Southern Jewish Life, Deep South, September 2019

Southern Jewish Life

OUR ANNUAL SPORTS ISSUE THE MITZVAH HEARD AROUND THE WORLD WELCOMING THE REGION’S NEW RABBIS High Holy Days 2019 Volume 29 Issue 9

Southern Jewish Life P.O. Box 130052 Birmingham, AL 35213 Birmingham’s Olivia Mannon wins silver playing for Israel’s national lacrosse team. Story, page 36.

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High Holy Days 2019 • Southern Jewish Life

shalom y’all For the Jewish communities of the Deep South, this is the most heavily religious time of the year.

But in addition to football season, the High Holy Days are coming up. As reported last month, members of the Who Dat Nation have a dilemma with a pivotal home game against Dallas on the first evening of Rosh Hashanah. What is a Jieux for Breesus to do?

Our September issue always has the intersection of sports and the Jewish community. The coverage really started last month, with our piece about Yana Fielkow of New Orleans playing on the gold medal-winning U.S. soccer team at the Maccabi Pan Am Games in Mexico City.

But as we report this month, it isn’t just U.S. uniforms being worn in international competition by athletes in our area, as a surprising number of Israel’s lacrosse and softball players this summer came from our region.

We also have coverage of the larger-than-usual New Orleans and Birmingham (also with New Orleans and Huntsville participation) delegations to the JCC Maccabi Games in Detroit and Atlanta, respectively.

We also have the most comprehensive coverage of a Team Israel story from the Women’s Lacrosse U19 World Championships in Canada, a story that went viral, including hundreds of thousands of views on ESPN. Naturally, there is a strong local tie.

In this issue, we also have interviews with the surprisingly large number of new rabbis in our region.

As we enter 5780, may it be a year of peace and prosperity, security and understanding… and another Lombardi trophy coming home to the Superdome.

To subscribe, email subscribe@sjlmag.com

SJL Online: sjlmag.com

Lawrence Brook, Publisher/Editor

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opinion

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 Gilad Katz and Canada, I have logged many miles seeing how sports can be a vehicle to help build Jewish identity, especially in our young.

Not Everything is Politics

I felt honored to come to Birmingham for the first time and fell in love with not just the city cycle the taken Hebrew calendar has community whowith are frustrated, and worst butAnother the people.

Youofhave Southern hospitality to a new level your kind angry, and caring come to an In a Maccabi few days,Games. according to the of all feel alienated from Israel. I hear them, I approach to end. the JCC Jewish tradition, we will celebrate the beginning understand their genuine frustration, and my by the Sokol and hard-working volunteers weretowonderful.

They of Led a New Hebrew Year,Helds, 5780.your These days are heart goes out them as they arepartnered members of with your outstanding staff, led by Betzy Lynch, to make the 2017 JCC Maccabi games a huge hit. times of soul searching. A time for us to stop our Israeli Family.

Iour want to take this opportunity as executive director of Maccabi USA to say thank you on routine and look back at the year that is My dear friends, during this time of behalf the year of everyone involved. ending as well as anticipate the New Year that is as we enter into the High Holy Days, I would like just around corner. to suggest we all stop.

We delegation will have plenty I had just the returned from the 20th World Maccabiah games that in Israel with a U.S. of I would like to take this opportimeinand toentire argue over 1100, who joined 10,000 Jewish athletes from 80 countries. of Back Julyopportunities the eyes of the tunity to focuswere on the relationship and debate.

But for now,and let us put Jewish world on Jerusalem and the Maccabiah. This past month with 1000 athletes betweenfrom Israel and the theworld Jewish ourthe differences on hold — at least coaches around being in Birmingham, you became focal point. communities in the Diaspora. for this special time of year. Let us Everyone from the Jewish community and the community at large, including a wonderful One does not have to be a scholar focus on something that for too police force, are to be commended. These games will go down in history as being a seminal to know that during the last few long we have forgotten or ignored. moment for the Jewish community as we build to the future by providing such wonderful Jewish years there has been a constant When was the last time we put memories. feeling of tension between Israel, aside the differences between us Jed Margolis or maybe we should say the Israeli and instead focused on the comExecutive Director, Maccabi Government, and the JewishUSA Dimon values, beliefs, and goals that aspora. This tension is not new we as a people share. and it seems that it has always Believe meseemy friends, supremacists would like to pushed back not On beenCharlottesville hanging above our heads. everything is politics!

The vast majority of the into a corner and made to feel lesser. We stand Nevertheless, it still seems that since the de- with Jewish community, both in Israel and the Unitand pray for the family of Heather Heyer, Editor’s This reaction to the events in the ed States, believe in our mutual destiny. We cision ofNote: the Israeli Government to suspend who was there standing up to the face of this Charlottesville, written by2017) JeremybyNewman, ‘Sheransky Report’ (June not recogniz- hate. know that the deep bond between us is undeniMaster of the Alpha Epsilon Pi Theta Colony ing the new official egalitarian plaza adjacent able and irrevocable. There is a fascinating story We recognize essence of the Americanrabat University, was shared by at AEPi to Auburn the traditional Orthodox plaza the Kotel about Rabbi Aryethe Levin, a very well-known narrative as a two-century old struggle to rid National, which called it “very eloquent” and (Western Wall), things have deteriorated. bi who lived in Israel during the first half of the of such corners, andfor allow those inlove praised at AEPi Theta Colony After“our thisbrothers came the “Nationality Law” at (July ourselves 20th century.

He was known his endless theand seatevery at theJew. table thattold theythat so deserve.

Auburn and…legislation the leadership theyhow- them 2019), aUniversity piece of Israeli which, for each It was there was It is the struggle to fulfill the promise of the display on their campus. ” ever well intentioned, became incredibly divi- once a time when the rabbi and his wife went to of Independence, menasked are sive throughout the Diaspora. Additionally, we Declaration see the doctor.

Upon arriving,that the “all doctor endowed by their Creator cannot forget that during all of these years the created them forequal… the reason that they came to seewith him.

White supremacy has been a cancer on unalienable rights.” We“My knowwife our has workan “Conversion Issue” has not yet been addressed, certain Rabbi Arye Levin answered, our country since its beginning, threatening is far from finished, but we know we will not to the disappointment and frustration of myself, issue with her leg and we both feel the pain.” its hopes, its values, and its better angels. move backwards. and most importantly the Diaspora.

Although we have our disagreements and even The events that took place in Charlottesville Just a few weeks ago, the Israeli Government argue between ourselves, the armed, end of take the day When men and women,atfully represented the worst of this nation. Those decided to bar two Congresswomen from en- to wethe all streets feel each other’s pain. in droves with swastikas and who marched onto the streets with tiki torches tering the State of Israel, due to their ongoing other Thatsymbols feeling of is stronger anything hate, it isthan a reminder of we howcan and swastikas did so to provoke violence and active support of the BDS movement. BDS, also relevant imagine.the It shows usracism time and time again just issues of and anti-Semitism fear. Those who marched onto the streets did known as the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanc- are howtoday. close Itand we to arethe onwork one anothis adependent wake-up call that so to profess an ideology that harkens back to tions movement, is a campaign that has one needs er. Knowing and to remembering that, especially to be done ensure a better, more a bleaker, more wretched time in our history. goal on their agenda: to delegitimize the very around this time of year, enables us to foresee A time when men and women of many creeds, welcoming country. But it should not come existence of the State of Israel. This decision our mutual future in the true context of ‫ביחד‬ races, and religions were far from equal and far without a reflection on how far we’ve come. regarding the Congresswomen has once again – together. Allow me to end by quoting from America was born a slave nation. A century from safe in our own borders. A time where frayed the unity of our communities.

Ecclesiastes, chapter 4 verses 9-12: into our history we engaged in a war in part Americans lived under a constant cloud of Today at first sight, it could appear as if the “Two we arewould better not thancontinue one; because they to 9ensure as one.

Wehave racism, anti-Semitism and pervasive hate. The major Jewish communities are disagreeing upon a good reward for their labor events that took place in Charlottesville served found ourselves confronted by the issue of civil too many core issues. One may ask: Where are 10 For if they fall, the will lift up his fellow; rights, and embarked onone a mission to ensure as a reminder of how painfully relevant these we heading? How much more can we distance but woe to him that is alone when he falleth, and the fair treatment of all peoples no matter their issues are today. ourselves from each other? As the Consul Gen- hath not another to lift him up. skin color. Although we’ve made great strides, Auburn’s Alpha Epsilon with the eral of the State of Israel to Pi thestands Southwest, I have 11 Again, if two lie together, then they have Jewish community of Charlottesville, andleaders it is a mission we’re still grappling with today. the privilege and honor to meet many warmth; but how can one be warm alone?

America was also born an immigrant with peoplewho around theup country and the Jewish individuals make the Jewish 12 And if a man prevail against him that is country. As early as the pilgrims, many and around the world. We also stand with the alone, two shall withstand him; and a threefold minorities whoisare targeted by theofhate that Gilad Katz Consul General Israel to the groups and families found in the country the cord is not quickly broken.” was on display inin Charlottesville.

We stand Southwest, based Houston, covering a territory opportunity to plant stakes, chase their future, Tova! andShana be themselves.

Few were met with open with the minorities of whom these white that includes Louisiana and Arkansas.

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High Holy Days 2019 April 2019

Southern Jewish Life PUBLISHER/EDITOR Lawrence M. Brook editor@sjlmag.com ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER/ADVERTISING Lee J. Green lee@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 14 Office Park Circle #104 Birmingham, AL 35223 205/870.7889 NEW ORLEANS OFFICE 3747 West Esplanade, 3rd Floor Metairie, LA 70002 504/432-2561 TOLL-FREE 866/446.5894 FAX 866/392.7750 ADVERTISING Advertising inquiries to 205/870.7889 for Lee Green, lee@sjlmag.com; Jeff Pizzo, jeff@sjlmag.com; or Annetta Dolowitz, annetta@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.

To that end, our commitment includes mailing to every Jewish household in the region (AL, LA, MS, NW FL), without a subscription fee.

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Copyright 2019. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or part without written permission from the publisher.

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Documenting this community, a community we are members of and active within, is our passion.

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agenda interesting bits & can’t miss events Photo by Nik Layman

On Aug. 18, the Birmingham Holocaust Education Center held its annual L’Chaim event, “Honoring Holocaust Survivors from Generation to Generation,” at the Alys Stephens Center. Before the event, survivors living in Alabama posed with their descendants for this group photo. Story, page 42

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agenda Birmingham Foundations plan holiday push for endowment commitments “Live Your Jewish Legacy” a combined effort

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As the Jewish community enters the year 5780 on the Hebrew calendar, Jewish institutions in the Birmingham area and beyond are emphasizing the future.

The Birmingham Jewish Foundation, the Temple Beth-El Foundation and the Rabbi Grafman Endowment Fund of Temple Emanu-El are joining forces, starting with the High Holy Days, to promote “Live Your Jewish Legacy: Our Community In Perpetuity.”

The Foundations are encouraging everyone to strengthen Jewish life today and tomorrow, either through establishing a future bequest and/or providing a current financial gift.

While annual campaigns and fundraisers provide for current needs, Foundation funds are kept in perpetuity and invested, and the income generated by those funds can be used for current needs and programs.

For many institutions and organizations, Foundation income provides a significant boost every year.

“Foundation is our pathway to ensuring the stability and vitality of our community,” said Seth Wolnek, president of the Beth-El Foundation.

“Sometimes people hear statements like this and think it requires a big financial commitment. While large gifts are one way, a series of ongoing incremental gifts can also create a fund which will support a specific program or activity. For now and for the future.”

Jann Blitz, executive director of Emanu-El’s Grafman Fund, added “We have worked collaboratively over the years in providing joint educational legacy programs for our community. I am pleased that we are now also working together on this umbrella marketing effort to raise awareness and encourage people to think about initiating a legacy gift to benefit those Jewish organizations that they care about in their lifetime — and we certainly hope that their synagogue is one of them.”

Sally Friedman, executive director of the Birmingham Jewish Foundation, said “Live Your Jewish Legacy” will represent a broad cross-section of the local Jewish community and the Jewish world, “in a spirit of unity.”

The Birmingham Jewish Foundation also includes the Foundations for Knesseth Israel, Huntsville’s Temple B’nai Sholom, the Birmingham Jewish Federation, Levite Jewish Community Center, Collat Jewish Family Services, N.E. Miles Jewish Day School, and Hillels at the University of Alabama and Auburn University. The Foundation also manages funds that benefit Jewish summer camping, and for Israel and world Jewry needs.

Friedman said more information about the program will be forthcoming as the holidays draw closer.

Touro to dedicate new Torah scroll

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High Holy Days 2019 • Southern Jewish Life

Last September, as scribe Linda Coppleson sat under a canopy in the sanctuary of Touro Synagogue in New Orleans to write the first letters of a new Torah scroll, Julian Good Jr. commented that Torahs are not written very often.

In October, the congregation will have the rare occasion of dedicating that new Torah, which the Good family is dedicating in memory of Julian Good Sr., a past president of Touro.

During the Shabbat evening service in the middle of Sukkot and before Simchat Torah, there will be a celebration of the Torah’s completion, Oct. 18 at 6 p.m., and the first time the scroll has been read from.

This is the fifth Torah that Coppleson has written, and it is “the first one written by a woman here in New Orleans, at least I am assuming so.”

Adding to the local connection, the wood used in the rollers is coming from Louisiana trees.

agenda Anna Slive Harwood now leads Slive Foundation The Mike Slive Foundation Board of Directors appointed Anna Slive Harwood as its initial executive director, effective Aug. 1. Anna worked closely with her father, former SEC and Conference USA Commissioner Mike Slive, to help establish the foundation before his passing last May. Mike Slive partnered with Ed Meyerson to start the foundation in late 2017.

The foundation has raised over $500,000 for prostate cancer research in less than two years and funded seven prostate cancer research grants, all through the work of a volunteer board of directors.

Anna has been president of the board for the past year, helping to run the day-to-day operations of the foundation. She transitions from her role as vice president at the Colonnade Group. Prior to that, she was a director of marketing at IMG College.

In addition to Anna’s hiring, Emily Capilouto has been named Director of Education and Outreach. In her role, Emily will oversee all education and outreach programs and help manage the foundation’s grant process.

The foundation is honoring Hatton Smith at its annual benefit, which has been renamed from “I’m With Mike” to “Beyond Blue,” on Sept. 26.

“We are thrilled to honor Hatton Smith at our Beyond Blue benefit this year. He has so generously given back to this community. In sharing his story of being a prostate cancer survivor, we hope that we can continue to help change the dialogue around prostate cancer,” Anna said. “This was my father’s vision, and we want to help find a cure so we can all move beyond the blue ribbon and end prostate cancer.”

The foundation also takes part in a prostate cancer awareness Shabbat at Temple Emanu-El, the Slives’ congregation, the Friday night before the gala. Emanu-El members Harry Bayer, Howard Goldberg, Judd A. Harwood, Charles Herman, Ed Meyerson, Danny Markstein and Joel Rotenstreich are on the foundation’s board.

Applications open for teen Israel leadership weekend in Atlanta The Center for Israel Education and the Emory Institute for the Study of Modern Israel invite Jewish 10th to 12th graders to apply to attend the next Teen Israel Leadership Institute in Atlanta during the weekend of Dec. 6 to 8.

The institute features a series of engaging learning activities to expand students’ knowledge and understanding of Israel and Zionism while they sample Jewish life on the Emory University campus and forge friendships with peers from across the country.

“I have a lot of Jewish friends. Every one of them supports Israel, but I don’t think a lot of them know about Israel too much,” said past institute attendee Eli Roberts of Marietta, Georgia. “I feel like I’m going to be able to teach them and also talk to my friends in Israel.”

CIE and ISMI launched the teen institute with spring and fall sessions in Atlanta in 2018, then took the weekend experience on the road to Newark, New Jersey, in January 2019 and to Seattle in May 2019.

The roughly two dozen participants in each Atlanta institute learned about Israeli history, politics, innovation and culture, the Israeli-Arab conflict, and Zionism. They participated in Shabbat services and had Friday dinner at Emory Hillel, a partner in the program along with the Jewish Teen Education and Engagement Network and JumpSpark. They simulated a Knesset debate, competed at making “Chopped”-style hummus and discussed what Israel means to them.

Space is limited, so students are encouraged to apply online through israeled.org/teens as soon as possible. The application requires a description of a proposed Israel learning project and a letter of support from a rabbi, a cantor, an educator or someone else who can explain why the student would be good for the program.

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Beth Israel, Jackson, is holding a matzah ball soup fundraiser, with proceeds going toward the congregation’s community efforts. Cost is $18 for a 32-ounce container, and the soup contains chicken, carrots and celery. Orders are due by Oct. 15 and can be picked up on Oct. 27.

The next Volunteer Opportunity for Collat Jewish Family Services in Birmingham will be Oct. 13 at 12:30 p.m. About 20 volunteers are needed to pack and deliver food boxes for low-income seniors. All deliveries are within a 5-mile radius of the Levite Jewish Community Center. Groceries are supplied through the Senior Grocery Initiative, a federally funded program of the Community Food Bank of Central Alabama. The assembly takes place at the N.E. Miles Jewish Day School.

Contact Jennifer Nemet to volunteer.

The Factory at Alabama Chanin in Florence will host a workshop on how to make challah, in a round shape, three braids and six braids. In addition to learning to create this traditional bread, participants will also learn how to make seasonal compound butter. Advance registration is required for the Oct. 8 workshop, which will be at 11:30 a.m.

The $58 fee includes light lunch and drinks. For information, call (256) 760-1090.

Hadassah Baton Rouge is participating in the Global Community Day hosted by the Rotary Club, from noon to 6 p.m. The free event at BREC Community Park has cultural exhibits from around the world, and Hadassah will staff the Israel booth.

The Temple B’nai Sholom Sisterhood is participating in Huntsville’s Liz Hurley Ribbon Run, a 5-kilometer run and walk on Oct. 19. Attracting 6,500 runners and walkers, the event benefits the Liz Hurley Breast Cancer Fund at Huntsville Hospital Foundation. A Survivors’ Walk starts at 8 a.m., with the run kicking off at 8:30 a.m. at Huntsville Junior High School.

Susan Neiman will present her new book, “Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil,” Oct. 8 at 5:30 p.m. at Off Square Books in Oxford. An Atlanta native who grew up during the civil rights era and now lives in Berlin, she contrasts how Germany has come to terms with its history in the Holocaust, and contrasts that to what the South has — or has not — done to confront its painful history.

A Girl Scout troop for Jewish girls in kindergarten to sixth grade has been formed in the Birmingham area. Monthly meetings take place after school on Wednesdays at the Mountain Brook Girl Scout House in Crestline. For more information, contact Judy Cullinan, judyriva@aol. com.

On Sept. 6, Auburn Hillel had breakfast with Auburn Basketball Coach Bruce Pearl at Big Blue Bagel.

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High Holy Days 2019 • Southern Jewish Life

community

community

Alumni from 27 states coming to Jacobs Camp 50th anniversary Nov. 1 celebration in New Orleans As the reservations deadline approaches for the Henry S. Jacobs Camp 50th Anniversary Celebration in New Orleans, over 200 camp friends and alumni from 27 states have signed up for the weekend.

The Utica, Miss., Reform summer camp will celebrate its history starting on Nov. 1 at 5 p.m. at Touro Synagogue, with a welcome reception.

Shabbat services will start at 6 p.m., followed by a dinner at 7:30 p.m. and a song session at 8:30. An after-party is planned for 9:30 p.m. at the Library Bar on Prytania Street, lasting until 12:30 a.m.

On Nov. 2, activities move to the Uptown Jewish Community Center, with camp-style Shabbat morning services at 9 a.m. At 10:30 a.m., camp activities will begin, including basketball in the gym, inflatable Gaga, kickball on the field, lanyard making, a bounce house and art activities.

Ultimate Frisbee will take over the field at 11:30 a.m. Lunch and snowballs will be served from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., with a song session at 12:30 p.m.

A Jewish tour of New Orleans will be available at 1 p.m. Led by Alan Raphael, the bus tour will include past and present sites of Jewish congregations, St. Charles Avenue mansions and historic businesses, and the site of the future Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience, which originated at the camp and will reopen in New Orleans next year.

The evening gala will be at the National World War II Museum, for ages 21 and up. There will be cocktails starting at 7 p.m., with dinner at 7:45 p.m. and dancing to follow. Havdalah and a friendship circle will be at 10:30 p.m.

The weekend is chaired by Diane and Alan Franco, and Robin and Billy Orgel. Honorary chairs are Susan and Macy Hart.

Registration for the weekend is $180, and includes the Shabbat evening events at Touro, Saturday activities at the Uptown JCC including lunch, the dinner celebration at The National WW2 Museum and a 50th Anniversary T-shirt.

Young adult registration for ages 21 to 25 is $90.

Registration for ages 8 to 20 are $50 and do not include the Saturday night event. Registration for ages 1 to 7 is $25 and includes babysitting during the Shabbat evening service. Reservation deadline is Oct. 1.

For additional information and reservations, check jacobscamp.org/50thReunion. A special group hotel rate is available at the Hotel Intercontinental.

How you can help Israel have a healthy New Year.

Provide EMTs with training to respond to terror attacks.

Supply crucial lifesaving equipment.

Protect Israel’s blood supply.

Magen David Adom is Israel’s emergency medical first responder, ambulance, and blood-services organization. MDA operates 168 emergency medical stations throughout Israel, responds to nearly half a million emergency medical calls each month, and collects, safety tests, and distributes nearly all the blood for Israel’s hospitals, including all the blood needed by the IDF. If you’re looking to make a difference for Israel and secure the nation’s health and safety this coming year, there’s no better way than through a gift to MDA. Please give today. Shanah Tovah.

Support Magen David Adom at afmda.org/rosh or call 561.835.0510.

High Holy Days 2019 • Southern Jewish Life

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community

Dual loyalty charge leveled Calif. Rep. Lieu accuses Ala., La. Reps of allegiance to Israel over America, backtracks on Friedman critique United States Representative Ted Lieu, a California Democrat, is partially backtracking from a dual-loyalty trope he tweeted on August 15 after Israel decided not to allow a visit to the territories by Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib.

Among his targets were Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama and Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, though most of the headlines came from a similar tweet to the U.S. ambassador to Israel, David Friedman.

After Friedman said the U.S. “supports and respects” Israel’s decision and that Israel “has every right to protect its borders against those activists in the same manner as it would bar entrants with more conventional weapons,” Lieu tweeted Friedman, saying “You are an American. Your allegiance should be to America, not to a foreign power.”

He added that Friedman should be defending the right of Americans to travel to other countries. “If you don’t understand that, then you need to resign.”

On a CNN appearance later that day, Lieu twice reiterated his call for Friedman to resign, “because he doesn’t see to understand that his allegiance is to America, not to a foreign power.”

Brooks expressed his support of Israel’s decision, saying on Twitter, “Like many nations, Israel bars enemies from entering Israel. How can anyone disagree with that? Israel bans Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib because they hate, want to hurt, maybe even destroy, Israel. I respect & support Israel’s sovereignty & right to exist.”

Lieu responded to him with “A reminder that you are an American Member of Congress. Your allegiance should be to America. We are Americans first. You should be defending the right of Americans to travel to other countries. Get it?”

Lieu wrote a similar response to Scalise’s defense of Israel at the Illinois State Fair’s Republican Day, ending that tweet with “If you don’t understand that, you should find another line of work.”

He also complimented Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan “for understanding that, as an American Member of Congress, your loyalty is to America, not to a foreign government.”

Shortly after Lieu tweeted the other members of Congress, he removed the tweet he had sent to Friedman. “It has been brought to my attention that my prior tweet to @USAmbIsrael raises dual loyalty allegations that have historically caused harm to the Jewish community. That is a legitimate concern. I am therefore deleting the tweet.”

In response to a tweet from the Zionist Organization of America, Lieu admitted writing the tweet, adding “I should have been aware at the time I wrote the tweet that, as applied to Amb Friedman, it raised dual loyalty issues that have historically harmed the Jewish community. I’m sorry for writing it.”

While he deleted his tweet to Friedman, the ones to his non-Jewish colleagues remained on his feed, and were still there as of Aug. 31.

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High Holy Days 2019 • Southern Jewish Life

Restoring Lives in a Home Environment We treat more than the addiction.

We treat the entire person.

Allie Bowsky Nork, center, was selected as the new Miss Crowley.

Nevaeh Hanks, left, is the 2019 Junior Miss Crowley, and Destiny Thompson, right, was named the 2019 Teen Miss Crowley.

Allie Nork named Miss Crowley On July 20, Allie Nork became the 83rd Miss Crowley at the annual Miss Crowley Pageant. In that role, she will travel the state over the coming year.

The daughter of Shelly Nork, Allie, 17, is a senior at Notre Dame High School, where she is class president, a football trainer and the varsity cheer team mascot.

She also is a member of Temple Shalom in Lafayette and a five-year Jacobs Camp veteran. She is chairing the congregation’s participation in Camp Dream Street, a project of NFTY-Southern that is housed at Jacobs Camp.

Allie has received the Prudential Spirit of Community Service Award, the President’s Choice Community Service Award, the Biliteracy Attainment Award and the Silver Academic Award. She hopes to attend Tulane to study biology.

Rabbi Barry Weinstein pointed out that Allie is the only Jewish teen in Crowley, about 25 miles west of Lafayette. Weinstein said that as he was one of only three or four Jewish youth growing up in Waverly, N.Y., “I surely appreciate Allie’s very special dedication to her Judaism” as shown by constantly going back and forth to Lafayette.

When Weinstein served the congregation, “Allie always was among the most attentive and dedicated students in our Religious School” and was the first student to come forward when volunteer needs arose.

Pink Mega Challah Bake unites Baton Rouge, Lafayette groups The Jewish organizations of the Greater Baton Rouge area are holding a Pink Mega Challah Bake, Oct. 6 at 5:45 p.m. at The Women’s Club of Baton Rouge.

Organized by Chabad of Baton Rouge, the women’s event is co-hosted by Beth Shalom, B’nai Israel and Hadassah Baton Rouge, and Temple Shalom in Lafayette. In addition to learning about how to make challah from scratch, there will be a breast cancer awareness panel. Early bird tickets are $18 through Sept. 15, $25 after. Woman of Valor dedications are $100.

More information is at megachallahbakebr.com.

METAIRIE 605 Metairie Rd, Metairie, LA 70005 504.309.8778 | @hemlinemetairie

High Holy Days 2019 • Southern Jewish Life

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community LimmudFest 2020 announced for March

Henry S. Jacobs Camp celebrated its 50th Anniversary Summer in 2019!

Camper and Staff alumni from 1970 ‘til today will gather in New Orleans, November 1-3, 2019 for a celebration weekend!

Friday, November 1st 5PM-9PM, Touro Synagogue Welcome Reception, Services, Dinner and Song Session

Saturday, November 2nd 9AM-1PM, Uptown Jewish Community Center Services, Camp Activities and Lunch

Saturday, November 2nd 7PM-11PM, National World War II Museum Dinner, Dancing and Havdallah

For more information and to register please visit: jacobscamp.org/50thReunion Questions: jfijman@urj.org

12

High Holy Days 2019 • Southern Jewish Life

In March 2018, nearly 400 participated in “Big Tent Jewish Learning” at the biennial New Orleans LimmudFest. The weekend of learning, arts, culture and spirituality returns next year, from March 20 to 22.

LimmudFest is part of a global movement inspired by the idea that when Jews from diverse backgrounds come together to celebrate and learn about everything Jewish, the entire community is enriched.

In New Orleans, that is taken to a unique level, as Gates of Prayer in Metairie hosts the Shabbat events, including Orthodox, Conservative and Reform services under one roof.

Limmud is a volunteer-led group dedicated to making some of the world’s most dynamic Jewish educators, performers and teachers, working in a variety of educational styles – lectures, workshops, text-study sessions, film, meditation, discussions, exhibits and performance – accessible to everyone, no matter what their level of Jewish knowledge or commitment to Jewish life.

“Wherever you find yourself, Limmud will take you one step further on your Jewish journey,” says Dana Keren, chair of LimmudFest 2020.

After the Shabbat experience in Metairie, programming moves to the Uptown Jewish Community Center for Havdalah and the Sunday sessions.

“We are working on a full list of thoughtful and passionate presenters who will be appearing at LimmudFest,” Keren says. Advisors who are providing mentorship are past LimmudFest chairs Gail Chalew and Aleeza Adelman, and rabbinical advisors from all the New Orleans area congregations.

Organizers hope to attract participants from around the region, and provisions can be made for those who need to be within walking distance of Gates of Prayer during Shabbat.

Working alongside Keren are all-volunteer teams. Orchestrating programming are Cathy Glaser, Jacquelyn Stern and Toby David. Sandy Cohen and Peter Seltzer are spearheading coordination of meals and snacks, which are included in the registration.

Other teams include marketing, logistics, home hospitality, volunteer coordination, fundraising and finance. Those who want to join in planning LimmudFest 2020 should contact the steering committee at info@limmudnola.org.

Registration will open this fall, and pricing will be announced soon. The weekend will begin at 4:30 p.m. on March 20 and run through 6 p.m. on March 22. All food and snacks will be kosher, and meals are included in registration.

For more information about LimmudFest 2020, go to http://limmudnola.org/.

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A recent “Meet the Rabbis” panel with Rabbis Moshe Rube, Stephen Slater and Adam Wright was held at Birmingham’s Levite Jewish Community Center.

The New Rabbi(s) Unprecedented level of Rabbinic reshuffling in region

Almost every year, there are a couple of new senior rabbis in the region. This year, one might need a scorecard to keep up, as communities used to long-tenured rabbis find a wave of new faces on the pulpit.

In recent years, rabbinic retirements include Rabbi Jonathan Miller of Birmingham’s Temple Emanu-El (27 years), Rabbi Edward Cohn of Temple Sinai in New Orleans (29 years), Rabbi Robert Loewy of Metairie’s Gates of Prayer (34 years) and Rabbi Donald Kunstadt of Springhill Avenue Temple in Mobile (28 years).

In New Orleans, three of the five full-time pulpits have new senior rabbis — Rabbi Katie Bowman at Touro Synagogue, Rabbi Daniel Sherman of Temple Sinai and Rabbi Josh Pernick at Beth Israel.

Of the other two congregations, Gates of Prayer Rabbi David Gerber arrived in Metairie a year ago, and Rabbi Deborah Silver has been at Shir Chadash for three years.

In addition to Rabbi Adam Wright taking the pulpit at Temple Emanu-El this year, Birmingham’s other pulpit rabbis are relative newcomers. Rabbi Moshe Rube of Knesseth Israel is the group veteran with two years, and Rabbi Stephen Slater recently completed his first year at Temple Beth-El. Rabbi Sydni Rubenstein is the new rabbi at Agudath Achim in Shreveport, and Rabbi Joseph Rosen takes over the only full-time pulpit in Mississippi, at Jackson’s Beth Israel. Dothan’s Temple Emanu-El also has a new leader as Cantor Neil Schwartz begins in the Wiregrass community after four years at Agudath Achim in Shreveport.

Aside from Chabad rabbis, who very rarely move to a different community, currently Rabbi Steven Silberman of Ahavas Chesed in Mobile is the dean of Southern full-time rabbis at a single congregation, in his 30th year.

The only other full-time rabbis who have been at their congregations for a decade or more are Rabbi Jana De Benedetti of B’nai Zion in Shreveport (13 years), Rabbi Scott Kramer of Agudath Israel-Etz Ahayem, Montgomery (12 years) and Rabbi Jordan Goldson of B’nai Israel in Baton Rouge (10 years).

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“Homecoming” for Touro’s Bauman For Rabbi Katie Bauman, becoming the new senior rabbi at Touro Synagogue gave her the “feeling of coming home to a community I already love.”

While she mostly grew up in Little Rock, Bauman was born in New Orleans and lived there until her family moved to Arkansas when she was four. But “I definitely consider New Orleans one of the places where I grew up,” having spent a lot of time in the community visiting relatives and friends, attending National

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Federation of Temple Youth regional gatherings at Touro.

“My family roots are deeply in this city, and also in this congregation,” she said.

Her grandparents were Morris and Ruth Berenson Forsyth. Her uncle, David, is an attorney in New Orleans, and she is also related to the Berenson and Stone families.

In November, another of the places where she grew up will come into play as Touro is the host congregation for Shabbat evening events at the celebration of Henry S. Jacobs Camp’s 50th anniversary. Because Jacobs Camp “is so important to me,” she had always planned to be in New Orleans for the reunion. “Never did I imagine I’d have the opportunity to be one of the hosts of it,” she said.

For her, “it feels like a small way for me to give back to the place that in so many ways raised me, raised so many of us.”

Bauman started attending the camp at age 10, continuing every year until the camp’s National Federation of Temple Youth trip to Israel in 1996. On that trip, she met and became friends with Adam Eckstein of Memphis, who is now her husband.

Continuing the Southern Jewish geography, that Israel trip was led by Ari Goldstein, son of Touro Rabbi Emeritus David Goldstein.

Bauman returned to Jacobs as a counselor and educator, and Camp Director Macy Hart encouraged her to become a song leader.

After earning a degree in Jewish, Islamic and Near Eastern Studies at Washington University, she had an internship at Temple Israel in Memphis as an education and music specialist, during which she decided to become either a rabbi or a cantor. She decided that being a rabbi gave her a better chance of staying in the South. “I want to live where my roots are, and being a rabbi gave me the best way to do that.”

Among her student pulpits was B’nai Israel in Natchez, just down the road from Jacobs Camp. After ordination in 2009, she returned to Temple Israel, first as assistant rabbi, then as associate rabbi. She was the founding chair of MICAH: Memphis Interfaith Coalition for Action and Hope, and a board member of the Metropolitan Inter-Faith Association.

The opportunity at Touro was the only time she ever considered leaving Memphis. “To me, New Orleans is an old friend,” and being able to live there was a great attraction. Touro was “an opportunity for a new challenge in a vibrant, historic congregation with a stellar team.”

That made this “uniquely compelling” for her.

While summer is generally a quiet time around synagogues, for Bauman it was even quieter, as the Reform congregations in New Orleans hold joint services during the summer, rotating among the three congregations a month at a time. When she arrived in late June, it was at the end of Touro’s turn. She attended the final Shabbat of June “as a congregant” at Touro’s Pride Shabbat. “It was beautiful.”

While she attended services at the other congregations, it wouldn’t be until the beginning of September that she ascended the pulpit at Touro.

But that quiet time was “a great opportunity for me to sit down with many congregants for coffee, lunch, walks in the park, learning about their connections” to Touro.

Bauman has found “a real sense of commitment to building this community” and being an active part of it, rather than “just receiving it.” She said “people want to be involved and responsible for shaping it.”

Noting that “there are so many leaders in this congregation,” one of her first messages was about leadership in Judaism, how it is “an act of generosity, to give of yourself.”

She is still getting to know everyone, saying “everything flows from relationships… what we do together will flow from those relationships.”

But things are about to get very busy for her. In addition to the holidays, the congregation is dedicating a new Torah on Oct. 18, hosting the Jacobs Camp service on Nov. 1, and she will be formally installed as Touro’s rabbi on Nov. 22.

community

NED MARSHALL DESIGN

Sherman enjoying the history of Temple Sinai The first time Rabbi Daniel Sherman walked into the sanctuary at Temple Sinai in New Orleans, he was “blown away. And I still feel that way.”

A Tulsa native, Sherman grew up in an atmosphere where “the Temple was unquestionably my second home” where he always felt comfortable, and he wants to replicate that feeling for the youth of Temple Sinai.

“I want our kids here at Temple Sinai to feel like the Temple is a second home for them. This is their home, we are happy to have them here, they are an important part of the Temple Sinai family,” he said.

Sherman became rabbi of Temple Sinai this summer after serving as rabbi of Temple Dor Dorim in Weston, Fla. He succeeds Rabbi Matthew Reimer, who became the rabbi and director of community engagement for the JCC Brooklyn Clinton Hill.

As part of a rabbinic family, Sherman has been active in the Reform movement throughout his life, attending the movement’s summer camps and the National Federation of Temple Youth. His father, Charles Sherman, was rabbi of Temple Israel in Tulsa from 1976 until his retirement in 2013. His brother, Aaron, leads Temple Beth El in Florence, S.C., and his sisterin-law, Rabbi Stephanie Alexander, is at Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim in Charleston, S.C. Sherman graduated from Yale University in 1993 with a degree in history. Becoming a rabbi “was always in the back of my mind as a possibility but I wasn’t sure.”

He went to Washington to do “something completely different,” but at the end of the year “I felt my place was in the Jewish world,” and he was excited to enter rabbinical school.

Sherman was ordained at the Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion in 1999.

Like his colleague at Touro down the street, he was a student rabbi at B’nai Israel in Natchez, visiting the community monthly.

After seven years as an assistant and associate rabbi in Naples, Fla., he decided it was time to branch out to his own congregation, and he moved to Tree of Life Congregation in Columbia, S.C. in 2006. It was “a very nice community,” he said. “I liked being in the South, I liked the tradition,” with third and fourth generation families in the membership. He “quickly learned lots of folks were related to each other, as happens in many of our Southern communities.”

After nine years, they decided to return to south Florida to be in a larger community and closer to his wife’s parents. They wound up in Weston.

South Florida is “a unique place, a unique Jewish community” but though they enjoyed it

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• High Holy Days 2019 • Southern Jewish Life

and could have stayed there for a long time, they “quickly realized this is not where we saw ourselves long-term.”

With their son starting high school and daughter starting middle school, it was a good time to make a change, and that is when Temple Sinai became open. “I was encouraged to look at Temple Sinai, and we’re here.”

They wanted to be in a Southern community “where we’d be proud to be part of the community, where we would enjoy raising our family.”

He also was attracted by the community’s history, and is “thrilled” to be at Sinai as it prepares to celebrate its 150th anniversary next year. “I love the history and tradition… I know that we have families that are not just third or fourth generation, but fifth.”

Part of that tradition is Sinai’s historic building, with the majestic sanctuary. “I have missed sanctuaries,” he said, noting that his most recent congregation’s building is from 1996 and doesn’t have a standalone sanctuary.

The first Shabbat at Sinai was “a very special feeling, to be able to welcome Shabbat and each other” in that environment.

His Sinai debut was during the joint summer services, where the three Reform congregations hold combined services during the summer, rotating monthly among Sinai, Touro and Gates of Prayer.

The joint summer services are “a wonderful tradition and a unique tradition,” he said. “I don’t think there are many communities that can pull that off.”

Someone growing up in New Orleans should feel comfortable in any of Sinai, Touro or Gates of Prayer, he said, and he likes that the Temple Youth Group is a combination of all three congregations, “to let our kids get to know each other.”

Being in the same rabbinic region, his father had relationships with Temple Sinai Rabbi Edward Cohn, Touro Rabbi David Goldstein and Gates of Prayer Rabbi Robert Loewy.

With so many new rabbis in town now, he said it is an exciting time for the community. “I’ve enjoyed getting to know my colleagues and look forward to working together.”

During the summer, he and the other local Reform clergy spent time together at Jacobs Camp, a place “I’ve heard about forever.” Sherman attended the Greene Family Camp in Texas and worked there when Jonathan Cohen was assistant director, before Cohen became director of Jacobs Camp. He also also spent a summer as a unit head at Camp Swig in California and served as faculty at Camp Coleman in Georgia for many summers.

“Growing up in Tulsa, I had never seen 300 Jewish kids in one place until I went to camp,” he said. “Camp is a great experience for our kids.”

He is continuing to learn the history of the congregation and the roles his predecessors played in the general community.

“It takes a while to really get to know a congregation,” he said. “You need to go through a cycle of holidays, events, school.” He wants to respect the congregation’s history, understand what the practices are and why, then “set a thoughtful course.”

Looking at the future, “some answers will require us to make some changes, some answers will have us build on the firm foundations that are here.”

Temple Sinai “has always been a loud voice for social justice here in New Orleans, and you can’t separate the life of Temple Sinai from the life of the greater community… I look forward to being part of that and continuing these traditions.”

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High Holy Days 2019 • Southern Jewish Life

Pernick’s road to New Orleans included Ghana, South Carolina It isn’t unusual for the rabbi of an Orthodox congregation to come from a rabbinic family, but for Rabbi Joshua Pernick at Metairie’s Beth Israel, the journey was a little different.

A native of Nanuet, N.Y., Pernick is the son of Rabbi Daniel Pernick, who has served Beth Am Temple, a Reform congregation, since 1985.

While he grew up in a Reform environment, his mother’s parents were Holocaust survivors from Eastern Europe who were more traditional and went to a Conservative congregation. Pernick grav- In February, Rabbi Joshua Pernick itated toward more traditional Ju- participated in the Jewish Gulf daism and went to a Conservative Alliance trip to Dubai camp, the Ramah day camp in New York, every summer.

He attended Brandeis University, studying sociology, which turns out to be “a good major if you want to go into the rabbinate,” he said.

During his junior year of college, he spent a semester abroad, in Ghana. While he wanted to study abroad, he wanted to go somewhere “that I wouldn’t have had an opportunity to go otherwise,” and was “totally different.” It was a “really impactful” four months, being away from the structures he had grown up with.

He found a group of Israelis nearby, and Chabad for Yom Kippur and Sukkot, but for the first time in his life he was without a Jewish community surrounding him, with one other Jewish participant in the program.

With others interested in his Judaism and constantly asking questions, he realized there were a lot of answers he didn’t know.

Though he leaned more traditional, his original plan was to become a Reform rabbi, going to Hebrew Union College a year or two after finishing college. But he put that plan on hold when “I realized I wasn’t Reform.” He also wasn’t Conservative or Orthodox. At Brandeis, “I would float between the communities” and realized he did not fit neatly into any one category.

He was urged to try non-profit work to help him find his path, and he applied for AmeriCorps, winding up in Charleston, S.C. There, he “found my home with one of the Orthodox minyans,” and that became his community, though “I wasn’t Orthodox in practice at that time.” He started becoming more Shabbat-observant and moving toward kashrut.

But his job wasn’t fulfilling, as he was in a cubicle. He wanted to work with children, so he went into teaching, starting with Addlestone Hebrew Academy, then returning to Brandeis for a master’s in Jewish Day School education, while teaching at Boston Jewish Community Day School.

Wanting to improve his skills, he spent a year studying at Pardes in Israel. By the end of that year, “I was essentially Orthodox.”

Teaching led him back to rabbinical school. A rabbi he was close with in college was a graduate of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, so he went to visit YCT and felt a “warm embrace” there. His sister, Sarah, is married to a YCT alumnus who is now a rabbi in Milwaukee.

Pernick wanted to teach some more before entering YCT, so he looked at positions in the South, including in Austin and at the N.E. Miles Jewish Day School in Birmingham, before winding up at the Atlanta Jewish Academy.

He emphasized a preference for being in the South, though before these experiences, the closest thing he had to a family connection to the

community region came from his father working at the Henry S. Jacobs Camp in Mississippi while in rabbinical school in the early 1980s.

He served as student rabbi of Shaarey Tphiloh in Portland, Maine from 2016 to 2018, receiving a grant from the Crown Foundation, in partnership with YCT, to create an expanded community role with Portland’s Jewish Community Alliance.

He interned with Rabbi Adam Scheier at Congregation Shaar Hashomayim in Montreal, and this past year was with the Durham Orthodox Kehillah in North Carolina.

As he was finishing YCT, the position at Beth Israel opened up and he considered it. “It really wasn’t until I came in person that it became… a leading option,” Pernick said. “I’d never been here before, everything I knew was secondhand.”

He immediately sensed “the warmth of the community. Everyone was so welcoming and kind.” It was “a place I could really see myself moving to.”

At Beth Israel, a major emphasis for him will be teaching, with regular classes in a variety of settings. He wants Beth Israel to be “a place where there are things going on every day.” Also, classes are a great way to get to know people on a deeper level, he said.

He is holding Wednesday classes Uptown, “to be able to connect with people who don’t live in Metairie and wouldn’t necessarily come to a class in Metairie.”

He also looks forward to continuing the collaboration with the other congregations in the Jewish Corridor. That Beth Israel is “not an island” was a major selling point for him.

The congregations collaborate on events such as Passover and Shavuot, and he hopes to keep those while building additional collaborative opportunities.

Youth programs are also a focus for him. “Fortunately, we have a bunch of kids who are here regularly.”

He is also looking forward to Limmud, the weekend of Jewish learning that will be in New Orleans next March, with Shabbat programming housed next door at Gates of Prayer. “I love Limmud. That’s the ideal Jewish community in some ways… everyone learning Torah and nobody cares about denominations.”

Rosen brings small-community experience to Jackson Having grown up in a smaller Jewish community, Rabbi Joseph Rosen feels at home in Jackson.

Newly ordained by Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, Rosen became rabbi of Beth Israel, the state’s only congregation with a full-time rabbi, this summer. He succeeds Rabbi Jeffrey Kurtz-Lendner, who is now the executive director of Rabbi Joseph Rosen leads Havdalah at Beth Israel’s gala on Sept. 7

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community the Jewish Federation of Greater Des Moines.

Rosen grew up in Rochester, Minn., in a congregation of 80 to 100 members. Beth Israel is listed as having around 190 members.

His childhood congregation was “a small congregation, but it had a lot of buy-in from the families, the kids.”

His Bar Mitzvah was “a very empowering experience,” as the rabbi got up on Friday night and did not have a speaking part until the Torah service the next morning. “We were brought up to be able to do the entire service on our own.”

He wanted to attend a college with a sizeable Hillel, so he followed in his father’s footsteps and went to Brandeis to become a psychiatrist, “something in the helping professions” like his parents, who both work for the Mayo Clinic.

“I quickly found out going to medical school wasn’t going to be for me, but I still liked psychology.”

As he deepened his involvement in Jewish life at Brandeis, he saw his “love for Judaism and my renewed enthusiasm for faith and tradition” mesh with his desire to help people, and that became his vision for the rabbinate. He led Reform services at Brandeis, and when he started taking Judaic classes his junior year, that reinforced his decision.

A strong memory was from his senior year of high school, when his grandfather passed away suddenly. He was “really impressed” with the way Rabbi Marcia Zimmerman of Temple Israel in Minneapolis “handled our family and how she comforted us,” much in the way his father handled patients in crisis, and he wanted “to bring that type of presence to others.”

Just “18 days” after graduating from Brandeis with a degree in psychology, he was on his way to Jerusalem for his first year of rabbinic school.

As a student rabbi, he has served at Rockdale Temple in Cincinnati; Temple Beth El in Beckley, W.Va.; Mt. Zion in Sioux Falls, S.D.; and Rodef Shalom in Falls Church, Va. He spent five summers at a Jewish summer camp in Wisconsin, and while in rabbinical school he was education director at Goldman Union Camp Institute. “It was an absolute blast,” he said. He really identified with the camp because of its smaller size.

When he visited the Henry S. Jacobs Camp, located near Jackson, “I felt the same home feeling I felt at Goldman. I love that I’m a 45-minute drive from a place where I can experience that camp energy.”

There were many factors that attracted him to Jackson, Rosen said. He fell in love with the

community’s “incredible history,” especially during the civil rights movement, the “close faith network” in the city and “how much congregational buy-in there was.” Though a smaller community, there is a lot of activity, with active ongoing efforts with Meals on Wheels, Stewpot and many other programs.

Though he had not been to the Deep South before, after seeing the energy and commitment at Beth Israel during his interview, he knew this was where he wanted to be.

For his first year in Jackson he is “trying to do a lot of listening and learning” from different groups in the congregation. “I’m not trying to come in and change the way things have been done for years.”

He is looking at ways to help grow the community and further engage in the broader community. He envisions Beth Israel as a place “not only for us as Jews to come together, but also be a place of learning for the community.”

Among planned adult education offerings, Rosen is launching a Judaism 101 course for a few people who are interested in conversion, as well as congregants who want to learn more about their Judaism.

His installation is scheduled for the weekend of Nov. 8.

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High Holy Days 2019 • Southern Jewish Life

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From L.A. to LA

Rabbi Sydni Rubinstein sees Shreveport as a place where she can get to know the entire community It has been a busy year for Rabbi Sydni Rubinstein, getting married in April, ordained as a rabbi in May and moving to Shreveport in June. But with a mix of “social justice, counseling and being in 50 places at once,” being a rabbi “is everything I enjoy doing.”

This summer, Rubinstein became the new rabbi at Agudath Achim, Shreveport’s Conservative congregation, succeeding Cantor Neil Schwartz.

Rubinstein was born in Portland but soon moved to California, growing up in the Los Angeles area. She grew up attending Reform religious school and summer camps. When she went off to college at Swarthmore to become a concert pianist, she also started getting into the study of Jewish texts. “I fell in love with the textual aspect of Judaism.”

A simple experience when she was in high school also set her on that path. When she came home one day, her little brother, 15 years younger, was running around and belting out the Shema. She was “totally struck by that, because I always said it quietly to myself.” The idea of how people “connect to the same prayer in completely different ways” fascinated her, along with the notion of a universal connection to God, expressed in different ways.

“I started asking everybody about God,” Rubinstein said. “I became fascinated with what different people believed about God.” By the end of her first year of college, “I became attracted to the idea of being a rabbi.”

To continue along that path, after receiving her degree in music at

Swarthmore, she went to the Pardes Institute for Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, where she coordinated the egalitarian minyan and was exposed to a wider range of Jewish philosophies and text study.

She “became really interested in halacha as a way to be active in the love of God.” As she continued her studies, “the Reform movement didn’t fit so much any more.” Growing up with a female rabbi, and since in her text study she concluded that men and women have the same obligations in Judaism, the Conservative movement “seems like the best fit.”

She went to the Brandeis Collegiate Institute, an “immersive experience in Jewish learning, arts, culture, and community” offered every summer to Jewish young adults from around the world. Most of the staff were students at the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at American Jewish University in Los Angeles. Rubinstein thought, “these people are really cool, I’d love to spend more time with them. So I did,” enrolling in the rabbinic program in 2014.

She served as Jewish programming director for B’nai B’rith Camp in

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community Oregon. For the last three years, she has been the rabbinic intern at Ohr Shalom Synagogue in San Diego.

For her first pulpit, she was “primarily looking for a small, friendly community. I found it in Shreveport.” She also wanted to be somewhere “that really needs rabbis.” Places like California, New York and New Jersey “have enough rabbis, enough rabbis want to go there.” A rabbi can make “a very different kind of difference here.”

She wanted a place “where I could literally meet with every member of the congregation and find out their needs and wants.” At Agudath Achim, the synagogue is part of everyday life.

“People come in and hang out in the office,” she said. “Even though it is a small congregation, people are really involved,” with numbers similar to much larger congregations in San Diego.

She and her husband were also looking for a place that was warm. Referring to the summer heat, she said “we definitely got that.”

Her initial goal is to revitalize what is already present at Agudath Achim, “getting people who are already in the community excited” and positive about the community’s future, and building from there.

She plans to offer a lot of adult education, starting with an adult Hebrew class that has 14 students — “a lot for a 50-member congregation.” Next will be a Torah reading class.

The idea is to “give people more opportunity to get involved” by “building up what we have and making it more accessible.”

She also noted that with her arrival, the rabbinate of northern Louisiana is all female, with Rabbi Jana De Benedetti at B’nai Zion in Shreveport, Rabbi Judy Caplan Ginsburgh at B’nai Israel in Monroe and Rabbi-Cantor Raina Siroty at Gemiluth Chassodim in Alexandria. In Los Angeles, Rubinstein said, most rabbis she met were female, and there are kids who are growing up having never met a male rabbi.

But one way to meet one is by meeting her husband, Rabbi Feivel Rubinstein.

He grew up Conservative, attending Camp Ramah in California and being active in United Synagogue Youth. He attended the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he was active in AEPi, Hillel and local Jewish organizations.

After graduating with a degree in music, he entered the Ziegler School, where they met. For the last six years, he has been a Jewish educator in Los Angeles, and director of ritual and prayer at Ramah.

When she was ordained, they decided she would find a pulpit and he would do freelance work. Just after they moved to Shreveport in June, he headed back to California for his summer as Director of Jewish Life at Ramah. He will also teach, lead holidays at a congregation in need of a rabbi and do other projects, including managing FreelanceJudaism.com.

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High Holy Days 2019 • Southern Jewish Life

community Rabbi Wright “wants to build a tree” in “magical” Birmingham Rabbi Adam Wright grew up in a region where “family, faith and a sense of belonging” were strong, and has found that at his new home in the South.

This summer, Wright became the rabbi of Birmingham’s Temple Emanu-El, a 600-family congregation that is the largest synagogue in Alabama. After five years at Temple Solel in San Diego, when he saw the opening at Emanu-El, “I jumped in.”

He is a native of West Bloomfield, Mich., an area “with a strong ethos for Jewish life,” and includes Temple Israel, the largest Reform congregaPhoto by Rabbi Barry Altmark tion in North America with about 3,400 families, and the biggest Jewish Community Center in the country.

Though he thought Judaism was fascinating “I never wanted to be a rabbi” growing up, Wright said. He wanted to be in the CIA or State Department, so when he started college he took Russian. “That lasted a week.”

Instead, he took a course on the Hebrew Bible and “learned things I didn’t learn in religious school,” advanced scholarship techniques like source criticism. Fascinated, he took more classes, graduating from Wheaton College with a degree in religion, with a minor in Jewish studies. His honors thesis was about the rabbinic aspects of Jesus in the Christian Bible.

He also played collegiate tennis at Wheaton.

After German and Arabic studies at Oakland University, he went to Nashville to earn a Masters in Theological Studies at Vanderbilt University Divinity School, following the path of his mentor at Wheaton. “I wanted to be a professor and wanted to be a rabbi,” he said.

When he got to Nashville in 2005, he decided to intern at The Temple with their educator, Lynda Gutcheon — who is now Emanu-El’s education director. “There, I was introduced to Southern Judaism,” Wright said. “People greeted each other, knew each other” and were second or third generation there.

While in Nashville, he decided not to become a professor but pursue the rabbinate. After finishing at Vanderbilt, where he worked with AmyJill Levine, he decided to take a break and teach, then headed to Los Angeles to attend Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.

He “fell in love with Los Angeles.” His first student pulpit was in Victorville, Calif., where he says he learned how to listen and respond to the wide range of needs of congregants, and that Judaism in other regions isn’t like how it is in Michigan. All of his student internships were in California.

While studying at HUC, he met Rachel, now his wife, who at the time was a resident at UCLA. In Birmingham, she practices pediatrics and internal medicine.

After being ordained in 2014, Wright became assistant rabbi and then associate rabbi at Temple Solel, a 700-family congregation in the San Diego area.

Wright said Solel Senior Rabbi David Frank was his mentor and “never micromanaged,” giving him a lot more freedom and latitude than most assistant rabbis, to develop and revamp programs.

Frank retired this summer, and was succeeded by Rabbi Alexis Berk, who was at Touro Synagogue in New Orleans. Solel’s cantor, Billy Tiep,

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was also at Touro before taking the position at Temple Solel in 2010.

In San Diego, Wright developed the Hartman Leadership Program, a two-year post-Confirmation program for 11th and 12th grade students.

As part of the program, students traveled to Atlanta, Selma, Birmingham and Montgomery on a civil rights tour.

He also instituted Israel advocacy programs, expanded programs to support veterans, and had the congregation institute a $36/36 dues policy for members under the age of 36, to build young adult involvement.

He is an advocate for experiential educational models. Additionally, “I’m a big believer in supporting Jewish camp” and that everyone “has got to go to Israel” to experience the country. A passionate supporter of Israel, Wright was on the advisory committee with the San Diego chapter of Stand With Us. Looking for his next chapter, Wright said “we wanted to get to a congregation more like Michigan, where people knew each other.”

He was familiar with Emanu-El and Emanu-El Rabbi Emeritus Jonathan Miller, because a consulting firm that was working with Temple Solel had worked previously with Emanu-El. When they visited for an interview last October, “within a matter of minutes, we realized we were in the right place.”

Reflecting on his first weeks in the community, “I’ve had no shpilkes” about being in Birmingham, he said. “I fell in love with it immediately.

There’s something magical here.”

Emanu-El has the potential “to make Judaism so cutting edge, to hit every demographic,” he said. The congregation is “hungry for creativity, diversity, social action.”

Emanu-El will “continue to represent Alabama, not only as its largest synagogue, but as a cutting-edge synagogue that complements the myriad of Jewish experiences.”

He and Rabbi Stephen Slater of Temple Beth-El, just up the street, have spoken of expanding the collaboration between the congregations and being “good neighbors.” In July, Beth-El members walked to Emanu-El for their Shabbat evening service, to surprise Wright and welcome him to the community.

“I don’t want to set roots here,” Wright said. “I want to build a tree.”

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High Holy Days 2019 • Southern Jewish Life

On Aug. 25, the Men of Mesch AZA in Birmingham held the annual Jam4Sam concert, the chapter’s biggest event of the year, at Good People Brewery. Named in tribute to a Mesch member, Sam Lapidus, who died in 2008 at age 14 after battling Ewing’s sarcoma for six years, the event raises thousands of dollars each year for the Alabama Center for Childhood Cancer and Blood Disorders.

High Holy Days 2019 • Southern Jewish Life

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community Ala. Republicans call for Omar’s removal She responds with comments about Judge Moore

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High Holy Days 2019 • Southern Jewish Life

At the Alabama Republican Party’s retreat in Auburn on Aug. 24, a resolution was approved calling for the removal of Rep. Ilhan Omar from office, leading to a war of words between Omar and former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore.

The resolution, which was approved by voice vote with one vote against, states that the Minnesota representative “has engaged in rhetoric that explicitly runs counter to American values and patriotism.”

Among the instances cited were her “falsely accusing U.S. armed forced of committing war crimes while on mission to liberate her home country of Somalia,” diminishing the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks as “some people did something,” and advocating to a U.S. district judge for sentence leniency for a convicted terrorist and member of the Islamic State.

The resolution also calls out her “disturbing record of using anti-Semitic language that includes alleging Jewish money is used to buy American influence regarding its policy toward Israel,” and that Omar supports “the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign.”

With that, the party “urges its elected congressional delegation to proceed with the expulsion process in accordance to Article 1, Section 5 of the U.S. Constitution to expel Rep. Ilhan Omar from the United States House of Representatives.”

Omar reacted on Twitter to the resolution, pointing out that she received 78 percent of the vote from people in her district, not from the Alabama Republican Party. “If you want to clean up politics, maybe don’t nominate an accused child molester as your Senate candidate?”

Moore, who was removed as Alabama Chief Justice twice, and then was the Republican nominee in a special U.S. Senate election in 2017 and is running for the 2020 Senate nomination, fired back at Omar, saying “President Trump was right: she should go back to Somalia from whence she came.”

During the 2017 election, Moore was accused of decades-old sexual misconduct by several women, including allegations that some of them were underage at the time. He has strenuously denied the allegations, leading accuser Leigh Corfman to file a defamation suit against him, after which Moore filed a defamation suit against her.

In his statement, Moore said “Omar, an avowed Muslim, is a sworn enemy of Israel and has accused our own military of war crimes. While in Congress she has been accused of numerous sexual relationships. I have been married to my wife, Kayla, since Omar was three years old and fought for my Country over 10 years before Omar was even born.”

Scott Simpson, public advocacy director for Muslim Advocates, condemned the Alabama Republicans for “a hateful, dishonest resolution” that is “a troubling escalation of the ongoing effort to vilify American Muslims” and silence them in the public arena.

Rep. Tommy Hanes, who introduced the resolution, told The Hill that “The left wing mob has accused our effort of being bigoted and driven by race. I will not stand by and allow my fellow Republican patriots to be slandered. Rep. Omar’s race and religion are irrelevant. Lady Liberty welcomes those who seek to live the American Dream and assimilate to our freedom loving culture. What is important is her love of country, her loyalty to the United States. Anyone that holds contempt for America ought not serve this great nation as a member of Congress.”

To remove a member of Congress, there would need to be a vote of at least two thirds of House members, so the effort is seen as all but impossible in the Democrat-controlled House.

Proclaiming Justice to the Nations, a Tennessee organization that fights antisemitism, launched a petition drive in February to have Omar removed. According to founder Laurie Cardoza-Moore, over 40,000 signatures have been gathered so far.

community American Hebrew Academy reopening Three months after closing abruptly, plan announced that includes students beyond the Jewish community Three months after abruptly shutting its doors, the American Hebrew Academy in Greensboro, N.C., has announced that it will reopen for the 2020-21 academic year, though under a new name and with a more diverse student body.

In a Sept. 16 statement, the new board of trustees announced it has “secured the long-term financial support required to sustain robust operations” and will resume “full operations” in grades 9 to 11 next year. A decision on 12th grade has not yet been finalized.

One major change is that the school, which had been exclusively Jewish, “will now be available to students of all nationalities, cultural and religious backgrounds.”

The school opened in 2001, mortgage-free, as the only pluralist Jewish boarding high school in the country, the product of visionary Maurice “Chico” Sabbah, and built on a 100-acre campus.

The school closed on June 11, two weeks after graduating its final senior class of 34 students. Though the facility was built for 400 students, the enrollment was just over 130 last year.

Glenn Drew, a founding member of the school’s board and its chief executive officer when the school closed, is expected to be the academy’s executive director, and Abe Tawil is expected to return as head of school.

The release said other “key administrators and faculty” will also return.

“The groundswell of support we have received facilitated the Academy’s re-opening,” Drew said. “The Academy has been recognized as a crown jewel in our city and within international education circles globally.”

Though there was speculation as to what would happen to the school’s campus after the school closed, the facility was never sold, and the board statement said financing to resume operations had been secured through Puxin Limited, a Chinese educational company.

The Greensboro News and Record reported that a document was filed with the Guilford County Register of Deeds detailing a $26 million financing transaction between the academy and Puxin.

A new name for the school will be announced in the next few weeks, along with a student recruitment campaign.

Opening the enrollment “will allow a broad spectrum of local day students to attend the Academy alongside an increased enrollment of boarding students from across the United States and around the world,” according to the release. “The Academy’s respected curriculum will continue to offer honors level, Advanced Placement (AP), early college and pre-career courses, as well as a new International Baccalaureate diploma option. In addition to the college preparatory curriculum, students will enjoy an expanded choice of elective courses in topics such as Introduction to International Business, Jewish Studies, Global Economies, Spanish, Chinese and Hebrew language, Entrepreneurship and Advanced Technologies.”

“We are delighted that the Academy’s future will reflect a more diverse curriculum and student body of all faiths, cultures and nationalities, creating a global educational experience unmatched by any other school,” Drew said. “We have had an exceptional opportunity to learn and grow from our past to assure even greater success in the Academy’s future.”

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community Gail Bayer a Smart Party honoree

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High Holy Days 2019 • Southern Jewish Life

Gail Bayer will be one of 10 honorees at this year’s Smart Party, the signature event of The Women’s Fund of Greater Birmingham.

The annual fundraiser celebrates smart women and smart giving, all to build equitable opportunities for women.

The Smart Party is a live and online fundraising event where around 500 attendees use their smart phones or devices to interact with friends online, create awareness, raise funds and win prizes. This year’s event will be on Oct. 10 at Haven. The main event will be from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., with a pre-party VIP experience at 4:30 p.m. with Kelly Caruso, CEO of Shipt. Individual tickets are $85, VIP tickets are $135.

The Women’s Fund of Greater Birmingham accelerates economic opportunity for women in Greater Birmingham and beyond through philanthropy, research, and advocacy. Driven by the understanding that when women move forward, communities move with them, The Women’s Fund strategically invests in change, identifies solutions, and shapes public policy to clear the path so more women and their families can thrive.

Founded in 1996, The Women’s Fund is Alabama’s first and only foundation to use a gender lens investment strategy.

A Dallas native, Bayer serves on the board of directors for the Temple Emanu-El Rabbi Grafman Endowment Fund and the advisory board for the Alys Stephens Center. She is a former board member of the Red Mountain Theatre Company, Alabama Symphony Orchestra, and Birmingham Chapter of the American Cancer Society, and was a lay member of their national grant-making board.

In 2018, she and her husband Jeffrey chaired the effort to bring the Violins of Hope program to Birmingham, which led them to establish the Instruments of Hope Unity Fund. As founding donors of this fund, the Bayers seek to build unity and a greater sense of trust and shared fates for people throughout the region.

She has also co-founded the Gail and Jeffrey Bayer Family Foundation at the Birmingham Jewish Foundation and the Gail and Jeffrey Bayer Family Religious School Fund at Temple Emanu-El. Bayer has also co-chaired numerous events, including the Heart Ball benefitting the Birmingham Chapter of the American Heart Association, the Hope Gala benefitting the Birmingham Chapter of the American Cancer Society, and events for Temple Emanu-El. Also being honored this year are Yazmin Cavale, CEO and co-founder of GLOW; Megan LaRussa Chenoweth, style director and founder of Style Yourself Chic; Stephanie Cooper, vice president of public relations at Alabama Power Company; psychiatrist and author Leesha Ellis-Cox; Bertha Hidalgo, assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology and associate scientist in the Nutrition Obesity Research Center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham; Cathy Sloss Jones, president of Sloss Real Estate; Evelyn Mitchell, senior vice president of corporate communications at Regions; Brewmaster Michelle Piechowicz of Dread River Distilling Co.; and Britney Summerville, vice president of community engagement at Shipt.

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automotive an annual SJL special section

Ray Brandt Auto Group reports record sales across 20 brands

Acura sports new amenities package Football has kicked off, and Acura is in a sports state of mind with its new A-spec package on the top-selling MDX and RDX Sport Utility Vehicles.

“A-spec offers some sportier options, including leather and alcantara-trimmed seats, smoked gray aluminum alloy wheels, red instrument panel LED illumination and other features,” said King Acura General Manager Reed Lyles. “Acura believes that style, luxury and performance marry well together.”

Lyles said that sales are up at King Acura, which has been serving the Birmingham area ever since Acura hit the market in 1986. King Acura is a Precision Team Award winner, which goes to Acura dealers that lead the nation in customer satisfaction.

“The RDX (5-passenger mid-sized SUV) and MDX (7-passenger SUV) are our top-sellers, but we’ve also done well with the TLX sedan,” he said.

The new 2019 RDX came out a year ago and offers fuel efficiency of a

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Sales for the Ray Brandt Auto Group continue to accelerate, and in August the 36-year-old company recorded its top sales month ever.

“We thank our customers and employees. They drive our success,” said Ray Brandt Auto Group COO Todd Dempster, who has been with the company for more than 26 years.

Ray Brandt started with a Datsun dealership in 1983 and is now the sixth-largest privately-owned company in New Orleans.

With the opening of Ray Brandt Nissan in D’Iberville, Miss., and Ray Brandt Chevrolet in Biloxi, the company’s portfolio now includes 20 brands in the New Orleans area and south Mississippi, with lines represented including Chrysler, Dodge, Hyundai, Fiat, Infiniti, Genesis, Mazda, Mercedes-Benz, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Porsche, Ram, Toyota, Volkswagen, Jeep, Kia and Chevrolet.

Ray Brandt Auto Group will open up a state-of-the-art Porsche dealership at new location in Metairie in 2020. Next year, Porsche will release the Taycan, which is their first fully electric sports car.

Dempster said the amount of innovation available in vehicles within the Ray Brandt Auto Group family will continue to increase. “Technology today lets the automakers design vehicles that are faster, stronger, safer, and more integrated with our lives than ever before.”

Examples of enhanced safety features include blind spot monitors, 360-degree cameras, pre-collision with pedestrian detection, and lane-departure assist. “Our customers tell us frequently how important safety is to them,” he said.

The Ray Brandt Auto Group has earned many accolades, including the J.D. Power Dealer of Excellence, Porsche Premier Dealer, Nissan Global Award of Excellence, Infiniti Circle of Excellence, Mercedes Best of the Best and the Toyota Presidents Award. In 2016, they were named the Louisiana Automobile Dealers Association’s Dealer of the Year.

Brandt grew up in South Louisiana, attended Loyola University where he earned BBA, MBA and JD degrees. He is a lawyer and a CPA, and is the chairman of the Motor Vehicle Commission for the State of Louisiana, which regulates dealers and manufactures in the state.

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sedan from a few years ago. By employing direct-injection engines and lightweight materials, the RDX can get close to 30 miles per gallon on the highway.

King Acura also sells an ILX sedan, which offers luxury but at a lower price point than the larger TLX. Lyles said Acura believes safety should not be an option. On most models, standard features include adaptive cruise control, lane-keeping assist, blind-spot indicators, surround-view cameras and sensors that can automatically brake to avoid a collision. Other features either standard or a part of packages include ventilated/heated seats, remote engine start and Apple Car play.

Acura vehicles consistently are among the category leaders in resale value, he added. “We have Acuras coming into our service department with 300,000 and 400,000 miles,” said Lyles. “The vehicles really hold their value.”

The automaker also believes in “getting real,” he said. “If it looks like wood, it’s wood. If it looks like metal, it’s real metal. Acura is all about using the real materials and offering that more luxurious feel.”

For more information, go to www.kingacura.com.

Ray Pearman embraces tradition, tech High-tech refers both to Huntsville’s national reputation and the luxury vehicles sold at Ray Pearman Lincoln.

“Technology has grown by leaps and bounds,” said Ray Pearman General Manager Paige Pearman-Sandlin. “Lincoln has incorporated the latest technologies on its vehicles to advance both luxury and safety.”

Some of those features, many of which come standard, include lane-keep assist, remote start, automated park/un-park, auto break, adaptive cruise control that can read speed limit signs, 360-degree cameras, wireless charging pads, top-of-the-line entertainment systems with satellite radio and even

multi-contour massage seats.

Lincoln recently released its new 2020 Aviator. The premium Sports Utility Vehicle with a third row of seating is larger than the Nautilus mid-sized SUV, but smaller than the Navigator, Lincoln’s largest SUV. The fleet of vehicles also includes the Lincoln Corsair SUV, formerly the MKC, the Lincoln Continental sedan, and the Lincoln MKZ sedan, which is also available as a hybrid.

“Soon we’ll have a PHEV electric hybrid vehicle, that when it runs out of electrical charge, it automatically switches to gas,” said Pearman-Sandlin.

While the focus at Lincoln is on the luxury driving experience, Pearman-Sandlin said advanced turbo-charged engine design for Ford and Lincoln has significantly improved fuel economy on the vehicles in recent years, while keeping all the horsepower for performance.

There’s another important “t” at Ray Pearman Lincoln along with technology — tradition. Sandlin’s grandfather Ray Pearman opened the dealership in 1961, when Huntsville was just a small mill village community. The city and the dealership have grown together over the years.

Sandlin is a third-generation Pearman at Ray Pearman Lincoln. She was around the dealership growing up and would go on to graduate from Auburn University with a degree in business management just more than 18 years ago.

“We’re carrying on the tradition of a family-owned, hometown dealership that has always been with Lincoln,” she said. “My brother, Zach, heads the service department. My dad and my grandmother are around most of the time.”

“Our customers and our employees are like part of our family,” said Pearman-Sandlin. “That’s what really makes this special.”

s i n c e 19 8 3

Over 3,000 cars, trucks and SUV’s across New Orleans!

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High Holy Days 2019 • Southern Jewish Life

Happy New Year 5780

sports an annual SJL special section

Blitz, Morgan help Israel Softball to best-ever European ranking A year after graduating from Indiana University ranked second alltime in hits for the women’s softball team, Birmingham’s Rebecca Blitz was concerned that she might be a little rusty when she took the field representing Team Israel in the European Championships this summer, held in the Czech Republic.

Instead, she made the All-Tournament team.

Blitz and Ole Miss alumna Jamie Morgan helped Israel to its best-ever finish in the European tournament, placing ninth out of 23 teams.

There were hopes that Israel would place in the top six, which would move them along the process for qualifying for the Olympics. “We wanted to compete and represent Israel to the best of our ability,” Blitz said, especially because this was seen as Israel’s best opportunity to finally qualify for the Olympics in a team sport for the first time since 1968.

Morgan, now an assistant coach for the Winthrop softball team, said the team was disappointed about not advancing to the next round, but placing ninth “was a big deal, and I don’t think Rebecca Blitz we realized it until after.”

In 2017, Israel was 21st of 23, and in 2015 Israel was last in a field of 20. “It’s a huge leap,” Morgan said, “and can help us for future European championships.”

The team started with a 9-1 victory over Ukraine on June 30, followed later in the day by a three-inning no-hitter against Turkey, winning 15-0.

On July 1 Israel opened with a 2-0 win over Austria, but lost to Spain, 5-4. Italy then defeated Israel on July 2, 7-0.

Israel lost to Spain in the final inning, and Morgan said she wished the team had been better prepared for the crucial game. On the other hand, Italy “was a really good team” that eventually won the championship.

On July 3, Israel beat Russia, 4-2, then took down Belgium, 8-1, and Switzerland, 7-0, on July 4. The final game was a victory over Germany, 4-2, on July 6.

Blitz started all nine games, batting .440, going 11 of 25 with five runs, two RBI and one double. She walked six times, was hit by a pitch once and struck out three times, and led the team on on base percentage.

“I felt like I came back after a couple of practices,” Blitz admitted. “I was High Holy Days 2019 • Southern Jewish Life

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pleasantly surprised at how well I played.”

Blitz also was the team’s base stealer, taking 11 bases in 13 attempts, including three against Ukraine. The rest of the team had 17 attempts combined, including Morgan stealing three times on four attempts.

Morgan started one game but played in all nine, batting .625 by going 5 of 8, with six runs, two RBI and one double. She also reached base twice after being hit by pitches. She started at third base, then went to the outfield, and also was called upon for a few innings at first base. “I was ready to play anywhere.”

Both Blitz and Morgan were 1.000 on fielding, and neither had an error.

This was the first time Americans were on the Israeli team. Blitz said in the U.S., “softball is huge and the U.S. is always in the Olympics.”

Morgan said “it was funny to see how other teams were responding” to their presence on Israel’s team. Spain, in particular, was not thrilled, she related.

The American players received dual citizenship in Israel a month before the tournament.

Six of the players met at the airport, then went to a kibbutz in Gezer, where “we all meshed really well” and additional players would show up every day or so, Morgan said. They practiced together for about three weeks, with Morgan serving as “kind of a player coach.” About a week before the team left for Europe, the coaches arrived. “We did really well for being together only that amount of time,” she said.

While everyone was very welcoming, the kibbutz did not have a lot of softball equipment, which was an interesting experience for players who were accustomed to the resources at higher Division I colleges, Morgan said.

Blitz said playing for Team Israel was a chance “to represent my heritage by playing the sport that I love.”

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High Holy Days 2019 • Southern Jewish Life

Before each game, Hatikvah was played.

Blitz said “that was really special, being on the field in an international competition wearing an Israeli uniform” and hearing Israel’s national anthem, “every now and then…

I’d start to tear up.”

Representing Israel in that way was “really special, that none of us really expected to do in our lives.”

Morgan said the opening ceremony was a “big moment” as the team marched in behind children who were carrying the Israeli flag.

“Just being there and representing Israel was very special,” Blitz added.

Several of the players are talking about competing for Israel in the next European championships, though this month Blitz started her new career in Chicago as a technology consultant.

“I’m keeping the door open. If it works out, great.” Especially because next year would be a qualifier for the 2021 World Games in Birmingham.

To compete for Israel this summer, “a lot of stars aligned for me to have that opportunity,” Blitz said.

On the way to Chicago, she stopped by Indiana University to present her Israel uniform to the softball program. The coach asked her to address the team.

“It was really special to get to meet some of the freshmen,” and see some friends who are now juniors and seniors. “Being a year out from playing at Indiana, you see it in a different perspective and can offer words of encouragement, things I wish I would have known.”

Making of a Mitzvah The full story of how a Birmingham family organized Team Israel’s Project Cleats to surprise Kenya’s lacrosse team with new footwear A lacrosse match in the world championships turned into an unexpect- whose parents were not there. Ella’s father, Michael Duvdevani, said they ed opportunity for Israel’s national team to do some good, coordinated by had five team members with them, and at one point the conversation a member of Birmingham’s Jewish community. Their gesture was hailed turned to the day’s match. as an example of sportsmanship and made headlines worldwide.

He commented about the Kenyan athletes sliding around during the The Women’s Lacrosse 2019 U19 World Championship was held in match, and Israel’s goalie, Lielle Assayag, said “of course they were falling, early August in Peterborough, Canada, with 22 teams. During the Aug. 6 they don’t have cleats.” match between Israel and Kenya, which was delayed an hour due to rain, “That’s crazy,” Duvdevani said. the team from Kenya kept slipping and falling on the wet turf, as Israel Duvdevani, founder and CEO of Complete Feet, a pedorthic clinic in won, 13-4.

Birmingham, knows about the need for proper footwear. Sitting in the The Kenyans had ordered new running shoes for the tournament, but restaurant, it was 5:20 p.m. when he sent a message on the WhatsApp upon arriving in Canada, they discovered they were in U.S. sizes and not group for the Israeli team parents, relating what Assayag had told him. the U.K. sizes they ordered.

“Who is thinking what I am thinking,” he According to the Peterborough Examinasked, and Project Cleats was born. He er, many of the Kenyan athletes live “in abquickly looked up sporting goods stores ject poverty in two-bedroom mud shacks nearby, finding a large store near the team housing families of eight,” and they had to hotel. overcome numerous obstacles to even get He called them and asked if they had an to the tournament, including a government ample supply of cleats. They did, but could attempt to shut down the team. not guarantee they would all be the same Kenya Coach Storm Trentham told Varstyle or color, but that wasn’t important. sity, the student newspaper at Cambridge He contacted the Kenyan coach and coUniversity, where she used to coach, that ordinated donations from the Israeli team “the highlight of coming to camp for some parents to purchase the cleats for the Kenof the girls is that they get three meals a day yan athletes. By 9 p.m., they had new cleats for seven days straight.” for everyone on Kenya’s team.

After the shoe size mixup, tournament But before the Israeli parents could get committee member Rose Powers and brothe cleats, more information was needed kers from Exit Realty then purchased new — the correct sizes. The Kenya coaches running shoes for the girls, as they would quickly planned an evening activity for also be practical for everyday use back Ella Duvdevani with a member of Kenya’s team their athletes, along with a cover story of home. how they needed to leave their sneakers in But running shoes were no match for the wet turf, making for a huge the dorm for an equipment check. They sent Duvdevani a list of names obstacle in their match with Israel. and sizes, and it was time to shop.

Birmingham’s Ella Duvdevani, a member of Israel’s national team, said Kenya’s assistant coach, Patrick Oriana, accompanied them to the store. “it was very noticeable” that the sneaker-wearing Kenyans were slipping A member of Uganda’s national lacrosse team, Oriana is quite familiar on the field during warmups. She assumed that they would change into with Israel, having represented Uganda at the FIL World Championships cleats before the match started, but she was surprised that they never did. in Israel last year. He also played in Israel for Barak Netanya in 2017, and After the game, the Israeli team had a free evening. Parents who were at in 2014 was captain of Uganda’s team at the FIL World Championships in the tournament took their daughters out to dinner, along with teammates Denver, the first African club ever in the tournament.

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Back at the hotel, they put each box in a bag, attaching a rolled up slip of paper with the corresponding Kenya athlete’s name on it.

The next day, the Kenyan team had their free day and attended the Israel-Belgium match, having been told that they were going to scout Belgium before playing them the following day.

“We knew we were going to be giving them the cleats after the game,” Duvdevani said.

After each match, the athletes go into the equipment tent, then come back out and line up on the field for the announcement of that game’s most valuable player. When the Israeli players emerged from the tent, each was carrying a bag onto the field.

As Team Israel stood there, Duvdevani addressed the crowd. The Kenya team had “played good, they played hard, they played strong” the day before, but “you shouldn’t have to put up with slipping and sliding, you should have the same quality equipment as everyone else.”

With that, he called each Israeli team member forward to surprise each of the Kenyan athletes with her own new cleats.

Once they realized what was happening, the Kenya athletes ran from their seats and started hugging the Israelis, with a celebration breaking out in the stands.

“It was definitely the best experience I’ve had in my life,” Ella said. “It was overwhelming.”

Duvdevani said it was eye-opening for the team. When it comes to equipment like cleats, “we don’t think twice about this sort of thing.”

For others, it is a luxury. “For us, it’s only cleats.

For them, it changes their game.”

Afterwards, he commented that “it has been a great day for Israel Lacrosse.”

Is it the shoes? On Aug. 8, Kenya beat Belgium, 16-9, after another rain delay. The win broke a three-game losing streak since Kenya won their opener against Jamaica. Kenya Lacrosse tweeted that it was “a brilliant win today on the slippery surface thanks to our 11th man, Israel Lacrosse, and our cleats!”

Israel had opened with an 11-7 loss to Hong Kong, then had two lopsided losses, 21-3 to Haudenosaunee, and 20-1 to Puerto Rico.

About 300 campers from nearby Camp Moshava, a religious Zionist Bnei Akiva camp, attended Israel’s game with Haudenosaunee, and the team greeted the campers afterward.

After also going winless in their first U19 championships in 2015, Israel gained its first-ever victory, against Belgium, 17-4, followed by the Kenya win. On Aug. 7, Israel defeated Belgium again, 16-6.

On Aug. 9, Kenya defeated Chinese Taipei, 11-10, to qualify for the 17th-place match, then went to the next field to watch the end of Israel’s 15-8 victory over Ireland, which was the other play-in game for the 17th-place match.

As the game ended, the Kenya players were dancing around with the Israeli flags, chanting Israel’s rallying cry, “Yalla Israel.”

At one point, Duvdevani said he mentioned to a couple of the Kenyans that the day’s victories meant Kenya and Israel would be facing off the next day for 17th place. Because the teams had grown so close, that news was like a slap in the face, he said.

Between the growing international media sensation around Project Cleats and the swirl of emotions in advance of the final game, Duvdevani and Oriana went to a nearby field late that night and started tossing balls around, just to take a break.

Ella said it was difficult to play Kenya in the final game, because one must be aggressive in lacrosse, and they had formed such a bond with the Kenyans. “We had to leave all our emotions off the field,” she said.

Still, it wasn’t just any game. For example, at one point when a Kenya player lost hold of her stick, one of the Israelis picked it up and handed it back to her. Normally, “you don’t do that.”

It was a much tighter game than before, with Israel squeezing out an 11-10 victory. ‘Win or lose, it would not have mattered,” Ella said. “The bond was so strong,” and after the game “everyone hugged each other.”

She said one of the Kenya players told her “this has changed my life and how I see the game.”

As the story grew worldwide, the Kenya team tweeted “The support from all around the world for our African Queens is priceless and hugely humbling.”

Earlier in the tournament, the Wales team had brought a full gift set for the Kenya players, and they received numerous donations of clothing and equipment from local Canadians.

The Peterborough Lakers lacrosse team covered extra baggage fees so the team could bring all the donations they received back to Kenya.

As the first women’s team from Africa to play in international competition, they completed a requirement for all continents to be represented in men’s and women’s competition before a sport can become eligible to include in the Olympics.

Ella, a rising sophomore at Mountain Brook High School, started playing lacrosse two years ago when a friend approached her in the lunchroom and said their lacrosse team needed more players, and since she ran track and field, her speed would be a great asset. She went to a practice and stuck with it, and this past year “is when I really started playing.”

While at a tournament, she wondered if Israel even had a lacrosse team, since “it would be really cool to play for Israel,” and looked online. Her father contacted the team’s coach, Alex Freedman, and after communicating for a

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while, she invited Ella to be on the team. Duvdevani said he replied “of course,” and then told Ella about the invitation.

Duvdevani, who grew up on a moshav near Gaza, explained that Israel “doesn’t have an abundance of players,” unlike the United States, which had around 800 applicants for its team.

As the second-youngest player, “I was really scared at first,” Ella said, and it was an emotional time as well because she had to leave her session at Camp Ramah Darom early for the tournament.

Ella, who appeared in all eight matches, was “really honored to represent my country and the Jewish people as a whole,” especially “coming from Alabama, where lacrosse isn’t a big sport.”

The tournament in Canada was “an experience you could never forget.”

OFFICE OF INCLUSION AND DIVERSITY

THIS IS AUBURN. “This wonderful country of ours allows us to gather together, to be Jewish and be free… I’m grateful I can be Jewish and a basketball coach in the SEC.”

— Auburn Head Basketball Coach Bruce Pearl, at the 2017 JCC Maccabi Games Opening Ceremony

Ilana Touger plays for Israel, brings home bronze in U-15 lacrosse While the U-19 Women’s Lacrosse World Championships were being held in Peterborough, Ontario, there was also a World Lacrosse Festival for teams in the U-15 bracket from Aug. 7 to 9, and Birmingham’s Ilana Touger was on the bronze medal-winning Israeli team.

Inspired by a cousin who played lacrosse in college, Touger started playing in first grade.

“There weren’t a whole lot of people playing, but it was really fun,” and she continued to develop her skills.

Now, she competes in the Greater Birmingham Youth Lacrosse Association and plays for Mountain Brook. She also has been participating in the HotBama summer lacrosse program since sixth grade, competing on a regional level.

She found out about the Canada competition from Ella Duvdevani, who was playing for Israel in the U-19 tournament. “She said she’d love for me to go,” and there was still space on the U-15 team. “I thought it would be a really good experience,” Touger said.

To play for Israel at the U-15 level, the requirements were looser than for the older groups. All U.S.-based players for Israel’s U-15 team had to be eligible for Israeli citizenship based on the Law of Return, namely, one Jewish parent or grandparent.

Being from a region where lacrosse isn’t well established, she was nervous at first. But that quickly changed, as “everybody was really welcoming, the coaches were super-nice.” A highlight was getting to meet players from around the world and learning other perspectives about the game.

Before the tournament, there was a three-day training camp. In the eight team field, Israel finished third, with the bronze medal, after winning four, tying one and losing one. Other teams in the tournament were from Canada, the United States, England and Wales.

Touger hopes to continue playing in college, though that is still a couple years away.

Now that she has competed for Israel, she looks forward to visiting Israel, perhaps on the Israel Lacrosse Service Trip, where high school lacrosse players travel to Israel and teach lacrosse skills to Israeli peers.

WE ARE COMMUNITY. Hillel, Auburn University’s Jewish student organization, was the recipient of the 2015 AU Student Involvement Award for Overcoming Adversity. diversity@auburn.edu www.auburn.edu/diversity

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Mannon part of history-making Israel silver medal lacrosse team As the school year ended at Fresno State University for Birmingham’s Olivia Mannon, “little did I know I’d be coming away with a lot of great relationships and a silver medal” after representing Israel on the world stage.

The rising senior for Fresno State’s lacrosse team participated in all eight matches for Israel’s national team in the 2019 Women’s European Lacrosse Championship, held July 15 to 25 in Netanya, Israel. Israel lost to England, 10-7, in the championship game on July 25.

The team opened with an easy 13-2 win over Germany, followed by a 12-6 victory over Scotland.

England defeated Israel, 12-3, but Israel rebounded with a win over Ireland, 12-10, before being tripped up by Wales in a 12-8 loss.

Israel defeated the Netherlands, 15-5, then avenged their Wales loss with an 8-5 victory, setting Israel up for the title game. In all, there were 16 teams in the tournament. Before the tournament, Israel ranked sixth in the world, fourth in Europe.

Before moving to Birmingham, Mannon lived in Chevy Chase, Md., a “hotbed” of lacrosse, so she picked up the sport in second grade and started competing in fourth grade. When she moved to Birmingham as a fifth grader, she joined the Greater Birmingham Youth Lacrosse Association and was told she could play with the middle schoolers.

While attending Altamont, she played soccer for Altamont but went to Mountain Brook to play high school lacrosse, as the sport is still in its early stages in Alabama. In 2015, she signed with Fresno State.

Not certain what she was going to do this summer, she and one of her college teammates went on a Birthright Israel trip that was a partnership with Israel Lacrosse. She enjoyed “doing Birthright and meeting all these other Jewish American kids, and we all have lacrosse in common.”

As part of the trip, there were tryouts as Israel’s national team could have three non-citizens compete in the European Championships. “I ended up making it,” she said, which completely shifted her summer schedule. “It was an amazing opportunity.” Those on the Birthright trip who did not make the national team could stay and play on the developmental team in the Festival bracket.

Two days after the Birthright trip ended, she went to Netanya to start practicing until the tournament began. “I didn’t know what to expect in Israel,” she said. “It ended up such a great experience.”

After just four practices for the Israelis, the opening ceremony was at Robert Kraft Stadium in Jerusalem. For the actual tournament, there was one field, so scheduling was often interesting. Their game against the Netherlands started at 10:20 p.m.

The following day’s semifinal against Wales was broadcast, the first continued on page 38 36

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Baton Rouge’s Sager gets his kicks with the Birmingham-Southern Panthers

by Lee J. Green Max Sager’s goals extend far beyond those he scores with the Birmingham-Southern College Panthers’ soccer team.

A rising sophomore and Abroms Scholar majoring in health science, the Baton Rouge native wants to use the education he gains to help himself and others.

“My senior year of high school, I got to shadow a physical therapist friend of the family — Seth Kaplan — when he was helping out at Camp Jacobs’ special needs camp called Dream Street,” said Sager. “I knew that was what I wanted to do…and I knew I wanted to play college soccer” and pursue physical therapy in graduate school.

His mother, Ellen, is the executive director of the Jewish Federation of Greater Baton Rouge, and his father, Marc, is also very involved in the Jewish community.

Max’s sister, Julia, is a senior in high school, past president of the Baton Rouge Federation of Temple Youth chapter and regional membership vice president of NFTY-SO. The family attends Temple B’nai Israel.

“We’ve always been very involved in the Jewish community and take great pride in our Jewishness,” he said.

Sager was one of only three or four Jewish students at his high school, and his graduating class only had 44 students.

He and a fellow soccer player at his high school learned about Birmingham-Southern College. They took a visit and Sager really felt at home.

“I had only been to ad Birmingham a couple of times1 before and I2:37 didn’t 25-0819 LOVE - Southern Jewish Life.pdf 8/15/19 PM have friends or family here,” he said. “But right away I loved the school,

the feel of community, the coaches, the team. It felt like a good fit for me.”

The BSC Panthers’ soccer team had been led for 33 years by legendary coach and Jewish community member Preston Goldfarb, who would also coach a couple of U.S. teams to gold medals in 2013 and 2017 at the World Maccabiah Games in Israel, the first back-to back golds in Maccabiah soccer history. Goldfarb retired from BSC in 2015.

“He stepped down just as I was beginning my recruitment process, but I did get to talk to him about Birmingham-Southern and the Maccabi Games,” said Sager. “He certainly did so much here for the soccer program, university and community.”

Current BSC Men’s Soccer Head Coach Greg Vinson and the rest of the current coaches “have really helped me to learn a lot… and really keep the team united. With coach Greg being an assistant under coach Goldfarb, he knew about the Jewish holidays and traditions. “ The BSC Panthers were 12-7-1 in 2018, losing in the first round of their conference tournament. Sager, an outside back and wing, scored his first

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goal in an October game.

“My parents made it for the opening game Labor Day weekend last year and to a couple of other games,” said Sager. “They live stream and call me after every game. I’m grateful that we can stay so close, even when we can’t see each other.”

The Panthers open the season at home on Labor Day again in 2019 and their regular-season schedule runs through Nov. 15. His parents plan to be at Birmingham-Southern for the opener and an away game versus Millsaps College, since Jackson is a little over two hours from Baton Rouge.

Sager said he is one of about a dozen involved members of Hillel at BSC, which has an estimated 40 Jewish students on campus. “When I am not playing a game, I attend Friday night services. We enjoyed Sukkot and Chanukah celebrations. We made challah. It’s a tight group and we hope to get more people involved.”

Division III schools do not give out athletic scholarships, but Sager said he was “so honored” to receive a scholarship for Jewish students, established by Hal Abroms, and was “thrilled to meet him” when Birmingham-Southern Hillel had a special Shabbat service at Temple Emanu-El.

“I also appreciate those who took me into their homes for the holidays when I couldn’t make it home,” said Sager. “I love the community here on campus and in Birmingham.”

Especially during the fall, Sager’s schedule is very busy with school, soccer and other activities. “It’s a challenge to balance everything, but I feel it’s even easier to stay on-task when I have more going on, so I welcome it,” he said.

Birmingham-Southern allows its students to do a “January term,” in which they can spend all month in one class or internship on-campus or abroad. Sager plans to spend his term either with Kaplan or with a physical therapist in Birmingham getting hands-on training.

This past January, he spent the month learning from Birmingham Barons broadcaster and Jewish community member Curt Bloom, while Bloom was teaching and broadcasting Samford University basketball games.

“It’s great to be able to learn hands-on from others,” said Sager. “There’s nothing like getting that unique experience.”

As the Panthers’ men’s soccer team this season, Sager said the goal is to win the conference championship and advance. “I want to do whatever it takes to contribute to the team and to help us have a very successful season,” he said.

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continued from page 36

time Israel Lacrosse’s women’s team was on television. The next day, “we were getting to watch the game from the night before.”

The men’s team showed up to support them, “in full Israel fan gear.”

She was “on such a high after the semi-final.”

Though they lost the championship by three goals, “it was definitely a close game” and a tremendous achievement for the Israeli team.

“This is the first time in the women’s program history to medal, so it was huge.”

Mannon played in all eight games. A defender in college, she played both sides of the field during the tournament, scoring her first international goals. Only eight Israeli players scored during the tournament.

She said the team was “remarkable… probably the most unselfish team.” That was an advantage, as “we really worked well with each other.”

A decade ago, she had been to Israel on a family trip, where she had a Bat Mitzvah at the Robinson’s Arch egalitarian section of the Western Wall. “Going back as a 21-year-old, and really getting to see the country, talk to people, understand the political climate… I was able to appreciate it a lot more,” she said.

Birthright was “an eye-opening experience.

Playing lacrosse there was icing on the cake.”

She has one more year of eligibility at Fresno State, and “tryouts for the World Cup are next summer.”

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NED

Large New Orleans Maccabi delegation medals in competitions and values The slogan of the Jewish Community Centers Maccabi Games in Detroit may have been “Detroit is Back,” but for one of the largest New Orleans delegations in recent memory, it was “New Orleans is Here!”

The Games were held from Aug. 4 to 9, with about 1,300 high school athletes, coaches and delegation heads from across North America and several other countries. The Detroit games also included the Maccabi ArtsFest, and this was the sixth time Detroit has hosted the Maccabi Games.

The 18 first-time participants from New Orleans brought home nine competition medals.

In Boys Soccer 14U, Hudson Glassberg and Alex Lupin were part of a joint team with Detroit, Ohio and Denver. They were bounced early in the elimination tournament, but Lupin scored 11 goals in five games.

Charlie Adler and Svetlana Fielkow were on the combined 16U Girls Soccer team with Orange County, Peninsula Palo Alto and Alberta.

They lost the bronze medal game, 3-0, to Detroit.

Benjamin Kornman, Luc Bauduc, Donovan Ligier and Zach Laviage were on a 14U basketball team with athletes from Central Jersey.

They lost in the first round of the elimination bracket, which they entered as the top-ranked team in the blue bracket. There were 24 teams in the 14U tournament.

Maya Soll won a silver medal in contemporary dance, in a routine that she self-choreographed.

In tennis, Nico Lupin set a goal of finishing in the Top 20 in the competitive bracket. He placed 12th.

Ethan Dulitz won a gold medal in lacrosse, with Zachary Breaux and Byron Perkins winning silver in the finals. The game was decided on a goal in the final 30 seconds.

J.K. Bain won a gold medal in the table tennis doubles tournament, taking down the top-rated player.

Riley Ruth competed in swimming, and Lily

Shapiro, Lauren Soll and Reyna Soll took part in the Visual Arts showcase.

In the Second Sport tournament, Hudson won a gold medal in dodge ball, with Luc, Ben and Nico winning silver.

Keynote speaker for the JCC Cares expo was Anthony Ianni, former Michigan State University basketball player who was part of the 2010 Final Four team. He is regarded as the first Division I college basketball player diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum, and he spoke about overcoming bullying and excelling over his autism.

Midot medals were also distributed by organizers to athletes who showed sportsmanship and exemplified Jewish values in competition.

Donovan Ligier received a Midot medal for his effort and attitude in basketball.

Byron Perkins was awarded a Midot medal by the college lacrosse coaches for his courage and willingness in learning a sport he had never played before. In the final game of the tournament, he scored his first goal.

The entire soccer team that Charlie Adler and Svetlana Fielkow were on received Miot medals for positivity and perseverance for continuing to play despite numerous injuries. They lost the bronze medal game after qualifying for the medal round in a penalty shootout, with Fielkow netting a key goal.

During the closing party, Delegation Head Neal Alsop was one of three delegation heads to receive a Midot medal from the games director, for being the three delegation heads who most exemplified Midot values throughout the week.

“This is 100% a testament not just to me but to the work that our three other coaches/chaperones did,” he said. “I will forever be grateful to PJ, Josh and Avital for making my first full year as the delegation head successful beyond my wildest expectations.”

Alsop said that in a May team meeting, he impressed on the athletes that while competition medals were great, “it would be far more significant to win a Midot medal.”

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High Holy Days 2019 • Southern Jewish Life

Team Birmingham (and Beyond) takes on Atlanta Maccabi Games Team Birmingham brought home several medals from the 2019 Jewish Community Centers Maccabi Games, held July 28 to Aug. 2 in Atlanta.

The 18-member delegation, which included athletes from Huntsville and New Orleans, participated in seven sports, individually and in joint teams with other delegations.

Over 2,000 athletes, coaches and delegation heads took part in the games, which included a closing party at Mercedes-Benz Stadium and a party at the Georgia Aquarium.

There was also an expo presented by the Israeli Center for the Disabled, which included a demonstration of wheelchair basketball, and learning about Atlanta’s Shepard Center.

Elijah Frankel of Huntsville won six medals, five of them gold, in the Boys 15-16 track and field events. Among his medals were silver for the 800-meter run (2:12.16), and gold in the 200-meter dash (25.49) and 400-meter dash (54.79).

Asher Smokey, Arlo Winston, Lev Berman, Daniel Goldfarb and Omer Duvdevani were on a U16 basketball team with Central Florida, going 0-4 during the tournament, losing to Kings Bay, Dallas, Los Angeles West White and Cleveland.

In U14 soccer, Ari Altmann, Miles McMillan, Dylan Bor and Cole Smith took part for Birmingham, while Jackson Mendler of New Orleans, a cousin of Ari Altmann, also played as part of the Birmingham delegation because he was unable to make the trip to Detroit the next week with New Orleans’ Maccabi delegation. They were paired with Los Angeles Valley, with the joint team defeating Panama, 3-1, in the first match, falling to South Jersey, 6-1, defeating Dallas, 4-0, then Houston, 8-5, before being knocked out of the competition by Chicago/J-Team/ Greater Washington/Baltimore, 8-3.

Maddie Green was on a joint volleyball team with Nashville, St. Louis and Cleveland. The combined team opened with a tie against Atlanta Red, 25-19, 17-25; followed by wins over Atlanta White, 25-17, 25-20; and Dallas/Memphis/Denver, 26-24, 25-12. They lost their last two matches, to Israel Blue, 25-8, 25-11; and to Israel White, 25-19, 25-21.

In Boys Golf 15-16, Elad Sabbag won gold by eight strokes, scoring 77 in both of his rounds. Gili Weintraub placed fourth in Girls 14-16.

Marley Nadler competed in the U14 tennis tournament competitive division, taking the 12 seed out of 17 competitors. In the finals bracket, she was defeated by fifth-seeded Leah Ren Taube of Atlanta.

In the U16 tennis tournament, Clara Lapidus was seeded fourth of 12, losing in the tournament bracket to fifth seed Allie Bielski of J-Team.

Sadie Arnold competed in dance, receiving a silver medal in ballet.

Malena Altmann also was in the Birmingham delegation as Star Reporter.

There was also an Esports event, hosted by Lost Tribe. Cole Smith and Miles McMillan medaled in the Esports.

Several Birmingham athletes also received Midot medals, which are given out by Maccabi staff when athletes show true sportsmanship and kindness during the competitions.

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Birmingham Maccabi athletes participated on joint teams with other delegations in basketball, volleyball and soccer

Previewing the SEC

by Lee J. Green This season, the Alabama Crimson Tide hopes to rise At SEC Media Days, the voting again to the top of the college media picked Alabama to once football landscape, for the sixth again defeat Georgia to win the SEC Championship. The predicted time in the past 11 years.

Coach Nick Saban’s Crimson standings are: Tide team breezed through to SEC East a 12-0 regular season record in 1 – Georgia Bulldogs 2018. In the SEC Champion- 2 – Florida Gators ship game, Alabama overcame a 3 – Missouri Tigers 21-7 deficit to down the Georgia 4 – South Carolina Gamecocks Bulldogs.

5 – Tennessee Volunteers The Tide would go on to de- 6 – Kentucky Wildcats feat the Oklahoma Sooners 45- 7 – Vanderbilt Commodores 34 in the Orange Bowl National SEC West Semifinal before losing to Clem1 – Alabama Crimson Tide son in the National Champion2 – LSU Tigers ship Game, 44-16.

3 – Texas A&M Aggies “Nick Saban always looks for 4 – Auburn Tigers teaching moments, and he has 5 – Mississippi State Bulldogs used the offseason to get Tide 6 – Ole Miss Rebels players focused on avenging 7 – Arkansas Razorbacks the championship game loss to Clemson,” said Paul Finebaum.

The journalist/broadcaster hosts the Paul Finebaum Show on the SEC Network, which celebrated its fifth anniversary on the network last month.

Finebaum calls Charlotte home, but he used to work for the Birmingham Post-Herald and hosted sports radio shows on WJOX and WERC during his decades in Birmingham. He was in Birmingham for SEC Media Days back in July.

“We’ve had a lot more Clemson fans calling the show in the past few months,” he said. “Alabama and Clemson have been the two elite programs over the past four years and you can certainly call this the biggest-stage rivalry in college football.”

Finebaum and his wife occasionally attend synagogue in Charlotte, but finding the time during college football can prove difficult, he said.

Other notable Jewish figures in the SEC include Eli Gold, the voice of the Crimson Tide, Auburn Basketball Coach Bruce Pearl, University of South Carolina Associate Athletic Director Charles Bloom and Mississippi State Athletic Director John Cohen.

The late Mike Slive led the SEC to unprecedented success from 2002 to 2015.

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SEE YOU THERE! High Holy Days 2019 • Southern Jewish Life

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community L’Chaim event celebrates Alabama Holocaust survivors and their descendants At its August 18 L’Chaim event, the Birmingham Holocaust Education Center recognized and celebrated Holocaust survivors who made Alabama their home, and showed examples of applying lessons from the Holocaust to “raise generations that will stand for decency and kindness,” said Deborah Layman, who produced the event.

Layman said the event was to “honor Alabama Holocaust survivors and their families, the families of the present and the families of the future.”

She co-hosted the event with Jeff Eliasoph from 13 News.

The center has identified 153 Holocaust survivors who wound up in Alabama. Of those, 77 moved to Birmingham, with others going to Anniston, Dothan, Gadsden, Huntsville, Mobile, Montgomery, Selma, Talladega and Tuscaloosa.

Layman noted that of those, “only 19 are still alive,” with 12 in Birmingham, two in Huntsville, one each in Northport and Selma, and three that are now out of state. Eleven attended the event, along with more than 100 descen-

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High Holy Days 2019 • Southern Jewish Life

dants, “a legacy of life.” Before the program, they did a group photo.

In the weeks leading up to the event, Eliasoph did profiles of three of the survivors on 13 News. “We hope to have this association for many years to come,” he said.

As part of celebrating life, Layman introduced a video of Holocaust survivors recalling their childhoods, saying “happy memories of childhood were an important part of making them who they are today.”

Robby Ballard of the Altamont School gave observations as an educator. “Nazism is ideological smallpox,” he said. “How do we combat it?”

In teaching about the Holocaust, he tries to impress on his students that “doing something morally courageous is different than doing the right thing.”

Holocaust survivor Robert May visits his class each year, and then they spend days afterwards processing the visit. The BHEC and May’s visit are “the critical tool in my arsenal as a teacher.”

Interspersed between presentations, the Red Mountain Performing Ensemble performed a three-section piece, “You Will Be Found,” de-

scribing the challenges faced by different members of society. They gave their experiences as a hijab-wearing Muslim woman, being disabled and “not handi-capable or differently-abled,” a lesbian, a black male, transgendered, and the great-granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor who finds herself dealing with contemporary antisemitism.

Cathy O. Friedman gave another example of a recent challenge, describing how Syria native Karim Shamsi-Basha, who immigrated to the U.S. in 1984, had been in a Vestavia gym and someone left a note in his bag with a swastika and “go back to where you came from.”

Friedman said “we know history has to be taught” and “this is not a time to be silent.”

Without community support, there would be no BHEC, she said.

At the event, it was announced that the BHEC had raised $317,000 toward this year’s goal of $330,000.

There was also recognition of Bayer Properties, which for 15 years has housed the BHEC office rent free. That property will soon be redeveloped, and BHEC will be moving to a new office.

Pies and Pints

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Pesto Shredded Mozzarella Salt and Pepper

Stretch pizza dough. Use the back of a spoon to spread pesto onto the dough — top with shredded and fresh mozzarella. Bake at 450 to 500 degrees for eight to 15 minutes (ovens vary — cook pizza until golden brown on the edges and bottom of the pizza).

Pull the pizza from the oven with a pizza peel or rimless cookie sheet.

Cover the pie with a single layer of sliced heirloom tomatoes (do not overlap) and finish with extra virgin olive oil, a pinch of salt & pepper along with grated Parmigiano Reggiano.

Pies and Pints

by Lee J. Green Gourmet pizza and craft beer pair perfectly together, inspiring the concept for Pies and Pints.

“My business partner, David Bailey, is from New York City and he grew up in the restaurant business,” said Pies and Pints Co-Founder Kimberly Shingledecker. “He had always wanted to open up a place with great pizza and beer, in an environment with cool music. He even had the perfect name picked out.”

Bailey and Shingledecker opened the first Pies and Pints in 2003 where they live in the ski resort town of Fayetteville, W.Va. Seven years later, they started a restaurant in Charleston, W.Va. before expanding into Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky then Alabama in 2016 with downtown Birmingham and Montgomery locations. Pies and Pints now has 15 locations.

“We felt it was a good recipe for growth. We’ve really developed a great following. We’re very pleased with the way the Birmingham and Montgomery locations have been received,” said Shingledecker.

Pies and Pints’ menu features 18 specialty pizzas, including several kosher-style options such as street corn pie and heirloom tomato pie.

A few of the specialty pizzas are seasonal. Customers can also make their own pizza from a selection of 40 different toppings.

“We can make substitutions on the specialty pizza and customers can create their own kosher-style pizza,” said Shingledecker. “That’s the great thing about pizza and all the options we offer.”

Pies and Pints also sells sandwiches, salads and chargrilled hot wings.

Among the kosher-style offerings are the rosemary and roasted garlic flatbread, pesto pizza, black bean pizza, grape and Gorgonzola pizza, Greek salad and Caesar salad.

Then of course, there’s craft beer. The Birmingham and Montgomery locations feature 35 craft beer taps and a majority of their selections are local and regional craft beers.

“Every Pies and Pints focuses on local and regional craft beers as much as possible,” said Shingledecker. “Each location also works with local produce companies and farmers. Just about everything is made fresh in-house.”

She said they plan to grow the concept and new stores within the Southern Jewish Life magazine coverage area are being considered.

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High Holy Days 2019 • Southern Jewish Life

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Cafe Beignet

Four Locations in the French Quarter: Decatur, Bourbon, Royal and St. Peter cafebeignet.com.

CALAS 6 eggs 2 cups cooked rice (cooled) 2/3 cup granulated sugar 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon 1 teaspoon salt 4 teaspoons baking powder

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1 teaspoon nutmeg 2 teaspoons vanilla extract 2 cups flour

Whisk eggs with sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt, vanilla and baking powder. Mix well with rice. Add flour and mix. Form small balls and fry to golden brown.

Serve 4 balls dusted with powdered sugar.

Café Beignet

by Lee J. Green The historic French Quarter Old Coffee Pot Restaurant has a nouveau vie, and in July became the fourth member of the Café Beignet family.

Started as a townhouse on St. Peter Street in 1829, the building housed The Old Coffee Pot from its opening in 1894 until its closing this past winter. The new owners restored the location, bringing back the essence and beauty of the building from its former days, renaming it Café Beignet at the Old Coffee Pot. “We wanted to freshen it up and show off its old character; make it look like it did 50 years ago,” said co-owner Peter Moss. “We bought the location so that we could be respectful of the history and continue the charm, ambiance that brought people here all of these years.”

Café Beignet opened as Coffee and Concierge on Labor Day in 1990 at 334 Royal Street in the French Quarter. They changed the name to Café Beignet in 1996 and would open locations on Bourbon Street in 2005, Decatur Street in 2017 as well as the most recent one on St. Peter Street.

Plans for a fifth location are already underway.

“Each of our cafes are unique in their own way, offering a French bistro/ vintage New Orleans setting,” said Moss. The Royal Street location is in a converted 1840s carriage house with an accompanying tropical courtyard.

The Bourbon Street location is an all-outdoor courtyard café with a full patio bar. It’s in Musical Legends Park and the courtyard is filled with bronze statues of famous New Orleans jazz musicians.

Café Beignet’s Decatur Street location sits near the river and right by the Steamboat Natchez. All locations offer live jazz music and pet-friendly areas.

Jewish brothers Peter and Keil Moss, along with their sister Margaret Moss, co-own Café Beignet. They also own and operate a family antique business that is more than 100 years old, with three stores, The Brass Monkey, Keil’s Antiques and Moss Antiques.

Gordon Stevens also shares ownership, and serves as president/CEO of continued on page 45

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community >> Rear Pew Mirror

continued from page 46

May you find offense only on the football field and, for Heaven’s sake, in the first half of the Mets’ season.

May you forgive people for what deserves forgiveness, plus a little more. But not too much more.

May you stop and smell the roses, put on an old record, and explain to your kin what a record is.

May you support and enjoy local theatre and the arts.

May you realize that your “us” is a “them” to others, and all y’all are better together.

May you play the last trump card.

May you come to be in Yisroel a shining name.

Doug Brook was voted most likely to complete this sentence. To read past columns, visit http://brookwrite.com/. For exclusive online content, like facebook.com/rearpewmirror.

Camp Judaea launches “Southern Jewish Journey” track Camp Judaea announced that it is introducing a new Chalutzim track, “Southern Jewish Journey” next summer.

In addition to the Outward Bound track that Judaea campers have enjoyed for many years, the new program will be for rising 10th grade campers and include a six-day tour of the Southern United States.

Participants will stop in Birmingham, Montgomery, Selma and Atlanta to explore civil rights history and ties to those Jewish communities. In addition to visiting important civil rights history sites, participants will meet with members of different southern Jewish communities.

The Hendersonville, N.C., camp launched this program in the hopes that it provide insights into the intertwined history of Southern Jews and the Civil Rights movement that campers may otherwise not get at their school back home.

Chalutzim dates for 2020 are June 8 to 24, so participants can attend Camp Tel Yehudah, beginning June 24. Enrollment is now open at campjudaea.org.

>> Cafe Beignet

NOW OPEN!

continued from page 44

the New Orleans Steamboat Company, including the Steamboat Natchez plus the City of New Orleans Steamboat launching this fall, as well as Gray Line Tours. Bill Dow, founder and chairman of the New Orleans Steamboat Company, also shares ownership in Café Beignet and resides in Lake George, N.Y., where he owns and operates another family business, the Lake George Steamboat Company.

Café Beignet serves breakfast all day and its unique recipes have gained much acclaim. The menu includes omelets, pastries, sandwiches, coffee, beer, wine, mixed drinks, salads and of course the New Orleans culinary staple in their name.

General Manager Donna Shay said their beignets are “light and fluffier than most other places. Customers are known to describe them as “fluffy, little pillows.”

She said serving breakfast all day accommodates locals and those who travel to New Orleans from across the world. “Many of our visitors are traveling from different time zones. It may be breakfast time where they are traveling from when they get to New Orleans and we can satisfy that hunger,” said Shay.

Along with the beignets, Café Beignet at the Old Coffee Pot brought back an old New Orleans staple called calas.

It’s rare to find calas on menus today. Historians connect calas with its roots in Africa. The dish made its way to New Orleans and was typically sold in the city streets. The fried rice fritters are dusted with powdered sugar and served hot.

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www.climatestorage.com High Holy Days 2019 • Southern Jewish Life

45

rear pew mirror • doug brook

The Mosald This column was originally going to be a satiric retelling of Moses presenting the Ten Commandments in the less Biblical voice of a contemporary temp worker who’s a habitual tweeter often puttering around Washington.

It was going to feature him straying from his tablet prompter, instead attesting to the size of the crowd at Mount Sinai, how the mighty waters of the parted Red Sea reached Alabama, and many other insights that didn’t stand the test of testament.

We decided, however, not to run it. While we trust the savvy and humor of both of this column’s readers, it doesn’t seem the right time to run it. It’s possible that people of all “sides” could find offense, if for no reason more than one who looks for a way to find offense usually finds it, rather than taking it for the intended equal opportunity satire.

It’s a shame, too, because it was funny. Really funny.

It’s entirely possible that, in the current climate change, people could be offended by the mere snippets above. Or even by the suggestion of such a column having been drafted. Or even by not publishing it.

But this is the eve of a new year, and with it comes the time for atonement. So, we will not run this Pulitzer-worthy witticism that the world’s not ready for. We won’t tempt people to insist on atonement which might or might not be forthcoming — or, as Victor Borge might say, fivethcoming.

Instead, as an homage to a time-honored tradition from a rabbi of blessed memory, we present to you wishes for the new year.

May the next Star Wars film exhilarate you whether you liked “The Last Jedi” or have good taste.

May you find more fault in yourself than in others.

May you find little fault in yourself.

May you not throw stones in glass houses, and instead listen to Billy Joel’s “Glass Houses” which will celebrate the 40th anniversary of its release this year.

May you make strides, not take sides.

May you watch “Shtisel,” whether you have already or not, because it’s not just great Israeli television, but great television.

May May be the best month between April and June of the entire year.

May your month of May hit like Mays.

May your first ever in-person Alabama football game not be last season’s national championship game. (For a friend who’s still in recovery.

Not this columnist. He’s not in denial, either.)

May your packages be delivered and your package thieves be delivered to justice.

May you be surrounded by people who realize we’re all on the same side, no matter whose side we’re on. May they realize it without the help of a unifying catastrophe.

May your social media be social and not require mediation.

May your social media not be dominated by topics covered by the media.

May the New York Y*nkees fail to win.

May the Miami Dolphins fail to fail.

May Major League umpires read more Shakespeare, but not take to heart that “fair is foul and foul is fair.”

May you not fall prey to any bots, calls from the IRS or Windows Technical Support, or emails asking you to verify your credentials, pay blackmail for something you didn’t do “recorded” on a computer that doesn’t even have a camera, or help a financial transaction for a prince from Jamaica. Zimbabwe, maybe.

May you remember that the world is round – a world, by its nature, without sides. continued on previous page

A few of our “best” wishes for 5780…

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High Holy Days 2019 • Southern Jewish Life

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High Holy Days 2019 • Southern Jewish Life