ALDO’S RISTORANTE NORTHERN ITALIAN CUISINE 757.491.1111
AMAZING LASH STUDIO EYELASH & BEAUTY STUDIO 757.347.5875
ANTHONY VINCE’ NAIL SPA FULL SERVICE NAIL SPA 757.226.0900
AVA MARIE SALON & SPA FULL SERVICE SALON 757.962.0199
CALICO CORNERS
FABRIC, WINDOW TREATMENTS, FURNITURE 757.463.1401
CHICO’S WOMEN’S FASHION 757.417.0744
CLUB PILATES FITNESS STUDIO 757.819.4001
FIRST CAROLINA BANK FINANCIAL SERVICES 757.217.4542
GOURMET GANG BISTRO & CATERING OPENING SOON!
KAADO MD AESTHETICS & ANTI-AGING 757.788.4508
J.MCLAUGHLIN LADIES, MEN'S & CHILDREN S APPAREL 757.734.7148
JOS A. BANK CLASSIC MEN’S CLOTHING 757.425.0071
MASSAGELUXE QUALITY LUXURY MASSAGE 757.422.LUXE
MIZUNO SUSHI AND MORE 757.422.1200
NOTHING BUNDT CAKES SPECIALTY CAKES 757.395.4021
OCEAN PALM A LILLY PULITZER® SIGNATURE STORE 757.437.7256
RESTORE HYPER WELLNESS INFUSIONS & CRYO 757.769.7514
SAVARNAS THREADING, SKINCARE & HENNA 757.446.0101
SOMA INTIMATE APPAREL 757.985.3511
TALBOTS CLASSIC • PETITES • WOMAN 757.428.4442
jewishnewsva.org
Published 20 times a year by United Jewish Federation of Tidewater.
It is strange preparing for the new year while it still feels like the middle of summer outside, but like all things, that will soon change. I will be grateful for the cooler weather as we embark on 5784, a year which will continue to bring change to our strong, generous, and innovative community.
Together, we have again accomplished much over the past year, and I continue to be immensely grateful – thank you. We again contributed funds through our annual 2023 Community Campaign, totaling close to $5 million to support ongoing and emerging needs locally and globally.
We continue to innovate in Jewish education – at Strelitz International Academy, Toras Chaim, Bina, the Talmudical Academy, through our synagogues and religious schools, and through programs and partnerships of the Konikoff Center for Learning.
We continue to build Jewish identity through programs such as BBYO, Birthright Israel, and support of teen participation in the JCCA Maccabi Games in Israel and the U.S. this year.
Over the past 13 months, we have welcomed four wonderful shinshinim from Israel who have enhanced our Israeli programming and awareness in our community, and who have now brought Tidewater to Israel!
We have enhanced our investment in community security through our increased partnership with Secure Community Network (SCN) with increased training, awareness, and measures to protect us all.
We have helped vulnerable, at-risk populations both in
our community and in Jewish communities in Eastern Europe, South America, Israel, and other countries through our overseas partnerships.
We have responded generously, as we always do, to continue to support the people of Ukraine as the war has raged on, as well as to appeals in the wake of natural disasters in Turkey, Syria, Hawaii, and now Morocco.
Our community institutions are innovating, evolving, and reimagining every day. Jewish Family Service has expanded its Embrace counseling program, Beth Sholom Village is planning for its next generation of care including the opening of Aviva at Pembroke, and multiple other institutions and programs, including those at UJFT, are planning to meet the needs of the next generation.
Our organized Jewish community has experienced much change throughout our history, and I have no doubt that we will continue to embrace change as we address current needs and plan for our future. This is who we are.
So, as the new year 5784 begins, may we all continue to stand together to continue to strengthen our Tidewater Jewish community and take care of one another, kol yisroel aravim zeh b’zeh both locally and globally.
L’shana tova tikatevu – wishing you and your families the sweetest of New Years.
Reba and Sam Sandler Family Campus of the Tidewater Jewish Community 5000 Corporate Woods Drive, Suite 200 Virginia Beach, Virginia 23462-4370 voice 757-965-6100 • fax 757-965-6102 email news@ujft.org
Terri Denison, Editor Stephanie Peck, Assistant Editor Michael McMahon, Art Director Sandy Goldberg, Account Executive Marilyn Cerase, Subscription Manager Patty Malone, Circulation Reba Karp, Editor Emeritus
United Jewish Federation of Tidewater David Leon, President Mona Flax, President-elect Alvin Wall, Treasurer Jason Hoffman, Secretary Betty Ann Levin, Executive Vice President JewishVA.org
The appearance of advertising in the Jewish News does not constitute a kashrut, political, product or service endorsement. The articles and letters appearing herein are not necessarily the opinion of this newspaper.
©2023 Jewish News. All rights reserved.
Subscription: $18 per year
JewishNewsVA
For subscription or change of address, call 757-965-6128 or email mcerase@ujft.org.
Upcoming Deadlines for Editorial and Advertising
Issue Deadline
October 16 Legal September 29
October 30 Business October 13
November 13 Hanukkah October 27
November 27 Mazel Tov November 10
10November 24
– page 8
For the Jews of Ukraine, the Unetaneh Tokef text is heart-wrenchingly real.
Aspectator was ejected from a U.S. Open tennis match
Tuesday, Sept. 5 after allegedly chanting a Nazi anthem at German player Alexander Zverev.
During the fourth set of Zverev’s match against No. 6 Jannik Sinner, the No. 12 seed approached the umpire’s chair, pointed toward the stands, and said, “He just said the most famous Hitler phrase there is in this world. It’s not acceptable.” The exchange was shown on ESPN’s broadcast.
The umpire, James Keothavong, turned to the crowd and asked the fan to identify himself, before reminding the arena to be respectful to both players. The fan was ultimately identified by security and removed from the event.
After the match, Zverev explained that the fan “started singing the anthem of Hitler that was back in the day,” according to the Associated Press. “It was ‘Deutschland über alles’ and it was a bit too much.”
Under Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime, Germany rewrote the beginning to its national anthem to include the phrase “Deutschland über alles,” which means “Germany above all.” The addition was removed after World War II.
Zverev, who lost the interrupted set but won the match, said he likes when fans are loud but that he had to intervene in this incident.
“I think me being German and not really proud of that history, it’s not really a great thing to do and I think him sitting in one of the front rows, I think a lot of people heard it,” said Zverev, a native of Hamburg born to Russian parents, both of whom were professional tennis players. “So, if I just don’t react, I think it’s bad from my side.”
The U.S. Tennis Association, which operates the annual tennis grand slam tournament hosted in Queens, N. Y., acknowledged the incident, saying “A disparaging remark was directed toward Alexander Zverev. The fan was identified and escorted from the stadium.” (JTA)
reaction to the film. That’s higher than both Sandler’s wildly popular 1990s comedies (such as Billy Madison, which scored a 40%) and his more acclaimed dramas (such as Uncut Gems, which scored a 91%).
Director Sammi Cohen told Kveller that “it’s a dream come true.”
“It’s a little surreal, and it took a while to sink in. I grew up loving Billy Madison and loving [Sandler]. It has nothing to do with him being Jewish. He’s just an icon. So yeah, it’s all been very surreal and amazing,” Cohen said. (JTA)
The makeup artist who styled Bradley Cooper as Leonard Bernstein has apologized for creating the prosthetic nose that some say perpetuates stereotypes about Jews.
Kazu Hiro said at a Venice International Film Festival press conference that he was not expecting the swift backlash to early images of Cooper in character that surfaced last year and intensified when the trailer for Maestro, a Bernstein biopic, was released.
“I feel sorry that I hurt some people’s feelings,” said Hiro, who has won two Oscars, including for his work transforming Gary Oldman into Winston Churchill for 2017’s The Darkest Hour.
He said he and Cooper would show up at 2 am most days to start early on pre-filming makeup sessions that took anywhere from three to five hours.
“My goal was and Bradley’s goal was to portray Lenny as authentic as possible,” Hiro said. “Lenny had a really iconic look that everybody knows — there’s so many pictures out there because he’s photogenic, too — such a great person and also inspired so many people. So, we wanted to respect the look too, on the inside. So that’s why we did several different tests and went through lots of decisions and that was the outcome in the movie.”
In January, a Turkish Instagram user posted part of an interview with Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, making statements in praise of Hitler and denying the Holocaust — and swiftly had the post removed from the social media platform.
But that wasn’t a success story for Meta’s efforts to keep hate speech off Instagram, the company’s Oversight Board has ruled. That’s because the Ye interview was accompanied by a reaction video of a reporter condemning his comments and sharing a family link to Holocaust victims.
Meta’s hate-speech detection system failed to grasp that the user was criticizing Ye, not endorsing him. So the company removed the post, accusing the user of violating its hate speech policies.
Now, the Oversight Board, an independent body tasked with reviewing Meta’s content moderation decisions, says the owner of Facebook and Instagram should improve its efforts to distinguish posts that promulgate hate from ones that aim to combat it. Too often, the board explained, human and automated moderators flag posts that are meant to educate against hate and antisemitism.
“Such mistakes can suppress speech meant to respond to hate speech, including Holocaust denial, or condemn statements of praise for dangerous individuals such as Hitler,” the summary said. “Protecting counter-speech is essential for advancing freedom of expression and a tool for combating harmful content such as misinformation and hate speech.”
The reviews are in: You
Invited
Bat Mitzvah is the best-reviewed movie of Adam Sandler’s blockbuster-filled career. It’s a hit with streaming audiences, too.
The Netflix movie about teen drama and the hallowed Jewish coming of age ceremony co-stars his real-life wife and daughters. That casting decision has generated some criticism in the era of the “nepo baby” debate about nepotism in Hollywood, but that hasn’t taken away from the fact that the film has a 96% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the reviews aggregator site.
That means 96% of online reviewers surveyed by the site had an overall positive
Both Bernstein’s family and the Anti-Defamation League defended Cooper, who also directed the film, and said they did not consider the elongated nose antisemitic. Also at the festival, where the film debuted, Bernstein’s daughter Jamie called the uproar over the prosthetic nose “an annoying distraction.”
“The people who were waiting to get mad about something were just waiting to pounce,” she told Vanity Fair.
The film, which will receive a limited theatrical release on Nov. 22 before debuting on Netflix on Dec. 20, drew seven standing ovations during its premiere at the festival. (JTA)
Meta’s Oversight Board said Meta disregarded the context within which the user presented Ye’s comments and erroneously removed the post under policies barring Holocaust denial and praise of figures such as Hitler. The user appealed the removal to no avail, but when the Oversight Board brought the matter to Meta’s attention, the company acknowledged the error and restored the post.
The board reiterated recommendations made in previous cases that Meta check how often its content moderators and algorithms incorrectly remove posts meant to educate about or counter hate speech. The accidental censoring of educational content has plagued the company for years, spiking, for example, when Meta banned Holocaust denial in 2020.
It is not the first time the Oversight Board, set up in 2020 amid allegations that Meta’s platforms help the spread of misinformation and extremism, has taken up a case involving antisemitism. Of the nearly 50 cases that have passed through its docket, at least four have touched upon Holocaust denial or Nazi-related content. (JTA)
distinction
Philissa Cramer, Eliyahu Freedman (JTA) — Jews and Jewish sites appear to have largely been spared following the devastating earthquake that struck Morocco late Friday, Sept. 8, killing more than 2,600 people, injuring thousands more, and plunging some of the poorest areas of the Northwest African country into into ruins.
The export of etrogs, the citrus fruit harvested locally and used ritually in the upcoming festival of Sukkot, also appears to be continuing largely unabated.
Israeli rescue teams are on the ground and the country has offered additional aid to Morocco as a massive humanitarian effort takes shape, the region’s largest in more than a century. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which has operated in Morocco since 1947, has staff aiding the operation there.
Dov Maisel, vice president of operations at Israel Hatzalah, an emergency aid nonprofit, said a preliminary team of four people with experience in disaster management had traveled to Morocco early Sunday, Sept. 10.
“They are describing terrible sites of destruction,” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, adding that his group would determine the size and scope of its ultimate mission based on what the team observes. “Will it be more medical? Search and rescue? Psycho-trauma? This is the evaluation they are doing right now.”
JDC relief activities are coordinated with the U.S. Department of State, USAID, Israeli relief efforts, and the United Nations, as well as local and international partners.
The Jewish Agency is also in contact with the local Jewish community to assess their needs.
The 6.8-magnitude earthquake, centered in the Atlas Mountains near Marrakesh, struck at a time of heightened Jewish tourism, following Israel’s normalization of relations with Morocco in 2020. Israel said it was aware of 479 Israelis in the country at the time of the quake and had accounted for the safety of all of them.
The quake came on the eve of a major pilgrimage timed to the anniversary of a Moroccan rabbi’s death and as the country’s etrog farms were completing their harvests of etrogs leading up to the fall harvest festival of Sukkot, which begins this year on Sept. 29. Hundreds of thousands of etrogs are grown in Morocco annually ahead of the holiday.
Tradition holds that etrog trees were first planted in the Atlas Mountains nearly 2,000 years ago by Jews who found shelter amongst the Berber tribes there after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. Today, the etrog farms in the Atlas Mountains are largely staffed by Berbers and owned by Jews living in Israel or in Agadir, a coastal city that was flattened in 1960 by an earthquake that, according to JTA’s reports at the time, killed a third of the local population overall and two-thirds of its Jewish community, about 1,500 people.
Like many people involved in the etrog trade, Tsvi Dahan was spending Shabbat in Agadir, where there is a tiny remaining Jewish community that grows during the etrog harvest. An Israeli who owns a grove about an hour away, Dahan was sleeping in a local hotel when the earth started shaking.
“I knew immediately that it was an earthquake,” Dahan said. (His wife, Deborah Danan, is a JTA correspondent in Israel.) “I put my head on the pillow and felt the bed move. I saw that the room was continuing to shake. In seven seconds, I was downstairs without anything, just my shirt and underwear.”
The hotel did not let guests reenter, so Dahan and others spent the rest of the night sleeping outside the synagogue, where etrog season means prayer quorums can be assured. The building, like the rest in the city, was built after 1960 as Agadir was reconstructed closer to the shore, downhill from the ruined city.
Dahan said he had quickly connected with Bilaid el Bouhali, the Berber who manages his grove, and learned that while el Bouhali was safe, his city of Oulad Berhil, in the mountains between Marrakesh and Agadir, was in ruins. A video taken by el Bouhali shows widespread devastation in his town, which had grown quickly in recent years.
“It’s not so nice to say but when I saw the lampposts all leaning, one of my first thoughts was, what about my [etrog] trees? I hope they’re still standing,” Dahan recalled. “Bilaid came to pick me up from Agadir and we went straight to the mountain to check on them. Thank God they’re fine.”
On Sunday, Sept. 10, Dahan was trying to figure out how to get himself and the etrogs out of the country. The Marrakesh airport was closed until further notice, but Dahan said he thought the first etrog shipments would depart on schedule.
In Marrakesh, where about 120 Jews live, many buildings have collapsed, and authorities have instructed residents to sleep outdoors for the next several days in case of aftershocks. (The majority of Morocco’s 1,500 Jews live in Casablanca, which was not affected by the earthquake.) But while many homes lay in ruins — including Dahan’s family home, where his grandmother and uncles lived until recently — relatively few deaths occurred there.
“Everything is okay — not a single Jew was injured,” said Menachem Danino, a Casablancaborn Israeli who runs a Facebook group for Moroccans in Israel. “All of the houses in the quarter were destroyed except the synagogue, which is fine with the exception of some cracks in the walls.”
Just a few miles outside the city, entire villages have crumbled, and an accounting of the injured and dead is still underway. Maisel said the Hatzalah team is part of that effort.
“They have been throughout the day on the ground meeting with officials and going out on the ground to villages between 15 to 20 kilometers outside of Marrakesh where the earthquake really wiped the villages off the face of this earth,” Maisel said.
He said his group had been alerted to the earthquake
first by volunteers who happened to be in Morocco as tourists, including some who were preparing for a pilgrimage, called a hiloula, to the grave of Rabbi Haim Pinto. That pilgrimage to the coastal city of Essouira, which was set for Tuesday, Sept. 12, drew about 2,000 people last year.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opened his Sunday Cabinet meeting by pledging support to Morocco and his counterpart there.
JDC’s chief operating officer, said. “As we in the Jewish community approach the High Holidays, weighing the uncertain balance between life and death, and the importance of aiding those most in need, we are on the ground in Morocco to preserve life, to comfort and support the most vulnerable, and to fulfi ll our commitment to repairing a broken world.”
Danino said he saw divine intervention in the fact that Morocco’s many Jewish sites had apparently survived the quake.
Another Israeli nonprofit, SmartAID, said it had sent 20 people late Saturday night, along with technology that could facilitate communication and medical care in areas without electricity and running water. And JDC is building up a team around its Casablanca-based Morocco director for a sustained aid operation.
“As we mourn the harrowing loss of life and devastation in Morocco, we’re working quickly with the Moroccan Jewish community to provide assistance to those most impacted in Marrakesh and ensure their most basic needs are being met,” Pablo Weinsteiner,
“Graves of Jewish sages [in the affected area] were not damaged,” he said, noting that he had spoken to the people responsible for the upkeep of the tomb of Rabbi Shlomo Bel Hench, a chief rabbi of Marrakesh who died 500 years ago and is buried outside the city in Ourika.
“There have been funerals day and night at the cemetery but the tomb of Rabbi Shlomo was not damaged at all,” Danino said. “How do you explain this?”
This is part of a series spotlighting local and overseas partner agencies that are beneficiaries of the United Jewish Federation of Tidewater’s annual Community Campaign. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the Jewish Agency receive funds from UJFT.
Alex Weisler
(JTA) — A catalog of calamities is central to the liturgy of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
We Jews are asked to imagine ourselves perched on the precipice of life and death. Nothing frames it as starkly as Unetaneh Tokef, the roll call of ruin enumerating various disasters that might befall us in the coming year.
With its repetition of “Who by …” fill-in-the-blank awfulness — strangling, stoning, famine, and plague — the medieval poem is the stuff of myth and legend, an opportunity to ponder fate and frailty. But for the Jews of Ukraine, the majority of whom remain in the country despite the ongoing conflict, the text is heart-wrenchingly real.
When we Jews pray, we face east, toward Jerusalem. But as the grandson of a Ukrainian Jew, east always conjures “the old country” — that’s where my soul calls home and where I’ve often directed my most fervent prayers. This year, Unetaneh Tokef is a compass for my heart.
I’m sure “who by water” resonates for Lyubov Irzhanskaya. When the Kakhovka dam burst in June, the Dnipro River surged into her second-floor apartment. The 76-year-old retired teacher had hours to decide where to flee.
“Who by fire” must send a chill through Lyudmila Dobroyer, 87 — a Holocaust survivor and the primary caregiver for her son Yuriy, who has developmental disabilities. During attacks on Odesa this summer, her building was badly damaged.
And then there are more workaday terrors, fears that keep me up at night half a world away in my safe Ohio bed. What if I lost my job and couldn’t provide for my family? What if it happened amidst power cuts and sub-zero cold?
“Who shall become impoverished” — ask Evgeniy Moshkovitch, 40, a forklift operator who fled Kherson with his family
two months into the crisis. With employers skeptical of the displaced, he’s unable to find a job and relies on Jewish community assistance to pay the bills.
Grim as it is, Unetaneh Tokef isn’t about blindly submitting to fate. Instead, it gives
if peace remains elusive.
Hidden in Unetaneh Tokef’s horrors are some best-case scenarios, too: “who shall be exalted,” “who shall reach the fullness of their days.” What if it all goes right, the prayer asks?
too. I’ve learned that by listening to other Jews who could just as easily be lost to history and have just as much to teach.
In western Ukraine earlier this year, I met Liliya Sumka, the last Jew in a small village only accessible by dirt roads. A
us the keys to our own salvation — ”repentance, prayer, and charity,” it exhorts, “can lessen the severity of the decree.”
Our own hands can rescue us, and post-Soviet Jews, who’ve doggedly rekindled identity and community after the Holocaust and communism, could teach a master class. As a longtime staffer at the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, or JDC, the humanitarian organization that for decades has aided needy Jews and built Jewish life across the former Soviet Union, I’ve seen it firsthand.
In Ukraine, I’ve witnessed local Jews volunteering for relief efforts in record numbers and my colleagues delivering more than 800 tons of humanitarian aid, home care to the bedridden and Shabbat gatherings during air-raid sirens. We’re also addressing new waves of need: unemployment, educational gaps and trauma — all with an imperative to strengthen lives, even
What if we sustain each other? What if we write our most vulnerable into the High Holidays’ symbolic Book of Life?
We can do that by marshaling our resources, as my organization has done since February 2022 with tens of millions of dollars from our partners — the Jewish Federations of North America, the Claims Conference, International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, individuals, families, corporations and foundations — and by lifting up individual stories so we understand the stakes if we fail to act.
For centuries, Jews have debated the identity of the nameless Unetaneh Tokef writer who gave voice to the cruel uncertainty of human existence and the possibility of redemption even in the darkness.
That anonymity hasn’t blunted the poem’s cold wisdom — life will often disappoint you, but it just might surprise you,
54-year-old widow with cerebral palsy, she ekes by on a $52 monthly disability pension.
For her, the difference between “who shall live and who shall die” is sometimes the stack of firewood and food packages delivered by my organization — or finding God in her own still small voice reciting the Shabbat blessings.
“Life?” Liliya chided me with a wry smile. “You can’t make it through that alone.”
May we all remember that, recognizing that we only get to fullness by giving it — showing up with full hearts and a full commitment to aiding those living on a knife’s edge around the clock, not just in the pages of our prayer books.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JTA or its parent company, 70 Faces Media.
Each summer, the Jewish Community Relations Council of the United Jewish Federation of Tidewater submits a five-year, Jewish holiday calendar to area school districts, arts leaders, elected officials, and similar public and private institutions which may have a Jewish population among its demographics. The calendar is intended to avoid scheduling confl icts that may result from overlapping religious obligations and professional or academic commitments.
Barbara Dudley, JCRC chair, explains in her accompanying letter, “If confl icts in scheduling arise, we encourage you to make reasonable efforts to accommodate students and employees without penalty. School administrators can build mutual respect by accommodating students and employees for their religious practices.”
While Shabbat is not included in the calendar, there is a footnote explaining that some members of the Jewish community will not participate in events on Friday evenings and Saturdays. Hanukkah and Purim are also listed as celebrations that do not require an absence from school or work.
The five-year calendar is available online at JewishVA.org/ JCRCHolidayCalendar.
(JTA)
– Nearly one in three current Jewish college students has witnessed or experienced some form of antisemitism on campus, according to a new survey.
The survey was released this month by Jewish on Campus, a student-founded antisemitism watchdog group. It was conducted by the polling firm Ipsos and surveyed more than 1,000 college students nationwide who identify as Jewish, as well
number said they witnessed antisemitism not directed at them.
Jewish organizations have long expressed concern over campus antisemitism, particularly having to do with student confl icts over Israel but also relating to bigotry from across the political spectrum. In 2019, then-President Donald Trump signed an executive order on antisemitism that spurred a series of federal civil rights complaints from Jewish and pro-Israel groups, including Jewish on Campus, alleging that public universities have not done enough to respond to antisemitism on their campuses.
Protecting Jews on campus is also a prominent feature of the Biden administration’s national plan for combating antisemitism, which was unveiled this spring.
survey results.
Notably, among respondents from the general population, the survey found that only 11% had heard of BDS. Nearly twice as many, meanwhile, 21%, said they had heard of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, a group best known for a controversial definition of antisemitism that a range of Jewish groups have pushed universities to adopt, in many cases successfully.
Jewish on Campus CEO Julia Jassey said in a statement that the survey should push college students and administrators to “meet this moment and take antisemitism seriously.”
The survey “underscores the urgency of our mission to elevate the voices and
experiences of Jewish students,” Jassey’s statement said. “As the new school year begins, these findings provide key evidence of the breadth and depth of antisemitism students face.”
While Jewish on Campus has surveyed campus antisemitic activity in the past, it relied on self-reported data. This was the group’s fi rst survey conducted via a reputable polling fi rm, and was funded by the World Jewish Congress. It joins a series of studies, conducted by the ADL, American Jewish Committee and others, that aim to measure bigotry against Jews by tallying reported incidents or polling the public — yielding a range of results and sparking debate over which statements or actions, especially regarding Israel, count as antisemitism.
as approximately 2,000 who reflect the general population of students and are largely not Jewish. The survey was conducted between March and May and has a credibility interval — similar to a margin of error — of 3.1%.
Of the Jewish students, 14% said they had directly experienced antisemitism on campus, while another 16% said they had witnessed an antisemitic incident.
The findings regarding personal experiences of antisemitism show a much lower rate than a similar survey conducted by Hillel International and the AntiDefamation League in 2021, which found that almost a third of Jewish respondents had personally experienced some form of antisemitism on campus in the previous year. In that survey, around the same
The federal complaints and resulting investigations, which in some cases predated the Trump administration and have continued into Biden’s tenure, have spurred some universities to change their policies. Last school year, months after downplaying the threat of antisemitism on his campus, the president of the University of Vermont issued a formal apology to Jewish students and promised to improve the school’s techniques for addressing the issue.
The Jewish on Campus survey also found that 84% of Jewish respondents believe antisemitism is a threat to the country, and that more than a third had heard of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement against Israel that has a pronounced presence on college campuses. The words “Israel” and “Zionism” do not appear in the
Jewish organizations have long expressed concern over campus antisemitism, particularly having to do with student conflicts over Israel but also relating to bigotry from across the political spectrum.
with a beautiful IB® -themed mural and new toddler classrooms helped contribute to the excitement as Strelitz International Academy welcomed the new school year with open arms and smiling faces on Monday, August 21.
Three days earlier, on August 18, students fi rst returned to SIA for the annual Meet and Greet. This was when students met their new teachers and classmates, dropped off supplies in their new classrooms, and ended the day with a sweet Kona Ice treat. Parents had the opportunity to ask questions about the upcoming school year and learn what they could expect. The morale was high, and everyone looked forward to the fi rst day of school.
With a red carpet leading to the front door, the first official day was wonderful, filled with engaging lessons, reuniting friends, and bonding with new ones. The school’s faculty and staff received upbeat feedback from parents and students as students left school with positive attitudes.
Heather Moore, head of school, launched a new podcast called S.I.A.: The Podcast, focusing on topics that are thoughtful and inspiring around parenting and educational programming. The podcast can be heard at www.strelitzinternationalacademy.org/podcast.
SIA is also in the process of creating a quarterly magazine that will be available both in hard copy and digital format. The Strelitz magazine will feature articles about events happening at the school, as well as what students are learning.
With a combined 40 years of experience, whether you’re buying, selling or investing, we can assist you with all of your real estate needs.HowardHanna.com NANCY EVANS Associate Broker (757) 287-5765 NancyEvans@HowardHanna.com HEATHER EVANS Property Manager (757) 287-5762 HeatherEvans@HowardHanna.com Ally St. Pierre Areimagined entryway Fifth Grade student Sylive Lomogda with her school supplies for the new school year. STRELITZ INTERNATIONAL ACADEMY Kindergarten student Alexa Kass with her new teacher, Jamie Baker during SIA’s annual Meet and Greet.
As the Chief Executive Officer at the Peninsula Foodbank, she believes the Foodbank not only distributes food but is also the spokesperson for those who otherwise don’t have a voice.
“There are so many low income individuals who haven’t received any benefit from the recovering economy and those who because of their life circumstances need help every now and then. We are there to help ensure their voices are heard.”
“Since 2004, when I started with the Foodbank and got to know Payday Payroll, I have always felt that Payday has been involved and helped to build it’s business through positive support for others in the community, both non-profits and start up businesses. I particularly appreciate the generosity that Payday has shown to the nonprofits in our community.”
Members of Nadiv, United Jewish Federation of Tidewater’s Young Adult Division men’s giving circle, gathered at the Downtown Norfolk home of Jeff Chernitzer on Wednesday, Sept. 6 to kick off a new year of philanthropy, networking, and community service programming. The kick-off is a signature event for Nadiv, as returning members reconnect with one another and warmly welcome new members into the group.
New to Nadiv this year is its Executive Leadership Committee, consisting of Danny Rubin (founder, past chair 2016–2023), Tim Thornton (chair, 2023–2024), Avidan Itzhak (vice-chair, 2023–2024), Mike Yaary (March Madness chair, 2023–2024), Sam Molofsky (membership chair, 2023–2024), and Troy Ingram (social action chair, 2023–2024).
Jeff Chernitzer and Tim Thornton set a tone for the group rooted in philanthropy, community, and Jewish values. All were clearly inspired by Chernitzer’s personal story, which traced his own philanthropic and professional journey from modest beginnings as a young man growing up in Norfolk, to a recognized leader in Tidewater’s Jewish community. One of Chernitzer’s messages particularly resonated with the group: “When you engage in philanthropy, it enriches your life and those around you through the good that you spread throughout the community.”
The Nadiv young men’s giving circle is open to all young men in the Jewish community, ages 20 to 40-something. It provides members with a rare opportunity to “do a deep dive” into their individual and collective Jewish and philanthropic values. And it enables members to learn about and support group-determined causes locally and abroad, while encouraging new personal and professional connections.
The next Nadiv event is a Sukkah night at the home of Danny Rubin on Tuesday, Oct. 3, 7 - 10 pm. If interested in joining Nadiv or attending the event, contact Elana McGovern, YAD director, at emcgovern@ujft.org.
Our
Shira Li Bartov
(JTA) — Golda Meir, the first and so far only woman prime minister of Israel, is a figure as shrouded in mythology as she is veiled by plumes of cigarette smoke in Golda, a new political drama starring Helen Mirren.
Meir has been called Israel’s “Iron Lady,” alternately lionized as a founder of the state, scorned for her dismissive statements about Palestinians and, most notoriously, held responsible for Israel being caught by surprise at the outbreak of the bloody Yom Kippur War of 1973. The film recreates Meir’s experience during the 19 days of that war, which would indelibly mark both her legacy and the Israeli consciousness. Directed by Israeli filmmaker Guy Nattiv, who won an Oscar for his 2018 short film Skin, Golda is now in theaters across the United States.
Generations of Israelis, including many who fought in 1973, have blamed Meir for a traumatizing war. But Nattiv offers a different portrait, building on recently declassified wartime documents that reveal how she was disastrously misinformed by her complacent military commanders. He presents Meir as a steely, ruthless yet vulnerable woman, tortured by guilt and motivated by the belief that she was defending her country from extinction.
“She was the scapegoat of the war,” Nattiv says. “The notion was that she was the only person responsible for this debacle, this failure, and it wasn’t true.”
Nattiv himself was four months old when war broke out on Oct. 6, 1973 — Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar — and his mother took him to a bomb shelter while his father headed to the front.
In a colossal intelligence failure, Israel was surprised by a two-front attack from Egypt and Syria, which sought to regain territories they lost in 1967. Many Israelis were overconfident after their young country’s swift victory over three Arab armies in the 1967 Six-Day War. But in the first 24 hours of the Yom Kippur War, thinly manned Israeli positions were overwhelmed along the Suez Canal in the southwest and the Golan Heights in the northeast.
Eventually, Israel won a costly victory: 2,656 Israeli soldiers were killed and 12,000 injured, a heavy toll for a small state. The Arab forces saw 8,258 killed and nearly 20,000 wounded. The national trauma of 1973 turned the public against Meir, previously admired for her long political career that included being a founder of Israel’s Labor Party and raising $50 million from Jewish Americans for the establishment of an Israeli state.
Golda frames Meir’s experiences as flashbacks
during her testimony to the Agranat Commission of Inquiry, which investigated Israel’s military failings leading up to the war. Although the commission cleared her of wrongdoing, she decided to resign. Four years later, after secretly battling lymphoma for 15 years, Meir died at 80 years old.
Nattiv sought to humanize her with a focus on the isolated, agonizing days of war taking place in the twilight of her life, spent in between war rooms and hospital beds.
“I wanted to show the most pivotal moment in her life and in this country’s life, this junction that shaped her whole image, while she was sick and had to make difficult decisions,” says Nattiv. “I wanted to tell her story through loneliness.”
Nattiv also shows Meir in the place where her political edge converged with a tender instinct: her intimate home kitchen. Like the real Meir, Mirren’s version cooks for the select group of advisors who enter her home. The prime minister was known for serving cheesecake and apple strudel to her powerful guests on Shabbat evenings, accompanied by consultations and debates around the table. The practice became known as “Golda’s Little Kitchen” or her “Kitchen Cabinet.”
Among Meir’s kitchen guests was then-U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, played in the film by Liev Schreiber. Nattiv recreates the tense conversations in which Meir pressured Kissinger to send aid for the Israeli army, whose reserve ammunition was rapidly exhausted in the early shock of the war. The United States, at first hesitant to lose its own access to oil from Arab countries, agreed to send weapons and aircraft to Israel when the Soviet Union began resupplying Egypt and Syria, drawing the Yom Kippur War into the Cold War.
In the film, Kissinger tells Meir that he is an American first, secretary of state second, and only third a Jew. Meir replies, “You forget in Israel we read from right to left.”
This quote was taken directly from history: The 100-year-old former diplomat has long publicly recounted Meir delivering the line. (He has not publicly said whether the coercion came with a bowl of borscht and a dollop of Holocaust guilt, as shown in the film.)
While Meir was tough with her allies and brutal to her adversaries, Golda portrays the prime minister as a victim of her own advisors in the film. She is shown taking the fall for the egregious errors of her military leaders — in particular Chief of Military Intelligence Eli Zeira and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan — to protect
the public’s faith in its army.
Documents declassified in 2020 showed that Zeira ignored intelligence warnings that Cairo and Damascus were poised to attack, withholding the communications from the government in his belief that the chance of imminent war was “lower than low.” Meanwhile, Dayan objected to fully mobilizing troops in the hours before the war, according to his testimony to the Agranat Commission, which was declassified in 2008.
Golda does not address the widely leveled criticism that Meir could have avoided war altogether. For months preceding the attacks, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat made repeated overtures for a peace settlement if Israel agreed to return the Sinai Peninsula, which it seized during the Six-Day War. He was rebuffed.
Documents released in 2013 showed that Meir did offer to discuss ceding “most of the Sinai,” but since she was not willing to return completely to the pre-1967 borders, Egypt rejected the talks. In back-channel communications with Kissinger, Meir vowed to prevent any peace initiative that required recognizing Egyptian sovereignty over the Sinai, according to Israeli historian Yigal Kipnis, author of the 2012 book 1973: The Road to War.
As a result of the bitter war, Israel and Egypt signed a disengagement agreement in January 1974. In 1979, following U.S.-brokered negotiations at Camp David, Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin signed a peace treaty. Egypt became the first Arab state to officially recognize Israel, and Israel withdrew fully from the Sinai Peninsula.
Nattiv credits the ensuing peace to Meir, with a title card at the end of the film reading, “Her legacy of saving her country from annihilation leading to peace serves as her memorial.”
But critics such as Kipnis have argued that peace might have been achieved sooner with negotiations before the conflict that, he has suggested, could be called the “unnecessary war.”
Meir will always be a controversial figure in Israel, says Nattiv. Whatever judgment the audience makes of her, he believes it is important for Israeli audiences to absorb how leadership blinded by hubris and power can poison a society. He references the current political crisis in Israel, in which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s efforts to weaken the Israeli Supreme Court have triggered mass protests that have been ongoing since January.
“It’s kind of crazy that today we see the Yom Kippur of democracy in Israel,” says Nattiv. “The blindness again, the same debacle that happened in 1973 is returning now.”
7 WEEKS - 1 CREDIT
7 WEEKS - 1 CREDIT
$999 + $35 Book Fee $999 + $35 Book
B’NAI ISRAEL CONGREGATION
420 Spotswood Ave., Norfolk, VA 23517 757-627-7358
bnaiisrael.org, office@bnaiisrael.org
Rabbi Shlomo Eisenberg ORTHODOX
BEACH COMMUNITY SHUL
3400 Holly Rd, Virginia Beach, VA 23451 757-938-0625 www.jewishvb.org
rabbi@jewishvb.org, info@jewishvb.org
Rabbi Meir Lessoff
CHABAD LUBAVITCH OF TIDEWATER/ CHABAD HOUSE
1920 Colley Avenue, Norfolk, VA 23517 757-616-0770
Rabbilevi@chabadoftidewater.com www.chabadoftidewater.com
Rabbi Aron and Rychel Margolin
Rabbi Levi and Rashi Brashevitzky
COMMODORE URIAH P. LEVY CHAPEL Corner of Maryland Ave. and Gilbert St., Naval Station Norfolk 757-444-7361
Rabbi Gershon Litt UNAFFILIATED
CONGREGATION BETH CHAVERIM Temple.Office@bethchaverim.com
Cantorial Soloist Jim Hibberd REFORM
CONGREGATION BETH EL 422 Shirley Avenue, Norfolk, VA 23517 757-625-7821 bethelnorfolk.com noelle@bethelnorfolk.com
Rabbi Ron Koas
Rabbi Emeritus Arthur Ruberg CONSERVATIVE
KEHILLAT BET HAMIDRASH/ KEMPSVILLE CONSERVATIVE SYNAGOGUE (KBH)
952 Indian Lakes Blvd. Virginia Beach, VA 23464 757-495-8510
kbhsynagogue.org
kbhsynagogue@gmail.com facebook.com/kbhsynagogue
Cantor David Proser CONSERVATIVE
OHEF SHOLOM TEMPLE
530 Raleigh Avenue, Norfolk, VA 23507 757-625-4295 ohefsholom.org, ed@ohefsholom.org
Rabbi Rosalin Mandelberg
Cantor Jennifer Rueben
Rabbi Emeritus Lawrence A. Forman REFORM
TEMPLE EMANUEL
424 25th Street Virginia Beach, VA 23451 757-428-2591 www.tevb.org, office@tevb.org
Rabbi Ari Oliszewski CONSERVATIVE
TEMPLE ISRAEL
7255 Granby St., Norfolk, VA 23505 757-489-4550
templeisraelva.org
TempleIsraelVA1954@gmail.com
Rabbi Michael Panitz CONSERVATIVE
TEMPLE LEV TIKVAH (HEART OF HOPE)
1593 Lynnhaven Parkway, Virginia Beach 757-617-0334 or 757-937-8393
jzobe@aol.com
Rabbi Israel Zoberman REFORM
TIDEWATER CHAVURAH
Rabbi Cantor Ellen Jaffe-Gill 757-499-3660
tidewaterchavurah1@gmail.com
tidewaterchavurah.org REFORM
(JTA) — Every few years I put out a call asking what people will be reading in preparation for the High Holidays, and usually one book tops the list: This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared: The Days of Awe as a Journey of Transformation, by the late Rabbi Alan Lew.
Published 20 years ago this month, This Is Real is an attempt by Lew, a Conservative rabbi trained in Buddhist practice, to get perhaps jaded readers to see the period that includes Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Sukkot as a time for deep spiritual introspection — or, as he writes, a time to “move from self-hatred to self-forgiveness, from anger to healing, from hard-heartedness to brokenheartedness.”
If that sounds like the gospel of
“self-care,” you’re not far off. Lew, who died in 2009 at age 65, came of age during the self-actualization movement, a serious attempt by psychologists to get people to live up to values that transcend their desire for wealth and status. By the time cosmetics companies, crystal sellers, and lifestyle influencers took hold of the concept, it was derided as selfishness disguised as a spiritual journey.
But Lew’s book grounds concepts of “self-discovery, spiritual discipline, self-forgiveness, and spiritual evolution” in normative Judaism. This Is Real never strays far from a traditional Judaism that saw the period of prayer, reflection, and repentance surrounding the holidays as a time for a moral wake-up call.
That hybrid of the traditional and the
much-maligned “New Age” continues to appeal to readers. Jewish educator Joshua Ladon, writing in the 2020 anthology The New Jewish Canon, calls the book “the handbook for American Jewish High Holiday survival,” comparing its influence to Rabbi Harold Kushner’s mega-bestseller When Bad Things Happen to Good People. Synagogues host book groups to discuss the book in the run-up to the holidays; the book’s publisher, Little, Brown and Company, issued a paperback version only in 2018, suggesting its hardcover sales had remained strong for 15 years.
Ilana Sandberg, a rabbinical student at JTS, recommended Lew’s book last month in a video for the seminary.
She first read the book in the fall of 2020 as she was preparing to lead High Holiday services at Brandeis Hillel for the first time as the rabbinic intern, and considers the late author her “spiritual hevruta,” or study partner, in the lead-up to the holidays. The book, Sandberg says, is about “accepting this idea that we are ever-changing beings and there really is a possibility for change, for renewal as we go through the cycle of the year.”
Lew was spiritual leader at San Francisco’s Congregation Beth Sholom from 1991 to 2005. Raised in Brooklyn and New York’s Westchester County, he was underwhelmed by the suburban Judaism of the 1950s and ’60s and, like many Jewish seekers of his era, turned to Zen Buddhism — at one point considering becoming a lay priest.
“It was in a Buddhist monastery, meditating, that I realized who I really am. I am a Jew,” he wrote in One God Clapping: The Spiritual Path of a Zen Rabbi, a memoir he co-wrote in 2001 with his wife, Sherril Jaffe. “A Jew can use the practice of meditation to illuminate his or her Jewish soul.”
A poet and sometime bus driver, Lew
was 38 when he enrolled at the Jewish Theological Seminary, the training ground for Conservative rabbis. In 2000, he founded Makor Or, a Jewish meditation center housed at his synagogue.
In This Is Real, he writes about the meditative aspects of High Holiday prayer. “When we sit in meditation with other people, breathing the same air, hearing the same sounds, thinking thoughts in the same rhythms and patterns, we experience our connection to each other in a very immediate way,” he writes.
But Lew’s version of the High Holidays is hardly passive or even gentle: Preparing for the holidays, as he suggests in the title, is hard and daunting work. The dreamlike opening sequence describes the “journey” of the High Holiday period as “fraught with meaning and dread.”
Ladon wrote that Lew’s book represents “the possibility of American Judaism, full of vitality and transcending boundaries.” Perhaps because of, or even in spite of this, it was mostly non-Orthodox Jews who replied to my recent social media post asking about their attachment to This Is Real.
“I’m really moved by the way that Lew takes the traditional images of the Holidays — the wake-up call of the shofar, the books of life, death and the undecided, the opening of the gates — and retells them in a way that they speak directly to my personal existential discomfort,” writes Jonah Mendelsohn, an actor and writer who has been reading the book with fellow members of SAJ, a Reconstructionist synagogue in Manhattan. “The book has me facing my own insecurity and self-judgment in a way that isn’t always comfortable, but pushes me to change.”
Karen Paul, a fundraising consultant and former executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Tikkun Olam Women’s Foundation, says a friend gave her
“A Jew can use the practice of meditation to illuminate his or her Jewish soul.”
a copy of the book the year her husband died from glioblastoma.
“Lew’s comforting and relatable stories were precisely the roadmap I needed to begin to reshape my future,” she says. “My favorite parable in the book is the day that the rabbi had to be on one side of the park for a [funeral] and the other side of the park for a birth. This is the dialectic of life, which, if we listen for it, applies to all that we do.”
Rabbi Rachel Barenblatt of the Reform Congregation Beth Israel of the Berkshires in North Adams, Massachusetts, recommends the book for “folks who might not self-identify as seekers, but who are interested in approaching the holidays in a deeper or more informed way.”
“When I first read it, it changed how I experience this two-month window of
time, and I love opening that up for those whom I serve,” she says. “How can we harness this season to fuel our inner work so that we can emerge ready to grow and become and try again?”
But she, like others, notes that This Is Real isn’t without his flaws. She suggests that Lew “had some blind spots, notably around gender.”
(Last year, Jewish blogger Shari Salzhauer Berkowitz criticized his “heterosexual, male” handling of the sexual dynamics in Ki Tetze, the Torah portion that includes instructions for soldiers taking women captives as “wives.”)
The book also has admiring references to Rudy Giuliani — the New York City mayor turned RICO defendant — and Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach — the songwriter who faced posthumous allegations of sexual
misconduct — that read differently than they did 20 years ago.
Barenblatt suggests pairing his book with a “contemporary and feminist text” such as Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg’s recent book On Repentance and Repair.
Lew’s style — he glides between poetry and memoir, allegory and darshanut, or Torah commentary — isn’t for everyone. Many prefer Nobel laureate S.Y. Agnon’s anthology Days of Awe, first published in English in 1948, a collection of mostly primary texts related to the High Holidays. Philip Goodman’s various anthologies for the Jewish Publication Society take a similar approach. The 1999 essay collection, Beginning Anew: A Woman’s Companion to the High Holy Days by Gail Twersky Reimer and Judith A. Kates is a corrective to books that ignore the central place of women in the liturgy.
Many of these books seem intended for readers who are looking for inspiration in synagogue when their attention begins to flag. Lew invites you to read his book as a
coherent narrative of a nearly three-month process from destruction (Tisha B’Av) to joy (Sukkot).
But for some readers, it is also a book to be dipped into and sipped from.
“I have never finished this book,” Pittsburgh Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman admitted last month in a column recommending books for the High Holidays. “I read four or five pages. I stop and ponder over the meaning of existence and God and human growth and obligation and fallibility. Lew is poetic and instructive and guru-esque but also deeply personal; you feel you know him. The book’s title is perfect, and yet the book really will prepare you for the High Holidays, even if you, like me, never actually finish reading it. One might argue that this book, if properly read, is never finished.”
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JTA or its parent company, 70 Faces Media.
The book’s title is perfect, and yet the book really will prepare you for the High Holidays
This story originally appeared on Kveller.
Don’t you dare,” I said, just milliseconds before a red matchbox car came catapulting toward my head. I scowled at my two-year-old and gave him a stern finger-waggle. Without hesitating, he trotted over, touched my arm gently and said, “Sorry.”
I should have been pleased, right? But my toddler’s saccharine “sorry” (pronounced “sowwy”) was devoid of remorse. Were he capable of a genuine apology, he probably wouldn’t have thrown the stupid car at me in the first place. I should add that a few minutes later, he launched a yellow matchbox car at my head.
With the approach of Yom Kippur, I find myself pondering that word, “sorry.” As both a Jew and a Canadian, I admit it’s one of the most heavily used words in my lexicon. But what purpose does it really serve? Is it a true expression of remorse? An attempt to get off the hook quickly? A way to avoid confrontation? (We Canadians are particularly adept
at the latter kind of “sorry.”)
Every year on the eve of Yom Kippur, my parents and siblings call one another to make amends for the past year’s transgressions. I always considered this an enlightened tradition, until my husband asked me why we always rehearse the same script, something about “sorry for anything bad I’ve done.” Talk about a catchall apology. “It’s sort of formulaic,” he pointed out. “Do you ever apologize for anything specific? ” I must admit, he has a point. When we make this round of phone calls, are we truly atoning for wrongdoing, or just trying to check teshuva, the cycle of repentance and forgiveness, off the to-do list?
As you may have guessed, my husband has a hard time saying “sorry.” The reason is in part cultural: born and raised in Germany, he bristles at Canadian niceties and
understands guilt as an almost unbearable burden carried on the national level, not as that slightly awkward feeling you get when your great aunt asks why you don’t want a second slice of her kugel. But saying sorry is also difficult for him because sincere apologies should be difficult. They emerge from an onerous process of self-reflection, acknowledgement of failure and heartfelt contrition.
Parenting guru Janet Lansbury sees “sorry” as one of the most difficult things children learn to say because it requires a high level of humility and vulnerability. It’s also loaded with parental expectations. I don’t know any parent who hasn’t asked, cajoled or even forced their child to apologize to the kid whose Lego they swiped or shin they kicked, only to have their child clam up or, even worse, completely fall apart. According to
“Do you ever apologize for anything specific?”
Lansbury, such moments are fueled by our own embarrassment and need to save face among other parents, as opposed to a desire to guide our kids. Without the time required to process their actions, saying “sorry” strikes the child as false, says Lansbury, “and faking emotion does not come naturally to a child.”
If we want our child to issue an honest apology, we need to give them time, and, most importantly, we need to model empathy and remorse. If we trust our children as we should, suggests Lansbury, they will learn to apologize in their own time. And when they do, they will mean it. “By trusting our children to develop authentic social responses, we give them the self-confidence to be the sensitive and deeply caring human beings we hope they will become.”
If we show them this level of compassion, they will undoubtedly return the favor, for what children do more naturally than apologize is forgive.
Lansbury’s take on apologies dovetails with that of the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, who saw repentance and forgiveness, the essential ingredients of the Jewish day of atonement, as “the two great gifts of human freedom.” Both are a matter of choice, Sacks insisted, which means they
can’t be forced.
Following anthropologist Ruth Benedict, Sacks distinguished between “shame culture” and “guilt culture,” and ascribed the latter to monotheistic religions like Judaism. Both shame cultures and guilt cultures instruct people how they ought to behave, but they operate very differently. Shame cultures emphasize what others think of you; the motivation for repentance is purely external, fueled by the pressure to avoid public shunning (or “cancel culture,” in today’s parlance). Guilt cultures, by contrast, are fueled by individual conscience, the
in common. Both focus on opportunities to cultivate personal responsibility, kindness, and empathy. The beauty of Yom Kippur is that nobody is exempt.
This is precisely the lesson I’ve decided to impart this year. Rather than coerce my kids to say “sorry” out of an abundance of shame or discomfort, I want to show them that even I must consciously devote time every year to this important — albeit uncomfortable — undertaking. I want them to know that saying “I’m sorry” isn’t easy for me, either.
According to Sacks, guilt serves an indispensable purpose; we must feel guilty to begin to make amends and repair the damage we have done. Yom Kippur provides the time needed to undertake this hefty task. It is not a day for rehearsed apologies but for honest soul-searching.
It turns out the rabbis and parenting experts have much
When I sit down with my five-year-old this Yom Kippur, I will tell him that this is the day when we can talk about mistakes that we’ve made and how we might avoid making them again next year. I will apologize to him for the times that I lost my temper. Perhaps he will reciprocate, perhaps not. The main thing is that he’ll think about it. And he will know that I am thinking about it, too.
As for my two-year-old, the lesson might need to wait another year or two. This Yom Kippur, I think I’ll just hide his matchbox cars in the closet.
As Yom Kippur approaches, many of us in the Jewish community prepare for a day of fasting, prayer, and reflection. But beyond these rituals lies an essential message that intersects profoundly with the work we do at Tidewater Jewish Foundation: the importance of legacy.
Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is the pinnacle of the Jewish High Holy Days—a time to reconcile with God and our fellow humans. As we stand in synagogue or gather in our homes, recounting the past year’s actions and praying for a better future, we are prompted to think about the legacies we are building. What will remain of our deeds, our words, and our commitments? How are we contributing to our community’s continuity and the world’s betterment?
This focus on legacy is integral to the work of our foundation, where we strive to connect donors with causes that address immediate needs and build a sustainable future for our community. We encourage endowment building, philanthropy education, and community initiatives that ensure the vibrancy and longevity of Jewish life here in Tidewater and around the world.
As you reflect on this Yom Kippur, I invite you to ponder your legacy. Each of us leaves an indelible imprint in ways both large and small. Let’s strive to make that imprint of compassion, service, and enduring love for our rich traditions and global community.
Wishing you an easy fast, and meaningful Yom Kippur.
Temple Israel is an egalitarian, multicultural and multigenerational Conservative synagogue.
We offer in person Shabbat service each week, and daily minyan services on Zoom. We have in person and virtual programs throughout the month, and you can participate in our “Mitzvah of the Month” helping organizations in need.
We are proud of our military families and offer affordable and flexible membership options for those who serve our country. Give us a call for more information.
Dr. Michael E. Panitz, Rabbi Nancy J. Tucker, Executive Director
Tammy Conklin,
Executive Assistant7255 Granby Street Norfolk, VA 23505
757-489-4550 www.templeisraelva.org
by Rabbi Israel Zoberman
• Affordable services to fit any budget
• Professional, experienced, caring staff
Eitan Altshulerl
One time on my way to Israel, a burly, older security officer asked me to name three Jewish holidays. I decided to show off and name them all in order. So, then he asked me which was my favorite. I guess he expected me to say Passover, Hanukkah, or Rosh Hashanah, but I said, “Sukkot!” Why? I mean how can you not love a holiday where you build a big tent, host parties, and are encouraged to essentially go camping.
In Israel at this time, the weather is perfect to be outdoors – warm in the day and cool in the evening. It is right in between the hot, dry season and the cold, rainy season, and in the shuk, there’s an exciting change over in the produce on display. Avocados, guava, pomegranates, mangos, pumpkin, and sweet potato become in season among other items, and as a result, the creative juices of chefs throughout Israel start to flow again.
One of my favorite recipes is
• Flexible payment options
pomegranate-honey chicken. It’s easy to make, and it is so good I’m literally sad whenever I fi nish my meal. You might even be tempted to lick your plate. It requires pomegranate molasses, which you can fi nd at almost any grocery store or order online and is not too expensive. Plus, you can use pomegranate molasses for a lot of other Middle Eastern recipes. The rest of the ingredients you may already have in your kitchen like chicken stock, honey, and powdered ginger, etc.
To do the recipe, fi rst you make the sauce and set aside. Then, you brown
your chicken, and then combine the two and set at a simmer on the stove for about 30-45 minutes. Serve over basmati rice or with roasted potatoes, and your guests will think you are a gourmet chef.
I love Sukkot because it is the lightest of all the holidays. You know the saying, “They tried to kill us. We won. Let’s eat.” Well, on Sukkot, we don’t have any of that baggage. Let’s just eat!
And in case you were wondering how the security officer responded to my answer. He said, “Bless you,” as if I had given the secret Jewish password, gave me a pat on the back, and I went on my way.
Sukkot begins at sundown on Sept. 29, five days after observing Yom Kippur.
During this Jewish autumn festival, many families, congregations, and schools build a sukkah, a temporary structure with three walls and an organic roof that provides shade and a view of the stars. This shelter reminds of the temporary dwellings built by the Israelites when they were wandering through the desert after their exodus from Egypt. For eight days, the sukkah becomes a temporary home where meals are eaten, and time is spent with family and friends.
Looking for a sukkah or to attend a Sukkot event this season? Here’s how area synagogues (listed alphabetically) are celebrating the holiday this year with events that are open to the community.
B’nai Israel Congregation will serve a deluxe kiddush in its sukkah after services throughout the holiday.
The annual Sukkah Hop in Ghent occurs on the fi rst day of Sukkot, Saturday, Sept. 30. A Dedication of the Low Family Playground takes place on Monday, Oct. 2 and will feature kids’ activities, a bounce house, and refreshments in the sukkah. Contact B’nai Israel Congregation at office@bnaiisrael.org.
Beach Community Shul’s sukkah will be open throughout the holiday. “Big Fancy Dinner” takes place on Friday, Sept. 29, at 7 pm at 3400 Holly Road in Virginia Beach.
A community-wide event takes place Tuesday, Oct. 3 at the home of Naty and Nir Chorev, featuring entertainment for all.
Young Professionals in the sukkah on Wednesday, Oct. 4 and Thursday, Oct. 5 at 7 pm, at Beach Community Shul. For all events, RSVP at www.JewishVB.org.
Chabad
Chabad will host holiday meals for the community on Friday night, Saturday, Saturday night and Sunday, starting September 29; Sunday lunch will include members of the Jewish community from Harbors Edge.
CTeen and their families are invited for dinner and a program on Sunday, Oct. 1. A child-oriented, community dance party with snacks in the sukkah will be held on Wednesday, Oct.4.
A steak and scotch event for adults takes place on Thursday, Oct. 5. Call Chabad at 757-616-0770 for more information.
Open House Sukkah Decorating Party takes place on Thursday, Sept. 28, 4 - 7 pm. Shabbat dinner will be served in the sukkah on Friday, Sept. 29.
A Kiddush luncheon in the sukkah will follow services on Saturday, Sept. 30 and Sunday, Oct. 1.
The weekly Lunch and Learn will be in the sukkah on Wednesday, Oct. 4. RSVP for the Shabbat dinner to noelle@ bethelnorfolk.com.411
A festive, seated, kiddush luncheon will be served in the sukkah following services on the first two days of Sukkot, Saturday, Sept. 30 and Sunday, Oct. 1. Call 757-495-8510 for more information.
Sukkot will be celebrated on Monday, Oct. 2 at 2:30 pm. This event is open to residents and their families.
Kiddush will take place in the sukkah following Shabbat services on Friday, Sept. 29.
Men’s Club and Sisterhood will sponsor Shake It in the Sukkah on Wednesday, Oct. 4 at 6 pm, where mocktails and cocktails related to Sukkot will be “shaken” for adults 18 and older.
Reservations are required for both events. Call the office at 757-425-6295.
Sukkot first Day - Saturday, Sept. 30, kiddush will take place in the sukkah after services.
Burgers & Brews in the SukkahWednesday, Oct. 4, 6 pm. RSVP to 757-428-2591.
Shabbat dinner cookout in the sukkah on Friday, Sept. 29.
Kiddush lunch in the sukkah will follow services on Saturday, Sept. 30 and Sunday, Oct. 1.
RSVP to the Shabbat cookout by calling 757-489-4550.
So, what does Yom Kippur have to do with food?!
Well, absolutely nothing… Like literally nothing. Not even water.
But we are all familiar with the challenge of what to eat after the holiday to break the fast. It should be something easy and fast, perhaps even prepared ahead of time so that people don’t have to fast any longer than necessary.
Usually, people just break out the bagels and lox, which are delicious especially after having fasted, but if you want something different this year and just as tasty or more, I suggest trying burekas.
Burekas are the “go to” pastries of Israel. They are popularly fi lled with a soft cheese or potato (if you need something pareve) fi lling, but they also come in spinach, pizza, mushroom, and eggplant varieties, etc. At my bakery in Herzliya, they were our most popular item, and we would sell them by the kilogram. People would buy
boxes and boxes as they got ready for Shabbat on Fridays.
If you don’t buy them pre-made, here’s how to start.
Get pastry dough from any grocery store. Use a rolling pin to fl atten out the dough (some extra flour on the side so it doesn’t stick helps), and then cut out squares in the dough. Put a dab of fi lling in each one, careful not to put too much, or they will burst. Then, fold over each shape into either a rectangle or a triangle.
They can be baked frozen, though a little thawing helps with putting on the egg wash, and a sprinkling of sesame seeds on top is recommended. They will only take about 10-15 minutes depending on your oven, but most importantly, keep an eye on them. Also, turn the tray around halfway through the baking so that the burekas bake evenly.
They’re best when they are about five minutes out of the oven so that they have had time to cool down, the pastry shell is fresh, and the insides are still warm. But they can be reheated and refreshed even if they have been
kept in the fridge and don’t look so appealing anymore. Don’t worry, once they are reheated in an oven, they will look almost as good as new, and many won’t even be able to tell the difference. You can even reheat them in the microwave, and while not ideal, surprisingly not all that bad either.
Everyone loves something warm and fl avorful after a fast. They’re also lighter but still have good calorie content for sensitive stomachs after a fast. And these things can be addictive, so it’s easy to eat a whole bunch at once.
Before I moved to Israel, I always wondered what to say to someone before Yom Kippur. “Chag Sameach?” Seems a bit inappropriate. “May you have a good signing?” – a bit wordy. Well, I learned it’s “Chatimah Tovah!”
May you all have a “good signing.”
Eitan Altshuler may be reached most days at the Cardo Café/ The Humusiya at the Sandler Family Campus, where he’s serving up a variety of Israeli dishes. . . and American ones, too.
olidays 5784
TICKETS: VAFEST.ORG OR CALL 757-282-2822 FESTIVAL BOX OFFICE: 440 BANK STREET, NORFOLK
May you be inscribed for good. The Tidewater Jewish Foundation wishes you and your loved ones a year of peace, health, and happiness.
with
Robin Ford
For nearly a quarter of a century, the Be a Reader Literacy Project has transformed students’ lives in Norfolk and Virginia Beach Title I schools by igniting their passion for reading. As it enters its 24th year of operation, the project stands as a shining example of the profound impact that focused efforts can have on nurturing a love for literature.
Since its inception, the Be a Reader Literacy Project has worked to bridge the gap in literacy skills among students of various backgrounds. The initiative aims to instill a lifelong appreciation for reading by providing access to engaging and diverse reading materials. The project strives to improve reading proficiency and spark curiosity, imagination, and critical thinking through reading sessions, games, and the much-loved I am a BeAR Star workbook.
One of the project’s key strengths lies in its community-oriented approach. Local volunteers and educators, with the support of the United Jewish Federation of Tidewater, come together to create a nurturing one-on-one environment that encourages second grade students to
explore the world of words. The program’s success stories are a testament to the power of connections – volunteer mentors who go the extra mile to make reading enjoyable and meaningful, fostering a sense of companionship and guidance that extends beyond the pages of a book.
As BeAR celebrates its 24th anniversary, it’s essential to recognize the countless individuals who have poured their time, energy, and enthusiasm into its growth. From the originator BeARs, Frances Birschstein (of blessed memory), Gail Flax, Betsy Karotkin, and Ronnie-Jane Konikoff, who envisioned a world where every child could discover the joy of reading to the countless number of volunteers (many of whom have been with the program for many years) who dedicate their time to mentoring in reading, writing, and even helping with homework, the Be a Reader Literacy Project stands as a collaborative endeavor driven by a shared love for learning and the desire to see every child have the opportunity to succeed.
Looking ahead, the project remains strong with a clear vision of nurturing generations of readers who are proficient in reading and empowered by it. The Be a
Reader Literacy Project continues to remind everyone that the journey of 1,000 books begins with a single page – a sentiment that resonates deeply as it embarks on its 24th year of kindling the love of reading in the hearts of students everywhere.
BeAR’s success translates to the need for more volunteers. An hour a week throughout the school year is the commitment, but for those with limited time, some volunteers ask friends to join them and commit to the BeAR Share program, where two mentors work with the same child alternately, depending on their schedule. The Norfolk schools, Chesterfield, Larrymore, and Willard, and Virginia Beach schools, Birdneck, College Park, Tallwood (supported by Tallwood High School), Thalia, and Seatack Elementary all need additional volunteers.
Together, it is possible to ensure that everyone can fi nd a place to volunteer and contribute to the growth and development of young readers in these Title I schools.
"Recently my mother required 12 hour per day personal care assistance. On short notice, Changing Tides Home Care provided the necessary assistance. They have been responsive to my mother's needs and have kept the family informed by telephone, text and portal. I am very pleased with their services.”
-Andrew H. Hook, President of Hook Law Center
Elana McGovern
The theme of this year’s United Jewish Federation of Tidewater’s Super Sunday Community
Phone-a-Thon and Campaign Kickoff could not have been more fitting: “Today, Tomorrow, Always.” This was on the minds of almost 60 volunteers who manned the phones at the Sandler Family Campus on Sunday, Sept. 10.
The room was abuzz with energy as
volunteers donned their Super Sunday T-shirts excited to call friends, colleagues, and members of the Tidewater Jewish community. Tables were filled with generations of families, old friends and new. The positivity was contagious, as evidenced by a surprising number of increased gifts – an illustration that the entire community is committed to supporting each and ensuring the health of the community. “Today,
With volunteers making calls and community members taking them, Super Sunday 2024 raised more than $250,000 from 225 individual gifts in support of the Federation and its beneficiaries at home and around the Jewish world. UJFT extends a major “Thank You” to everyone who was a part of this day and part of supporting Tidewater’s amazing and generous community.
If you are a young Jewish adult (aged 24 – 45) and would like to be a part of next year’s Super Sunday planning committee, contact Elana McGovern at emcgovern@ujft.org. –
Note: Last year’s total was: $209,203.50.
Elana McGovern is United Jewish Federation of Tidewater’s Young Leadership Campaign director.
For area jazz lovers, autumn is the time to celebrate the return of the Attucks Jazz Club. This cozy space upstairs at Norfolk’s historic Attucks Theatre is the perfect spot to hear great jazz: table seating, where every seat has a great view of the players, great sound, and the Club bar that’s open for drinks and snacks. For one swinging Saturday night each month, September through March, the Attucks Jazz Club Series, presented by the Virginia Arts Festival and Seven Venues, is home to the best players and the most faithful fans around.
Each date brings players at the top of their form, from throughout the region as well as from other jazz hotspots like New York, Philadelphia, and beyond. The one constant is John Toomey, a legend among local jazz fans. A dazzling pianist, Toomey curates the series, finding the perfect mix of guest artists to perform with his Trio, whose regular players include bassist Jimmy Masters, who has enlivened the region’s jazz scene for more than three decades, and drummer Tony Martucci, a favorite of Washington D.C. jazz fans.
The Attucks Jazz Club’s fall lineup includes:
Saturday, Sept. 30, vocalist Alex McArthur brings her signature sound—a voice that can croon and wail, finding the story in every song. McArthur has been compared to Billie Holiday; in fact she played the famed singer in a production of the acclaimed stage show Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill.
Saturday, Oct. 21, vocalist Dominique Eade takes the stage. Praised by The Washington Post as “dynamic, mesmerizing…one of the finest vocalists on the contemporary jazz scene,” Eade is a singer, composer and improviser who blends vocal virtuosity with a songwriter’s emotional sensibility, creating music that has garnered critical acclaim and served as a creative signpost for a generation of singers.
Saturday, Nov. 11, guitarist Chris Whiteman, who is regarded an “old soul,” a devotee of classic jazz who finds new depth and delight in the Great American Songbook, performs.
A word to the wise: many Attucks Jazz Club shows sell out in advance, so get tickets early. Just $25, tickets are on sale now online at VAFest.org.
Amy Zelenka
Throughout her professional career, Elana McGovern has worked in non-profits and philanthropy, consistently centering her work on the essential Jewish value of tikkun olam, a commitment to repairing the world. This commitment has not only shaped her career but also her engagement within the community.
As a lay leader, McGovern served on United Jewish Federation of Tidewater’s Young Adult Division (YAD) cabinet, as well as on the leadership of the new YAD women’s giving circle, Adira.
McGovern and her family are also involved outside of Federation. They can be found at Ohef Sholom Temple throughout the year and her son is in fourth grade at Strelitz International Academy – further solidifying their commitment to the community’s future.
In her new role as United Jewish Federation of Tidewater’s director of the Young Leadership Campaign, McGovern is eager to engage young adults (in their 20s, 30s, and 40s) and to collaborate with community members and organizations to ensure that YAD programs appeal to the diversity of the community and that all feel welcome. She will continue to build and strengthen programs which allow young Jewish adults to explore their Jewish and philanthropic values and will seek to empower and advance leadership development for a new generation of Jewish leaders. McGovern will also be soliciting input and ideas about the kinds of programs and activities that appeal to young Jewish adults in Tidewater.
It’s an exciting time for the Federation’s YAD program – a time of building, re-building, and envisioning a new future. Look for upcoming calls, emails, texts, and social media postings to learn what’s taking place with YAD and the Young Leadership Campaign. Stay informed. Get involved. There has never been a better time.
For more information on getting involved with YAD, contact Elana McGovern at emcgovern@ujft.org.
Tashlich
Let your soul stones sail from stormy shores into the silence of the sea, that you may be heard.
by Rabbi Israel Zoberman
The Konikoff Center for Learning of the United Jewish Federation of Tidewater will present an engaging and thought-provoking adult education course, Scripture on the Silver Screen. Taught by Rabbi Michael Panitz of Temple Israel, the course offers participants a fascinating journey through the intersection of timeless Bible stories and the captivating world of cinema.
The art of storytelling is a dynamic process that evolves with each retelling, often blending the old with the new in a harmonious dance of adaptation. This metamorphosis of narrative is not limited to folklore or contemporary literature—it extends to the sacred tales found within the Bible. Scripture on the Silver Screen delves into this intriguing phenomenon, inviting participants to explore the ways in which Hollywood reshapes and retells these ancient stories for modern audiences.
During 10 sessions, participants will take a cinematic expedition through the reimagined landscapes of five iconic bible stories. Through film screenings and in-depth analyses, attendees will uncover the nuanced threads connecting the biblical originals, the rich history of biblical interpretations across various faiths, the conventions of contemporary cinematic storytelling, and the innovative creativity of the artists involved in the filmmaking process.
These five films offer a diverse spectrum of narratives, each representing a distinct era of cinematic storytelling.
1. Samson and Delilah. A tale of strength, betrayal, and redemption, this film explores the intricate relationship between
Samson, endowed with superhuman power, and Delilah, whose allure ultimately leads to his downfall.
2. David and Bathsheba. This film delves into the complex story of King David and his ill-fated affair with Bathsheba, a narrative of love, remorse, and divine forgiveness.
3. . The retelling of Noah’s Ark presents a visually stunning depiction of the biblical flood, showcasing the intricate balance between humanity’s hubris and the resilience of hope.
4. Prince of Egypt. This animated masterpiece explores the tale of Moses, from his miraculous infancy to his journey as a leader of his people, capturing themes of liberation and faith.
5. Gods and Kings. The story of Moses takes a more realistic and dramatic turn in this film, exploring his transformation from a reluctant hero to a determined liberator, facing the wrath of Pharaoh. As participants traverse through these cinematic interpretations, they will uncover a captivating synthesis of ancient wisdom and modern creativity, resulting in what can be aptly described as a “modern midrash,” speaking to generations of film audiences, from the 1920s to the present day.
Pre-registration required. Course cost is $60 for Simon Family JCC members; $75 for guests. For more information about this course, and others offered by UJFT’s Konikoff Center for Learning, visit JewishVA.org/KCL or contact Sierra Lautman at SLautman@UJFT.org.
Pre-registration required. Course cost is $60 for Simon Family JCC
Awealth of fall offerings for kids is available at the Simon Family JCC. Soccer Shots is the best way to start kids playing soccer and improving their skills. Through November 15, children ages 3-5 years old will play on Wednesdays after school, and kindergarten-3rd graders will play on Tuesdays. Little Ninjas and Self Defense with Spirit Fighting Arts helps kindergarten-5th graders learn discipline and defense in a
welcoming environment. Classes will meet on Thursdays. Yoga meets on Wednesdays and is a great way for kids to learn mindfulness and improve mental and physical health in a peaceful setting. Discounts are available for all classes for JCC members.
Visit JewishVA.org/kids for more information and registration.
Save the date for Temple Emanuel’s cocktail party and casino night, A Night in Casablanca. Open to the entire community, the evening will include gambling tables, horse racing, and a silent auction. For more information, call the temple’s office at 757-428-2591.
Sunday, October 22, 11 am – 3 pm, Sandler Family Campus
Fun for all ages including pony rides, train rides, inflatables, a petting farm, carnival games, and more are planned for Strelitz International Academy’s First Annual Fall Festival. Wristbands, raffle tickets, and kosher food will be available for purchase in advance and at the door. Check www.strelitzinternationalacademy.org to take advantage of early bird prices. The event is open to the entire community. Festival sponsorships are available. For more information, contact Carin Simon at csimon@strelitzacademy.org or call 757-424-4327.
Stephanie Peck
In her fight against pancreatic cancer since she began fundraising for it in 2018, Sharon Hurwitz has raised more than $91,000. Through Zumba-thons, silent auctions, and yard sales, Hurwitz dedicates much of her time to supporting the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network to offer whatever assistance she can to find a cure for this disease.
Hurwitz’s husband, Ronald, passed away from pancreatic cancer on January 1, 2018, one day after his 65th birthday. Hurwitz soon realized that this cancer had also claimed the lives of other family members, including Ron’s mother, uncle, and father (though some of their illnesses were treated instead as stomach cancer).
Ashkenazi Jews, whose ancestors come from Central and Eastern Europe, carry a higher risk of certain cancers than the general population. About one in every 40 Ashkenazim has a BRCA cancer-causing gene mutation, while the general population is one in every 400 people. Both of Ron’s parents were from this European region, making the family history of pancreatic cancer clearer.
Hurwitz, a retired, high school English teacher, will host her twice-annual, fundraising yard sale October 6-7 (the next one will be in April). More than 50 families currently donate furniture, clothing, music, and other items, and she says she always welcomes donations from new families, too. Her challenge in 2024 is to raise $9,000, which will bring her total raised so far to more than $100,00.
“If you are related to Ashkenazi Jews, please learn more about the symptoms of pancreatic cancer,” says Hurwitz. “You can’t stop it if you don’t pay attention to it.”
Sierra Lautman
This fall, the Konikoff Center for Learning of the United Jewish Federation of Tidewater will team up with a long-time Melton educator from New York City, Harman Grossman, to offer a new Melton course, Jewish Medical Ethics. The course will take place online.
Born and raised in Brooklyn, Grossman relentlessly pursued his education. After graduating from the Yeshiva of Flatbush, he embarked on an academic adventure that led him to Princeton and Harvard Law School, with a semester at Hebrew University in between. His legal career commenced with a prestigious clerkship for federal judge Robert Carter in the Southern District of New York.
After working seven years in a law firm, Grossman
transitioned to Johnson & Johnson, where he spent three decades specializing in complex commercial and intellectual property litigation. Retirement marked a new chapter, and his unwavering passion for Jewish education led him to earn a master’s degree in Jewish education online from the Jewish Theological Seminary.
Grossman’s dedication to Jewish education and the Florence Melton School of Adult Jewish Learning is evident through his 15 years of teaching Melton courses. His portfolio encompasses many topics, including Jewish ethics, the Jewish calendar, mysticism, history, and Bible studies. Now, Grossman has reached a significant Melton milestone – he is the first Melton teacher to join the organization’s board. His focus is exploring new formats to deliver Melton education, ensuring that the program continues adapting and thriving
Stephanie Peck
Dylan Cohen “woke up singing,” says his father, Jeff. Aptly named after singer-songwriter, Bob Dylan, this 17-year-old senior, who attends the Visual and Performing Arts Academy at Salem High School, will star as Joseph in Hurrah Players’ Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, October 13-15 at Roper Performing Arts Center in Downtown Norfolk.
Three years ago, Hugh Copeland, founder and artistic director of Hurrah Players, told Jeff that he was thinking of Dylan for the role of Joseph. It was no surprise then, that Dylan was overwhelmingly chosen by the casting panel to perform the lead in Andrew Lloyd Weber’s rock opera.
While singing is his art form, and 99% of the show is sung, Dylan needed to work on choreography and dance. Copeland says, “He went all in. He energizers the cast because he’s so prepared.”
Dylan is unsure of what’s next, though he hopes to attend VCU Arts Department of Music at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. For Joseph, he’ll share the stage with his seven-year-old sister, Madeline, who has also been with Hurrah Players since she was five years old.
in an ever-changing world.
This fall semester, Grossman will stream into Tidewater to teach Jewish Medical Ethics. Students in the course will study Jewish texts and perspectives on modern medical topics that range from surrogacy to living wills. As an instructor, Grossman emphasizes that his classes are far from passive; they encourage active participation and discussions. He encourages open dialogue and welcomes diverse perspectives by returning to the text and applying it to personal experience and current events.
Whether a seasoned scholar or a newcomer to Jewish traditions, this course offers a welcoming and interactive environment to explore what Judaism has to say about modern medical advances.
Course cost is $295, including the textbook. Register before September 20 using code EARLYBIRD for $60 off the course. For more information, or to register, visit JewishVA.org/Melton or contact Sierra Lautman at SLautman@UJFT.org.
Tuesday, October 10, 1 pm, Simon Family JCC
After a hiatus, Yiddish Club members eagerly look forward to reuniting to celebrate Yiddish culture and language. Club meetings are free and open to the community and will take place every other Tuesday beginning Tuesday, Oct. 10.
Arlene Kessel will lead the club. Her passion for Yiddish – both the language and culture – has inspired many, with engaging discussions always a highlight of the club’s meetings.
These club meetings are joyous occasions where attendees reconnect with old friends and make new ones who share a love for Yiddishkeit.
Take advantage of this opportunity to immerse in the beauty of Yiddish culture. For more information and to RSVP, visit JewishVA.org/YiddishClub or contact Mia Klein at MKlein@ujft.org or 757-452-3184.
Nofar Trem
Children, grandparents, and everyone in between, joined PJ Library in Tidewater and UJFT’s Young Adult Division on Friday, August 25 at the Sandler Family Campus for a celebratory End of Summer Shabbat. Swimming with friends and family, adult deep-water relay races, and a kids cannonball contest all added to the fun evening.
Rabbi Yoni Warren led a warm and welcoming Shabbat service that was followed by the community gathered around tables, enjoying Shabbat dinner and each other’s company.
The evening also served as a welcome party for Tidewater’s new Shinshinim, Maya and Naomi, who will be in the community all year bringing Israel to the area.
For more information on PJ Library and PJ Library in Tidewater events, visit JewishVA.org/PJ.
Under the direction of the Chief Program Officer, the Program Department Coordinator has an essential role in the department’s functioning as it supports the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC), Arts + Ideas, Leon Family Art Gallery, Seniors Programs, Jewish Innovation, and BeAR programs. This critical position requires an individual with strong communication skills, who is accustomed to a fast-paced work environment and is a problem-solver. Must be detail-oriented and like to work as part of a team.
An Associate’s Degree in Business, Public Administration, or other related and appropriate field, preferred; general research skills including print and internetbased extremely helpful. A minimum of 2 years administrative experience, with proven proficiency in the advanced use of MS Office applications including Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Publisher and familiarity with social media platforms in order to use these tools to disseminate information and messaging.
Contact Taffy Hunter, Human Resources director, at 757-965-6117, resumes@ujft.org or submit resume to:
United Jewish Federation of Tidewater Attention: Human Resources 5000 Corporate Woods Drive Virginia Beach, 23462
SEPTEMBER 27-DECEMBER 6, WEDNESDAYS
Jewish Medical Ethics: A 21st Century Discussion (Online). A 10-Week Melton Course offered by the Konikoff Center for Learning of the United Jewish Federation of Tidewater. 6:45 pm. Led by Harman Grossman, an attorney and long-time Melton teacher at Central Synagogue in New York, students will explore the positive, negative, beneficial, and detrimental aspects of the new technologies in the medical field and the wisdom Judaism offers us in our encounters with them. Early Registration $235 before Sept. 20 using code EARLYBIRD at checkout. Standard registration $295. For more information and to register, visit JewishVA.org/Melton or contact Sierra Lautman at slautman@ujft.org or 757-965-6107. See page 33.
OCTOBER 3, MONDAY
Dedication of the Low Family Playground, in memory of Honey Low, at B’nai Israel. A new, state of-the-art playground for the children of Honey Low’s (of blessed memory) beloved synagogue, B’nai Israel Congregation, made possible by Honey Low’s family with support from the Tidewater Jewish Foundation. For more information, contact B’nai Israel Congregation, 757-627-7358
OCTOBER 4-29
Fiddler on the Roof. Virginia Stage Company. VaStage.org.
Yiddish Club. Attendees will reconnect with old friends and make new ones who share a love for Yiddishkeit. The Yiddish Club is a vibrant hub for preserving and promoting the Yiddish language and its rich heritage, making it an essential part of the community. This club is free and open to the community. Every other Tuesday at 1 pm. For more information and to RSVP, visit JewishVA.org/ YiddishClub or contact Mia Klein at MKlein@ujft.org or 757-452-3184. See page 33.
Scripture on the Silver Screen. In this 10-session course, offered by the Konikoff Center for Learning and taught by Rabbi Michael Panitz of Temple Israel, students will learn how Hollywood retells a Bible story through five films, noting a fascinating synthesis. 11 am – 12:30 pm. Registration is $75, $60 for JCC members. For more information and to register, visit JewishVA.org/KCL or contact Sierra Lautman an SLautman@ujft.org. See page 31..
Annual Great Big Challah Bake at B’nai Israel Congregation. Community members of all ages are invited to Tidewater’s annual Great Big Challah Bake, a partnership between B’nai Israel Congregation and the Konikoff Center for Learning of the United Jewish Federation of Tidewater. As part of the Shabbos Project, thousands of similar events will take place around the globe. All ingredients and recipes will be provided. Each participant will leave with two challahs ready to bake and enjoy for Shabbat. 7 pm. Suggested donation $5. For more information, or to register, visit JewishVA.org/KCL.
Kids Night Out at the Simon Family JCC. Members and future members can drop off their children from 6 - 10 pm for a night filled with games, crafts, snacks, and swimming (for children who can swim without a fl oatation device). Ages four years to 12 years may attend. Register at https://federation.jewishva.org/children-family by 4 pm on Friday, November 17. Lifeguard supervised.
The Simon Family JCC is partnering with Lynnhaven River Now (LRNOW) to collect and distribute reusable bags. This program will help Virginia Beach residents reduce plastic bag pollution and prepare for a future when grocery stores, convenience stores, and pharmacies no longer use environmentally harmful, single use plastic bags.
At the entrance to the Sandler Family Campus, there is a place to drop off new or gently used reusable bags which will be donated and distributed to clients of Jewish Family Service’s Food Pantry.
For additional information, visit: www.lynnhavenrivernow.org/blog/ give-a-bag-take-a-bag/.
Linda Fulcher
VIRGINIA BEACH – Linda Fulcher, beloved wife, mother, and grandmother, passed away on August 30.
Linda is survived by Bob, her husband of 39 years, daughter, Sheri, grandchildren, Madison and Griffi n, daughter, Krissy (Dan), and step-daughter Kristen. She was predeceased by her parents, Walter and Mae Webster.
Linda was born in Bayville, N.Y. She attended C.W. Post and Hofstra Universities and graduated with a master’s in education. Linda had a long career as a teacher, including a position as director of general studies at Hebrew Academy of Tidewater, before retiring in 2013.
Throughout her lifetime in New York and Virginia, Linda brought happiness to everyone she met with her smile and loving
nature. She loved being with her family and especially loved being a grandmother (Oma) to Madison and Griffi n and being Bob’s Bride. Linda enjoyed traveling to hot rod and motorcycle shows with Bob, where she sometimes had booths and sold her hot rod automotive drawings. She also enjoyed getting her hands dirty helping Bob build his hotrods in their garage. She loved being a teacher, often being told “you’re my favorite teacher” by her students.
She was a talented and passionate artist and created beautiful works of art through sketching, painting, jewelry making, leather crafts, knitting, and any new art form she discovered that piqued her interest. She loved her dogs, tending to her flower gardens, singing along to the radio, always learning, reading, and doing crossword puzzles.
Linda was a member of Associates of Vietnam Veterans of America Chapter 969 and represented them at state meetings and national conventions. She was also a Vet Center Wives group member and was recognized for her support of our Veterans and their families.
A celebration of her life was held at Graham Funeral home in Chesapeake, Va. She will be interred at a later date at Albert G. Horton Veterans Cemetery in Suffolk, Va. Donations may be made to the ASPCA at www.aspca.org or Disabled American Veterans at www.dav.org. To leave a condolence to the family, please visit Grahamfuneralhome.com
Barbara Friedman Leibowitz
VIRGINIA BEACH – Barbara Friedman Leibowitz, 89, died peacefully at home on September 2.
Barbara was predeceased by her parents, Murray and Esther Friedman, her brother, Richard Friedman, and her husband, Phillip (Buddy) Leibowitz.
She is survived by her sister, Iris Friedman Ruden of Memphis, Tenn., her children, Roger Leibowitz (Kim) of Richmond, Susan Rodgers, and Ilene Lipton (Steve Jason), of Virginia Beach; her grandchildren Robyn Klein (Matt Cabana), Daniel Rodgers (Jennie), Seth Lipton (Brittany), Maya Hager (Zach), Matthew Leibowitz, and Evan Leibowitz, and great-grandchildren Jace Klein, Carter Lipton, Landon Lipton, Kyler Hager, and Aubrey Rodgers.
Barbara was raised in Portsmouth and
graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School in 1952. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 1956 and her master’s degree from Old Dominion University in 1975. She met Buddy Leibowitz when they were both 15, and they were together for the next 58 years until his passing in 2007.
She had a life-long career as an educator and guidance counselor, working in Norfolk, Virginia Beach, and Henrico County, Virginia school systems.
Funeral services were graveside at Forrest Lawn Cemetery. Contributions in Barbara’s memory may be made to Congregation Beth El or your favorite charity.
VIRGINIA BEACH – Herbert Bernard Luria, IV passed away on September 4, in his newly adopted home of Virginia Beach, Va., from a difficult battle with cancer.
Born on March 11, 1947, in Birmingham, Ala., Herbert was predeceased by his parents, Elaine Daniel Luria and Herbert Bernard Luria III, his beloved grandmother, Juliet D. Daniel, and his in-laws, Dr. Seaburt and Miriam Goodman. He is survived by his loving wife of 55 years, Michelle Goodman Luria, his daughter, Elaine Goodman Luria and her husband, Robert Blondin, their daughter Violette Luria Blondin, step-children Chloe and Claiborne Blondin of Norfolk, Va., his sister, Amanda Luria Herman (Fred) of New Orleans, La., and his sister-in-law, Shari Goodman Siegel (Jack) of Sarasota, Fla.
Herbert had many fond memories of growing up in his childhood home on Montevallo Road in Mountain Brook, Ala., and time spent with his lifelong best friend, Ronnie Aland. Growing up, he enjoyed many summers in Margate and Atlantic City, N.J., and cherished his time there with his friend Alfy Mottola. He loved his many Luria first cousins and remained especially close with Edward “Spike” Luria.
Herbert attended Birmingham University School and graduated from Tulane University. Acquainted through childhood, Herbert and Michelle began dating in Confirmation Class at Temple Emanu-El, where they were later married while attending Tulane University.
After graduating from Georgetown
University Law Center and a stint with the Securities and Exchange Commission in Washington, DC, Herbert and Michelle returned home to Birmingham to start a family, and Herbert joined his father in the family scrap iron and steel brokerage, Luria Company.
John Saucier (Peggy), Donna Saucier Elliott (James), Craig Saucier, Linda Saucier Fowler (Philip), Glenn Saucier (Denise), and Brian Saucier; his eight grandchildren, Nathan Saucier (Kehli), Stephanie Saucier, Evan Fowler, Jennifer Elliott Kimball (James), Lauren Fowler Eastlack (Aaron), Rob Elliott
Herbert enjoyed good food and wine and had a great interest in history, literature, and art. He was a skilled painter and a collector of military memorabilia. He and Michelle enjoyed boating on the Chesapeake Bay and took many long road trips to explore new places.
Herbert cherished watching his daughter, Elaine, through her time at the United States Naval Academy, her two decades of service in the U.S. Navy, and later as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Virginia.
Herbert and Michelle recently relocated to Virginia Beach to be closer to family and enjoy time with their granddaughter, Violette. A private burial was held at Elmwood Cemetery in Birmingham, Ala. A memorial service was held at Temple Emanu-El in Birmingham.
HAMPTON – Dad passed away peacefully on Thursday, August 31, 2023, at home in Hampton, Virginia, at the age of 103.
Dad, the oldest of three children, was born in Oconto, Wisconsin in 1920. He joined the Army in 1942 and was stationed at Brooklyn Army Terminal, New York where he met our mom, Elizabeth “Betty” Quigley. They were married in September of 1945 in New York City. After 30 years of selfless service to our country, Lt. Colonel Robert H. Saucier, along with his wife Betty and six children, retired June 1972 in Hampton, Va.
Dad began his new career in the Hampton City School system in 1974 where he taught for 11 years before retiring, for good, in July 1985.
He is survived by his six children,
(Sophia), Kristin Elliott Milchuck (Blake), and Erin Fowler; and his 12 great grandchildren, Whitney, Morgan, Ryan, Brayden, Anthony, Margaret, William, Elizabeth, Dylan, Sloane, Catherine, and Wesley.
Dad was an incredible man. He gave our family the strength and courage to meet the challenges of the world. He, along with mom, defined the meaning of selfless devotion to one’s children and dedication to family. Dad’s integrity and character are the inspiration that touches each of his children and will continue in his grandchildren and great grandchildren. Truly a member of the Greatest Generation.
Dad now joins Mom, the love of his life, in heaven at God’s table for life everlasting.
A Mass of the Resurrection was celebrated at Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Hampton.
Burial will follow later at Arlington National Cemetery.
NORFOLK – Dr. Alfred M. Schulwolf, 90, passed away on September 8.
He was predeceased by his beloved wife, Helen A. Schulwolf, his brother Benjamin Schulwolf, and his parents, Leopold and Faye Schulwolf, all of blessed memory.
He is survived by his sons Neal (Lisa), Gary, and Andrew (Robin) Schulwolf, along with five grandchildren, Hallie, Brett, Helene, Gracie, and William, whom he treasured dearly. He is also survived by his special friend, Arlene Brown, and his sisterin-law, Shirley Schulwolf Hainer, along with many nieces and nephews.
Dr. “Buzzy,” as he was affectionately known to his family, many friends, and colleagues, was born in Norfolk, Va. He
graduated from Maury High School, the University of Virginia (Phi Beta Kappa), and the University of Virginia Medical School. He completed his medical residency in Pediatrics at Boston City Hospital in Boston, Mass.
He returned to Norfolk in 1961 and started Tidewater Children’s Associates with his close friend, Dr. Larry Berman, of blessed memory, and practiced pediatrics until 2004, hiring and training many pediatricians throughout Tidewater. He was very active with Children’s Hospital of The Kings Daughters, served as president of the Medical Staff in the 1970s, and participated in various committees and taught at the hospital.
Dr. Schulwolf was also active with Eastern Virginia Medical School and chaired the Admissions Committee in the 1980s. He especially enjoyed teaching the residents and hired several of them for his pediatrics practice.
He was a former member of the Jewish Family Service board, chairman of the March of Dimes APAC Committee, and took great pride in donating to the local
arts, museums, and Jewish causes. He was extremely proud of co-chairing a committee that studied Tay-Sachs disease in Tidewater.
Dr. Schulwolf credited the Florence Smith Medical Scholarship with providing him the opportunity to attend medical school, and he was a supporter and fundraiser of the Scholarship Fund throughout his life.
Amongst his many successful entrepreneurial ventures outside of the medical profession, Dr. Schulwolf was the creator and owner of Hasskins Fresh Fries, one of the original food court businesses at Waterside.
Dr. Schulwolf will be best remembered for his love of family, devotion to many friends, and his ever present and unique humor that made him beloved by many.
The funeral was held at Ohef Sholom Temple in Norfolk, Va. A graveside service followed at Forest Lawn Cemetery.
Memorial donations may be made to Ohef Sholom Temple or Children’s Hospital of The Kings Daughters.
Online condolences may be shared with the family at www.hdoliver.com.
send peace to all who mourn, and comfort to all who are bereaved.
Ellen Van Os
NORFOLK – Seven days following her 100th birthday, our mother, Ellen Van Os, left us.
Ellen was a life affirming woman who loved to have fun, was the finest dancer, and absolutely defined perseverance. Born and raised in Norfolk, Ellen and her teenage friends enjoyed weekend dances, Ocean View, and Virginia Beach.
After graduating from Maury High School, Ellen attended Mary Washington College with a focus on fashion design. She volunteered for the War Effort (WWII), and then had the great adventure of living in NYC where she was a buyer for prestigious Bonwit Teller (both in NYC and later in Chicago) and she walked everywhere! Ellen was dedicated to her family and constantly planned trips and camp experiences for her children. She was equally devoted to her mother, sister, and brother – they remained a close family unit. At age 50 Ellen began her real estate career. She was a top producing agent and one of the first local women to earn her broker’s license.
In recent years Ellen found immeasurable pleasure in her grandchildren, great-grandchildren and three generations of devoted nieces and nephews. Ellen was pre-deceased by her parents
Henry M. Van Os and Eloise Lowenberg
Van Os, her sister Betty Van Os Crockin and her brother Henry S Van Os.
She is survived by her children Beth Front Averett of Norfolk, Samuel Edward Front (Adriana) of Schererville, Ind., Ann Front Hergenreder (Leo) of Heathsville Va., and Henry Van Os Front of Denver, Col. as well as seven grandchildren, four great-grandchildren and many loving nieces and nephews.
Donations may be made to the Ohef Sholom Temple Archives, Norfolk,Va. Arrangements by Altmeyer Funeral Homes. Graveside service took place at Forest Lawn Cemetery.
To leave a condolence for the family, visit www.altmeyerfh.com.
Andrew Silow-Carroll
(JTA) — Captain Bill Pinkney, a Jewish sailor who became the first African American to sail around the world solo, died Thursday, August 31. He was 87 and had suffered a fall.
Starting in 1990, the Chicagoan’s 22-month, 27,000-mile journey aboard a 47-foot cutter captivated thousands of schoolchildren who followed his trip via an educational television channel. The footage was used in an award-winning documentary, The Incredible Voyage of Bill Pinkney, that aired on the Disney Channel, National Geographic and PBS stations.
The former cosmetics executive also wrote a children’s book in 1994, Captain Bill Pinkney’s Journey.
A very different journey also captivated readers in 2019, when Pinkney and his former wife, Ina Pinkney, were featured in a New York Times photo essay about their marriage and extremely amicable divorce. Bill, who grew up poor on Chicago’s South Side, and Ina, who grew up Jewish in Brooklyn and Long Island, married in 1965. It was his second marriage.
Ina was 21 years old when she met Bill at a coffee place in Greenwich Village. “As soon as I spotted him across the crowded room, I said to my friend, ‘Susan, I’m going to marry him,’” Ina told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “And I sat down and I talked to him for a little bit, and we went out and we had something to eat. And that was it. It was a done deal for me. And what even helped more is that he was Jewish.”
Yet although Bill considered himself Jewish starting in childhood and converted to Judaism as an adult, her parents broke off contact with the couple and none of her relatives attended the wedding.
According to Ina, Bill was 12 years old when he came home from church with his mother, who divorced his father when Bill was six. “He said, ‘I can’t go there anymore.’” When his mother asked why, Bill explained, “Because all I hear about is that everything gets better after you die. It can’t be that way.” His mother encouraged him to discover something he could believe in, and after a visit to the library, the preteen announced, “I’m Jewish.”
When Ina, who grew up in a Conservative Jewish home, and Bill were engaged, Bill decided to go through a formal conversion, choosing the Hebrew name “Barak ben Avraham Avinu.”
When Ina asked why he felt he needed a formal conversion, Bill explained, “Because without this I could not be buried in a Jewish cemetery next to you.” Ina said that, late in life, Bill would regularly Zoom into services held at the Hebrew Congregation of St.
Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and she would occasionally join him online.
The two were married for 36 years. The couple went their separate ways in 2001, when Bill decided to continue to pursue his sailing dreams and Ina her career as a celebrity baker and chef in Chicago.
“My life was on the sea, hers was on the land,” Bill told the New York Times in 2019. According to Ina, Bill would say, “If it doesn’t have a lobby, it would never be her hobby” – that is, she preferred a hotel or a cruise ship over the sail boats he favored. Ina used saltier language to describe how bored she felt on the water.
He later married Migdalia Vachier Pinkney. She survives him, along with his sister, Naomi Pinkney, as do a daughter from his first marriage and two grandchildren.
William Pinkney was born Sept. 15, 1935, in Chicago. After serving eight years in the Navy, he became a makeup artist and designed a line of women’s cosmetics, eventually working as a marketing manager for Revlon and director of cosmetics marketing for Johnson Products Company. He became director of marketing for the Chicago Department of Human Services in 1980, according to the History Makers.
Pinkney first learned how to sail small cargo skiffs while stationed in Puerto Rico with the Navy in the 1950s. He began sailing in earnest on Lake Michigan when working in Chicago.
Pinkney also served, starting in 2000, as the first captain of the reconstructed Amistad, the Spanish schooner whose crew was killed in a revolt by enslaved Africans in 1839. The reconstruction of the ship was inspired by Steven Spielberg’s 1997 film, Amistad, about the revolt; as captain, Pinkney took schoolteachers to Africa on a route tracing the Middle Passage crossing by which enslaved Africans were taken from Senegal to the Americas.
In recent years he ran a charter boat business in Fajardo, Puerto Rico.
Pinkney was also a senior advisor for National Geographic. In 2021, he was inducted into the National Sailing Hall of Fame.
Discussing his round-the-world voyage on a boating website, Pinkney said that one of the highlights was sailing past South Africa two weeks after Nelson Mandela had been released after 27 years behind bars. “I sailed past Robben Island, where he’d been imprisoned, flying a red, black, and green spinnaker, the colors of the African liberation movement,” said Pinkney. “As an afterthought, I should’ve put a big yellow Star of David on there as well [laughing], because I’m Jewish.”
“Because without this I could not be buried in a Jewish cemetery next to you.”
Do