I have a responsibility to get the story right. That responsibility, though, goes both ways. While reading this newspaper you may have noticed that there are no fullpage ads for department stores or car dealerships. There aren’t splashy full-color layouts featuring UPMC or Allegheny General Hospital, and no advertorials hawking Chanukah gift suggestions by advertisers. Instead, you have a community newspaper

filled with news you can use. I’ve written about the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter trial, antisemitism on college campuses, the kosher food policy at Weinberg Terrace and local security concerns. I’ve also highlighted the important work being done by members of our community and documented when we’ve celebrated holidays and important anniversaries.

or social media posts, you know the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle endeavors to tell the stories of this community and to get the stories right. We are your best source for news about your local Jewish community. We hope to continue our work for generations, but we need you to recognize the shared responsibility I mentioned a few paragraphs ago.

Whether you get your news from our printed paper, our emailed newsletter or social media posts, you know the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle endeavors to tell the stories of this community and to get the stories right. Each week we also highlight the lifecycle events that matter to you: b’nai mitzvot, births, weddings and obituaries. We include photos and calendar listings and community events. Whether you get your news from our printed paper, our emailed newsletter

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DECEMBER 22, 2023

Headlines Local educators honored for their work against antisemitism — LOCAL — By David Rullo | Senior Staff Writer

haler Area High School teacher Catlyn DiPasquale feels a responsibility to teach about the humanity that emerged during the Holocaust. “We’re talking about the human story. You feel a calling to tell this story, to get it right and to do the topic justice,” she said. Michele Russo, a teacher at Seneca Valley Intermediate High School, believes it’s imperative that students learn how the Holocaust relates to the present day and civil rights. “I think it’s important they see the whole thing and just don’t learn about the Holocaust in isolation,” she said. Both DiPasquale and Russo are recipients of the inaugural 2023 Shine A Light on Antisemitism Civic Courage Award. They are the only two high school educators to receive the honor, joining five other winners, including educators from elementary schools and universities, as well high school and college students. The two also are among only 12 educators who were honored nationally. DiPasquale has taught Shaler’s Holocaust elective for the last five years and manages her area’s LIGHT (Leadership through Innovation in Genocide and Human Rights Teaching) Center. She was recently honored as a Righteous Among the Neighbors by the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh. Like Russo, DiPasquale believes teaching about the Holocaust extends beyond that period of history. “I think it’s important to teach not only about the event itself but some of the things happening today,” she said, “because antisemitism didn’t end with the Holocaust. It also didn’t begin with the Holocaust, so it helps kids put into context some of the things happening today.” “Everybody has a story, and everybody is important,” DiPasquale continued, noting that when she has survivors speak to her students, it’s “the most impactful thing I could ever do. They can teach the kids more in 15 minutes than I could teach in a whole semester.” In a district without a lot of diversity, DiPasquale feels these types of lessons help prepare students for the world they’ll face after graduation. Russo, who has made it her mission to teach about marginalized groups, has been committed to combating hate and antisemitism. She is an ambassador with the Light Education Initiative and partners with student-led organizations to discuss inclusion, acceptance and tolerance. She traveled to Poland with Classrooms Without Borders in 2022 and spent time earlier this year in the South, learning more about the Civil Rights Movement. The English teacher, who reads Elie Wiesel’s “Night” each year with her students, said she teaches about the “pyramid of hate,” a concept taught by the Anti-Defamation League that shows how biased behaviors 4

DECEMBER 22, 2023

p Michele Russo

Photo courtesy of Shine a Light

grow in complexity and are supported by lower levels of hate. She also has a former skinhead speak to her class. “I don’t like teaching things in isolation,” she offered as the reason for combining lessons about current incidents of hate with the Holocaust. “You can’t teach the Jewish story in isolation.”

p Catlyn DiPasquale

go above and beyond their professional duties, Shine A Light representative Megan Nathan said. “We were thrilled with the kind of work that people are doing and we’re hopeful that their stories, which are now on our website, can serve as inspiration for other people and leaders in the community,” she said.

Photo courtesy of Shine a Light

Pittsburghers saw the initiative’s logo on electronic billboards last December as part of a campaign that featured jarring messages like “You’re not like other Jews,” “I would’ve never guessed you’re Jewish. You’re so cool,” and “Did you see the diamond on her finger? It’s huge! But what do you expect? She has a Jewish fiancé.”

“I think it’s important to teach not only about the event itself but some of the things happening today, because antisemitism didn’t end with the Holocaust. It also didn’t begin with the Holocaust, so it helps kids put into context some of the things happening today.” –CATLYN DIPASQUALE Learning about the Holocaust, Russo said, will help prepare students for life after graduation. “LGBTQ is part of that,” she said. “When people say I teach about antisemitism, I don’t know if I do. It’s part of the whole story that I teach. We’re teaching students how to be citizens.” Shine A Light representative Lauren Multer said the idea for the award came out of a conversation at the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. “Somebody said they wanted to highlight the amazing work people were doing in this field, or acting as upstanders and demonstrating what it means to call out hate and stand up for the Jewish community in their school system,” she said. Shine A Light received “amazing applications” from its 100-plus partner organizations, nominating people who

Despite the troubling times, Nathan noted, the nominations showed that there are people doing incredible things in the face of challenge and adversity. “It was really the brightest part of our day to be able to read through these applications and wish that we could give awards and thank yous and recognition to everyone, because it’s so important that this work is taking place right now,” she said. That recognition includes not only the publicity that comes with winning the award but also $2,000. Shine A Light, she explained, is an initiative of a group of more than 100 community partners, both Jewish and non-Jewish, who have all signed on with the conviction that collective action is the most effective way to address antisemitism in the United States and Canada.

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The meaning of the billboards eventually became clear in the last few slides with messages like “If you don’t think the Holocaust happened, maybe Jews aren’t your issue. Maybe history class is,” and “Antisemitism is bad for everybody. It starts with the Jews…but never ends there.” Both DiPasquale and Russo said they don’t do their work for awards. Still, they were thrilled to learn of the recognition. DiPasquale said it feels odd being recognized for doing what feels like the right thing to do. “I was really honored, totally not expecting it,” she said. “It’s important that people see that other people are doing this and care about people in the community and about humanity.” PJC David Rullo can be reached at drullo@ pittsburghjewishchronicle.org. PITTSBURGHJEWISHCHRONICLE.ORG

Headlines Proposed mission to Israel aims to strengthen Jewish peoplehood — LOCAL — By Adam Reinherz | Senior Staff Writer

proposed mission to Israel will send community members 6,000 miles east in the coming weeks. Designed by World Mizrachi, and led by Shaare Torah Congregation’s Rabbi Yitzi Genack and Rebbetzin Anna Yolkut, of Poale Zedeck, the three-day trip will be an opportunity to strengthen Jewish peoplehood. “Showing that we are all in this together is important,” Yolkut said. The mission is scheduled for Jan. 2-4, according to Genack. Other rabbis and community members have taken short trips to Israel since the war with Hamas began on Oct. 7. Yolkut’s husband, Rabbi Daniel Yolkut, recently traveled to the Jewish state with the Rabbinical Council of America. From conversations with him “and people there” it became obvious that the connection between American and Israeli Jews must be fortified, Anna Yolkut said. Genack, who also participated in a mission to Israel with the RCA, said that Pittsburghers must demonstrate their connections with the Jewish state and its residents.

p Rabbi Yitzi Genack, center, delivers cards to Israeli soldiers during a mission to Israel last month.

Photo courtesy of Rabbi Yitzi Genack

“The Jewish people have to be embedded in this experience in Israel, and they have to feel it viscerally,” he said. “They can’t do it from America.” Questions about the bond between American and Israeli Jews have received recent attention.

In its 2021 Survey of American Jewish Opinion, the American Jewish Committee reported that 46% of respondents consider Israeli Jews “extended family,” while 28% said Israeli Jews are “not part of my family.” Even before the current war between Hamas and Israel, Pew Research Center detected strained ties and generational shifts in attitudes regarding the Jewish state. Although 67% of Jewish Americans ages 65 and older described themselves as feeling “very/somewhat” connected to Israel, only 48% of those under age 30 gave Pew a similar answer. When asked about the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, generational divisions appeared again, as 44% of respondents ages 65 and older strongly opposed the BDS movement, but only 27% of Jewish Americans under age 30 were opposed, according to Pew’s 2021 report. Genack and Yolkut both hope the upcoming mission will fortify the ties between American Jews and Israel. The Pittsburghers said they are looking to take between 15 and 40 community members. When Genack visited last month, he found the trip, which occurred alongside fellow rabbis, “profound and inspiring.”

Days of people-to-people connections made clear that “it’s all of our responsibility to actively demonstrate to Jews around the world that we care about them,” he said. He and Yolkut want their upcoming mission to achieve similar outcomes. “The people of Israel need it, and we need it,” Genack said. This mission is not about touring, the rabbi noted. “This is a demonstration that we are one people and we support each other,” he said. Yolkut and Genack both said they recognize the hardships a quick trip to Israel present. “Each individual on the mission would arrange their own airfare and accommodations. If there is a cost for the mission, it will be reasonable,” they wrote in a joint message to congregants. Still, a trip to Israel now is imperative, Yolkut said. “I know that it’s not easy and I know that every individual can’t pull it off logistically or financially, but everyone should feel in one way or another that they are sacrificing for Israel and the Jewish people,” she said. “This trip isn’t the only way but it’s one way.” PJC Adam Reinherz can be reached at areinherz@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.

Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh gets end-of-year donation from Mystery Lovers Bookshop — LOCAL — By David Rullo | Senior Staff Writer

here’s no mystery whose Chanukah gift list the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh was on this year. Mystery Lovers Bookshop in Oakmont recently donated more than $1,000 to the Jewish nonprofit as part of an annual tradition that goes back more than 30 years, according to the store’s co-owner Tara Goldberg-DeLeo. Each year, Mystery Lovers receives advance reader copies of books before they are published. The store is not allowed to sell these books, so once a year, they are placed on a table for customers to take for free. The store includes a donation jar next to the books and asks people to donate something, if they are able. The donations are earmarked for a particular nonprofit or charity that is clearly noted. In the past, the shop has donated to Sandy Hook Promise, Freedom to Read Society, Southern Poverty Law Center, Children’s Heart Foundation and the Pittsburgh Center for Victims. This year, the designee was the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh. “People were extremely generous this year,” Goldberg-DeLeo said. “It was really heartwarming to see the generosity of people.” Goldberg-DeLeo, who is Jewish, said the

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p Kristy Bodnar (left), co-owner of Mystery Lovers Bookshop stands with Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh’s Emily Loeb and Tara Goldberg-DeLeo, co-owner (right). The independent bookshop recently donated over $1,000 to the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh.

Photo courtesy of Tara Goldberg-DeLeo

Holocaust Center was chosen because of the rise in antisemitism. “We thought now was a good time to show our support against antisemitism,” she said. Emily Loeb, the Holocaust Center’s director of programs and education, said its not often that a local business decides to make the center the recipient of its major

annual fundraising event. “It was really touching,” she said. “It was truly a mitzvah on their part.” Loeb stressed that the Holocaust Center did not solicit the donation, but as a small nonprofit, the gift means a lot. “This is a huge deal,” she said. Loeb said she was touched to find out

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that this was the store’s largest fundraiser to date. “They do this every year and they say this is the most money they’ve raised,” she said. And while it would be easy in this day and age to receive the donation in the mail or online, Loeb felt a visit to the store was in order. “It was such a touching thing that they did, thinking of us and recognizing what’s going on in the world and how important it is to recognize antisemitism,” she said. “It’s great to be recognized for the good work that we’re doing in the community.” Loeb said the Holocaust Center has worked diligently this year to develop innovative programs for a broad audience that not only educate about the Holocaust, but that also apply the lessons of the Holocaust to issues being faced today. And Loeb is excited about the creation of a new community partnership. “It’s making connections with people in the community who we weren’t even aware of following what we were doing,” she said. For Goldberg-DeLeo, the kindness of the community never ceases to surprise her. “We really appreciate the generosity of everyone that came in and we continue to support different communities,” she said. “We really hope to support all types of communities.” PJC David Rullo can be reached at drullo@ pittsburghjewishchronicle.org. DECEMBER 22, 2023

Calendar Submit calendar items on the Chronicle’s website, pittsburghjewishchronicle.org. Submissions also will be included in print. Events will run in the print edition beginning one month prior to the date as space allows. The deadline for submissions is Friday, noon. q SUNDAY, DEC. 24 Join Shaare Torah and Poale Zedeck for United in Laughter, an evening of chdut and comedy to support United Hatzalah, featuring international Jewish comedy sensation Eli Lebowicz. $72. 5:30 p.m. Shaare Torah social hall, 2319 Murray Ave. shaaretorah.net/event/comedy2023. q SUNDAYS, DEC. 24 – JAN. 14 Join a lay-led online parshah study group to discuss the week’s Torah portion. No Hebrew knowledge needed. The goal is to build community while deepening understanding of the text. 8:30 p.m. For more information, visit bethshalompgh.org. q WEDNESDAYS, DEC. 27 – JAN. 24 Bring the parashah alive and make it personally relevant and meaningful with Rabbi Mark Goodman in this weekly Parashah Discussion: Life & Text. 12:15 p.m. For more information, visit bethshalompgh.org/life-text.

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

q MONDAYS, JAN. 8 – FEB. 5 Join Congregation Beth Shalom for a weekly Talmud study. 9:15 a.m. For more information, visit bethshalompgh.org.

who have supported the Jewish community and stood up against antisemitism. Free. South Hills JCC. 7 p.m. https://hcofpgh.org/event/righteous-amongthe-neighbors-celebration.

q WEDNESDAYS, DEC. 27 – MAY 15 The Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh virtually presents two Melton courses back-to-back: “Ethics” and “Crossroads.” In “Ethics,” learn how Jewish teachings shed light on Jewish issues. “Crossroads” will present an emphasis on reclaiming the richness of Jewish history. 7 p.m. $300 for this 25-session series (book included). jewishpgh.org/series/meltonethics-crossroads.

q MONDAYS, JAN. 8 – MAY 13 H. Arnold and Adrien B. Gefsky Community Scholar Rabbi Danny Schiff presents Torah 2. Understanding the Torah and what it asks of us is perhaps one of the most important things that a Jew can learn. In Torah 2, Schiff will explore the second half of Leviticus and all of Numbers and Deuteronomy. 9:30 a.m. $225. Zoom. jewishpgh.org/event/ torah-2-2/2023-10-09.

q SUNDAYS, JAN. 7 – JAN. 28 Chabad of Pittsburgh presents the Jewish Children’s Discovery Center. Girls and boys grades 3-5 will practice cake-decorating skills while learning about the holy temple and what its beautiful golden vessels can teach us today. Girls and boys grades K-2 will create and decorate a wooden mitzvah house while learning about the holy temple and the values it represents. Girls and boys ages 3 and 4 will touch, taste, hear and feel their way through a journey of Jewish values and traditions. With weekly storytelling, crafts, music and games, this class is sure to get out all the morning wiggles. Grades K-5: $60/4-week session; ages 3-4: $30/4-week session, $10/class. Noon. chabadpgh.com.

q THURSDAYS, JAN. 11 — FEB. 8 Bring your lunch and join Cantor Toby Glaser for Lunch Time Liturgy to look at the prayers of Kabbalat Shabbat, the opening psalms and prayers of the Shabbat evening service. $54. 1 p.m. Rodef Shalom Congregation, 4905 Fifth Ave. rodefshalom.org/lunch.

Join AgeWell for the Intergenerational Family Dynamics Discussion Group at JCC South Hills every third Wednesday of each month. Led by intergenerational specialist/presenter and educator Audree Schall. The group is geared toward anyone who has children, grandchildren, a spouse, siblings or parents. Family dynamics is a fascinating topic and whether you have family harmony or strife, these discussions are going to be thoughtprovoking with tools and views to help build strong relationships and family unity. Free. 12:30 p.m. 345 Kane Blvd.

q WEDNESDAY, JAN. 17 Join the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh for the Righteous Among the Neighbors Celebration, a joint project with the LIGHT Education Initiative, in partnership with student journalists at Mt. Lebanon High School, to honor non-Jewish Pittsburghers

q FRIDAY, JAN. 26 Join the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh virtually for its annual commemoration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Robbie Aitken, professor at Sheffield Hallam University, will discuss the concept of “forgotten victims,” which looks at the experiences of Germany’s Black resident community. Registration is free and donations are optional. Noon. hcofpgh. org/events. PJC

Join the Chronicle Book Club! Birthright is resuming its free trips to Israel for the first time since Oct. 7

he Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle invites you to join the Chronicle Book Club for its Jan. 21 discussion of “Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth,” by Noa Tishby. From the Jewish Book Council: “Noa Tishby is on a mission to correct misperceptions of Israel — its history, culture, and people. After watching Israel be criticized by the global community, partiularly online, the Israeli actress, writer, and producer began defending the country on Twitter and beyond. What began as a hobby developed into a deep passion, and ultimately, a vocation. The more Tishby sought to explain Israel to others the more she sought to learn herself. From that journey, this book was born.”

Email: Contact us at drullo@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org, and write “Chronicle Book Club” in the subject line to register. We will send you a Zoom link for the discussion meeting. Registration closes on Jan. 18. Happy reading! PJC

By Deborah Danan | JTA

— Toby Tabachnick

Your Hosts: Toby Tabachnick, editor of the Chronicle David Rullo, Chronicle senior staff writer How and When: We will meet on Zoom on Jan. 21 at noon. What To Do Buy: “Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth.” It is available at area bookstores and from online retailers, including Amazon and Barnes & Noble. It is also available through the Carnegie Library system.

Don’t miss an issue All changes can be submitted in writing or emailed to subscriptions @ pittsburghjewishchronicle.org or call 410-902-2300, ext. 1

DECEMBER 22, 2023

— ISRAEL —

irthright Israel on Tuesday announced that it would resume its free, 10-day educational trips to Israel in January after suspending them amid the ongoing war with Hamas. Around 350 participants, students and young adults primarily from the United States, are expected to travel to Israel beginning the week of Jan. 5, 2024, the organization said in a statement. The 350 participants are a small fraction of the 23,000 Birthright had planned to send to Israel this year. Still, the resumption of the programs is a powerful symbol of a potential return to normalcy for Israel, which has been in war mode since Hamas’ attack on Oct. 7. Even as Israeli leaders say they are unwilling to put an end date on their military operations in Gaza, universities are gearing up to reopen Dec. 31 and on Monday, the government raised limits on gathering sizes, citing reduced concerns about rocket attacks. The decision to resume Birthright trips was made after “careful consideration and conversations” with the group’s local partners in Israel, the group’s statement said, and will “operate under strict safety and security standards” set by the Israel Defense Forces’ Homefront Command. Birthright CEO Gidi Mark said that while the trips will continue to prioritize the organization’s goals of “positive Jewish identity building,” they will also incorporate a focus on the Hamas attack and its impact on Israeli society and Jewish communities around the world.

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“Everything is different post-Oct. 7 from an educational perspective. The people of Israel are different and the young adults arriving to Israel are different,” Mark told JTA. “We are preparing the educational teams to deal with broad discussions and an open dialogue. We believe that participants will come to explore and learn about what happened and what is occurring now, and also share about the reality back home and the rise of antisemitism.” Travel to and from Israel has been limited to Israeli carriers since Oct. 7, and the war has taken a steep toll on tourism. Last month, Birthright announced the launch of volunteer programs in Israel after it canceled its regular scheduled trips for December amid security concerns. More than 3,300 of its alumni had applied to volunteer in kibbutzes and other Israeli communities “to harvest crops in the absence of the thousands of foreign field workers,” the organization said in a statement at the time. Even with the resumption of its regular programs, the two-week volunteer trips — which are exclusively for Birthright alumni — would continue in tandem, Mark told JTA. “Naturally, alumni of January classic trips will be able to extend their stay in Israel, for an additional two-week volunteering experience,” he added. Birthright Israel has brought some 850,000 young Jewish adults to Israel on a free tour of Israel since its launch in 1999. The organization had previously canceled trips only once before, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Facing financial woes, it has scaled back in the years since. PJC PITTSBURGHJEWISHCHRONICLE.ORG

Headlines JHF approves emergency grants for mental health needs on campus — LOCAL — By Adam Reinherz | Senior Staff Writer

he Jewish Healthcare Foundation approved emergency grants totaling $135,000 to support the mental health needs of Jewish college students facing rising antisemitism on campus. The funding will go to Hillel International, Hilllel JUC, Chabad of Carnegie Mellon University and Chabad House on Campus at the University of Pittsburgh. Since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, Jewish students at the University of Pittsburgh feel increasingly “alone,” Chabad at Pitt’s Rabbi Shmuli Rothstein said. He said students are feeling higher levels of anxiety, awkwardness, nervousness and frustration. “Thank God nothing physical has happened,” he added, “but students are worried about antisemitism.” “The mental health needs on campus have skyrocketed,” Chabad of CMU’s Rabbi Shlomo Silverman said. “People are stressed and scared.” The Israel-Hamas war is 6,000 miles east of Oakland, but its effect here is palpable. Researchers from Boston University pointed to studies conducted after Sept. 11, 2001, showing that “large-scale attacks like 9/11 can affect populations far beyond just those groups who were directly exposed to the events themselves.” Days after the Israel-Hamas war began, the American Psychological Association cautioned that “fear, anxiety and traumatic stress have long-term effects on health and well-being…. These impacts are also being felt by people around the world who have families and friends in the region, as well as those concerned about the effects of war everywhere.” NPR reported on Nov. 24 that repeated media exposure to war can render someone “more vulnerable to the traumatic imagery if they identify with one of the affected groups.” Pittsburgh’s Jewish campus professionals repeatedly told the Chronicle their students have experienced greater levels of stress and unease since Oct. 7. The University of Pittsburgh’s Office for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion has heard from

 Students gather at the University of Pittsburgh and demonstrate support for Israel on Oct. 9. Photo by Adam Reinherz

students, faculty and staff “anecdotally and via reports to the Pitt Concern Connection, about a rise in Islamophobic and antisemitic remarks,” according to an Oct. 25 message to students from the office’s Vice Chancellor Clyde Wilson Pickett. Jewish students and staff are facing “incredible duress and challenges,” said Tim Cohen, senior vice president of leadership giving at Hillel International. College campuses, he added, are “ground zero for antisemitism.” “Obviously, we always know we’re going to have problems on certain campuses — like Columbia, Michigan, Harvard — we expect this to happen at those kinds of campuses, but we found this happening across the board,” Cohen said. He pointed to growing unrest at Carnegie Mellon University, New York University and Oberlin College, saying, “the amount of hate that they’re experiencing is just unprecedented and is somewhat out of control.” A CMU spokesperson, though, said that the university’s Counseling and Psychological Services has not seen an increase in students seeking mental health resources since the start of the Israel-Hamas war. “The numbers are comparable to what they’ve seen at this time in past years,” according to Peter Kerwin, CMU’s director of media relations. In announcing its emergency grants JHF officials noted, “Hillels and Chabads on university campuses offer Jewish students a refuge and a wide range of support resources. Since the start of the Hamas-Israel War, Hillels

and Chabads have seen a dramatic spike in engagement among their Jewish students, who seek camaraderie, solace, and a safe space in the face of agitation among fellow students who condemn Israel and even Jews in the aftermath of the horrific attacks by Hamas on October 7, 2023.” Dan Marcus, Hillel JUC’s president and CEO, praised JHF’s recognition of the current climate. “Students are sharing their anxiety and fear with our staff on campus, in coffee shops and during impromptu meetings,” he said.

“We’re seeing students coming into Hillel JUC’s building, which is a safe space on campus, and needing someone to speak with. Thankfully the 10.27 Healing Partnership has provided professionals, but this period has increased our workload exponentially.” Marcus said $25,000 of funding from JHF will continue Hillel JUC’s “core role and responsibility of caring for, advocating for and supporting Jewish students.” Rothstein said the $5,000 Chabad at Pitt received will boost its commitment to “creating a bigger sense of family.” Weekday programs and Shabbat meals are attracting close to 100 students, Rothstein said, and Chabad at Pitt is deeply appreciative that “JHF is there for the community.” Chabad of CMU will use its $5,000 grant for “mental health services and fighting antisemitism on campus,” Silverman said, though he is not yet certain of the specifics. Of the $135,000 of emergency grant funding, $100,000 will go to Hillel International due to the organization’s work with “thousands of college students globally,” according to JHF. “Hillel staff have expanded their outreach to students and faculty available 24 hours per day, seven days per week, for peer and professional support.” PJC Adam Reinherz can be reached at areinherz@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.

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 Chabad at Pitt students held a challah bake for Israel. All proceeds were donated to the IDF. Photo courtesy of Chabad House on Campus

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DECEMBER 22, 2023 7

Headlines As Israel fights Hamas, activists on the right are calling to rebuild settlements in Gaza — WORLD — By Eliyahu Freedman | JTA

ITZAN B, Israel (JTA) — Since Oct. 7, Benjamin Netanyahu has largely avoided face-to-face meetings with ordinary Israeli citizens. One exception occurred in mid-November, when the Israeli prime minister met with a group of Israelis evacuated from the Gaza border, including former Gaza Strip settlers who presented him with a request: to return to their uprooted homes once Israel’s war with Hamas was over. “The Gaza Strip won’t let us rest, the land of Israel won’t let us rest until the people of Israel return to settle it, and only then will it flourish” one of the participants, Zehorit Cohen, told Netanyahu in a video clip that has since circulated online. Cohen is a former resident of the Gaza bloc of settlements, known as Gush Katif. “It has nothing to do with strategy or security or economics or anything,” she said. “We need to go back there because it’s the land of Israel, and the land of Israel calls to us.” Israel evacuated 8,000 settlers and all of its troops from Gaza in 2005, a withdrawal that split Israeli society and that, for the uprooted settlers, still festers as an open wound. Now, as the Israeli military reconquers broad swaths of the coastal territory in its campaign to

p A view of the synagogue in Nitzan B, a Gaza border community established to house Israeli settlers evacuated from Gaza in 2005 Photo by Eliyahu Freedman

destroy Hamas, former Gush Katif residents and other settler leaders are standing at the vanguard of mounting calls to rebuild the evacuated settlements. “Today, after this thing, everyone understands that settlements equal security, and where there aren’t settlements, there’s terror,

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massacre and Holocaust,” Yossi Dagan, the head of the Samaria Regional Council of settlements in the northern West Bank, said in a recent interview on Israeli Channel 14, a right-wing station. Jewish resettlement inside Gaza has no international support and is understood by even some right-wing lawmakers to be inadvisable. But Dagan, along with settler activist Daniella Weiss, is leading a coalition of right-wing groups using the current war as a springboard to intensify a push for a return to Gush Katif. Their coalition recently held a conference that drew some 200 people and at least one lawmaker, according to Haaretz. The group has already drawn up a list of families who have committed to relocating to a future resettlement project in Gaza. “The true victory over Hamas will be to take territory back and establish settlements,” Dagan said. Politicians on the far right have long called for reestablishing Gush Katif, including an Israeli government minister who did so earlier this year. Now, the war has brought those demands squarely into the mainstream. A mid-November poll of Israel’s Channel 12 News found that 44% of Israelis are in favor of resettling Gush Katif, with 39% opposed and 17% “unsure.” A Hebrew University poll in December found that enthusiasm had declined, with 33% in favor of settlement in Gaza while 55% are opposed. In the international arena, however, and even among Israel’s right-wing leadership, the idea appears to be a non-starter. Netanyahu has denounced the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza, called the disengagement, but he voted for it as a member of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s government at the time. While he has said Israeli troops will remain in Gaza for the foreseeable future, he called the resettlement of Gush Katif “not a realistic objective” of the war against Hamas. And President Joe Biden called a potential reoccupation of Gaza a “big mistake” in an October “60 Minutes” interview. In March, his administration rebuked Netanyahu’s

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government for repealing a portion of the 2005 disengagement law. Former Israeli right-wing officials have also criticized the movement to return to Gush Katif. Yonatan Bashi, who was one of the leading officials overseeing the implementation of the 2005 Gaza withdrawal, said trying to settle several thousand Israelis in a territory inhabited by millions of Palestinians would be an error. “From the beginning, the idea that we went to live in the Gaza Strip was a big mistake, not because of ideology but because there were 1.6 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip versus 7,000 or 8,000 Jews,” Bashi told Israel National News last month, estimating 2005 population figures. “Whoever thought our problem with the strip was geographical was wrong then and is wrong now.” Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who took a lead role in advocating for the disengagement plan and later became an outspoken advocate of territorial withdrawal, said the idea that settlements in Gaza provide security is “utter nonsense.” “Had we remained in Gush Katif, we would have been in the kishkes of Gaza, and everything would have happened years ago,” he said, using the Yiddish word for guts. Instead, he blames the Oct. 7 attacks on reports that the army diverted troops from the Gaza border to the West Bank leading up to the attack. “If our soldiers had stayed next to the border and were not … protecting the settlers so they can attack Palestinians in the West Bank and destroy their olive groves, what happened would not have occurred,” said Olmert. While Netanyahu threw cold water on resettling Gaza, some politicians in his government support the idea. Amichai Chikli, the Diaspora affairs minister, said resettlement shouldn’t be “ruled out.” And Gideon Saar, a Netanyahu rival who also opposes Palestinian statehood, wrote in a recent op-ed, “We need to strengthen Jewish settlement across the Land of Israel, Please see Gaza, page 11

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Headlines — WORLD — 7 men, some members of Hamas arrested in Europe

Police in three European countries arrested seven men they said were planning terror attacks against Jews and Jewish sites on Dec. 14. Some of the men arrested were longtime Hamas members who began building a weapons cache in Berlin after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, according to German officials. Three of the suspects were arrested in Germany, while one was arrested in Rotterdam, in the Netherlands. Police in Demark arrested three other men, with Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen saying the threat was “as serious as it gets.” German officials described the suspects as “longstanding members of Hamas” who “have participated in Hamas operations abroad.” Hamas is considered a banned terror group across the European Union. The men arrested by Germany were accused of building a weapons cache in Berlin, starting in October. The Guardian reported that the suspects have ties to Khalil Hamed al-Kharraz, the former second in command of Hamas’ military wing who was killed by Israeli bombing in Lebanon last month. Danish police said they would increase security for the near future at Jewish sites. Israel’s intelligence agencies, Mossad and Shin Bet, jointly commended Danish police for their work.

Dutch mayor refuses to be photographed with Israeli ambassador at Chanukah event

A Chanukah celebration in the Dutch town of Enschede took a bitter turn after its mayor refused to be seen near the Israeli ambassador to the Netherlands. Jaap Hartog, chairman of the Enschede synagogue, invited Mayor Roelof Bleker to a celebration of Chanukah and the synagogue’s 95th anniversary on Dec. 11. He reserved a seat for Bleker next to Israeli Ambassador Modi Ephraim, who was visiting Enschede for the occasion. But hours before the event, Hartog received a call with preconditions from Bleker. “The mayor didn’t want to sit next to the ambassador, didn’t want to shake hands with him and especially didn’t want to shake hands with a photographer present, so he wouldn’t have trouble with photos in the media,” Hartog said. Hartog responded by telling the mayor not to come at all. However, when Bleker insisted on joining, he was received and seated on the synagogue’s balcony between other guests. Bleker said his intention was to keep a distance from the war in Israel and Gaza and avoid images that might stir controversy. But that effort backfired, as his stipulations prompted a media frenzy in the Netherlands last week. Bleker said he regretted the controversy in a public statement, noting that he had called both Ephraim and Hartog to apologize.

Today in Israeli History Dec. 25, 1918 — Anwar Sadat is born

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

Dec. 22, 1938 — Rambam Hospital opens

The British Government Hospital of Haifa, now the Rambam Health Care Campus, opens with 225 beds at the foot of Mount Carmel. The British high commissioner says the hospital reflects Haifa’s growth and multicultural mix.

Dec. 23, 1789 — France debates citizenship for Jews

The French National Assembly spends three days debating Jewish rights without a decision. Count Stanislas de ClaremontTonnerre says, “The Jews should be denied everything as a nation but granted everything as individuals.”

Dec. 24, 1920 — Keren Hayesod is founded

Meeting in London, the World Zionist Congress launches Keren Hayesod (The Foundation Fund) to raise money for the Zionist movement p This early Keren and help fulfill the Hayesod poster was Balfour Declaration’s used to raise money promise of a Jewish for Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel. homeland in Palestine. National Photo Collection of Israel

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p Egyptian President Anwar Sadat addresses the Knesset during his November 1977 visit to Jerusalem.

By Ya’acov Sa’ar, Israeli Government Press Office

Anwar Sadat, the president who leads Egypt into the 1973 Yom Kippur War and signs a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, is born in Mit Abu al-Kum, Egypt. He is assassinated during a military parade in 1981.

Dec. 26, 1864 — Land buyer Hankin is born

Yehoshua Hankin, who personally buys 30% of the land owned by the State of Israel at independence in 1948, is born in Ukraine. He makes his first land buy in 1890 when he purchases a plot that becomes Rehovot.

Dec. 27, 2008 — Operation Cast Lead begins

Israel launches Operation Cast Lead after Hamas breaks a six-month cease-fire. The 22-day operation aims to stop rocket fire at civilians, stop Hamas terrorism and stop weapons smuggling into Gaza.

Dec. 28, 1917 — Britain picks Arab advocate as Jerusalem governor

Gen. Edmund Allenby names Ronald Storrs the military governor of recently captured Jerusalem. An advocate for Arab interests and a weak Zionist, Storrs remains the governor of Jerusalem and Judaea until 1926. PJC

In first comments on Evan Gershkovich, Vladimir Putin says Russia seeks a prisoner exchange

Vladimir Putin said Russia hopes to reach an agreement to free Evan Gershkovich, the American Jewish journalist it imprisoned in March. “It is not that we have refused to return them,” Putin told reporters in a produced four-hour news conference last week, referring to Gershkovich and United States Marine Paul Whelan, who has been held in a Russian prison since 2018. “We want to reach an agreement, and these agreements must be mutually acceptable and must suit both sides.” The statement was the Russian president’s first public comment on Gershkovich, 32, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was arrested on espionage charges that he, the United States and the Journal all vehemently deny. He has been in prison without trial for nearly nine months. In November, his detainment was extended until at least Jan. 30. Gershkovich is the American-born son of Jewish refugees from the Soviet Union, and his case has drawn interest and support from Jews and Jewish organizations worldwide who are pushing for his release. Gershkovich has been held in Moscow’s Lefortovo prison since his arrest by the Russian Federal Security Service, or FSB, while on a reporting assignment in the city of Yekaterinburg. If convicted, he could face up to 20 years in a penal colony.

IDF says it is disciplining soldiers who broadcast Jewish prayers from West Bank mosque

Israeli soldiers will be disciplined after broadcasting Jewish prayers from a West Bank mosque during a military operation there, which the Israel Defense Forces said ran counter to the army’s rules and values. Multiple videos began circulating last week showing the incident, which took place as the IDF conducted a three-day operation in Jenin, a northern West Bank city that has been a focal point of Israeli counterterrorism raids in the West Bank. In one video, two Israeli soldiers can been inside an empty mosque, one standing on the minbar, the steps from which an imam typically projects prayer, singing the Shema into a microphone as well as a phrase declaring the primacy of God. The IDF responded swiftly to the videos, which show the faces of the soldiers participating, it said in a statement that was released in Hebrew, English and Arabic. “During IDF operational activity in close proximity to a mosque in Jenin, soldiers acted against IDF codes of conduct within a religious establishment,” the statement said. “The soldiers were immediately removed from operational activity, after receiving the videos and after an initial inspection of the incident by commanders,” it added. “The behavior of the soldiers in the videos is serious and stands in complete opposition to the values of the IDF. The soldiers will be disciplined accordingly.” PJC — Compiled by Selah Maya Zighelboim

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DECEMBER 22, 2023

Headlines College:

Thank you, next Continued from page 1

Higher learning, heated tensions

As the Israel-Hamas war crept into its second month, and high school seniors explored options for future study, the news cycle and politicians continued following Jewish life on campus. On Nov. 7, the Department of Education issued a reminder to schools of their “legal obligation to address discrimination, including harassment.” U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona called rising reports of hate incidents post-Oct. 7 “deeply traumatic for students” and “alarming to all Americans.” “Antisemitism, Islamophobia and all other forms of hatred go against everything we stand for as a nation,” he said. On Dec. 11, the ADL released an updated report that between Oct. 7 and Dec. 7, the organization recorded 2,031 antisemitic incidents — a 337% increase from the same span last year. Six days earlier, during a five-hour congressional hearing, lawmakers probed presidents of Penn, Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology about antisemitism and whether calls for genocide against Jews violate university codes of conduct. The presidents said the answer depended on “context.”

Squirrel Hill resident Elli Kanal has closely followed reports of campus life at Harvard. His interest, he said, was driven by his son’s receipt of an invitation to apply. “He did really well on his SATs, but he’s still probably at the bottom edge of what they’re considering,” Kanal said. Weeks before Harvard president Claudine Gay sat before Congress, Kanal emailed Harvard College Admissions about campus affairs and university leaders’ reactions. Kanal's email begins with appreciation for the invitation but notes the reason why his son is forgoing an application to Harvard: “My son is Jewish. Through many, many well-documented actions and inactions, Harvard has made it clear that not only is my son not welcome on campus, but in fact would likely be in moderate personal danger. To that extent, we will most definitely not be considering sending our son to Harvard.” Kanal said he isn’t sure about the message’s effect, but believes it’s necessary to tell university representatives “you actively lost a candidate.” Before Oct. 7, Casey Weiss, an assistant principal at Hillel Academy, had already spent scores of hours working with high school students and their families on the college admissions process. She helped students craft essays, gather requisite materials and find schools best matching their interests — whether it be an eruv on campus or a “pro-Israel group,” she said.

Oct. 7 changed the experience. As war unfolded and news of campus unrest increased, students and families began rethinking earlier selections, Weiss said. On Nov. 2, she joined colleagues from Jewish day schools across the country on Zoom to discuss the effects of antisemitic incidents at universities on the application process. One takeaway of the meeting, Weiss said, was how best to “support students and their families.” The topic of recrafting personal statements was raised. While one participant told students to avoid writing about being Jewish, Weiss disagrees with that approach. “I think if the institution doesn’t want that then we don’t want them,” she said. During subsequent meetings with students and parents, Weiss said she reiterated that sentiment. “The messaging has been clear,” she said. “We are proud of who we are and we will be proud of who we are.” Lauren Lieberman, director of college counseling at Shadyside Academy, said she hasn’t seen evidence that Oct. 7 and its aftermath is “changing college lists or where kids are choosing to apply to.” More apparent, however, is the nuanced approach some students are taking to addressing Jewish identity in essays and related materials. “It’s something that they’ve asked about and had some concern about,” she said. “My response for this is pretty much like

CMU: Continued from page 1

behavior to her studio professor who told her not to worry because Arscott wouldn’t be grading her. According to the complaint, Arscott sent Canaan a link to a “violently antisemitic blog,” the The Funambulist, and copied CMU’s chief diversity officer and the vice provost of diversity, equity and inclusion on the email. When Canaan complained, other professors turned on the student, telling her to stop “acting like a victim” and said that they would not “be an advocate for the Jews,” the complaint alleges. Lawfare Project attorney Ziporah Reich said Arscott is an “extremely influential” person at CMU. Riech noted that another professor, whom Canaan turned to for help, said she was reticent to speak up against Arscott because Arscott helped her get hired at CMU and she “needed to be careful about what she did.” The lawsuit lists detailed reports Canaan allegedly made to various school administrators who either ignored her pleas, failed to take any action to protect her, punish her abusers, or in the case of the schools Title IX coordinator, “aggressively discouraged Canaan from filing a formal complaint which would have trigged an investigation of Arscott, the DEI’s failure to address the misconduct and the systematic culture of antisemitism.” Reich said that Canaan was a conscientious student and a leader among her Jewish peers on campus, and that she documented everything that was going on “because students were looking to her to fight antisemitism.” The complaint draws connections between 10

DECEMBER 22, 2023

p Yael Canaan, picured at CMU in 2021, is suing the university.

CMU and Qatar, claiming that country shelters and protects antisemitism, antiJewish and anti-Israel terrorist organizations. The lawsuit alleges that Arscott spent professional time in Qatar and that CMU has a campus in Doha, Qatar, and has reported funding of nearly $600 million dollars from the country. CMU faculty, the suit alleges, subjected Canaan to a “systematic campaign of hostility, including limiting class time, ceasing direct one-on-one instruction provided to every other student, and omitting her project — and only her project — from a disseminated book of the studio work created by all the other students in the class.” As a compromise to her grievances, Canaan says she was instructed to avoid Arscott and to present her work before Arscott joined the class and then leave, limiting her time in the “most important class in her academic program and publicly humiliated her before her peers.”

Photo by Kevin Lorenzi

As a result of the university’s actions, Canaan says she developed chronic, debilitating migraines triggered by stress, clinical depression, experienced grave emotional distress, became lonely, had her grades suffer and was cheated out of her education at CMU and “saw her career materially damaged.” She was forced to see doctors and therapists as a result of the experience. The lawsuit alleges three violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964: direct discrimination, hostile educational environment and retaliation. It also alleges breach of contract and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The CMU graduate became so disillusioned by the antisemitic actions she faced at the university, and her fear that she would face similar experiences in the field, she decided not to seek a career in architecture after graduating. Canaan is seeking an award of monetary damages, including for her loss of educational

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everything else: If this is your authentic story, and your authentic voice, and this feels like the story you want to tell, then you should tell that story. And you have to believe that any school who would not admit you based on your authentic story is not a place where you belong.” Some teens have rebuffed the advice by claiming, “That sounds like such a mom thing to say,” Lieberman said. “But I believe it’s true. You have to hold out some faith.”

Planning for the future

Many college-bound seniors who applied early decision or early action already have heard back from prospective schools. Regular decision applications are due in the coming months. Siebzener, who hopes to study architectural engineering, is still following reports about Jewish life on campus post-Oct. 7. He said that conversations with friends, at school and on social media, along with news from Facebook and YouTube, have been insightful tools for refining his list. “I still plan on applying to all the places I planned on applying to, but I added Yeshiva University,” Siebzener said. “I don’t know how this is going to turn out over the next seven to 10 months.” PJC Adam Reinherz can be reached at areinherz@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org. opportunities, tuition payments, out-of-pocket costs for therapy, counseling and/or medical, psychological and psychiatric care required as a result of CMU’s conduct and costs to be paid for further therapy, counseling and/or medical, psychological and psychiatric care required as a result of CMU’s conduct and lost career earnings, as well as emotional damages, punitive damages, injunctive relief preventing CMU from violating Title VI, attorney fees and other relief deemed just by the court. A spokesperson for the university said that CMU is committed to creating and nurturing a welcoming, inclusive and supportive environment where all students can reach their potential and thrive. “We take any allegations of mistreatment or harassment seriously. We have just received notice of this lawsuit and we will evaluate and respond to it,” the spokesperson said. In an email to the university community, CMU President Farnam Jahanian said the allegations made by Canaan were “alarming.” “I also want to be clear on where we stand as a university,” he wrote, “Antisemitism and other forms of discrimination are antithetical to the values that round our diverse community and drive our academic mission, and hate has no place on our campus.” He said the Carnegie Mellon University he knows is “strikingly at odds with the one described in the lawsuit.” The university, Jahanian said, will continue to engage community members to better understand perspectives and experiences and how the school may better support its students, faculty and staff. PJC David Rullo can be reached at drullo@ pittsburghjewishchronicle.org. PITTSBURGHJEWISHCHRONICLE.ORG

Headlines Federation helps local organizations procure more than $900,000 in security grants — LOCAL — By Toby Tabachnick | Editor

ore than $900,000 in state security grants have been awarded to local Jewish organizations by the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency, the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh announced last week. Chabad of the South Hills, Congregation Poale Zedeck and Tree of Life, Inc., each were awarded grants of $150,000, while Hillel Academy of Pittsburgh was awarded a grant of $111,5000. B’nai Emunoh Chabad, The Jewish Spark and Yeshiva Schools of Pittsburgh will each receive $75,000. Other Jewish organizations awarded state security grants include Community Day School ($25,000), Congregation Kether Torah ($25,000), Lubavitch Center ($25,000), Rodef Shalom Congregation ($25,810) and Temple Emanuel of South Hills ($20,000). The Federation helped many of these organizations navigate the grant application system. Additionally, two non-Jewish organizations assisted by the Federation — Bhutanese Community Association of Pittsburgh and Center of Life — will receive grants in the amount of $25,000 and $46,327, respectively. “This brings the total Pennsylvania and federal security grants [the Federation] helped to secure to $15,464,048 since 2020, including $2.4 million in Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program funds,” according to Adam Hertzman, the Federation’s

Gaza: Continued from page 8

especially on battle lines. We need to return to the classic Zionist approach of spreading out our population instead of shrinking.” Far-right Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu recently told Israel’s public broadcaster, “I want to return and establish settlements in the strip, but I’m not sure now is the time to do it.” Many former Gush Katif residents and their ideological supporters feel themselves pulled back toward Gaza by trauma from a home that was lost — one that is connected to a historical right-wing Zionist mandate to control the entire land of Israel. For years after the disengagement, many of the evacuated settlers lived in temporary housing. Some communities have reconstituted themselves elsewhere. The former Gush Katif settlers generally refer to the withdrawal as an “expulsion.” At the Gush Katif Heritage Center in Nitzan B, a southern Israeli town established to house evacuated settlers, there is a constant mourning over what was lost and an unfading desire for a return to Gush Katif. “Here is a memorial — not a museum for something that was and is finished, but a memorial for what continues to live in our hearts” said Shimon Samson, a 71-year old guide at the center who lived in the small Gush Katif settlement of Gadid PITTSBURGHJEWISHCHRONICLE.ORG

p Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh

Photo by Adam Reinherz

director of marketing. “Getting these grants can be complicated,” Hertzman said, so the Federation works with organizations “to pull the information together they need” and “sometimes literally doing the writing.” Some of the larger grants will go to “major security initiatives,” including significant building improvements, according to Shawn Brokos, the Federation’s director of community security. The process for obtaining state security grants has become “very competitive,” Brokos said. For this round, there were requests totaling $24 million from nonprofits, with a total of $5 million awarded. “But we have a process in the Jewish community where we work together and support one another in these grant applications,” she said. “I think it’s a very good approach and it’s an approach we have a lot of success with, and we’re actually starting to share

that collaborative effort with some of our other faith-based and vulnerable organizations.” The Federation is proud to help non-Jewish nonprofits through its outreach program, which Hertzman said “dovetails nicely” with the work the Federation’s Community Relations Council does to build trust and goodwill with other marginalized and faith communities. “We want the Jewish community to be supportive of security in those communities and vice versa,” Hertzman said. “And a great way to do that is helping them secure resources to do it. So we are trying to make sure those communities are safe and feel safe.” Hertzman credited Pennsylvania’s elected officials “who continue to pay attention to the rise in antisemitism and respond to the rise in antisemitism with ideas and legislation that may be able to help, and to provide money to Jewish community

beginning in 1980, a decade after the Gaza settlements were founded. Samson pointed to a historical Jewish presence in the ancient city of Gaza that dates back centuries, as exemplified by a replica mosaic of King David, on display by the center’s entrance, based on an original discovered in a fifth-century Gazan synagogue in 1965, shortly before

beachfront in Gaza City and even dining at a halal falafel stand. The situation deteriorated with the advent of the first intifada in 1987. As part of the 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Palestinian Authority was given control over much of Gaza including the cities and refugee camps now

Yonatan Bashi, who was one of the leading officials overseeing the implementation of the 2005 Gaza withdrawal, said trying to settle several thousand Israelis in a territory inhabited by millions of Palestinians would be an error. Gaza was conquered by Israel from Egypt in the 1967 Six Day War. According to Samson, approximately 40 of the Israelis killed in the Oct. 7 attack were family members of the first generation of Gush Katif settlers, who left their farms in the Gaza border region to receive government-sponsored land inside Gaza. “At first there were no problems,” recalled Samson nostalgically of the initial period of Israeli settlement in Gaza. He recalled local rabbis permitting eating fresh fish on the

seeing fierce battles. Violence escalated again during the second intifada two decades ago. All told, the memorial center lists 42 civilians — not including soldiers — who were killed in terror attacks across Gush Katif ’s history. Samson said another 40 community members died prematurely after the “expulsion” in 2005 from “depression, heart attack and other ailments caused by losing millions of dollars and their homes,” including two suicides. Israeli researchers found that former Gush Katif residents were at an increased risk

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and faith communities and minority communities who are under threat.” Reports of antisemitic incidents, locally and nationally, have increased since the IsraelHamas war began with Hamas’ attack of Israeli civilians on Oct. 7. Last weekend, about 200 synagogues and Jewish institutions across the United States received bomb threats via email, including one synagogue in Pittsburgh and one in Morgantown, West Virginia, Brokos said. The threats — which were emailed to the Pittsburgh and Morgantown congregations on Saturday morning — were a hoax, Brokos said, and a continuation of a months-long spree of hoax threats around the country. There was no disruption to religious services in Pittsburgh, although services were interrupted in other locales, including Colorado and Alabama. The Secure Community Network “has tracked more than 449 swatting incidents and bomb threats in 2023-to-date, up 541% from 2022 (83 incidents), as compared to a total of 23 between 2019-2021,” The Jerusalem Post reported Sunday. The Federation also continues to receive reports of “antisemitic graffiti, verbal assaults, hateful emails and hateful rhetoric,” Brokos said. “We are encouraging anybody who sees antisemitic graffiti to call 911 and report, it because law enforcement is investigating these incidents and without a report, they have no record of it.” PJC Toby Tabachnick can be reached at ttabachnick@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org. of diabetes and hypertension. A Haaretz report from 2005 found that 85 members of Israel’s security forces were killed in Gaza since the start of the second intifada in 2000, while 2,600 Palestinians were killed in total in the territory between 1967 and 2005. Many more Palestinians have been killed in the repeated rounds of fighting between Israel and Hamas, which took control of Gaza in 2007 after a brief civil war with a rival Palestinian faction. Nadin Cohen, a 70-year old immigrant from France who was evacuated from Gush Katif, now has a home in Nitzan B lined with photos of seaside vistas from her old home. Samson and Cohen both say they are too old to consider uprooting themselves again, but they both consider their grandchildren among the “many youths who are interested in settling Gush Katif once again,” Cohen said. While such a return may seem unrealistic, evacuated settlers still have faith that it can happen. Limor Son Har-Melech, a far-right lawmaker who was evacuated from a northern West Bank settlement as part of the 2005 withdrawal, quoted the Bible while expressing her belief that the residents of Gush Katif will yet return. “We are a nation of God. This is the land that the creator of the world gave us,” she said in a video she posted to social media last week. “We just need to believe in this. If we just believe in this, God willing, we will win.” PJC DECEMBER 22, 2023

Opinion Parents, talk to your children about what they see online Guest Columnist Angela Liddle

s much as parents and guardians want to, we cannot fully shield our children from the horrors of war. The digital age has made it impossible to do so. That point was made abundantly clear in a recent survey from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, an independent nonprofit that studies online platforms. ISD analyzed more than 300 posts of videos across Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat that portrayed “graphic, distressing or violent imagery” from the Hamas-Israel War. This content was easily accessible to children ages 13 to 16, ISD noted: “During the course of analysis, ISD analysts enabled additional content filtering tools, beyond the platforms’ standard enhanced safety functionality for minors. The ‘Sensitive Content Control Feature’ was used on Instagram, the ‘Restricted Mode’ was enabled on TikTok. Despite these safeguards, content containing extreme gore was still accessible.”

It does not take much effort for a child or teen to find these images. Since Hamas’ attack on Israel in early October, hate speech has surged across the internet, namely on platforms like X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, Facebook and Instagram. The New York Times recently reviewed thousands of social media posts with hate-based hashtags, with antisemitic

and Instagram filtering tools failing to catch such content, it’s up to us as caregivers to help our kids to reconcile the content they may have seen. I know that talking about subjects like war and gore with a child is not always easy, but a modern parent must be ready to undertake such conversations. And these conversations

As parents, we can’t think “it’s too late” to begin to promote positive, healthy digital behaviors. content soaring by more than 919% on X and 28% on Facebook since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack. The teen mental health crisis, already a global epidemic, is likely to be exacerbated thanks to these images. How can we — parents, guardians, and caregivers — help our children to not be exposed to these images? It’s a tall order: Children ages 8 to 12 spend more than five hours per day on screens and devices, according to a March 2022 survey from Common Sense Media. That same study found that teens 13 to 18 spend more than eight hours per day on screen, giving plenty of opportunity for them to be exposed to abject cruelty and violence. And with TikTok

must be ongoing: We can’t protect our youth from digital threats in just one step. Digital technologies change rapidly, and new threats emerge with the same haste, and only by practicing positive and healthy digital behaviors can we hope to protect our kids from what they see online. As parents, we can’t think “it’s too late” to begin to promote positive, healthy digital behaviors. We can’t tell ourselves “not my child” or “not my community.” Platforms like Instagram and TikTok are omnipresent, and we can’t fool ourselves into believing that our children “would never” view such graphic content. We also cannot rely solely on legislation and lawsuits to protect our children from

graphic content. While I commend lawmakers and officials for wanting to hold platforms accountable for their roles in the youth mental health crisis, we as parents must be equipped with the resources and tools to help us raise healthy children in a digital era. And it falls upon us to begin the conversation; punishing a child by taking away devices or their screens will only make social media and other digital content more attractive to them. Ask them about what they have seen and how it made them feel. Be empathetic and understanding of how they feel and encourage them to reach out to you or another adult if they ever see anything online that makes them uncomfortable or that they feel is inappropriate. And remind them that they can always come to you without fear of punishment. The digital age has made parenting more difficult than any other time in modern history. But we can’t let this difficulty get in the way of our children’s well-being. By talking to our children about what they see online and how they feel, we can make sure the next generation has the resources and support they need to use social media in healthy, positive ways. PJC Angela Liddle is president and CEO of the Pa Family Support Alliance, which created the Family Digital Wellness initiative.

A soldier’s laundry Guest Columnist

Michal I. Berman

fter hearing the idea from a mother of six a number of years ago, I decided that I too would have my kids start doing their own laundry. I wasn’t great at delegating household tasks, and in this I saw a quick win — less work for me, and a good opportunity for my kids to learn some responsibility. When my son entered the army, I made a new rule. Any soldier in our house gets his or her laundry done, by me, “for free.” After he was discharged, the dirty clothes returned to his own laundry basket, and he

was on his own. In a shift I think of as “The COVID Effect,” we are now experiencing something we never thought possible, if we thought about it at all. We are in a war we didn’t anticipate. We thought we were safer than that. We thought we had it covered. Moving past the initial shock, we as a country, as a nation, are navigating our way through a time of great pain and suffering. No one has escaped this, it’s just a matter of degree. The fortunate ones among us are personally unscathed, but nevertheless deeply scarred. The horrors perpetrated against us on Oct. 7. The ongoing suffering of our hostages. The unthinkable burden of the hostage families. The wounded. The dead. How do we cope? We follow the news. We take breaks from

following the news. We feel guilty about taking that break when others are dealing with so much more, so we continue. We work. We volunteer. We attend funerals. We comfort the mourners. We try to maintain a routine. We feel guilty about maintaining our routine. We sleep. We don’t sleep. We do our soldiers’ laundry. My son has once again donned his uniform to protect our people and defend our home. And when he’s on leave, I once again do his laundry. Smoothing every freshly washed shirt, folding each clean pair of pants, pairing the safely sanitized socks. It all feels like a holy act. A blessing. And an honor. We think, he’s home now. Soon he’ll be going back. But he’s home now, and we have the privilege of doing his laundry. Other mothers no longer need to fold their

sons’ uniforms. Because their sons no longer need their uniforms. We are fighting for survival. But the cost is so great. We are deeply proud and appreciative of our soldiers, but they, our children, are dying. Every day they are dying. And they are killing. We wish they didn’t have to. We wish there was another way. We pray for a time when this is over. When we are all safe. When all people everywhere are safe. When all of mankind matures enough to “use their words.” When we can put down our guns and tools of terror. For now, I am wishing others heaps of dirty laundry. PJC Michal Berman, a full-time technical writer, has made Israel her home since 1989. This article first appeared on The Times of Israel.

I know university presidents can respond better to odious speech — because I saw it happen at my school Guest Columnist Ari Kohen

s a political science professor for two decades and as the director of the Harris Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Nebraska, I’ve been through several rounds of odious speech and debate over how to handle it. So I’ve been extremely surprised by the whole university presidents congressional hearing debacle.

DECEMBER 22, 2023

First, I’m surprised by the number of people who think Rep. Elise Stefanik — who in the not-so-distant past has spoken approvingly of Hitler and promoted the antisemitic Great Replacement conspiracy theory — was somehow acting in good faith or is some sort of friend of Jewish people. She wasn’t and she isn’t. Second, I’m surprised by the people who think the university presidents were somehow tricked or couldn’t have answered differently. They weren’t and they could have. It should be possible for very smart people to stake out a position that notes how strongly we want to adhere to a free speech position while also making clear that any code of

conduct that allows students to call for genocide at their university should be reexamined. I know this is possible because I’ve seen it happen, here at my public university in the Midwest that could be a model for this moment. Years ago we had some Nazis on our campus. I’m not being hyperbolic and calling someone a Nazi because they voted for bad candidates or something. I’m talking about students who posted on a white supremacist forum about wanting to drive their car into Black Lives Matter rallies or who traveled across the country to chant “Jews will not replace us” in Charlottesville and posed doing Nazi salutes with prominent Nazi groups.

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When one of these students was “outed” by groups like Unicorn Riot and the Nebraska Antifascists, many students called for removing him from campus for his speech. University leaders considered the demands and rejected them. Instead, the university threw itself behind more speech, namely rallies against hate and a campaign about the inclusivity we want to promote on campus. A “Hate Will Never Win” rally drew 1,500 people to the school’s basketball stadium, and the school helped distribute T-shirts with that message to anyone who wanted one. The message could be seen all over our campus. Please see Kohen, page 13

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Opinion Chronicle poll results: Resignation of Liz Magill

ast week, the Chronicle asked its readers in an electronic poll the following question: “Was the resignation of University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill warranted following her testimony to Congress?” Of the 310 people who responded, 86% said yes, 10% said no, and 4% said they weren’t sure. Comments were submitted by 86 people. A few follow.

Was the resignation of University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill warranted following her testimony to Congress?

10% No

Her testimony under oath in front of Congress was abhorrent and a disgusting display of lack of morals. Good riddance, and I hope other spineless elite presidents follow suit. She should have been given a chance to change her view and policy. The large donor withdrawing his pledge did not allow this to happen. I did not like her smiling while she gave those awful answers.

Kohen: Continued from page 12

That moment wasn’t easy, let me assure you. A lot of people — including at least one Jewish student — said that having Nazis on campus was dangerous and that they presented a safety concern for members of minority groups who felt directly threatened. I felt it, too. It’s not comfortable to walk around campus wearing a kippah, as I do, when you know there are people on the same campus who say they hate Jews, “love violence,” and own a bunch of guns. There is an exhaustion that comes from being on high alert and also a real temptation to blend in, to remove the kippah. And what follows is a sadness and even an embarrassment, a desire not to be the sort of person who is concerned about someone looking at you from across the street

4% Not sure

Freedom of speech is no cover up for hatred. University policies around free speech have been inconsistent and hypocritical in recent years, and ultimately it is the responsibility of their presidents to ensure that the policies are clear and consistently enforced. Her inaction about the various antisemitic incidents on campus were more damning than her testimony.

86% Yes

She was completely tone deaf. She died on the hill of equivocation and moral cowardice. College presidents picking and choosing which groups to defend from hate is arrogant and appalling.

The other two college presidents need to resign or be removed as well. She was foolish to have listened to her counsel and should at least have been given the opportunity to fix things. It was warranted long before the congressional hearing. According to her testimony, the college procedures would only be broken if violence were actually accomplished. Mere verbal intimidation does not count. How horrible. PJC — Compiled by Toby Tabachnick

As a formerly proud Penn alumnus, sometimes change is needed at the top to indicate that the whole entity is ready to change course and that problematic issues will finally be taken seriously.

Her moral and intellectual obtuseness were astounding. Put another way, put any other group in place of Jews and calls for genocide, and what would have been her school’s reaction?

Chronicle weekly poll question: How much longer do you

and certainly not to be the sort of person who decides to hide their identity to avoid being called out, picked on, targeted. But I left the threat assessments to the professionals. I was pleased to see the campus stand up against bigotry, and I maintain that the University of Nebraska made the right call. A year after the initial conflict, the university was continuing to support students in having constructive conversations about diversity and inclusion — though under a different name because of a copyright issue related to “Hate Will Never Win.” What happened on my campus wasn’t easy, but it didn’t feel that difficult, either. Yet, in 2023, in response to demonstrations that repeatedly veer into antisemitism or allow for antisemitic comments, a lot of universities don’t seem to be very interested in holding big rallies against bigotry like Nebraska did in 2018.

Instead I see a lot of explaining that “From the river to the sea” could plausibly mean something positive rather than something genocidal. And this means Jews are feeling left alone, without the support that campus leaders offered to targeted minorities in the past. Jews are being asked to deal with a level of hostility that feels like targeted harassment due to its repetition, intensity and pervasiveness. And, rather than people telling us they’ve got our back, we’re being told, especially on social media and especially from people on the left, that perhaps we’re being overly dramatic about our feelings. The university presidents should have been able to explain that people can say odious things but that all of the rest of us must respond by calling out those things for being odious.

They should also have been able to explain that calling for genocide almost certainly would amount to harassment and an unsafe environment but that we have to work together to be clear about what is and what isn’t targeted harassment. Their inability to say these things is not someone else’s fault, and the message it sent to American Jews was received loudly and clearly. I’m grateful I heard a different message on my campus several years ago — and saddened for students today who aren’t on a campus where their classmates are encouraged to say “Hate Will Never Win.” PJC

think the current Israel-Hamas war will last? Go to pittsburghjewishchronicle.org to respond. PJC

Ari Kohen is a political scientist and the Schlesinger Professor of Social Justice and director of the Norman and Bernice Harris Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Nebraska. This article first appeared on JTA.

— LETTERS — Continuation of Israel-Hamas war is ‘immoral’

A recent opinion piece in the Chronicle labeled a call for a ceasefire of Israel’s war on Gaza “immoral” (Julie Paris, “Calls for a premature ceasefire are immoral and counterproductive,” Dec. 13, 2023). Other opinion pieces in the Chronicle have also identified a ceasefire as synonymous with support for Hamas, just as many rabbis in our community signed a letter to Rep. Summer Lee asserting that a ceasefire is “grotesque.” At present this war has killed almost 20,000 people confined to Gaza and destroyed hospitals, schools, homes and cemeteries, in addition to those maimed, orphaned and injured. Assertions of civilians being used as human shields are not exculpatory; this is an atrocity of violence brought about by extensive bombing of a densely concentrated population. How much of Gazan life has been destroyed; how little has Israel gained. It is a facetious and tremendously gross oversimplification to assert that a call for a ceasefire suggests support for Hamas. In fact, what is immoral is the continuation of such atrocity, and what is grotesque is the assertion that it is acceptable. Jared Magnani Squirrel Hill

Praise for 10/27 Memorialization Working Group

As a licensed social worker, I wanted to comment on the article “10/27 memorial to be built on unity, not unanimity” (Dec. 8). I was impacted and moved by the Chronicle’s description and capture of an evolving group — which is the Memorialization Working Group. Over the years I have been a member of groups, and have moderated them as well. So much of your portrayal of the participants is familiar: developing trust, listening skills, work to be done, different voices and opinions, not all will agree, and eventual respect and consensus. I am touched to read how this group is working toward the goal of memorializing their family members. They certainly appear to be doing the hard work of due diligence…. together. I can only commend them, and will follow their completion of the memorial project with much interest. Ed Sisenwain Pittsburgh

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

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DECEMBER 22, 2023

Life & Culture Cheese enchiladas: A quick weekday meal — FOOD — By Jessica Grann | Special to the Chronicle

s much as I love experimenting in the kitchen, I often find myself in a rut when it comes to weekday dinners, and I have to go into my notebooks to remind myself of what’s easy to make and pleases everyone at the table. I like to introduce different flavors to get my kids acquainted with various kinds of cuisine, and it’s hard to go wrong with Tex-Mex. This cheese enchilada recipe only takes about 15 minutes to prepare, which is perfect if you are short on time. The ingredients are all store-bought and simply combined at home, but these enchiladas taste like they were made with a lot of effort and love.

Ingredients:

2 packages canned enchilada sauce, red or green 2 packages cream cheese 1 ½ cups Mexican blend cheese, divided 1 small can green chiles, drained 1 package flour tortillas ¼ teaspoon salt

Enchilada sauce comes in two versions, red and green. I made this recipe with the green version because I love tomatillos and salsa verde. The red sauce also tastes great and has more of a smoked chili flavor. Experiment with both on different days to see what works best for you. If you’ve never had salsa verde, I suggest starting with the red version. A word about tortillas: Tortillas come in many different sizes and kinds. I like the fajita-size for this dish, but you can use any size. I avoid the large burrito-sized shells because they have a lot more surface and get a bit doughy. Corn tortillas also work with this dish, but instead of 6 to 8 large pieces, you will have many small ones. Be careful if using soft corn tortillas

p Cheese enchiladas

Photos by Jessica Grann

because they can easily crack. If you use corn tortillas, quickly run them under water for a second so that they are a little easier to roll up. Set the oven to 400 F and place the wire rack in the center of the oven. Lightly grease a 9-by-13-inch baking dish.

Put a medium-sized saucepan over low heat and add the cream cheese. Cream cheese can burn very quickly even on the lowest heat setting. If you set the cream cheese on the counter an hour before preparation, it will melt faster. Either way, don’t leave the kitchen

Chai

when you’re melting the cream cheese, and have a spatula handy to stir it frequently. Once melted, add 1 cup of Mexican blend shredded cheese and stir for a few minutes until combined. Take the pan off of the heat and fold in 1 can of drained green chiles. Pour about ¾ of 1 can of enchilada sauce across the bottom of the baking dish. Bring a cutting board next to the stovetop so you can prepare the enchiladas next to the pot. Lay a tortilla flat and add the filling. The amount of filling will differ depending on the size of the tortilla, but for fajitasize shells, spoon about ¼ cup filling onto the flat tortilla — just heap it toward the end closest to you as you’re working, and spread it to each side across the bottom, leaving about 2 inches of space on the sides. Fold up the edge that is closest to you, turning it away from you, then fold in each side to secure the cheese from leaking out during baking. Roll up the tortilla completely and place it seam down into the sauce-lined baking dish. Use your baking dish as a guide as to how wide to make the enchiladas. Fill the dish completely and pour the remaining 1 ¼ cans of sauce over the top of the enchiladas. Use a spoon to be sure that the edges are covered in sauce. Sprinkle with the remaining ½ cup of Mexican blend cheese and bake uncovered for 25 minutes or until the sauce is bubbling and the cheese is fully melted across the top. Let it sit for 10 minutes before serving to allow the cheese filling to firm up a bit. These enchiladas go well with Mexican red or yellow rice, which you can make easily while the enchiladas are cooking. Enjoy and bless your hands! PJC Jessica Grann is a home chef living in Pittsburgh.

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Life & Culture A good time for comedy: Eli Lebowicz to perform at shuls’ fundraiser for Israel — COMEDY — By Toby Tabachnick | Editor

li Lebowicz first took the mic as a standup comedian when he was a student at Yeshiva University in 2009. He got enough laughs to win the school’s annual comedy contest (yes, YU had an annual comedy contest) — and enough encouragement to hone his act and keep performing. Lebowicz will bring his decidedly Jewish act to Pittsburgh on Dec. 24, at “United in Laughter,” a fundraising event for United Hatzalah, hosted by congregations Shaare Torah and Poale Zedeck. The event begins at 5:30 p.m. at Shaare Torah and includes dinner. Lebowicz performs throughout the U.S. and Canada. While he has not yet been offered a Netflix special, he’s made peace with his place in the world of comedy. “I don’t have TV credits, but I’m like the Young Israel comedian, or the Chabad comedian,” he said, speaking from his home in Teaneck, New Jersey. “I’m the guy that you see at synagogues and shuls all over the country, but I don’t really give off the vibe of ‘Have I seen that guy on TV?’ It’s more like, ‘Have I davened next to that guy?’” Lebowicz, 34, has been doing standup since college, but has been making people laugh since high school, when he worked at Chicago’s Wrigley Field selling drinks and hot dogs while doing Harry Caray impressions at Cubs games.

p Eli Lebowicz

Photo by Daniel Landesman

He polished his craft during “bringer” nights at New York comedy clubs, where budding comics were invited to do a fiveminute set if they brought eight or 10 friends along for the ride. From there, he moved on to entertaining at sheva brachot and holiday parties, having developed a solid 30-minute set “for a Jewish crowd, with a Jewish spin on it,” he said. “There’s so much material, especially in the Orthodox life,” Lebowicz said. “There’s just so many things to laugh about.”

He began entertaining on college campuses, at Hillel centers and for other Jewish groups, to the tune of about 50 shows a year. Until last year, he had a series of day jobs while doing comedy on the side. Some of those jobs provided fodder for his act — including his stint in the marketing department at the Orthodox Union. “I would just get random phone calls, from people who would be like, ‘Hi. I’m in Costco and I want to know if these

hotdogs are kosher l’Pesach.’” Or, “‘Hi, I’m born in February 1928. When’s my Hebrew birthday?’” Now the father of two (and one on the way) is a full-time comic and he hasn’t looked back. Committing to comedy full time, Lebowicz said, has allowed him time to do podcasts and sketch videos in addition to standup, helping to shape his “comedy brand.” Lately, he’s been on the road doing shows around the country to help fundraise for Israel. It’s a good time for comedy, Lebowicz said. “It’s a little bit like COVID, where like people need a pick-me-up, because the last two months have been so heavy and so filled with a multitude of emotions of fear sadness, pain, anger,” he said. “And now it’s also fear of antisemitism. There’s so much going on that I very much encourage communities to try to have these kinds of events. It’s a night to get off your phones for a sec. Just because there’s the elephant in the room of what’s going on in Israel — especially because we don’t know how long this is going to go on — we just need a refresh, a catharsis.” At one of the first shows Lebowicz did after the war began, he was part of a comedy lineup and the price of the ticket was $36. “I said to the audience, ‘You know, $36 is pretty good for group therapy.’ We all just need this.” Registration for “United in Laughter” is at shaaretorah.net/event/comedy2023. PJC Toby Tabachnick can be reached at ttabachnick@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.

‘Curb Your Enthusiasm,’ TV’s Jewiest comedy, to end after upcoming 12th season — TELEVISION — By Andrew Lapin | JTA

decades-long era of Jewish comedy on television will come to an end next year, as “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” Larry David’s HBO comedy, is set to end after its 12th season. The imminent conclusion of “Curb” has been rumored for several seasons now, but a poster and press statement from David this week confirmed that its 12th go-around, premiering Feb. 4, will indeed be the show’s last. “As ‘Curb’ comes to an end, I will now have the opportunity to finally shed this ‘Larry David’ persona and become the person God intended me to be — the thoughtful, kind, caring, considerate human being I was until I got derailed by portraying this malignant character,” David’s statement reads. “And so ‘Larry David,’ I bid you farewell.” David’s particular blend of semi-autobiographical Jewish misanthrope humor has influenced much of television comedy since “Seinfeld,” the cultural watershed sitcom he 16

DECEMBER 22, 2023

p Larry David attends the “Curb Your Enthusiasm” Season 11 premiere at the Paramount Theatre in Los Angeles, Oct. 19, 2021. Photo by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic for HBO

co-created with Jerry Seinfeld, debuted in 1989. After that series went off the air, David went solo to premiere the heavily improvised “Curb” in 2000, taking a series of extended hiatuses but always returning to his kvetching alter ego. The full series is now streaming on Max.

Now 76, David has over the years populated “Curb” with a wealth of Jewish characters and plotlines, including the time he posed as an Orthodox Jew in an effort to weasel out of donating a kidney to a friend; the time he went behind his Jewish community’s back to dine

PITTSBURGH JEWISH CHRONICLE

at a Palestinian chicken restaurant; the time he accidentally arranged a meeting between a Holocaust survivor and a contestant on the reality show “Survivor”; the time Mel Brooks cast him in “The Producers” on Broadway; and, most recently, the time he stole a pair of “Holocaust shoes” from a Holocaust museum to wear on his own feet. Side characters on “Curb” have also become Jewish breakout stars in their own right, including Susie Essman, who told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in 2021 that she’s noticed the show has a large universal appeal despite often being specifically Jewish. “I’ve had every ethnicity, every race, stop me on the street telling me how much they love the show,” Essman said. “It’s the truth-telling that we do — that we basically say all the things that people are thinking but are afraid to say.” Details on the next season aren’t out yet, but life has imitated art since the last season: Presidential candidate and vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — who is married to “Curb” co-star Cheryl Hines — has made numerous comments linking COVID-19 vaccine mandates to the Holocaust or other antisemitic tropes. PJC PITTSBURGHJEWISHCHRONICLE.ORG

Life & Culture Bernstein, Oppenheimer and Barbie lead off a Jew-ish list of 2024 Golden Globe nominees — ENTERTAINMENT — By PJ Grisar | The Forward

efore we begin, a moment of interesting l’dor v’dor. On Monday the Golden Globes nominated actor Riley Keough for her role as a 1970s singer in “Daisy Jones & the Six,” while actor Cailee Spaeny is nominated for best actress in a motion picture drama for playing Keough’s grandmother Priscilla Presley in a film that takes place — in part — in the same era. Beyond this interesting piece of trivia, the Globes, after years of controversy involving alleged bribes and a pronounced lack of diversity, have elevated some quite Jewish fare for 2024, including marquee biopics about an American maestro, an American Prometheus and a Jewish American Plastic Princess. Bradley Cooper’s Maestro, about Leonard Bernstein’s complicated marriage, is nominated for best picture in the drama category, best actress for Carey Mulligan and best actor for Cooper, who is also nominated for director. Joining it is Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer,” nominated for best picture, best actor for Cillian Murphy, supporting actor for Robert Downey Jr. (playing Lewis L. Strauss, the very Jewish foil to the scientific lead of the Manhattan Project) and best screenplay and director for Nolan.

 Rachel Brosnahan is nominated for her role as Miriam “Midge” Maisel in “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” on Amazon Prime.

Photo courtesy of Prime Video

While they are forever yoked together, “Oppenheimer” will not compete directly with Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” in the best picture category, as “Barbie” is nominated in the musical or comedy category. They will square off in the best director field, best screenplay and a new category called “Cinematic and Box Office Achievement in Motion Pictures.” Jonathan Glazer’s stunning drama “The Zone of Interest,” about longtime commandant of Auschwitz Rudolf Höss, is nominated for

best drama, best non-English language picture and best original score, by composer Mica Levy. Glazer was snubbed for director. While “Maestro” largely backgrounds Bernstein’s Jewish music, another Jewish wunderkind, Mark Ronson, is nominated for best song twice for “Dance the Night” and “I’m Just Ken” from the “Barbie” soundtrack. He’s in good company with Lenny Kravitz (nominated for “Road to Freedom,” written for “Rustin,” a film with quite a few Jewish resonances) and Jack Black, who co-wrote the song “Peaches” for “The Super Mario Brothers Movie.” Jewish actors Natalie Portman, Joaquin Phoenix and Timothée Chalamet are nominated for their leading roles in the comedy or musical category for “May December,” “Beau is Afraid” and “Wonka,” respectively. Each nomination is a little strange in that “May December” is not a straight-ahead comedy, “Beau is Afraid” kind of defies classification and “Wonka” was somewhat notorious for having trailers that nowhere indicate the film is a musical. The late, great, and Jewish Robbie Robertson is nominated for his score for Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” a film also nominated for best drama, actress, actor, supporting actor and screenplay for Scorsese and Jewish scribe Eric Roth. In the television category, Rachel Weisz is nominated for her dual role of Beverly and

Elliot Mantle in the Amazon Prime remake of David Cronenberg’s “Dead Ringers.” Emma Stone nominated for best actress in “Poor Things,” is also nominated for her performance in “The Curse,” a show where she plays a Jewish convert and says the Shabbat blessings. Though lately controversial for their social media activity in support of Israel, some of which has been viewed as anti-Palestinian, Amy Schumer and Sarah Silverman are each nominated in the Globes’ new category for stand-up comedy. Silverman, who co-stars in “Maestro” as Leonard Bernstein’s sister, is nominated for “Sarah Silverman: Someone You Love” and Schumer for “Amy Schumer: Emergency Contact.” Rounding out TV, which features a raft of nominees for the valedictory season of “Succession” and just one for the farewell to “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” (Rachel Brosnahan for actress) are nominations for Jewish stars Jason Segal (for “Shrinking”), Natasha Lyonne (the “Columbo” homage “Pokerface”) and Eban Moss-Bachrach on “The Bear” as a character who came under fire for uttering the phrase “Jewish lightning.” The ceremony is set for Jan. 7, 2024. PJC This story originally appeared in the Forward. To get the Forward’s free email newsletters delivered to your inbox, go to forward.com/newsletter-signup.

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DECEMBER 22, 2023 17

Celebrations

Torah

B’Nai Mitzvah

Jewish unity is the cure

Lily Dora Neiman became a bat mitzvah on Dec. 16, 2023, at Congregation Beth Shalom. Lily’s parents are Megan and Merle Neiman. She is the granddaughter of Susan and Nathan Hausler, and Reva and Lee Neiman. Lily is a seventh grader at Community Day School where she excels as a student and as a soccer player for the CDS Lions. She avidly enjoys shopping and being silly with her friends and loves to ski and go horseback riding as well. Lily has participated in several charity, school and community-based activities, most recently as a student ambassador for the 10/27 Tree of Life commemoration. For her mitzvah project, she is producing and selling earrings made from post-consumer recycled products. All of her proceeds will be donated to No Dog Left Behind.

Oscar “Ozzy” Weisberg became a bar mitzvah on Dec. 2, 2023, at Temple Emanuel of South Hills. Ozzy’s parents are Rikki Hommel and David Weisberg. He is the younger brother of Marti Weisberg and the grandson of Susan and Richard Hommel, and Gail and Charley Weisberg. Ozzy was a rock star at his bar mitzvah. Not only did his voice not crack during his haftarah, but his humor shined through during the service as well. Ozzy isn’t only an honor student at Jefferson Middle School, but he also volunteers with the Miracle League of the South Hills where he shares his love of baseball with his teammates. He also lends his booming voice as an announcer as well. If you see Ozzy around the Burgh, wish him a mazel tov on a job well done!

Birth

Franki and Aaron Zimmerman of Stamford, Connecticut, are thrilled to announce the birth of their daughter, Riley Noa, on Nov. 27, 2023. Riley’s proud grandparents are Dr. Stuart Silverman of Squirrel Hill, Nan Silverman of Mars, Cantor Deborah Katchko-Gray and Dr. Scott Gray of Ridgefield, Connecticut, and Ron Zimmerman of New Rochelle, New York. Great-grandparents are Allene and the late Warren Gittlen of Harrisburg, and Audrey and the late Ralph Silverman of Oakland. Riley is named after her maternal great-grandfather, Ralph Silverman.

Wedding With great pleasure, Larry and Adrienne Savitz of Squirrel Hill announce the marriage of their daughter Jessica Savitz to Derek Grossman, son of Barry and Caryn Grossman of Long Island. Surrounded by family and friends from near and far, the ceremony and reception took place earlier this year at Congregation Beth Shalom in Squirrel Hill. Dr. Pamela Parker, sister of the bride, served as the matron of honor; Michael and Justin Grossman, brothers of the groom, served as best men. Following a honeymoon to Costa Rica, the couple are back home in White Plains, New York. PJC

oday is Asara B’Teves, the 10th of Teves. It is the day the Babylonian armies, led by King Nebuchadnezzar, laid siege on the holy city of Jerusalem in the year 3,336 from Creation (425 BCE), which led to the destruction of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem 31 months later. It is observed by fasting, mourning and repentance, with additional prayers and a special Torah reading and haftorah. Unlike the other three fasts commemorating the chain of events that culminated with the destruction of the Holy Temple and our exile, Asara B’Teves is the only one that can fall on a Friday, as it does this year. This means that while usually it is forbidden to enter Shabbos fasting, we do so this year, breaking our fast on kiddush after nightfall.

Our sages say that G-d provides the cure before the disease. When King Nebuchadnezzar surrounded the holy city, he forcibly brought about unity among its inhabitants. And this was in the city that unites all Jews, as King David describes it in Psalm 122: “Jerusalem that is built like a city in which all Israel is united together.” Furthermore, the city’s name — “Jerusalem” — means “complete awe” (yirah shalem). This is because those who visited Jerusalem and witnessed the service in the Holy Temple would be inspired in their fear of Heaven. Thus, the unity was in a place of “complete awe” — based on Torah, mitzvos, and holiness. Unfortunately, what was brought about by the siege wasn’t authentic, heartfelt unity. And G-d allowed the Babylonians to conquer Jerusalem and exile the Jews. Maimonides writes that the purpose of the four fasts marking these calamities is to arouse hearts and initiate the paths

The 10th of Teves reminds us that the way to end these calamities is through Ahavas Yisroel and Achdus Yisroel — Jewish love and unity, with “complete awe” — based on Torah and mitzvos.

Mazel Tov! Mazel Tov!

The reason for this fast’s stringency of repentance. So first and foremost, the compared to the other three is that it 10th of Teves reminds us that the way to commemorates the first incident in this end these calamities is through Ahavas series of calamitous events. The siege led Yisroel and Achdus Yisroel — Jewish love to the breach of the city walls 2½ years and unity, with “complete awe” — based on later, the destruction of the Holy Temple Torah and mitzvos. and the Jews’ exile on the 9th of Av, and True Jewish unity existed in the days of the assassination of Gedaliah ben Achikam King Solomon. After his reign, the Jewish the following Rosh Hashanah. He was people split into two kingdoms, Judah and appointed by the Babylonians to govern Israel. The 10 tribes of Israel were later a remnant of the Jewish people in the exiled, and eventually the kingdom of Holy Land, and upon his death those Jews Judah was as well. were forced to leave as well, solidifying The Torah portion we will read this the exile. Shabbat begins: “And Judah approached SPECIAL SPECIAL Although, after OCCASIONS 70 years of exile,DESERVE we him [Joseph]. ” This ATTENTION symbolizes the eventual But soofisthe a birthday, a graduation, is atospecial occasion…a birth,build unity did What return the Holy Land and two kingdoms. This union will an athletic victory, an a b’nai mitzvah, an engagement, the Second Temple, it wasn’t as glorious as come about with the academic arrival of Moshiach, achievement…anything thatbe deserves a wedding, anniversary? the first, missinganfive key components. And when all our fast days will transformed SPECIAL OCCASIONS DESERVE SPECIAL ATTENTION 420 Absolutely! years later, we were exiled again, this time into holidays. special recognition. so we is amerit birthday, graduation, today, What is a special occasion…a birth, by the Romans. Ultimately then, the 10th of But May thisatransformation an athletic victory, an academic a b’nai mitzvah, an engagement, Teves led to the current exile we are in. with the ultimate redemption! PJC no better to share your joy achievement…anything that deserves a And wedding, an anniversary? We know there that theisreason for the place special recognition. Absolutely! Rabbi Yossi Feller is the rabbi of the destruction of the Second Temple and our in... than current lengthy exile is baseless hatred. Chabad Jewish Center of Cranberry. This The cure to that, then, is Ahavas Yisroel: column is a service of the Vaad Harabanim of there to share your joy Western Pennsylvania. lovingAnd our fellow Jew. is no better place

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Rabbi Yossi Feller Parshat Vayigash Genesis 44:18 – 47:27

DECEMBER 22, 2023

the more there is in life to celebrate!

SEND YOUR CELEBRATIONS, MAZEL TOVS, AND PHOTOS TO: PITTSBURGH JEWISH CHRONICLE PITTSBURGHJEWISHCHRONICLE.ORG announcements@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org

Obituaries GRECH: Stephanie Grech, 82, passed away unexpectedly on Dec 7, 2023. Daughter of the late Martin and Ruth Rosenberg. Preceded in death by her husband, George. Survived by children Michele Schwimmer Schroeck (Robert) and Michael Schwimmer; sister Ellen Ostrow (Harvey); nephew Hal Ostrow (Amy), and their two sons Sam and Ari. She was a residential adviser in the mental health and drug addiction field for over 20 years, built a wonderful rapport with her clients and loved what she did. She was a dedicated and loving mother, sister, aunt, great-aunt and friend. Donations may be made to: Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh Foundation, 4401 Penn Avenue, Pittsburgh PA 15224; designate to Marty Ostrow Memorial Fund. HAUSMAN: On Dec. 16, Sarita B. Hausman, 90, passed in Atlanta, Georgia. She was preceded in death by her beloved husband, Edgar; parents, Saul and Esther Bond; and brother, Jerome (Sherman). Sarita is survived by her son Stuart and daughter-in law Doris, son Joel and partner Jennifer, godson Lee, daughter-in-law Diane, sister-in-law, Karen, nephew Michael, niece Alisa, grandchildren Samuel, Jonathan, Sarah, Benjamin and Becca, and great-grandchildren Micah, Caleb and Ellie. Services were held at Ralph Schugar Chapel, Inc. Interment Pliskover Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, a donation to the charitable cause of your choice is preferred. Her memory will be a blessing to all who loved her. schugar.com PJC

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Anonymous . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Arnold Kanselbaum Faye Bleiberg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bessie Bleiberg Faye Bleiberg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Max Mallinger Faye Bleiberg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Morris Krantz Hyla Caplan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Zelda Sadowsky Hal Coffey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Harry Coffey Hal Coffey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Raye Coffey Joan Finkel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . David S . Finkel Joan Finkel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Samuel Finkel Sylvia Pearl Plevin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Faye Schwartz Rhoda & Jay Gefsky . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Mollie Barnett Sherwin E . Glasser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Eleanor F . Glasser Gail & Fred Greene . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bessie Silverstein Perman Sharon Light Greenfield . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Racille Light Jean Horne . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Sheldon A . Cohen Rushie Leff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Hyman Mallinger Richard Linzer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sidney Linzer Randy Malt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Marian P . Malt Ted Pinsker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Nathaniel Pinsker Joan Privman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Maurice Margolis Rhoda Rofey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Leonard Rofey Paula Rofey Singer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Anna Ruben Sharon S . Snider . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dan Snider Marlene Terkel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Melvin Silberblatt Edris C . Weis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Harry Tannenbaum Susan & Robert Zohlman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Gilbert S . Goldman Cheryl Bloch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Janice Gay Barovsky

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

THIS WEEK’S YAHRZEITS — Sunday December 24: Trudi Danenberg, Mary Dine, Alfred Engel, Saul Franklin, Diane Friedman, Eleanor Glasser, Lena Goldstein, Saul M . Gordon, Tillie Green, Rena R . Labbie, Herbert Lenchner, Lillian M . Levick, Samuel Moses, Leonard Rofey, Lilly E . Rosenberg, Zelda Sadowsky, Hyman Schwartz, Marion Segal, Rachel Seidenstein, Kenneth Zapler Monday December 25: Darlene D . Beck, Harold E . Caplan, Abraham Cohen, Molly Crea, Jacob Harry Feingold, David S . Finkel, Samuel Goldblatt, Phillip Jacobson, Louis C . Klein, Leonard L . Launer, Sidney Linzer, Hyman Mallinger, Marvin L . Olender, Nathaniel Pinsker, Seymour N . Seltman, Belle Skirboll, Dorothy Stein, Lena Steinfeld, Arthur J . Stern, Ralph Morris Swartz, Sam Warmstein, Edith Wolinsky Tuesday December 26: Dora S . Birnbaum, Hyman Bleckman, Violetmae Caplan, Sarah Gerson, Anna Lebovitz Glick, Jack Green, Benjamin Hushan, Helen Karnold, Sonia B . Lewinter, Henry Mustin, Carrie W . Nevins, Rose Rosenberg, Irvin Skirboll, Leo B . Stoller, M .D . , Yetta Weiss, Jacob Wolk Wednesday December 27: Dorothy Augenblick, Mayer Berenfield, Harry Coffey, Isadore L . Cohen, Ronald E . Fishman, Ernie M . Friedman, Saul Garber, Sara Barbara Goldberg, Pauline Goldenson, Israel Heyman, Pearl C . Lazar, Samuel Levenson, Jerome Zachery Lieber, Morris K . Manela, Morris Nathan, Benjamin Raphael, Irwin Shapiro, Melvin Silberblatt, Joseph A . Simon, Esther Rose Singer, Dan Snider Thursday December 28: Simon Alpern, Nathan G . Bagran, Howard Jay Dunhoff, Joseph Elias, George Goldberg, Louis Gordon, Sera Herskovitz, Albert Lenchner, George A . Levenson, Beatrice Loeb, Morris Martin, Myna Shub, Rose Berkowitz Simensky, Esther Teplitz, Joan Wolfson Friday December 29: Herman Godfrey Bigg, Jacob Bloom, Esther Broad, Israel Buck, Samuel Davis, Albert Epstein, Sam Faigen, Mortimer M . Frankston, Maurice A . Golomb, Lillian Granoff, Elizabeth Kopelman, Samuel E . Latterman, Dr . Fred Laufe, Faye Lester, Sam Liebman, Katherine Greenberg Lincoff, Sam Melnick, Milton Moses, Bessie Silverstein Perman, Harry Rom, Ethel Sachs, Louis Seder, Anne Deutch Shapiro, Meyer S . Sikov, Seymour Solomon, Herman Spiegelman, Helyn R . Spokane, Ike Tepper, Mollie B . Weiss Saturday December 30: Albert Ackerman, Mollie Barnett, Julius Caplan, Jacob L . Cohen, Jacob Diznoff, Rose Friedberg, Morris Gross, Minnie Gusky, Gertrude P . Katz, Margaret Kopelson, Charles Lipsitz, Sylvia R . Litman, Irwin Luick, Maurice H . Margolis, Rose Steinman Morris, Philip H . Nevins, Dr . William Ratowsky, Kenneth E . Rosenberg, Bernard Roth, Belle Somach, Jennie Spokane, Rev . Alex Spokane, Nathan Stalinsky, Samuel Sidney Zelmanovitz

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PITTSBURGH JEWISH CHRONICLE

DECEMBER 22, 2023

Life & Culture Bring them home More than 100 community members gathered on the corner of Murray Avenue and Darlington Road in Squirrel Hill to demand the release of hostages held by Hamas since Oct. 7. The Dec. 17 demonstration featured remarks from Pittsburgh’s religious leaders as well as a public installation calling attention to the approximately 17 women who remain captives of Hamas. Red ribbons were tied to pairs of shoes and placed beside photographs of the women believed to be hostages. The vigils will be held each Sunday from 12 to 1 p.m. at the same location, until all the remaining hostages are released, organizers said. PJC

p Rabbi Yisroel Rosenfeld of the Lubavitch Center addresses the crowd.

p Rabbi Yitzi Genack of Shaare Torah speaks to the crowd assembled on Dec. 17.

p Community members gather in support of the hostages, now held in captivity for more than two months.

p The vigils are held each Sunday in Squirrel Hill.

DECEMBER 22, 2023

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Photos courtesy of David Dvir

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DECEMBER 22, 2023

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Community Press ahead

Yeshiva Schools of Pittsburgh Early Learning Center students learned about Chanukah by examining olives.

Chanukah is a holiday best spent with friends

The Friendship Circle of Pittsburgh celebrated Chanukah at Zone 28 on Dec. 11.

p Matti Frankel, Nochum Rittri and Rikki Greenberg

p Rabbi Mordy Rudolph lights the menorah while reciting a blessing.

Taking their talents to Dallas

Celebrating Chanukah in the South Hills

Photo courtesy of Yeshiva Schools of Pittsburgh

Squirrel Hill resident Gabi Kunzman and her dad, Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh President and CEO Jason Kunzman, traveled to Dallas for the DEKA Mile World Championship. Gabi placed fourth in the 14-17 Female Age Group. Jason placed 11th in the 50-54 Male Age Group.

p Going from strength to strength.

Photo courtesy of Jason Kunzman

Photo courtesy of The Friendship Circle of Pittsburgh

The Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh, Temple Emanuel of South Hills, Beth El Congregation of the South Hills and the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh celebrated Chanukah together at Temple Emanuel on Dec. 11. Families and friends enjoyed Chanukah Bingo, latkes and sufganiyot.

p Let’s keep the light going.

Photo courtesy of Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh

Time to celebrate

Eat a latke, show some love

p There’s a party going on right here. Photo courtesy of Jewish Women’s Foundation of Greater Pittsburgh

p Caleb Epstein, Avi Moses and Amit Levin are fixated on holiday fixings.

Jewish Women’s Foundation of Greater Pittsburgh Trustees from the Grantmaking Committee gathered on Dec. 10 to celebrate the successful completion of 2023 grantmaking.

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Chabad House on Campus and GIFT (Giving It Forward Together) welcomed approximately 40 students for a Chanukah dinner. The holiday event enabled participants to celebrate and assemble winter holiday kits for 145 local seniors.

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Photo courtesy of Chabad House on Campus

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