FOOD • 21
THURSDAY, AUGUST 8, 2013
All about food – Time to Give a Party Zell’s Bites
by Zell Schulman There are times when my calendar’s filled with the “Have to Do” things such as doctor appointments, classes at the University of Cincinnati’s Ollie, the weekly visit from my trainer to keep my mind/body in shape. All of a sudden, I know I need to fill my time with “fun” things to do. I check the newspaper, then I go to the “fun” links on my internet looking for art openings, movies I haven’t seen yet or interesting concerts or happenings around town that I’d enjoy attending. Being invited to my children’s home for dinner or having my adult grandchildren over to my condo for dinner is always a treat for me. It’s an opportunity to catch up and having everyone on the same page. There are life cycle events like weddings, Bar and Bat Mitzvah’s of your friends children and grandchildren. The ones you feel you need to go to, and
CONSTRUCTION from page 1 really worth striving for. By investing in Cedar Village and other senior services, the Foundation is effectively pursuing that. He added, “The Aquatic Therapy Center provides Cedar Village with yet one more service for those in need of healing, some of whom may be in the most vulnerable moments of their lives. They can find a real source of strength in this facility and its staff.” This is the second phase of an expansion for Cedar Village’s rehab services. The first phase, which opened in July 2011, consisted of renovations that greatly expanded the amount of space devoted to rehabilitation services, including an advanced therapy gym and renovated rooms for short-term rehab patients. Separately, Cedar Village opened a satellite rehab location in February at the Mayerson JCC in Cedar Village offers comprehensive rehab services for people of all ages on an inpatient and outpatient basis with a wide range of medical conditions.
the ones we’re never really ready for, the death of a good friend or family member. I’ve a cubby on my desk labeled, “Invite over for dinner, cocktails, brunch or just to spend a little quality time together.” This “social” cubby holds business cards and contact information of interesting and new people I’ve been introduced to or met while attending a community or social event. As a lady whose life these past twenty years has been involved in the Culinary world, my condo is the perfect place for me to entertain and bring new and different people together. The first thing on my agenda is finding the time and date that will work best for me. I do most of the cooking myself, and recently looked into my freezers and realized I don’t have any more room to add anything. I always keep a casserole or homemade cookies and brownies plus cut up fruits of the season in a wonderful syrup. I prepare. these to go over angel food or pound cake for a quick dessert. You can always find a loaf of New York rye bread for a quick hor de veaus. I spread a little Dijonnaise (good mustard mixed with a little mayo) on the bread and top it with fresh smoked salmon, white fish or a little cream cheese and caviar. Add a great glass of wine, or wonderful fresh lemonade and you have the perfect addition for a good conversation. Sometimes, this is all you’ll need except a reservation
at your favorite restaurant. Remember it doesn’t need to be the fanciest or newest. There is never the wrong place to go, as long as it is comfortable, quiet and gives you the time to just enjoy quality time together. When you really wish to bring new friends and guests that have never met before together, it is a challenge, but sometimes these have been the best parties I have ever had. Mix ages, occupations and a variety of interests together, and everyone will enjoy having the opportunity to meet new an interesting people. They may not have known each other, but before the evening is over you will have one or two exchanging contact information. Believe me, it works. As for something to go with your drinks, I never have more than two or three nibbles to begin with and always have a favorite “nosh” that everyone loves. A winner is always a large bowl filled with a good variety of mixed nuts and dried fruits, with a tiny bit of something spicy added. I usually purchase a good pre-mixed package of mixed nuts and then add my own dried cranberries, glazed pineapple, dark and blonde raisins, cut into small pieces, along with a touch of cayenne pepper. Remember just a small pinch, or you’ll ruin the whole thing. Now that I’ve shared my party ideas with you, I’ve got to get my phone calls made to create another wonderful, fun and interesting time in my condo. Enjoy!
To house the pools, contractors will construct a one-story, 6,200square-foot building next to the existing rehab center. The two buildings will be connected via a 29-foot corridor. The larger pool will vary in depth from just under four feet to five feet. It will be 21 by 50 feet -about 1,050 square feet. It will have a lift that will make it easy for people with mobility problems to enter the water. The two smaller pools will be about nine by seven feet – about 63 square feet each – and used mostly for one-on-one sessions with aquatic therapists. The smaller pools will have floors that can be raised and lowered to provide easy access to patients with mobility problems, including those using walkers and wheelchairs. The floors will be able to go high enough that the pools would have no water in them. They can be lowered with a hand-held remote control to a water depth of six feet. The smaller pools also will have floors that serve as treadmills that can go as fast as 8.5 mph. In addition, the smaller pools
will have underwater cameras with overhead monitors, giving patients and therapists a view to analyze patients’ movements. Jogging in place, simulated bike riding and modified jumping jacks are among the exercises that can be done in the smaller pools. Aquatic therapy is a powerful tool for rehabilitation because the buoyancy of water reduces the stress on joints, minimizes pain, increases the range of motion and allows patients to exercise longer. For example, a patient who can only exercise on land for five minutes, perhaps due to obesity, breathing problems or arthritis, might be able to exercise for an hour in a warmwater pool. The water improves blood circulation and improves muscle tone. It also lessens the chance of injury from falling. And because it’s fun, it improves a patient’s mood, decreasing depression. Aquatic therapy can be used for various conditions, including sports injuries, arthritis, muscle spasms, chronic pain and total joint replacement.
RABBINATE from page 9 entrenched religious establishment. The imperative to circumvent the rabbinic bureaucracy has grown especially strong in the wake of last week’s Chief Rabbinate election, which saw the defeat of a popular reformist candidate and the victory of two sons of former chief rabbis, both haredi Orthodox. The reformist, David Stav of the liberal Orthodox rabbinic group Tzohar, lost in the race for Ashkenazi chief rabbi to David Lau, the son of Yisrael Meir Lau, who held the post from 1993 to 2003. Yitzhak Yosef followed in the footsteps of his father, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, in winning the Sephardic chief rabbi post. “Tzohar tried to fix the rabbinate from inside, to take control of it and fix it,” said Shmuel Shetach, the CEO of Ne’emanei Torah V’avoda, a Modern Orthodox group that supports rabbinate reform. “Even if Rabbi Stav was chosen, the system is too problematic. It’s not appropriate for modern times.” Until now, there have been two major approaches to addressing the rabbinate’s problems: reform and abolition. Orthodox groups generally have opted for the former, arguing that the rabbinate must be maintained as an anchor of Jewish unity. Liberal Jewish groups tend to see the rabbinate as a bastion of haredi Orthodox domination that must be eliminated. Both approaches have failed. Stav lost despite an aggressive campaign with backing from key political figures. Calls for the rabbinate’s elimination have gotten even less traction due to the political clout of the haredi political parties and Israel’s reluctance to change the status quo. Sidestepping measures offer a third way. Some activists are hoping to break the rabbinate’s monopoly on kosher certification. Others want to widen options for Jewish marriage and conversion. Still others hope to help Jewish women seeking a ritual divorce. “The Israeli public wanted a connection to Judaism, and it got a slap in the face from the dealmakers who said ‘you don’t interest us,’” Stav said of his defeat. “But Judaism is stronger than the dealmakers.” A precedent for the workaround strategies exists in the unlikeliest of places – the haredi community. Despite dominating the rabbinate, the community has its own privately administered kosher certification standard and runs its own network of private religious courts. Liberal activists believe that if the haredi community can do it, so can they.
The Israeli Conservative movement has launched a modest kosher supervision program for wineries that adheres to Conservative Jewish law, which allows non-Jews to work without restrictions during the winemaking process. The program currently supervises two wineries and is in talks with another three. It “offers an alternative where people know there is not discrimination against those who aren’t Jewish,” said Rabbi Andrew Sacks, the director of the Conservative Rabbinical Assembly in Israel. Activists also have started to look outside the rabbinate to help women who cannot remarry because their husbands are missing or refuse to give them a religious writ of divorce, or get. Batya Kehana-Dror, the head of a group that advocates for these women, hopes the new chief rabbis will find Jewish legal solutions for these so-called chained women, or agunot. But if they don’t, Kehana-Dror plans to convene a private religious court of three rabbis who have proven themselves willing to be more creative with Jewish law. “If the [chief rabbis] make a move toward finding a solution for agunot, it could be great news,” Kehana-Dror said. “When they don’t give us a solution, we’ll go to a private organization.” Critics of the Chief Rabbinate achieved a groundbreaking victory last year when Israel’s Supreme Court mandated for the first time that non-Orthodox rabbis in rural communities receive state salaries should they meet certain criteria. This year, the ruling was extended to Conservative and Reform rabbis in Israeli cities. The rabbis should begin receiving state paychecks later this year. Shetach of the Modern Orthodox group Ne’emanei Torah V’avoda hopes to extend the precedent of those court decisions to all of Israel’s religious services, which in his vision would operate like the country’s medical system: The government would fund several overarching religious communities, and citizens could choose the one that best suits them, just as they choose among several publicly funded health care networks. The plan would gradually limit the rabbinate’s powers rather than abolish the body – a goal Shetach sees as more realistic than fighting it head-on. “Even among the Orthodox there’s an understanding emerging that the struggle against reform is superfluous,” Shetach told JTA. “There’s reform of budgeting for rabbis anyway, so we say to the Orthodox, ‘What will [fighting] bring you?’ “