Jewish News Supplement - May 8, 2023 Summer

Memorial Day Commemoration

Thursday, May 25, 8:30 am, Jewish War Veterans Flagpole, Sandler Family Campus

The Board of Rabbis and Cantors of Hampton Roads and the Jewish War Veterans (Post 158) will host a community Memorial Day Weekend observance to start the weekend in appreciation of those who paid the ultimate sacrifice for the freedom that Americans experience.

The weekend that will be marked by the celebration of Shavuot (Jewish dairy fest) and Memorial Day (for many, a secular barbecue fest), will also offer an opportunity to join together to pause and

value the many brave men and women who have given their lives in support of a nation where “we can go to shul on Friday and Saturday and go to the beach on Sunday,” says Rabbi Yonatan M. Warren, BCC, Lieutenant Commander, U.S. Navy Chaplain Corps.

Hosted by the local Navy Jewish Chaplains, Rabbi Yoni Warren (Navy Medical Center Portsmouth) and Rabbi Aaron Kleinman (Marine Forces Command), this event is open to all. Rain location will be inside the Sandler Family Campus.

30th Annual National Senior Health and Fitness Day 2023

Wednesday May 31

9 am – 2 pm Sandler Family Campus

Simon Family JCC presents the 30th Annual Senior Health & Fitness Day.

The day-long celebration includes group fitness classes, games, vendors, and prize raffles. Plus, the Cardo Cafe will be open.

Free and open to the public, registration is not required.

To learn about more senior activities, go to JewishVa.org/Seniors.

Don’t miss the Camp JCC experience

Dave Flagler

With summer right around the corner, Camp JCC is gearing up for another exciting season. Last year’s day camp program was so successful that this year’s spots are filling fast – good news for the camp and an incentive for parents to register children for a summer filled with fun, learning, and new experiences before it’s too late.

Camp JCC prides itself on offering a wide range of activities designed to engage and challenge campers of all ages. From daily instructional and recreational swim to sports, art, drama, Israeli culture, and gaga ball, the program helps children explore their interests, develop new skills, make new friends, and strengthen existing friendships in a supportive and inclusive environment. Campers build strong relationships with each other and their counselors, creating a tight-knit community. Camp JCC counselors, specialists, and support staff help campers develop confidence and independence, while also fostering a sense of belonging.

In addition to regular daily programming, Camp JCC offers a variety of special activities throughout the summer. Themed days and weeks, special guests and entertainers, field trips for older campers, and camp-wide celebrations are just some examples.

Camp JCC begins on Tuesday, June 20. Register for individual weeks or the entire summer (if space is available). Visit www.campjcc.org for more information and to register.

To learn more about Camp JCC, or to hear about year-round opportunities for teens in the community, contact Dave Flagler, director of Camp and Teen Engagement, at DFlagler@UJFT. org or 757-452-3182.

Eliza Kimball and Dani Weinstein decorate their kites during art time.

Ella Gladstein, Liam Yashaev, and Aiden Bennett chase Henry Krupnick through a color run at the conclusion of Color War week.

Judy Blume is having a moment.

Here’s why Jewish women love her

Sarah Rosen (JTA) — As a young teenager growing up in Manhattan, Nina Kauder found it nearly impossible to ask her mother difficult questions about puberty or her Jewish identity, for two reasons.

Her mother had fled the Holocaust as a child and was, in Kauder’s words, “very tough” to talk to. And by the time Kauder was a teen, her mother was terminally ill. She got her first period just months after her mother’s death.

So Kauder, now 58 and a health coach, turned to Judy Blume.

She remembers reading Blume’s 1970

young adult classic Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, about a sixth grader with a Jewish father and Christian mother, in her closet with a flashlight after bedtime.

“I’m reading in there, devouring her book, learning about boys, learning about breasts, learning about brassieres, learning about religion, about identity, about growing up in the United States — learning about all of that,” she says.

Kauder isn’t alone. Blume’s 29 books, which have sold more than 90 million copies and been translated into 39 languages, have been touchstones for women — especially Jewish American women

— for multiple generations. Her protagonists deal with a range of teen issues, from bullying to sex to loneliness to menstruation, in a realistic way, but they also grapple with issues of Jewish identity as they come of age, adding an extra layer of relevance for young Jewish readers.

Blume is having a moment with the recent release of a documentary about her life and career streaming on Amazon Prime titled Judy Blume Forever and a major on-screen adaptation of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, which debuted on Friday, April 28 to warm reviews. The topics Blume has written

about since 1969 have remained relevant: her books still regularly land on banned book lists as states continually debate what young readers should be able to access. (Several of her books were banned in states including Texas, Florida, Utah, and Pennsylvania last year.) She regularly speaks out on the dangers of book banning, which she attributes to fear, explaining that “because fear is contagious, some parents are easily swayed.”

The documentary tells the story of Blume’s life and career, beginning with her secular Jewish upbringing in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Born in 1938,

Two films – one about her and one based on one of her most popular books – are screening now. . . before the summer heats up and more time is spent outside. . .away from theaters and televisions.

Blume was seven when World War II ended, and she describes a nervous childhood in the film. Her mother reassured her that the war happened far away and that they were safe.

“Did I believe that?” Blume asks in the film. “I don’t know. I was a Jewish girl, and this happened because you were a Jew. I was an anxious child.”

She also connects her childhood anxiety to her prolific imagination: “I felt adults kept secrets from the kids. I hated those secrets. I think I had to make up what those secrets were. That fueled my imagination.”

Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret centers on an 11-year-old who moves to a new town with her parents and has intimate conversations with God. Margaret longs to feel normal, to start growing breasts and get her period along with her friends. She also struggles with her religious identity; her mother is Christian, and her father is Jewish, and neither set of grandparents approved of the union. Margaret sets out on a quest to learn about and pick a religion, all the while wondering why she only feels God’s presence when she’s alone.

During the war, Kauder’s mother had “survived in France as a hidden child, [hidden] by the nuns in a Roman Catholic environment.” Subsequently, growing up, Kauder “didn’t have a Jewish or a religious or a spiritual influence at all.” She identified with Margaret.

“Here comes Judy Blume’s book, which for different reasons has a Jewish and a Catholic influence, but she’s trying to figure it out,” Kauder says.

To Jessye Ejdelman, a 31-year-old software engineer who attends a Modern Orthodox synagogue in New York City and is raising her children in a Yiddish immersive household, the book is also a strong expression of American Jewishness: of “not being sure where you fit as a Jew and not being sure where God fits as a Jew and as an American.”

To Edjelman, the Margaret character demonstrates something meaningful about the Jewish relationship to God. “The literal wrestling with God in a way is very like Jacob. I think of Judy Blume when I think of that, like that wrestling with God, that uncertainty.”

But the book’s relevance in her teenage years went beyond religion.

“[Like in] Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, I was also a girl who was waiting for my first period to come,” she says. “I remember pretending to have my period and I really related to Margaret as a character because of that… Like I was just waiting to not be awkward or weird or ugly or a child… Many, many women relate to that feeling.”

In the 1970s, after her writing career and the women’s liberation movement took off, Blume decided to leave the suburbs and her first marriage. “I wanted to see the world. I wanted to travel everywhere,” she explains in the film.

After her divorce, her books became more explicitly drawn from her own life. In 1977, Blume wrote what she calls her “most autobiographical novel,” the book Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself, about her post-war Jewish childhood. It includes a scene where the young characters grapple with their fear of the Nazis by playing make-believe.

Elisa Zuritsky, 53, a TV writer and producer behind shows like Sex and the City, Odd Mom Out and Smash, remembers watching The Brady Bunch on TV in the early 1970s — a time when Jewish themes were far less common on screen — and hoping they might include a Jewish moment or character.

“I started reading Judy Blume books and the thrill that there were any Jewish characters in her books and heroines and narrators of her stories was monumental, I think, for me,” said Zuritsky, who grew up attending Jewish day school in Philadelphia. “I so rarely saw Jews anywhere in the popular culture that I consumed.”

Rereading the books as an adult, Zuritsky said, “what struck me the most, and what I think I was responding to as a kid, was how unadorned and unapologetically honest she let her narrators be.” She aspired to be just as honest in her own writing about women’s life experiences.

“There’s a direct line between reading Judy Blume books and being an adult writing for Sex and the City. It’s pulling from the same well,” she said. “The bar was set for me personally by [Judy Blume].”

Parade and Leopoldstadt each nab 6 Tony nominations in a big year for Jewish Broadway

Andrew Lapin

(JTA) — Shows about the Holocaust and a notorious American antisemitic incident picked up several Tony Award nominations,

as Broadway’s biggest honors made room for a sizable Jewish presence.

Most notably, a revival of the 1998 musical Parade, starring Ben Platt as

the early-20th-century Jewish lynching victim Leo Frank, scored six nominations, including best revival of a musical and a best actor nod for Platt. Jewish lead actress Micaela Diamond also scored a nomination for playing Leo’s wife Lucille, causing awards presenter Lea Michele to squeal with glee (pun intended) as she read Diamond’s name at the livestreamed nominations ceremony.

Arriving during a heightened moment of national awareness about antisemitism, Parade attracted notice early in its Broadway run when a performance was picketed by neo-Nazis. That incident led to an outpouring of support from B*roadway’s Jewish community. Platt himself arrived at last night’s Met Gala wearing a Star of David necklace, further driving home the show’s message.

Leopoldstadt, Tom Stoppard’s epic, highly personal play about multiple generations of a Jewish Viennese family before, during and after the Holocaust, also received six nominations, including an expected nod for best play. Brandon Uranowitz also earned a nod for best actor in a featured role in a play, and Patrick Marber scored a best direction nomination; both are Jewish.

Signs were more mixed for another high-profile Jewish production, The Sign In Sidney Brustein’s Window, which eked out two nominations, including best revival of a play. The show, first written by Lorraine Hansberry in 1964 shortly before her death, follows a Jewish bohemian grappling with political and social change in Greenwich Village.

Besides Parade, the musical revival category was dominated by shows with Jewish roots. Also nominated was a new version of the 1960 classic Camelot, billed as “Lerner & Loewe’s Camelot” in recognition of the two Jewish Broadway scribes who crafted the initial production, Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe. Written by Aaron Sorkin, who is Jewish, and directed by Bartlett Sher, who learned as a teenager that his father was Jewish, the new Camelot had five nominations.

Two reinterpretations of Stephen

Sondheim standards, Into The Woods and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, rounded out the category. The pop singer Josh Groban, whose father was Jewish before converting to his mother’s Christianity, was nominated for playing the lead role.

The play Good Night, Oscar, about the Jewish entertainer Oscar Levant’s struggles with mental illness, picked up three nominations. Death of a Salesman, a new revival of the classic play by Jewish playwright Arthur Miller, also picked up two nominations.

Jewish actress Jessica Hecht picked up an acting nomination for her lead role in the play Summer, 1976, about a lifelong friendship between two women.

Among the other nominees was a modern-day musical reimagining of Some Like It Hot, the 1959 cross-dressing comedy. The original movie had plenty of Jewish talent: It was directed by Billy Wilder, co-starred Tony Curtis and Jewish convert Marilyn Monroe, and featured recently deceased Jewish character actor Nehemiah Persoff in a small role. The new musical, by Amber Ruffin and Matthew López, led the pack with 13 Tony nominations including best new musical. Veteran Jewish songwriter Marc Shaiman picked up a nomination for co-writing the show’s score.

Another new musical based on a movie, New York, New York, also built off of Jewish talent: the songwriting duo John Kander and Fred Ebb wrote the music for the original 1977 film, and Kander is co-credited with Lin-Manuel Miranda for additional music. New York, New York received nine nominations, including best new musical.

The prolific Jewish theater composer Jeanine Tesori had another Broadway hit this year with the musical Kimberly Akimbo, which received eight nominations, including one for her music.

The nominations were co-announced Tuesday, May 2 by Michele, who has been the talk of Broadway since she replaced Beanie Feldstein as the lead of the Funny Girl revival.

The Tonys will air on CBS and various Paramount-owned streaming services on June 11.

Outdoor Aquatic Center opens for Summer at Simon Family JCC and Sandler Family Campus for Memorial Day weekend

SATURDAY – MONDAY

MAY 27-29, 11:30 am – 5:30 pm

With temperatures climbing this Spring, the opening of the Metzger Outdoor Aquatic Center is planned for Memorial Day weekend. Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, members and guests are will be able to enjoy all of the fun the outdoor pools and water park offer.

The same hours will be in effect for the following weekend, June 3-4.

June 10 - August 20, outdoor pool hours will be extended to 7 pm on weekdays (MondayThursday), with the pool continuing to close at 5:30 pm on Fridays through Sundays.

August 21 - September 4, the pool will close at 6 pm on weekdays, and 5:30 pm, Friday - Sunday, including Labor Day on Sept. 4.

June 20 - August 11, outdoor lap swimmers can swim outdoor in the lap lane after 12 pm, to accommodate the camp schedule.

The JCC Summer Swordfish swim team is an excellent way for children to improve swimming skills with great coaches, make new friends, and stay fit over summer. Go to SimonFamilyJCC.org for more information.

Camps

The Jewish Sport Report:

Why there are so many Jewish sports halls of fame?

Jacob Gurvis

(JTA) — On one wall of the dining hall at the Indiana University Hillel sits 36 framed photographs of Jewish alumni who have made an impact in the sports industry, from athletes to executives. It’s the IU Jewish Sports Wall of Fame.

One of those pictures is of Josh Rawitch, who has had a long career as an executive in baseball. At first, Rawitch tells the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, he questioned whether he was truly worthy of being honored alongside fellow Hoosiers like Mark Cuban, the billionaire businessman and owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, and all-time Jewish Olympic legend Mark Spitz.

But then Rawitch thought about the location of the wall, and who it might impact.

“You’re going to have young people, 18, 19 years old, walking in there looking at the wall, seeing all these people who are up there who have gone on to do significant things in the industry,” Rawitch says. “That’s actually pretty cool. That actually inspires them. If I was 18 and I’d have walked in and that wall had been there when I was a freshman, I would have thought, ‘that’s really cool.’ I would love to be like one of those people someday.”

Rawitch knows a thing or two about halls of fame: He’s the president of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York. He says institutions like the one he leads are important “repositories for history.”

“I think having a hall of fame of any kind in any city essentially does two things — it honors people who are really good at what they do, and it documents the history of what’s gone on in that industry,” he says.

The display that honors Rawitch in Bloomington is just one of many halls, walls, and exhibits across the United States and the world — many of them small — that honor Jewish greatness in sports. From Southern California to Philadelphia, St. Louis to Washington, D.C., similar organizations and institutions recognize Jewish athletes, coaches, executives, media members and beyond.

Why so many?

“We want to call attention to that because of the antisemitic trope that Jews are not good soldiers, farmers, or athletes. We need to overcome that,” says Jed Margolis, who runs the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in Israel, which has honored more than 400 athletes since 1981 and is housed in Netanya after being founded in the United States. “It’s simply not true. And telling the stories out there will help inspire people and lay to rest some of those falsehoods which I think are important to overcome.”

In the fight against antisemitism, Steve Rosenberg, who chairs the Philadelphia Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, says “the best defense is a good offense.” The Philadelphia hall, which inducted its first class in 1997 and has moved locations multiple times, has 183 total inductees, including former NFL tight end Brent Novoselsky and longtime 76ers broadcaster Marc Zumoff.

“We shine the light on the great accomplishments of Jews in sports. And we need to do more of that in the world,” Rosenberg says.

Rosenberg adds that he thinks there should be even more halls of fame, for Jewish actors, architects, poets and so on, “so that we can celebrate our accomplishments, not in the way that we pat ourselves on the back, but that we can talk about all the great things that we do as a people.”

For Craig Neuman, the chief programming officer at the St. Louis Jewish Community Center, a key feature of Jewish culture is the sense of connection Jews feel when they discover that a celebrity is Jewish.

Like the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame seeks to recognize the most elite athletes — Jewish world record holders, Olympians, and the like. Or, as Margolis puts it: “We’re looking for the best of the best: the Hank Greenbergs, the Mark Spitzes, people like that.”

“As the National Baseball Hall of Fame, I think it’s pretty clear that we are honoring the absolute greatest who

ever played or worked within the game of baseball nationally,” Rawitch says. “Clearly, that should be harder to get into than, say, the California Baseball Hall of Fame or the New York Baseball Hall of Fame. But I don’t think it should diminish if you’re a recipient of that. It should be an honor for anybody who’s named to any sort of hall or wall of fame.”

Inclusivity is central to the local halls of fame.

“I think we want to, on some level, send a message that says, ‘hey, just because you’re not in Cooperstown doesn’t mean that you didn’t have an impact in the world, on your sport, in your community,’” says Neuman.

But that doesn’t mean the standards for entry aren’t high. In fact, in St. Louis, candidates for induction must possess more than just athletic accomplishments — there’s also the “mensch factor.”

“When you are in a position where people might look up to you because

of some accomplishments, and whether it’s because you’re an athlete, or you’re a politician, or a lawyer or whatever the profession that puts you in the public’s eye, there’s a certain responsibility that comes along with that,” says Neuman. “It’s a great example to set that, yeah, this guy was a great baseball player, but he was also a great human being as well.”

The St. Louis Jewish Sports Hall of Fame has 84 members inducted across eight classes dating back to 1992 — including Chicago Cubs ace Ken Holtzman and basketball legend Nancy Lieberman. The last group was enshrined in 2018.

Many of those inductees represent more than the typical professional sports — baseball, basketball, football, soccer and hockey. There are racquetball and handball players, even a hot air balloonist. For Rosenberg, recognizing people from a diverse range of sports is an important part of the work, especially as he works to engage younger members of the community.

“I want the young people, particularly the young Jews, to know that there’s a place for you, no matter if you’re a golfer, a swimmer, a gymnast, a baseball player, whatever you want to do, that you can go on to achieve greatness and that greatness will be recognized,” Rosenberg says.

“The reality is, if I stood at the hall of fame on any given day, people that are coming in just to see the hall of fame, we couldn’t get a minyan,” Rosenberg says, referencing Judaism’s 10-person prayer quorum. “Maybe over the course of a year. But we do get the sort of incidental traffic, people that are going to the JCC for other activities.”

The Philadelphia hall’s journey to the JCC was not a simple one. The collection used to have a permanent space at a local YMHA, featuring typical sports artifacts like bats and jerseys. Then it moved into the Jewish federation building — until September 2021, when Hurricane Ida caused severe flooding that destroyed

much of the hall of fame’s memorabilia. The current exhibit at the JCC is more two-dimensional, Rosenberg said.

One of the Philadelphia inductees is Arn Tellem, the vice chairman of the NBA’s Detroit Pistons and a longtime agent who represented A-list athletes like Kobe Bryant. Throughout the 2000s, Tellem was regularly ranked among the top agents in all of sports, and he is a member of the Southern California, Michigan and Philadelphia Jewish Sports Halls of Fame.

By the time Tellem got the call from the Philadelphia hall in 2015, he had received his fair share of recognition. But that didn’t make this honor count any less for the Philadelphia native. Rosenberg said Tellem “couldn’t wait to come” to the ceremony, bringing three tables worth of supporters with him.

“Arn Tellem isn’t doing this for recognition, or for money, or for fame,” Rosenberg says. “He has that. It means something to him.”