April 8, 2015 edition of The Reporter

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VOLUME XIII, NUMBER 8

APRIL 9, 2015

Glassman to speak at JCC on May 28 Lee Glassman, a tour guide for the Federation, will speak to the community on Thursday, May 28, at 7 pm, at the Scranton Jewish Community Center, 601 Jefferson Ave. Glassman was born in Scranton, the son of Aaron and Marion Glassman.

Marion’s parents, Sarah and Abraham Rubin, owned a clothing store in the Pine Brook section of Scranton. Aaron’s father, Rabbi Jacob Glassman, was rabbi of the flats’ B’nai Israel Congregation for 50 years.

boys, Ari and Rafi. Kim is a Lee attended Scranton Hebook designer. brew Day School, Scranton Lee’s brother, Alan, lives Central High, Widener Univerin Clarks Summit and is vice sity, the University of Scranton president of Riggs Asset Manand New York University. He agement Company in Wilkesentered into the family busiBarre. Lee’s sister, Diane, and ness, G&G Sewing Machine her husband, Bob Rosenschein, Company, prior to making of Harrisburg, founder of Analiyah with his wife, Lynn, swers.com and Curiyo, made and daughters Rhea and Kim aliyah in 1983. in 1989. Rhea is married to Lee Glassman Lee has participated in Simon Plosker, senior editor of HonestReporting.com. They have two several archeological excavations and

has brought hundreds of people to digs.

A licensed tour guide in Israel, Lee works for government agencies as well as the business community, who take advantage of his perspective in bringing Israel into focus for many visitors. “He enjoys connecting people to Israel and revealing a land rich with splendor, history, culture and tradition, and looks at every day in Israel as an adventure,” said organizers of the event.

To RSVP, contact Dassy Ganz at 570961-2300, ext. 2.

Will Netanyahu join partners’ push for the poor?

By Ben Sales TEL AVIV (JTA) – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel got his wish in recent Israeli elections: a larger and more stable right-wing government marching in lockstep on security and diplomacy. But while the coming coalition may be more unified when it comes to the conflict with the Palestinians, it is likely to be split on another question: how to spend taxpayer money.

Two of Netanyahu’s incoming coalition partners – the centrist Kulanu and the haredi Orthodox Shas parties – ran campaigns aimed at refocusing Israel’s economic priorities below the poverty line. Under Netanyahu, Israel has shed much of its historic socialist character to emerge as one of the developed world’s most economically unequal countries.

“In the Republican terms of the U.S., Netanyahu is more Republican than the Republicans,” said Hebrew University public policy professor Momi Dahan. “He’s against taxes and subsidies. Shas, I can imagine that will be its demand – to raise subsidies. And the flip side will be raising taxes.”

Security is a perennial concern of Israeli voters, but Netanyahu’s last two coalitions collapsed partly due to budgetary conflicts.

In 2012, the prime minister called elections after struggling to gain support for an austerity budget. Two years later, he went to the polls again after clashing with then-Finance Minister Yair Lapid over the defense budget and Lapid’s controversial proposal to cut the sales tax on new apartments for certain young couples.

Netanyahu could have an even harder time accommodating his poverty-minded partners this time around. Shas based its campaign this year on caring for “transpar-

ent” poor Israelis. Netanyahu and Lapid, Shas claimed, had forsaken the poor in 2013 with cuts to subsidies for children and religious students, and with a sales tax hike. The party’s economic platform called for raising taxes on the rich, increasing the minimum wage and providing more funding for public housing.

One Shas ad, hung around the posh Tel Aviv neighborhood of Ramat Aviv, read, “If you live in Ramat Aviv, don’t vote for us. If you work for someone who lives in Ramat Aviv, only Shas.”

“In the past decade, Likud looked for new partners,” Shas Chairman Aryeh Deri said in a campaign ad in early March. “Friends, what are you doing with these people, who know to care only for the rich?”

That message was a theme as well for Kulanu, the new party led by Moshe Kahlon, a former Likud minister who broke away in 2014, claiming Likud had lost its populist ethos and did too little to help the poor. During the campaign, Kulanu also accused Netanyahu of neglecting low-income Israelis and ignoring Israel’s ballooning housing prices.

Eli Alalouf, Kulanu’s third-ranking lawmaker, wrote a government-commissioned report on fighting poverty last year that advocated raising unemployment benefits – a proposal Netanyahu did not adopt.

In 2009, as communications minister under Netanyahu, Kahlon lowered cellphone prices by increasing competition in the market. He has promised to apply the same model to Israel’s housing sector, selling off state land and streamlining the housing bureaucracy under a single authority. “How does the public not see that they’re tricking it in front of its eyes?” Kahlon asked in a February speech. “They’re pulling it left,

At left: Shas Chairman Aryeh Deri celebrated exit poll results on March 17. Shas made alleviating poverty a centerpiece of its 2015 campaign. (Photo by Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

right, left, right, and meanwhile the cost of living is rising and the dream of an apartment is getting further and further away from young couples.”

Unlike Shas, which wants higher taxes and more direct government payments to lower-income Israelis, Kahlon is a believer in market-based solutions to the housing crisis – a fact analysts say will make it easier for he and Netanyahu to chart a path forward. Netanyahu, after all, backed Kahlon’s mobile phone reform.

“I think they understand each other,” said Noam Gruber, a senior fellow at the Taub Center for social policy. “They have the same capitalist outlook, but Kahlon is more social capitalism and Netanyahu is more American capitalism. I don’t think it’s a recipe for a crisis.”

Shas’ demands may be harder for Netanyahu to stomach. The prime minister’s economic record is filled with policy reforms aimed at privatizing public companies, trimming the budget and scaling back Israel’s once robust social safety net. In the midst of an economic crisis in 2003, Netanyahu reduced child allowances and welfare subsidies, cut income and corporate tax rates, and sold off stock in major industries.

Such policies helped maintain Israel’s economic growth rate during the worldwide economic slowdown in 2009 and kept unemployment below 6 percent going into 2015. But Israeli wealth inequality is now on par with the United States and nearly a quarter of Israeli families live below the poverty line – numbers that rank among the worst in the developed world.

Despite all that, however, Dahan says the demands of the haredi politicians may soften if it leads them to regain control of Israel’s religious services.

“In the short term, they’re a pretty comfort-

Federation on Facebook

The Jewish Federation of Northeastern Pennsylvania now has a page on Facebook to let community members know about upcoming events and keep connected.

INSIDE THIS ISSUE Jewish reads

Refuge in a zoo

Ayelet Tsabari’s stories reflect During World War II, some Jews her Yemenite background; and a found a safe refuge hiding in the review of three books.

Warsaw Zoo. Stories on page 6 Story on page 11

News in brief...

A homeless man in Jerusalem. Under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel has emerged as one of the developed world’s most economically unequal countries. (Photo by Yonatan Sindel/Flash90) able partner,” Dahan said of the haredi parties.

“If Netanyahu gives them sectoral privileges, he can buy them. They’ll get in line with whatever the government chooses.”

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Pay it forward & give to the 2015 Jewish Federation of Northeastern Pennsylvania Annual Campaign!

Goal: $896,000 For information or to make a donation call 570-961-2300 ext. 1 or send your gift to: Jewish Federation of Northeastern Pennsylvania 601 Jefferson Ave., Scranton, PA 18510

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Candle lighting April 9............................................7:18 pm April 10..........................................7:19 pm April 17......................................... 7:27 pm April 24......................................... 7:34 pm

The P.A. officially joins the ICC; David’s Sling passes key tests; PLUS and more.

Opinion........................................................2 Stories on page 15 D’var Torah..............................................10

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THE REPORTER ■ april 9, 2015

a matter of opinion My son’s encounter with anti-Jewish hatred

By Michael Douglas (JTA) – Last summer our family went to southern Europe on holiday. During our stay at a hotel, our son Dylan went to the swimming pool. A short time later he came running back to the room, upset.

A man at the pool had started hurling insults at him.

My first instinct was to ask, “Were you misbehaving?”

“No,” Dylan told me through his tears.

I stared at him. And suddenly I had an awful realization of what might have caused the man’s outrage: Dylan was wearing a Star of David.

After calming him down, I went to the pool and asked the attendants to point out the man who had yelled at him. We talked. It was not a pleasant discussion.

Afterward, I sat down with my son and said: “Dylan, you just had your first taste of antisemitism.”

My father, Kirk Douglas, born Issur Danielovitch, is Jewish. My mother, Diana, is not. I had no formal religious upbringing from either of them, and the two kids I have with Catherine Zeta-Jones are like me, growing up with one parent who is Jewish and one who is not.

Several years ago Dylan, through his friends, developed a deep connection to Judaism, and when he started going to Hebrew school and studying for his bar mitzvah, I began to reconnect with the religion of my father.

While some Jews believe that not having a Jewish mother makes me not Jewish, I have learned the hard way that those who hate do not make such fine distinctions.

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Dylan’s experience reminded me of my first encounter with antisemitism, in high school. A friend saw someone Jewish walk by, and with no provocation he confidently told me: “Michael, all Jews cheat in business.”

“What are you talking about?” I said.

“Michael, come on,” he replied. “Everyone knows that.”

With little knowledge of what it meant to be a Jew, I found myself passionately defending the Jewish people. Now, half a century later, I have to defend my son.

Antisemitism, I’ve seen, is like a disease that goes dormant, flaring up with the next political trigger.

In my opinion there are three reasons antisemitism is appearing now with renewed vigilance.

The first is that historically, it always grows more virulent whenever and wherever the economy is bad. In a time when income disparity is growing, when hundreds of millions of people live in abject poverty, some find Jews to be a convenient scapegoat rather than looking at the real source of their problems.

A second root cause of antisemitism derives from an irrational and misplaced hatred of Israel. Far too many people see Israel as an apartheid state and blame the people of an entire religion for what, in truth, are internal national-policy decisions. Does anyone really believe that the innocent victims in that kosher shop in Paris and at that bar mitzvah in Denmark had anything to do with Israeli-Palestin-

ian policies or the building of settlements 2,000 miles away?

The third reason is simple demographics. Europe is now home to 25 million to 30 million Muslims, twice the world’s entire Jewish population. Within any religious community that large, there will always be an extremist fringe, people who are radicalized and driven with hatred, while rejecting what all religions need to preach – respect, tolerance and love. We’re now seeing the amplified effects of that small, radicalized element. With the Internet, its virus of hatred can now speed from nation to nation, helping fuel Europe’s new epidemic of antisemitism. It is time for each of us to speak up against this hate.

Speaking up is the responsibility of our political leaders. French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has made it clear that antisemitism violates the morals and spirit of France and that violent antisemitic acts are a crime against all French people that must be confronted, combated and stopped. He challenged his nation to tell the world: Without its Jews, France would no longer be France.

Speaking up is the responsibility of our religious leaders, and Pope Francis has used his powerful voice to make his position and that of the Catholic Church clear, saying: “It’s a contradiction that a Christian is antisemitic. His roots are Jewish. Let antisemitism be banished from the heart and life of every man and every woman.”

In New York, Cardinal Timothy M.

Dolan is well-known for building a bridge to the Jewish community. His words and actions and the pope’s are evidence of the reconciliation between two major religions, an inspiring example of how a past full of persecution and embedded hostility can be overcome.

It’s also the responsibility of regular citizens to take action. In Oslo, members of the Muslim community joined their fellow Norwegians to form a ring of peace at a local synagogue. Such actions give me hope – they send a message that together, we can stand up to hatred of the Jewish people.

So that is our challenge in 2015, and all of us must take it up. Because if we confront antisemitism whenever we see it, if we combat it individually and as a society, and use whatever platform we have to denounce it, we can stop the spread of this madness.

My son is strong. He is fortunate to live in a country where antisemitism is rare. But now he, too, has learned of the dangers that he as a Jew must face. It’s a lesson that I wish I didn’t have to teach him, a lesson I hope he will never have to teach his children.

Michael Douglas, award-winning actor/producer and United Nations messenger of peace, received the 2015 Genesis Prize, which honors “exceptional people whose values and achievements will inspire the next generation of Jews.”

This article first appeared in the Los Angeles Times.

Phony Obama-Netanyahu conflict diverts attention from real issues

By Abraham H. Miller JNS.org Until the Obama administration decided to shift its support away from Israel because of a rather torturous interpretation of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s campaign rhetoric, it seemed absurd that a major policy decision against an ally would ever turn on the hyperbole of a political campaign.

Even after Netanyahu clarified his remarks, the administration is persisting in its reassessment of policy not toward Netanyahu, but toward the Jewish state.

Contrast this with the administration’s behavior toward Palestinian leaders who routinely advocate genocide, call Jews the descendants of apes and pigs, incite vio-

lence against innocents, name parks and schools after mass murderers and openly allude to peace negotiations as strategic steps toward Israel’s elimination.

Yet the Obama administration has not found that any of this rises to the level to warrant a change in policy toward the Palestinians. American administrations have typically met Israel’s outrage against Palestinian incitement, provocation and terrorism with cautious patronizing and the urging of restraint.

Days after Yasser Arafat signed the Oslo Accords, the Palestinian leader characterized the treaty by alluding to the Prophet Mohammed’s peace of Mecca.

Arafat reminded his followers that Mohammed broke the agreement when he felt

letters to the editor Guterman Fund does mitzvah

To the Editor: Rabbi Henry Guterman was a recognized, world-renowned scholar, revered by his congregation at Scranton’s Machzikeh Hadas synagogue and respected by all in the area. Residing in Scranton from 1910 for more than 56 years, he served as the city’s chief Orthodox rabbi for more than a half century and witnessed the beginning, growth and development of Scranton’s organizations and agencies from inception. No communal occasion was complete without him, it is said, because he represented the one great integrating force within the Jewish community.

On November 8, 1966, shortly after Rabbi Guterman’s death, the late Morris Gelb sent a letter to the community establishing the “Rabbi Henry Guterman Foundation” and requested funds from the community “for the purpose of fostering education, charity and religion of the kind and quality practiced by your beloved rabbi.” As a token of love, respect and

admiration for his work and his memory, a fund was established in his name to provide area synagogues with the funds necessary to ensure that the less fortunate members of the community could celebrate Passover in accordance with Jewish tradition.

Since that time, the income from the Foundation was wisely administered by the late Larry Preven, former president of the Foundation, and has brought great joy and happiness not only to needy families during the Passover holiday season, but also to provide Hebrew school graduates with Judaica gifts to honor their graduation.

As Marilyn Preven noted in a recent letter to the Federation, “I hope (as Larry wished) that you will continue doing all the good that the fund has done in the past with the necessary acknowledgments and that the monies will bring happiness to those who receive it.”

Each year, more than $2,500 in income from the foundation is forwarded

strong enough to take the city.

The American response was as typical then as it is now – Israel should not overreact to Palestinian hyperbole.

So, why is Palestinian terrorism and verbal evasion met with endless rationalization, while something as insignificant as Israeli campaign rhetoric results in harsh policy changes?

The explanation is quite simple.

President Barack Obama has long been looking for an excuse to create daylight between his administration and Israel.

The conflict with Netanyahu is not about Netanyahu; it is about the administration grabbing a fig leaf to justify a move toward the Palestinians.

See “Issues” on page 8

to Jewish Family Service for distribution to area synagogues for distribution to their most needy families. Jewish Family Service also conducts a community maos chitim (tzedakah request) mailing, thereby increasing the funds available for these purposes.

The Jewish Federation of Northeastern Pennsylvania wishes to express its appreciation to the founders and the benefactors of the Rabbi Henry Guterman Foundation who, throughout many years, have never forgotten his work and continue to honor his memory with these good deeds.

On behalf of our president, Michael Greenstein, and the officers and trustees of this Federation, I extend to each and all of you our very best wishes for a wonderful Passover holiday, good health and long life for many years to come.

Mark Silverberg Executive Director Jewish Federation of Northeastern Pennsylvania

april 9, 2015 ■

THE REPORTER

3

community news Comedian Andy Pitz to headline Temple Hesed comedy show on May 2 New York city comedian Andy Pitz will headline the Temple Hesed program “A Night of Comedy” on Saturday, May 2, at 8 pm, at the temple, 1 Knox Rd., Scranton.

Tickets cost $18 in advance or $20 at the door. Patron tickets, which cost $50, entitle purchasers to two drinks.

Beer, wine and soda will be available for purchase, and snacks will be provided. Guests must be 21 or older to attend. Doors will open at 7 pm.

Pitz’s New York style has been said to “bring out the funny in the familiar” and “mock the mundane.” He enjoys topics such as technology, social networking, marriage, parenthood and more. In addition performing in comedy

venues across the nation, he has appeared on “The Late Show with David Letterman” and “The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson.” He is a regular performer at New York City’s comedy clubs, including Comic Strip Live and the Gotham Comedy Club.

Joining Pitz will be Teri Granahan, a former New York City comedian who now resides in the Poconos.

Granahan is said to have a following in Northeastern Pennsylvania and won Best Comedian in both the Electric City newspaper and Diamond City’s “Best of” reader polls.

Tyler Rothrock, formerly from the Lehigh Valley

but now residing and performing in the New York City comedy circuit, will perform and host the show as master of ceremonies.

Last year’s “A Night of Comedy” also featured a New York City comedienne and drew more than 200 guests. “‘A Night of Comedy’ is perfect for anyone age 21 and older who enjoys a good laugh without undue lewdness,” said organizers of the program.

To order tickets, visit www.hesed.eventbrite.com or call 570-344-7201.

Temple Hesed is celebrating its 155 th year in Scranton.

Program on Jewish-Catholic relations to be held on May 7 The Weinberg Judaica Studies Institute of the University of Scranton has invited the community to attend “The Church and the Jews, Fifty Years After Vatican II” on Thursday, May 7, at 7:30 pm, in the Brennan Auditorium. The speakers will be Dr. David Berger, of Yeshiva University, and Dr. Philip Cunningham, of St. Joseph’s University. They will discuss changes that have occurred in Catholic-Jewish relations in the last 50 years.

Berger is the Ruth and I. Lewis Gordon Professor of Jewish History and dean at the Bernard Revel Graduate School of Yeshiva University. For many years, he was a professor of history at Brooklyn College and the Gradu-

ate Center of the City University of New York. He is the author of “The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages” and numerous articles on medieval Jewish history, Jewish-Christian relations, antisemitism, contemporary Judaism and the intellectual history of the Jews.

Cunningham is a professor of theology, specializing in Christian-Jewish relations, and director of the Institute for Jewish-Catholic Relations of Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, PA. He also serves as president of the International Council of Christians and Jews, secretary-treasurer of the Council of Centers on Jewish-Christian Relations and has been a member of

Cantor Wolkenstein in Mostly Opera’s “Great Moments in Opera” Mostly Opera will present “Great Moments in Opera” on Sunday, April 19, at 3 pm, at Covenant Presbyterian Church, 550 Madison Ave., Scranton. The program will celebrate “masterpieces of opera tradition,” inEric Sparks Cantor Marshall Sarah Houck cluding works by Verdi, Dennis Fanucci Wolkenstein Donizetti and Mozart.

Excerpts will be performed by professional singers from Northeastern Pennsylvania, including Cantor Marshall as “acoustically perfect.” Parking will be available adWolkenstein, Dennis Fanucci, Eric Sparks and Sarah jacent to the church.

Tickets cost $25 for adults or $7 for students, and include Houck. There will be scenes performed in costume, acrefreshments at intermission. To make a reservation, send a companied by an ensemble orchestra.

The concert will include performances from Verdi’s check payable to Mostly Opera, 142 N. Washington Ave., “La Traviata,” “Aida,” “Otello” and “Ernani”; Donizetti’s Suite 800, Scranton, PA 18503. Tickets will be available “L’Elisir D’amour” and “Lucia di Lammermoor”; Ros- at the door. For more information, call 570-702-4356. sini’s “Barber of Seville”; and Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro” and “The Magic Flute.”

The Covenant Presbyterian Church has been described

the Advisory Committee on Catholic-Jewish Relations for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

He is also webmaster of Dialogika, the CCJR’s online resource site. He is the author of the forthcoming book, “Seeking Shalom: The Journey to Right Relationship between Catholics and Jews,” slated for publication in 2015 by Eerdmans Publishing Co. He is also a member of the Christian Scholars Group on Christian-Jewish Relations and contributed to its 2002 statement, “A Sacred Obligation: Rethinking Christian Faith in Relation to Judaism and the Jewish People,” and its 2005 book, “Seeing Judaism Anew: Christianity’s Sacred Obligation” (Sheed and Ward).

S E N I L D A E D The following are deadlines for all articles and photos for upcoming Reporter issues.

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Thursday, April 9............................. April 23 Thursday, April 23.............................. May 7 Thursday, May 7............................... May 21 Thursday, May 21............................... June 4 Sohmer Baby Grand Piano for sale in Syracuse Original ivory keyboard.

Dark walnut case.

Older, but in very good condition. Piano bench included. Valued at $6,000 but price negotiable. Contact syrgal6@gmail.com.

ÊCheck out the Federation’s new, updated website at www.jewishnepa.org or find it on Facebook

4

THE REPORTER ■ april 9, 2015

Bais Yaakov students held a celebration

Bais Yaakov students held a siyum celebration in honor of their learning the shaishes y’mai beraishis (six days of creation) in the book of Beraishis (Bereshit).

New students in the Bais Yaakov of Scranton, Avigail Lopez, Tzilah Blima Pion and Rayzel Gittel Pion, completed their learning with teacher Rabbi Yaakov Bilus.

Each student presented a d’var Torah, and also their gratitude to Bilus and others “who made their great accomplishment possible,” noted a Bais Yaakov representative.

Divrei bracha and gratitude were spoken by Rabbi Avrohom Goldstein, the head of the Toiras Chesed community worldwide. Bilus spoke, describing for

those in attendance the girls’ achievements and their growth in Torah learning. Rabbi Mordechai Dov Fine expressed “the enthusiasm” brought by the new members of the community.

“Together with Rabbi Avrohom Goldstein, they have become a significant part of the Scranton Orthodox community and

are beloved by everyone,” said a Bais Yaakov representative.

Thirty people attended the siyum, including Rabbi Yisroel Brotsky, rav of the Beth Shalom Synagogue, and parents of the girls, teachers and staff. “We are looking forward to even greater achievements,” said a Bais Yaakov representative.

Sarah Schenirer 80th yahrzeit commemorated at Bais Yaakov of Scranton on March 17

The Bais Yaakov High School of Scranton held a commemorative event for students, staff and mothers of students in memory of Sarah Schenirer on March 17.

Special guest speaker Rabbi Mordechai Dov Fine, morah d’asra of Machzikeh Hadas in Scranton, began the program by giving background to who Sarah Schenirer was and what she accomplished.

Fine portrayed why Schenirer felt the need for a Torah education for girls. In 1917, in Crackow, girls only attended public schools and received no formal Jewish education. “Although raised in religious

homes, they lacked the fire of a Jewish education, which their brothers attending yeshivot were privileged to receive,” explained a Bais Yaakov representative.

Schenirer realized that Jewish girls “would be lost” if they did not receive this education as well. She received the blessings of three leaders of the time – the Belzer Rebbe, the Gerrer Rebbe and the Chofetz Chaim – and began recruiting.

She opened her first kindergarten class with 25 students and from then it grew to 300 schools in Poland alone, before the outbreak of World War II.

With the Bais Yaakov movement born, schools opened throughout Eastern Europe. After World War II, a number of her students came to America and, under the leadership of Rebbetzin Vichna Kaplan, continued her legacy. Today there are numerous Bais Yaakov schools all around the world.

Guest speaker Rebbetzin Sossa Pernikoff portrayed her own life experiences growing up in Montreal, where most girls attended public school. Pernikoff, who became known as the “geveret,” grew up in “an illustrious family.” At the age of 12½, she announced to her family that she wanted to attend Bais Yaakov High School in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY. Considered “unheard of at that time, especially

for someone so young,” she convinced her family and traveled by train to New York City. She was not greeted by anyone, but was said to be “determined to succeed.”

Despite being so far away from home, she made up her mind to learn as much Torah as she could and grow as a young Jewish woman. Determined to marry a Talmid chochom (Torah scholar), she married Rabbi Meir Pernikoff, who attended the Telz Yeshiva in Cleveland and became a well-known mohel. Together they went to Plymouth, PA, and began a Talmud Torah school. Sossa has been teaching both young and older students in the United Hebrew Institute in Wilkes-Barre, as well as Talmud Torah and adult education, for more than 60 years.

Front row (l-r): Esther Malka Pion, Dovid Hernandez and Hadassah Lopez. Back row: Tzilah Pion, Michele Ackerman, Rebbetzin Sossa Pernikoff, Rayzel Pion, Esther Elefant, Chana Valencia, Miriam Chodosh, Avigayil Lopez and Raizel Valencia.

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Rabbi Mordechai Dov Fine addressed the attendees of a commemoration of the yahrzeit of Sarah Schenirer on March 17.

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THE REPORTER

For U.S. journalists, Ben-Gurion U. science mission more than an assignment

By Deborah Fineblum Schabb JNS.org “The difficult we do immediately, the impossible takes a little longer.” When Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, spoke those words, he could very well have been referring to the scientific breakthroughs that were destined to emerge from the school that would bear his name.

What Ben-Gurion may not have envisioned is the emergence of an annual rite in which American journalists see those discoveries for themselves. After 10 years, the Murray Fromson AABGU (American Associates, Ben-Gurion University) Media Mission has brought nearly 100 reporters and editors from across the Atlantic for an up-close look at the cutting-edge research taking place at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (or BGU), which is home to some 20,000 undergraduate and graduate students.

“We want them (the journalists) to see that, although it’s so new, only 45 years old, this university was the realization of Ben-Gurion’s vision of a world-class research center in the heart of the desert,” said Ronni Strongin, the AABGU vice president who kickstarted the media trip. “With each group of journalists who come and see it, the news gets out there about the amazing things going on here.”

The theme of this year’s mission – which wrapped up on March 20 after a week of demonstrations and insider briefings by top scientific researchers – were the health and medical discoveries currently in process at BGU. The showcase included research and innovations in the fields of neuroscience and imaging, stem cell research, biomedical robotics, biopharma and medical informatics.

Since this year’s theme was scientific and medical breakthroughs, several of the nine journalists on the mission were science reporters. For them, including Tanya Lewis, a staff writer with LiveScience.com, the “gee-whiz factor” ran high.

“I’m really into robotics so it’s been great being here,” Lewis said after a briefing on diagnostic robotics designed to crawl through the human body. “To see the technology they’ve come up with here and the ones still in development and their medical uses is just exciting.”

Among the highlights of this year’s mission: At the BGU Department of Physiology and Neurobiology’s Zlotowski Center for Neuroscience, Prof.

Alon Friedman’s team is developing a drug to prevent epilepsy after brain injury by repairing the blood-brain barrier, a network of blood vessels filtering the blood flowing to the brain.

Visiting the Sleep Unit Department of Biomedical Engineering’s Biomedical Signal Processing Lab, the journalists were among the first to hear of a new diagnostic approach to sleep problems using a non-contact, non-invasive audio process, rather than hooking patients up to uncomfortable sensors in costly sleep centers.

In the Laboratory for Rehabilitation and Motor Control of Walking, Dr. Simona Bar-Haim and her team of researchers run a program that helps teens with Cerebral Palsy live more independent lives. The journalists were invited to try on the “Re-Step,” a shoe for training people with brain injuries, strokes and Cerebral Palsy who struggle with impaired mobility, allowing them to practice walking on changing surfaces. “It’s incredible that they can actually retrain patterns in the brain that have been damaged,” said Melissa Gerr, a reporter for the Baltimore Jewish Times.

“It was pretty amazing to see that.”

Dr. David Zarrouk, director of the Bioinspired and Medical Robotics Laboratory, showed off his team’s tiny robots. Some resembled cockroaches, others were designed to travel the length of a human intestine. Bioinspired, he explained, means guided, but not limited, by nature. “We want to combine the knowledge of nature with 21st century technology,” said Zarrouk. BGU is considered one of the world’s foremost centers of robotics research and design.

As the journalists peered through a microscope at a beating heart cell, Dr. Rivka Ofir of BGU’s new Center for Regenerative Medicine, Cellular Therapy and Stem Cell Research presented the journalists with “disease in a dish” – a technique of programming a patient’s diseased cells into any kind of cell that will best allow them to be studied for the root cause of the problem. Ofir also shared her years of research into the effect of the lemongrass plant and her findings on its positive impact on immunity against disease.

As they pulled their suitcases toward the waiting van, the journalists reflected on what they had learned. “We got to see the exciting things they’re doing here, and some of them in their early stages,” said Amishai Gottlieb of

At left: On the American Associates, Ben-Gurion University media mission, Alexandra Lapkin – a reporter for The Jewish Advocate of Boston – tried on shoes designed to help people with strokes, Cerebral Palsy and brain injuries learn to walk. (Photo by Ronni Strongin)

Philadelphia’s Jewish Exponent. “I especially thought the sleep apnea study was very cool.”

5

Dr. Rivka Carmi, president of BGU, described the annual media mission as an “exceptional program that showcases a completely different side of Israel – science and innovation, community outreach and the Negev.” To maximize the mission’s impact, she said, “We invite people who might otherwise never visit this part of Israel, to open their eyes to the exciting work being done here.”

In fact, Alexandra Lapkin, a reporter with The Jewish Advocate of Boston, used the very same image to describe her experience. “It’s been an eye-opening week,” she said. The research was fascinating for her, but simply being in Israel was just as powerful.

“What happens is, the view of Israel gets very muddled from far away,” Lapkin said. “You have to see it for yourself, wander the city streets, and see all kinds of people sitting at outdoor cafes, happy and surprisingly… peaceful.”

In fact, the “all kinds of people” aspect was a fundamental take-away for the media mission participants. “It’s not the way I thought it would be here,” said LiveScience. com’s Lewis. “There is an immense diversity of people and cultures here that I didn’t expect.”

You are cordially invited to the

ANNUAL MEETING

of the Jewish Federation of Northeastern Pennsylvania Please join us as we elect Officers and Trustees, celebrate the achievements of the past year and honor several individuals for their leadership contributions to our community and to Israel

Thursday, June 11, 7pm Koppelman Auditorium, Scranton Jewish Community Center 601 Jefferson Avenue, Scranton Dessert reception & film will follow the meeting.

RSVP to 961-2300 (ext. 4)

Jewish Federation of Northeastern Pennsylvania

2015 ANNUAL MEETING PROGRAM Welcome & introductions.....................Douglas Fink, Federation Vice-President Invocation................................................Rabbi Daniel Swartz, Temple Hesed Federation Perspectives .........................Douglas Fink, Federation Vice-President Presentation of Presidential Award .....Mark Silverberg, Executive Director Presentation of Campaign Awards ......Douglas Fink, Federation Vice-President 2015 UJA Campaign Report ................Mark and Joan Davis Nominating Committee Report ...........Seth Gross, Chairman Installation of Officers and Trustees....Rabbi Daniel Swartz, Temple Hesed Closing Remarks Dr. David Malinov Reception

ÊCheck out the Federation’s new, updated website at www.jewishnepa.org or find it on Facebook

6

THE REPORTER ■ april 9, 2015

Ayelet Tsabari’s award-winning stories reflect Yemenite background, global outlook

By Beth Kissileff (JTA) – Ayelet Tsabari acted as a child and teen, appearing in Habima’s youth performances in Israel, a commercial and some student films. Although Tsabari no longer acts, the author of the Ayelet Tsabari: “I love award-winning “The Best accessing different Place on Earth” feels that the characters to put myself experience of fiction writing in characters that are not is not entirely unlike acting. necessarily me.” (Photo “I love accessing different by Sean Brererton) characters to put myself in characters that are not necessarily me,” she says.

Tsabari, 41, speaks of her fiction as a process of “embodying” her characters, be they a Yemenite grandmother, a Filipina caretaker in Israel, a young woman in the Israeli army or an Indian man who is a British citizen.

She elaborates, “I do believe that we are all human, and I can relate to most people. You have to find that kernel of truth in you.”

Tsabari’s collection of short stories – for which she recently won the Sami Rohr Prize for Fiction – reflects that diversity, with tales set in India and Canada, as well as Israel, and with characters of varied ages and nationalities. Administered by the Jewish Book Council, the $100,000 Rohr Prize is the largest literary prize in the Jewish world and is intended for writers early in their careers who have published one or two books. The prize alternates between fiction and nonfiction each year and is awarded to “a book of literary merit that stimulates an interest in themes of Jewish concern.”

Tsabari grew up in Israel, but has lived in Canada for 16 years, having “followed a guy” she met in India when she was in her 20s. “I never planned to stay as long as I did,” she says.

Tsabari now lives in Toronto with her husband, but is currently in Israel for a project. In an interview via Skype, she says she is “comfortable with multiple identities and languages and places I call home” while at the

same time missing Israel. “I still long for Israel all the time,” she adds. “This is why I write about [it] as much as I do. “ Although “pretty much everything that I write is about Israel,” she says, the “longing for a place, the sense of being away, is a very Jewish theme.”

Tsabari’s family emigrated from Yemen to Israel, and many of her characters are Jews of The cover of Ayelet Mizrahi (from Arab countries) Tsabari’s award- background. As she said in the w i n n i n g s t o r y Sami Rohr prize news release, collection, “The Best “By portraying characters of Mizrahi background I was hoping Place on Earth.” to complicate readers’perceptions of Israel and Jewishness, and to expand and broaden their ideas of what a Jewish story and Jewish experience can be.”

In one “Best Place on Earth” story, “The Poets in the Kitchen Window,” a Mizrahi boy who loves to write poetry tells his sister he has stopped. She asks why, and he says, “Name one Mizrahi poet.” His sister takes a drag on her cigarette, and he continues, “See.” Her answer: “Maybe that’s exactly why you should write.

Ever think about that?”

The characters then continue to play a game in which they make poetry together out of the things that surround them. Later the sister brings her brother a volume of poetry by the Baghdad-born Israeli poet Roni Someck.

Tsabari says “The Poets in the Kitchen Window” was a very personal story because her father had always wanted to be a poet, but put it aside to go into a practical career, law, and to support his family of six children. He had been set to start studying poetry again in his early 40s when he passed away suddenly.

In the months since winning the Rohr prize, Tsabari says she often finds herself shaking her head without speaking – her way of expressing that she can’t articulate

Friends of The Reporter Dear Friend of The Reporter, Each year at this time the Jewish Federation of Northeastern Pennsylvania calls upon members of our community to assist in defraying the expense of issuing our regional Jewish newspaper, The Reporter.

The newspaper is delivered twice of month (except for December and July which are single issue months) to each and every identifiable Jewish home in Northeastern Pennsylvania.

columns that cover everything from food to entertainment.

The Federation assumes the financial responsibility for funding the enterprise at a cost of $26,400 per year and asks only that we undertake a small letter writing mail campaign to our recipients in the hope of raising $10,000 from our readership to alleviate a share of that responsibility.

We would be grateful if you would care enough to take the time to make a donation for our efforts in bringing The Reporter to your door.

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As always, your comments, opinions and suggestions are always welcome.

With best wishes, Mark Silverberg, Executive Director Jewish Federation of NE Pennsylvania 601 Jefferson Avenue Scranton, PA 18510

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all the good things that have happened as a result. Random House has agreed to publish her next two books – a memoir and a novel – as well as publish “The Best Place on Earth” in the United States. (Currently, it is published only in Canada, by HarperCollins Canada.)

But even before winning the Rohr, Tsabari was earning recognition. She is in Israel on the Ontario Arts Council’s Chalmers Arts Fellowship, which supports artists in projects to advance their careers and inspire and inform their work. Tsabari’s project: recording the stories and songs of elderly Yemenite women. The project is so exciting, she says, it gives her “goosebumps on a regular basis.”

She isn’t quite sure how she will use the material she is collecting, but she feels an “urgency” to speak to these women since they are elderly and dying.

Although she is a native Hebrew speaker, Tsabari now writes in English (“The Best Place on Earth” has not yet been translated into Hebrew). She compares writing in a new language to living in a new country, and says it feels like “mirroring the act of migration.” It’s also another way of inhabiting new selves and new roles.

Book review

Three for spring

by RABBI RACHEL ESSERMAN First it’s snowing, then it’s raining, then it’s icy, then there’s a beautiful, warm spring day followed by... snow, then rain, then ice... You get the idea. There’s only one thing to do when the weather is this volatile: read. (Bet that came as a surprise.) The three novels in this review don’t have much in common except for featuring Jewish characters, but all offer something of interest.

“Florence Gordon” Have you ever fallen in love with a fictional character?

By page 3 of Brian Morton’s “Florence Gordon” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), I was in love with the 75-year-old Florence. Her current life is so intellectually interesting she has no interest in recapturing her youth. She accepts what it means to be old, but feels young inside because ideas still inspire her. After all these compliments, what confirmed my love for her, though, was this statement: “She was also, in the opinion of many who knew her, even in the opinion of many who loved her, a complete pain in the neck.”

Florence is a crotchety, feminist New York City Jewish intellectual who has no patience for anyone not up to her intellectual speed. This includes her son, Daniel; daughter-in-law, Janine; and college-age granddaughter, Emily. In fact, she’s not thrilled that Daniel’s family is on an extended stay in the city, even though they have their own apartment and lives. Florence finds Janine’s admiration irritating and doesn’t understand Daniel’s life choices – from his enlistment in the armed services to his current work as a police officer. Only Emily may prove interesting, but that depends on her intellectual stamina and her willingness to follow Florence’s example.

However, anything that interferes with Florence’s current work – a memoir of the 1960s feminist movement – is an inconvenience. What she doesn’t realize, though, is that the members of her family are facing their own challenging dilemmas.

The beauty of Morton’s work is not only the creation of four fascinating characters, but the author’s ability to make us feel their emotions – the wise and foolish ones.

The novel also features several wonderful chapters that make it crystal clear just how easily we misinterpret other people’s reactions – seeing them as a mirror of our own See “Books” on page 13

Notice to our Pocono Readers 911 Emergency Management Services has been updating mailing addresses in Monroe County and Lehman Townships in Pike County. Please don't forget to notify the Federation so you will continue to receive The Reporter.

Thanks, Mark Silverberg, Executive Director Jewish Federation of Northeastern Pennsylvania

april 9, 2015 ■

Framework for Iran nuclear deal reached

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Israel’s strategic affairs minister, Yuval Steinitz, slammed the deal. “The smiles in Lausanne are detached from wretched reality in which Iran refuses to make any concessions on the nuclear issue and continues to threaten Israel and all other countries in the Middle East,” Steinitz said in a statement. “We will continue with our efforts to explain and persuade the world in hopes of preventing a bad (final) agreement.”

Obama also said his administration will be engaging with Congress in the coming weeks. Congress can scuttle the agreement if it can muster a veto-proof majority to negate the deal, uphold existing sanctions or impose new ones on Iran.

“The issues at stake here are bigger than politics; these are matters of war and peace,” Obama said. The president argued that the alternatives to the deal – bombing Iran or imposing additional sanctions – would do less to set back Iran’s nuclear program than the agreement. “A diplomatic solution is the best way to get this done and offers a more comprehensive and lasting solution,” Obama said. “It is our best option by far.”

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By JTA staff (JTA) – A framework for a nuclear deal with Iran has been reached, but significant hurdles remain. At a White House news conference on April 2, President Barack Obama said that the United States and the five other world powers negotiating in Switzerland had reached a “historic understanding with Iran” on a deal that, if fully implemented, would prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. The deadline for a comprehensive agreement is June 30.

“It is a good deal” that would “cut off every pathway” to an Iran nuclear weapon, Obama said of the deal reached in Lausanne two days after the negotiators’ self-imposed deadline. “If this framework leads to a final comprehensive deal, it will make our country, our allies and our world safer.” Cautioning that “Nothing is agreed till everything is agreed,” Obama provided the basic outlines of the accord: Iran will not develop weapons-grade plutonium, and the nuclear facility at Arak will be dismantled and its fuel shipped out of the country.

Iran’s installed centrifuges will be reduced by two-thirds, and Iran won’t enrich uranium using advanced centrifuges for at least 10 years.

International inspectors will have unprecedented access to Iranian nuclear facilities and their entire supply chain.

In exchange, Iran will get relief from certain U.S. and U.N. sanctions, and the relief will be phased in as Iran takes steps to meet its end of the bargain. If Iran violates the deal, the sanctions will “snap back,” Obama said. The president did not specify what sanctions would be lifted or which would remain.

Obama said the deal ensures that Iran’s “breakout time” for acquiring a nuclear weapon is at least a year and imposes strict limitations on Iran’s nuclear program for at least 15 years.

Anticipating criticism from overseas and in Washington, Obama said he would

THE REPORTER

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THE REPORTER ■ april 9, 2015

Science Snippets

Nice to sniff you: handshakes may engage our sense of smell

By WEIZMANN INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE REHOVOT, ISRAEL – Why do people shake hands?

A new study from the Weizmann Institute of Science suggests that one of the reasons for this ancient custom may be to check out each other’s odors. Even if we are not consciously aware of this, handshaking may provide people with a socially acceptable way of communicating via the sense of smell.

Not only do people often sniff their own hands, but they do so for a much longer time after shaking someone else’s hand, the study found. As reported recently in the journal eLife <http://elifesciences.org/content/4/e06758>, the number of seconds the subjects spent sniffing their own right hand more than doubled after an experimenter greeted them with a handshake.

“Our findings suggest that people are not just passively exposed to socially significant chemical signals, but actively seek them out,” said Idan Frumin, the research student who conducted the study under the guidance of Prof. Noam Sobel of Weizmann’s Department of Neurobiology. “Rodents, dogs and other mammals commonly sniff themselves, and they sniff one another in social interactions, and it seems that in the course of evolution, humans have retained this practice – only on a subliminal level.”

To examine whether handshakes indeed transfer body odors, the researchers first had experimenters wearing

gloves shake the subjects’bare hands, then tested the glove for smell residues. They found that a handshake alone was sufficient for the transfer of several odors known to serve as meaningful chemical signals in mammals. “It’s well known that germs can be passed on through skin contact in handshakes, but we’ve shown that potential chemical messages, known as chemosignals, can be passed on in the same manner,” Frumin says.

Next, to explore the potential role of handshakes in communicating odors, the scientists used covert cameras to film some 280 volunteers before and after they were greeted by an experimenter, who either shook their hand or didn’t. The researchers found that after shaking hands with an experimenter of the same gender, subjects more than doubled the time they later spent sniffing their own right hand (the one they used to shake with). In contrast, after shaking hands with an experimenter of the opposite gender, subjects increased the sniffing of their own left hand (the non-shaking one). “The sense of smell plays a particularly important role in interactions within gender, not only across gender as commonly assumed,” Frumin says.

The scientists then performed a series of tests to make sure that the hand-sniffing indeed served the purpose of checking out odors and was not merely a stress-related response to a strange situation. First, they measured nasal airflow during the task and found that subjects were truly sniffing their hands and not just lifting them

Issues An incision into Obama’s ideology would have easily predicted this outcome. He was reared in the American leftists’ understanding of the Arab-Israeli conflict – one that flows from simplistic identity politics. As that narrative goes, Israelis are white-skinned, Western people (in reality they are largely Middle Eastern Jews) exploiting third-world, brown-skinned people.

Israel is characterized as the last vestige of British colonialism, even though Britain did not vote for the creation of Israel and actively supported the Arabs in the 1948 war. Consequently, the Jews have no right to be there and it is their obligation alone to make concessions.

This fatuous narrative dominates Middle East teachings in higher education.

Obama’s friends not only believed this bad rendition of history, but some were also its major proponents. Obama has displayed a penchant for surrounding himself with Israel-bashers such as Rashid Khalidi, Palestine Liberation Organization spokesman and university professor.

From various accounts, Obama made an incriminating, pro-Palestinian speech at a farewell dinner for Khalidi that

to their nose. It turned out that the amount of air inhaled by the volunteers through the nose doubled when they brought their hands to their face. Next, the scientists found they could manipulate the hand-sniffing by artificially introducing different smells into the experimental setting.

For example, when experimenters were tainted with a commercial unisex perfume, the hand-sniffing increased.

In contrast, when the experimenters were tainted with odors derived from sex hormones, the sniffing decreased.

These final tests confirmed the olfactory nature of the hand-sniffing behavior.

Taking part in the study were Ofer Perl, Yaara Endevelt-Shapira, Ami Eisen, Neetai Eshel, Iris Heller, Maya Shemesh, Aharon Ravia, Dr. Lee Sela and Dr. Anat Arzi, all of Sobel’s lab.

“Handshakes vary in strength, duration and posture, so they convey social information of various sorts,” says Prof.

Sobel. “But our findings suggest that at its evolutionary origins, handshaking might have also served to convey odor signals and such signaling may still be a meaningful, albeit subliminal, component of this custom.”

The Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, has been called one of the world’s top-ranking multidisciplinary research institutions. The Institute’s 3,800-strong scientific community engages in research addressing problems in medicine and health, energy, technology, agriculture and the environment.

Continued from page 2

celebrated his move from the University of Chicago to Columbia University. The Los Angeles Times has refused to make public a video of those remarks.

Professor Zbigniew Brzezinski, who openly advocated shooting down Israeli planes if they try to bomb Iran, is another trusted Obama foreign policy adviser. There is Samantha Power, Obama’s U.N. ambassador, who in a radio interview advocated using American troops to protect Palestinians from Israelis. And no such list would be complete without the inclusion of Robert Malley, an apologist for Arafat’s walking away from Camp David and a man whose father was one of Arafat’s advisers.

In his Hyde Park neighborhood in Chicago, Obama associated with ultra-progressive Jews who believed that peace was more likely if Israel, not the Palestinians, were on the receiving end of condemnation. One of Obama’s Jewish neighbors and earliest supporters was Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf. In 1973, Wolf founded Breira, an organization of progressive Jews that was so pro-Palestinian that American Zionists harshly attacked it.

Netanyahu’s campaign statement that “now” is not

a time for a two-state solution was evasive campaign rhetoric. This is no different than presidential candidate Obama calling for an undivided Jewish capital in Jerusalem, only to subsequently amend his statement to mean that Jerusalem should not be divided with barbed wire – a phony allusion to Jordan’s cutting the city in two from 1948-1967.

Netanyahu’s statement about responding to high Arab voter turnout was no different from Obama’s cronies lamenting that former Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley’s urban renewal program was making the city white once again and threatening the black political base.

The Obama split with Netanyahu is less a split with Netanyahu than it is a divide with Israel wrought by Obama’s progressive view of the Jewish state. It was inevitable, as inevitable that the relationship between the American and Israeli people will not only survive, but get stronger after this Israel-bashing administration is gone.

Abraham H. Miller is an emeritus professor of political science, University of Cincinnati, and a senior fellow with the Haym Salomon Center.

april 9, 2015 ■

THE REPORTER

REGISTRATION IS OPEN FOR

27th Annual Teen Symposium on the Holocaust Co-sponsored by Hilton Scranton & Conference Center and the Jewish Federation of NEPA

Grades 8 – 12 welcome with appropriate preparation Choice of Tuesday, May 5th OR Wednesday, May 6th, 2015 Time: 8:30AM registration; 8:50AM sharp program begins; 1:30PM – 1:45PM dismissal Where: The Hilton Scranton & Conference Center, 100 Adams Avenue, Scranton, PA 18503 What:

The Teen Symposium on the Holocaust is a full day program that deals with the causes and effects of the Holocaust. It also provides an opportunity for participants to meet with survivors of the Holocaust and American GIs, who liberated the Nazi concentration camps. Sessions with survivors are the core of the day. Meetings with these witnesses bring insights and understanding that only such “living history” can bring to those who hear firsthand testimony.

Each day’s program will be held at the Hilton Hotel on Adams Avenue, with breakout sessions in different conference rooms. The day will begin with two brief introductory sessions followed by the film, Children Remember the Holocaust.

Breakout sessions follow, where small group meetings with survivors are held. After lunch, attendees will return to the Casey Ballroom for the production of Lida Stein and the Righteous Gentile and a guided audience discussion.

The afternoon session is a 50 minute play that follows “ordinary” people from “ordinary” families caught up in the extraordinary political and social upheaval during the Nazi era. It focuses on the relationship between Lida Stein, a Jewish teenage girl, and her best friend Dora Krause, a German teenage girl. The play probes issues from the perspective of teenagers, both Jewish and non-Jewish, who are swept up in life-altering decisions about friendship, politics, and family loyalty in difficult times. The audience discussion that follows addresses two key aspects of the Holocaust era: the gradual intimidation and eventual segregation of the Jewish community from the larger society, and the characters, motivations and consequences of the decisions of friendly and non-friendly German adults and youth. It will also focus on peer pressure and its impact on decision making, family loyalty, personal responsibility, moral strength, and commitment.

The only mandatory fee involved is lunch prepared by Hilton’s food service. The cost is $7.00 for students and $9.00 for teachers. (Please note that teachers will be eating with their students).

Registration begins on a first-come, first-served basis upon the receipt of this notice to our office. It will end when all available spaces are filled. Participation requires adherence to the time schedule, which includes check in before 8:50AM. Registration deadline is April 15th with payment in full. Payees will incur a $25.00 fee if paid on the day of the Symposium.

Please be aware, and make your students aware, of the fact that the survivor they meet will have gone through one or more of many experiences in the Holocaust, but may not be a survivor of a concentration camp. School groups are divided so that participants from each school meet several people and can share what they learn upon returning to school.

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THE REPORTER ■ april 9, 2015

d’var torah

The joy and grief of the season: Pesach and Yizkor

by RABBI MARJORIE BERMAN, SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR, RECONSTRUCTIONIST RABBINICAL COLLEGE IN PHILADELPHIA Passover-Yizkor, Deuteronomy 15:19-16:17 A day or two after the Vernal Equinox, my husband and I were hiking in Lackawanna State Park. Despite the fact that it was the beginning of spring, there was a fresh fall of snow on the ground and the sun sparkled off every ice crystal. As we looked upward through the still-bare branches and the evergreens, the sky was a deep bright blue. We watched as a pileated woodpecker flew overhead, the sharply delineated white and black underside of its wings in stark contrast with its bright red head. We’re training to walk the Scranton half marathon, so we were quiet for much of the walk, concentrating on keeping our pace up while picking our way among the icy footprints left by those who had gone before us.

On such a beautiful day, I expected to be filled with joy at being in nature, but I found it difficult to connect. When, surprised, I reached deeper, I found a great sadness. I realized that I was grieving the natural world of my childhood, when one could eat the fresh snow without worrying about the possible toxins within, where 70 degree days in March followed by hailstorms (like we had that week) were delightfully unexpected weather events, and not possible harbingers of global climate change.

Grief and spring are an odd combination. Spring is the season of freedom, the advent of new life, the return of color and lushness and warmth to the land!

How can we be in mourning at such a time? And yet, at every seder we dip the parsley in salt water, and the matzah in charoset. Green life and tears. Freedom and the bitterness of slavery. Every year at Pesach services, we commemorate Yizkor. We greet new life and mourn those who are no longer with us. When the Israelites finally had their freedom in the wilderness, they spoke constantly of what they had lost – their security, the foods they were used to, the places they knew. Why do grief and joy sometimes walk hand-in-hand?

Grief, of course, is not a simple thing, and none too predictable. I once found a notebook in which someone had written, “I have drunk deeply from the cup of grief, and found to my surprise that it was very sweet.” If we allow ourselves to experience our grief deeply, as our tradition advises us to do, it can heighten our gratitude for life. Knowing that all we have is temporary can awaken in us a profound appreciation for the present moment.

The preciousness of what we have been given is brought to the fore by what we have lost. The parsley is sweeter in contrast to the salt water. The matzah is given flavor by the charoset.

But grief can also dull us to life. When we don’t give it the time or attention it needs, it can pull us into depression. When it is combined with fear or anxiety or hopelessness, it can inure us to those things that would otherwise bring us pleasure. There are references to mourners walking between the worlds, one foot in the land of the living and one in the world of the dead. It can prevent us from feeling present to anything we do, as though there were a veil between us and the world.

So how do we allow grief and remembrance to heighten our senses and enrich our appreciation for being alive, rather than blocking us and focusing our energy on what is no more? First of all, to acknowledge that the very nature of grief – especially fresh grief – is to go back and forth between those two poles. It is like the waves or the tides, coming in, crashing and then receding once more.

Secondly, by spending time with our grief, as painful as it might be. As a dear friend of mine was told when his beloved, smart, vivacious daughter committed suicide after a long struggle with bipolar disorder, “don’t duck.”

In mourning, we need to spend time with our feelings, listen to what they have to say to us, allow them to move through us. Whether we are missing the unconditional love and companionship of a parent, friend, spouse, or child, or are angry and betrayed that we will never have the relationship that we wanted with someone now gone, we need to take the time to listen to the voices of grief within us.

Thirdly, our tradition teaches us, we should involve ourselves in actions that heal the world in memory of those we have lost. There is a custom of committing ourselves to studying a particular body of knowledge in someone’s honor when they have passed, or of giving tzedakah to a cause that was important to them. The Israelites first turned their grief and anxiety into action in a destructive way – by creating the golden calf. But then they made a better choice, and took on the commandments. For me to again walk in the woods in joy, I may need to become part of an organization battling climate change, contribute to our park, pick up trash by the roadway and study what can be done.

What do we do with our grief? Surrender to the process.

Be with our feelings. And when the time is right, pick ourselves up and begin again with the work of healing the world. Nature does it every year – in autumn, the leaves fall and become part of the earth below; in winter, the tree stands bare in silent contemplation. But in spring, life returns again to cover the world in flowers and green, making way for fruits to come and feed the hungry. May you be having a zisan – a sweet – Pesach, tasting of both the joy and grief of the season, and may those that you are remembering help bring you closer to a life of gratitude and healing.

Maira Kalman

The exhibit “Maira Selects” is being shown in the former first-floor drawing room of the Carnegie Mansion in New York through June 7. Jewish author, artist, and designer Maira Kalman has chosen 40 objects from Cooper Hewitt, the National Museum of American History and her personal collection in an exploration of the human condition.

Some of the items on view are stockings, shoes, a hat, a teapot, samplers and porcelain figures of ballet dancers; vintage editions of “Alice in Wonderland” and “Winnie the Pooh”; the Gerrit Rietfeld Zig Zag chair (ca. 1934); a handkerchief memorializing Queen Victoria; and Abraham Lincoln’s funeral pall and gold pocket watch.

For more information, visit www.cooperhewitt. org/events/opening-exhibitions/maira-kalman-selects/ or contact the museum at 212-849-8400.

Exhibit on Mendes I. Cohen

The Jewish Museum of Maryland will hold the exhibit “The A-Mazing Mendes Cohen” until June 14. The exhibit offers a different perspective of the Battle of Baltimore and its aftermath through the eyes of artilleryman Mendes I. Cohen, from his rescue of gunpowder during the battle to his visit to the pope and how he was the first American tourist to Palestine. It seeks to connect “Cohen’s journey to what was happening to Jews across America, Europe and the Middle East in the early 19th century and explores how Cohen, as one individual, created a personal.”

For more information, visit http://jewishmuseummd. org/single/the-a-mazing-mendes-cohen/ or contact the museum at 410-732-6400.

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april 9, 2015 ■

THE REPORTER

When Jews found refuge in underground warren at Warsaw Zoo

Zabinskis’ heroism. In an interview

By Cnaan Liphshiz at his home in Karmiel, Tirosh, a WARSAW (JTA) – In a carriage retired career officer in the Israel bound for the Warsaw Zoo, Moshe Defense Forces, recalls having a Tirosh could sense his parents’ much different reaction to Antonina, fear and the strong odor of alcohol a cheerful teacher who enjoyed wafting from the direction of the painting and playing the piano. driver and his horse. The trepida“I was only 3½ years old, but tion that rainy night in 1940 was I was already a suspicious war from the Nazi soldiers guarding the child out of the ghetto trained in Kierbedzia Bridge separating the keeping quiet for hours,” recalled family’s home from the zoo where Tirosh, whose parents told him to they hoped to find shelter. As for the pray loudly to Jesus if he was ever smell, it was the result of a successseen alone by strangers lest he be ful ruse designed by Tirosh’s father taken for a Jew. “But when I saw to get them there safely.

Antonina, I told my mother, ‘I think His father, a carpenter, had inwe’ll be alright here.’” structed the driver to douse himself Tirosh spent three weeks at the with vodka so the Nazi guards on the bridge, aware of German stereotypes Jan Zabinski, the director of the zoo, where he lived in a windowabout Polish drinking habits, would Warsaw Zoo, helped shelter hundreds less underground room with his wave them through without inspec- of Jews during the Holocaust. (Photo younger sister, receiving food from the Zabinskis and their tion. “The risk was enormous, but my by Wikimedia Commons) son, Ryszard. For safety reasons, parents knew that our only chance of Tirosh’s parents stayed in a different chamber in the survival was getting to that zoo,” recalled Tirosh, 78.

Tirosh is one of 300 Jews whose lives were saved underground maze.

By the time Tirosh reached the zoo, many of the thanks to the little-known heroism of the menagerie’s director, Jan Zabinski, and his wife, Antonina. A lieutenant animals had been killed – some in hunting parties that in the Polish resistance, Zabinski sheltered the Jews in Nazi officers held there – or shipped off to German zoos. underground pathways connecting the animal cages. He Determined to keep the zoo running because of its value for the resistance, Zabinski turned it into a pig farm, acalso used the zoo to store arms for the resistance.

A meticulous scientist whose curt style could some- cording to “The Zookeeper’s Wife,” a 2007 book about times come across as uncourteous, Zabinski also cut the Zabinskis. Sometimes Zabinski would smuggle pig an intimidating figure. “When Zabinski gave an order, meat into the Jewish ghetto, where the prohibition on its people did what he said,” said Jan-Maciej Rembiszewski, consumption had been largely abandoned because of a the zoo’s director from 1982 to 2006, who began vol- Nazi starvation policy that had Jews living on a diet of unteering there after the war. “I’m sure even the Nazis 187 calories a day.

At the zoo, Antonina communicated with her Jewrespected his authoritarian style, which allowed him to ish guests through a musical code, Tirosh recalls. “She run the place as his own fiefdom.”

In April, Tirosh, who now lives in Israel, will return played for us one piano tune and told us to sit tight and to the zoo for the opening of a museum celebrating the be very quiet if we heard that music, and then another

11

tune to indicate the danger was over,” he said.

One day, Antonina gave Tirosh and his sister red hair dye to hide their natural black hair and make them look less Jewish. When the children emerged from the bathroom, Antonina’s son said they looked like squirrels, which became their code name. Tirosh says his confinement at the zoo was one of the few periods during the war when he remembers no pain or suffering.

After leaving the zoo, Tirosh and his sister went to live with Christian foster families, where he suffered abuse and disease and nearly died. After the war, Tirosh was reunited with his family. His father died of a heart attack in 1948 and the rest of the family immigrated to Israel in 1957.

Antonina died in 1971 and her husband in 1974.

The Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem recognized both Zabinskis as Righteous Among the Nations in 1965.

See “Zoo” on page 14

Moshe Tirosh, right, with Jonny Daniels, the founder of From The Depths, a Holocaust commemoration organization that helped create a new museum at the Warsaw Zoo. Tirosh hid from the Nazis for three weeks underground at the Warsaw Zoo. (Photo by From The Depths)

Get ready for the 51st Annual

Celebrate Israel Parade Sunday, May 31 This year’s theme is Israel Imagines! $10 per person - to make your bus reservations, please contact Dassy at Dassy.ganz@jewishnepa.org or 570-961-2300 x2

ÊCheck out the Federation’s new, updated website at www.jewishnepa.org or find it on Facebook

12

THE REPORTER ■ april 9, 2015

Lower East Side candy king holds firm against changing neighborhood

By Debra Nussbaum Cohen NEW YORK (JTA) – Walking into Economy Candy on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, it’s hard to know where to look first. To the foil-clad chocolate rabbits standing sentinel atop sacks of chocolate eggs? The stacks of kosher-for-Passover jelly rings and chocolate pops across the narrow aisle? The facing bins spilling over with peanut butter chews and saltwater taffy?

Make your way to the back of this Willy Wonka-esque store, past more of the 2,000 varieties of candy it sells, and the walls are lined with dispensers ready to release a rainbow of gumballs and jellybeans.

At a time when venerable Lower East Side companies like Streit’s Matzos are selling their increasingly valuable land to developers and departing (see related article on page 10), the decidedly old-school Economy Candy is holding firm.

Mitchell Cohen, who took over Economy Candy from his father two years ago after leaving his job at a leading investment bank, spent every Sunday he wasn’t in Hebrew school, and each school vacation, helping his parents at the store. Now he gets a regular stream of calls from people wanting to buy the building.

“We’re part of the neighborhood,” said Cohen, 29.

“We’re not going anywhere.”

Cohen’s grandfather, Morris “Moishe” Cohen, started the business in 1937 as Economy Shoe, a repair shop with a pushcart in front selling candy and dried fruits.

When Moishe, whose family had emigrated from Greece, returned to the Lower East Side after serving in the Army, he and his brother-in-law took over the place and renamed it Economy Candy.

Moishe Cohen’s family lived for a time on the third floor of the building that houses Economy Candy, back when it was a tenement. He died in his sleep in February at 97.

Today, Economy Candy inhabits all three stories, with the upper levels used for storage and packing web orders. The retail space on the first floor is full of candies of every imaginable variation and is a thriving, if slightly bedraggled, remnant of the old Jewish neighborhood amid the hipster hotels and pricey boutiques that share

Mitchell Cohen at Economy Candy on New York’s Lower East Side. (Photo by Debra Nussbaum Cohen) Rivington Street with bodegas and bars.

Back in Moishe’s day, Lower East Side streets bustled with hundreds of thousands of Jewish immigrants. There were six or seven other candy stores in the immediate vicinity, says Mitchell Cohen. “Now we’re one of the only family-owned Jewish businesses left,” he said.

With the departure of Streit’s, which baked its last Passover matzah on Rivington Street on March 1, the only other one left is Russ and Daughters, the legendary lox-and-bagels shop run by its founder’s great-grandchildren. A few other Jewish food purveyors remain – Katz’s Delicatessen, Yonah Schimmel knishes, Kossar’s bialys and The Pickle Guys (who took over the famed Guss’ pickles) – but none are run by their founding families.

The dairy restaurant Ratner’s shut down in 2002 and the property is now being marketed as a development site.

“The Lower East Side has gone through so many transformations since my great-grandparents – and everybody else’s – lived there a century ago that our ancestors would plotz if they saw it,” said Julie Cohen

(no relation to Mitchell), director and producer of “The Sturgeon Queens,” a documentary about Russ and Daughters. “But when I’m down there I can still feel the spirit of what it used to be.”

Today there are some 14,000 Jewish households in the neighborhood, says Laurie Tobias Cohen, the executive director of the Lower East Side Jewish Conservancy, which runs tours of the area. The preponderance of residents are Chinese, Puerto Rican or African-American – and those who can afford the million-dollar apartments going up. Still, Tobias Cohen says, between synagogues, shtiebels and new Jewish-owned boutiques and galleries, “There’s still a lot of Jewish life kicking on the Lower East Side.”

On a recent wintry afternoon, a constant stream of shoppers flowed through Economy Candy’s aisles.

Manny Rodriguez, who describes himself as a regular at the store, had just purchased a fistful of Clark bars.

“I come more than I should,” he said.

Hand-dipped chocolate-covered graham crackers and chocolate-coated jelly rings are perennially popular, Mitchell Cohen says, with orders coming in from all over the country. Earlier that day, someone had ordered 300 pounds of orange jelly fruit slices.

Green tea-flavored Kit Kats, which a number of customers had come in requesting after trying them in Japan, were Cohen’s biggest challenge: None of his usual distributors knew how to get them. He called Asian grocery distributors to no avail. Eventually he found one in Queens who could procure them and he placed an order for 300 bags. They were gone in two weeks.

The current candy crush is for English Cadbury chocolates, which are newly unavailable in the United States. The main ingredient in the American version is sugar. But the ones made in England list milk as the first ingredient, and devotees are fanatically loyal to their Flakes and Maltesers.

Hershey, which owns the American rights to Cadbury, has brought trademark infringement claims against a major distributor of the British product, which stopped importing them. Cohen stocked up as soon as he heard.

See “Candy” on page 13

Have you made your 2015 Pledge?

The mission of the Jewish Federation of Northeastern Pennsylvania is: To rescue the imperiled, to care for the vulnerable, to support Israel and to revitalize and perpetuate the Jewish communities of Northeastern Pennsylvania.

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april 9, 2015 ■

Books

emotions rather than understanding their behavior may have nothing to do with us. “Florence Gordon” is the rare novel I didn’t want to see end, at least until I could read Florence’s memoir.

“Playing with Matches” Poor 16-year-old Raina Resnick. After traveling around the world with her family, she finally made friends at her new school in New York City. Unfortunately, trying to be popular got her into so much trouble that she was expelled and forced to move to Toronto to live with her strict Orthodox aunt. If Raina messes up there, then she’ll be moving to China to live with her parents and be home schooled.

In “Playing With Matches” by Suri Rosen (ECW Press), this engaging teenager discovers that doing a good deed is not as simple as it seems.

Toronto is difficult for Raina: the girls in her new school snub her and her beloved older sister, Leah, blames Raina for her broken engagement. The only good thing to happen is Raina’s successful attempt at matchmaking. Although that was supposed to be a one-time deal, word soon gets out and Raina is forced to set up an anonymous “Matchmaven” e-mail account. After being inundated with requests, her schoolwork suffers so badly that Raina wants to close down the account, that is until she has the opportunity to help someone she loves find happiness.

While “Playing With Matches” is aimed at a teen audience, adults who enjoy light fiction will also find it absorbing reading.

Raina seems like a sweet teenager, even before she learns the life lessons the author is intent on teaching her. Rosen has a light touch, so these lessons – which include some for the adults in Raina’s life – are easy to swallow.

“Jewish Mothers Never Die” While I’m going to resist the temptation to make jokes about the title of Natalie David-Weill’s “Jewish Mothers Never Die” (Arcade Publishing), many people would suggest Jewish mothers stay alive in their children’s minds long after they’ve gone to their grave. Whether or not that’s a good thing is open to debate.

When Rebecca Rosenthal dies, she finds herself in a heaven inhabited by the mothers of famous men, for example, the mothers of Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, Groucho Marx, Marcel Proust, Romain Gary and Albert Cohen. Rebecca realizes she has one thing in common with these women: she, too, worries about the son she left behind.

According Minnie Marx, you don’t have to be Jewish or a mother to be a Jewish mother: “It’s an expression, that’s all: a synonym for being loving, devoted, heroic, possessive, demanding, paranoid, anxious, unbearable, nosy, and obsessed with one’s children.” Obsessed is the correct word: Although, except for Rebecca, their children are long dead, the women spend their time talking about their sons, for example, whose accomplishments were the greatest, who suffered the most difficulties in life, who was closest to his mother... The list could go on, as each mother tries to prove her son was special or unique. This leaves readers with more talk than action. However, that’s not a complaint, since the discussions are interesting, particularly when they focus on literature. I was so intrigued by the material on the unfamiliar Cohen and Gary that I looked for more information about their Jewish-themed novels online.

Sections of “Jewish Mothers Never Die” struck me more as a lecture than a novel, but that’s not surprising since, Da-

vid-Weill has a Ph.D. in French literature.

This odd-ball work was a fun change of pace, especially since it was short. At 180-

Candy

THE REPORTER

13

Continued from page 6 some pages, these women are interesting; if the novel was much longer, they might have become unbearable.

Continued from page 12

And while he still has some on his shelves, he knows they won’t last long.

Unlike some of his Jewish customers, Cohen isn’t overly nostalgic for the bygone Lower East Side. His grandparents had left the neighborhood when his father was still young, and he was raised on Long Island. But Cohen is getting married in May, and he hopes to have children who will one day take over Economy Candy, as he always knew he would. Rivington Street will likely be

different when they do.

“A lot of the stores – whether they’re old or new, candy shops or jewelry designers – are quirky one-offs where you can find the owners working behind the counter.

And there are still a few places that drag their shmattes out onto the street to sell at a bargain price,” Julie Cohen said. “So even though most of the residents and retailers aren’t actually Jewish anymore, I guess I’d say the whole place is still actually pretty Jewy.”

Economy Candy is among the last of the classic Jewish-owned food businesses on the Lower East Side. (Photo by Debra Nussbaum Cohen)

Economy Candy as it looked decades ago. (Courtesy photo)

Quick Reference Guide to Planned Giving Use this planned giving quick reference guide to help determine the best strategy for achieving your philanthropic and financial goals. For more information or to discuss these planned giving options, please contact Mark Silverberg, Executive Director, Jewish Federation of NEPA, 570-961-2300 (x1) or mark.silverberg@jewishnepa.org.

If Your Goal is to:

Then You Can:

Your Benefits May Include:

Make a quick & easy gift Simply write a check now

An income tax deduction and immediate charitable impact

Avoid tax on capital gains securities Contribute long-term appreciated stock or other

Defer a gift until after your lifetime Put a bequest in your will (gifts of cash, specific property,

or a share or the residue of your estate

Receive guaranteed fixed income that is partially Create a charitable gift annuity tax-free

A charitable deduction plus no capital gains tax

Avoid capital gains tax on the sale of a home or other real estate

Donate the real estate or sell it to a charity at a bargain price

An income tax reduction plus reduction or elimination of capital gains tax

Avoid the two-fold taxation on IRA or other employee benefit plans

Give your personal residence or farm, but retain life use

Name a charity as the beneficiary of the remainder of the retirement assets after your lifetime

Tax relief to your family on inherited assets

Create a charitable gift of future interest, called a retained life estate

Tax advantages plus use of the property

Exemption from federal estate tax on donations Current & future savings on income taxes, plus fixed, stable payments

Make a large gift with little cost to you Contribute a life insurance policy you no longer need or Current & possible future income tax deductions

purchase a new one & designate a charity as the owner

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Give income from an asset for a period of years Create a charitable lead trust Federal estate tax savings on asset & income tax but retain the asset for yourself or your heirs deductions for deductions for donated income

Create a hedge against inflation over the long term Create a charitable remainder unitrust Variable payments for life plus tax advantages

Make a revocable gift during your lifetime Name a charity as the beneficiary of assets in a Full control of the trust terms during your lifetime

living trust

ÊCheck out the Federation’s new, updated website at www.jewishnepa.org or find it on Facebook

14

THE REPORTER ■ april 9, 2015

Jewish Harlem Walking tour

April 2015 • Non-Feature Films • *NEW* American Masters: Mel Brooks: Make A Noise - After more than 60 years in show business, Mel Brooks has earned more major awards than any other living entertainer. A comedy force of nature, Brooks is very private and has never authorized a biography, making his participation in this film a genuine first. Showcasing the Brooklyn native’s brilliant, skewed originality, American Masters: Mel Brooks: Make A Noise features never-before-heard stories and new interviews with Brooks, Matthew Broderick, Nathan Lane, Cloris Leachman, Carl Reiner, Joan Rivers, Tracey Ullman and others. This career-spanning documentary of the man behind Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, The Producers, Spaceballs and of course the 2000 Year Old Man journeys through Brooks’ professional and personal ups and downs, providing a rare look at a living legend, beloved by millions. *NEW* Broadway Musicals: A Jewish Legacy - Engaging, humorous, and provocative... examining the unique role of Jewish composers and lyricists in the creation of the modern American musical. The film showcases the work of legends such as Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, George and Ira Gershwin, Lorenz Hart, Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II, Leonard Bernstein, and Stephen Sondheim. Interviews with songwriters and luminaries including Sheldon Harnick, Stephen Schwartz, Harold Prince, Arthur Laurents, Charles Strouse, and Mel Brooks provide insight, alongside standout performances and archival footage.

Everything is a Present: The Wonder and Grace of Alice Sommer Hertz - This is the uplifting true story of the gifted pianist Alice Sommer Hertz who survived the Theresienstat concentration camp by playing classical piano concerts for Nazi dignitaries. Alice Sommer Hertz lived to the age of 106. Her story is an inspiration.

Follow Me: The Yoni Netanyahu Story - Yoni Netanyahu was a complex, passionate individual thrust into defending his country in a time of war and violence. The older brother of Benjamin Natanyahu, the current Israel Prime Minister, Yoni led the miraculous raid on Entebbe in 1976. Although almost all of the Entebbe hostages were saved, Yoni was the lone military fatality. Featuring three Israeli Prime Ministers and recently released audio from the Entebbe raid itself.

Hava Nagila (The Movie) - A documentary romp through the history, mystery and meaning of the great Jewish standard.

Featuring interviews with Harry Belafonte, Leonard Nimoy and more, the film follows the ubiquitous party song on its fascinating journey from the shtetls of Eastern Europe to the kibbutzim of Palestine to the cul-de-sacs of America.

Inside Hana’s Suitcase - The delivery of a battered suitcase to Fumiko Ishioka at the Tokyo Holocaust Museum begins the true-life mystery that became the subject of Karen Levine’s best-selling book Hana’s Suitcase. The film follows Fumiko’s search to discover the details of Hana’s life, which leads to the discovery of her brother George in Toronto.

Israel: The Royal Tour - Travel editor Peter Greenberg (CBS News) takes us on magnificent tour of the Jewish homeland, Israel. The tour guide is none other than Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The viewer gets a chance to visit the land of Israel from his own home!

Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story (narrated by Dustin Hoffman) - This documentary portrays the contributions of Jewish major leaguers and the special meaning that baseball has had in the lives of American Jews. More than a film about sports, this is a story of immigration, assimilation, bigotry, heroism, the passing on of traditions, the shattering of stereotypes and, most of all, the greatest American pastime.

Nicky’s Family - An enthralling documentary that artfully tells the story of how Sir Nicholas Winton, now 104, a British stockbroker, gave up a 1938 skiing holiday to answer a friend’s request for help in Prague and didn’t stop helping until the war’s beginning stopped him. He had saved the lives of 669 children in his own personal Kindertransport.

Shanghai Ghetto - One of the most amazing and captivating survival tales of WWII, this documentary recalls the strange-but-true story of thousands of European Jews who were shut out of country after country while trying to escape Nazi persecution. Left without options or entrance visa, a beacon of hope materialized for them on the other side of the world, and in the unlikeliest of places, Japanese-controlled Shanghai.

The Case for Israel - Democracy’s Outpost - This documentary presents a vigorous case for Israel- for its basic right to exist, to protect its citizens from terrorism, and to defend its borders from hostile enemies.

The Jewish Cardinal - This is the amazing true story of Jean-Marie Lustiger, the son of Polish-Jewish immigrants, who maintained his cultural identity as a Jew even after converting to Catholicism at a young age, & later joining the priesthood.

The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg - As baseball’s first Jewish star, Hammerin’ Hank Greenberg’s career contains all the makings of a true American success story.

Unmasked: Judaophobia - The Threat to Civilization – This documentary exposes the current political assault against the State of Israel fundamentally as a war against the Jewish people and their right to self-determination. *NEW* When Jews Were Funny is insightful and often hilarious, surveying the history of Jewish comedy from the early days of Borsht Belt to the present.

• Feature Films • Fill the Void - This is the story of an eighteen-year-old, Shira, who is the youngest daughter of her family. Her dreams are about to come true as she is set to be married. Unexpectedly, her sister dies while giving birth to her first child.

The drama of the story reaches its peak when the girls’ mother proposes a match between Shira and the young widower. Shira will have to choose between her heart’s wish and her family duty.

Footnote - The winner of the Cannes Film Festival (Best Screenplay) is the tale of a great rivalry between a father and son, two eccentric professors, who have both dedicated their lives to work in Talmudic Studies. Each has a need for recognition in his chosen field and the day comes when father and son must look deeply inside themselves for the truth- advancement of his own career or of the others.

Hidden in Silence - Przemysl, Poland, WWII. Germany emerges victorious over the Russians and the city comes under Nazi control. The Jews are sent to the ghettos. While some stand silent, Catholic teenager, Stefania Podgorska, chose the role of a savior and sneaks 13 Jews into her attic.

Noodle (compatible only on PAL – DVD players - Hebrew with English subtitles) This film was a beloved entry in the Jewish Federation of NEPA’s Jewish Film Festival. It tells the heartwarming story of an Israeli stewardess, Miri, whose personal life as a war widow leaves her without much joy. Everything changes for Miri when her Oriental housemaid disappears one day leaving her with her young Oriental child!

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas - Based on the best- selling novel, this movie is unforgettable. Set during WWII, the movie introduces us to Bruno, an innocent eight-year-old, ignores his mother and sets of on an adventure in the woods. Soon he meets a young boy and a surprising friendship develops.

The Concert - Andrei Filipov was prodigy- at 20 he was the celebrated conductior for Russia’s renowned Bolshoi Orchestra. Thirty years later, still at the Bolshoi, he works as a janitor. Ousted during the communist era when he refused to fire the Jewish members of the orchestra, a broken Andrei now cleans the auditorium where he once performed in front of thousands.

The Debt - In 1966, three Mossad agents were assigned to track down a feared Nazi war criminal hiding in East Berlin, a mission accomplished at great risk and personal cost- or was it?

The Other Son - As he is preparing to join the Israeli army for his national service, Joseph discovers he is not his parents’ biological son and that he was inadvertently switched at birth with Yacine, the son of a Palestinian family from the West Bank. This revelation turns the lives of these two families upside-down, forcing them to reassess their respective identities, their values and beliefs.

The Lower East Side Jewish Conservancy will hold a “Jewish Harlem Walking Tour” on Sunday, April 26, beginning at 10:45 am.

Marty Shore, urban historian, will lead walkers through the sites of Jewish religious life in the urban settlement of Harlem, which was once the second largest Jewish community in the U.S. In 1917, it was home to more than 175,000 Jews. The tour will feature looks at the exteriors of the former homes of Temple Israel of Harlem, Congregation Shaarei Zedek and the Oheb Zedek.

Walkers will meet at the northeast corner of Adam Clayton Powell Blvd. and 125th Street, in front of the statue of Adam Clayton Powell. The cost is $20 for adults and $18 for seniors and students. There is an additional $2 charge the day of tour. For more information or to register, visit www.nycjewishtours.org/ or call 212-374-4100.

Jewish Motorcyclists Alliance Ride

The Jewish Motorcyclists Alliance rides to commemorate the Holocaust and raise money for Holocaust Awareness and Education every year. In 2015, The JMA is riding to Nashville Tennessee for a three-day event to raise money for the Tennessee Holocaust Commission.

Event dates are June 18, 19 and 20.

The JMA will help fund the Tennessee Holocaust Commission Holocaust Memories Alive Film Archive Project. This is composed of 80 hours of film footage of 100 Tennesseans who are Holocaust survivors, refugees and U.S. Military Liberators.

For further information on the Ride to Remember contact Betsy Ahrens at betsy.ahrens@verizon.net. For information on the Jewish Motorcyclists Alliance, visit jewishmotorcyclistsalliance.org.

Online book club

Jewish Women Archives begun a book club open to anyone interested in books by and about Jewish women.

There is no cost to participate. Visit http://jwa.org/blog/ bookclub for more information and to learn about the book under discussion.

Zoo

Continued from page 11 The new museum, in which visitors can tour the Zabinskis’ old villa at the zoo and the renovated maze of tunnels, also includes the piano on which Antonina warned her charges of approaching Nazis.

“This museum is not going to be a huge one, but from a commemoration point of view it’s among the most important of its kind because of the target audience – children,” said Jonny Daniels, the founder of From The Depths, a Holocaust commemoration organization that initiated the museum project together with the Panda Foundation, the zoo’s charitable arm. “More than another town-square monument to nameless rescuers of Jews, here we have a tangible story of bravery at a place frequented by children and possibly also groups visiting Holocaust sites who will be able to experience one of Warsaw’s most beautiful places.”

In recent years, plans to erect monuments in Warsaw for rescuers of Jews have stirred debate in Poland, with some critics charging that the emphasis on rescue serves to whitewash widespread Polish complicity in the annihilation of the country’s Jews.

Tirosh shares those concerns. Polish society, he says, exhibited a “deep-rooted antisemitism that fit very nicely with the Nazi plans for annihilation.” But he is not traveling to Poland for the museum opening to talk about Polish society. “I’m just going to pay homage to the couple that saved my life,” he said.

april 9, 2015 ■

THE REPORTER

15

NEWS IN bRIEF From JTA

Missing Israeli found in West Bank, was part of a hoax

The missing Israeli who was the target of a 10-hour manhunt was found in what appeared to have been a hoax. Nis Asraf, 22, was found alive on April 3 in Kiryat Arba, Ynet reported. A spokesman for the Israeli military said a friend of Asraf’s had falsely reported him missing. “The ‘missing man’ and his friends staged a kidnapping,” Moti Almoz said. “We’ll investigate the reasons behind this and will handle this to the full extent of the law.” Israeli security forces were alerted to Asraf’s disappearance on April 2 by the friend. Asraf reportedly entered the Palestinian village of Beit Anun, near Hebron, to get help after he and the friend became stranded with a flat tire. Three Israeli teens were kidnapped and killed last summer near the same West Bank area.

Druze-Israeli soldier indicted for passing information to Syria

An Israeli soldier was indicted on charges of providing classified information to Syria on Israeli army positions. Cpl. Halal Halabi, a resident of Daliyat al-Karmel, a Druze town in northern Israel, was charged in a military court on April 2. Halabi was detained in February after relaying “classified information capable of harming state security on the IDF’s activity on the Israel-Syria border,” in Israel’s North, the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement. He is accused of passing information to a Druze resident of the Golan Heights, an Israeli citizen, who was indicted in March on charges that he spied for Syria.

Israeli soldier stabbed while preventing Palestinian infiltration

An Israeli soldier was stabbed while preventing a Palestinian man from infiltrating the security fence into Israel. The soldier, a commander of a paratrooper unit, was stabbed in the torso during the infiltration attempt from the West Bank on April 2, according to the IDF spokesman. He was taken to a hospital after being treated in the field. The Palestinian was attempting to cross into Israel through the fence near the community of Oranit, about 15 miles east of Tel Aviv. The attacker was one of six Palestinians attempting to cross into Israel, according to the IDF. All of the attempted infiltrators were arrested.

Stephen Greenberg tapped to lead Conference of Presidents

Stephen Greenberg, a New Jersey lawyer, was nominated to be the next chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. An attorney with an extensive resume of Jewish communal involvement, Greenberg was recommended by the Presidents Conference Nominating Committee to succeed Robert Sugarman effective June 1. His candidacy will be presented to the umbrella group’s full membership on April 29. Greenberg is currently the chairman of the National Council Supporting Eurasian Jewry (formerly the National Conference for Soviet Jewry). He is also chairman of the New Jersey Federal Judicial Selection Committee and was the chief executive of Net2Phone, an Internet telephone communications firm. He is currently counsel to McElroy, Deutsch, Mulvaney and Carpenter, a New Jersey-based law firm with offices in seven states.

Argentine union leader calls gov’t minister “little Jew boy”

An Argentine union leader who called a government minister “little Jew boy” defended himself by saying “Everybody calls him this.” In a radio interview on April 1, Luis Barrionuevo, who heads the Blue and White CGT union, in discussing a national general strike initiated the previous day by his union, said the Minister of the Economy, Axel Kicillof, that “the little Jew boy gives no answer” to workers’ demands. Barrionuevo used the term “el Rusito,” or “the little Russian,” to refer to Kicillof – “Russian” is a popular slang term used to refer to Jews in Argentina. Alerted by the show’s host, Ernesto Tenembaum, that the language was offensive, Barrionuevo justified it by saying, “That’s how his Cabinet colleagues refer to him.” Cabinet chief Anibal Fernandez responded by saying in his daily meeting with journalists that “the little Russian is a brilliant minister.” In another radio interview, Jewish journalist Martin Liberman asked Barrionuevo if he has problems with Jews. “Everybody calls him this,” Barrionuevo said. “When I talk with members of the government, they refer to the minister as el Rusito. I didn’t discriminate against him. I have Jewish friends.” The president of the national Jewish political umbrella DAIA, Julio Schlosser, told JTA that “these discriminatory expressions are very upsetting. We regret these statements by Luis Barrionuevo and condemn them.” Sergio Widder, the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s director for Latin America, called on Barrionuevo to make an immediate public apology. “Failure to do so can be interpreted as an endorsement of hatred against the Jewish community,” he said.

Television host and producer Gerardo Sofovich popularized calling Jews in Argentina Russians in a humorous fashion. He died three weeks ago at 77.

reclusive German art collector Cornelius Gurlitt was stolen by Nazis from its rightful owner, according to German officials. German Culture Minister Monika Gruetters declared in a statement that her ministry was already in touch with an heiress of the original owner and would seek to promptly return the 1902 oil painting, the French news agency AFP reported. “The Seine Seen From the Pont Neuf, the Louvre in the Background” was among more than 1,400 works of art held by the late art collector Cornelius Gurlitt, whose father, Hildebrand, served the Nazis as an art dealer and sold a number of works that were confiscated from Jewish owners. When Hildebrand Gurlitt died in 1956, his son inherited the collection, which he kept in his Munich home and in a second home in Salzburg, Austria. Cornelius Gurlitt willed his collection to the Bern Kunstmuseum in Switzerland, which has agreed to participate in a process to determine which paintings were looted from their owners and to return those paintings to the owners’ heirs. That process has already resulted in the restitution of a number of paintings, including one by Henri Matisse and another by Max Liebmann.

P.A. officially joins International Criminal Court

The Palestinian Authority officially became a member of the International Criminal Court. A ceremony was held at the Geneva court on April 1 to mark the P.A.’s ascension. P.A. President Mahmoud Abbas signed the requests to join the ICC and other international conventions at the end of December after the United Nations Security Council failed to pass a Palestinian statehood proposal. Israel retaliated by withholding hundreds of millions of dollars in tax payments it had collected on behalf of the Palestinian Authority. The week of March 27, Israel announced that it would send the tax payments to the P.A. In a statement at the ceremony, Sidiki Kaba, president of the Assembly of States Parties, said he hoped the accession of “Palestine,” the second state from the Middle East, “will pave the way for other countries in the Middle East who, by adopting the Rome Statute, will strengthen the International Criminal Court in its fight against impunity for mass crimes.” The Rome Statute is the treaty that established the ICC. In January, ICC prosecutors opened a preliminary inquiry into possible war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank. The prosecutors will determine whether preliminary findings merit a full investigation into alleged atrocities and possible charges against Palestinian and/or Israeli officials. P.A. Foreign Minister Riad Malki, who met with ICC officials on April 1 in what were characterized as ceremonial talks, cautioned in an interview on Palestinian radio that “ICC procedures are slow and long, and might face lots of obstacles and challenges, and might take years.”

U.S.-Israel missile system David’s Sling passes key test

The joint U.S.-Israel air defense system known as David’s Sling has passed a set of tests that potentially clears the way for full-scale deployment. The Israeli Defense Ministry announced on April 1 the successful tests of the midrange missile and rocket defense system, Reuters reported. David’s Sling detected a target missile launching and destroyed it, the Israeli financial newspaper Globes reported on April 1. The Defense Ministry plans a definitive trial in the near future that would set the system on a path to being deployed and operational in the near future, Globes reported, potentially this year. Reuters reported it could be next year. Designed to stop long-range rockets, drones and cruise missiles, David’s Sling is intended to supplement the Iron Dome system, which targets short-range rockets, and the Arrow system targeting ballistic missiles, both of which are already in operation. The U.S. defense contractor Raytheon is collaborating on the system with Israel’s state-owned Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd. In March, Israeli officials requested that the U.S. provide an additional $317 million in funding for Israel’s missile defense programs beyond the $158 million requested in the 2016 budget by the Obama administration. According to Globes, David’s Sling costs $1 million per interception.

Dutch cyber expert who said ISIS was part of Zionist plan keeping job

A Dutch civil servant who said ISIS was “part of a plan by Zionists” may keep her job, the country’s justice minister determined. Minister Ard van der Steur made his decision public on April 1 in a letter sent to the parliament about the conduct of Yasmina Haifi, a former project leader at the ministry’s National Cyber Security Center. In the letter, van der Steur wrote that Haifi received a “suspended dismissal” and will be transferred from her former post. She will no longer be employed at the Dutch counterterrorism unit under which her former department operated, but will work elsewhere within the ministry. Van der Steur wrote the letter to answer queries by rightist lawmakers who demanded action against Haifi. In August, Haifi was suspended for writing on Twitter, “ISIS has nothing to do with Islam. It’s part of a plan by Zionists who are deliberately trying to blacken Islam’s name.” ISIS, or Islamic State, is a Sunni Muslim terrorist group. Halfi has denied that she is antisemitic and said her tweet was targeting Israel, not Jews. In February, a commission headed by Job Cohen, a former mayor of Amsterdam and former leader of the Dutch Labor Party, determined there were no grounds for dismissing Haifi. Following the controversy, Haifi left the Labor Party, where she had volunteered as an activist. The committee for the Rights of Civil Workers headed by Cohen, who has Jewish roots, recommended reprimanding Haifi, but determined that she was protected from dismissal by freedom of speech laws. Vice Premier Lodewijk Asscher called Halfi’s tweet “a classic form of antisemitism.” In a letter sent to friends and family in August, Haifi denied that she was antisemitic. “I have always participated in activities against antisemitism,” she wrote. “I did not realize the load of the word Zionist/Zionism. In the Netherlands (and the rest of Europe) it equals ‘Jewish.’ I targeted the expansion policy of the state of Israel and not the Jewish people.”

Germany: Pissarro painting looted by Nazis will be returned to heirs

Experts have determined that a painting by Camille Pissarro from the cache of

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THE REPORTER ■ april 9, 2015