SJL New Orleans, August 2014

Southern Jewish Life P.O. Box 130052 Birmingham, AL 35213-0052

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Southern Jewish Life New Orleans Edition

August 2014

Volume 24 Issue 8

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For nine years, we have been honored to serve as New Orleans’ Jewish community news magazine. We are pleased to announce a new arrangement that will begin with the High Holy Days issue next month.

In recent years, the Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans has published an eight-page newsletter, “The Jewish Newsletter,” with information about the Federation and other community agencies — the Jewish Community Center, Jewish Family Service, Jewish Community Day School, Jewish Endowment Foundation of Louisiana and Tulane Hillel.

Starting next month, that newsletter will no longer be mailed separately, but will be incorporated as an insert to Southern Jewish Life. By doing that, the Federation will be able to stretch its campaign dollars further through savings on postage and printing.

Also, by being in the magazine the newsletter will be produced in color.

Content in the newsletter pages will continue to be up to the Federation and community agencies, while the rest of the magazine will continue to be an independent voice serving the New Orleans Jewish community.

The Federation used to do its own newspaper, as is common in smaller and mid-size communities across the country, contracting with an outside firm to produce the paper. For years I’d run into editor Gail Chalew, followed by Julie Schwartz, at national Jewish media conventions and we’d discuss events in the region.

Having published The Southern Shofar, later renamed Deep South Jewish Voice, since 1990, when Hurricane Katrina struck and the levees broke in 2005 we offered our services to the New Orleans community, filling in as the community paper and an online presence as long as the community wanted.

As the rebuilding process began, the company that the Federation worked with on their newspaper opted out of their arrangment, and we continued covering community events and the road to recovery — and letting the rest of the Jewish world know what was really happening in New Orleans.

Our post-storm coverage won a Rockower Award for Excellence in Jewish Journalism from the American Jewish Press Association.

More recently, our coverage of the New Orleans/Israel Partnership on Emergency Response and Medicine continued our string of Rockowers.

In 2009, we changed format from a tabloid newspaper to a glossy magazine to better serve the community, and changed our name to Southern Jewish Life.

Personally, it is a thrill to serve the New Orleans Jewish community, where my family roots go back to my great-grandparents, who are buried at Chevra Thilim on Canal Street. Our boys love being part of the JCC day camp every summer in Metairie.

Ever since I started in the Jewish publishing world, my goal has been to provide a quality publication that rivals those of much larger communities.

As always, I welcome your feedback, and with this new Federation arrangement we will continue to serve in new ways as the New Orleans Jewish community’s news magazine.

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A New Orleanian’s view from Israel

Southern Jewish Life

Publisher/Editor: Lawrence M. Brook, editor@sjlmag.com

More and more I realize how incredibly complex the political situation is here,Associate and Publisher/Advertising: Publisher/Editor: Lawrence M. Brook, now it is personal.

It doesn’t matter if you are Lee J. Green, lee@sjlmag.com editor@sjlmag.com Editor’s note: Katie Connell made aliyah politically on the right or the left.

ALL human from New Orleans one year ago and settled in New Orleans Bureau: Associate Publisher/Advertising: Beer Sheva in the Negev. She currently lives in life is precious and can add value to the world.

Alan Smason, alan@dsjv.com With that said, Hamas (whose name means Lee J. Green, lee@sjlmag.com an absorption center for new immigrants. This Cait Muldoon, Gail Naron Chalew “Islamic Resistance Movement”) has declared originally appeared in the weekly e-news of Creative Director: Ginger Brook, Creative Director: Shir Chadash in Metairie. This was written on itself to be a Sunni fundamentalist Islamic ginger@sjlmag.com movement with the goal of establishing an Ginger Brook, ginger@dsjv.com July 11.

Islamic Palestinian state in place of the state of Photographer-At-Large: Photographer-At-Large: A few days ago, on a beautiful afternoon I Israel. They establish jihad (holy war) as the Rabbi Barry C. Altmark Barry C. Altmark was driving in Be’er Sheva and pulled to a stop only means of solving the issue of Palestine, at an intersection across from the shopping and establish that the commandment of Contributing jihad Contributing Writers: Doug Brook Writers: mall. Simultaneously, as I heard Code Red is an individual religious duty incumbent Doug Brook sirens, one of the people in the car with me upon every Muslim. They refuse to recognize Mailing Address: Mailing Address: P.O. Box 130052, Birmingham, AL 35213 slowly said “why are those people running.” I Israel as the Jewish State.

P .O. Box 130052, have heard these sirens before during a drill, In short, Hamas is a particular group of NewALOrleans Birmingham, 35213 Office: but this time it was real. people that want to annihilate us. Hamas 3747 West Esplanade, 3rd Floor, I turned to my right, the driver of the car does not want peace. They want us out of the Metairie, LA 70002 Telephone: next to me rolled down the window with a Land of Israel. This is something that people Birmingham: (205) 870-7889 look of terror in his eyes and said in Hebrew: all around the world need to understand. FAX: (866) 392-7750 Telephone: “Sirens, those are sirens! Pull off to the side Israel is going to extreme measures to Birmingham: (205) 870-7889 and get out!” With sirens still going, there is a reduce the risk of collateral damage Story New Orleans: (504) 780-5615 and Tips/Letters: editor@sjlmag.com hard explosion directly above us. loss of innocent life, as well as bringing in Toll Free: (866) 446-5894 (866) 392-7750 At that moment, I remembered what to do humanitarian aid, food, medicine, and fuel to FAX: Subscription Information: if you are in a car and there is a rocket attack. the residents of Gaza. However, Israel needs Southern Story Jewish Tips/Letters: Life published monthly connect@sjlmag.com I realized that I am in a potential bomb if the to put a stop to the attacks and any further and is free by request to members of the Iron Dome failed. I hit the accelerator, pulled escalation buy defending itself.

Subscription Jewish community in our Information: coverage area of Life published the car over and commanded everyone to What is the historical reality, the reality Alabama,Southern Louisiana,Jewish Mississippi and NW monthly and is free request to members of the get out and get down on the side. People all today is that Israel is home for the Jews.

Florida. Outside thosebyareas, subscriptions Jewish community in our over were doing the same, lying down on the People flee and are rescued from countries, are $25/year or $40/two years. To coverage area of Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and NW pavement as the second rocket is intercepted such as Yemen, in which their lives are subscribe, call (205) 870-7889 or mail in Florida. Outside those areas, subscriptions by the Iron Dome. payment are to the address above. danger due to anti-Semitism. They are taken $25/year or $40/two years. To I looked around in a fuzzy, surreal blur. to safety here in Israel. subscribe, call (205) 870-7889 or mail The publisher is solely responsible for The faint smell of firework-like smoke jolted Some of my friends here in the absorption payment to the address above. the contents of SJL. Columns and letters me into reality. After a few minutes, all of center, recently rescued from Yemen, have represent the views of the individual the people looked at each other with the been through so much already. Traumatized The publisher is solely responsible for All articles that do not have a realization that it was beginning: The recent as their husbands and fathers have writers. the contents of SJL. Columns and letters been byline on them are written by the publisher. kidnapping and murder of Naftali Fraenkel, murdered, daughters and sisters kidnapped represent the views of the individual Allmakes articles do as nottohave Gilad Shaer, and Eyal Yifrah and the revenge and sold as wives, taken to Israel Southern Jewish Life nothat claims with writers. a byline on them are kidnapping and murder of Mohammed Abu nothing, now standing outside of the bomb the Kashrut of its advertisers, andwritten retains by the publisher.

Khdeir, followed by riots all around Israel had shelter crying waiting for the next siren. theIt’s right to refuse any advertisement.

Southern Jewish Life makes no claims as to finally escalated into a war. heartbreaking. When does it end for them? therates Kashrut of itson advertisers, available request. and retains This was how it began for me. Since July 9 Jews should be able to take refuge and beAdvertising safe the right to refuse any advertisement. (two days before this was written), over 320 in Israel.

Copyright 2010. All rights reserved, Advertising ratesofavailable rockets have been shot into Israel from Gaza, reprints only by permission publisher.on request.

I just had my one-year anniversary. I came 50 just since this morning. There have been to Israel for a more meaningful life by helping Copyright 2014. All rights reserved, reprints only by permission of publisher. many sirens, and I have heard and felt the to contribute the best I can to its development.

Philosophy: shaking of the Iron Done intercepting the The potential here is amazing, and I amTo part link the Jewish communities of the Philosophy: To link the Jewish communities rockets. My sleep has been interrupted in the of this history.

Deep South, tell you the fascinating of thetoDeep South, to tell you the last three nights, all around 2 a.m., with sirens People may think that I am crazystories for of one another, and to fascinating stories of one another, and and explosions. wanting to live here, and are wondering if I to document and preserve the news and document and preserve the news A feeling of tension is all over the country want to come back to the U.S. The answer events large and small, allofa part of the events large and small, all a part of with rockets reaching as far as north central is absolutely not. The rockets and terror rich culture of Southern Jewry. the rich culture of Southern Jewry.

Israel, terrorists trying to infiltrate from the reinforce how important it is to have a strong sea and by parachute, and for the first time, Jewish presence here. here in the south, Bedouins throwing fire Pray for our soldiers, pray for peace — Am bombs and rocks at cars. As Israel prepares Yisrael Chai. for what looks like a ground invasion, the end P.S. Code Red siren while typing this: Two is not yet near.

Rockets.

26 September 2010 Southern Jewish NOLA Life

By Katie Connell

Special to Southern Jewish Life

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August 2014

Southern Jewish Life

Front Porch

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Benefit concert rallies support for Israel: In a city known for music, it is only fitting that instead of a traditional rally to stand with Israel, a musical evening was held.

The Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans held “Music Over Sirens” on July 29, drawing over 125 to a benefit concert at the Howlin’ Wolf.

Israeli musicians Itamar Borochov and Jonathan Greenstein were joined by New Orleans artists Khari Lee, Doug Belote, Matt Lemmer and Michael Pellera. Lee and Pellera have taken part in musical exchanges to New Orleans’ Partnership2Gether community in Israel, Rosh Ha’Ayin.

Morris Bart emceed the event, saying “Music sounds so much better than sirens or silence. So it is with Israeli and New Orleans musicians that we want to spend this special evening together.”

Michael Weil said the war “is personal. It affects every Israeli. There is always someone you know who has been killed or wounded and every family member has someone called up now,” and there are family members from New Orleans serving.

Weil reminded the crowd that Gaza has not been occupied since Israel withdrew in 2005. Since then, “Hamas has spent $1.2 billion on rockets and tunnels. Each tunnel costs $2 million to construct. Imagine what hospitals, schools, parks and shelters could have been built with that money.”

Bart spoke of his first visit to Sderot, the town that has been in Hamas crosshairs for years. When his group arrived, they were told about the 15-second warning they get when a rocket is fired from Gaza. They were told to wear running shoes at all times and constantly look around to know where the nearest shelter is.

While there were no sirens during his visit, he said it was easy to discern the level of tension they had to live with on a daily basis.

A moment of silence was held for those on both sides who have been killed. “We mourn all the children, all those that have died in this unnecessary war,” Weil said.

Bart asked the crowd to say prayers “for all those that have lost their lives in the conflict and the many wounded; whether Israeli or Arab, Jew or Muslim.”

Bart was so enthused by the crowd that he said he was matching dollar for dollar what was raised that night. The event had raised $9,571 from donations at the door.

Proceeds will go to the national Federation “Stop the Sirens” campaign, and to Kibbutz Kfar Gaza to rebuild a playground that was destroyed by Hamas rocket fire.

The national campaign provides respite summer camps for children, special programs for the aged and infirm, as well as trauma

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August 2014

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Giving You Our Best Every Month It’s What We Do.

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Front Porch counseling.

Bart said Kibbutz Kfar Gaza is less than a mile from the Gaza border and has been under constant rocket fire. “All the children, students, foreign workers and older people have been evacuated to safety in the North.

No one is working the fields and they are fearful for the next rocket and especially from an attack by an underground tunnel.”

Bart read a letter from Tzachi Levy, a Kfar Gaza resident who described what life has been like for the last 10 years of rocket attacks. “Some homes and buildings have been destroyed. People have been injured and there have even been a few deaths. But we learned to live with that constant threat and overcome it.”

Levy thanked New Orleans for “your support and your love. And especially how you bring

your music to overcome in this war.”

Richard Neff closed out the evening by talking about the similarities between New Orleans and Partnership2Gether community Rosh Ha’Ayin, which is known as Israel’s city of music.

The Israeli artists for the benefit were brought in by the Israeli Consulate in Houston. The local musicians donated their time, and Howie Kaplan of Howlin’ Wolf donated the venue space, so all of the proceeds went to the special campaign.

A table was set up to design cards or send letters to Kfar Gaza or to Israeli soldiers. The Jewish Community Day School is coordinating a “New Orleans Children’s Letters to Israel Campaign” and will continue sending batches of letters as long as they come in.

The Federation also planned a phonea-thon for the emergency campaign in the following week.

Cantor Mintz welcomed to Touro: During the first New Orleans joint Reform summer service at Touro Synagogue this year, Cantor David Mintz was officially welcomed to the community.

Mintz started at Touro on July 8 and visited the Henry S. Jacobs Camp last month. Touro’s month of hosting services on the annual summer rotation began on Aug. 1.

A native of the Boston area, Mintz was recently ordained as a cantor at Hebrew Union College — Jewish Institute of Religion, where he earned a Masters in Sacred Music.

He also has a Bachelors of Music from Boston University and a Masters from the Manhattan School of Music.

He succeeds Cantor Jamie Marx, who is now cantor at Temple Sholom in Broomall, Pa., near Philadelphia.

Mintz worked at the Jewish Community Center in Manhattan and served as cantorial soloist at Temple Judea in Massapequa, N.Y. While studying at HUC-JIR, he served as the cantorial intern at Central Synagogue in Manhattan and Congregation Emanu-El of the City of New York, as well as student cantor at Adat Chaverim in Plano, Tex. While in cantorial school, he was the recipient of a fellowship in the Tisch Leadership program, which fosters transformational leaders in the Reform movement.

He also had a summer chaplaincy internship at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York, and was the recipient of a Fischl-Kohn Memorial Grant to travel to Prague with the Defiant Requiem Foundation to research his cantorial thesis on the music of Theresienstadt.

Through the Institute of Southern Jewish Life, Mintz toured several Southern communities as a cantorial student, including Temple Sinai in Lake Charles and Temple Shalom in Lafayette.

In October 2012, he was part of a week celebrating the heritage of Monroe’s Jewish community. Coordinated by the University of Louisiana at Monroe and Temple B’nai Israel, he gave a public concert, did a “meet and greet” on campus and led a discussion on Jewish music and culture.

In June, a week before moving to New Orleans, he and Deborah Reinhold Sacks were married. She is a Jewish educator, musician and community organizer.

She has joined the faculty of the Jewish Community Day School, where she will teach the weekly Torah portion through text study and creative arts. She has led teen trips to Israel, and spent a year working in Israel caring for Jewish and Arab children from abusive and dysfunctional families.

She has also been an educator at the Brandeis Collegiate Institute, a pluralistic spirituality program geared towards young adults’ exploration of Jewish identity through text, the arts, and creative spiritual practice.

Touro is known for its musical programming, highlighted by the JazzFest Shabbat every April.

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NOLA

Upcoming Events

Front Porch Federation Annual Campaign hits post-storm high: The Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans announced that the 2014 Annual Campaign set a post-Katrina record, bringing in $2,704,704.

The campaign was up $127,372 over the 2013 campaign, with 95 new gifts and 366 increased gifts.

The campaign was chaired by Brian Katz and Susan Good. Katz said he was “extremely proud to have helped this community to a post-Katrina record for the 2014 Campaign. The increase will allow greater support at a time when it is greatly needed locally, nationally and especially internationally.”

Good spoke about the dedication of the volunteers and said “We continued, as a community, to ‘Hit the Chai Note’ and by doing so made a difference in the lives of our fellow Jews here in New Orleans, in Israel and around the world.”

In February, the campaign Super Sunday that also brought in the most since the storm. On Feb. 9, $153,910 was raised, which was the highest since 2002.

While many communities have phased out Super Sunday phone-athons, New Orleans has stuck with it by popular demand. This year, there were 93 volunteers working the event.

The Federation also participated in the first GiveNOLA Day, where over 300 non-profits did online fundraising. The Federation came in 19th in funds raised, with $20,760.

Sunday, August 17 Hadassah Build-A-Bra Workshop Metairie JCC, 12:30 to 4:30 p.m.

JNOLA Family Night at the New Orleans Zephyrs Zephyr Field, 4 p.m. Tickets are $5, beers are $1 and kosher concessions from Kosher Cajun will be provided.

Temple Sinai Sisterhood Attic Sale Temple Sinai, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Also Monday, August 18, 9 a.m. to noon.

“Fiddler on the Roof” Sing-a-Long Baton Rouge Jewish Film Festival Manship Theatre, Baton Rouge. 2 p.m.

Sunday, August 24 AIPAC New Orleans Annual Event Rev. DeeDee Coleman, speaker Audubon Tea Room, 9:45 a.m. $36.

New JNOLA director: Miranda Larsen has been named the new manager of JNOLA, the young adults group of the Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans. A native of Crotonon-Hudson, N.Y., she received undergraduate and graduate degrees at Tulane. Her mother graduated from Newcomb in 1971, and after the levees broke the family came to JazzFest to support the city, returning every year since.

JNOLA was the combination over a year ago of several different Jewish young adults groups in the community.

The group holds regular programming and social events.

Monday, September 8 Morris Bart Sr. Lecture Series “New Orleans Memories: One Writer’s City” with Carolyn Kolb.

Uptown JCC, 11:45 a.m.

Sunday, September 14 Rhythm and Soul Annual Gala Jewish Family Service of Greater New Orleans Max Nathan, honoree Audubon Tea Room, 5 p.m.

Try-A-Triathlon Uptown JCC, 8:30 a.m.

Art bra workshop: On Aug. 17, New Orleans Hadassah will hold its second annual Build-a-Bra workshop. Art bras, some of which will be created at the workshop, and other breast-themed art pieces donated by professional and amateur artists will be displayed and auctioned at Bra-Veaux.

Bra-Veaux: An Uplifting Event is the chapter’s major fundraising event for the year. The fundraiser will be held in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month and everything raised from the event will be donated to breast cancer research.

This year’s event will be on Oct. 25 at 7 p.m., at the Lakefront Airport Terminal, which is being restored to its Art Deco appearance.

The event, which is being orchestrated by Co-Chairs Miriam Waltzer and Barbara Kaplinsky, will honor the memory of long-time, dedicated Hadassah Volunteer Pearl Daube.

“We are grateful to the Daube family. Their caring and generosity have allowed us to dedicate this event to Pearl,” Waltzer said. “Pearl was beloved by all and was an unbelievable source of strength over the years to our Hadassah organization.”

The August workshop will be from 12:30 to 4:30 p.m. at the Goldring-Woldenberg Jewish Community Center in Metairie. It will center on creating works of art from recycled bras, and volunteer artists are welcome to create a piece. Craft supplies and bras will be provided, though supplemental bras and materials are welcome. A donation of $10 is requested to cover the cost of refreshments and supplies.

NOLA

On June 19, JNOLA held a Thirtysomething(plus) Meet Up at TREO in New Orleans. The next JNOLA event is Jewish Family Night at Zephyrs Field on August 17.

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Front Porch The American Israel Political Affairs Committee will have its New Orleans annual event on Aug. 24 at the Audubon Tea Room at 9:45 a.m. Guest speaker is Rev. DeeDee Coleman of the Russell Street Missionary Baptist Church near Detroit. A New Orleans native, she is on the AIPAC National Council and regularly meets with members of the Congressional Black Caucus. In 2007 she was given the American Baptist Churches’ highest award, the Dahlberg Peace Award, of which Dr. Martin Luther King was the first recipient. Reservations are $36 and can be made by calling Kacie Penn at (832) 3807708 or emailing kpenn@aipac.org.

The Jewish Community Day School in Metairie announced it will celebrate its visionary founders and supporters at the school’s gala, Oct. 19 at Shir Chadash. “Some Enchanted Evening” will feature a tropical dinner and drinks, raffle auction, live auction and music by the Bon Operatit! Trio. The school’s 1996 founding will be celebrated, and proceeds will go toward new programming at the school.

Tickets start at $180 each, with higher giving levels available.

We don’t just list organizations and call it an annual guide…

Southern Jewish Life’s Chai Cotton is more than a listing of organizations, institutions and congregations…

It is a portal to the history of the Deep South Jewish communities of Louisiana, Alabama, the Florida panhandle and Mississippi, and a guide to the present.

Be part of this keepsake edition and show your support for Southern Jewish Life by advertising in this special issue.

Coming Soon!

To reserve your space in Chai Cotton 2014-15, Call (205) 870-7889 • Toll-Free (866) 446-5894 Email connect@sjlmag.com • Fax (866) 392-7750 8

August 2014

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Temple Sinai in New Orleans will have its annual Attic Sale on Aug. 17 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Aug. 18 from 9 a.m. to noon.

An “early bird” entry at 8 a.m. on Aug. 17 is available for $10. Items available for sale include everything from clothing to kitchen tools, from books to linens. Funds from the attic sale support projects by the Sinai chapter of Women of Reform Judaism.

The Army Corps of Engineering drainage construction near the Uptown Jewish Community Center is requiring a rerouting of traffic. Traffic on St. Charles heading downtown will be routed across the neutral ground to one lane on the lakeside between Octavia and Valmont, while Uptown-bound traffic will narrow to one lane. To enter the Uptown JCC, there will be a way to turn onto St. Charles from one lakebound lane on Jefferson Avenue.

JNOLA is hosting Family Night at the New Orleans Zephyrs on Aug. 17 at 4 p.m. Tickets are $5, beers are $1 and kosher concessions from Kosher Cajun will be provided.

The Baton Rouge Jewish Film Festival will present a “Fiddler on the Roof” screening and sing-along on Aug. 17, honoring the 50th anniversary of its Broadway debut. The 2 p.m. screening will be at the Manship Theatre, and lyrics will be provided at the door.

NOLA

B’ham Day School students support Lone Soldier alumnus in Gaza As the ground battle started in Gaza, students at Birmingham’s N.E. Miles Jewish Day School gathered to show their support of a Day School alumnus who is in the middle of the fight.

Corporal Asaf Stein, 29, is a member of the Golani Brigade.

Born in Israel, he grew up in Birmingham and earned his doctorate in biomedicine from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Then he moved to Israel and joined the Israel Defense Forces.

“A lot of people ask me why a 29-year-old man would join the IDF,” Asaf said recently on the IDF blog. “I tell them I just wanted immigrate to Israel and join the army. They understand me.”

The son of Susan and Michael Stein, Asaf was home in early July for what was to a three-week visit, but his trip was cut short by the callup.

He spoke to the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces at The Temple in Atlanta on July 10, then had to return to Israel the next morning.

Susan Stein is a teacher at the Day School, and the students have rallied around the family.

On July 21, a quickly-assembled group of Day School students assembled at the Bais Ariel Chabad Center to draw posters showing support for the Steins. Though it was the middle of the summer and many students were away, about two dozen came on a moment’s notice.

Michael Duvdevani said the evening was to “send a message to the Stein family that we as a community stand with them and support them.”

Asaf is what is referred to as a Lone Soldier, someone who serves in the IDF but who does not have any family in Israel. Lone Soldiers are paired with Israeli families for support, but for the soldier’s family abroad, there is no social structure supporting them emotionally as there is in Israel.

Duvdevani and Oren Azrad, a former Olympics swimmer for Israel now living in Birmingham, coordinated the event. Duvdevani explained that the event was one of three initiatives that started that week. He also set up a WhatsApp group, “Birmingham Supports Asaf.”

He made Asaf a member of the group, though he will not see any of the messages until he returns from Gaza.

Duvdevani also said that many reservists were called up with no notice, so they had no time to prepare or bring anything. He started a fundraiser on July 20 that would go toward buying essentials for the soldiers — toiletries, shampoo, underwear, socks — and by the next evening $4500 had been contributed.

The donations were being put to immediate use. He said a friend in Israel was fronting funds so he could bring the supplies to soldiers the next day, and Duvdevani would reimburse him with the funds raised.

They would be presented in the name of Chabad of Alabama, he said.

In 2008, Asaf was a counselor at a children’s camp in Nitzana through the Jewish Agency. That camp was established for children

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August 2014

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August 2014

from Sderot and other communities near the border with Gaza, who have dealt with years of rocket threats and dashing to bomb shelters.

At the time, he told the Birmingham Jewish Federation “I am grateful I was able to participate in a program aimed at giving these children a break from constant danger, and showing them that they are not alone; and, that the rest of Israel and Jews from all over the world will support them.”

He volunteered in Israel in 2009, and decided to stop just visiting, setting a goal of becoming a soldier in a combat unit, though he was much older than most entering the IDF. Through persistence, last July he was accepted into the Golani Brigade, one of 100 accepted out of 350 candidates. He told Israel Hayom that in a meeting with two highranking army commanders, they said that only four men close to his age had ever been selected to combat units. “So I’ll be the fifth,” he responded.

Ever since Asaf joined the IDF, the Birmingham Jewish community has been supporting its home-grown soldier.

For example, in December, Day School students sent Chanukah cards and raised money to buy sufganiot — Chanukah jelly doughnuts — for Asaf ’s group.

After the students and parents finished making posters of support at Chabad, the group drove to the Stein house to show their support.

With all of the students on the porch, Duvdevani told the Steins “we are all thinking about you, thinking about Asaf… we’re so proud of what Asaf is doing.”

Susan Stein said what they needed most is “prayers and good wishes.”

Afterward, she said they last heard from Asaf on the morning of July 16, when he told

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them that he was given three minutes to talk, and then the military would be taking his phone until he returns.

“I’m going to be gone for a few days,” she recalled him saying. “We’re just praying” and getting very little sleep.

Michael Stein showed a photo of his son with a large rifle, which he said generally is given to the taller soldiers. Because he was so good at navigation, that is his current role, so he and a partner are out in front guiding fellow soldiers.

It is a tense time for soldiers’ families, with Israel trying to find and expose the smuggling tunnels used to hide armaments, protect Hamas leaders and infiltrate Israel. The tunnel entrances are generally hidden in civilian areas, and it is estimated that the tunnel network cost hundreds of millions of dollars to construct.

On July 20, 13 members of the Golani were killed in Shejaiya, from where a large proportion of missiles had been launched at Israel. One of them was Sean Carmeli, a Lone Soldier from South Padre Island, Tex. Carmeli was buried in Haifa. With his parents on the way from Texas, the Maccabi Haifa soccer team put out a call to support the Lone Soldier by attending his funeral; the turnout was estimated at 18,000.

For Duvdevani, the current conflict also hits home. He grew up on Moshav Talmei Yosef, a couple of miles from the Gaza border.

His parents and brother still live there. While there has been the threat of Hamas missiles for years, he noted that the moshav was the “second line” of communities from the border and somewhat removed from the infiltration threat posed by tunnels under the border.

His mother, Margaret Kartus Duvdevani, is a Birmingham native. In 2012, the Birmingham Jewish community worked with Operation Lifeshield to place a rocket shelter in the moshav.

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August 2014

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As the war in Gaza continues, Rosh Ha’Ayin is taking part in supporting the soldiers as the city also deals with numerous Code Red alerts of incoming missiles.

Danny Shani, who chairs the Rosh Ha’Ayin-New Orleans Partnership, and his friend Ziv Parwar, have made trips to visit troops in the South and deliver goods to them.

Rosh Ha’Ayin is New Orleans’ Partnership2Gether community and Birmingham’s sister city in Israel.

On July 22 Shani and Parwar took 1,000 pairs of socks, 1,000 cans of drinks, ice cream, snacks and cakes from a Rosh Ha’Ayin bakery to the soldiers. They visited several units and also distributed shampoo, deodorant and soap.

As noted in a post to the Partnership Facebook page, “The soldiers are tired but motivated to continue to defend Israel.”

One of the soldiers commented that he never though he’d “get an ice-cold Coke here, while fighting.”

Their final stop was to the unit of a friend’s son, but he had been injured shortly before their arrival and in fact had unknowingly seen his ambulance to Soroka Hospital in Beersheva leaving as they arrived.

After distributing goods to that unit, Shani and Parwar went to Soroka to visit the soldier, who had inhaled smoke from a fire that had broken out at their position and had respiratory tract burns. “Luckily the injury is not severe and he hoping to return soon to his friends and continue the activity,” they reported.

Previously, the pair had raised funds for a July 11 trip where they brought pizzas and drinks, along with underwear. They raised over $15,000 for that trip, including a $2,000 allocation from the Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans and local leadership.

The food and beverages they distributed were purchased in Ofakim, a town in the southern part of Israel that has lived with incoming missiles and struggled economically due to the uncertainty. In what is likely an unintentional nod to the relationship with the Southern United States, many of the soft drinks were RC Cola.

Shani said “I was moved by the soldiers reactions when we got there, they ran to us happy to get the food and drinks, but you could tell they were much happier about us caring for them. The hugs we got from the soldiers were our treat.”

One of the volunteers who made the trip south noted that when he returned to Rosh Ha’Ayin there was a rocket attack. He heard the siren before he even got out of his car and dashed to his home’s shelter. “After about a minute a loud explosion sounded very close to the house.”

They started getting messages on WhatsApp, then started receiving pictures. They heard sirens as the fire department arrived in the area to extinguish the fire, which was not far from his house.

After 10 minutes he left the shelter. His home was not damaged and nobody in Rosh Ha’Ayin was hurt.

On July 17, it was reported that three Israelis were hurt trying to run to shelters, as well as a person in Rosh Ha’Ayin who was “hurt from panic.”

On July 25, Iron Dome intercepted two rockets over Rosh Ha’Ayin and three over neighboring Petach Tikva.

Donations for future Rosh Ha’Ayin trips to the troops are being collected online.

You can relax…

Chabad to debut in Mississippi

New emissary coming home to Gulf Coast And then there was one.

With Rabbi Akiva and Hannah Hall moving to the Mississippi Coast this month to set up Chabad of Southern Mississippi, South Dakota is the only state in the country without a Chabad presence.

Mississippi’s Jewish community is estimated at 1,600; South Dakota has around 350 Jews.

What makes the establishment of Chabad in Mississippi more unusual is that Hall will not need a map to find his way around — he went to high school in Ocean Springs.

Hall, who was raised by a Rabbi Akiva and Hannah Hall with Jewish mother and non-Jewish daughter Leah father, said his family was always Jewishly active and connected to the community. While visiting relatives in Las Vegas, he attended Camp Gan Israel at Chabad there.

“That was my first exposure to a full Torah lifestyle, and I really took to it,” he said.

Around his Bar Mitzvah age, the family became close with Rabbi Mendel Rivkin of Chabad in New Orleans.

While in high school, he started observing Shabbat and keeping kosher, making weekly trips to stay with the Rivkins over Shabbat. In 2007, at age 18, he coordinated what was considered Mississippi’s first public Chanukah menorah lighting ceremony, attended by Gulfport Mayor Brent Warr. The ceremony has been repeated in recent years, and he and Rivkin have also visited the Fort Polk Army Base on Chanukah.

“After I finished public high school, I was looking to go to a yeshiva,” Hall said.

Hall said his family has been supportive of him. His father, Ron, is the regional director of guest experience at MGM Resorts International. His mother, Lara, was active in theater and died in 2009 at the age of 41; she was buried at the Beth Israel cemetery in Biloxi.

Just as Hall was finishing up his rabbinic degree, he was introduced to Hannah Black, who had grown up in another small Jewish community: Bakersfield, Calif., where her family belonged to a Reform congregation. After Chabad opened there when she was 10, the family became more involved and she started attending a Jewish school in Los Angeles at age 14.

They were married in the fall of 2012. The Rivkins and several others with New Orleans connections attended the wedding in Los Angeles.

After the wedding, the Halls lived in Crown Heights before becoming Judaic teachers for a family in an area of California where there was no such opportunity.

As the Halls were finishing up their commitment in California they started looking at different options. Rivkin told him that there was an opportunity to start a Chabad House in Mississippi, “and you have a background in the area.”

“The idea of going on shlichus,” becoming a Chabad emissary, “wasn’t necessarily something I had in mind,” he said. But he figured if he didn’t take it, it might be a while before someone else did, “so it was

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our responsibility to accept it.”

He added, “we felt that we had been given an opportunity and a mission that was unique to us, and couldn’t decline such a responsibility.”

The Mississippi center will be linked with Chabad of Louisiana, but will be autonomous.

Hall’s base will be the Gulf Coast because that is the area he is most familiar with, but he hopes to branch out to places like Hattiesburg and Jackson. Biloxi is also a tourist area, and there are numerous Jews serving at Keesler Air Force Base.

They are moving the first week of September, and likely will have a Sukkot event as their formal introduction to the community. They plan to renew old friendships and network in the community to establish relationships.

They plan to have people over for Shabbat dinner and lunch, but are not anticipating holding services or a minyan right away.

“People are loyal to their synagogues,” Hall said. “We’re not coming there to compete or offer the same programs” as Beth Israel in Gulfport.

He plans to supplement “what is already there” and offer a resident rabbinic presence that has not been in the area before. He said the likely offerings will be adult education and Torah learning, while also providing outreach to the unaffiliated and to tourists.

He said the opportunity “to bring Jewish people close to Torah and chassidus is quite remarkable. In addition, my family still lives there, which will allow us to spend much more time with them than we were able to in the last few years.”

Rivkin said “We are excited about this unique opportunity the the Halls have. We believe that they will do a great job working with the existing Jewish presence and the people of the Gulf Coast Jewish community.”

Mobile also gaining Chabad presence Just days after it was announced that there would be a new Chabad center along the Mississippi Gulf Coast, the Mississippi center picked up a new neighbor.

Rabbi Yosef and Bina Goldwasser are setting up Chabad of Mobile this month after visiting the community earlier this year. While there have been several visits to Mobile by traveling Chabad rabbis, Goldwasser said Rabbi Yossi Posner from Chabad of Alabama in Birmingham was interested in seeing someone move there.

Goldwasser hopes to open a Chabad House that “should be a home where every Jewish person could feel welcome regardless of their background or affiliation,” he said.

Goldwasser visited Mobile for Chanukah and met with many people in the community.

They “were very positive” about it, he said. He went back a couple of moths later and led a class on Chassidism, and held a Purim party.

They are moving to Mobile from Crown Heights with their two-year-old son, Menachem Mendel.

Goldwasser was a Day School student in his native Pittsburgh, then went on to yeshiva in New York and France. Bina Goldwasser was raised in North Miami Beach, then attended high school in Chicago and women’s seminary in Tzfat. She has worked in Jewish day camps in four states.

They plan to provide classes, community events, Shabbat and holiday meals and other

Southern Jewish Life

services to the community.

Mobile’s Jewish community numbers roughly 1,200. Goldwasser said he has already met with the Mobile Area Jewish Federation leadership and Rabbi Steven Silberman of Ahavas Chesed. He also said that in his visits he met with many who are not currently affiliated in the community.

He is eager to expand the availability of kosher foods in the area, and will be working with Rabbi Yeshayahu Tenenboim from Chabad of the Emerald Coast in Destin.

“We are excited to fulfill our life’s dream by putting our skills, passion for Judaism and love of people into serving the spiritual needs of the Jews in Mobile with innovative, fun, and informative Jewish programming with a personal touch,” Goldwasser said.

Their one question for Mobile is “what can we do for y’all?”

Bentonville congregation celebrates 10 years while planning new home While many small-town congregations struggle as their memberships age, a Jewish community continues to grow in northwest Arkansas.

Congregation Etz Chayim in Bentonville, Ark., is celebrating its 10th anniversary this month after closing its building and taking down the mezuzahs. But for this congregation, that’s a good thing.

Michelle Malashock, immediate past president of Etz Chayim, said when the congregation bought its previous location in 2005, “they never thought we would be here this long.”

On July 27, congregants took down the mezuzahs and the Eternal Light and said Shehecheyanu “as a nod to new possibilities.”

Many of the religious items have been put into storage temporarily.

Susan Abrahams, the congregation’s treasurer, said it was “a great starter home” but “we have outgrown it and we are ready for the next.”

The tipping point, they said, came last August when it poured all night. Malashock had a “sinking feeling” knowing that the building

was lower than the surrounding area, and sure enough she got a call that “it’s water everywhere” in the building.

With Rosh Hashanah fast approaching, “we had a wonderful offer to move for the High Holy Days,” and though the building wasn’t completely unusable, concern that another rainstorm could happen closer to the holiday without a backup plan in place led the congregation to ac- Etz Chayim’s “starter building” cept the offer.

With a temporary home, Etz Chayim was That temporary arrangement with First Christian Church to use their Waterway lo- able to list their property and start thinking cation has “formed into a long-term relation- about their next building. They did have an ship,” Abrahams said. The church is located in offer earlier this year but rejected it because what was originally intended to be a stable for it was not in line with what the congregation a horse-themed development, and is set up in needed. With the July 27 ceremony done, it is an informal setting for coffeehouse-style ser- now on the market again.

Malashock said the new building will likely vices.

Etz Chayim works with the church on many be flexible in its design and available for other initiatives, Abrahams added. “They had what religious groups to use.

The growth of Bentonville’s Jewish comwe would call Mitzvah week, and we participated in that,” and the congregation donates munity came with the explosive growth of the Bentonville area as a whole, due to one factor to several of their initiatives.

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August 2014

15

Delta Jewish Open including LSU reunions The 27th annual Jay Mosow Memorial Delta Jewish Golf Open will have several new additions for 2014. The fall event is a reunion for Jews from Mississippi Delta communities, and this year it will also be a reunion for ZBT and AEPhi at Louisiana State University.

The Open will start with the annual steak dinner at Hebrew Union Congregation in Greenville on Oct. 18. A social hour starts at 6:30 p.m., followed by the 7:45 p.m. dinner, during which mulligans may be purchased

and teams are announced. There are also prizes and drawings. The golf tournament will be on Oct. 19 at 8 a.m. at Greenville Country Club.

The weekend is also the Greenville Hot Tamale Festival.

The tournament is a four-person scramble format, and proceeds benefit the Henry S. Jacobs Camp and the Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life.

Registration information will be distributed soon.

Etz Chayim’s ark with its roots on the town square, in a building with the words “Walton’s 5-10” on the front.

That storefront is now a museum about the history of Wal-Mart. In recent years, vendors and suppliers have opened up shop there, bringing an incredible diverse population to the area, and many have been Jewish.

Initially, the handful of Jews traveled half an hour south to Fayetteville for services, but soon figured that there were enough to support their own congregation.

In the summer of 2004, a group of 15 families established CEC, as they call it. Soon there were 35 families involved, and the numbers continued to climb.

The area also attracted a Chabad family.

Rabbi Mendel Greisman set up Chabad of Northwest Arkansas in neighboring Rogers.

Etz Chayim services started at the Bentonville Boys and Girls Club. In 2005 they converted a former Assembly of God church into a synagogue, and welcomed representatives of the Baptist, Catholic, Muslim and Hindu communities to the dedication.

Malashock said Bentonville “has totally embraced us. Everyone is so interested in what we do.”

The congregation has not affiliated with a particular movement because of a diversity under its roof. Some members keep kosher while others come to services once a year.

Since 2006, Rabbi Jack Zanerhaft has traveled from Tulsa once a month to serve the congregation.

After it opened, Etz Chayim received numerous items from small-town Arkansas congregations that were disappearing. The state’s Jewish population is currently estimated at 1,725.

Many items were contributed from Temple Beth El in Helena, which closed in 2006. Beth 16

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Come See Our New Bar and Expanded Dining Room Perfect for private parties and other simchas Israel in El Dorado gave them a Torah, which they later found out had originally been brought to Camden, Ark., by the Feibelman family in 1938 as they fled their hometown in southwestern Germany. They took their congregation’s Torah with them before the 400-year-old congregation was destroyed.

The Torah and ark are now housed at Waterway.

This past January there was a ceremony welcoming 11 new families into the congregation — but while the congregation is growing, it is not growing exponentially.

Malashock explained that there is a lot of turnover, because many executives are sent to Bentonville for just a couple of years, then they transfer away. The congregation currently has about 55 families, and that number is starting to increase as more people elect to stay longterm.

But the new congregational board is mostly people who have arrived in the last couple of years. Only one board member has been around since the beginning.

Malashock is from Kansas City, Abrahams came to Arkansas from Atlanta.

With a young-skewing congregation, Etz Chayim has far more Bar Mitzvahs than funerals. The 30 students in the religious school make it the second largest in the state.

That was one of the problems with the old building — there were two small classrooms. Just before the flood, a closet at the entrance was being converted into a third, even smaller classroom.

As part of the long-term building plan, Etz Chayim is embarking on a campaign called ReJEWvenate Bentonville. The goal is both to raise money for a new building and to raise engagement and activity within the community.

The 10th anniversary celebration will be on Aug. 22 at 6 p.m. at Avondale Gardens. The Shabbat dinner will be catered by Kosmos Greek restaurant, and many founders who have since moved on to other communities will attend. Malashock said it was scheduled so local members would be back because school will have started, but former members along the East Coast could travel because school has not yet started for them.

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Beth Israel in Gulfport will celebrate the fifth anniversary of its new post-Katrina building on Aug. 24 at 5 p.m. Representatives visiting from the Jewish Federations of North America include Richard Klein and New Orleans’ Julie Wise Oreck. Other community leaders who were instrumental in the rebuilding process will also attend.

The previous Beth Israel location was in Biloxi, two blocks from the beach. The building was inundated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and rendered unusable. The new location in Gulfport is several miles inland.

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Brandt leaving Jacobs position Gary Brandt, Senior Assistant Director of the Henry S. Jacobs Camp in Utica, has announced his plans to leave his current position soon after the summer season concludes.

Brandt’s announcement comes as the Jacobs Camp community says goodbye to current camp director Jonathan “J.C.” Cohen, who will also be leaving at the conclusion of the summer. A farewell event for Cohen is scheduled for Aug. 9.

Incoming Camp Director Anna Herman, who is already on site in Utica spearheading a comprehensive transition process, noted that “to the current camp community, J.C. and Gary are respected and viewed as inspirational leaders.”

Brandt has served as assistant camp director since April 2009, and has been one of the longest-serving assistant directors in the camp’s 45-year history. During his tenure at Jacobs, Brandt worked to institute a range of eco-friendly improvements, transformed the camp’s staff training model, and traveled many miles to recruit campers.

In October 2013 he completed the Yitro Fellowship Program, a professional development seminar sponsored by the Foundation for Jewish Camp.

Brandt said that during his time at Jacobs Camp “I have learned an immense amount about how to be the kind of leader that helps others grow and learn. To do this I have had to develop a lot of patience, and cultivate my listening and communication skills. I have found fulfillment in helping create a program and community that has pushed our campers to develop their identities, explore Judaism in meaningful ways, and make lifelong connections.”

Herman has already begun the search for new assistant directors, with hopes of filling the positions by summer’s end.

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The Union of Reform Judaism announced its second group of URJ Service Corps Fellows, bringing experiential camp education to 38 Reform institutions throughout North America. Three Fellows from the Henry S. Jacobs Camp in Utica will be serving in the region this coming year. The Ramah system has not announced its Fellows as of press time.

Ivy Cohen will work with the Reform congregations of Greater New Orleans — Sinai, Touro and Gates of Prayer. She has been involved in URJ camping for 18 years and this summer was her first at Jacobs Camp, where she was program director. She hopes to incorporate her hobbies of cooking, the outdoors and travel into programs that show the diversity of experiences that camp offers.

Julia Solomon will work with Birmingham’s Temple Emanu-El for the second year in a row. Solomon has been a camper and counselor for 10 years and plans to start nursing school in 2015.

Alex Shindler will work with Temple B’nai Israel in Little Rock. He has been counselor and sports department head at Jacobs Camp for two years.

The Service Corps is a joint venture between the URJ and Ramah camping movements to provide camp-style programming throughout the year outside the camp setting. Though each Movement runs their own cohort, they share professional development programs and materials, and learn from one another.

The Ramah movement started the program four years ago and the Reform movement joined last year. It has been recognized by Slingshot as an innovative program in the Jewish world.

The young adult educators work 4 or 5 hours per week in the communities, promoting the concept of Jewish summer camping.

Claiming an unexpected mitzvah Fla. rabbi finds seven sets of tefillin at Scottsboro’s Unclaimed Baggage When Rabbi Uri Pilichowski and family stopped in Scottsboro at the Unclaimed Baggage Center on July 2, it was just another interesting place to see on their cross-country adventure.

It quickly turned into much more than that for the Boca Raton, Fla., family, as they found seven pairs of tefillin, setting off an Internet odyssey to return the sets to their owners.

Unclaimed Baggage purchases truckloads of suitcases from airlines, rental car companies and unclaimed cargo after the respective carriers have exhausted all avenues to return the lost items to their owners. The items are sold at the north Alabama store, and unsold items generally wind up going to charitable organizations.

Pilichowski’s wife, Aliza, had read about the store and figured it would be an interesting place to visit. They were driving from Baltimore to visit her sister in Memphis, and Scottsboro “was only slightly out of the way,” he said.

Four years ago, they set a goal of visiting all 50 states by the time their daughter Avigayil graduated from high school. Since then they had moved from California, where he was assistant rabbi at Beth Jacob in Beverly Hills, to Florida, where he was at Boca Raton Synagogue and started an Israel advocacy group for high school students.

At the start of this summer they had been to 35 states — and had taken Alaska and Hawaii out of the challenge. With their decision to move to Israel later this summer, “it put a rush on our plans” to hit the remainder of the Lower 48.

Pilichowski said his wife found the sets of tefillin, which were marked at $45 each. “She immediately started crying” because she was sad to see them unclaimed. She quickly called him over to see what she had discovered.

He noted that in Jewish law there is a prohibition on turning away from a lost item, and

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Two sets of tefillin had been handed down by the Lubavitcher rebbe’s former chef

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a commandment to try and return items to their owners.

“We bought them all,” he said, and they quickly took pictures in the store and posted their find on Facebook, with “HELP! HELP! HELP!… We found Tefilin!!! People are missing their tefilin! Please share this entire post.”

That post was shared over 1700 times, and within a day, six of the seven sets had been claimed.

The name “Abie Malka” was on two pairs of the tefillin, so Pilichowski contacted Yossi Malka, a fellow counselor from several years back at a Passover camp in Ukraine.

Yossi Malka confirmed that they were indeed his oldest son’s, having been given to him by his grandfather, Dovid, shortly before his passing in 2011, in anticipation of Abie’s Bar Mitzvah. They became lost in Charlotte, N.C., on a Passover trip to Cancun.

Dovid Malka of Crown Heights was a chef for the Lubavitcher rebbe and Oholei Torah.

When they were lost, Yossi Malka explained to the New York Daily News, “it was devastating. I did not want to share it with the rest of my family.” He even returned to the Charlotte airport to search the lost-and-found.

Though six pairs were identified quickly, the last pair proved more challenging. It was the only one that did not have a name or initials.

According to VIN News, an Israeli man whose daughter is friends with the Pilichowskis reposted the story on Facebook and then set out to find the owner.

A sticker on the tefillin indicated they had been checked at a store in Holon, so Ami Mintzer contacted the store’s owner, who found the sofer who had checked the tefillin. He was able to verify that they beto Emilion Maimon of Bat Yam, whose suitcase was lost while 3:54longed PM traveling from Mexico to Denver last December.

In all, two pairs belonged to Israelis, the Malka sets went to Los Angeles and the others were reunited with owners in New York.

In a post reflecting on the odyssey, Pilichowski said “After a tragic week, in which our people collectively sat in mourning over three kedoshim, the speed in which the owners were found speaks not only to the power of crowdsourcing, but to the importance of following God’s commands, the resilience of our people, and our nation’s ability to come together in good times and bad.”

He added, “Thousands participated in this mitzvah, and it is a tribute to them that the owners were found.”

After leaving Memphis on July 8, the Pilichowskis headed back to Boca to get ready for their Nefesh B’Nefesh flight to Israel — with one more stop in Scottsboro.

“No more tefillin” on the return visit, he said. But “they knew what we were talking about this time.” Anyone who wants to look for sets of tefillin in the future should check the jewelry department, he added.

Because they are moving to Israel, this will likely be his last time through Scottsboro.

A set of tefillin “is more than a purchase, it’s sentimental value,” he said. “If you got it for your Bar Mitzvah, that’s your Bar Mitzvah pair.”

More tefillin found

Shortly after this story broke, Rabbi Laibel Berkowitz of Chabad of North Alabama in Huntsville decided to visit Unclaimed Baggage.

Sure enough, he found four more pairs.

The first of those to be claimed belonged to a Shaliach at Chabad of Oregon.

Berkowitz said “I also arranged with the management that if any more come in to contact me directly and I will buy it from them.”

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Waffles on Maple, the New Orleans area’s newest kosher establishment, opened in the spring, becoming the first kosher dairy restaurant in the area.

Manager Zev Attias said he and owner Rotem Dahan had discussed opening a venture at the Maple Street location some time back. When the space became last December, they decided to try something Dahan had seen while visiting Israel last summer.

In Jerusalem, Dahan came across a waffle establishment that primarily sold to students in the area, and felt something like it would do well near Tulane University. While waffles aren’t usually the first thing that comes to mind for kosher establishments, they have a universal appeal.

“We took it to the next level and added the savory waffles,” Dahan said, and transformed the front of the building at 7712 Maple Street into an eye-catching waffle motif.

The restaurant has a selection of waffles that stay on the menu and others that are featured every so often. Last month, they added personal pizzas to the menu, and for those looking for something lighter, crepes are available.

They decided not only to make the restaurant kosher, but to go the additional step and make it Cholov Yisrael, since it is close to Uptown Chabad. Chabad Rabbi Yossie Nemes and Anshe Sfard Rabbi David Polsky oversaw the certification.

Cholov Yisrael refers to dairy products that come from milk that was milked under the supervision of an observant Jew. The tradition came from centuries ago when it was common for farmers to mix the milks of various animals, including non-kosher ones. With modern labeling laws and governmental inspections it is assumed by most that this problem no longer exists, but some still adhere to the stricter standard.

Being Cholov Yisrael means “we cater to Reform Jews to very Chassidic,” as well as non-Jews, Attias said. He added that because no dairies in the region are Cholov Yisrael, they have to import those ingredients from Miami or New York.

Other ingredients are locally sourced, and many of the items take on local flavors.

Sweet waffle options include “Waking in New Orleans” with crushed pralines, whipped cream, rum caramel sauce and chocolate shavings. Also on the menu are Bananas Foster and Strawberry Shortcake.

Savory waffles include Sunny in Holland, with two fried eggs and hollandaise; Better than Feta with sun dried tomatoes, ricotta, feta and basil; and Gimmie Gravy, which is a take on sausage gravy using vegetarian sausage.

There is also occasionally a crab (substitute) au gratin waffle on the menu.

Customers can also build their own waffles and crepes from a wide range of toppings, and of course one option is maple syrup.

One waffle that has been making waves is the “heart attack,” which includes two eggs, three cheeses, mushrooms and onions on top. They have added a food challenge, the “quadruple bypass,” which is four heart attack waffles. Whoever completes it in 20 minutes gets it free and becomes a legend on the Wall of Fame. It comes with a smoothie “to wash down the

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Continued on page 23

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August 2014

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Food and Dining With Israeli roots, Doris Metropolitan not the typical NOLA steakhouse One of New Orleans’ newer high-end restaurants, recently named one of the ten hottest in town by Zagat and Best New Restaurant by New Orleans magazine, has its roots in Israel.

Doris Metropolitan, which opened in the Quarter last fall, started as Doris Katzavim, Doris Butchers, in Rosh Pina in 2003, specializing in high-quality dry aged beef that is hand-selected from private farms.

Itai Ben Eli said the first location was a small place, but “Thank God, we had a lot of success,” and its uniqueness attracted a lot of attention in Israel.

After he and Doris Rebi Chia opened two more locations, in Tel Aviv and near the Sea of Galilee, they sold it “to a big company that saw the potential of growth” and it was the right time for them to sell.

They went to Costa Rica and saw the potential for high-quality beef, and in 2009 opened Doris Metropolitan in Santa Ana, which they saw as an up-and-coming area ripe for development.

Soon they started thinking about expansion

22

August 2014

and traveled around Central America. Many of their customers in Costa Rica have second homes in Miami and urged them to open there, so Rebi Chia moved there to look for the right location. As they were preparing to finalize a location, Rebi Chia traveled to New Orleans “as a tourist,” and immediately fell in love with the city, the people and the Quarter.

Ben Eli said he “felt comfortable” there and told him that he needed to come see for himself.

They spent a month in town researching, but when they came across the former Alpine’s space “it was the final deal maker,” as it would enable them to accomplish everything they wanted to do with the new location.

Ben Eli said one thing he particularly likes about New Orleans is that 90 percent of conversations involve food, even with people who don’t realize he is in the business.

“This is the kind of crowd we want to work with.”

While procuring high-end beef in Israel and Costa Rica is more of a challenge, the U.S. has “the best beef in the world.” They serve USDA

Southern Jewish Life

Prime, and as much as possible try to ensure it comes from nearby, extending to Mississippi or Texas.

There are exceptions, including last month’s supply of Wagyu beef from Japan and Australia.

While one can have a New York Strip there, as in most steakhouses, “we always try to do something different.” Their signature is the Classified Cut. “For us, it’s the best cut of beef… beautifully marbled, soft, the best you can get.” But don’t ask what that cut is — it’s classified, hence the name.

They also aim to show a different experience than the traditional dark-wood steakhouse. Instead, the décor is light and European.

Aside from beef, there are a handful of

chicken and seafood dishes available, and several inventive appetizers.

The entrance is dominated by a horseshoe bar with views of the kitchen where Chef Shachar Kurgan runs the show, and across from the bar is the glass case where Doris dry-ages the beef for 21 days. The up-front case with the beef on pedestals shows how Doris takes the dry-aging process seriously and places a lot of importance

Waffles (cont. from page 21)

pain.”

Dahan said there has been one attempt at the quadruple bypass so far, and it was unsuccessful.

In addition to the Tulane area community, they try to appeal to kosher visitors who are in New Orleans for vacations or conventions.

Theirs is the closest kosher option to the convention district.

They have used Couchster to deliver waffles Uptown and to the Garden District, but because Couchster did not go downtown or to the Quarter at first, “I have sent waffles in taxicabs,” Attias said.

Out of town visitors are always asking when they will open a location in their hometown. Attias also observed, “I don’t know of any international airports that have a kosher option.”

Dahan said there is already interest in franchises from some larger communities, and he is looking at additional locations in the Quarter, Warehouse District and Metairie.

While those locations would be kosher, they likely would not be Cholov Yisrael. “We did it mostly for the frum community near here,” Dahan said.

They opened the restaurant in the narrow Maple Street building just before Passover, so they had to shut back down for eight days. It also was close to the end of the school year at Tulane, so during the summer they cut back their hours.

Now that classes are resuming and students are

on it.

As they explain, dry aging deepens and concentrates the beef, pulling out the most amazing natural flavors, as if the meat was gently cured while retaining its juiciness.

The restaurant also serves as a butchery where one can bring home their dry-aged steaks.

Doris Metropolitan is open nightly for dinner and Friday to Sunday for lunch.

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Zev Attias prepares for the day returning, they are going back to a 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. schedule weekdays, closing at 3 p.m. Fridays, and 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sundays.

When classes are in session, Attias said, that area has plenty of foot traffic 24 hours a day.

Golden Flake turns up the heat The temperatures in the South continue to heat up into August, as does interest in the upcoming college football season.

Something else hot in regard to both spiciness and popularity is Golden Flake’s new Jalapeno Dip potato chip flavor.

The Birmingham-based snack maker, which celebrates its 91st year, proudly maintains its OU certification on many of its products and continues to expand what it offers to consumers.

“We do a lot of test studies and ask our customers what they like before adding new flavors,” said Golden Flake Marketing Director Jim Ward.

“Golden Flake is the flavor of the South and in the South, we all like more flavor. We season at a higher level than most other chip-makers.”

Right now, the main “season” is football season. Golden Flake has been a sponsor of the Alabama Crimson Tide, Auburn Tigers and UAB

Blazers for many years. The company also is a sponsor of the Sun Belt Conference and Talladega Motor Speedway. “We’re a sponsor of all things outdoors and fun,” added Ward.

Golden Flake distributes across the Southeast and in recent years has expanded into Texas and Oklahoma.

For products under kosher certification, a rabbi comes by several times a year for unannounced quality checks to see that Golden Flake continues to meet all the requirements. “It is very important to us and a part of our overall quality initiative,” said Ward.

Last year, more than 30,000 people of all ages took the Golden Flake plant tour, which was named by Flip Key Travel as one of the top factory tours in the world. In mid-July, one of those visitors was new Auburn head basketball coach Bruce Pearl (story, page 27).

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www.auntsallys.com August 2014

23

Executive Director for Shir Chadash Conservative Congregation The Executive Director leads and supports the mission and values of Shir Chadash, serves as the chief administrative coordinator of the congregation, collaborating with the Rabbi, professional staff, the Board and other lay leaders to establish strategies, goals and programs for the ongoing successful operation of the congregation. Working under the supervision of the President, the Executive Director is responsible for the overall management of the congregation’s operations and support staff, all administrative, accounting, and maintenance functions as well as outside contractors.

Minimum required skills include a bachelor’s degree, 5 years of management experience, financial acumen, computer ability including Quickbooks, Microsoft office, etc.; ability to multitask, and must be a self starter. It would also be desirable for the applicant to have non-profit experience, volunteer experience, management of a budget in excess of $500,000, Jewish or Jewish knowledgeable, some event planning experience as well as building management experience. Interested parties should contact lisaafinkelstein@ gmail.com.

Mardi Gras Zone born from necessity What started as a necessity for kosher-keeping Mardi Gras Zone owners Benny and Orit Naghi, along with helping their neighborhood just after Katrina, has turned into one of the largest, most diverse kosher selections in the New Orleans area.

Mardi Gras Zone started in 2000 as a store for buying Mardi Gras sundries such as beads, boas, masks, and souvenirs. But after people began settling back into the Bywater-Marigny area by the store after the storm, it was difficult finding even some basic foods and supplies. The Naghis used their connections to start bringing in items, and things expanded from there.

“We had some flooding issues with our house and when we were in the FEMA trailer on our land, we thought we would do some planting and really develop the farm. That plus the food supplies connections at the store and we were able to help others as well as ourselves,” said Benny Naghi, whose family was exiled from Iran in 1979. He has been in New Orleans since his high school days and Orit is originally from Tel Aviv.

Today Mardi Gras Zone offers customers the opportunity to buy challah, made by Orit every Friday, Osem soups, all types of matzah, kosher organic pickles, pareve dairy items and much more while they pick up some Mardi Gras tchotchkes.

“Since we keep a kosher home, it was important to us to have a wide variety of fresh kosher and also gluten-free, vegetarian, vegan options,” said Naghi. “The farm has really allowed us to offer our customers some of the freshest, healthiest, organic products. Plus we support local as much as possible.”

They raise bees on the farm and “our honey is some of the best around.

We make sure it is light in color, which signifies the best quality.” They also raise chickens for farm-fresh eggs in addition to numerous vegetables, fruits, herbs and other farm-grown foods.

Naghi said that he would like to start a kosher slaughter so the store can offer fresh kosher meat.

He said during Pesach, the Mardi Gras Zone kitchen becomes kosher for Passover and they prepare meals to go. The store also offers a regular delivery service. Mardi Gras Zone also can make deli sandwiches and fresh, store-cooked pizzas. The store also has gained a reputation for its fresh-made, Israeli-style hummus.

“We love this (Bywater) area and New Orleans. It is such a great mixture of different cultures. It is our goal to provide customers with many fresh food options that work with their cultures and diets,” said Naghi.

V. Richard’s specializes in hard-to-find V. Richard’s, in the Forest Park neighborhood of Birmingham, prides itself on being a neighborhood, independent grocery store that can get in — within a few days at the most — “any product that a customer wants that we don’t already have in the store.”

That is according to owner/operator Rickey Little, who himself is almost always in the store to greet customers and help them with their shopping needs.

“We get to know the community and our customers. That helps us to 24

August 2014

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August 2014

25

Food and Dining

Fall’s not far away.

Top program. Top facilities. Top players.

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bring in whatever they are looking for, especially some of the harder-tofind items,” said Little. His father, Rick Sr., started V. Richard’s in Milwaukee in 1984 and would sell it to open up in Birmingham in 1995. Rickey’s grandfather was at one time a vice president for a major supermarket chain. “This is our family business. It’s what we do and what we love.”

V. Richard’s is known for its challah. The bread comes from a recipe used at Abigail’s in Anniston, a bakery V. Richard’s acquired years ago. V. Richard’s still employs one of their bread makers.

Little said that Bubbe kosher pickles and sauerkraut are very popular sellers, as are Streit’s Matzo Crackers.

V. Richard’s carries a line of kosher-certified sauces/marinades called Soy Vey and also have low-glycemic agave syrups by Wholesome Sweeteners that are kosher.

“One of our main distributors is one of the largest kosher products distributors in the country,” Haddon House, said Little.

He added that V. Richard’s has kosher poultry and other meats. The store has also gained a reputation for its vast beer and wine selection.

Winn-Dixie expands kosher options After launching a successful line of Winn-Dixie brand kosher bakery goods last year, including the rugelach, challah loaves as well as challah rolls, babka, seven-layer cake, black and white cookies — the supermarket with stores across the region this year introduced its kosher frozen french fries along with kosher canned mushrooms.

“The Winn-Dixie brand french fries have been several years in the making. They had to change the way they were made and go through several processes to have them abide by the kosher standards,” said Winn-Dixie Sales and Marketing Manager and former kosher Category Manager Deborah Shapiro. “They have been very popular thus far.”

Fellow kosher Category Manager and former Winn-Dixie Store Mashgiach Ahron Scharman said new kosher products might be more prevalent at first at certain stores near higher populations of those who might keep kosher, but the bakery goods launched last year are now in greater supply in more stores.

“If there is a kosher product that anyone wants but is not in the Winn-Dixie store they usually go to, they can just ask someone at the store to get it in and we are happy to get the products for them,” usually within a few days depending upon the item, said Scharman.

Scharman said the rise in popularity of natural and organic foods has also been seen in kosher products. “Whatever is trending in food carries over to kosher usually. We want to continue to expand the variety and selection of what we offer in Winn-Dixie brand kosher products,” he said.

Winn-Dixie’s website has a complete list of the kosher products available and all of the appropriate certifications. Before major Jewish holidays, especially ones such as Passover where food is a central component, Winn-Dixie enhances its website with more information, ideas, recipes and products.

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Publix adds online ordering In addition to expanding its extensive list of kosher items Publix offers in its store brand at stores across Alabama and the Florida panhandle, the grocery store chain now offers an easy online ordering system from where customers can order deli meats as well as sub sandwiches in advance.

“Publix continues to offer a variety of foods for our customers,” said Publix Public Relations Director Brenda Reid. “For customer convenience, we have compiled a list of Publix brand products that are kosher on our website. We’ve indicated what’s dairy, meat and pareve, as well as information about certification.”

She also encouraged customers who keep kosher to check product labels regularly, since some ingredients in products change periodically.

Publix is happy to order any kosher products that it carries but cannot be found at one’s nearest store. Reid said that also on the website are many kosher recipe ideas.

26

August 2014

Southern Jewish Life

Sports Bruce Pearl settling in at Auburn While the upcoming football season may be getting all the attention in Southeastern Conference territory, new Auburn University Head Basketball Coach Bruce Pearl is hard at work rebuilding that program — and getting acclimated to Alabama’s Jewish community.

Pearl had been head coach at Tennessee starting in 2006, and was active in the Jewish community there. In 2009, he coached the U.S. basketball team to a gold medal in the 2009 Maccabi Games in Israel.

He was fired from Tennessee in 2011 following an issue over NCAA rules violations and was out of coaching for three years.

He was named Auburn’s coach on March 18, taking over a program that was 14-16 last year and had an RPI of 160 — which was up from an average of 204 over the last four years. While Pearl was at Tennessee, his teams averaged an RPI of 17.

Shortly after Pearl arrived in Auburn, he attended a Passover Seder at Beth Shalom. At Chanukah he will host a party at his home and make latkes for students.

Knoxville has a Jewish community of roughly 2,000; Auburn’s is a fraction of the size and Beth Shalom did not even exist until 1989.

Pearl said “There are more small Jewish communities in this world than there are large ones, so you just adapt.

“I’m just glad I’m in a community where God’s presence — religion is out front,” he said, “whether it is in Bible study, in synagogue or Sunday service, spiritual life in this part of the country is important, and it’s important to me.”

He noted the common threads present in the three Abrahamic faiths. “I spend a great deal of my time trying to put teams together, trying to get different folks from different places and different backgrounds who all have goals and dreams and aspirations to all play together.”

But he added, “Unfortunately in some parts of this country, religion divides us… I don’t understand it.”

A Boston native, Pearl said he was raised with a strong sense of mitzvah, and is grateful for the opportunities he has to exercise that,

Jewish Southern Leaguers There are a few Jewish baseball players in the Southern League according to JewishBaseballNews.com including Mobile Bay Bears outfielder Zac Borenstein, Jackson Generals pitcher David Colvin and catcher Jack Marder, Tennessee Smokies catcher Charlie Cutler, Montgomery Biscuits pitcher Lenny Linsky and Pensacola Blue Wahoos pitcher Jon Moscot.

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Auburn Head Basketball Coach Bruce Pearl samples the goods while visiting Golden Flake, which sponsors Auburn athletics. whether representing the university as a head coach or in the Jewish community.

He wants his “brothers and sisters in the state of Alabama” to know “I’m here to serve.

Please call on me when I can serve the community and do the mitzvah.”

He added, “Obviously I’d love for them to come down and watch our team play.”

He recalls speaking to Birmingham’s Temple Emanu-El in October 2008 while he was still at Tennessee. “The Birmingham community is extremely important in the Auburn fan base,” he noted. In late July he spoke at a Jewish Federation of Central Alabama Brews and Jews event, and will speak at their annual dinner in late October.

He noted that the Auburn-LSU football game is on Yom Kippur this year, and “It’s going to take me out of action” depending on what time of day the game is.

To get the gold at the Maccabi Games, the U.S. team had to take down defending champion Israel, 95-86, in overtime. Among those on the team was Pearl’s son, Stephen, who at the time was a top high school player in Knoxville and averaged seven points per game during the Maccabi tournament.

Stephen is now Auburn’s assistant strength coach and director of basketball camps, and “It’s great to have him on the staff.”

A common theme at Auburn is the Auburn family. “I am a very new member of the Auburn family and I can’t say I’m part of the family yet, I haven’t been here long enough,” Pearl said. “I’m trying to be… family takes time.”

He said he is in it for the long haul. “When you move, you move your family. I’m not renting, I’m not leasing, I bought. I’m all in. It’s a total commitment.”

As for how the upcoming season is looking?

He simply said “We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

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27

Sports Salant retires after 22 years as Gulf South Conference commissioner

By Lee J. Green

28

August 2014

After 22 years and many accomplishments as a Jewish, Yankee commissioner of the Division II Gulf South Conference, Nate Salant has retired from the conference and been named into its first-ever Hall of Fame.

On June 30, the last day of his long tenure, he spoke at a Men’s Club event at the Levite Jewish Community Center. Last month he spent 15 days in Israel and then went to Italy for the first time.

“It has been quite an incredible run, but I felt that it was just time,” said Salant, who is from the Bronx originally. “It will be nice to go to Jerusalem and not get calls about conference issues at 1 a.m. This is my first trip over there where I won’t need to think about this.”

Salant’s great-great-great grandfather was the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem and he still has some family in Israel. “Every time I go over there, I always uncover something new and significant,” he said.

The Gulf South Conference was formed in 1970 and “had been run at the (university) presidential level” until a few years ago. Currently the conference’s members include the University of Alabama at Huntsville, Christian Brothers, Delta State, University of North Alabama, Valdosta State, University of West Alabama, University of West Florida and the University of West Georgia. Union University and Shorter University join this year and Lee University will join in 2015.

Salant was working as a university administrator in the Philadelphia area when he interviewed for the commissioner’s job at the Birmingham-based conference. He had never been to Birmingham before.

“Oddly enough, the interview was right by a travel agency and I went in there. It was owned

by Fred and Robin Benjamin, who I am still good friends with to this day. So the first people I meet in Birmingham were Jewish,” he said.

Traveling to many small towns in and around where Gulf South Conference universities are located, Salant in some cases was the first Jewish person some had ever met.

“For the most part, I did not experience any incidents of anti-Semitism. People would ask me questions to try and understand,” said Salant.

Several universities in the conference today and previous members are Christian-affiliated universities. “I think devout Christians tend to like and respect observant Jews.”

Salant recounted some experiences in which religion came into play, but most of the time he served as a mediator for “wars of words” between those affiliated with different Christian universities in the conference.

Salant tries to keep kosher close to 100 percent of the time and never works on the major

Southern Jewish Life

Jewish holidays. He always would observe the Sabbath. When traveling to some Saturday college football games he would arrive Friday before sundown and always walk to the stadiums.

“As you can imagine, it’s pretty difficult finding kosher in some of these small towns,” he said, especially some places in Arkansas when the GSC had some teams there. “But once folks knew I was Jewish and kept kosher, they started accommodating by bring in kosher foods and not scheduling meetings on some of our holidays. By standing up for what I believe in, I effectuated change.”

Salant attended the University of Albany for undergraduate work. He noted the university was 40 percent Jewish, but the teams still played on holidays.

“Most of the athletes weren’t Jewish and those that were did not stand up for themselves. I was the sports editor of the school newspaper and worked at the radio station. I explained to those who administrated why it is important for observant Jews to observe these holy days,” he said.

“So it’s not just the South.”

When asked about the changing landscape of national collegiate athletics — especially as it pertains to some recent court cases revolving around “pay to play” and revenue issues — Salant expects some major changes in the next few years.

“I think the NCAA people know today will be radically different in the next few years,” he said. If college athletes are paid to play it will take away revenues for Division II and Division III athletic programs that really need those funds, since a portion of revenues generated by Division I conference universities goes to the lower-tier divisions, he noted.

“I think we are heading to five Division I superconferences that would break away from the NCAA. It is certainly going to be a time of great change,” he said.

Barons’ announcer returned from Yom Kippur break to call championship

By Lee J. Green Birmingham Barons’ baseball Director of Broadcasting Curt Bloom has called many games in his 26-year professional career. But he knows he made the right call when it came to not calling Game 4 of the Southern League finals last year, which fell on Yom Kippur.

“I knew in my heart what my answer was, but I wanted to ask Rabbi (Randall Konigsburg) at our Temple (Beth-El) his advice. He said that if I don’t do the game and went to Temple, no one will remember I didn’t announce the game 10 years from now. But I will always remember and know that I did what I felt was right,” said Bloom, who is in his 23rd season with the Barons.

To explain his reasons why he would not be on air in Game 4, Bloom posted on Facebook. He got all positive comments and encouragement from those who replied, most of whom were not Jewish.

It turns out that Birmingham lost Game 4 but went on to win the deciding Game 5 in the at home with Bloom in the booth. Just a few blocks away, there was a special commemoration event at the 16th Street Baptist Church to remember the four girls killed at the church 50 years ago that day.

“You can’t even dream up a script like that,” he

said. “Mayor (William) Bell paused in his speech to announce the news of the Barons winning.

Everything just aligned perfectly. Oddly enough, the Barons scored four runs to win Game 5 and the championship.”

Bloom said he has four minor league baseball championship rings, but last year’s might have been the most special. The Barons had just moved from Hoover to a new stadium in downtown Birmingham before the start of the 2013 season.

“It was certainly very memorable. When your team wins a championship, you share the joy with everyone in the organization and all of the fans. There was for sure a big wave of excitement,” he said.

After the season, Bloom was asked to fill in announcing some basketball games for the Samford University Lady Bulldogs. After this season, he will become the full-time radio broadcaster for Samford women’s basketball.

“Of course calling baseball is very different from basketball. Basketball is more fast-paced and keeps you on your toes. Baseball has more (dead air), so the challenge is to come up with things to say when you aren’t calling a play,” he said. Bloom spent 10 years announcing UAB basketball games.

Bloom and his family live in Pelham. His wife,

Laura, teaches at the University of Alabama, where his older daughter, Chloe, just earned all A’s her sophomore year. She is majoring in Kinesiology. Younger daughter Alexis is in high school.

With so many games at home and on the road during the baseball season, Bloom said it can be hard to make it to Temple regularly. But you can find “CB” at Beth-Elmany Fridays from October through March.

“I really enjoy it. It cleanses my mind and my soul,” he said.

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Front row: Jared Davidson (LF), Aaron Karlin (SS), Fred Shear (Team Manager), Jeremy Jacobson (1B), Jon Lappen (2B). Second row: Mark Jaffe (RCF) Henry Rosenblat (Team Statistics) Allan Berger (Bench Coach), Scott Friedman (C), David Hirsch (DH), Michael Gilman (3B), Martin Fischman (RF). Third row: Brad Rosenblat (LCF), Seth Shear (RCF), Damion Michael (P).

Gates of Prayer takes softball title Epstein retires as league commissioner

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After 22 years at the helm of the Synagogue Softball League, Richard Epstein heads into “voluntary” retirement, but his Touro team fell short in giving him the retirement present of a league title.

Gates of Prayer took the newly-named Epstein Championship Trophy with a 10-1 victory at Miley Playground on July 20.

Touro was thwarted early after Jason Adler and Steven Fielkow each had hits with two out in the first. Zak Rosenberg singled to left, but Gates left fielder Jared Davidson made a perfect throw to get the out at home plate.

Gates answered with one run in the bottom of the first, with Brad Rosenblat singling home Michael Gilman. After holding Touro scoreless in the second, Gates added two runs.

In the top of the third, Touro got on the board as David Hammer drove home Jonathan Tebeleff, but in the bottom of the third Gates put the game away with five runs. As part of the attack, Seth Shear hit a two-run overthe-fence homer.

Insurance runs were added by Gates in the fourth and sixth innings, but Touro couldn’t touch Gates pitcher Damion Michaels.

Touro had just eight hits, none for extra bases. Zak Rosenberg said “it just wasn’t our year.”

The semi-finals were held on July 13, during which Epstein was presented with an engraved rocking chair. He said with his solo law practice he no longer has the time to devote to coordinating the league. He also managed Touro’s team.

It was fortuitous that the retirement presentation was made that day, as Epstein was unable to attend the championship game, because he had to speak at a funeral that morning.

Touro, which was the third seed based Regular Season Standings on a tiebreaker, defeated second seed Shir Gates of Prayer 5-3 — Chadash in the semifinals, 7-5. Touro took a 7-3 lead into the bottom of the seventh Shir Chadash 5-3 — Touro 5-3 — and final inning, but Shir Chadash’s Andy Beth Israel 4-4 1 Adelman and Bruce Wainer hit singles to drive in a run each with two outs. Touro Sinai 1-7 4 pitcher Jason Adler intentionally walked Ben Jacobson to load the bases, because Jacobson had won numerous games for Shir Chadash in the past.

Shir Chadash’s Jeff Asher then hit a liner to left field, which Austin Marks flagged down with a leaping one-handed grab, preventing an extra-base hit that would have won the game for Shir Chadash.

Gates of Prayer made the finals by walloping next door neighbor Beth Israel, 14-7, in a game that was interrupted by lightning.

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A biography of legendary Auburn University Track Coach Mel Rosen is also a glimpse into Southern Jewish history.

Author Craig Darch was drawn to the story of how a Jewish kid who grew up in Brooklyn during the Great Depression was able to become such an important figure at a “quintessential Southern university.”

Rosen was coach at Auburn for 28 years, and he coached the U.S. Olympics track team to a record 20 medals in the 1992 Summer Games in Barcelona. He also coached in the Maccabiah Games in Israel.

In all, he coached seven Olympians, 143 All-Americans and led Auburn to four consecutive Southeastern Conference indoor championships.

For Darch, who has previously written three textbooks, the book was a departure. Growing up in South Bend, Ind., he was in a household of sports fans and “it was always significant if there were any Jewish personalities.”

Darch, who is the Humana Foundation-Germany-Sherman Distinguished Professor in the College of Education, got his doctorate at Oregon, “the epicenter of collegiate track and field,” so when he took a position at Auburn in 1982 he had heard of Rosen. He got to know Rosen through events in the local Jewish community.

The idea of telling his story clicked early one day. Darch was running through campus at 4 a.m. when he noticed a bus waiting, ready to take one of the athletic teams to a competition. The lone figure on the bus at that point was Rosen.

“Here’s a guy in his 80s who is there before anyone else, waiting to go to the next event,” he observed.

He later asked Rosen if he’d be interested in being interviewed, and after a couple days of thought, he agreed.

Darch said Rosen’s story is “often a story not told, how the Southern communities for the most part were a great place for Jews to come.

Coming from the north, sometimes you don’t expect to hear that.”

Rosen was coaching during the turbulent 1950s and 1960s. After Auburn integrated, many of the black athletes, even from other sports, gravitated toward Rosen.

While Auburn has a synagogue today, in the 1950s they imported Rabbi Eugene Blachschleger from Montgomery every so often. Rosen admitted that he came out “not so much for the rabbi but for the corned beef and pastrami.”

The book has a great deal of Jewish flavor to it, and Darch was concerned that he might have to tone it down. Instead, he has found audiences to be fascinated by descriptions of the Jewish experience in Auburn and the South.

Despite Rosen’s track and field success, he was able to bring only three Jewish athletes to Auburn — the Bresler brothers from Birmingham, and a Tel Aviv native who left Auburn after one year.

The book’s foreword is written by 1976 Olympics Gold Medalist Harvey Glance, who Rosen coached. Glance later became Auburn’s track coach and joined Rosen in the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame.

In 2006, the track at Auburn was named the Hutsell-Rosen Track.

Wilbur Hutsell was Auburn’s first track head coach.

Darch will be speaking at Birmingham’s Temple Emanu-El on Aug. 15 at 5:45 p.m., and signing books at Homewood Public Library on Aug. 28 at 6:30 p.m. He and Rosen were scheduled to sign books at the Alabama Booksmith in Birmingham on Aug. 5 at 4 p.m.

For starting times and more information, call (205) 424-2368 www.bentbrook.com Follow us on twitter Like us on Facebook

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Sports SEC Network kicks off a couple weeks before football season

By Lee J. Green The SEC Network launches Aug. 14 and Southeastern Conference Commissioner Mike Slive has found himself doing a lot of networking along with an increased workload.

A vote that would allow for more autonomy and decision-making by the five major conferences — SEC, Pac 12, Big 12, Big 10, ACC — is scheduled for Aug. 7, so there’s lots of news even before the first SEC game kicks off on Here are the predicted Aug. 28. standings as voted upon “With all of these new, important by the media: initiatives, it has been a busier time than usual for all of us with the SEC,” Western Division said Slive, who started things off on 1 – Alabama Crimson Tide July 14 for SEC Media Days at the Hy2 – Auburn Tigers att Regency Hotel near Birmingham.

3 – LSU Tigers That evening, Slive and his wife, 4 – Ole Miss Rebels Liz, celebrated their 46th wedding 5 – Mississippi State Bulldogs 6 – Texas A&M Aggies anniversary. “There is a lot going on, 7 – Arkansas Razorbacks but these are big, positive, important things shaping the landscape of not Eastern Division just the SEC, but all of college foot1 – South Carolina ball,” he said.

Gamecocks Slive said the SEC Network hopes 2 – Georgia Bulldogs to have agreements with most ca3 – Florida Gators ble and satellite providers before its 4 – Missouri Tigers launch. On its television and digital 5 – Tennessee Volunteers 6 – Vanderbilt Commodores platforms, the network will air more 7 – Kentucky Wildcats than 1,000 SEC live sporting events as well as interesting stories, features, documentaries about current/former SEC athletes, administrators, coaches and fans.

“They are so many extraordinary stories out there that we will be able to tell. We want to let people know about exemplary student athletes who go the extra mile… and everything that makes the SEC so special,” he said.

Paul Finebaum, who was a print and radio fixture in Birmingham for over 30 years, will have his show simulcast on radio stations and satellite radio and the SEC Network from 2 to 6 p.m. each weekday. His new book entitled “My Conference Can Beat Your Conference: Why The SEC Still Rules College Football” — about the dominance of the conference on the field along with the colorful personalities that call into his radio show — comes out Aug. 5.

The SEC was 13 seconds away from claiming its eighth straight college football BCS Championship, but Florida State came back to defeat the Auburn Tigers in the waning seconds of the game at the Rose Bowl. In 201415, the college football champion will be determined for the first time by a four-team playoff.

For the 16th consecutive year last season, the SEC led all conferences in average attendance per football game with 76,000 fans, more than 7.5 million total.

Despite losing its last two games of 2013-14 and having to replace all-everything quarterback A.J. McCarron, the Alabama Crimson Tide have been tabbed by the SEC media to win the Mike Slive SEC Championship in 2014-15.

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A fleeting Pelican ends up in Sacramento Israeli Omri Casspi traded to New Orleans but waived New Orleans Pelicans fans who were looking forward to seeing Israeli player Omri Casspi play at Smoothie King Center will have to settle for seeing him in a visitor’s jersey.

Two weeks after being traded to New Orleans, Casspi was waived and claimed by the Sacramento Kings after he cleared waivers. A one-year deal was being finalized at the league minimum.

Casspi has appeared in 327 games with 96 starts over the course of five NBA seasons with Sacramento, Cleveland and Houston, holding career averages of 7.7 points, 3.8 rebounds and 1.1 assists in 20.7 minutes per game. Casspi’s first two seasons were in Sacramento after the Kings made him the first Israeli ever selected in the first round of an NBA draft.

He and Dallas Mavericks guard Gal Mekel are with Israel’s national team this summer in hopes of making the 2015 EuroBasket.

On July 15 the Pelicans had announced that they received Omer Asik, Casspi and cash considerations from the Houston Rockets in a three-team trade that sent Alonzo Gee, Scotty Hopson and the Pelicans’ protected first round pick in the 2015 NBA Draft to the Rockets and Melvin Ely to the Washington Wizards. As part of the three-team trade, the Rockets acquired Trevor Ariza from the Wizards.

At the time, the Rockets were trying to clear salary cap space to go after Chris Bosh, who

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wound up staying in Miami. Marc Stein of ESPN said as the trade was being concluded that Casspi would likely be waived by New Orleans and would be able to pick his new team.

Casspi was waived on July 23. He told the Sacramento Bee “I would love to come back and fulfill my path. But now I have to concentrate on the national team, and maybe, I can get some of this pressure off my chest.”

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JCC takes second in city swim meet Girls relay team sets new record The Jewish Community Center Dolphins placed second in the Greater New Orleans Country Club Swim League championships, with one relay team setting a new city record in the process.

The 9/10 Girls medley relay set a new record of 2:31.16, 29 seconds ahead of the second-place finishers. The medley relay consists of each swimmer doing one of the four strokes — butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke and freestyle. The record-breaking group consisted of Camille Ingram, Ellie Allen, Julia Munger and Trinity Belott. They also won the freestyle relay by 18 seconds.

Twelve teams competed at the University of New Orleans arena pool on July 10. Cypress Lakes Country Club was the overall champion, with 2,077.5 points. The JCC edged the Mimosa Dolphin swim team with 1,624 points to Mimosa’s 1,592.5. Southern Yacht Club was a distant fourth.

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The JCC girls made it close, trailing Cypress Lakes 1055.5 to 1037. On the boys’ side, the JCC was third, behind Cypress Lakes and Mimosa.

Other highlights included Allen, Munger and Belott sweeping the top three positions in the girls’ 9/10 50-yard breaststroke. Munger and Belott also took the top two places in freestyle, while Jenna Leali won the girls 11/12 freestyle, fly and breaststroke.

Olivia Givens and Melody Salmanian took the top two spots in the girls 15-18 backstroke.

The JCC also won the girls 18 and under 200-yard pyramid relay and the girls 11/12 medley relay with a 12-second margin and the freestyle relay by 11 seconds.

The 11/12 relay team consisted of Leali, Isabella Mendez, Raine Riccio and Nina Kirsch.

The 18 and under relay team was Munger, Leali, Givens and Mae Garofalo.

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Day School continues putting focus back on core mission

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As the Jewish Community Day School in Metairie opens the school year on Aug. 14, it is continuing to focus on its core mission in the post-storm era.

Head of School Sharon Pollin noted the school was founded “to serve the entire Jewish community of Greater New Orleans by providing an academically superior secular and Judaic education” and teach about the unity of the Jewish people.

With her arrival last year, “aggressive action was undertaken to address and restore the alignment of the Day School with its core mission as an academically excellent Jewish day school,” she said.

The school had expanded to eighth grade with a total enrollment of 86 in 2005, and held its first graduation that year. Then the levees broke following Hurricane Katrina, scattering families across the country.

The school remained closed for the year and reopened in the fall of 2006 with Kindergarten through third grade, with the plan of expanding back to fifth grade.

To bolster the numbers, non-Jewish students were enrolled and the name was changed to Community Day School.

Pollin said “many of these adjustments were made without always considering the mission or the long term impact on the institution.”

Last year the board determined that the name change had not been “in the best interest of the school or the community.” Adding Jewish to the name “is now a direct reflection of its educational mission and vision, and… its vital role as a core institution in a healthy and strong New Orleans Jewish Community,” she said.

As part of that realignment, a decision was made to forego a Kindergarten class this year. The class will return next year.

Pollin said “State of the art resources, ongoing professional development and strong parental support allows the JCDS to provide a secular education that matches or exceeds the quality of education that any other elementary school in the greater New Orleans area provides,” and graduates have a seamless transition to the next level.

Earlier this year, the school announced that it would introduce STEAM in fifth grade — reflecting the acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math while adding A for the arts.

“In line with the school’s mission to instill a love of learning, invigorated by academic excellence, STEAM students will explore each discipline and integrate these skills to encourage critical thinking, problem solving, the use of digital tools and innovation,” Pollin said.

The school also welcomed Barbara Kaplinsky as director of strategic marketing and development. She and husband Mark were among the pioneering families that established the school, and son David was in the first Kindergarten class and in the only eighth grade graduating class.

“This community is very fortunate to have a Jewish Day School, especially one of this caliber with its outstanding current Head of School Sharon Pollin and its highly accredited teachers and faculty,” Kaplinsky said. “I am committed to lending my expertise to helping this institution thrive. It has been a vital part of the Jewish community for 18 years and, with the continued support of the community, it will be around for at least another 18 years.”

She comes to the school after 35 years of working for United Way in a number of local and national capacities.

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Author and lecturer Rabbi Brad Hirschfield will be the speaker at this year’s annual meeting of the Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans.

The event will be at the Uptown Jewish Community Center on Sept.

16 at 7 p.m.

This will be Hirschfield’s first visit to the community since 2008.

Hirschfield is the president of CLAL — The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, a leadership training institute, think tank and resource center.

Recognized as one of the nation’s leading preachers and teachers by Beliefnet.com, he conceived and hosts a landmark interfaith TV series entitled “Building Bridges: Abrahamic Perspectives on the World Today,” airing on Bridges TV, an American Muslim network.

He is author of “You Don’t Have To Be Wrong For Me To Be Right: Finding Faith Without Fanaticism” and co-hosts a weekly radio show in Portland, Ore.

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On July 20 and 21, 25 rabbis, Shluchim of Chabad’s Southern region from North Carolina to Florida to Texas went to New Orleans for an annual regional conference. Rabbi Mendel Rivkin said they “engaged in study sessions and discussed important issues including increased cooperation among Chabad centers in the region and beyond and working with other Jewish organizations.” A community event included “Who said it best?” where three rabbis were asked to answer several tough questions in rapid fire succession while a panel of judges evaluated their performance.

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Pizza, sushi now on Kosher Cajun menu Kosher Cajun is expanding its repertoire.

The New Orleans-area institution has long been known for traditional deli dishes and kosher takes on Louisiana classics like jambalaya, red beans and rice, and gumbo.

With the completion of a new prep space, Kosher Cajun is offering Pizza Wednesdays, Sushi Thursdays and Fried Chicken Fridays.

The expanded menu comes as the store recently finished a much-needed new prep area for catering. To accommodate a limited dairy menu in what had been only a meat establishment for sit-down meals a counter was added in the grocery area, on the other side of the store from the main seating area.

The pizza is available by the slice in cheese, mushroom or “veggie patch” varieties, or by the entire pizza. For full pizzas there is a buildyour-own option — cheese and vegetables only, of course.

While pizza is available instore from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Wednesdays only, it can be ordered on other days with a five pizza min-

imum.

The pizza counter opened on July 8, then moved to its usual Wednesday slot on July 16.

The sushi menu returned in mid-June and includes cucumber avocado, tuna rolls, salmon rolls and a California roll that uses imitation crab.

Also new to the menu is iced and hot coffee, along with latte. For dessert, there are freshbaked pareve cookies.

The store is now also making regular deliveries to Memphis, with pickup at the Baron-Hirsch parking lot.

The Jewish Endowment Foundation of Louisiana held “Everything You Wanted to Know About Charitable Giving (But Were Afraid to Ask)” on June 27 at Five Happiness. Guest speaker was Carole Cukell Neff, pictured above with Lis Kahn.

Below, Sandy Levy introduces the program, which focused on women’s participation in philanthropy.

Open Monday-Thursday 7 am-6 pm, Friday 7 am-5 pm and Saturday 8 am-3 pm.

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Continued from page 38

most people) is forgotten, not just for what it commemorates but even for its existence on the calendar?

Chanukah makes much more sense. The connection between the resanctification of The Temple by the Maccabees, after some thoroughly revolting behavior, is perfectly commemorated by jellyfilled doughnuts. (The preceding paragraph was brought to you by your friends at Krispy Kreme. This Chanukah , check out our seasonal Snowmensch and Red Velvel offerings.)

Finally, consider Yom Kippur. What? Food associated with Yom Kippur? Just try to say — given all we know about the Talmud and rabbinic debate — that the following isn’t entirely plausible: The rabbis debated for so long about what food to associate with the holiest of days that is Yom Kippur that, before they knew it, Kol Nidre had to start, and there was no food at all to be had.

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Humble Bagel brings taste of New York to Freret

For those looking for a fresh bagel in New Orleans, here is a humble suggestion.

Humble Bagel opened on the 4700 block of Freret in April, run by relative newcomers Casey Mackintosh and Tara Mikhail.

Their opening came shortly after the sudden announcement that Artz Bagelz was closing. Mackintosh said he was surprised by the closure, as he had purchased some of Artz’ older equipment and liked the idea of having more places around town promoting the idea of bagels.

Mackintosh is from northern Virginia, and the couple based Humble on neighborhood bagel shops on Long Island, where Mikhail grew up.

Though the concept may originate in New York, they are making the flavors local. Their bagels are made of five ingredients, including Steen’s Cane Syrup, and they serve New Orleans Roast coffee. The bagels are hand-rolled, kettle boiled and baked fresh each day. They have about a dozen varieties, along with daily specials, and several flavors of cream cheese.

Bagels are available by the half-dozen or dozen, and there are bagel sandwiches with everything from peanut butter and hummus to eggs, breakfast meat or lox. A recent special was a chocolate chocolate-chip bagel with strawberry cream cheese and Nutella.

They also bottle specialties such as fresh-squeezed orange juice, peach-strawberry lemonade or blueberry limeade in mason jars.

The building’s owner said he was approached by national chains interested in that space but wanted to maintain the local flavor of the area.

They are open from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. Thursdays to Sundays.

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The Beholder’s Eye

by Doug Brook

Thought for food

It all started with the presentation of a half-empty bag of kosher taffy, called Orthodox Chews.

The label indicated that they are salt water taffy, which seems an apt homage to the Dead Sea. But the label also called them “A Chewish Tradition,” which would make any Star Wars fan suspect that they might taste like wookie.

This line of sleep-deprived thought led to pondering the variety of flavors that could be appropriate to Orthodox Chews. What if — inspired by the jellybeans in “Harry Plotzer and the Sanhedrin’s Stone” all the way through “Harry Plotzer and the Deadly Challahs” — the flavors went far beyond the norms for said confection?

After all, wouldn’t the flavor of a grey Orthodox Chew be gefilte fish? If so, it follows that a black one would be a brisket taffy. A red one would taste like marror. A white one would be a marror stronger enough to make your Ma roar.

The burnt ones taste like homemade latkes. The pink ones taste like lox. The purple ones go down like Manischewitz.

How did some This could lead one to think that silliness is ruling the day, and that a blue foods get linked to Orthodox Chew would taste like an Jewish holidays?

Israeli flag stripe. Please. The blue ones taste like the colored strand in the tzitzit on a tallis. (Which actually might taste like the stripe on an Israeli flag…)

The brown ones taste like the fronds on the sukkah when it’s finally taken down three months after sukkot ended. Yellow would taste like etrog, and green would shake your taste buds like a lulav.

This then makes the train of thought derail into wondering how any of the foods associated with Jewish holidays make sense. Why does nothing say “happy new year” to Jewish palates like apple dipped in honey?

On Rosh Hashanah, Jews are supposed to eat apples dipped in honey to symbolize having a sweet year. And then, almost instantly, Jews are shown exactly how sweet a year they’ll have by dealing with cleaning the honey from their kids’ now-sticky hands and from their nice High Holiday clothes. (Granted, this is nothing compared to what sometimes has to be cleaned up after secular New Year celebrations, but still…)

Speaking of which, consider Purim. Hamantashen is supposed to be based on the three-pointed hat worn by the arch enemy. Are Alabama fans supposed to create a dessert in the shape of a visor after beating South Carolina? It could be worse: Hamantashen could’ve been based on something else of his, if one changed the final “a” to a “u.”

Consider Passover. (After all, you’re already less than eight months away from starting to cook.) How could matzah be designated the Jewish bread of affliction by a people who have spent generation after generation picking rye seeds from between their teeth?

What about eating dairy, particularly cheesecake, on Shavuot? Why mix dairy with the holiday during the warmest part of the year, giving its food a table-life shorter than the blessing over eating it? And why tie the delicacy (to most people) that is cheesecake to a holiday that (to

Continued on previous page 38

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Rocking the Cardboard

The Uptown Jewish Community Center held its annual Cardboard Boat Race on June 29, with 22 teams competing. Teams of one to five passengers create their boats entirely from cardboard and duct tape, then race across the pool. Most spectacular sinking went to Family Ties. Boogie Fever had the best theme. Most creative went to Big Sound Hole, and the fastest boat was JC/DC (top right).

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