Southern Jewish Life, Deep South, August 2021

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

Volume 31 Issue 8

August 2021

Southern Jewish Life

shalom y’all Mississippi is at the epicenter of a major church-state battle that could have repercussions for decades.

The United States Supreme Court is considering a Mississippi test case that bans most abortions after 15 weeks, after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocked enforcement of the law.

In recent years — but before a couple of Supreme Court retirements — the court struck down six-week and 12-week bans, and a Texas law that significantly hampered the ability of clinics to function. The Mississippi case is seen as a test of whether a more conservative Supreme Court will take the opportunity to strike down Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that stated women had the right to decide whether to have an abortion, without excessive restriction by governments.

Many states have since made a sport of pushing the envelope of what could be considered “excessive,” and activist groups have been hoping for an eventual ban on the procedure.

Mississippi is among 11 states with “trigger laws” that would automatically ban abortion of Roe v. Wade is overturned. Some estimate that about 24 states would eventually ban the procedure.

Mississippi Attorney General Lynch Fitch has been particularly vocal, saying Roe was “egregiously wrong” and that “nothing in constitutional text, structure, history or tradition supports a right to abortion.”

How, then, is this a church-state issue?

For all the talk about how we live in a “Judeo-Christian” society, this is one of numerous times where the Judeo and the Christian do not see eye to eye. There is a fundamental difference in how the two view the unborn.

For opponents of abortion, life begins at conception and abortion is murder. In Jewish law, a fetus under 40 days is considered “mere water,” and throughout pregnancy the fetus has the same status as a limb of the mother. Only at birth is personhood conferred.

A good part of the difference is religious in nature (though this explanation is going to continued on page 40

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August 2021 • Southern Jewish Life

3

commentary

MESSAGES

Maccabi USA leader praises Birmingham Games I have had the honor of attending many Maccabi competitions around the world. From Israel to Australia to South America, Europe and the JCC Maccabi games around the United States and Canada, I have logged many miles seeing how sports can be a vehicle to help build Jewish identity, especially in our young.

In Louisiana: Don’t conflate Holocaust education with Critical Race Theory battle

felt honored to come to Birmingham for the first time and fell in and love the withmurder not justofthe city produced Nazism 6 million

By IJonathan Tobin but the people. You have taken Southern hospitality to a new level with your kind and caring European Jews.

(JNS) —toThere is no more obvious approach the JCC Maccabi Games. sign that This is not just an inappropriate analogy; American education is in trouble than the fact it points to were a flaw in much They of what passes for Led by the Sokol and Helds, your hard-working volunteers wonderful. partnered that most state legislatures have become battleHolocaust education in this country.

As scholar with your outstanding staff, led by Betzy Lynch, to make the 2017 JCC Maccabi games a huge hit. grounds over how to teach history. The subject Ruth Wisse has pointed out, the problem with Ican want to take this opportunity as executive director of Maccabi USA to say thank you on behalf be fraught with controversy under any cirof everyone involved. cumstances.

But in the last year, as efforts to put Holocaust education is that it is not treated by most of those who create the curricula for mancritical into public-school curricula I hadrace just theory returned from the 20th World Maccabiah games in Israel with a U.S. delegation of courses on the subject as history but as a have increased, the entire question how from to dated over 1100, who joined 10,000 Jewish of athletes 80 countries. Back in July the eyes of the entire form of moral education that is part of a univerthink just were abouton the history ofand ourselves but Jewishnot world Jerusalem the Maccabiah.

This past month with 1000 athletes and sal lesson about the evils of all prejudice. Rather the United States itselfthe hasworld become wrapped up coaches from around being in Birmingham, you became the focal point. than instruct students in the specifics of the hisin controversies about education.

Everyone from the Jewish community and the community at large, including a wonderful tory of anti-Semitism and what produced Nazi On the one hand, some Americans believe police force, are to be commended. These games will go down in are history as being athe seminal Germany, they taught about irrationality that the death of George Floyd, followed by a moment for the Jewish community as we build to of theallfuture by providingbias. such wonderful Jewish sorts of arbitrary summer of protests and riots, justifies a reasmemories.

So it was in that sense understandable that sessment of the way we think about everything. some critics of the Louisiana Holocaust bill Jed many Margolis For people, that mandates not just a moral brought up the history of the Middle Passage Executive Director, Maccabi USA reckoning about actual racism that still exists, and slavery, and pondered why it was OK to but also a need to adopt radical notions like teach some kinds of history and not others. critical race theory and intersectionality. Those supremacists would like tobesee pushed backslavAmericans and should taught about On Charlottesville ideas put race at the center of everything, as into a corner and made to feel lesser.

We stand and the country’s history of racial injustice. well as divide everyone into groups that are ei- ery with and pray for the family of Heather Heyer, But teaching that as history shouldn’t mean inEditor’s Note: This to and the events in are ther designated as reaction privileged those who who was there standing up to the face of thisthe corporating it into a narrative that ignores Charlottesville, written by Jeremy Newman, not with the former obligated to make amends, hate.

Master of the Epsilon Picircumstances, Theta Colony to story of America’s advances towards greater regardless of Alpha their personal and liberty favor of that discards We recognize thein essence of one the American at Auburn University, was shared

by AEPi the latter in pursuit of “equity.” That is a direct equality the principle of equality for one that enshrines narrative as a two-century old struggle to rid National, which called it “very eloquent” and contradiction of traditional liberal values about race as a permanent, defining characteristic. ourselves of such corners, and allow those in praised “our brothers at AEPi Theta Colony at equality. And it leads to the adoption of curricuThe same problems apply to efforts to create them the seat at the table that they so deserve.

Auburn University and… the leadership they la, such as those based on The New York Times’ such as theofone It is thestudies strugglecurricula, to fulfill the promise thethat display on“1619 their campus. fallacious Project,”” that mischaracterizes ethnic was recently adopted in California.

Whether Declaration of Independence, that “all men are much of American history in an effort to depict not toequal… teach about various ethnic minorities created endowed by their Creator with the United States as an irredeemably racist na- or White supremacy has been a cancer on and their travails and struggle acceptance in certain unalienable rights. ” Wefor know our work tion. our country since its beginning, threatening America was never the issue.

What was — and is far from finished, but we know we will not Sadly, defenders of CRT have not satisfied its hopes, its values, and its better angels.

— atbackwards. stake in those debates was an effort to move themselves with merely denouncing their op- is The events that took place in Charlottesville enshrine race consciousness at the heart of evponents as racists and falsely characterizing the When men and women, fully armed, take represented the worst of this nation. Those ery discussion. grassroots movement that has arisen to stop to the streets in droves with swastikas and who marched onto the streets with tiki torches In the controversies in California, Jews who their efforts. Instead, some are noting that those other symbols of hate, it is a reminder of how and swastikas did so to provoke violence and wanted their stories represented in the who are against their woke version of history relevanttothehave issues of racism and anti-Semitism fear. Those who marched onto the streets did curriculum wound up essentially competing, are in favor of mandating other sorts of special are today. It is a wake-up call to the work that so to profess an ideology that harkens back to whether they wanted to or not, against other history instruction: Holocaust education. needs to be done to ensure a better, more a bleaker, more wretched time in our history. groups who wanted the validation that According to one report about a debate over ethnic welcoming country.

But it should not come A time when men and women of many creeds, come from inclusion in these courses. a proposal for a Holocaust-education mandate would without a reflection on how far we’ve come. races, and religions were far from equal and far in the state of Louisiana, some liberal Jews ob- Such discussions ought not to be zero-sum America was born a slave nation. A century from safe in our own borders. A time where jected to the fact that the sponsors of that bill games, but that’s usually what happens in these into our historySo weit’s engaged a war in part Americans lived under a constant cloud of circumstances. hardly in surprising that efwere conservative Republicans, whom they othto ensure weHolocaust-education would not continue aslaws one.are Wenow racism, anti-Semitism and pervasive hate. The forts to pass erwise opposed, and who were also supporting found ourselves confronted by the issue ofofcivil events that took place in Charlottesville served sometimes being viewed in the context the a bill prohibiting the incorporation of CRT into rights,over and CRT embarked on a mission to ensure as a reminder of how painfully relevant these battle with divisive consequences. state curricula. theThat’s fair treatment peoples no matter their issues are today. a mistakeof—alland not just because we Some on the left also claimed that it was skin color.

Although we’ve made great strides, ought to want students to learn about both the Auburn’s Alpha Epsilon Pi stands with the wrong and hypocritical for those on the right to it is a mission we’re still grappling with today.

Jewish community of Charlottesville, support teaching about the Holocaustand but were history of slavery, as well as that of anti-Semitism.

It’s thatwas thealso teaching of immigrant history should be America born an with the Jewish people around by thethe country opposed to courses informed idea that neither a vehicle for radical race theories like country.

As early as the pilgrims, many and around the world.

Wedominates also stand with the institutionalized racism American “The 1619 Project, ” which seeks to reinterpret groups and families found in the country the minorities who are targeted by the hate that society. One such critic said there was a direct America’s past as one of unbroken hate, nor a was on display inthe Charlottesville.

We stand analogy between institutionalized racism of opportunity to plant stakes, chase their future, met with with the minorities of whom these white American bigotry and the systematic hate that and be themselves. Few were continued on open page 39 4 August 2021 • Southern Jewish Life

January August2021 2021

Southern Jewish Life PUBLISHER/EDITOR Lawrence M. Brook editor@sjlmag.com ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER/ADVERTISING Lee J. Green lee@sjlmag.com ASSOCIATE EDITOR Richard Friedman richard@sjlmag.com V.P. SALES/MARKETING, NEW ORLEANS Jeff Pizzo jeff@sjlmag.com CREATIVE DIRECTOR Ginger Brook ginger@sjlmag.com SOCIAL/WEB Emily Baldwein connect@sjlmag.com PHOTOGRAPHER-AT-LARGE Rabbi Barry C. Altmark deepsouthrabbi.com CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Rivka Epstein, Louis Crawford, Tally Werthan, Stuart Derroff, Belle Freitag, Ted Gelber, E. Walter Katz, Doug Brook brookwrite.com BIRMINGHAM OFFICE P.O. Box 130052, Birmingham, AL 35213 2179 Highland Ave., Birmingham, AL 35205 205/870.7889 NEW ORLEANS OFFICE 3747 West Esplanade, 3rd Floor Metairie, LA 70002 504/249-6875 TOLL-FREE 888/613.YALL(9255) ADVERTISING Advertising inquiries to 205/870.7889 for Lee Green, lee@sjlmag.com Jeff Pizzo, jeff@sjlmag.com Media kit, rates available upon request SUBSCRIPTIONS It has always been our goal to provide a large-community quality publication to all communities of the South.

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agenda interesting bits & can’t miss events On July 20 at the Uptown Jewish Community Center, Consul General Gilad Katz was honored by the New Orleans Jewish community for his years of service to the region. He completed his term at the Israeli Consulate to the Southwest in Houston, covering a territory that includes Louisiana and Arkansas.

After congregations begin to reopen, Delta variant rolls back plans With much less organized activity during the summer, increasing vaccination rates and Covid cases on a major decline, many congregations in the region started loosening up restrictions, holding in-person services for the first time since the pandemic began, even going back to semi-normal regarding kiddushes and lunches — and speculating about a mostly normal High Holy Day season.

Then the Delta variant took hold, and now many congregations are cutting back on what is allowed, and looking at Rosh Hashanah with a more skeptical eye.

On Aug. 11, Mobile’s Ahavas Chesed announced that it was immediately halting all in-person services and closing the building once more, and became the first congregation in the region to explicitly state that High Holy Day services would be virtual instead of in person. Mobile and neighboring Baldwin County have been the hottest spot in Alabama for the Delta variant. While conditions will be re-evaluated next month, the announcement stated “No in-person gatherings will take place until community spread has lessened. This includes High Holiday services.”

In Alexandria, Gemiluth Chassodim had been holding services in person and having Shabbat dinners for the last few months, but Rabbi Raina Siroty announced that their Covid safety team agreed to suspend all in-person services this month. “We are hopeful that our High Holy Day services will be in person, with

everyone wearing masks and properly social distancing from one another,” she said.

Agudath Israel-Etz Ahayem, which was the first synagogue in the region to impose restrictions in March 2020 as the pandemic began, announced that as of Aug. 11 all in-person services were being suspended, and services will be livestreamed and on Facebook until further notice.

Most congregations that have announced a decision are continuing in-person services but reinstituting restrictions.

For Mobile’s Springhill Avenue Temple, the board approved limiting entry to those who are fully vaccinated, saying it is not meant to single out or denigrate anyone, but “with the sincere interest of the congregation as a whole.” They will “depend on those coming into the building to act in good faith” regarding the new guideline.

Birmingham’s Temple Emanu-El reverted to the “yellow tier” on July 28, mandating masks and requiring reservations for attending services. Beth Israel in Jackson is also mandating masks and reservations, with a maximum capacity of 30. Because of the limit, reservations are for Beth Israel members only, and no walkins are allowed.

In Huntsville, Temple B’nai Sholom raised the maximum attendance to 65 with social distancing, with reservations suggested but not required. Masks are suggested for all, but not necessary for those who are fully vaccinated.

Editor’s Note: While the information here is accurate as of press time, the situation is changing rapidly. Check sjlmag.com, our Facebook page and our weekly e-news for the latest. For any scheduled in-person event, check with the congregation or institution to see if there have been any last-minute changes.

Onegs are still on hold and “kibitzing” discouraged, with the service shorter and less singing.

Gates of Prayer in Metairie announced it will be requiring masks of everyone age five and up, and encouraging them for younger children.

The congregation, which held the first major in-person event in late April with an outdoor music festival, is hosting the joint Reform Shabbat services for New Orleans this month. Next door, Beth Israel has reinstituted a mask requirement and has suspended kiddush lunches in a move they hope “will be short-lived.”

Birmingham’s Temple Beth-El has gone back to mandating masks throughout the building, and seating socially distant, with family pods.

Participation on the bimah is limited, with masks and social distancing for everyone who goes up. Daily minyan has also been moved from the small chapel to the sanctuary, to better provide distancing.

Beth-El has also suspended indoor food service, after a to-go box was prepared for the Aug. continued on page 16 August 2021 • Southern Jewish Life

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Program explores the “Mensch of Steel” Whether programming is an organization’s superpower or Kryptonite, the Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life has a Super event for communities in the region to join.

“Is Superman Circumcised? The Complete Jewish Story of the World’s Greatest Hero” will be on Oct. 7 in a shared Zoom event. During the pandemic, the Institute began offering joint Zoom programs to partner congregations, Federations and other community organizations in its 13-state region.

Author Roy Schwartz will discuss his new book that explores the numerous Jewish motifs in the story of the world’s best-known superhero.

Introduced in June 1938, the American icon Man of Steel was created by two Jewish teens — Jerry Siegel, the son of immigrants from Eastern Europe, and Joe Shuster, an immigrant. They based their hero’s origin story on Moses, his strength on Samson, his mission on the golem, and his nebbish secret identity on themselves. They made him a refugee fleeing catastrophe on the eve of World War II and sent him to tear Nazi tanks apart nearly two years before the United States joined the war.

In the following decades, Superman’s mostly Jewish writers, artists and editors continued to borrow Jewish motifs for their stories, basing Krypton’s past on Genesis and Exodus, its society on Jewish culture, the trial of Lex Luthor on Adolf Eichmann’s, and a future holiday celebrating Superman on Passover.

The program will provide a greater appreciation for the Jewish roots of the “Mensch of Steel.” Groups that want to partner for the program should contact Ann Zivitz Kientz, akientz@isjl.org, for information.

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Ron Wolfson and Bruce Powell will lead “Raising A+ Human Beings,” a workshop for educators, teachers and clergy, on Aug. 29 at 1 p.m. Coordinated by the Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life, the workshop is also open to parents in the Institute’s 13-state region.

Powell founded and led three new Jewish high schools and has consulted on the founding of 23 more. He also consulted with over 60 Jewish Day Schools as president of Jewish School Management. He was a founding faculty member at the Jewish Theological Seminary’s Day School Leadership Training Institute.

Wolfson is the Fingerhut Professor of Education at American Jewish University and president of the Kripke Institute, and consults on building relational cultures at Jewish camps, synagogues and schools. In that field, he is author of “Relational Judaism: Using the Power of Relationships to Transform the Jewish Community,” while his mainstream books include “God’s To-Do List,” “The Seven Questions You’re Asked in Heaven,” “The Spirituality of Welcoming” and “The Art of Jewish Living” series.

Wolfson is also doing a program for the Institute on Aug. 19 at 7 p.m., “Preparing for the High Holy Days,” based on “The Seven Questions You’re Asked in Heaven.” Communities around the region were given an opportunity to partner with the Institute to make the program available for their members. Gates of Prayer and Northshore Jewish Congregation are providing the program for the entire Greater New Orleans community, and B’nai Israel in Tupelo is also signed up.

Registration for the Aug. 29 program is $36 per person for Institute education partners, $45 for the general public, at isjl.org. The registration includes a copy of their book by the same title.

agenda MSJE postpones opening celebration weekend The Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience, which opened in New Orleans in May, was planning an opening celebration for October 2 and 3 in hopes that the pandemic would be mostly gone and supporters from across the region could travel and attend. But with the Delta strain spiking, the museum announced in late July that it will postpone the ceremony, likely to Spring 2022.

“Now is not the right time for such a celebration,” the museum leadership stated in a press release. “We have also heard from mnay of you that you do not feel comfortable making travel plans at this time.”

The museum is open daily except Tuesdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and follows CDC recommendations, along with state and local guidelines.

La. Jewish Coalition holds speaker series Registration is now open for the first Louisiana Jewish Coalition event, a three-part speaker series that will be available online.

The coalition, which was formally announced in July, is an outgrowth of collaborative efforts

by Jewish communities around the state to assist areas affected by Hurricane Laura, especially the Jewish community in Lake Charles. A leadership conclave is being organized for early next year, as well as an Israel Independence Day celebration with Governor John Bel Edwards.

The speaker series kicks off on Aug. 15 at 9:30 a.m. with “Stories from the Negotiating Table.” David Hammer, investigative reporter for WWL-TV, will interview Middle East analyst, author and negotiator Aaron David Miller.

Miller is also a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

On Aug. 22 at 10 a.m., Ilana Kwartin of the Jewish Agency for Israel will lead a discussion on “What’s Happening Now?” She will lead a conversation with Birmingham native Rep. Elaine Luria, a Democrat who represents Virginia’s second Congressional district, and Republican Rep. Mark Green of Tennessee. The Jewish communities of Birmingham and Nashville will be invited for this presentation.

The series concludes with “Looking Toward the Future,” on Aug. 29 at 10 a.m. Lindsay Baach Friedmann, South Central regional director for the Anti-Defamation League, will lead a candid discussion between Israeli and Palestinian participants in Parents Circle, after which the Jerusalem Post’s Herb Kenion will give a journalistic perspective.

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Rabbi William Schwartz, emeritus of Pensacola’s Beth El, dies Rabbi Nissen William Schwartz, longtime leader and rabbi emeritus of Temple Beth El in Pensacola, died on July 21. He was 95.

A Scranton native, Schwartz was a sergeant and platoon leader for the U.S. Army in World War II, receiving two combat stars and many other medals, and the Legion of Honor and title of Chevalier from the French Republic.

He served at Beth El from 1962 to 1990, and was a professor at the University of West Florida and Pensacola Junior College. He helped initiate the Interfaith Thanksgiving Service, which continues to this day, and organized the largest community Passover Seder in Pensacola’s history, held at the Municipal Auditorium.

He also served Beth Israel in Meridian, and had pulpits in Sarasota, Fla.; Philadelphia, Pa.; and Lafayette, Ind. Services were held in Lake Worth, Fla., on July 29. He is survived by his wife, Elaine; his children Marty, Debbie, and Danny; and his grandchildren, Gary and Ryan.

Temple Emanu-El in Tuscaloosa will have a Welcome Back lunch party on Aug. 22 at noon. There will be boxed lunches from Full Moon, music, a video collage of events past, and the Sno Cone truck will be in the parking lot. Tables will be inside and outside, and the congregational meeting will follow at 1 p.m. Reservations will be required.

The Pensacola Jewish community will welcome Yarden Shiri as their new Shlicha for the coming year. A resident of Ashkelon, she was a programmer in the Israeli Intelligence Corps, then decided to go into Shlichut. She arrives in Pensacola on Aug. 20 at 11:20 a.m., and there will be a welcome party at the home of Cindy and Ted Gross on Aug. 29 at 5 p.m.

Birmingham’s Temple Beth-El will have a family-friendly hike at Red Mountain Park for its next inter-everything group event. The group is for families and individuals who identify as interfaith/intercultural/interdenominational or inter-anything. The group will meet at the park entrance at 9 a.m. on Aug. 22. Bagged lunches are encouraged, snacks will be provided.

The Yoknapatawpha Arts Council in Oxford, Miss., has reworked the Fringe Festival and is now calling it Hoka Days, and it is being organized “not as a memorial” to Ron Shapiro, but as a way of keeping his passionate spirit alive. He died in August 2019 at the age of 75 and was a fixture in the local arts scene. Groups and individuals can submit events to fall under the festival’s umbrella.

The Men’s Club at Etz Chayim in Huntsville is going to the Trash Pandas game on Aug. 22. First pitch is 6:35 p.m. Tickets are $16 and include a $2 stadium credit.

Temple Beth El in Pensacola will hold its annual poker tournament, Aug. 21 at 5 p.m. Doors open at 4:15 p.m. The congregation’s largest fundraiser is a “No Limit Holdem” tournament, with a $100 buy-in in advance, or $110 at the door.

Chabad Emerald Coast is holding a pre-Rosh Hashanah women’s challah bake, Aug. 22 at 5:30 p.m.

The next joint Shabbat service between the two Baton Rouge congregations will be on Aug. 20 at 6 p.m. at B’nai Israel. The service will be in person and online. Masks and physical distancing will be required.

8

August 2021 • Southern Jewish Life

community New Iberia rallies for Detroit Jewish journalist detained in Myanmar Almost three months have passed since Myanmar officials detained a Jewish journalist from Detroit, with ties to Louisiana, and there is little to indicate that he will be released any time soon.

Danny Fenster, who had worked at the Daily Iberian in New Iberia, had been working in Myanmar. On Feb. 1, there was a coup as Myanmar’s military ousted the ruling party after a contested November election. After Aung San Suu Kyi won in a landslide, the military deposed her, claiming widespread voting fraud.

Suu Kyi won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 while in detention for advocating for democratic reform. She led the National League for Democracy to victory in the first free election in decades in 2015, but her reputation has been tarnished by mistreatment of the Rohingya Muslim minority, including a 2017 crackdown that killed 7,000 and forced hundreds of thousands to flee.

The United States and European Union have imposed sanctions on the military leaders of the coup.

On June 27, a rally was held in Kenel Williams sings “Go Down New Iberia, to publicize Danny Fen- Moses” at a rally for detained ster’s plight and show support to his journalist Danny Fenster, June family in Michigan.

27 in New Iberia The rally was a demonstration of the effect Danny Fenster had on the small central Louisiana town during brief time he was there as a reporter, and the deep friendships he made with the community.

About 35 attended the rally, which was held in front of city hall under stormy skies. Some wore the “Free Fenster” T-shirts that had been designed by Robbie Biederman, longtime friend of Danny’s brother, Bryan Fenster, with proceeds from the shirts earmarked toward a charity of Danny Fenster’s choice when he returns.

Charleen Markle, an organizer of the rally, said they wanted to “bear witness to the injustice being done to Danny, and call for his immediate release.”

Fenster worked for the New Iberian from August 2017 to February 2018, and won first place for Best News Story from the Louisiana Press Association for a story on the families of murder victims who are still looking for closure years later.

Phebe Hayes said Fenster “made it a priority to get to know the people of the parish and the city.” Several speakers spoke of how he explored the long-neglected African-American West End, telling stories that had long been ignored.

Phanat Xanamane asked “what would bring a progressive liberal young man with his talent to New Iberia,” and said Fenster wanted “to seek a better understanding of his fellow citizens and learn about people… who have a different point of view,” because understanding each other improves the world.

Robby Carrier-Bethel spoke of her “brother-sister friendship” with him. She recalled their first lunch together, at Brenda’s Dine-In, where he spoke of his “love and commitment to truth, justice, journalism” and his Jewish faith. When his brother came to town to do photography, “Bryan became my brother also.”

In the West End, “Danny and Bryan have photographed and written hours of individual human stories, whether they are delightful or painful,

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community and they have meant a lot,” she said.

After leaving New Iberia, Fenster went to Thailand and then Myanmar, where he became managing editor of Frontier Myanmar.

Markle said Fenster’s “passion for telling the stories of the oppressed took him from here to Southeast Asia.”

Detained Without Charges

Southern Jewish Life Just Over the Horizon The Jewish holidays are just over the horizon. Rosh Hashanah begins the evening of Monday, Sept. 6.

We all no doubt are hoping that it will be a year in which we finally get the pandemic behind us, get back to enjoying those pre-Covid activities and relationships that are so important to us, and gain a sense of optimism and tranquility about our future.

At Southern Jewish Life, because of several new and important initiatives, we already know the coming year will be an exciting one.

The impact of our magazine keeps growing; a new venture, Israel InSight is taking hold; our online presence is expanding, and more people are receiving our monthly print edition than ever before.

In short, opportunities abound as Southern Jewish Life, the only national award winning publication in our coverage region (Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and NW Florida) celebrates its 30th year.

To keep going and growing, though, we need more revenue.

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August 2021 • Southern Jewish Life

On May 24, he was heading to Detroit on a surprise visit to see his family for the first time in three years when he was detained at Yangon International Airport by Myanmar officials. Reportedly, at least 88 journalists have been detained since the coup.

Fenster, 37, has been held at Insein Prison ever since. According to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, at least three foreign journalists had been detained in Myanmar, Fenster is the only one still in custody.

The Detroit Jewish News reported that Fenster was finally granted a phone call with his wife, Juliana, on June 30. His brother, Bryan, was patched in on the call and told the Detroit paper that “We established he was OK, and we told him the whole world is watching and we are doing all we can as a family to get him out. He sounded good, and he said he was healthy. I was even able to crack a joke with him and hear him laugh.

We know he will be home soon, but not soon enough.”

Rep. Andy Levin of Michigan has been working with the State Department and U.S. Ambassador to Myanmar Thomas Vajda to try and secure Fenster’s release.

On July 1, there was a hearing where Fenster was remanded into custody for another two weeks. U.S. embassy officials accompanied him to the court hearing, which did not detail what he is being charged with or when he might be released.

That day, Frontier Myanmar reported that a letter filed with the court showed Fenster was arrested for working at Myanmar Now. According to the publication, Fenster resigned as editor of Myanmar Now in July 2020 and started working for Frontier the next month.

The military regime banned Myanmar Now and four other independent media organizations on March 8, and Myanmar Now’s offices were raided the same day, Frontier reported. On March 27, the police were asked to open a criminal case against “responsible editors” of Myanmar Now, which currently publishes online.

“Frontier believes Danny has done nothing wrong and we reiterate our call for his immediate and unconditional release,” the publication stated in its July 1 article.

Myanmar Now said Fenster worked there from mid-2019 to July 2020 as a copy editor for their English-language website. “His sole assignment was to edit the news stories which had been translated from Burmese into English. He held no other position in the management of the newsroom nor was he affiliated with any type of non-editorial duties,” the statement said. “It is regrettable to learn that he has been falsely accused of continuing to be an active member of Myanmar Now during the recent court proceedings against him.”

Myanmar Now says Fenster “never should have been arrested, and we call for his immediate release.”

A fourth hearing, which took five minutes, on July 26, after which he was remanded back to prison. Another hearing on Aug. 9 “had come and gone in the same fashion,” according to an update on the Bring Danny Home Facebook group. His next hearing will be Aug. 23.

community Family calls were temporarily cancelled after a late-July uprising in the women’s section of the prison, due to a Covid outbreak. The military seized control of the prison.

His father told Deadline Detroit after speaking with him on Aug. 1 that he has a fever and loss of smell and taste, which are indicators of Covid. The bed in his cell resembles a wooden pallet, he added.

It is assumed that Fenster is being held under Article 505(a), which was implemented two weeks after the coup to make it easier to prosecute and jail journalists for “any attempt to cause fear, spread false news or agitate directly or indirectly a criminal offense against a government employee” or that “causes their hatred, disobedience, or disloyalty toward the military and the government.” However, Fenster has still not been officially charged.

Dwayne Fatherree of the Daily Iberian insisted that Fenster “should be freed, for saying things that are true.” He said journalists write the first draft of history, and Fenster is “wonderful” at writing stories that need to be told.

On July 1, Fenster’s attorney, Than Zaw Aung, said “Danny looks slim. He lost weight. He requested me to tell others he is okay and fine.”

At the June 27 rally, Rev. Matt Woolley from Church of the Epiphany said Fenster’s crime was “to stand up for justice. To stand and speak the truth.”

Hayes added that Myanmar officials might have thought they could hide things by silencing Fenster, but “it has had the opposite effect.

Danny’s imprisonment is bringing attention to Myanmar” and the suffering there.

The rally concluded musically, with Kenel Williams singing “Go Down Moses.” Brenda DeKeyzer Lowry, who sings at her church and has been soloist for many years at Gates of Prayer, the synagogue in New Iberia, did a Mishebeirach and “Oseh Shalom,” explaining to the crowd what the two Hebrew prayers meant.

Hayes said “we hope this gathering of Danny’s New Iberia friends provides some comfort to his wife, parents, brother and other family members.”

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August 2021 • Southern Jewish Life

As Ned Goldberg steps down after 33 years as executive director of Jewish Children’s Regional Service, a familiar face will be succeeding him.

New Orleans native Mark Rubin, who joined the social service agency in September 2012 as its first-ever development director, will step into that role, effective Aug. 1. His new role was unanimously approved by the JCRS board on July 15.

“We look forward to working with Mark in his new position as executive director and have no doubts that he will transition into this role with great ease,” Mark Rubin said JCRS President Michael Goldman.

“Under Mark’s leadership, JCRS will not only continue to flourish but will expand its influence in order to help more Jewish children than ever before.”

Rubin becomes only the fourth leader of the agency since 1946. When Goldberg arrived in New Orleans in 1988, he succeeded Sanford and Viola Weiss, who had led the agency for over four decades and instituted the programs for summer camp scholarships and college aid, and an out-of-home care program that expanded into the current JCRS Special Needs program for Jewish youth facing challenges.

Goldberg will become director emeritus upon his retirement, and will continue with the agency in a part-time role.

Rubin has more than 20 years of mission-driven development and program experience, working for national and local organizations such as the American Cancer Society, the Arthritis Foundation and Tulane University.

At JCRS, he grew fundraising and outreach to the Jewish community, in New Orleans and across the agency’s seven-state region. The Jewish Roots annual gala, which was first held a few months before Rubin’s arrival, has grown into one of the largest events on the New Orleans Jewish calendar, and has raised over $1.4 million since 2012. Rubin also expanded disaster relief efforts to include financial assistance for families with minor children who have been affected by the Covid pandemic.

“I am excited to begin this new chapter for the future of JCRS. It is an honor for me to build on the tremendous work that Ned has done with the agency,” Rubin said. “There are always Jewish kids in need — in good times and in challenging ones like the pandemic. Every day, JCRS makes a tremendous impact on the lives of Jewish youth through our programs and outreach. I look forward to working with our truly dedicated Governing Board, volunteers, and staff to meet that need where we can help the most.”

Additional recent programs include administering the PJ Library program to communities in the region that do not already have the infrastructure to implement the program; and the Oscar J. Tolmas Hanukkah Gift Program, which provides Chanukah gifts to youth from low-income families.

Since 1855, JCRS has provided needs-based scholarships, support and service to Jewish youth and families in the form of college aid, Jewish summer camp grants, and assistance to children with special needs. In 2020, JCRS reached more than 1,800 youth in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, Arkansas, Texas and Oklahoma.

community Goldman becomes JCRS president Michael Goldman of New Orleans has assumed the presidency of Jewish Children’s Regional Service. The agency is headquartered in New Orleans and serves Jewish youth and families in Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas.

A resident of Louisiana since 1971, Goldman relocated from New York to New Orleans, to assume a management position in business. Beginning in 1980, the Brooklyn native and wife, Brenda, owned and operated Michael Goldman a Child’s World children’s furniture and apparel store in Lake Charles, before returning to New Orleans in 2015.

During their years in Lake Charles, the Goldmans became leaders of the Jewish community of Southwest Louisiana, and continue serving to this day as officers and volunteers for Temple Sinai of Lake Charles. Over the years, the couple also became long-time devotees to the Henry S. Jacobs Camp in Utica, where their children attended camp every summer.

In 2005, during Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the Goldmans learned about the services of JCRS, as they assisted their community in recovering from the twin disasters. The couple became re-involved with disaster relief through JCRS in 2020, when Hurricanes Laura and Delta revisited and devasted Lake Charles. When the hurricanes hit in 2020, the Goldmans made it their personal mission to re-contact every Jewish family in Southwest Louisiana and to encourage any family needing relief to register with the Jewish and public organizations that were providing assistance.

“I’m very proud to be serving JCRS in a leadership capacity,” stated Goldman. “Over the years, I’ve witnessed the impact that JCRS has made through all of its programs: Camp and College Scholarship Assistance, Special Needs Support, PJ Library, Disaster Relief, Hanukkah Gifts, and other forms of Jewish and charitable outreach,” he explained.

“With the continued passion and skills of our board, loyalty and support from our donors, and dedication and professionalism of our staff, I expect JCRS to grow and continue to enable Jewish youth to become well-adjusted, successful, and self-supporting Jewish adults. I am looking forward to working with the community on many worthwhile projects and will look to our board and especially to our new officers, and outgoing president, Donald Meltzer, for support and guidance. “ Joining Goldman as JCRS officers are Vice Presidents Amy Gainsburgh Haspel, Alan Krilov, Rose Sher and Henry Weber; Treasurer Kathy Shepard and Secretary Carrie Pailet.

Jewish pro-life group files in Miss. case The Jewish Pro-Life Foundation has filed an amicus brief to the Supreme Court of the United States in the Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health case, which will consider Mississippi’s law banning almost all abortions after 15 weeks.

“Studies demonstrate that an unborn baby feels pain as early as 12 weeks gestation, if not earlier,” said Foundation President Cecily Routman. “As Jews, we appreciate this opportunity to argue for the protection of imperiled, innocent human life in the womb.”

This is the first Amicus brief submitted by a Jewish pro-life organization to the U.S. Supreme Court. “Our arguments provide the Justices with a Jewish, life affirming view much different than pro-abortion Amicus briefs usually filed by Jewish groups,” Routman said.

Co-signers to the brief are the Coalition for Jewish Values; Rabbi Yakov David Cohen of Noahide.org; Bonnie Chernin, founder of Jewish Life League; and Rabbi Chananya Weissman of Israel.

August 2021 • Southern Jewish Life

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Team Israel baseball at the Tokyo Olympics. Source: Team Israel Baseball/Facebook.

Cinderella story of Team Israel baseball becomes roller coaster ride at Olympics

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August 2021 • Southern Jewish Life

The clock struck midnight on Team Israel’s run in the Olympics, as the team placed fifth in the six-team field of Olympic baseball, going 1-4 overall. Analysts had given Team Israel a 45 percent chance of medaling.

Two players with ties from the region were part of the team that started an improbable run to the Olympics and captured international headlines in the sport.

Metairie native and Isidore Newman School alumnus Jeremy Bleich became part of Team Israel in 2016, while Zach Penprase, who played college ball in Mississippi, joined soon after.

Players are eligible to compete for a country if they are eligible for citizenship; with Israel’s Law of Return, that makes any Jewish player in the world eligible. Only five members of Team Israel were native-born Israelis.

The Olympics was a return trip to Tokyo for Team Israel. In 2016, they were ranked 41st in the world, then surprised everyone in the qualifiers for the World Baseball Classic in Tokyo. At the 2017 tournament, they finished sixth.

They also competed in the 2019 European Baseball Championships and the 2019 Europe/Africa Olympic Qualifier, where they made the sixteam field for the Olympics.

Bleich played professional baseball for 11 years after graduating from Stanford University. He was drafted by the New York Yankees in 2008 and spent much of his career at the AAA level, with a brief stint in the Majors with the Oakland Athletics in 2018. After retiring, he became a pitching analyst for the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2020.

California to Mississippi to Olympics Penprase played college ball at Mississippi Valley State, a historically Black college. The Southern Californian was not recruited heavily out of high school, but Doug Shanks, who coached the Delta Devils at the time, saw his recruiting video online.

Penprase told HBCU Sports that he visited Itta Bena and fell in love with the region. “I was like, I’m coming here, like, I’m coming,” he said.

“There’s just no other offer and the schedule was amazing being able to play Mississippi State, Alabama, and then also experiencing what a historically Black college was like.”

He was SWAC All-Conference in 2005 and 2006, and in 2006 he led the nation in stolen bases, with 60. He was drafted by the Philadelphia Phillies in 2006. He mainly played single-A ball for Philadelphia and the Boston Red Sox, then signed with the Fargo-Moorhead RedHawks,

community where he played from 2008 to 2015 and set several career records for the team.

He played professional baseball for 10 years, retiring in 2015 to work in the construction industry and put that chapter of life behind.

Then he got a message from Israel Baseball, asking him to try out for the national team as it attempted to qualify for the Olympics. He was hesitant to get back into baseball mode, until his wife reminded him of one thing — it’s the Olympics.

As with the other players on the team who were not Israeli, he became an Israeli citizen under the Law of Return. His mother is Jewish and his great-grandfather was the last Chief Rabbi of Rhodes, but the extent of his practice had been Passover and Chanukah.

During the qualifying tournaments, where the unheralded Israeli team stunned the world by making the six-team Olympic field, he had 12 RBI in 21 games.

In addition to the Israeli team, he spent a few months with the Pomona, N.Y., Boulders of the Frontier League this year, where the manager was a teammate in Fargo and more than willing to let him set an example for younger players. It didn’t hurt that Team Israel was also scheduled to play Pomona as a pre-Olympics tuneup.

During the Olympics, he was amused to see that his name was misspelled on the scoreboard when he was at the plate. “I’m an Olympian and my name is being pronounced all weird, my name is being spelled wrong, and the umpires still aren’t good,” he said on Instagram, adding that it “doesn’t matter.”

Roller-Coaster Run In the first game on July 29, Israel tied the game at 5 in the top of the ninth with a single homer by Ryan Lavarnaway. In extra innings, runners automatically start on first and second, but in the top of the 10th, Oh Seunghwan struck out all three Israeli batters. Penprase had been substituted as a pinch runner for Nick Rickles, who had started the inning at second. In the bottom of the inning he was the designated hitter, but did not get a plate opportunity.

Bleich took over in the bottom of the 10th, and after a sacrifice advanced both runners and the next batter flied out to third, Bleich hit the next two batters, sending the winning run across the plate and giving South Korea a 6-5 win.

The second game in pool play wasn’t as close, as the United States took a 3-0 lead in the third and cruised to an 8-1 victory. Bleich started the top of the sixth inning, striking out two while Todd Frazier reached first on a throwing error.

Jonathan Demarte took over for Bleich and Frazier scored an unearned run on a single.

In the bottom of the ninth with two outs, Pen-

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prase pinch-hit for Robb Paller but struck out.

After being 0-2 in pool play, Israel faced an elimination game against Mexico on July 31, and rallied with a 12-5 win that knocked Mexico out of the tournament.

Penprase went 1-for-4 with one run and two runs batted in. His damage came in the six-run seventh, where he singled to center, scoring Ty Kelly and Mitch Glasser, stole second and then scored on a Scott Burcham double. Bleich did not pitch.

With hope rekindled, Israel met South Korea for a grudge match on Aug. 1. But Israel’s hopes took a hard hit with an 11-1 loss that was called after seven innings due to the mercy rule. Penprase, playing left field, went 0-for-3. In the sixth, Bleich entered with a runner on first and no outs, with five runs having already been scored that inning. The inning’s second error on a fielder’s choice put a runner on second, then after a strikeout, Bleich gave up a two-run homer before getting a groundout to end the inning.

Israel’s medal hopes rested on the game against the Dominican Republic on Aug. 3, but the Dominicans erased Israel’s 6-5 lead in the bottom of the ninth, knocking Israel out of the tournament, 7-6. Bleich did not pitch.

Penprase went 2-for-4 in the final game. In the fifth, he advanced a runner to second while a play at the plate nabbed Rickles. Penprase would then score on a two-run double, tying the game at 2. In the top of the ninth, Penprase singled but was caught in an inning=ending double play. Former Major League All-Star Jose Bautista had the walk-off single that ended Israel’s run.

After the game, Team Israel tweeted, “The dream we never dreamed of came to an end tonight. But know that throughout our inaugural Olympic journey, we felt your support from around the world.”

In Israel, much of the emphasis was on how close Israel came to medaling in a sport that just a decade ago was the sole province of small groups of American and Canadian Israelis on improvised fields.

The victory against Mexico was also Israel’s first win in any Olympic team sport since 1968.

After the final game, Penprase thanked the team on Instagram, saying “I can’t help but sit here and wonder if anything will ever be this exciting again. Thanks to Israel Baseball for the opportunity of a lifetime. I’m still stirred with emotions, and I know we all poured our hearts into every game we played, from Bulgaria to Tokyo.”

>> Delta

continued from page 5

7 Shabbat service. Procedures are being established for outdoor food service for special occasions.

Pensacola’s Temple Beth El is also mandating masks and social distancing, blocking every other row in the sanctuary. Food will be served by kitchen staff.

The New Orleans Jewish Community Center announced that as of July 28, all individuals are required to wear masks throughout the facility, regardless of whether they have been vaccinated. Birmingham’s Levite Jewish Community Center also requires masks in the facility.

Birmingham’s N.E. Miles Jewish Day School, which held classes in person last year, began this school year on Aug. 10 with masking still required. Visitors to the school will need to be vaccinated. Last year it was rare for anyone other than students or faculty to be in the building.

Temple Shalom in Lafayette was planning to hold its first in-person service since March 2020 on Aug. 27, including the first in-person visit of Student Rabbi Aaron Torop. The congregation will have hand sanitizer at the door, require masks for those who have not been vaccinated, and enforce six-foot distancing except for those in the same household.

Temple Beth El in Anniston was also planning its first in-person service for Aug. 20.

16

August 2021 • Southern Jewish Life

community Major Louisiana mission to Israel, UAE officially announced for next summer Registration will open this fall for a major Louisiana mission to Israel being organized by the Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans, in cooperation with several partners from the state’s business sector.

The mission will feature four industry tracks for business representatives, as well as an “Explore Israel” track for members of the community who just want to experience Israel. The business tracks are Medicine/Biotechnology/ Healthcare, Energy/Water Management/Engineering, Transportation/Port/Maritime, and Cybersecurity/Innovation.

The group will visit Israel from July 12 to 18, and there will be an opportunity to extend to the United Arab Emirates from July 18 to 22.

Jones Walker LLP is the Title Sponsor; additional partners include the World Trade Center New Orleans; the New Orleans Business Alliance; GNO Inc.; Louisiana Economic Development; and Ochsner Health.

The mission will include visits to Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and industry specific places of interest for each of the four business tracks. The delegation will be comprised of approximately 200 business, community, educational and govern-

ment leaders. Participants will also enjoy an exclusive opportunity to take part in the Opening Ceremonies of the Maccabiah Games, the third largest sporting event in the world.

“Israel is known as the ‘Startup Nation’,” said Federation CEO Arnie Fielkow, “and this upcoming trade mission presents a unique opportunity for Louisiana businesses to gain access to this major international hub of innovation and technology.”

“We are honored to be a part of this trade mission to Israel and are always happy to support opening economic development doors for the State of Louisiana and City of New Orleans,” said Jones Walker Managing Partner Bill Hines.

“We greatly look forward to exploring and expanding the economic relationships between the private and public sectors in Israel and the private and public sectors of our city and state.”

“The innovation and economic growth of Israel has been rapid and remarkable, making it an ideal location for a business mission” said Michael Hecht, president and CEO of Greater New Orleans Inc. “A good business mission serves to both inform and inspire, and we expect both from this trip to Israel, especially in

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J. Edwin Webb, CEO of the World Trade Center New Orleans, said “Israel is a technologically supercharged market and remains a top issuer of patents in the World. Our Louisiana based and regional businesses are invited to join us as we further extend Louisiana’s trade and innovation reach in Western Asia.”

Small businesses may apply to receive reimbursement on registration and travel expenses related to the trade mission through Louisiana’s State Trade Expansion Program. Reimbursements are subject to U.S. Small Business Administration funding availability.

“The trade mission to Israel that Gov. John Bel Edwards led in 2018 established important business relationships and laid the groundwork for new Louisiana projects ranging from energy to cybersecurity,” LED Secretary Don Pierson said. “International commerce is vital to our economic development effort, and there is great value in promoting opportunities for Louisiana industries to export their products – and their expertise. As we continue to cultivate these business relationships, Louisiana and Israel should see benefits for years to come.”

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August 2021 • Southern Jewish Life

(JNS) — The state of Florida notified Unilever, the parent company of Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream, on Aug. 3 that it has 90 days to cease its “boycott of Israel” or face a ban on contracts and investments with the Sunshine State.

The move is in response to the July 19 announcement that the ice-cream maker will stop selling its product in areas it calls “Occupied Palestinian Territory,” which includes the West Bank and parts of Jeru- After Ben & Jerry’s announced its desire to boycott salem. territories held by Israel, social media exploded It comes after Florida state officials held with “new” boycott-compliant flavors of ice cream. talks with Unilever’s investor-relations department on July 28 and received an indication cent people who protest hate and bias in all that “the parent company has no current plan to forms should make their voices heard in protest prevent Ben & Jerry’s from terminating business to Unilever and Ben and Jerry’s.”

The rabbi and members of his congregation activities in Israeli-controlled territories.”

“As a matter of law and principle, the state of held a protest last week outside a Ben & Jerry’s Florida will not tolerate discrimination against shop, although they made clear that their target the State of Israel or the Israeli people,” said was the corporate offices of the ice-cream maker Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. “By placing Ben & and not the local franchise owners.

While Unilever owns Ben & Jerry’s, the takeJerry’s Fortune 500 parent company Unilever on our ‘List of Scrutinized Companies That over agreement allows the Ben & Jerry’s board Boycott Israel,’ Florida is sending a message to set social policy for the ice cream company. to corporate America that we will defend our Apparently, the Ben & Jerry’s board wanted strong relationship with the Jewish state. I will to stop doing business in Israel altogether, but not stand idly by as woke corporate ideologues Unilever issued a statement without their prior seek to boycott and divest from our ally, Israel.” knowledge emphasizing Unilever’s commitIn a letter to the governor, the State Board of ment to doing business in pre-1967 Israel.

Unilever President Alan Jope said “We have Administration of Florida, which manages the assets of the state’s retirement plan and provides never expressed any support for the BDS moveinvestment services to governmental entities, ment and have no intention of changing that said Ben & Jerry’s actions violate state statutes. position.”

The chair of the Ben & Jerry’s board, AnuradThose statutes define a boycott of Israel as “refusing to deal, terminating business activities ha Mittal, is executive director of the anti-Israor taking other actions to limit commercial re- el Oakland Institute. She has accused Israel of lations with Israel, or persons or entities doing colonialism, apartheid and land-grabbing, and business in Israel or in Israeli-controlled territo- refers to Israel’s founding as a catastrophe. Reportedly, the Ben & Jerry’s board engaged anries in a discriminating manner.”

Jimmy Patronis, CFO of the State Board of ti-Israel activists to try and convince franchisees Administration, said “Israel is a friend of Flor- to sign on to the boycott of Israel, but a group of ida. It’s a thriving democracy with incredible 30 franchisees has already complained that the people and culture, and Ben & Jerry’s decision boycott has adversely affected their businesses. to very publicly discriminate against Israel was One Jewish-owned franchise in New York dea shortsighted attempt to virtue signal to folks clared it would give 10 percent of its proceeds to on the radical left. The second Ben & Jerry’s de- Israel education groups.

Five U.S. states, including Florida, are at the cided to discriminate against Israel, it affected Florida’s ability to make investments with its forefront of taking action against Unilever. The Alabama-Israel Task Force is exploring what parent company.”

Rabbi Efrem Goldberg of Boca Raton Syna- Alabama can do. Mississippi, like Florida, is a gogue in Palm Beach County, Fla., praised the state where the anti-BDS laws include a prohibistate’s decision. “BDS practiced in any form is tion against state retirement system funds being not only anti-Israel, but is a form of anti-Sem- invested in companies involved in anti-Israel itism and must not be tolerated,” he said. “De- boycotts.

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The Zionist “Odd Couple” Laura King, John Buhler makes impact for Israel

By Richard Friedman He’s a fiery evangelical Christian, an outspoken and powerful change agent who embraces causes with unswerving purpose.

She’s a pensive Jewish woman, a cagey strategist trained to listen carefully and chooses her words strategically.

At first blush, they seem like a version of the proverbial Odd Couple.

But what has brought Huntsville’s John Buhler and Laura King together as friends and community partners is their dedication to Israel, a commitment animated by a powerful chemistry and relentless drive.

Together they, along with others, have birthed the Alabama Israel Task Force, an agile, nimble Huntsville-based juggernaut that has brought Jews and Christians together to educate about Israel and advance the country’s well-being.

Led by King and Buhler, the organization continues to be at the forefront of strengthening support for Israel and the Alabama-Israel relationship, particularly among Alabama’s legislators, the state’s governor and other high-ranking Alabama officials. Pastors Robert Somerville and Patrick Penn also have been involved from the start.

Huh... What Was That...

Would You Say It Again, Please...

It Could Be Time To Check Your Hearing

Recent Resolution Most recently, AITF, along with other partners, played a role in motivating the Alabama Legislature and Gov. Kay Ivey to adopt a resolution supporting Israel in its military operation against Hamas.

The resolution clearly faulted Hamas for firing more than 4,000 deadly rockets at Israel’s population centers and affirmed Alabama’s support for Israel’s right to defend itself. Both Buhler and King were present in Montgomery for the signing of the resolution with Alabama and Israeli leadership.

This effort was the latest in a string of legislative and other public initiatives supporting Israel that AITF has been involved in since its founding in 2013.

One of the group’s efforts was the role it played in the state’s passage

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From left, Laura King, John Buhler, Deputy Israeli Consul General Alex Gandler, Gov. Kay Ivey, Israeli Consul General Anat Sultan-Dadon, Supreme Court Chief Justice Tom Parker and wife Dottie at May 2021 signing of resolution expressing Alabama’s support for Israel during its recent operation against Hamas.

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in 2016 of one of the strongest anti-BDS measures in the nation. BDS, which stands for Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions, targets Israel through economic warfare. Currently, AITF is seeing what action Alabama can take against Ben & Jerry’s under the anti-BDS legislation.

Today, this Huntsville-based, volunteer-led organization, whose sweet spot is bringing Jewish and Christian activists together, has become a force in Montgomery, a fundraising advocate for important Israeli organizations, a dynamic pro-Israel voice in Alabama, a venue for honoring government and civic leaders who’ve gone to bat for the U.S.-Israel relationship, and a strong voice against antisemitism.

It has strategically transcended partisan politics while honoring and working with political leaders.

Israel, and more recently antisemitism, have been AITF’s focus and nothing — not even the divisive issues and partisanship that are ripping people apart today — get in the way of the organization pursuing its goals.

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AITF was birthed in 2013 in a very “beshert” way — it was meant to be. King was at a wedding in Georgia where she met Israeli Eeki Elner, founder of the Israel Leadership Institute, and decided she wanted to arrange for him to come to Huntsville to do a program.

“Laura reached out to Patrick Penn about hosting Eeki for an event.

During that evening at his church, while Eeki was speaking, Patrick suddenly remembered we all had met in Israel in Sderot on the Gaza border years earlier,” Buhler explained.

Somerville, Penn and Buhler had all been on that trip that visited Sderot, where Elner gave the group a briefing about the situation with Gaza.

Penn “ran to his office and got pictures of us with Eeki in Israel, and we realized we were all suddenly being reunited -— unplanned, unexpectedly and providentially — in Huntsville that night,” Buhler continued.

“That led to us all getting together to further consider what this might mean — and we invited others to join in that consideration. This led to the birthing of AITF.” The year 2013 was a perfect time to launch, said Buhler. It was the 70th anniversary of the State of Alabama adopting a resolution in 1943 supporting the establishment of a sovereign Jewish state in the Biblical homeland of the Jewish people.

Moreover, not only was Alabama the first state in the union to adopt such a resolution, it did so at the height of the Holocaust when millions of European Jews, who were defenseless and had no place to go, were being incinerated by the Nazi death machine.

“We thought this was the right time to go public,” recalled Buhler.

AITF initiated a 70th anniversary commemoration of the resolution and its significance; educating and inspiring a broad array of Alabamians, and creating in state leaders a heightened sense of connection with Israel that has continued.

AITF, as it does today, advanced its cause by reaching out to key people and developing allies and partners, and augmenting these activities with an impactful website and effective social media strategy.

Different Backgrounds Buhler and King come from vastly different backgrounds.

He was born in Tennessee and grew up in Maryland and the Florida panhandle. A University of Florida graduate with a degree in electrical engineering, he got “very serious” about his Christian faith in 1990, about the same time he moved to Huntsville to work for Intergraph.

“I was very hungry — I devoured the Scriptures, both the Hebrew Bible and Christian Scriptures,” he remembered.

In addition to being involved in his local church, Buhler began reaching out and building relationships with many in the Christian community. His immersion into his Christianity also led him to an interest in 20

August 2021 • Southern Jewish Life

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Judaism and Israel.

“When I consider my Christian faith, all that I hold dear has come to me through God, Israel and the Jewish people,” explained Buhler.

Yet, he also became anguished.

“I came to know that throughout history, no people have been more deeply dishonored than the Jewish people, by many including the Christian community, which was a heart-breaking discovery — especially with the Jewish people being entrusted biblically with a unique calling and redemptive role in the destiny of the nations.”

King was born in Hawaii. Her father did intelligence work for the U.S. government, which led to King growing up in Canada, Germany, England and Israel. She came back to the U.S. as a teenager and, as she came of age, she followed in her father’s footsteps, becoming involved in intelligence work.

Serving in the U.S. Air Force, she was an intelligence analyst, frequently residing abroad to support the work of the National Security Agency.

As her career was ascending, Jonathan Pollard, an American Jew working as a Naval intelligence analyst, was arrested and charged with spying for Israel.

As part of the backlash, King said, it became harder for Jews connected to Israel, such as herself, to climb that career ladder at NSA. “Because of the Pollard situation, NSA was skittish of any Jews connected with Israel. That was just a no-no — not an official policy, but it was known and was an unofficial policy.

“Heck No!” King wound up getting a job at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville. Her first thought when she was offered a job in Alabama was “Heck no! They are going to burn a cross in my yard!”

However, relatives who had visited Alabama dispelled her initial misimpression and told her it is a very nice place to live. King apparently has agreed with them because she wound up settling in Alabama, where she has lived for 35 years. During her time in Alabama, she has made her mark in Jewish volunteer circles locally and nationally.

King became connected to Israel as a young girl. She remembers the moment clearly. She and her family were living in Germany when Palestinian terrorists murdered Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

“I had not been told about the Holocaust, and while living in Germany it became almost an obsession for me to learn as much about it as possible,” she recalled.

“I had lovely German friends, but when the television started showing images of the Holocaust, it dawned on me that we are different, that we are not the same,” she remembered. “I began understanding as to why the state of Israel existed and what a miracle it was that it came into existence.”

Though of different faiths and backgrounds, this Zionist Odd Couple remains bound and motivated by a shared vision — to bring as many Jews and Christians together around their devotion to Israel to make a difference, and to remind all continually that Israel’s existence must never be taken for granted.

Shreveport holding watch party for Jerusalem Youth Chorus On Sept. 12, the Shreveport Jewish community will hold a watch party for the Jerusalem Youth Chorus’ worldwide annual gala, starting at noon.

Reservations are $20 per family and are available through the North Louisiana Jewish Federation website. The Federation is a sponsor of the gala.

The chorus is a music and dialogue program for Israeli and Palestinian youth in Jerusalem. Despite the pandemic, the young singers have continued to meet and write songs lifting up their realities and expressing dreams for the future. They will be joined on Sept. 12 by guest stars as the songs have their world premiere.

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community LJCC enhanced by two Eagle Scout projects Two Birmingham area Scouts did projects at the Levite Jewish Community Center to fulfill their Eagle Scout requirements, providing new resources to the preschool and community members.

David Applebaum, a member of Bluff Park Troop 21, constructed an interactive musical wall in the outdoor STEAM classroom of the Cohn Early Childhood Learning Center. The wall consists of several double-sided wood panels featuring instrumentation made from PVC pipes, pots and pans, wind chimes and various recycled and homemade noisemakers.

The musical wall will allow children to build motor skills, work cooperatively with their peers, and explore music in a new way.

For Applebaum, it was a homecoming, as he was a student at the preschool until age 5, and from ages 6 to 14 was a camper at the LJCC’s summer camp. This summer, he served as a Counselor-In-Training.

Applebaum created a GoFundMe page to raise money for the project’s materials and construction costs. His fundraising page explained his passion for this project, as his preschool and camp experiences at the J “made such a big impact on my life, I wanted to show my gratitude and appreciation.”

Director of Early Childhood Education, Barbara Traweek, said “His choice to give back to the ECLC means the world to us.”

Elle Warren of Troop 86 Green, an all-female Boy Scouts of America Troop, constructed a mountain bike skills feature called a “teeter-totter,” which allows bikers to practice balance. This feature can be found on the head of the trail that begins behind the tennis courts. The hiking and biking trails at the LJCC are accessible to all members of the local community, regardless of membership.

Warren mountain bikes the trails at the LJCC weekly and races for a local National Interscholastic Cycling Association team. Mountain biking is one of her favorite activities. She has seen teeters in other state parks and wanted to build a similar feature for her local community, and was excited to plan a service project that brought together her Scout Troop and her mountain biking friends.

Warren grew up attending Cub Scout meetings and campouts with her brother and father. She began her journey to Eagle Scout in 2019 when girls were first allowed to join the Boy Scouts. Troop 86 Green is one of the first two all-female troops in Central Alabama. There are 22 girls in her troop, and she is the second to achieve Eagle Scout.

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community Judge Moore’s defamation suit against Sacha Baron Cohen thrown out A Federal judge has dismissed a defamation lawsuit brought by twice-ousted Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore against actor Sacha Baron Cohen.

In a 26-page ruling on the $95 million suit, Judge John P. Cronan of the Southern District in New York ruled on July 13 that viewers of the segment on Cohen’s “Who Is America?” would have known that the interaction between Moore and a fake Mossad agent with a “pedophile detector” was a joke. He also noted that Moore had signed a waiver before the encounter.

“Who Is America” debuted on Showtime in July 2018, and an interview with Moore was aired during the third episode, on July 29. Moore filed suit a month later.

During the segment that aired, Cohen was disguised as Erran Morad, “a supposed Israeli anti-terrorism expert and former Mossad agent.”

During the segment, Morad started by talking about Alabama’s historic support for Israel, then pivoted to innovations in Israeli technology, including a fraudulent device that supposedly detects child molesters through a hormone in their sweat.

During Moore’s 2017 run for U.S. Senate, four women accused Moore of inappropriate conduct when they were underage and he was around 30 years old. Moore passionately denied the allegations, but in the segment, Morad’s device “malfunctioned” by going off whenever it was placed near Moore, much to the feigned surprise of Morad. Moore then cut off the interview and walked off the set.

After the segment taped, Moore’s counsel sent a letter saying they would seek legal remedies if the segment aired.

Moore had been lured to Washington for the interview under the pretext that Yerushalayim TV — which does not exist — was going to honor him for his support of Israel, as part of Israel’s 70th anniversary celebrations.

The suit states that “this false and fraudulent portrayal and mocking of Judge Moore as a sex offender, on national and international television… has severely harmed Judge Moore’s reputation and caused him, Mrs. Moore and his entire family severe emotional distress, as well as caused and will cause Plaintiffs financial damage.”

Cohen’s attorneys cited First Amendment rulings regarding satire.

In a texted statement to the Associated Press, Moore said “of course” he will appeal the ruling, especially since the court referred to Cohen’s behavior with terms like “trick” and “joke” but the court “will still do nothing to rein in his fraudulent misconduct.”

After the ruling, Cohen tweeted “nice try” to Moore, and added that accusations against Moore of “inappropriate sexual encounters with

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community young females, including one who was underage” are “now part of the legal record” as a result of the lawsuit.

Moore is also involved in a pair of defamation suits with one of his main accusers, Leigh Corfman. In the suit against Moore, Corfman claimed Moore and his campaign “defamed Ms. Corfman, repeatedly and in all forms of media, calling her a liar and questioning her motivation for publicly disclosing that Mr. Moore sexually abused her in 1979 when she was a 14-year-old high school freshman and he was a 32-year-old assistant district attorney.”

In August 2020, an Alabama judge denied Moore’s motion for summary judgment in Corfman’s defamation case. The case was delayed because of Covid suspending jury trials.

Judge John Rochester also refused Moore’s request to recuse himself from the case. Moore cited Rochester’s contributions to Doug Jones and “criticism and mocking of Christianity on his Facebook page with full knowledge of Judge Moore’s belief in God,” accusations Rochester called “absurd fictions.”

Part of Moore’s rise to prominence in the early 1990s came in a custody case involving a woman in a same-sex relationship. Moore refused to recuse himself despite his numerous public statements against homosexuality, and his assistant had let several fundamentalist churches know when the case would be heard in Moore’s courtroom so their members could be present.

Previously, Moore’s defamation suit against Corfman was “paused” until Corfman’s defamation suit against him is resolved.

On Aug. 5, Rochester dismissed the Judge Roy Moore for U.S. Senate campaign as a defendant in Corfman’s case, leaving just Moore. Moore said “My campaign for US Senate has in no way defamed plaintiff Leigh Corfman. We look forward to proving in open court, before a jury, her political motivation for making false allegations in my Senate campaign.”

In January 2020 Moore also sued the Washington Examiner, alleging its coverage of accusations against him were “fake news” that damaged his reputation. This was reported to be the sixth such suit he has filed over coverage of the controversy.

JewishTogether in Mobile

On July 22, the Mobile Area Jewish Federation held its first in-person event in a year, kicking off the annual campaign with #JewishTogether, held at the Medal of Honor Park Amphitheater.

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August 2021 • Southern Jewish Life

community Birmingham teen meets with Israel’s president in Jerusalem Ephraim (Epps) Tytell of Birmingham, met Israeli President Isaac Herzog at the president’s residence in Central Jerusalem.

Tytell, an 11th grade student at Mountain Brook Hig School, was part of a special delegation of 11 teen representatives of the Chabad teen network, CTeen, that made an official visit to meet with Herzog on July 28.

They discussed matters important to Jewish life in America, sharing their experiences with Antisemitism, Jewish pride and what it’s like being part of a minority Jewish community in a public school setting.

The teens were among 80 participants in CTeen’s Heritage Quest Israel trip. All Heritage Quest participants attend public high schools in the United States. Many are from small or isolated Jewish communities, and for most, this is their first visit to Israel.

Herzog applauded the teens for their interest in Judaism and the Jewish homeland, telling them of his work with youth during his time at the Jewish Agency for Israel, and of his relationship with the Lubavitcher Rebbe.

“The delegates were touched by the President’s personal interest and warmth. The meeting strengthened their commitment to being ambassadors of the Jewish people in the places where they live and I hope it will empower them for a long time,” Heritage Quest program coordinator Sarah Sherman, whose son is currently serving in the IDF, said.

“We hope to inspire the teens to become proud Jewish leaders in their communities back home.” explained Rabbi Mendy Kotlarsky, executive director of Merkos 302 and vice chairman of CTeen International, “This meeting played an integral part of that goal with the president reminding them of their unique role as young Jews in the United States.”

ADL program focuses on CRT opposition After a summer of controversy in the Mountain Brook school system over the No Place for Hate anti-bias program, and state battles over Critical Race Theory, the Anti-Defamation League Central and Southern divisions are hosting “Voices from K-12 Schools on the Impact of Anti-CRT Movement,” an online seminar on Aug. 26 at 4 p.m. Central.

The seminar “will clarify what critical race theory is and isn’t; provide an opportunity to hear directly from teachers, students and administrators who are directly being impacted by this movement to whitewash American history; and highlight steps that individuals can take to fight back against these resolutions and bills.”

The program is in response to “a campaign using the decades-old legal academic concept of “Critical Race Theory” as an all-encompassing boogeyman against any sort of anti-bias or anti-racist education programs, as well as against curricula that teach about systemic racism in this country.”

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community Becky Seitel’s “Darkness Into Life” survivor photos are a lasting legacy

By Richard Friedman There are those who pursue their creative talents for personal fulfillment. Then there are those who use their gifts to change the world.

Birmingham’s Becky Barker Seitel, who died July 24, did both.

She loved photography; it was a passion she discovered later in life.

Yet, when she began taking photography courses at Samford University after marrying Birmingham Jewish community member Alan Seitel, she never could have imagined she was beginning a trajectory that would leave a lasting legacy and influence thousands.

A Yearning Through Alan, Becky got to know Mitzi Levin, who had married Alan’s lifelong friend Barry Levin, also of Birmingham. Together these two Christian women married to Jewish men started to become more deeply connected to the Jewish community.

After attending a Holocaust memorial service in 2005 that featured local survivors, Becky developed a yearning to preserve the stories of Alabama’s survivors through photography in a way that would make a vivid and lasting impact.

She reached out to Mitzi, an accomplished artist, to become her partner.

Thus the widely-acclaimed exhibit “Darkness into Life” was born — a striking and beautifully done series of paintings and portraits that capture the sagas of those who survived Adolf Hitler’s genocidal assault on Europe’s Jews and resettled in Alabama after World War II. Especially important to Becky and Mitzi was telling the stories in a way that ultimately inspires.

Crowned By Triumph The lives depicted were not only marred by the tragedy of the Holocaust, they also were crowned by triumph — the triumph of having survived and moved from darkness into life.

Mitzi’s paintings, based on each survivor’s recollection of the past, and Becky’s contemporary photos of them, work together seamlessly in a powerfully understated way. The photos and paintings are accompanied by concise and compelling narratives written by Becky and Mitzi.

When talking to Becky and Alan and Mitzi and Barry as the project

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August 2021 • Southern Jewish Life

A Becky Seitel photograph of Birmingham area survivors. was being birthed, one could sense that something important and lasting was about to happen as they explained the idea.

Of particular significance, they convinced the Birmingham Holocaust Education Center to come aboard and help them reach out to local survivors.

When the two women would talk about the project, you could feel the determination and passion in their hearts and see the pride that their husbands had in them, especially with neither Becky nor Mitzi being Jewish.

Memorable is the humility with which Becky and Mitzi carried themselves. It was clear that they were grateful for having the chance to tell what they believed was a sacred story.

More than 1,000 people crowded the corridors of the Levite Jewish Community Center for the unveiling of the exhibit in 2007. Over the following months those traversing the halls would often stop in front of the paintings and photographs, standing quietly, lost in thought.

When Becky or Mitzi or one of the survivors would guide individuals or groups through the exhibit it was powerful. Everyone, including those

community who had studied the Holocaust for years, came away more informed.

“Something Together”

Public Venues Over the years, “Darkness into Life” has traveled widely throughout the state under the auspices of BHEC, which has arranged for survivors and others to speak to groups of all ages in conjunction with the exhibit.

The collection has been displayed in many public venues, including schools, and thousands of Alabamians have seen it. The impact has been enormous.

In a 2018 story on the exhibit appearing at Cullman High School, where historically there have been few if any Jewish students, teachers Susan Boyd and Gina Nix said the school was honored to be hosting the exhibit, “so that our students and community would have the opportunity to learn more about the Holocaust without having to travel.”

“Darkness into Life,” which can be viewed online, highlights 20 Alabama Holocaust survivors, some of whom have died since the exhibit debuted.

Becky was born in Carbon Hill, Ala., outside of Jasper. “Her father was mayor for a while,” Alan recalled during a recent Zoom chat.

“He put in the only stop light that Carbon Hill ever had.”

Becky was previously married and raised two children, and, having moved to Birmingham, worked at UAB, putting herself through school over eight years. She spent most of her career in the financial services industry before shifting to non-profit work.

She and Alan were married in 1999.

“We wanted to do something together and we thought about different things. We wanted to give back to the community together,” he said.

However, they couldn’t quite figure out exactly how — until a light bulb went on in Becky’s head as she sat there in 2005 listening to Holocaust survivors tell their stories.

Lasting Presence “Struck by powerful survivor testimony, After “Darkness into Life” Becky never picked Becky lamented that her own grandchildren up a camera again. would be unlikely to hear from a survivor,” “I don’t really know why,” said Alan. “I BHEC explained in a statement upon Becky’s don’t know whether it took so much out of her passing.

BHEC photo

Becky Seitel (right) with husband Alan and survivor Ilse Nathan. or she felt there wasn’t anything else she wanted to accomplish through photography — that she had kind of reached the mountaintop.”

Becky then became interested in other activities and spent the last eight years of her life quilting.

Alan understood and supported Becky’s creative journey. It was a path that not only left the enduring legacy of “Darkness into Life,” but also a lasting creative presence.

“Becky was always changing and always evolving,” said Alan. “She was a creator and an artist. So there was always newness.”

August 2021 • Southern Jewish Life

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Alabama connection spurs growth of American football in Israel

By Richard Friedman

Southern Jewish Life tells our story, keeping our communities connected and informed!

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American-style football is growing in Israel, thanks in part to a private Christian school in Huntsville.

It is at that school, Madison Academy in Huntsville, that Israeli football enthusiast Ori Shterenbach’s love for the American-birthed game deepened after a great experience coaching at the school.

Today, Shterenbach, sports director of American Football in Israel, looks back on the experience and recollects fondly the coaching education he got, which included, among many great memories, attending University of Alabama Coach Nick Saban’s football camp.

He also happily remembers his interaction with Huntsville’s Jewish community, which warmly embraced Shterenbach and his then-girlfriend, now-wife Vardit.

The 40-year-old Shterenbach grew up at a time when there was no organized American-style football in Israel. So how did he get interested?

The credit sort of goes to Saddam Hussein, the former dictator of Iraq and one of Israel’s major enemies at the time.

Shterenbach, in a recent Zoom conversation from his home in Haifa, recalled January 1991 when, during the Gulf War, Hussein’s Iraq was firing Scud missiles at Israel, forcing Israelis to huddle in safe rooms during the attacks.

“Since we were up all night, I got to watch my first Super Bowl, which came on in the middle of the night Israel time,” recalled Shterenbach, who had always been involved in sports.

His interest in football began growing and while traveling abroad after completing his military service, he encountered American football firsthand via a pickup game. After that he was hooked.

“I’ve always loved the game — the aggressiveness, the tactical part, the intelligence required. I‘ve basically grown up loving American football.”

He and five other people got together and founded the Israel Football League. He became both the quarterback and coach of Haifa’s team. It’s then that what would become his connection to Alabama took hold.

“A lot of American coaches were coming to Israel to help us,” explained Shterenbach. One of those was Eric Cohu, a high school coach at Jackson Academy in Tennessee.

“He offered me an internship to come to the U.S. to learn the trade, and to learn about the origin of football and to live the life of a football coach.”

Shortly thereafter, Cohu got a new job at Madison Academy in Huntsville. Shterenbach came in 2010 to join him, and that’s how the Alabama-Israel Football League connection started. Shterenbach would stay in the Huntsville area for a year.

Wonderful Memories Though it was more than 10 years ago, wonderful memories of his North Alabama experience remain fresh and stick with him.

“Everything was great — the food, the people, the atmosphere, the weather, the Southern hospitality. I still miss it. It felt like home because people were so good to Vardit and me — both the Jewish community and the whole community.”

He also remembers with pride the team’s achievements during his time

community at Madison Academy.

“When I was there we finished 10-0 and got to the quarterfinals of the state championship. Two years later we won the state championship and would win it three years in a row,” including a 15-game playoff winning streak. Among those he coached was Jordan Matthews, who would eventually be drafted by the NFL’s Philadelphia Eagles.

While in Alabama, Shterenbach also had the chance to be an ambassador for Israel, a role he still plays. “People were so interested that I was from Israel. I went into classes and lectured about Israel. The students I met still talk with me, text me and take an interest in what is going on in Israel.”

Coach Cohu, now at Little Rock Christian Academy in Arkansas, comes to Israel once or twice a year, sometimes bringing former Madison Academy players with him. “He loves Israel,” says Shterenbach. “Our connection remains strong.”

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Since returning to Israel after his year in Alabama, Shterenbach has been a leader in building the Israel Football League and its umbrella organization, American Football in Israel. He has held several key positions and today is in charge of the development of American football at all levels — from grassroots to high school to adults to women’s football, from flag to tackle.

He works closely with players, coaches and officials and is one of American Football in Israel’s most prominent faces.

With support from New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and the Kraft family, the Israel Football League has grown tremendously, said Shterenbach.

“It is tough to start a new sport in Israel, and football is such an expensive game with all of the equipment and gear. We don’t have it here, we have to get it from the U.S. and our budgets are limited.”

The league welcomes donations of money and equipment. People can donate through Friends of the Israel Football League.

The Friends organization was founded in 2015 “by Jewish and Christian friends who have a love for Israel and a passion for football,” according to its website. Its mission is “Building Community in the Holy Land through Football.”

The Friends group believes that “Bringing together young men or women on a football team gives them tools and values for the rest of their lives. Jews, Christians and Muslims, religious, secular and ultra-Orthodox, native Israelis and new immigrants, all become one working and striving, as a team, for victory.”

Adds Shterenbach,“We don’t discriminate. Anyone can play.” Players include native-born Israeli Jews, American Jews who have moved to Israel, Israeli Arabs and Palestinians.

Despite the challenges the league and American football in general have faced in Israel, Shterenbach is proud of the growth that he and others involved with the sport have achieved. “We have done a good job in building it.”

There are eight teams in the Israel Football League, about 10 in its high school league and close to 1500 participants overall.

The Israeli tackle national team will compete in the European international competition, and in December, American Football in Israel will host the flag football world championship in Jerusalem, with over 20 countries participating.

Competing teams also will qualify for the World Games, which will be held in Birmingham in 2022. This will be the first time flag football is featured in the World Games.

“Here in Israel, we love football,” said Shterenbach. “It is growing, always evolving, and I love the connection with Alabama. I will always be grateful for that connection and will try to keep it. Without it, I wouldn’t be where I am today.”

August 2021 • Southern Jewish Life

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community Connecting with Israel in a special way

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Far and wide, country to country and across different cultures, one thing that binds people is parenting special needs kids.

This was brought home to me not too long ago through a Zoom chat with an Israeli diplomat, Anat Sultan-Dadon.

Anat professionally is Israel’s Consul General to the Southeast, an important posting.

Based in Atlanta, her region covers a broad swath of Southern states, including Alabama, where I live.

She also is the mom of a special needs Trotter Cobb daughter, and a mutual friend, knowing this, was the one who connected us. I’m glad he did.

Anat, warm and engaging, has had several important diplomatic postings which have taken her family — her husband, two older daughters, her special needs child and herself — to different parts of the world.

A Full Day As I have come to learn, a diplomat’s life is a busy one, often 24/7, as they and their staff represent their home country in a variety of ways, from managing visas to meeting with high-ranking officials to creating new relationships.

Anat, for example, had recently spent a full day in Montgomery and Selma accompanying the Washington-based Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. on a civil rights tour. Her day also included a meeting with Gov. Kay Ivey and other high ranking officials, and a news conference.

She was back in Alabama a few weeks later to meet with Gov. Ivey and others to mark the signing of a State of Alabama resolution supporting Israel in its recent conflict with Hamas. Through her, I have learned about Alabama’s long-standing support for Israel and the many ties between our state and our Middle East ally.

However, if you had listened to my Zoom chat with her, you never would have known she was the Consul General from Israel. Rather, you would have thought of her as a devoted and loving special needs mom. Which she is.

The Consul General’s youngest daughter, now 10, is profoundly challenged by a rare genetic defect known as Kleefstra Syndrome.

Her daughter’s name is Niv, which means “expression” in Hebrew. She struggles with a condition that has been identified just in the past few years and there are only several hundred known cases in the world.

My son, who we call Trot and who is 25, faces special needs challenges as well. He has a rare genetic defect known as DYRK1A. It also has only been recently identified and the number of known cases also is small.

Same Bond In my chat with Anat, I felt the same bond that I always feel when I talk to parents of such challenged kids. We soften when we talk about our children.

Who we are and our professional accomplishments in life just fade away, and we listen intently to the other’s story, deeply interested in their child and the challenges their family and child face.

And there always is a look of understanding on our faces, as there clearly was in this Zoom chat.

Special needs moms and dads make time for each other. This was evident in my Zoom with the Consul General. Hours earlier there had been a terrible accident in Israel. Forty-five people died and about 150 more were injured during a religious pilgrimage.

I suggested to Anat that our Zoom be postponed but she insisted we go 30

August 2021 • Southern Jewish Life

community forward. I could sense our conversation was important to her.

She reflected what I’ve found to be the case with most parents and families with special needs children — a willingness to help others. I was interested in hearing about what Israel is doing to help its special needs citizens become all they can be.

I’d read about how much the Israelis loved, included and took care of their special needs community, treating these citizens as a normal part of society. What the country offers in the way of services, facilities and teaching life skills can serve as an example to the rest of the world.

I felt especially inspired by hearing how the Consul General has been able to manage a demanding career as an international diplomat -- while being a mom not only of a special needs daughter but also of two other daughters, and being a wife as well, and having to move every 4 or 5 years.

During her career, Anat has served in Germany, Cameroon, the Netherlands and Australia. In 2016, she was the recipient of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Outstanding Employee of the Year Award.

The foreign service has always been in her blood. Her father served as Israel’s ambassador to Egypt, Turkey and Canada, three important postings, and Anat would like to continue in his footsteps.

Yet being a woman at the upper echelon of the foreign service can be challenging, and additionally, wherever her family goes, she and her husband have to make sure there are support services for their youngest daughter. (She is pleased with Atlanta’s offerings.)

The One Comment Anat admitted all of this can be challenging. She’s happy to talk to other parents of special needs children to encourage them. However, she is reluctant to portray herself as a role model, noting that she has been blessed with a supportive family and resources -- things other such parents may not always have.

The Consul General and I are from different backgrounds -- I am a retired Christian businessman who has lived much of my life in Alabama; she is a mid-career Jewish Israeli diplomat who has lived in countries across the globe; we are a generation apart. Yet in our conversation I again heard the one comment that above all else connects special needs parents to each other.

We both remarked that when we share our experiences with well-meaning people outside of the special needs community, they often tell us how lucky our children are to have us as parents.

What Anat says to these people is exactly what I say: “We are the lucky ones to have them. We are so blessed and our lives would be empty without them.”

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Trotter Cobb is a retired businessman living in Birmingham. To learn more about Trotter and his writing go to https://www.trottercobb.com/.

JCRC educates about Jewish holiday schedule For many schools, universities and businesses, the ever-changing dates of Jewish holidays are often not on the radar. Birmingham’s Jewish Community Relations Council is working to minimize conflicts by releasing a Five Year Calendar of Jewish Holidays and Observances, through the summer of 2026.

The calendar has been sent electronically to administrators and educators in local schools that have Jewish students, and is available in an expanded version on the JCRC web page. A physical version is also being made available.

The calendar gives the dates for holidays, along with brief explanations of each holiday and whether there are work restrictions that would lead to school absences. The calendar is being made available to employers any group or organization that schedules events and would like to be sensitive to Jewish members.

August 2021 • Southern Jewish Life

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“Deep Breathing” technique 32

August 2021 • Southern Jewish Life

community Long-time Hispanic advocate Isabel Rubio reflects on her Jewish ancestry

By Richard Friedman As Isabel Rubio readies to step down after 20 years as the founding executive director of the Hispanic Interest Coalition of Alabama, she’s become intrigued by an unusual Jewish story that courses through her family’s history, and that she did not know about until she was an adult.

It’s a saga that has a footprint in New Orleans and McComb, Miss., as well as Alabama.

Her great-grandfather on her mother’s side was Jewish. Her great-grandmother was Catholic. He was German.

She was Spanish. It was an unusual marriage for those days, given the way European society was structured in the late 1800s.

Her great-grandfather, Richard Sussman, was born in 1870 and died in 1927. Her great-grandmother, Angela del Olmo, was born in 1878 and died in 1912.

What makes this saga even more unusual is that of the four boys and four girls they had — one of whom was Rubio’s grandmother — the boys were raised Jewish and the girls were raised Catholic.

“It’s odd,” admits Rubio, who was raised Catholic in McComb and who today lives in Birmingham and is Episcopalian. She thinks her great-grandfather wanted to perpetuate his Jewish heritage.

However, she acknowledges, if that were the case it would’ve been more logical for the daughters to have been raised Jewish than the sons, because traditionally Judaism is passed through the mother.

Little Connection Rubio, who was born in 1965, and whose mother died when she was four, didn’t know about any of this until she was in her 20s and one of her grandmother’s elderly sisters told her the story. Through the years, there had been little connection between the Jewish and Christian sides of the family.

Her great grandparents migrated from Europe in the early 1900s, after living in Germany and Spain, and eventually settled in New Orleans. At the time, Rubio says, there was a sharp divide between the city’s Christian and Jewish communities, creating an awkwardness for the family.

Rubio speculates that a possible reason for her great grandparents to raise their four daughters Catholic might have been to increase their marriage prospects.

In fact, one of her grandmother’s sisters married a prominent Catholic banker, and, as the story goes, hid from him that her father was Jewish.

Rubio, an accomplished nonprofit executive and social activist, has embraced her Jewish heritage. She feels that it’s in her DNA — literally.

A recent DNA test showed that her second highest category — at 17 percent — was European Jewish.

She’s also fairly certain that her Catholic great-grandmother had Jewish forebears, which is not uncommon among families rooted in Spain where during the 14th and 15th centuries Jews were forced, often brutally, to convert to Christianity.

Feeling a Connection Growing up in McComb, a smaller Mississippi town between New Orleans and Jackson, Rubio didn’t know any Jews. However, she and her father would visit cemeteries to learn more about the past.

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August 2021 • Southern Jewish Life

She was surprised to discover an old Jewish cemetery in Summit, just north of McComb, which intrigued her. “I wanted to know who the people were and what their lives were like.”

Rubio remembers visiting there more than once and feeling a connection with the people buried there.

According to the Institute of Southern Jewish Life’s encyclopedia of Southern Jewish communities, the Jewish community in McComb and Summit dates back to the 1850s, when the railroad came through and Jews from New Orleans moved there to escape a yellow fever epidemic.

A congregation was formed in Summit in 1877 but disbanded in 1916 as the community dwindled. The abandoned building was destroyed in a 1924 tornado, and in the late 1930s the Jewish community in McComb numbered just 12.

Faith Inheritance Today, Rubio considers herself part Jewish, a faith inheritance that has come to influence her life and her work on behalf of Alabama’s Hispanic community.

“I have so many friends in the Jewish community. I so appreciate and adore so many things about Jewish culture and feel a connection.

What really draws me to the Jewish community is the warmth that has been extended to me and the cohesiveness.”

As an advocate for Alabama’s Latino population, she sees parallels between that community’s history and the Jewish community’s — particularly the immigrant experience and the challenges and discrimination the two communities have faced.

Speaking in her ¡HICA! role at a Birmingham Jewish community rally against antisemitism held last June, Rubio referred to her Jewish heritage and how it has heightened her commitment to combat antisemitism.

The reference to her Jewish background came as a surprise to some who’ve known Rubio but who were unaware of her family history.

As she prepares to leave ¡HICA! at the end of this year, the 56-year-old Rubio is pondering what she wants to do next. She has two grown children and a significant other who she noted — with irony and Jewish cultural shorthand — is an “M-O-T”(Member of the Tribe).

Among her interests, though, is finally pursuing one thing she’s never gotten around to all these years. She wants to find out more about her Jewish heritage and the Jewish side of her family.

“I would love to connect with relatives who know something about all this. It would be super cool, and maybe someone has the answer as to why the boys were raised Jewish?”

(For more on Rubio’s career at HICA see the recent Birmingham Times story at birminghamtimes.com.)

community BHEC gala honors founder Phyllis Weinstein L’Chaim, the Birmingham Holocaust Education Center’s annual fundraising event, is going virtual this year due to the Covid resurgence, on Aug. 22 at 3 p.m.

Phyllis Weinstein, who founded the BHEC, will be honored at the event. A long-time advocate for Holocaust education, Weinstein died on Jan. 6 at the age of 100.

The event is presented in collaboration with Red Mountain Theatre, and the program will be a combination of musical and theatrical entertainment, education and remembrance with performances by the Red Mountain Performing Ensemble and special guests, including Alie B. Gorrie.

L’Chaim will be hosted by Birmingham native Alison Goldstein Lebovitz, host of “The A List with Alison Lebovitz.”

The program will also feature a conversational one-on-one interview with Wolf Blitzer by Birmingham resident Esther Schuster. Blitzer, host of CNN’s “The Situation Room,” is the son of Holocaust survivors.

Weinstein was involved in virtually all the Jewish organizations and agencies in Birmingham, including Hadassah, Collat Jewish Family Services, the Birmingham Jewish Federation and BJF Community Relations Committee. She also spearheaded the founding of the N.E. Miles Jewish Day School.

In 1984, Weinstein was a charter member of the Alabama State Holocaust Advisory Council, which became the Alabama Holocaust Commission in 1999. In 2002, Weinstein gathered a group of like-minded citizens and created the Birmingham Holocaust Education Committee, a sub-committee of the Alabama Holocaust Commission, which became the Birmingham Holocaust Education Center in 2011.

When asked why she worked so hard to preserve the history and lessons of the Holocaust, she answered, “It was something that needed to be done.”

Information on viewing the program is available at bheclchaim.swell.gives.

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FBI New Orleans Special Agent in Charge Douglas Williams, Jr., formally presented Aaron Ahlquist with the 2020 Director’s Community Leadership Award Nominee at the FBI New Orleans Field Office.

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FBI New Orleans Special Agent in Charge Douglas Williams, Jr. announced that Aaron Ahlquist is the recipient of the 2020 FBI Director’s Community Leadership Award. The award was presented at the FBI field office in New Orleans on July 14.

Ahlquist is the director of community engagement for the Anti-Defamation League South Region. He formerly served as regional director since 2017. He also serves as co-chair of the Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans Security Committee.

“Mr. Ahlquist’s tireless efforts demonstrate his commitment to help strengthen the relationship between the FBI and the communities we serve,” said FBI NO SAC Williams. “The FBI is proud to recognize his work and continued partnership.”

An active member of FBI New Orleans’ Multicultural Engagement Council and Civil Rights Working Group, Ahlquist is working with the FBI on a joint innovative outreach strategy across Louisiana to reach underrepresented groups, particularly the Jewish, LGBTQ+, Latino and African American communities, in furtherance of the FBI’s mission to build trust and develop stronger ties to the community, educate the public, and prevent hate-motivated and extremist crimes.

According to the FBI office, “despite the COVID-19 pandemic and nationwide civil unrest, Mr. Ahlquist maintained consistent communication and supported FBI NO’s commitment to keep all Louisianians safe,” and “he is a valuable and highly appreciated resource and partner to the FBI New Orleans Division.”

Jackson’s Pensacola holds Rosh Hashanah dinner

Jackson’s restaurant in downtown Pensacola is once again planning a Rosh Hashanah dinner, on Sept. 6 starting at 5 p.m.

In addition to the regular menu, Chef Irv Miller is preparing a special Rosh Hashanah menu with locally baked challah, red and golden delicious apples with East Hill orange blossom honey; then a first course of potato and zucchini latkes with balsamic fig preserves, sour cream and fresh chives, finishing with the entrée — house-smoked and slow-braised brisket with caramelized onions, Mom’s kugel, sugar glazed carrots, toasted almonds and crispy balsamic Brussels sprouts.

The Rosh Hashanah dinner is $29 per person. Reservations are being taken.

Avodah New Orleans members complete challenging year of service On July 21, the 2020-2021 cohort of Avodah’s New Orleans Service Corps celebrated the culmination of their service year as part of an online national celebration.

Avodah New Orleans is a year-long service learning program designed to build the foundations for careers in the public sector, to prepare participants for lifelong activism in social justice movements, and to contribute to the New Orleans community. Participants, age 21 to 26, live in a communal house while being matched for full-time positions at grassroots non-profit organizations that fight poverty, at no cost to the organizations.

Among the organizations served by the 11 New Orleans Avodah members this past year are First 72+, UNITY of Greater New Orleans, Louisiana Fair Housing and Action Center, and more.

Since 2008, Avodah has facilitated partnerships with each placement organization, pairing Service Corps Members with early-career roles at organizations that make an impact in the community, giving the organizations added capacity to serve more people. The program has served more than 44,000 individuals and families across Greater New Orleans.

This year’s cohort rose to the unique challenges of the Covid pandemic, serving clients by phone and video, and providing assistance to the many people and families struggling from economic loss, social isolation, health, and other challenges that the virus posed. Outside of their day jobs, the New Orleans cohort prepared 100 hot meals per week for the city’s unhoused population through a collaboration with Southern Solidarity.

At the opening retreat last fall for the 2020-21 Avodah Service corps members in New Orleans “We are immensely proud to see another generation of changemakers take the next steps in their social justice journeys,” Avodah CEO Cheryl Cook said. “There is such diversity among the passions of this group — future organizers, educators, public servants and entrepreneurs. This cohort will go on to join the nearly 1,400 Avodah alumni who are leaders in their communities on issues of housing justice, criminal justice reform,

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education, health access, immigration reform and so much more.”

The graduates of Avodah Jewish Service Corps will go on to life-long careers and endeavors in social justice. For some, that means the pursuit of further education for careers in public health, social work, legal advocacy, public policy and more. For others, Avodah opens the door to a career in public service. More than half of Avodah alumni remain in New Orleans, strengthening the community through direct and indirect service.

“Avodah brought me to New Orleans with a lot of intentionality,” Avodah New Orleans Service Corps Member Halle Young, said. “I feel like I’m investing in the city in a really meaningful way and I’m not ready to leave yet… Avodah feels a part of my current growth and the growth I hope to have in the future.”

“This cohort is filled with incredible justice-minded Jewish leaders. The Corps Members work to be in meaningful relationships with the communities they serve, as well as each other,” Avodah New Orleans Program Director Shoshana Madick said. “We are incredibly lucky to have each of them in the New Orleans Jewish community and I look forward to witnessing their continual growth and impact.”

Avodah also operates sites in New York City, Washington and Chicago. In 2022, Avodah intends to expand its Service Corps with two more sites: a bayit specifically designated for Jews of Color in New York City, and a new site in San Diego.

The new Avodah members for 2021-22 will arrive in New Orleans in August. Applications are still being accepted for all Avodah locations, and members will be added through September.

B’ham congregations develop new teen education program

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August 2021 • Southern Jewish Life

The religious schools at Birmingham’s Temple Beth-El and Temple Emanu-El are introducing Kesher, a new concept in Jewish teen experiences and post b’nai mitzvah education..

Open to students in grades 8 to 12, Kesher will meet every other week in 12 sessions starting Oct. 7, Thursdays at 5:30 p.m. at the N.E. Miles Jewish Day School. There will also be additional programming for 10th graders undergoing Confirmation.

The new program will have elective classes, including Judaism and Ethics, filmmaking, Israel, mental health, college readiness, cooking in Hebrew, and leadership through improv comedy.

There will also be two community mitzvah projects during the year.

Registration is now open through the two congregations.

commentary >> Education

continued from page 4

metaphor for moral education. It does Jews no good to boil their history down to one that is only predicated on a vision of victimhood and powerlessness as the disproportionate attention given to Holocaust education sometimes does. Similarly, viewing America’s past as only a story of white supremacy and black victimhood is also unproductive and damaging, not to mention a source of misinformation.

It would be far better if we could study these subjects outside of the context of partisan battles or ethnic/religious competitions in which groups see education curricula as politics by other means. Above all, we should strive to avoid fallacious comparisons between these subjects that, almost by definition, give short shrift to the study of each and reduces them to political footballs.

This has happened because, in our day, the discipline of history has, more often than not, become a function of illiberal and toxic intellectual fashions that dominate academia like CRT. So it’s little wonder that the battles over these topics in legislatures have also become influenced by misinformed and revisionist history aimed at scoring points for radicals, rather than fact-based accounts that can offer a nuanced view of the past not tainted by ideological blinders.

We needn’t blush about opposing woke indoctrination about race while also seeking to have Americans understand the Holocaust. But no matter which subject we’re discussing, the real tragedy is the way those who pose as experts are leading us into arid debates that do little to enlighten and much to divide us along racial and religious lines.

Jonathan S. Tobin is editor in chief of JNS—Jewish News Syndicate. Follow him on Twitter at: @jonathans_tobin.

Tech helps facilitate fertility successes

By Lee J. Green

Despite fears and uncertainty during the pandemic, pursuit of family-building and successful pregnancies continue at New Leaders In Fertility and Endocrinology, aka NewLIFE, and the rapid promotion and acceptance of telemedicine has played a role in helping facilitate those successes.

“One good thing to come out of the pandemic is that we have seen the advancement of video-conferencing,” said Barry Ripps, a Jewish fertility specialist and founder of NewLIFE, with offices in Pensacola, Panama City, Destin, Dothan, Tallahassee and Mobile. “Telemedicine reduces the number of visits needed during a patient’s initial evaluation… and most insurances now cover costs for telemedicine visits.”

Ripps also noted that NewLIFE has been successful in offering fertility care to couples living far beyond the local offices, many of whom wished to combine a healthcare visit with a safe vacation to the Gulf Coast of Florida.

“We’ve gone to great lengths to ensure patient safety,” he said. “This allows people to escape the pressure and (fertility treatment) costs of the larger cities.”

NewLIFE’s treatment costs average 30 to 40 percent less than those in larger metropolitan areas, a fact that has made a miracle for many would-be families.

Ripps said he advises patients to focus on their health, particularly during a pandemic, to increase their chances for fertility success. “Obesity alone raises risks for complications from a Covid-19 infection and it also decreases the chances for a successful pregnancy,” he said.

Ripps said their patients are provided with as much education as possible on wellness and how a healthy lifestyle can increase their chances, and speed, of a successful conception.

“A lot of what we do is education and consultation,” he said. “We’re with our patients every step of the way in the process.”

August 2021 • Southern Jewish Life

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August 2021 • Southern Jewish Life

continued from page 3

be vastly simplified, as there are many differences of opinion). In Christianity, one is born a sinner because of the original sin with the fruit in the Garden of Eden — it taints all of humanity, and because that sin separates people from God, the only way around that is through faith in Jesus as the savior and intermediary.

Add to that the idea that the saved soul goes to heaven and the unsaved soul goes to hell, and that in the Christian view, the soul is given at conception. Abort the fetus, the soul is doomed.

In Judaism, there is no concept of being born with original sin, one is born as a clean slate, and isn’t religiously accountable until Bar or Bat Mitzvah. Not to mention that Judaism doesn’t share the heaven-hell expectation that Christianity has.

Clearly, the passion many have about abortion is religious in nature.

But the United States is a secular nation in terms of how laws are made, even with the idea that the natural law spoken of by the Founders comes from the divine.

The dichotomy has other implications — there have been many Jews who have been leery of giving birth in a Catholic hospital, because of fears that if there is a complication and only one or the other will survive, the inclination in the hospital may be to focus efforts on the unborn. After all, the mother has already had her chance to be “saved.”

In Jewish law, the primary effort should go to protecting the mother, not only because the difference in status, but because there may already be other children who depend on her, and the harsh-sounding but realistic view that one can always try again.

If a woman needs to have a leg amputated, nobody thinks twice about it. Since Jewish law considers the fetus to be similar to “a limb” of the mother, the same applies. Of course, that is the legal view and has nothing to do with the emotional aspects of having to undergo such a decision.

In no way, however, does this mean that Judaism accepts abortion on demand, and despite what opponents of abortion state, it is almost never a decision done on a whim or taken lightly, it is often highly traumatic and made more so by activists who know nothing of an individual’s circumstances.

There are certain times under Jewish law where not only is abortion permitted, it is mandated, in order to put the well-being of the woman first.

One can look at the rules and state that abortion is justified only if the mother will die from the pregnancy. Such cases are very rare.

Even many Orthodox authorities, who are generally the least lenient, also take into account severe abnormalities — which could hamper a mother’s ability to take care of other children — the mother’s mental health, or when a pregnancy comes from rape or incest. But even in those cases, the preference is to examine each case on its own merits.

A one size fits all law doesn’t allow for that.

The Reform and Conservative movements have issued rulings taking into account the mother’s mental state, or if carrying a particular pregnancy to term will result in physical damage that would prevent future pregnancies.

But whatever the rationale, and wherever most people in the Jewish community stand on what circumstances should or should not be permitted, there is an overwhelming sense that the least appropriate venue for those decisions is legislative buildings.

For governments to ban abortion altogether means a violation of Jewish law in the cases where the mother is endangered. It is not a contradiction to want the government to get out of the decision making process while desiring a society with as few abortions as possible.

community If the number of abortions is an issue, there may well be other factors at play, other than accessibility. Take Israel, for example.

Israel has rather liberal abortion laws, and a much lower abortion rate than the U.S., though both have fallen dramatically in recent years.

In Israel, a woman can seek an abortion if under the age of 17 or over 40; if not married or the pregnancy is not from her marriage; cases of rape or incest; danger to the woman’s life, including physical or emotional damage; or in cases of severe physical or mental abnormality.

Minors need not seek parental permission, an issue that sends American pro-lifers into conniptions.

A woman seeking an abortion in Israel goes before a three-person panel that includes an OB-GYN, an additional medical specialist and a social worker. There is no mandate for a religious authority or a government representative to be present. The panels approve roughly 98 percent of cases.

And yet, despite abortion being legal and paid for by Israel’s universal health care, the rate of abortion there is half that of the U.S. If Roe is overturned, the U.S. will once again be a patchwork of states regarding the accessibility of abortion, and we have no illusions about what that will look like in our region.

For the sake of religious liberty, a ban on abortion is not the answer. If opponents of abortion want to make a dent in the numbers — which indeed have been declining — the answers lie more in societal attitudes toward life and parenthood, not in the accessibility. But changing societal attitudes is a much Lawrence Brook, Publisher/Editor harder battle to fight.

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culture “The Day After” documentary kicks off Sidewalk Film Festival’s return

By Lee J. Green A significant “Television Event” will kick off the Sidewalk Film Festival’s Homecoming to downtown Birmingham in 2021 and the documentary’s Jewish director is excited about the big-screen debut of the film, which examines 1983’s television movie that shook the world – “The Day After.” “’The Day After’ came out during a time where we just had three networks and Cold War fears were heightened,” said “Television Event” Director Jeff Daniels. “More than 100 million people watched it,” making it the highest-rated television movie of all time, “and it really brought out a dialogue in our polarized nation. The power of storytelling can bring people together and create these galvanizing moments.”

In “The Day After,” the U.S. is poised on the brink of nuclear war. This shadow looms over the residents of the small university town of Lawrence, Kans., as they continue their daily lives. When the unthinkable happens and the bombs come down, the town’s residents are thrust into the horrors of nuclear winter.

“Television Event” examines the production and making of the controversial television movie event, helmed by Jewish director Nicholas Meyer and starring Jewish actor Steve Guttenberg.

Daniels, 43, grew up in New York City and saw “The Day After” when he was five years old. “The atomic angst was palpable, even for someone my age,” he said. The film “wasn’t just a television event, it became a major news event. When I started doing some research for the documentary, I wanted to understand how someone could make a film about something so frightening and turn it into a primetime family event on ABC.” The filmmaker got interested in making the documentary after he saw a segment in 2018 on the 25th anniversary of “The Day After.” He read Meyer’s memoir and interviewed the director for several hours.

Meyer’s illustrious motion picture career includes directing “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn” and co-writing the screenplay for “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.” He also created the History Channel miniseries about the great Jewish magician, “Houdini.”

“Nicolas Meyer was a big-time film director and he took ‘a step down’ to direct the film but he said it was all worth it just to make a political statement,” said Daniels. “That spoke to me as a filmmaker.”

Daniels also included interviews with former ABC news anchor Ted Koppel, psychologists, cabinet members under former president Ronald Reagan and those involved in the making of “The Day After.”

“The people I interviewed who worked in Reagan’s White House said

“Television Event” 42

August 2021 • Southern Jewish Life

culture

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Then Stay for dinner “Storm Lake” the movie really changed him,” said Daniels. “He was a former actor and understood the power of storytelling and how movies could affect people.

This led to a change in his rhetoric. He would go on to believe and say publicly that nuclear war could never be won and should never be fought.”

Growing up, Daniels was always fascinated by history, world events and learning more about his Sephardic Jewish roots. His grandfather was a photographer for the U.S. Army during World War II. He started making documentaries shortly after graduating college in New York and interning on the Ken Burns television docuseries “Jazz.”

While in college he studied for a semester in Melbourne, Australia. At age 23, encouraged by Australian government’s support of “filmmakers who wanted to make politically important documentaries,” he permanently relocated there. He has been married for 10 years and has a nineyear-old daughter.

Daniels has made several Jewish-focused documentaries in the past, including “Mother with a Gun.” That film looks at how Jews should respond to a global increase in attacks by focusing on the Jewish Defense League’s Shelley Rubin, who was married to former JDL leader Ira Rubin.

The filmmaker said he regrets that he can’t make it to Birmingham for the festival, but he will likely participate virtually with the Q&A after the movie.

“I’m just so appreciative they selected the movie. There are some excellent documentary and feature films at the Sidewalk Film Festival,” said Daniels. “I’ve never been to Birmingham but I have been to Huntsville. I attended Space Camp at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in 1987.”

The Southern Jewish Life magazine is sponsoring the documentary “Storm Lake,” written and produced by Jewish filmmaker Beth Levison.

The movie focuses on the importance and challenges of local journalism today through the prism of a small-town Iowa newspaper.

In another documentary at Sidewalk, “Not Going Quietly,” Ady Barkan embarks on a national campaign for healthcare reform after being diagnosed with ALS. Jewish filmmaker Nicholas Bruckman directed the film, which premiered at South by Southwest earlier this year.

William Klein provides an ultimate behind-the-scenes look at the 1981 French Open in “The French.” The grand slam tennis event, featuring iconic players such as John McEnroe, Bjorn Borg, Chris Evert, Martina Navratilova and Yannick Noah, proved to be a “crucial moment in a crucial year in the history of the game.”

“Zola,” an adult dark comedy based on a viral tweet by Aziah “Zola” King, is directed by Janicza Bravo, who has been quoted as saying “I feel comfortable saying that I might be the only black, Panamanian, Jewish woman working in comedy.”

The 23rd annual Sidewalk Film Festival will take place Aug. 23 to 29 in downtown Birmingham at multiple venues, including the Alabama Theatre, Lyric Theatre and the Sidewalk Cinema and Film Center. For more information about the Sidewalk Film Festival and complete schedules, go to www.sidewalkfest.com.

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August 2021 • Southern Jewish Life

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counselor’s corner a monthly feature from Collat Jewish Family Services

If You’re Lonely, Chances Are You’re Not Alone

By Cynthia Bryant, LICSW

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Happy New Year 5782

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Be friendly. If it would make your day to receive a smile from someone, then be that person for someone else. Smile! See what happens.

Then smile again.

Be a giver. Share with others. Do you have too many garden veggies, too many breakfast muffins? Who doesn’t love muffins?

Be less serious. Do you let yourself laugh?

Give it a try. Watch something silly. It really will be ok. The more you can laugh with others and at yourself, the more people will be drawn to you. You can find interesting events through www.meetup.com. You can enjoy movies or speakers at your local library or senior center; exercise through Silver Sneakers or the LJCC; or even join a group of lively seniors on a chartered bus to a casino!

Be a lifelong learner. Anyone will be bored and lonely if they are looking at the same four walls and TV shows. Take a class through UAB’s New Horizons program or the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Alabama. Even if your body cannot move, let your brain travel.

You can listen to podcasts or check out books or audiobooks online. You can even join a team of home-based volunteers who help renowned UAB archaeologist Sarah Parcak review her findings!

Be an oasis. Reach out to friends, loved ones and acquaintances. Send a card. Ask how you can be of help to them. Everyone is overstressed

Mahatma Gandhi may have said it best: If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him.

CJFS provides individual and group therapy for family, relationship and parenting issues, as well as depression, anxiety, grief and other problems. For more information or to schedule an appointment, contact Clinical Director Marcy Morgenbesser, marcy@cjfsbham.org or 205.879.3438.

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In the course of my work as a Clinical Social Worker at CJFS, I often visit senior living communities, apartment complexes and neighborhoods where it seems that nearly everyone I meet is experiencing loneliness. Some days, I wish I could knock on all the doors and introduce everyone to each other!

In reality, I know the solution to one person’s loneliness may not work for someone else. Even for adults, making new friends can be challenging, and for many people, it’s hard to know where to start. As families spread out geographically and community ties change, loneliness is a growing problem — but there are steps each of us can take to develop new friendships and deeper interactions:

by life and longs for moments of calm.

Can you become a person who sees their strengths and efforts, encourages them and makes them feel seen and heard? If so, you will be like an oasis in a desert.

Be a volunteer. Let people see who you are and what you have to offer. This is also the perfect way to focus less on your own concerns and focus on others. The volunteers at our CJFS CARES respite program have lots of fun and interaction — and the lunch is great, too!

Be forgiving. Sometimes, people remain isolated because they fear rejection or think others will be judgmental or critical. In fact, many people who make this assumption will admit that they personally have judgmental tendencies. By learning to accept the flaws of others, you’ll find you will make this same allowance for yourself.

Welcome to the human race!

Be legacy-minded.

What would happen if you were purposeful in your conversations with your friends and family? Do you have relationships to repair or even create? You do not need an invitation to be a role model, a loving shoulder to cry on, a fishing buddy or the neighborhood cookie lady.

August 2021 • Southern Jewish Life

community >> Rear Pew

continued from page 46

Another old Sephardic song originally performed on shofar was similarly adapted into a 1973 song by The Eagles. Early every morning of the late summer month of Elul, generations of Sephardim used to sound the shofar to the tune of “Tequilla Sunrise” while sipping a cocktail of the same name like a mimosa at brunch.

Shofars are most commonly known as ram’s horns, which ties in with the story of Abraham and Isaac that’s chanted on Rosh Hashanah. However, some shofars are antelope horns.

This alternative antler dates back to the Talmud. The recently discovered tractate Bava Gump recounts how a great rabbi’s great aunt eloped just before Rosh Hashanah.

Rabbi Telfon, the great communicator, observed that using an antelope horn for a shofar celebrates that marriage. Rabbi Selfon caused some static by asserting that eloping deprived friends and family of enjoying a nice spread and open bar, so the antelope horn is used as a symbol of atonement leading up to Yom Kippur.

He also conceded that the antelope horns just look cool — a crucial concession because it preserved the paradigm that for every two rabbis there are three opinions.

Doug Brook expected complaints about this column, but shofar so good.

His live performance in June of the one-man play Shylock is now available on-demand through August 22 – Information and tickets at https://www. svshakespeare.org/. To read past columns, visit http://brookwrite.com/. For exclusive online content, follow facebook.com/rearpewmirror.

Online Teen Israel Education Program Returns in September

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Applications are due Sept. 5 for the Atlanta-based Center for Israel Education’s next virtual Teen Israel Leadership Institute, to be held at 11 a.m. Central on consecutive Sundays, Sept. 19 and 26.

TILI’s interactive presentations enhance 15- to 18-year-olds’ understanding of Israel, its complexity and its role in Jewish identity. TILI participants in person and online the past three years have called the experience empowering and said it provided confidence in speaking about Israel: The center engages teens and adults with Israel learning through context and perspective. TILI focuses on teen interaction and engagement with the sources of Israel’s rich, complex past to deepen appreciation of Israel’s role in shaping Jewish identity. The program provides teens a variety of tools to understand contemporary events with nuance and to share their knowledge with their communities.

Among other topics, the interactive TILI sessions will focus on Zionist and Israeli culture and politics through music, Israel’s Jewish and democratic origins, identity and religion in Israeli society, the British-Arab-Zionist triangle in building the state until 1949, Arab-Israeli relations and negotiations, becoming critical consumers of media, and Israel on campus.

September’s teen institute is for 10th- through 12th-graders. Teens with any level of knowledge about Israel are welcome, but the most successful attendees are willing to engage with their peers and bring an open mind. Participants who complete the program receive a CIE Teen Israel Leadership Institute Certificate in Israel Education.

The usual $54 registration has been waived, so participation is free.

Applications are accepted on a rolling basis, and teens are encouraged to apply as soon as possible. Applications are available at israeled.org/teens.

August 2021 • Southern Jewish Life

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rear pew mirror • doug brook

The horn section

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August 2021 • Southern Jewish Life

A familiar sound is rumbling louder underneath the din of late summer weather. Yes, there’s the sound of synagogue staffs dealing with High Holy Days planning — somewhere between stifled screams and blood-curdling bellows.

Another familiar sound lurks deeper. People think they hear more car horns because school is starting and summer vacations are over. But a different kind of horn is also feeding this phonic frenzy.

Every morning in the month of Elul, leading up to Rosh Hashanah, the shofar is sounded. Few enough people attend weekday morning minyan to hear it, so for most people it blends in with all the other horns during early morning traffic. To them, there’s no distinguishing between the horn sounds of a shofar and a chauffeur.

This daily shofar sounding foreshadows the better-known shofar soundings on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. When the shofar is sounded on Rosh Hashanah, the exact sequence of long and short notes translates in the ancient Morris Code into the Yiddish equivalent of “time to sneak out of services and have lunch.”

The same sequence is repeated several more times in the service for those who ignored its meaning the first time, or who understood but were trying to get out of setting the table.

It’s understandable that people would be confused by the exact sequence of shofar sounds. For example, take the shevareem which is three longer notes. If you do half a shevareem it would logically be one and a half. However, half of “shevareem” is “sheva” which is Hebrew for “seven.” This teaches that, according to Jewish tradition, three divided by two equals seven.

This kind of math might beg the question how Jews were ever stereotyped as accountants. However, this Zoom just kind of math makes it easier to understand how on Chanukah one day’s doesn’t capture worth of oil lasted eight days, and how there are seven aliyahs to the Torah on the true crowd Shabbat but eight people have them.

Science is still unable to explain how for sounds from every two rabbis there are three opinShabbat morning ions.

Despite the shofar’s basic tonal qualities — the quality of which depends on who is sounding it — it isn’t known much today as a musical instrument. But it once was. The Jewish composer Felix Mendelssohn in 1822, at age 13, wrote his Concerto for Violin and Shofar in B-double-flat minor, which is so forgotten by history that all the way until his death, in 1847, Mendelssohn had never said a word to anyone, including himself, about writing it.

In the second half of the Twentieth Century, a couple of groups popularized songs originally performed on the shofar. The first was originally an old Sephardic tune, whose Spanish origins help explain the adaptation first recorded by The Champs in 1958.

The song, popularly known today as “Tequila,” originally had a second “l” in its name, “Tequilla” – which, of course, was pronounced “tekiya.”

The Champs perform the song with a saxophone, but centuries earlier Sephardim performed it entirely on shofars. Unfortunately, the ability to control tone on shofars so melodically has been lost to time and chapped lips. continued on previous page

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August 2021 • Southern Jewish Life