Federation Star - February 2016

Evy Lipp People of the Book Cultural Event Wednesday, February 17, 2016

This event is sold out! If you need to cancel your reservation, please contact Renee’ ASAP at rbialek@jewishnaples.org or 239.263.4205 so we can allow those on the waiting list to attend.

Tickets will be mailed February 3. Please bring your ticket for admittance.

Celebrating Jewish Life in Collier County, Israel and the World

Federation Star Published by the Jewish Federation of Collier County serving Naples, Marco Island and the surrounding communities

www.JewishNaples.org INSIDE THIS ISSUE:

4A Women’s Cultural Alliance 9A Men’s Cultural Alliance 10A Community Focus 14A Tributes 18A Jewish Interest 23A Business Directory 24A Israel & the Jewish World 27A Commentary 29A Focus on Youth 31A Synagogues 32A Organizations 34A Community Calendar 35A Community Directory 1B Jewish Happenings 6B Jewish Book Festival

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February 2016 - Shevat/Adar 5776

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Vol. 25 #6

“Shop with a Sheriff”

The Jewish Federation and the Collier County Sheriff’s Office partner to make the holidays brighter for 90 deserving children and their families.

By Joel Kessler

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member of the Jewish Federation of Collier County who wishes to remain anonymous made a generous $9,000 donation so that children could team up with Collier County deputies and shop for their parents and siblings. The donor’s goal was two-pronged: to help families in need enjoy the season and to give children an opportunity to interact and spend quality time with deputies.

Federation President/CEO Jeffrey Feld and Federation Board Chair Alvin Becker were in attendance on Monday, December 14, when 45 Golden Gate

students shopped with deputies. Each child was given $100 to spend at a local Kmart. The children and deputies then enjoyed snow cones and popcorn at the Golden Gate Community Center where volunteers wrapped the gifts.

A simultaneous shopping trip had an additional 45 deserving East Naples students accompanied by deputies who serve the East Naples community.

Jeffrey Feld was quoted as saying that the anonymous donor was looking forward to continuing “Shop with a Sheriff” each year during the holiday season as an ongoing program.

4A “Dining Out” – a favorite WCA pastime

6A Major Gifts and Lion of Judah event

At the “Shop with a Sheriff” event at the Kmart in Golden Gate: Joel Kessler, Federation President/CEO Jeffrey Feld, Sheriff Kevin Rambosk, Lt. J.J. Carroll, Stephanie Spell (Chief of Community Engagement, Collier County Sheriff’s Office), Federation Board Chair Alvin Becker (photos courtesy of Ted Epstein)

Phyllis Seaman to receive Kipnis-Wilson/Friedland Award 16A 20th Annual Women’s Hanukkah Tea

24A 15 Israeli wearable techs that will disrupt our lives

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he Jewish Federation of Collier County is proud to recognize Phyllis Seaman as the first Kipnis-Wilson/Friedland Award recipient from our community. The award, a prestigious, internationally-recognized honor to a Lion of Judah, is given to a woman who demonstrates the highest ideals of women’s leadership and involvement. The award was established in recognition of Norma Kipnis-Wilson and Toby Friedland (z’l), co-founders of The Jewish Federation of North America’s Lion of Judah Program.

Phyllis more than exemplifies the

Jewish Federation of Collier County Inc. 2500 Vanderbilt Beach Rd., Ste. 2201 Naples, FL 34109

Prsrt Std US Postage Paid Permit #419 Ft Myers FL

spirit of the Lion of Judah, far exceedmany board leadership positions including the recommended criterion considing Vice President. erations for the prestigious During the last 22 years, award.

Phyllis has chaired or co-chaired When Phyllis Seaman Jewish Federation of Collier relocated with her husband, County campaign events – the Michael, from New York to annual Community Dinner and Naples in 1992, she started Major Gifts/Lion of Judah – volunteering for social funcmany times and has sat on nutions at the Jewish Federamerous committees. tion. In 1994, her family went Phyllis was Campaign Chair on a Federation community from 2010 to 2014, and started Phyllis Seaman family mission to Israel, which sparked writing a monthly article in the Federaher desire to join the Federation board tion Star to keep donors informed as to and her commitment to Federation in continued on page 2A

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Federation Star February 2016

JEWISH FEDERATION

Renee’s community program & events corner for all the events you want to attend.

New groups that are forming, let me know you are interested in being a part of any of these groups: Community ¡¡ Crochet/knitting group – knit newProgram born hats and booties to donate to NCH Coordinator ¡¡ Mix and Mingle - senior Jewish singles hat a busy month December ¡¡ Jewish singles for ages 40s-50s was. Thank you to all the ¡¡ Jewish singles for ages 25-35 participants, sponsors and ¡¡ Chess, Scrabble and backgammon attendees who joined us for the Commuclub nity Chanukah and Menorah Lighting ¡¡ Jewish professionals Celebration at the Mercato. ¡¡ Girl Time: spa, dinner, movies, I had the opportunity to visit Primcomedy clubs, museums and more, rose School of North Naples in Demeeting after work or over the cember to teach the children about weekend Chanukah. I read Sammy Spider’s First ¡¡ Young adult book club for grades Hanukkah by Sylvia A. Rouss. We 4-8 played with dreidels and had a lot of fun. ¡¡Youth group for grades k-5: puzzles, board games, activities, book club, playground time and more Upcoming events: Wednesday, February 3, 3:00 to 4:30 p.m.: Naples Regional Library. Presenter: Lauren Feibelman, RSVP: Naples Regional 239.263.7768 or visit www.collierlibrary.org and click on the program Renee’ Bialek teaches Primrose School of North Naples students about Chanukah link.

Friday, February 5: Tau Epsilon Rho January was filled with programs.

Law Society and the Cardozo Society of Thank you to all those who marched the Jewish Federation of Collier County with us at the MLK Jr. Parade. Pete invites the community to: Shabbat DinRushefsky and the Klezmer Revival ner at 6:30 p.m. at the Naples Beach Band entertained us at South Regional Hotel and Resort. $70 pp. RSVP to Yale Library. We had several speakers and at ytfreeman@ytfreemanlaw.com. guests in January. The Jewish ProfesMonday, February 8: Mix & Mingle sionals group had a meeting. dinner at Golden Leaf. RSVP to Judi If you want to get involved, volat judipalay@aol.com by February 1. unteer at the Jewish Federation, start a Limit 50 people. class or give a lecture, please contact Tuesday, February 9, 7:00 p.m.: “The me at rbialek@jewishnaples.org. RSVP

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Renee’ Bialek

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Grand Mufti of Jerusalem: Holocaust collaborator or initiator?” David G. Willens Community Room at the Federation. Contact sbrazina@aol.com to register. Limit 35 people.

Monday, February 15: No school today! Join us for Game Day at the Jewish Federation from 10:30 a.m. to noon. All

Wednesday, February 17: Evy Lipp People of the Book. Bring your reserved tickets to Temple Shalom at 7:15 p.m.

Tuesday, February 23: Israel Advocacy Committee screening of The Prime Ministers: Soldiers and Peacemakers for the entire community at Temple Shalom starting at 7:00 p.m. $10 admission.

RSVP to iacnaples@ gmail.com.

Thursday, February 25 from 10:00 to 11:30 a.m.: Based on her new book, Everyday Healing, this interactive workshop with Janette HillisJaffe will be presented.

Free admission at the Participating in Game Day are Gene Helfand, Jordan Wasserman and Jaron Wasserman Jewish Federation of ages can attend this free event. RSVP by Collier County. Books will be sold and February 12. signed by the author. $15 for one book Monday, February 15: Let’s learn how or $25 for two. RSVP to rbialek@ to make origami animals with instrucjewishnaples.org. tor Mr. Dave. Join us at this free event Monday, February 29: Performance of at the Jewish Federation from 1:00 to The Man Who Married His Mother-In2:00 p.m. Limit 25 people. RSVP by Law by Jeffrey Hatcher will be presentFebruary 12. ed at 4:00 p.m. at the Jewish Federation.

Monday, February 15, 3:00 to 4:30 Tickets are $35. Ticket purchases and p.m.: “Practical Mental Health Ideas reservations to Collier County Reperto Help You Live Better.” Lecture and tory Theatre at 239.231.3741. discussion presented by Dr. Jacqueline Backgammon on Thursdays Sallade, Board-certified clinical psyat the Jewish Federation: chologist with 40 years of experience Contact Dena for reservations in clinical practice with adults and at dena_robbins@me.com. children. Adults only, please. RSVP by February 4 from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m.

February 12. Limit 15 people.

February 11 from noon to 3:00 p.m.

Monday, February 15: An encore February 25 from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. presentation of The Interview will take Save these dates: place at 3:00 p.m. at the Jewish FederaMonday, March 7 from 6:45 to 8:00 tion. Tickets are $35. Ticket purchases p.m. Enjoy free dance lessons at Fred and reservations may be made by callAstaire Dance Studio at 1585 Pine ing Collier County Repertory Theatre at Ridge Rd # 26, Naples. No dance ex239.231.3741. perience needed. This event is open Tuesday, February 16: Scrabble, to Federation members. Limit to 30 Othello, checkers…board-game time! people. RSVP by March 4.

Join us for this free event at the Jewish Thursday, March 17: Make a Purim Federation from 3:45 to 4:45 p.m. If you grogger and take it home! Free event have a favorite board game, please bring from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. Limit 25 people. it. RSVP by February 15.

RSVP by March 15.

Phyllis Seaman...continued from page 1A where their dollars go. Phyllis is proud to help her Federation raise its campaign to over $1 million annually.

In 1998, Phyllis received the Community Volunteer Award, and in 2010, shared an honor with her husband for community support and leadership.

Phyllis became a Lion of Judah in 2005. In 2012, Phyllis attended the Campaign Chair/Executive Directors Mission and became a Ruby, and established a Lion of Judah Endowment

(LOJE) in 2014. Her goal now is to encourage more Lions in our community to become Endowed Lions.

Presently, Phyllis is Women’s Philanthropy, Lion of Judah and Endowment Chair, and is a Small City Trustee on the board of The Jewish Federations of North America.

Phyllis and Michael have three children, Sloane, Kim and Jordan, and three granddaughters, Isabel, Tess and Teigan.

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This month’s advertisers This publication is brought to you each month thanks to the support of our advertisers. Please be sure to use their products and services, and mention that you found them in the Federation Star.

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JEWISH FEDERATION

February 2016 Federation Star

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BDS – Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions

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Jeffrey Feld Federation President/ CEO

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here is a whole movement of BDS against Israel. The purpose is a global campaign targeting Israel, attempting to increase economic dand political pressure on Israel so that she will comply with the wants of the BDS movement. The BDS movement was created by 171 Palestinian organizations. It disincentivizes the Palestinian leadership from negotiations, it is antiSemitic and it promotes the delegitimization of Israel. The Jewish Federation of Collier County is obviously opposed kto the BDS movement. @ We should be very proud that the State of Florida became the fifth state fto pass a resolution condemning the -BDS movement for its anti-Israel activity and the damage that it inflicts on .the cause of peace in the Middle East. dFlorida’s decision is a reaction to grow-

ing anti-Semitic sentiment and activity in the state, including the boycotting of Israel, political leaders and businesses, and the attacks against Jewish and proIsrael students on university campuses – something that is happening across the country, not just in Florida.

Through the leadership of the Israel Advocacy Committee of the Jewish Federation of Collier County, we are being proactive on combating BDS. On Monday, January 25, our community and our Federation will join with the Jewish Federation of Lee & Charlotte Counties and the SWFL Regional Pastors, Leaders & Churches for the eighth Annual Covenant with Israel Celebration, held at Estero High School.

In addition, lectures, films and other programs have been brought to our community to promote a greater support and appreciation for Israel. I will take this opportunity to highlight such experiences. This past December, our Israel Advocacy Committee brought in Asaf Romirowsky, PhD, a fellow at the Middle East Forum, a Philadelphiabased think tank, and his lecture was entitled, “How to combat the boycott

Di-verse: showing a great deal of variety

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Alvin Becker Federation Board Chair

ebster’s New Pocket Dictionary defines diversity as “showing a great deal of vamriety “and no adjective better describes tthe offerings of programs and events available to members of Naples’ Jewish community.

Take a look at recent issues of the Federation Star or review the Federation’s Community Update email for example. Another good source of information is the Federation’s 2016 issue of Connections magazine. Prominently described in each are announcements of educational, cultural and current event lectures and presentations on a wide range of important political and international topics affecting our local, national and international communities.

Schedules of multiple Jewish-

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flavored film festivals are listed as are presentations by noted authors. Purely social groups like the Federation-sponsored Mix & Mingle Jewish singles group, chess and backgammon clubs, Jewish Professionals, and youth groups are listed. Participation in a variety of events like January’s MLK Jr. Parade and invitations to serve on a number of action-oriented committees like the Jewish Community Relations Council are noted. Finally, local Jewish organizations and synagogues describe their offerings and programs.

Longtime members of our Jewish community as well as newcomers expect to find a vibrant, active and responsive Jewish community in the Naples area, and your Federation, through its financial and administrative support of the organizations and programs noted, strives to achieve that goal.

We have a great diversity of Jewish offerings in our community. Choose to participate in one (or more) to enhance and enrich the quality of life where you live.

IAC to present The Prime Ministers: Soldiers and Peacemakers

of Israel (BDS) movement.”

The Jewish Federation of Collier County, working collaboratively with ArtsNaples World Festival, is bringing the Jerusalem Symphony to Naples, on Saturday, February 27. The performance will be held at the North Naples United Methodist Church. (See the ad in this issue for details.) Please understand that having the performance at the North Naples United Methodist Church is a BIG deal regarding fighting BDS. Another experience will be the Community Yom HaAtzmaut “Celebrate Israel” program that will be held on Sunday, May 15 from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. at the Mercato. We invite the entire community to join with us as we celebrate the 68th anniversary of Israel’s independence.

As a community, we need to show our support for Israel. We need to do

everything we possibly can to stop the BDS movement from its mission. We need to educate our community, and particularly our young people as they prepare for high school and college, to be able to respond to the BDS propaganda and literature.

We do these things by providing our support for Hillel and BBYO, and through the activities of our Israel Advocacy Committee. None of this is possible without a successful Annual Campaign.

We need your help to raise the funds so we can continue to do all the things that our Jewish community believes is important. We need your continued financial support to ensure that we will be a vital, vibrant Jewish community.

Please generously support Campaign 2016! Thank you very much.

Are you considering buying or selling your home?

CALL ME…I can help!

Chellie Doepke Premiere Plus Realty, Co.

239-877-1722 seachell2@hotmail.com www.sells-naples.com www.facebook.com/chelliedoepkerealtor

Making real estate dreams reality The Jewish Book Festival kicks off on Thursday, February 18.

See below for a quick overview. Included in this issue is a 4-page insert with a complete schedule of events, venue locations, author bios, book synopses, ticket packages and an order form.

Individual events are also highlighted throughout this issue.

Calendar of Events THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 18 ~ 1:00 - 4:00PM Theme: Russia Talia Carner, Hotel Moscow David Greene, Midnight in Siberia

Presents the First Annual

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 22 ~ 1:00 - 4:00PM Theme: Family Dr. David Bernstein, I’ve Got Some Good News and Some Bad News: YOU’RE OLD Dani Klein Modisett, Take My Spouse Please

February 18 - March 14, 2016 11 events ~ 23 authors All events take place in Naples

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 23 ~ 9:00 - 11:00AM Theme: Food Chef Rossi, The Raging Skillet

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 24 ~ 1:00 - 4:00PM

These are just a few of the books you’ll hear about at the Festival:

Theme: Local Authors B.A. Shapiro, The Muralist Marc Simon, The Leap Year Boy Bob Mandell, Stroke Victor Jerry Greenfield, Secrets of the Wine Whisperer

By Jeff Margolis

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he Israel Advocacy Committee p.m. at the Mercato. Project chairman of the Jewish Federation Collier Jeffrey Randall has been extremely County is pleased to present the busy gathering vendors with Israellatest installment of the film series The made goods, delicious food choices, Prime Ministers on Tuesday, Februgreat activities for children, and booths ary 23 at 7:00 p.m. at Temple Shalom. with information from many Jewish and This is the second film in the series Israeli organizations. and is produced by Moriah Films, the Mark your calendars now. This award-winning division of the Simon festive event will be a highlight of the Wiesenthal Center for Tolerance.

The film was previewed to rave reviews last summer as part of the Federation’s Summer Film Series and is being screened again for the many community members who were unable to attend the sumSteve Brazina, guest speaker Herb Keinon and Alan Gordon at a recent IAC event mer presentation. There is a $10 admission charge and reserseason in our community. It’s free and vations are necessary. RSVP to iac@ open to the public. Come and celebrate gmail.com.

Israel’s 68th birthday.

The buzz is starting to build for the For more information about this “Celebrate Israel” festivities scheduled event, please contact Jeffrey at jeffreym for Sunday, May 15 from 1:00 to 4:00 randall@gmail.com.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 29 ~ 6:30 - 9:00PM Theme: Spirituality Sarah L. Kaufman, The Art of Grace Jay Michaelson, The Gate of Tears

TUESDAY, MARCH 1 ~ 1:00 - 4:00PM Theme: Holocaust Daniel M. Cohen, Single Handed Steven Pressman, 50 Children

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 2 ~ 1:00 - 4:00PM Theme: Israel Jessamyn T. Hope, Safekeeping Mike Kelly, The Bus on Jaffa Road

For more information on the 23 authors, their books, tickets, venues and more:

THURSDAY, MARCH 3 ~ 1:00 - 4:00PM Theme: Fiction Julia Dahl, Run You Down Susan Jane Gilman, The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street

www.JewishBookFestival.org Thank You to Our Sponsors

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 9 ~ 6:30 - 9:00PM Theme: Memoir Sally Fingerett, The Mental Yentl Dafna Michaelson Jenet, It Takes a Little Crazy To Make a Difference

THURSDAY, MARCH 10 ~ 6:30 - 9:30PM Theme: Powerful Women Lisa Green, On Your Case Julia Pimsleur, Million Dollar Women

Women’s Cultural Alliance

MONDAY, MARCH 14 ~ 6:30 - 9:00PM

Theme: Inspiration Megan Feldman Bettencourt, Triumph of the Heart Goldie Milgram, New Mitzvah Stories

www.JewishBookFestival.org

239.263.4205

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Federation Star February 2016

JEWISH FEDERATION www.WomensCulturalAlliance.com / 215-820-6697

WOMEN’S CULTURAL ALLIANCE

“Dining Out” with WCA

By Susan Pittelman, WCA Publicity Director

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ining Out” is a favorite pastime of many who live in Southwest Florida – and WCA offerings certainly support that interest! Among the wide variety of WCA programs and special interest groups are multiple opportunities to eat in some of the newest and most interesting restaurants in the area.

Ladies Who Lunch, a very popular WCA offering held once a month, gives women a chance to enjoy lunch with other WCA members at a variety of restaurants. Not only do women enjoy the food, but they also appreciate the opportunity to make new friends, as table seating is always random. Sue Dean, who is the liaison during season, commented, “New restaurants, new friends and stimulating conversation – what more could one ask for? Ladies Who Lunch provides it all, and more!” Toby Kosloff, the liaison during the summer months, pointed out, “Summer is the perfect time for Ladies Who Lunch. We have more choices of restaurants and clubs than we do during season. The number of full-timers who join us each summer increases every year!”

Dinner Dames also offers women the opportunity to dine at a variety of restaurants around town, but for dinner instead of lunch. Unlike Ladies Who Lunch, which is announced in the WCA Weekly eblast, members need to register with liaison Ferne Walpert to receive information about these special dinners.

Ferne explained, “We try to eat at the top restaurants in the area, and women are able to order off the menu. In December we had a delicious dinner at Campiello and were wowed by a Naples snowfall.

In January we dined at Alexander’s. It is a great way for our members to try out the best restaurants with a wonderful

group of women.”

Many of the events planned by WCA’s Couples Group include dining out. These events usually are “sellouts,” reflecting how much WCA couples enjoy each other’s company as well as how much they enjoy dining out in restaurants! So far this season, the Couples Group has dined at Café Figaro and at Limoncello. Liaison Phyllis Strome stated, “The Couples Group offers a great opportunity to meet and create friendships with other couples as well as enjoy the different venues and activities that Naples has to offer.”

WCA’s Serious Foodies Group offers its members many different food “experiences.” Several cooking demonstrations and lunches have been held at various restaurants around town. New this year are “Themed Coffee Klatches” at which members bring a specific type of food (e.g. baked desserts, salads, nondairy appetizers) to someone’s home, where they enjoy each other’s culinary creations and share the recipes. In addition, every month a fabulous recipe is sent to Foodies. On Tuesday, February 23, Serious Foodies will be going to the Jewish Book Festival presentation

by Chef Rossi, author of The Raging Skillet, to further enhance their culinary skills as well as to enjoy a healthy continental breakfast together. Liaison Lea Bendes remarked, “Yes, we take food seriously. Some seriously study the preparation while others seriously enjoy tasting the results! It’s a perfect combination...meet, greet and eat.”

In February, the Couples Group is joining with the Serious Foodies to create two events at which participants will not only have the opportunity to eat dinner out with others, but they will also have the opportunity to prepare

WCA-sponsored event: Thursday, March 3, 1:00 - 4:00 p.m. at Temple Shalom~ Topic: Fiction Susan Jane Gilman ~ The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street Julia Dahl ~ Run You Down www.JewishBookFestival.org ~ 239.263.4205

WCA’s Ladies Who Lunch enjoy both friendship and fine food at the Colony Bay Club

their own meals under the direction of The Sauce Lady. Lea Bendes, liaison to Serious Foodies, said, “Each event will be an evening of delicious food and fun, while adding skills to your cooking repertoire!”

WCA’s special interest group Tea Anyone? offers both having tea in a home and having tea in a restaurant.

The first gathering was held at Brambles English Tea Room in December. In March, the women will enjoy Afternoon Tea at Audrey’s Attic. In addition, liaison Marlene Karpman will be hosting a tea in her home. She commented, “I love inviting everyone to my home! I have done it for the last two years. It’s the most enjoyable and relaxing afternoon – a chance to catch up with old friends and to meet new ones!”

While jazz is the first love of WCA Jazz Junkies, oftentimes the group’s events are held at restaurants. Liaison Sue Dean explained, “Southwest Florida has a cache of great jazz musicians. We seek them out in some unique venues, and attend performances as a group.

Most involve dinner and music.” In December, WCA members enjoyed a delicious meal at the Roadhouse Café as well as wonderful jazz by the Danny Sinoff Trio. In January, the group met

for Sunday brunch and jazz at the Wine Loft.

For WCA members who enjoy “eating out” with others, but prefer dining in a home instead of in a restaurant, WCA’s Dinner Parties Group is a perfect match! Members each prepare one dish from a planned menu for every dinner and also agree to host one of the dinners at their home. According to coliaison Judit Price, “The group is open to both singles and couples. A wonderful menu and recipes are provided. Everyone cooks following the recipes that are sent, with all expenses shared by the group. Groupings rotate each month so that we will have an opportunity to share a meal with different people each time.” Co-liaison Avra Schwab added, “We had our first WCA Dinner Party in January and are pleased to report that a great time was had by all! The food and venues were wonderful.”

Don’t miss out on some of these great dining experiences! These events are only for WCA members, so if you are not yet a member of WCA, join today. You will be glad that you did!

Complete the Membership Form below or visit www.WomensCulturalAlliance. com for more information.

Evy Lipp People of the Book Cultural Event Wednesday, February 17, 2016

This event is sold out! If you need to cancel your reservation, please contact Renee’ ASAP at rbialek@jewishnaples.org or 239.263.4205 so we can allow those on the waiting list to attend.

If you are attending, please be sure to bring your ticket with you.

Read the Federation Star on your tablet!

Celebrating Jewish Life in Collier County, Israel and the World

Federation Star Published by the Jewish Federation of Collier County serving Naples, Marco Island and the surrounding communities

www.JewishNaples.org INSIDE THIS ISSUE:

9A Men’s Cultural Alliance 4A Women’s Cultural Alliance 10A Community Focus 14A Tributes 18A Jewish Interest 23A Business Directory 24A Israel & the Jewish World 27A Commentary 29A Focus on Youth 31A Synagogues 32A Organizations 34A Community Calendar 35A Community Directory 1B Jewish Happenings 6B Jewish Book Festival

Visit www.issuu.com

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February 2016 - Shevat/Adar 5776

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Vol. 25 #6

“Shop with a Sheriff”

The Jewish Federation and the Collier County Sheriff’s Office partner to make the holidays brighter for 90 deserving children and their families.

By Joel Kessler

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member of the Jewish Federation of Collier County who wishes to remain anonymous made a generous $9,000 donation so that children could team up with Collier County deputies and shop for their parents and siblings. The donor’s goal was two-pronged: to help families in need enjoy the season and to give children an opportunity to interact and spend quality time with deputies.

Federation President/CEO Jeffrey Feld and Federation Board Chair Alvin Becker were in attendance on Monday, December 14, when 45 Golden Gate

students shopped with deputies. Each child was given $100 to spend at a local Kmart. The children and deputies then enjoyed snow cones and popcorn at the Golden Gate Community Center where volunteers wrapped the gifts.

A simultaneous shopping trip had an additional 45 deserving East Naples students accompanied by deputies who serve the East Naples community.

Jeffrey Feld was quoted as saying that the anonymous donor was looking forward to continuing “Shop with a Sheriff” each year during the holiday season as an ongoing program.

4A “Dining Out” – a favorite WCA pastime

Enter “Federation Star” in the search box and click on the cover image of the issue you’d like to read. Then simply scroll through the pages.

6A Major Gifts and Lion of Judah event

At the “Shop with a Sheriff” event at the Kmart in Golden Gate: Joel Kessler, Federation President/CEO Jeffrey Feld, Sheriff Kevin Rambosk, Lt. J.J. Carroll, Stephanie Spell (Chief of Community Engagement Collier County Sheriff’s Office), Federation Board Chair Alvin Becker (photos courtesy Ted Epstein)

Phyllis Seaman to receive Kipnis-Wilson/Friedland Award 16A 20th Annual Women’s Hanukkah Tea

24A 15 Israeli wearable techs that will disrupt our lives

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he Jewish Federation of Collier County is proud to recognize Phyllis Seaman as the first Kipnis-Wilson/Friedland Award recipient from our community. The award, a prestigious, internationally-recognized honor to a Lion of Judah, is given to a woman who demonstrates the highest ideals of women’s leadership and involvement. The award was established in recognition of Norma Kipnis-Wilson and Toby Friedland (z’l), co-founders of The Jewish Federation of North America’s Lion of Judah Program.

Phyllis more than exemplifies the

Jewish Federation of Collier County Inc. 2500 Vanderbilt Beach Rd., Ste. 2201 Naples, FL 34109

Prsrt Std US Postage Paid Permit #419 Ft Myers FL

spirit of the Lion of Judah, far exceedmany board leadership positions including Vice President. ing the recommended criterion considDuring the last 22 years, erations for the prestigious Phyllis has chaired or co-chaired award.

Jewish Federation of Collier When Phyllis Seaman County campaign events – the relocated with her husband, annual Community Dinner and Michael, from New York to Major Gifts/Lion of Judah – Naples in 1992, she started many times and has sat on nuvolunteering on social funcmerous committees. tions at the Jewish Federation. In 1994, her family went Phyllis was Campaign Chair on a Federation community from 2010 to 2014, and started Phyllis Seaman writing a monthly article in the Federafamily mission to Israel, which sparked tion Star to keep donors informed as to her desire to join the Federation board and her commitment to Federation in continued on page 2A

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Women’s Cultural Alliance Membership Form Our Membership year runs from September 1 to August 31.

Dues for members who join after March 1st will cover the next season.

Men's Cultural Alliance of Collier County Men's Cultural Alliance of CollierForm County 2015-2016 Membership

New Member____ Renewal____ Is there a change in your information from last year? YES___ NO___ ___________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________

Name

Spouse/Partner Name

___________________________________________________________________

Email Address (very important)

2015-2016 Membership Form 31 of the next year.

The membership year is from November 1 until October The membership year is from November 1 until October 31 of the next year.

Dues received after April 30 will be applied to the next season.

Dues received after April 30 will be applied to the next season.

Please check one: New Please check one: ☐NewRenewal ☐☐ ☐ Renewal

fill the out the formcompletely completely and PRINT CLEARLY!) (PLEASE(PLEASE fill out form and PRINT CLEARLY!)

___________________________________________________________________

Name: _________________________________ _______________________________Name: Spouse or Partner Name, if applicable: Community in which you live FL Home Phone Spouse or Partner Name, if applicable: Local Address: ______________________________ ____________________________________ City: State: Cell Phone Northern Phone Local Address: ___________________________________________________________________ Email (very important): City: State: Northern Street Address, City, State or Province, Zip Florida phone: Cell or alternate phone: Email (very important): In FL: Full Time______ OR Part Time______ From _________________________ to _______________________ Northern Address: City: State:phone: Zip: Cell or alternate Membership Dues are $90.00 (US Funds), which includes a $36.00 donation to Federation $90.00 Florida phone: FL Street Address, City, Zip

I am also including a voluntary donation to the Federation in the amount of $_________________Northern Total enclosed or authorized $__________________City: ____I will be paying by check. (Please make your check payable to JFCC/WCA.)

In Southwest Florida: full-time ☐ part-time ☐ (from Address:

to

Zip:

Zip:

)

Membership fee: $56 (US Funds only, Minimum for the year; includes Federation membership.)

State: Zip: NAME BADGES A name badge will be issued to you at no charge if you are a NEW member.

In Southwest Florida: full-time ☐ part-time ☐ (from to ) I want a replacement name badge: Yes ☐ No ☐ Fee: $8. If you checked yes, submit a total fee is $64. ____I will be paying by credit card: Card Number_________________________________________________________ Namefee: as you want(US it toFunds appear on the name badge Membership $56 only, Minimum for the year; includes Federation membe Exp. Date_______________ Name on Card________________________________________________________ Additional donation to the Federation is voluntary and encouraged.

NAME BADGES Please your check Federation of Collier County and mail with this form to: A name badge willmake be issued to payable you at to: no Jewish charge if you are a NEW member.

MCA/ Jewish Federation of Collier I want a replacement name badge: YesCounty ☐ No ☐ Fee: $8. If you checked yes, submit a total fee i ____I would like to volunteer for WCA by Chairing or Co-Chairing a program.

Vanderbilt Beach Rd, Ste. 2201 Name as you 2500 want it to appear on the name badge ____I would like to be a speaker or lead a workshop on these topics: If checked, list topic(s)_______________________ Naples, FL 34109 ____I would like to volunteer in some capacity, but I am not yet sure what.

Additional donation to the Federation is voluntary and encouraged.

You must sign the waiver below, and return this completed form with your check or credit card information.

To be included in the WCA Directory, we must have this information by August 1.

I would like to volunteer my services/expertise and would be willing to chair or co-chair a meeting/outing Please sign Event Participation Waiver: As a participant in a WCA event, I, acting for myself, my executors, make on your payable to: Jewish Federation of Collier County and mail with this form the check following topic or topics: administrators, heirs, next of kin agree as follows: I waive all rights, claims, courses of action, of any kind whatsoeverPlease that I or my heirs or my legal representatives may claim to have against The Jewish Federation of Collier County, The Jewish Federation of Collier County EVENT PARTICIPATION WAIVER Women’s Cultural Alliance, or their agents, servants, and/or employees, for any loss, injury, or damage sustained by MCA/ me By signing below, I accept the terms of this waiver. while participating in a WCA event. This waiver and release shall be construed broadly, under the laws of the State of 2500 Vanderbilt Beach Rd,in Ste. 2201 As a participant an MCA event, I , acting for myself, my executors, administrators, heirs, next of kin agree Florida. Your membership payment is your permission for Women’s Cultural Alliance to take and use photographs/videos for appropriate purposes in accordance with WCA’s mission as follows: That I waive all rights, claims, cause of action, of any kind whatsoever that I or my heirs, legal Naples, FL 34109

representatives may claim to have against either The Jewish Federation of Collier County, and or the Men’s Cultural Alliance of Collier County, their members, agents, servants, and or employees, for any loss, injury, I would like to my services/expertise and would be willing to chair or co-chair a meeting/ or volunteer damage sustained by me while participating in an MCA event.

This waiver and release shall be construed broadly, under Laws of the State of Florida. on the following topic orthe topics:

Signature_________________________________________________ Date__________________________ Please mail this form (with the signed waiver) and your check or credit card number to: Jewish Federation of Collier County, 2500 Vanderbilt Beach Rd. #2201, Naples FL 34109.

to

If you prefer, you may complete this form online at www.WomensCulturalAlliance.com and then print off the form, sign the waiver, and mail it to the Jewish Federation (at the above address) with your payment.

Signature

EVENT PARTICIPATION WAIVER By signing below, accept the terms of this waiver.

For more information: Contact Steve BrazinaI sbrazina@aol.com

JEWISH FEDERATION

Published by

Officers Board Chair: Alvin Becker Vice Chair: Kevin Aizenshtat Vice Chair: Phyllis Seaman Secretary: Wallie Lenchner Treasurer: Jerry Sobelman Immed. Past Chair: Judge Norman Krivosha

Board of Directors Joshua Bialek Rosalee Bogo David Braverman Harvey Brenner Dan Carp Stephen Coleman Karen Deutsch Michael Feldman Alan Gordon Neil Heuer Joel Pittelman Jane Schiff Arlene Sobol Michael Sobol Steve Strome Dr. Daniel Wasserman Beth Wolff Edward Wollman Barry Zvibleman

Past Presidents Gerald Flagel, Dr. William Ettinger, Ann Jacobson, Sheldon Starman, Bobbie Katz, Rosalee Bogo

Board Members Emeritus Hans Levy Shirley Levy

Synagogue Representatives Cantor Donna Azu Sue Baum Rabbi Ammos Chorny Phil Jason Rabbi Adam Miller Suzanne Paley Rabbi James Perman Dr. Arthur Seigel Neil Shnider Rabbi Sylvin Wolf Rabbi Fishel Zaklos

Federation President/CEO Jeffrey Feld

Staff Renee’ Bialek, Community Prog. Coord.

Stacy Hersha, Business Oper. Mgr. Julie Hartline, Administrative Assistant

Federation is the central Jewish community-building organization for Collier County, providing a social service network that helps Jewish people in Collier County, in Israel and around the world. As the central fundraising organization for Jewish communal life in our area, strength is drawn from organized committees of dedicated volunteers.

Programs include: • Annual Campaign & Endowment fund • Educational & cultural programs • Israel Advocacy Committee • Jewish Book Festival • Jewish Community Relations Council • Jewish Russian-American Cultural Alliance • Men’s Cultural Alliance • Publication of the Federation Star, Connections and ership.)

Community Directory • Strategic Planning • Women’s Cultural Alliance is $64.

• Women’s Division • YAD – Young Adult Division • Youth Activities Committee – sponsoring youth education and o: scholarships for Jewish Summer Camp and the Israel Experience

The work of the Jewish Federation of Collier County represents both our community /outing and our community’s most generous tradition – to give to others even in the most difficult times.

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Meet your Federation board: Michael & Arlene Sobol

By Jean Amodea

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2500 Vanderbilt Beach Road, Suite 2201 Naples, Florida 34109-0613 Phone: (239) 263-4205 Fax: (239) 263-3813 www.jewishnaples.org Email: info@jewishnaples.org

February 2016 Federation Star

aples residents, with roots outside of Boston, Michael and Arlene Sobol, now retired, operated a computer training company, which they started in 1978. The couple served as employee numbers one and two, respectively – and they got along – successfully operating their business until they sold it in 2000.

These days, they enjoy friends and family, especially their two sons and their wives and four grandchildren. The couple heads north for the holidays and also from May through September.

While in Naples, they maintain a full schedule of leisure activities. Michael, enamored with sports, bikes, kayaks, plays senior softball, pickle ball and tennis.

While Arlene can be found playing some golf, she loves canasta and bridge, and has attained the title of Bridge Life Master, playing at a duplicate bridge club in Naples. At home, she is known, said Michael, as a great baker.

Notwithstanding their active leisure activities, the couple is dedicated to being active members who give back to their Jewish community.

Michael has served on the Federation board for the past three and a half years, and also serves on the Men’s Cultural Alliance (MCA) board, in charge of communications. Arlene has served on the Federation board for a year and a half, and also serves on the Women’s Cultural Alliance (WCA) board.

“We enjoy what we do, and we both agree that taking an active role in the Federation, the WCA for me, and the MCA for Michael, brings us great pleasure,” said Arlene.

To learn more, I chatted with this dynamic duo, true role models of doing, giving and serving their community.

Michael, tell us about your work with the Federation board.

In the early 2000s, because of my technological background, I assisted with the Federation’s computer systems.

As the Federation grew and evolved, it required more of my time and expertise.

While I am not involved in the day-today technology of running the networks and computers, since 2007, I have been sending over 1,000 email blasts weekly as my technological contribution. I also do this for the MCA. I also serve as the MCA liaison to the Federation board, representing the 400-strong membership. This year, I was also on the Federation’s allocations committee.

Michael, what do you see as the Federation’s primary goal?

It is the umbrella organization of all the Jewish organizations in the greater Naples area, acting as the fundraiser and distributor of those funds to the needy and to the appropriate organizations in Naples, in Israel and around the world.

Have you brought any new agenda items to board, Michael?

We are trying to enhance the social media presence of the Federation, but it has been difficult due to the age of the majority of the community members who have been slow in accepting social media like Twitter and Facebook.

Although we are working toward this goal, it is not a high priority.

Michael, what is one of the board’s challenges, and are we lagging in philanthropy?

Getting volunteers to help with the men’s programming is challenging.

We have difficulty in encouraging men to step up to the plate and get involved on boards and committees. I am trying to promote that involvement. One of the MCA’s goals is to provide cultural, educational, social and active events for men. We offer a Talmud class taught by a volunteer member, and we have pickle

ball, kayaking and biking as well as luncheon speakers. It is disappointing that more folks do not step up to the plate as far as the philanthropic portion. It is a shame that the Federation struggles to raise more money in this affluent community. If you look out the windows of our beautiful communities, you don’t see hungry people. However, it is a bit

Arlene & Michael Sobol

deceiving, because there are Jews as well as other groups of folks who are hungry in Naples. We live in a bit of a bubble, here.

Arlene, what is your role on the board?

I am on a committee to locate outside venues for all programming, and I work with the Federation office database. I also joined the board to represent WCA. My interest is in programming and doing things that will help Jewish women respond to the Federation through the affinity group of WCA. By having a say on the board, I am able to let them know about the WCA’s needs, concerns and interests. I also bring the Federation’s needs in funding to the WCA and create a tie between both boards and help WCA members understand the Federation’s importance and goals.

Arlene, what can the community of Jewish women accomplish?

The power of the community and the strength in numbers can accomplish so much with fundraising. The WCA has strength in numbers with over 1,100 women members. While it is not a fundraising arm, by joining the WCA and being active, women can also become active members of the Federation and strengthen that organization.

Arlene, why is it important for the community to take an active role in the Federation, and what is of interest to you, personally?

We are helping others in the community, and that is important for all of us. I am on the committee to find a larger space for the office, meetings and programming. We have outgrown the current space, and we need more and larger space for the affinity groups and Federation needs. The committee is just starting to search.

Arlene, why do you think that we have a less than perfect fundraising outcome?

Some reasons for the slow giving is that many people give up north, and when in Naples, they consider this a vacation spot, and they do not think they need to give here. But, they don’t realize that at some point, they may need some of the Federation-supported services now or in the future, and that is why giving is so important.

Jean Amodea, a former school principal from New Jersey, is a freelance writer for the Naples Daily News and its community publications as well as director of Peter Duchin Music of Naples/Entertainment Direct. She also performs with her husband Ron’s dance band, jazz ensemble and Caribbean quartet.

Reach Jean at jeanamodea@gmail.com.

Temple Shalom & Ellen Katz Invite You to Celebrate the 50th Anniversary of

“Fiddler on the Roof” Sunday, February 28th at 4PM

No creative work has ever won our hearts & imaginations so thoroughly!

Ellen Katz, popular Broadway “edu-tainer”, will present a joyous retrospective of “Fiddler on the Roof” Special performances by Cantor Donna Azu The Naples Klezmer Revival Band

This event is free and open to the community!

Ellen’s engaging presentation will include: Discussion of the show’s evolutionfrom page-to-stage & script-to-screen The Stars - Zero, Topol, Molly Picon & Bette Midler How “Tevye” was created by writer Sholom Aleichem Insight into how this folk tale become an international hit Ellen performs the favorites!

Join in and sing along!

IT’S A TRULY REMARKABLE STORYA MIRACLE OF MIRACLES! DON’T MISS A NOTE!!

RSVP by February 26th Temple Shalom 4630 Pine Ridge Rd. Naples, FL 34119 239-455-3030

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Federation Star February 2016

JEWISH FEDERATION

Major Gifts and Lion of Judah event, January 7, 2016

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he Major Gifts and Lion of Judah event of the Jewish Federation of Collier County was held on Thursday, January 7. Linda and Dan Carp welcomed approximately 95 guests into their home to help kick off

the Federation’s 2016 Annual Campaign.

Linda Hurwitz was the guest speaker. Linda is the immediate past National Campaign Chair of The Jewish Federations of North America and is currently

the Chair-elect of the Board of The Associated.

Proceeds from Campaign 2016 will go to benefit a variety of programs and agencies that provide for Jewish con-

Phyllis Seaman, Dan & Linda Carp, Rosalee Bogo, Linda Hurwitz, Jeffrey Feld

tinuity; local humanitarian and social services provided by JFCS of Southwest Florida; and Israel & overseas humanitarian and social services.

Photos courtesy of Ted Epstein

The Lions roar

Harvey & Maxine Brenner

Sheila & Alvin Becker

Barbara & Ron Balser

Jay & Stuart Kaye

Michael & Phyllis Seaman

Phyllis & Stephen Strome

Frank & Dr. Deborah Wyman

Lois & Phil Cohen

Jane Schiff & Lon Gratz

Murray & Pauline Hendel

Myra & Dr. Mort Friedman

Linda Hurwitz addresses the attendees at the home of Dan & Linda Carp

JEWISH FEDERATION

February 2016 Federation Star

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Tau Epsilon Rho and the Cardozo Society of the Jewish Federation present three community events Reservations to these events can be made by calling Yale T. Freeman, P.A. at 239.530.2500 or by email at ytfreeman@ytfreemanlaw.com.

Gala dinner with ADL’s Abe Foxman – February 9

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be Foxman, recently retired National Director of the AntiDefamation League, will be presented with the prestigious Benjamin Nathan Cardozo Award of the Tau Epsilon Rho Law Society at a gala dinner co-sponsored by Tau Epsilon Rho (TER) and the Cardozo Society of the Jewish Federation of Collier County.

This major event, to be held on Tuesday, February 9 at the Naples Beach Hotel & Golf Club, is being held in conjunction with TER’s 95th Annual Convention. A cocktail reception will begin at 6:30 p.m. followed by dinner, the awards ceremony, and a stimulating interview of Mr. Foxman.

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, John Abe Foxman, an American lawyer born in Russia, has long been the leadPaul Stevens and Antonin Scalia, as ing voice in the United States in the well as former Pennsylvania Governor Edward Rendell. fight against anti-Semitism.

He retired last summer after TER chancellor David Marispending fifty years with the on, of Philadelphia, commented, Anti-Defamation League, “We are delighted to have the and since 1987, as its NaJewish Federation of Collier County co-sponsor this exciting tional Executive Director.

Tau Epsilon Rho is the event honoring Abe Foxman, a oldest Jewish law society luminary of the American Jewish in the United States, and is community, and to invite the local Abe Foxman proud to include within its memberJewish community to participate.” ship judges, lawyers and law students Yale Freeman of Naples is the of all faiths. During the past five years, local TER Event Chair (ytfreeman@ Federation has worked closely with ytfreemanlaw.com), and David Liner of Sarasota is the TER Convention TER, honoring U.S. Supreme Court

Shabbat dinner – February 5

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Shabbat dinner will be held on Friday, February 5 at 6:30 p.m. at the Naples Beach Hotel & Golf Club, and the entire community is invited to attend. This event, which is being co-sponsored by the Tau Epsilon Rho Law Society and the Cardozo Society of the Jewish Federation of Collier County, marks the opening of Tau Epsilon Rho Law Society’s 95th Annual

Convention.

Tau Epsilon Rho (TER) is the oldest Jewish law society in the United States, and is proud to include among its membership judges, lawyers and law students of all faiths.

Jeffrey Feld, Federation President/ CEO, said, “The Jewish Federation of Collier County is pleased to welcome TER back to Naples for its annual con-

vention, and to celebrate Shabbat dinner together.” David Marion, Chancellor of TER added, “For the past six years the Naples Jewish community and the Cardozo Society of the Jewish Federation of Collier County, in particular, have been so welcoming and helpful to us that we wanted to share this special evening together.”

The local event chair is Yale Free-

Chairman. For information on TER and the convention, contact Mr. Liner at dliner@ropertech.com.

All members of the community are invited to attend, and the cost is $150 per person. Seats are limited.

A Shabbat dinner will also be held as TER’s opening event on Friday, February 5 (see article below for details).

Jeffrey Feld, Federation President/CEO, remarked, “The Jewish Federation of Collier County is pleased to be working with Tau Epsilon Rho on both of these exciting events, and encourages participation by the entire Naples Jewish community.”

man (ytfreeman@ytfreemanlaw.com), and the TER convention chair is David Liner (dliner@ropertech.com).

Full program details will be announced at a later date, but the cost of the dinner and program will be $70 per person. A brisket dinner will be served, with a vegetarian option also available.

You do not need to be a lawyer to attend this event.

Attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner and her “Battle to Bankrupt Terrorism” – March 16

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ounded by attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner in 2003, and based in Tel Aviv, Shurat Hadin - Israel Law Center is responsible for: ¡¡ More than $2 billion in court judgments on behalf of terror victims ¡¡ Freezing more than $600 million of terror-related assets ¡¡ Collecting over $150 million for terror victims How do they do it? Shurat Hadin cripples terror organizations by interrupting their sources of funding through lawsuits in Israel, the United States, Canada, Australia and Europe. Money is the oxygen for terrorism. Without it, terrorists are unable to finance their deadly attacks. Cutting off the flow of money to terrorists stops the flow of terrorism.

This is exactly what Shurat Hadin does.

Nitsana will tell her fascinating story at a luncheon sponsored by the Cardozo Society of the Jewish Federation of Collier County on Wednesday, March 16 at 11:45 a.m. at Temple Shalom.

Shurat Hadin has become the world leader in fighting terrorism through civil lawsuits and other legal action. They represent hundreds of terror victims against terror organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah; terror regimes such as Syria, Iran and North Korea; and financial institutions that facilitate terrorist activities such as LebaneseCanadian Bank and UBS. Working together with intelligence and regulatory agencies, and a worldwide network of volunteer attorneys, they strive to freeze the assets of terror-sponsoring states and organizations, and secure a measure

of justice on behalf of the families of victims.

Nitsana and Shurat Hadin are currently working on collecting judgments against North Korea, Syria and Iran, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, as well as others.

One of their recent victories was in the case of Sokolow v. Palestine Liberation Organization, in which they won a historic $655 million judgment in federal court in New York last February, holding the PLO and the Palestinian Authority liable for a number of suicide bombings perpetrated during the Second Intifada. They are currently pursuing Palestinian assets to execute on the judgment.

Shurat Hadin has filed an injunction against the U.S. administration to prevent the release of funds to the Islamic Republic after the nuclear deal is implemented. Their plaintiffs have millions of dollars in judgments against Iran, and they are arguing that the unfreezing of Iranian assets will rob them of what could be their last and only chance to realize justice.

In response to the ongoing, horrific terror attacks in Israel, Shurat Hadin filed a lawsuit against Facebook in October 2015, in the United States, to seek an injunction requiring Facebook to remove all pages inciting Palestinian terrorism, to monitor these methods of incitement and block them, and to place responsibility on Facebook for this rampant terrorism on its network.

Additionally, Shurat Hadin defends Israelis and IDF soldiers from war crime

The Cardozo Society The Cardozo Society is formed as a way to network the many existing and new Jewish attorneys in our legal community. The Jewish Federation of Collier County continues to reach out to raise awareness through this association of Jewish attorneys, promoting professionalism, cooperation and identification with our Jewish community.

For more information, please contact Yale Freeman at ytfreeman@ytfreemanlaw.com.

charges. In response to the Palestinians’ global campaign to delegitimize Israel, Shurat Hadin preemptively confronted their threats to file war crime complaints against the IDF in the International

Criminal Court (ICC). They filed their own war crime allegations against senior Palestinian officials and terrorists.

The community is invited to attend.

Seating is limited.

MEET THE RETURN on YOUR INVESTMENT FIND YOUR RATE ONE LIFE

“I like it here. I feel like it’s a second

family. Many Ethiopian Israelis haven’t been able to make a good living and to study, but my ambition is to do that and get a good job.”

Meet Yossi Gambar Student, Kfar Ha’Noar Hadati Educational Village

Age

Rate

60

5.5%

70

5.8%

80

7.2%

90+

9.5%

Rates in effect at time of publication.These rates change periodically, so please contact us to check on current figures.

YOSSI is a biology major at Kfar Ha’Noar Hadati, a refuge in Kfar Hassidim, Israel for immigrants, orphans, children at risk, and students from imporverished families. Placed on a special track for high achievers, Yossi aims to become an elite naval commando before studying biology at university.

To learn more, contact Leah Siskin, ORT America Advancement Director at 1-888.802.6088.

ORT is THE Jewish organization meeting the world’s educational needs since 1880.

ORTamerica.org

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Federation Star February 2016

JEWISH FEDERATION

How much is a dollar and what can it do?

Possibly priceless!

Phyllis Seaman Federation Vice Chair

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ost of us don’t blink an eye at, or really think about, those inconsequential dollars we spend. Many of us grab a cup of coffee each day. Over the course of a year that would be over $1,000.

Going out for even an inexpensive dinner of a pizza, side salad and glass of wine is over $45. Once a week, that totals over $2,300 a year. Many of us eat out three or more nights a week.

Parking your car with a valet is at least $200 a year.

We can be frivolous and not even think about where each dollar goes because we don’t have to. Maybe it’s time to start to consider what those inconsequential dollars could mean to those who struggle to put food on the table, or send children to Hebrew school or a few weeks at camp. I think about it constantly since I’m on the Campaign Cabinet and our allocations committee. We worry and crunch numbers constantly to fulfill all the requests that arrive each year. WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT! I write my monthly articles to educate you about Federation, and what your dollars support in Collier County, nationally, in Israel, and over 60 countries around the world. You can make a difference. You could help Federation do our job without affecting your life and really impact so many lives tremendously.

Remember, we live in Paradise.

How many of you say, as you see prices rise, “I don’t know how families with kids can get by.” Many can’t. That is where we step in. Your gift to Federation makes what we do possible.

Our Federation does so much in our community, supporting all the synagogue preschools, Hebrew schools, day camps, Hillel, many humanitarian and social service programs, and JFCS. We support Jews in Israel and around the world through the Jewish Agency for Israel (JAFI), American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), World ORT/ORT America, and Jewish National Fund. We support many cultural programs and adult education in our community. See the list of many of the programs and services your Federation supports in the box at right.

A gift to the Jewish Federation of Collier County provides more support here and around the world than any other organization. If you have never made a gift to Federation or just a small gift, I’m asking you to please consider A DOLLAR A DAY minimum for the 2016 Campaign. It’s a Leap Year! For those who can do more consider that cup of coffee a day or that dinner a week.

That gift could possibly save a life or definitely make it better.

To those of you who support our Federation, THANK YOU! If you have not made your gift to the 2016 Campaign yet, please consider a 10% or more increase over your 2015 gift. We are trying to encourage gifts or pledges to be made before the end of season to have a better handle on allocations. Please GIVE NOW! By the time you read this article, our two main Campaign events will have occurred. As I write this article a few days before the Major Gifts/Lion of

Judah Event, we are expecting the largest attendance ever for this event, with over 90 people at the home of Linda and Dan Carp. This group is truly the heart of our Federation, supporting more than half of our Campaign. We have added four new Lions to our Pride, bringing us to 54, which is pretty impressive for our small, but rapidly growing, Jewish community. We certainly do roar!

Our Power of Community Celebra-

tion at The Ritz-Carlton Golf Resort, Naples, is expecting over 325 guests for a “Return to the Catskills” with comedian Freddie Roman.

The Evy Lipp People of the Book Cultural Event with Rabbi Joseph Telushkin on Wednesday, February 17 is sold out! Thank you to all our Patron Sponsors whose support is essential to make our events successful.

We Are the Strength of a People – The Power of Community

WHERE YOUR DOLLARS GO Youth Programs & Youth Education ÎÎ Beth Tikvah Youth Education ÎÎ BBYO Naples ÎÎ Camp Scholarships ÎÎ Chabad - Camp Gan Israel/Preschool of the Arts/Hebrew School ÎÎ Jewish War Veterans Post #202 ÎÎ Temple Shalom - Preschool & Religious School Scholarships ÎÎ Hillel at Florida Gulf Coast University Israel & Overseas Humanitarian & Social Services ÎÎ American Jewish World Service ÎÎ JFNA - Overseas Core Assessment ÎÎ JFNA - Israel Action Network ÎÎ JFNA - Stop the Sirens Campaign ÎÎ JNF - Sderot Emergency Fund ÎÎ JNF - Red Mountain Therapeutic Riding Center ÎÎ Neve Michael Children’s Village ÎÎ Yad LaKashish ÎÎ Sapir Community Center, Kfar Saba ÎÎ WUPJ - HaTikvah Preschool in Ukraine ÎÎ Birthright Israel ÎÎ ORT (World ORT/ORT America) Local Humanitarian & Social Services ÎÎ Jewish Family & Community Services XX Senior Outreach & Support XX Developing Healthy Socialization Skills XX Counseling & Mental Health Support Cultural Programs & Adult Education ÎÎ Anti-Defamation League ÎÎ Beth Tikvah Scholar-in-Residence ÎÎ Catholic-Jewish Dialogue ÎÎ Evy Lipp People of the Book Event ÎÎ Fund for Human Needs ÎÎ Holocaust Museum & Education Center of SWFL ÎÎ Israel Advocacy Committee Programs ÎÎ Jewish Community Relations Council ÎÎ Men’s Cultural Alliance ÎÎ Naples Jewish Congregation Cultural Program ÎÎ Stand Up for Justice Grant ÎÎ Temple Shalom Men’s Club ÎÎ Jewish Cong. of Marco Island - Jewish Film Festival ÎÎ Jewish Cong. of Marco Island - Cultural Series ÎÎ Women’s Cultural Alliance

CALLING ALL JEWISH BUSINESS PROFESSIONALS For longtime members of Naples Jewish Congregation, the appropriate question is why we have chosen to remain active members.

In addition to being warm and welcoming, our congregation provides its congregants with a deep spiritual experience. Under the leadership of Rabbi Sylvin Wolf, we are presented with learned and challenging concepts on all aspects of Judaic thought and scholarship.

As a relatively small congregation with no “building,” but with a dynamic Board and a host of volunteers, NJC prides itself on contributing time and financial aid to JFCS of Southwest Florida, Meals of Hope, and Weekend Meals for Homeless Children of Collier County.

The hallmark of NJC is volunteerism. Whether it is planning holiday events or being a member of our choir, the strong sense of dedication reaffirms our desire to belong.

– Donald and Irene Pomerantz, Pelican Marsh

JEWISH PROFESSIONALS MEET & GREET

Join other professionals at the next networking event and make connections to help your business grow.

MONDAY, MARCH 21 6:30 – 8:30 pm

Israeli Kosher Wine taste testing at Total Wine 5048 Airport-Pulling Rd., Naples

Limited to 25 Jewish Professionals

$15 - checks payable to JFCC Hosted by

RESERVATIONS REQUIRED by March 16 to rbialek@jewishnaples.org.

February 2016 Federation Star

JEWISH FEDERATION

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Prominent Naples speaker to tell story of Israel’s greatest spy at February MCA Luncheon

,By Jeff Margolis s homas Eastwood has established h a reputation in Naples as an engaging and dynamic speaker. kHis careers with both the ATF and the hDepartment of Defense, where he led 7counterintelligence and criminal investigations, have provided him with numerous stories, which he has shared with enthusiastic audiences at the Collier County Library and the Renaissance Academy.

The Men’s Cultural Alliance is pleased to have Mr. Eastwood as its guest speaker for the luncheon meeting on Thursday, February 11 at the Club at Olde Cypress. He will speak about “Eli Cohen - the Israeli Spy who almost became the Syrian Minister of Defense.” The cost of the luncheon

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is $28. Checks, payable to the Jewish Federation (JFCC), can be sent to Meir Kehila at 4751 West Bay Blvd., #804, Estero, FL 339­82.

After the luncheon meeting, at 2:30 p.m., the MCA will hold its annual business meeting. The election of officers will take place at that time.

Nominations will be accepted from the floor. All members in good standing are invited to participate in this important meeting that will chart the future of the MCA. Our organization now has over 400 members. Members do not have to attend the luncheon to attend the business meeting.

Upcoming events See the Shy Wolf Sanctuary up close and personal. Thanks to MCA member

Jeffrey Randall, special arrangements have been made for a private tour on Wednesday, February 10 at 9:00 a.m.

Reservations are limited to 20 members and a donation of $10 is requested. For more information or to RSVP, send an email to jeffreymrandall@gmail.com.

The MCA monthly speaker series continues on Wednesday, February 17.

Al Ambrosia, a retired Vice President for Risk Management will speak about “Open Markets, Economic Growth and Shared Prosperity.” The program will be held in the David G. Willens Community Room at the Federation office at 10:00 a.m. For reservations, email mcalectures@aol.com.

Join fellow MCA members at the fourth annual Night at the Everblades

on Wednesday, February 24, as the home team takes on the South Carolina Stingrays. Tickets are $25 each and include an Everblades cap. Game time is 7:30 p.m. For reservations, email me at jamcounsel2@gmail.com.

The MCA Sweetheart Dinner / Dance on Saturday, February 13 is sold out. Thank you for your support.

As always, members are encouraged to check their 2015-2016 MCA Program Guide for ongoing activity groups and special events. Any member who wishes to start a new group should contact Steve Brazina at sbrazina@aol. com.

To become an MCA member or to renew your membership, please see the form on page 4A.

Noted scholar warns of BDS threat

By Jeff Margolis

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he goal of the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement is to defeat Israel in the court of public opinion, rather than on the battlefield where it cannot win.

So commented Dr. Asaf Romirowsky recently in his sobering remarks to a full house in the David G. Willens Community Room of the Jewish Federation of Collier County.

The BDS movement is anti-Zionist, anti-Israel and anti-Semitic. The movement has taken hold on college campuses across the United States where Arab money is being used to fund proPalestinian dialogue in both classrooms and extracurricular activities, striving to equate Zionism to Nazism. This rhetoric has attracted sympathetic ears from impressionable college students, many of them Jewish, who believe that this

is the route to a “two-state solution.”

In reality, it is part of a diabolical plan to discredit Israel’s right to exist. And what is striking about all of this is that the BDS movement has not gotten a great deal of press.

Promoters of BDS believe that the 1948 establishment of the State of Israel is the “Original Sin.” They have tried to paint Israel as an apartheid state, that Zionism is racism, and that the Palestinians are victims. The movement has also been attempting to promote the Palestinian Right of Return to land they once occupied, an issue that Israel vehemently disagrees with.

According to Romirowsky, a fellow at the Middle East Forum, the current battlegrounds are academic institutions where tenured professors, deemed “scholar-activists,” under the

adassah

H. M. S. H

“schlock data” that is flag of academic freedom, can say practically anything being fed to them. without the fear of repercus“College is not kindergarten,” he remarked. sions. They have been able to He also believes that use this platform to spew hate the stakeholders in the speech. The complicit faculty Jewish community need has been able to use the orgato speak out and that nization Students for Justice Dr. Asaf Romirowsky America’s connection to in Palestine (SJP) as their Israel must be maintained. We also must conduit to promote the BDS agenda. monitor the mainstream media.

SJP has been joined in its quest by two other organizations, Jewish Voices for Not mentioned at the meeting was Peace (JVP) and the American Friends the fact that billionaire casino mogul Service Committee. Their ultimate goal Sheldon Adelson has spearheaded a is the replacement of the current State of group of pro-Israel supporters, raising Israel with a Palestinian majority nation. as much as $50 million to combat the The overarching question is how BDS movement on campuses. do we combat the BDS movement? Dr. Dr. Romirowsky was invited to speak by the Israel Advocacy CommitRomirowsky believes that we need to tee, an affiliate of the Jewish Federation educate our students BEFORE they get of Collier County. to college to enable them to sift out the

The Collier/Lee Chapter of Hadassah Presents

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March 1, 2016 Honoring Ida and Jeff Margolis For outstanding community achievement

HERITAGE BAY GOLF AND COUNTRY CLUB 10154 Heritage Bay Blvd Naples, Florida 34120 Couvert: $125 per person Complimentary Valet parking Attire: Cruise Ship Chic-Country Club Attire For reservations and more information contact Lynn Weiner 239-598-1009 lynninaples@yahoo.com

Proceeds to Benefit Hadassah Medical Organization and the work of Hadassah

10A Federation Star February 2016 HOLOCAUST MUSEUM & ED CTR OF SWFL

COMMUNITY FOCUS www.holocaustmuseumswfl.org / 239-263-9200

Inaugural “Author-in-Residence” program to feature Edwin Black

T

Amy Snyder Executive Director

he Museum is pleased to host New York Times bestselling author Edwin Black in our inaugural “Author-in-Residence” program.

In Southwest Florida from February 21 through February 24, Mr. Black will participate in a series of events in Collier and Lee counties, in close cooperation with several educational institutions and community organizations.

In addition to his work on the Holocaust, Mr. Black is also known for numerous articles on human rights, corporate criminality and academic fraud. A world traveler, Mr. Black has spoken in several countries and has addressed such groups as the United Nations, the British House of Commons, the Canadian House of Commons, the Israeli Knesset, and the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs.

Among the works Mr. Black will be discussing are: IBM and the Holocaust, which exposes the relationship of IBM founder Thomas J. Watson and his company with the Nazi Regime which created the identification and cataloguing techniques allowing the Nazis to carry out the round-up, transportation and mass killings of the “Final Solution.”

War Against the Weak, which ad-

dresses the eugenics movement in America and its relationship to creating a Master Race in Germany.

The event schedule as of this article’s deadline is shown below. Events are open to the public, with a suggested $25 donation per person to help defray costs. Reservations are required. For more information, series sponsorship opportunities and to RSVP, contact the Museum at 239.263.9200. Reserved seating will be available for series sponsors at all events.

Wednesday, February 17: Radio Interview on WGCU-FM (90.1 FM and 91.7 FM on Marco Island) on Gulf Coast Live program from 1:00 to 2:00 p.m.

Sunday, February 21: “IBM and the Holocaust” at 7:00 p.m. at Temple Shalom Monday, February 22: Dinner at 6:00 p.m. at Vasari Country Club, where Mr. Black will be awarded the inaugural “Abe Price Moral Compass Award.” The award is named in honor of the Holocaust survivor and late Naples resident. Limited seating is available for Series Sponsors only. Please contact Amy Snyder for more information at 239.263.9200.

Tuesday, February 23: “War

Against the Weak” from 7:00 to 8:30 p.m. at Florida SouthWestern State College, Lee Campus, Building U-102, 8099 College Parkway, Fort Myers Wednesday, February 24 – two events: “IBM and the Holocaust” from 10:45 a.m. to noon at Florida Gulf Coast University, Cohen Center Room # 247, 10501 FGCU Blvd., Fort Myers; “War Against the Weak” at 6:30 p.m. at St. John The Evangelist Church, 625 111th Avenue North, Naples Please join us in welcoming Edwin Black to Southwest Florida. We hope you will be able to attend the events

scheduled to learn more of what Mr. Black’s extensive investigations have uncovered about the background events of the Holocaust and World War II. Event information is also listed on the Museum’s website at www.Holocaust MuseumSWFL.org.

For additional information on this period in history, we invite you to visit our current exhibit, At War’s End. An overview of the Nuremberg Trials and Allies Military Tribunals held following World War II, the exhibit looks at the search for justice amidst the chaos following the war.

Holocaust Musuem & Education Center of SWFL-sponsored event: Tuesday, March 1, 1-4 p.m. at Temple Shalom ~ Topic: Holocaust Steven Pressman ~ 50 Children Daniel M. Cohen ~ Single Handed www.JewishBookFestival.org ~ 239.263.4205

Museum’s Annual Luncheon

O

ver 140 ladies came out to support the education programs of The Holocaust Museum & Education Center of Southwest Florida at its annual luncheon on December 10.

This year’s theme was “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and guests learned about Audrey Hepburn’s wartime experiences from author Margaret Cardillo in a Tiffany wonderland setting in The Artisan Room at The Ritz-Carlton Beach Resort in Naples. Ms. Cardillo, who grew up in Naples, is the author of the children’s book Just Being Audrey.

At right: View of the color-coordinated ceiling and tables for the event in The Artisan Room at The Ritz-Carlton Beach Resort Below: Author Margaret Cardillo with her parents, Linda and John Cardillo, and Margaret’s son Bottom: Author Margaret Cardillo addresses guests at the event (photos courtesy Charlie McDonald Photography)

COMMUNITY FOCUS

February 2016 Federation Star

11A

Jewish Historical Society films score another hit

By Carole J Greene

O

n Wednesday, January 6, the Collier County Museum on the grounds of the county government complex provided the setting for a return to the 1950s. The second annual presentation of short biographies about pioneers of the mid-20th century Jewish community in Collier County (what there was of it) featured two interviews made by local filmmakers Alex Goldstein and Marina Berkovich.

This couple owns ABG World Video and Audio Production.

The first 15-minute film screened that day covered the beginnings in 1950s Collier County of an agricultural company that now operates nationwide.

It began as 6-Ls, named for the father, three sons and two sons-in-law who originated it. Today the company goes by the name Lipman Produce.

The filmmakers interviewed Bill Lipman, one of the original sons, and Gloria Goldberg, whose first husband was a Lipman son. They shed light on life in the ’50s, when Jews were excluded from many areas of the county.

The Lipmans were forced to maintain

their homes elsewhere. Through the week, the men lived and worked in Immokalee. On weekends they rejoined their families in Hollywood, Florida.

Eventually, the Lipman families relocated to Naples and were instrumental in erecting the first building that housed Temple Shalom.

Both people featured in the historic bio have since died, highlighting the importance of recording interviews while pioneers still survive. This objective formed the basis for the 2010 founding of the Jewish Historical Society of Southwest Florida, the sponsor of this day’s presentation.

The second 15-minute bio presented the memories and insights of Richard Segalman, a nationally-renowned artist who admitted: “This town has my soul.”

He discovered in the white sand, green water and blue sky a combination of colors that thrilled him. “It’s the light down here,” he said. “I get a feeling of safety.”

Segalman, whose birth name was Freschel, has visited or resided in Naples since 1955, when his uncle, Bill

Three generations of the 6-Ls: Lipman descendants at the event

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Freschel, and aunt – Bill’s sister, Fran Gilman – operated the first business in Naples owned by Jews, the Anchor Bar. At that time, this watering hole was the “in” place for weekend dancing. It was located on the northwest corner of U.S. 41 and Third Ave. North. A CVS pharmacy now stands on the site.

The Anchor Bar was the first place to exhibit Segalman’s paintings. Now, his works hang in major museums and prestigious galleries – locally, the Harmon-Meek Gallery. According to William Meek III, who attended the January 6 premiere of Segalman’s video, a recent Naples exhibition of his paintings was the artist’s most successful ever.

Meek noted that the art world doesn’t make a big deal about Richard’s being Jewish. “He’s not a ‘Jewish artist,’ but he is a great artist whose works are

now being acquired by museums.”

Richard Segalman himself said a few words, ending with an emotionally evocative personal insight. “Every time I drive down, the feelings Naples gives me are so overwhelming that I have to pull over and cry.” He offered thanks to the filmmakers for recording the interview of “the Naples painter who happens to be Jewish.”

The Jewish Historical Society of Southwest Florida covers Collier, Lee, Charlotte, Sarasota and Manatee counties. These two films plus the inaugural one premiered last year begin a series of 12 documentaries planned. These will be available to JHSSWF members at a “virtual museum” currently being developed. For membership information, call 239.566.1771, email jhsswf@ gmail.com, or visit the website at www.

JHSSWF.org.

Richard Segalman, Marcy Aizenshtat-Bigel holding a Segalman painting, and William Meek III

DISCOVERY AND RECOVERY: PRESERVING IRAQI JEWISH HERITAGE On View Through March 6, 2016 Exhibition details the dramatic recovery of historic materials relating to the Jewish community in Iraq from a flooded basement in Saddam Hussein's intelligence headquarters, and the National Archives' recovery work in support of U.S. Government efforts to preserve and make these materials available.

This exhibition was created by the National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC, with generous support from the U.S. Department of State. Local support received from Congregation Beth Jacob, Nancy G. Pastroff, Kenneth and Barbara Bloom, Elliot Stone and Bonnie Sockel-Stone, and Isabel Bernfeld Anderson.

More information is available at www.ija.archives.gov.

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MARK PODWAL: ALL THIS HAS COME UPON US… On View Through March 17, 2016 Mark Podwal is best known for his drawings on The New York Times OP-ED pages. This exhibition features his depictions of historical threats of antisemitism, from slavery in Egypt through the Holocaust, combined with verses from the Book of Psalms.

Exhibition Sponsors: Funding Arts Network, Robert Arthur Segall Foundation, Dr. Paul Drucker, Burton Young, Kenneth and Barbara Bloom, Elliot Stone and Bonnie Sockel-Stone, Isabel Bernfeld Anderson, and Anonymous Donor.

12A Federation Star February 2016

COMMUNITY FOCUS

JFCS of Southwest Florida: Some questions

By David W. Rutstein, Chair, JFCS of Southwest Florida

W

e have a question for you: “Why in this affluent community called Naples are JFCS and its Senior Center necessary?”

There is a commonly held misconception here that all of us are living a good life and can care for ourselves.

Well, although we are a very young organization – just four years old (with our Senior Center now celebrating its second anniversary) – we at JFCS have learned how to answer that question. ¡¡ We are feeding people who are

hungry. ¡¡ Older people come to us every day in large numbers to be helped by our more than 130 vetted, trained and committed volunteers. ¡¡ Our social workers, case managers and entire JFCS staff are helping those who face the daily challenges of dementia, family dysfunction and loneliness.

In a short time, we have changed peoples’ lives.

We have a second question for you:

“Why do we volunteer to do all this?”

We work at JFCS because it feels good. Life is short, and recently stressful enough, that we want to devote our time, our energies and whatever experience and talents we have to this phenomenon called JFCS – or as someone recently said, “The Miracle on Castello Drive.”

We work for JFCS for another reason. Louis Katz, the late venerated

entrepreneur and philanthropist used to say, “You cannot have a perfect day unless you help someone who cannot pay you back.” At JFCS we strive to make every day a perfect day.

So, on behalf of the growing number of people who need us, we ask you to join the growing number of people who support us. For more information about JFCS, call 239.325.4444.

JFCS of Southwest Florida-sponsored event: Monday, February 22, 1-4 p.m. at Temple Shalom ~ Topic: Family Dr. David Bernstein ~ I’ve Got Some Good News and Some Bad News: YOU’RE OLD Dani Klein Modisett ~ Take My Spouse Please

www.JewishBookFestival.org ~ 239.263.4205

The Naples Jewish Caring Support Group Next meetings: Mondays, February 8 & 22 10:30 a.m. to noon at JFCS, 5025 Castello Road, Naples Mayor John Sorey, Edward and Judith Anchel, Dr. Jackie Faffer, Councilwoman Linda Penniman along with Naples Chamber ambassadors participate in ribbon cutting of the Naples Senior Center expansion

SIGN UP FOR THE FEDERATION’S WEEKLY COMMUNITY eNEWSLETTER! Get the latest information on upcoming community events and cultural activities, news from Israel and lots more.

Send an email to info@jewishnaples.org

Call Donna Levy at 239.325.4444 for more information.

Job Available: Administrative Assistant Part-Time Administrative Assistant Opening at Beth Tikvah. Call Phil Jason at 239.287.8921 or send an email with your background to bethtikvahnaples@aol.com.

UNRAVELLING YOUR DNA---WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT GENETICS

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 29, 2016 BETH TIKVAH OF NAPLES 1459 Pine Ridge Road 7:00 - 9:00 PM Light Refreshments to Follow What: You have been hearing about hereditary cancer syndromes, such as BRCA, and pre-conception genetics. There is even more information now in the media discussing what genes can tell us about ourselves, our families, disease, diagnosis, and treatment.

How do we best use this information?

Why: The purpose of this program is to ensure that you are an informed

consumer and that you know the appropriate questions to ask your health provider.

There will be no charge for this event.

Registration is required because of limited space.

To make your reservation, email: bethtikvahnaples@aol.com or shelleygoodman@rogers.com or by calling 434-1818.

Supported by: There will be no charge for this event. Registration is required because of limited space.

o

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COMMUNITY FOCUS

February 2016 Federation Star

13A

14A Federation Star February 2016

COMMUNITY FOCUS

Introducing Rabbi Mark Gross, the new rabbi at JCMIJ A

O

n January 1, 2016, services at the Jewish Congregation of Marco Island were conducted

by Rabbi Mark Gross.

Rabbi Gross retired in late June, and became rabbi emeritus at Temple Beth Orr, Coral Springs, Florida, after 29 years of service. Upon his retirement, the temple members, local dignitaries and clergy honored his achievements for his services to Temple Beth Orr and

lineage of being a rabbi through the City of Coral Springs.

Rabbi Gross brings 18 generations. He has spent his excellent experience to a lifetime immersed in Torah, the Jewish Congregation devoting his life in service to of Marco Island and to the his congregants.

City of Marco Island. He Sue Baum, President of the was ordained at the HeJewish Congregation of Marco brew Union College and Island, stated: “The Congregaalso received a Doctor of tion looks forward to starting Rabbi Mark Gross Divinity from that college. the New Year with Rabbi Gross, Rabbi Gross is able to trace his a gifted man, with excellent education,

Tributes

Tributes require a minimum donation of $18.

Tributes to the Jewish Federation Campaign

To:

Wallie & Gary Lenchner Lots of luck & happiness in your new home Phyllis & Michael Seaman

To: David Willens Mazel Tov on the birth of your new grandson From: Harvey & Maxine Brenner

To:

From:

Jerry Flagel Our deepest condolences on the passing of your brother, Richard Phyllis & Michael Seaman

To: Mel Becker In memory of your beloved wife, Renee From: Sally & Stanley Bagan

To: Ellen & Gary Gersh Lots of luck & happiness in your new home From: Phyllis & Michael Seaman

To: Bill & Louise Warshauer In memory of your son, David From: Phyllis & Michael Seaman Delores & Corky Levin Mel & Gail Ufberg Lois & Richard Janger Ellen & Gary Gersh Fondly, Gracia JoEllen & Len Rubenstein Pauline & Murray Hendel Kathy & Bill Hughes Corky and Alan Kaplan Rosalee and Jerry Bogo Nancy Kaplan

To:

From:

To:

From:

Pauline Hendel In honor of your special birthday Nancy & Hank Greenberg Delores & Corky Levin

Sandy and Rabbi Sylvin Wolf Our best wishes for a very happy and most healthy New Year Barry and Iris Weissman

To: Irene Pomerantz Our best wishes for a full and speedy recovery From: Barry and Iris Weissman

To: Jane Schiff and Lon Gratz In appreciation of friendship and warm hospitality From: Rosalee and Jerry Bogo To: Gilbert Rashbaum In memory of your beloved wife, Lanny From: Greta Klein To: Dorothy Litt In memory of your husband, Irv From: Lois & Richard Janger Gracia Kuller Delores & Corky Levin Dena & Jerry Robbins To: Mr. & Mrs. Mord Wiesler In memory of your son From: Nancy Kaplan To: Harvey Sandberg In honor of your 90th birthday From: Louise & Sid Kaye

The Jewish Federation of Collier County extends condolences to:

To: Howard & Elaine Spector In honor of your grandson’s Bar Mitzvah From: Maxine & Chuck Shapiro To: Phyllis & Steve Strome In honor of the birth of your granddaughter, Amelia From: Nancy & Hank Greenberg

experience and the ability to lead. The community is welcome to attend services, which begin at 8:00 p.m. on Fridays.D An Oneg Shabbat follows the service.”

You may also join us for Torah study and services at 9:30 a.m. on Saturdays.

The Jewish Congregation of Marco Island is located at 991 Winterberry Drive. For more infomation, call 239.642.0800 or visit www.marcojcmi. com.

• • • • • •

Bill & Louise Warshauer on the passing of your son, David Jerry Flagel on the passing of your brother, Richard Myron Freedman and Julie Harris on the passing of your daughter-in-law, Stephanie Harry Friedman on the passing of your beloved wife, Bea Dorothy Litt on the passing of your beloved husband, Irv Rabbi Mark & Carol Gross on the passing of Carol’s mother, Charlotte Farber

To place a Tribute in the Federation Star in honor or memory of someone, please contact Julie Hartline at the Federation office at 239.263.4205 or jhartline@jewishnaples.org.

Tributes require a minimum donation of $18. A note will be sent to the person you are honoring. Tributes help further the work of the Jewish Federation of Collier County.

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J

COMMUNITY FOCUS

February 2016 Federation Star

15A

Jewish National Fund to honor David Braverman and Anthony Solomon at Annual Tree of Life™ Award Dinner

e

.Dr. Bernard Lublin to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award ” ewish National Fund (JNF) will manitarian award given in recognition Shalom, the National Kidney Founy host its annual Naples Tree of Life of outstanding community involvement, dation, and the Jewish Federation of

Award™ Dinner on Thursday, Febdedication to the cause of AmericanCollier County. His other philanthropic oruary 4 at the TwinEagles Country Club Israeli friendship, and devotion to peace ventures include the Community School

J

(11725 Twin Eagles Boulevard, Naples) to honor David Braverman and Anthony .Solomon with Tree of Life™ Awards.

The dinner will also honor Dr. Bernard Lublin with a Lifetime Achievement Award for his dedication to the Naples community and JNF. This year’s special guest speaker is Ambassador Gideon Meir, who served as Israel’s Ambassador to Italy from 2006-2012. Cocktails and dinner will be served at 6:00 p.m., with the program set to begin at 6:45 p.m.

Proceeds from the dinner will benefit JNF’s vital work in Israel, which is varied in scope, but singular in benefit: striving to bring an enhanced quality of life to all of Israel’s residents and translate these advancements to the world beyond. JNF greens the desert with millions of trees, builds inclusive parks, creates new communities and cities for generations of Israelis to call home, bolsters Israel’s water supply, helps to develop innovative arid-agriculture techniques, and educates both young and old about the founding and importance of Israel.

The Tree of Life™ Award is a hu-

and security of human life. This year’s award honors Anthony Solomon and David Braverman.

“We are so proud that this year’s Tree of Life™ Award honorees are Anthony and David. These two young men assumed the title of Co-President for JNF in Southwest Florida and provided us with youth, imagination and energy,” said Naples Board Member Hank Greenberg. “In addition, they exhibited purposeful and directed leadership which allowed us to move forward at an accelerated rate in providing financial aid to the many services and facilities we support and maintain that are so sorely needed in the land of Israel.”

Braverman’s love for Israel and Jewish culture is exemplified by his commitment to JNF and several other organizations. He has David Braverman served on the board of the Holocaust Museum & Education Center of Southwest Florida, Temple

of Naples, ALS Association, Seacrest County Day School, and many other wonderful causes.

Serving on the Naples board since its inception, Solomon has been the CoPresident of JNF in Southwest Florida for the past four years. He and his wife Ashley have been the hosts and major sponsors of the Tree of Life™ Award Dinner, and their support has helped

Anthony Solomon

Advertorial

Senior Housing Solutions:

Who are we & what do we do?

F

or nearly 30 years, Bruce Rosenblatt, owner of Senior Housing Solutions, has been overseeing retirement communities and assisted living facilities throughout the United States including three prominent communities in the Naples area. He has helped hundreds of folks with the decision to move and fully understand how difficult and complicated the process can become, and how valuable the service we provide is to you.

Selecting the best retirement community or the best assisted living facility is not an easy task.

Senior Housing Solutions provides professional and trusted Senior Housing Advice and is one of kind in our area. We do not accept referral fees or commissions from any of the retirement communities we recommend. We do this so we can stay completely objective and unbiased to give you the best possible advice. We

Bruce Rosenblatt, owner of Senior Housing Solutions

take the time to get to know you, and value our relationship we have with you.

We make it our mission to know about all of the senior living communities in our area from the inside out.

There are many nuances about each of the communities in the area that you would never know. We also may know

of new communities that are scheduled to be constructed. We stay current on pricing, availability, quality of care, financial stability, operational issues and signification staffing turnover.

Utilizing our services eliminates the guesswork and gives you the peace of mind of knowing that you have made an educated and well-thought decision.

We take the time to listen to you and put our knowledge to work for you.

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As a trusted resource, we have developed an exclusive Eldercare Directory of vetted businesses called Preferred Solutions Providers to be of greater assistance to you. The directory includes medical, financial, legal, real estate and other senior care services.

These businesses have met our quality standards and are in good standing with us. We are a one-stop shop!

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For more information, please call 239.595.0207 or visit our website at www.seniorhousingsolutions.net.

grow JNF in the greater Naples area.

Their involvement has ensured the success of the annual Award Dinner for many years. Solomon is the Executive Vice President and owner of The Ronto Group, a property development company in Southwest Florida.

The dinner will also honor Dr. Bernard Lublin with a Lifetime Achievement Award. The Lifetime Achievement

Award is bestowed on an exceptional and senior community leader who, throughout their life, has become a symbol of Jewish and non-Jewish philanthropy and tzedakah through giving back to their community.

“We are also greatly honored to present our Lifetime Achievement Award to Dr. Bernie Lublin, whose commitment to Jewish National Fund and medical research has been an inspiration to all of us. His leadership in guiding us for many years is deeply appreciated,” said GreenDr. Bernard Lublin berg.

Dr. Lublin is a past board president of JNF in Southwest Florida, a member of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, and a past chairman of the Virginia Board of the Anti-Defamation League. He served on the National Board of the American Technion Society, and received their “Visionary Award.” Dr. Lublin participated in the Naples Jewish Federation Humanitarian Mission to Cuba and the 2003 ORT mission to Argentina. Upon retiring from orthopaedics, he pursued a second career in the field of breast cancer and focused on the BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations that those of Jewish decent are more susceptible to than the greater population.

Sponsorship information and tickets for the Naples Tree of Life™ Award Dinner are available online at jnf.org/ naplestol. For more information on this event or ways to get involved with JNF in Naples, please contact Beth Morris at bmorris@jnf.org or 727.536.5263.

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16A Federation Star February 2016

COMMUNITY FOCUS

20th Annual Women’s Hanukkah Tea

By Marina Berkovich

J

ewish women have been celebrating togetherness for twenty years at the annual Women’s Hanukkah Tea hosted by the Temple Shalom Sisterhood. All Jewish women’s organizations of Collier County come together to share the responsibilities and fun of the oldest Jewish women’s celebration of our community.

Rabbi Sylvin Wolf and Rabbi Adam Miller were present this year, as they have been in the past, to officiate.

Members of NCJW, Hadassah, ORT, WCA, and the Sisterhoods of Temple Shalom, Beth Tikvah, Naples Jewish Congregation and Chabad, as well as many non-affiliates, including visiting friends and family, heard Jane Galler’s and Cantor Donna Azu’s wonderful Hanukkah selection of tunes. Some were well known and some were more obscure, but humorous or sentimental, which Jane – a true champion of music togetherness – loves to dig up and surprise everyone with. This year she wrote a 20th anniversary song

for everyone to share.

Temple Shalom preschoolers, from the shy to the overly bold, marched, sang, chanted and entertained the crowd of mothers and grandmothers, most of whom live away from their younger generations and are happy to welcome the youngsters. As the children exited after their performance, they got rewarded in Hanukkah gelt, just as Jewish kids do everywhere in the world during the eight days of Hanukkah. Chocolate gelt for our real gelt! Precious.

Watching the children sing and march, proud and happy of being members of our tribe, is one of the two most important reasons this event is so special. Temple Shalom is the continuation of the very first home the Jewish community had in Collier County, and that in itself is the story our community loves to celebrate.

The second most important reason why this Hanukkah Tea is so special is its 50-50 raffle, the beneficiary of which is JFCS of Southwest Florida. Most in-

Cantor Donna Azu and Jane Galler (left) sang while Bobbie Katz lit the Chanukah menorah

dividual winners have been known over the years to graciously donate their 50% share of the split back to JFCS. Jackie Faffer, JFCS President/CEO, provided a broad overview of the activities and services at the organization, shared plans for the future, and thanked everyone present for this much-appreciated donation.

We are a generous, giving and loving Jewish women’s community.

Togetherness is our strength, and Bobbie Katz, who has been organizing and running this event for twenty years, figured this out all the way back when the Jewish community was still small and everyone knew everyone else.

The desserts-only reception reflects the time-sensitive needs with sugar-free

and gluten-free sweets. Sandy Stone, who has been leading the Temple Shalom Sisterhood efforts to provide a pleasing variety of deliciousness for all of these 20 years, was happily scooping ice cream. Tea is king. But ice cream is queen!

There will be many Hanukkah Teas to come. Perhaps we will live long enough to see the children of today’s children sing for us in 2050, and someone will celebrate 120 years of Women’s Hanukkah Tea in year 2115. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?!

But for right now, the party is over.

The organizing committee thanks you for making it another successful and memorable event. They could not do it without you.

Temple Shalom preschoolers sang and entertained the crowd of mothers and grandmothers

Chanukah, Oh Chanukah, Come Light the Menorah

WCA’s rd 3 Annual M Jewelry Show

By Susan Pittelman, WCA Publicity Director

Need a gift? Want to buy something special for yourself?

Do you simply enjoy looking at fabulous jewelry?

Then this show is for you!

Come browse (and buy!) jewelry and handcrafted cards created by talented designers – all of whom belong to WCA!

ore than 240 Women’s Cultural Alliance (WCA) members and their guests gathered at Heritage Bay Golf & Country Club on Thursday evening, December 10, to celebrate Chanukah. This was the second year that WCA held a Chanukah Dinner Dance. The idea to have a dinner dance to enable WCA members to joyously celebrate Chanukah together was the inspiration of Gina Cannon, who, once again, did an outstanding job of organizing the event.

Participants enjoyed a traditional Chanukah dinner, beginning with crispy latkes, sour cream and applesauce.

The evening’s program featured the traditional lighting of the Chanukah menorah, led by Rabbi Michael Raab.

Everyone joined in singing the blessings

as the menorah at each table was lit. The evening also included dancing (starting with the hora!) with music provided by Gil the DJ. The dance floor was packed dance after dance – everyone really enjoyed themselves!

In keeping with the spirit of the holiday, each person was asked to bring non-perishable food items for the food pantry at JFCS of Southwest Florida.

The bags of food in the foyer were overflowing.

Everyone had a wonderful time.

I overheard a WCA member remark, “Where else, and how else, but here in Southwest Florida, through WCA, could you celebrate Chanukah at such a fun and joyful event!” We are all hoping that WCA will continue to make the Chanukah Dinner Dance an annual event.

Thursday, February 11 1:00 to 4:00 pm Temple Shalom 4630 Pine Ridge Road

Everyone Is Welcome!

Not all designers will accept credit cards, so be sure to bring checks and cash.

10% of the proceeds will be donated to the Jewish Federation of Collier County.

Ilene & Jake Blaz, and Gina Cannon at the WCA Chanukah Dinner Dance

February 2016 Federation Star

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18A Federation Star February 2016

Stars of David

By Nate Bloom, Contributing Columnist Editor’s note: Persons in BOLD CAPS are deemed by Nate Bloom to be Jewish for the purpose of the column. Persons identified as Jewish have at least one Jewish parent and were not raised in a faith other than Judaism – and don’t identify with a faith other than Judaism as an adult. Converts to Judaism, of course, are also identified as Jewish.

New TV Season: New Shows The Fox comedy series Cooper Barrett’s Guide to Surviving Life started on January 3 (new episodes air Sundays at 8:30 p.m.). The title character is a young man in search of his first job after college. JUSTIN BARTHA (National Treasure flicks), 37, plays Cooper’s 40-year-old married brother.

The sci-fi action series Second Chance premiered on Fox on Wednesday, January 13 at 9:00 p.m. It was created by RAND RAVICH (The Astronaut’s Wife), 53, a Solomon Schechter day school grad. It stars British Jewish actor ROBERT KAZINSKY, 32, in his first really big American role.

Kazinsky, a very toned and handsome guy, plays Jimmy Pritchard a “re-born” Seattle-area police detective who died at age 75 after a corruption scandal forced him to retire. Billionaire twins bring him back to life as a 32-year-old (Kazinsky) with a new purpose. But Pritchard is still haunted by the old temptations. Here are two reasons to like Kazinsky, sight unseen: His original last name is “Appleby,” but he took the “more Jewish name” Kazinsky, his grandfather’s middle name, as his stage name – that might be a first – and he speaks Hebrew and has appeared in Israeli TV ads.

The new USA network series Colony mines now familiar film and TV ground. Again, we are in a horrible future and the Earth has been invaded by baddies from outer space. The action is set in Los Angeles, where the alien occupiers, who appear in human form, have walled off the city and are

“culling off” the physically unfit. The series centers on Katie and Will Bowman (Josh Holloway), secret members of the resistance movement, and their two children. Bowman is supposed to be a former Army Ranger. There are many human collaborators, including Alan Snyder, who is the governor of the Los Angeles area and a total tool of the invaders. Playing Snyder is veteran character actor PETER JACOBSON, 50, who played Dr. Chris Taub for five years on House. (Began January14; new episodes air Thursdays at 10:00 p.m.)

I am not sure I like the idea of Jacobson, who looks very stereotypically Jewish, playing the bad guy.

But it continues the movie/TV fiction that resistance fighters are handsome, blond all-American types like Holloway, and collaborators are “something other” than blond and handsome. In the documentary The Sorrow and the Pity, about France during the Nazi occupation, the point is made that the “regular folks” mostly went along with the Occupation. The French Resistance was mostly made-up of ‘oddballs,’ including working-class Communists and Socialists who usually weren’t screen idol handsome – a very large number of Jews, and an effeminate, gay Englishman who became a secret British agent aiding the Resistance. He did so, he said, to prove to himself that he was a “man.”

Starting on PBS on Sunday evening, January 17 is Mercy Street, a sixepisode medical drama set during the Civil War. The action takes place in a hospital in Virginia, where two volun-

JEWISH INTEREST

Interested in Your Family’s History?

Ten years of doing a Jewish celebrities column has turned Nate Bloom (see column at left) into something of an expert on finding basic family history records and articles mentioning a “searched-for” person.

During these 10 years, he has put together a small team of “mavens” who aid his research. Most professional family history experts charge at least $1,000 for a full family tree. However, many people just want to get “started” by tracing one particular family branch.

So here’s the deal:

Send Nate an email at nteibloom@aol.com, tell him you saw this ad in the Federation Star, and include your phone number (area code, too).

Nate will then contact you about doing a “limited” family history for you at a modest cost (no more than $100). No upfront payment. teer nurses from opposite sides work.

JOSH RADNOR (How I Met Your Mother), 41, plays the lead physician, a Union loyalist whose Maryland family owned slaves. (All PBS series episodes are viewable free online and via services like Roku. This is also true of most non-PBS recent episodes – especially new series.)

The Globes and the Oscars Well, the Golden Globes, which aired on Sunday, January 10, were one of the weirdest of all time. The verbal sparring between host Ricky Gervais and Mel Gibson, which referenced Mel’s anti-Semitic remarks, was so prolonged as to be almost bizarre. There were a number of upset winners, including AARON SORKIN (best screenplay) for Steve Jobs – more critics disliked the film than liked it, and it tanked financially. Also, the best drama winner, The Revenant, was not that wellreviewed by many critics. However, expect EMMANUEL LUBEZKI, 51, a Mexican Jew, to get another Oscar nomination for his Revenant cinema-

tography (I am writing before the Oscar nominations come out). Lubezki has been Oscar-nominated seven times and won the last two years (Gravity and Birdman).

Other likely Jewish Oscar nominees: LIEV SCHREIBER, best actor, for playing MARTY BARON, the Floridian newspaper editor who led the Boston Globe team that uncovered the pedophile priest scandal, in Spotlight. Also JOSH SINGER, who cowrote that film; AMY SCHUMER, best actress, Trainwreck; CHARLIE KAUFMAN, best animated film, Anomalisa; and LASZLO NEMES, the director and writer of Son of Saul, a Hungarian film about the Holocaust.

It’s a shoo-in for a best foreign film nomination and a likely winner (it won the Golden Globe in this category).

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February 2016 Federation Star

JEWISH INTEREST

19A

Immigrant life, assimilation and conversion issues flavor unique murder mystery Book review by Philip K. Jason, Special to the Federation Star Forgiving Mariela Camacho,

by A.J. Sidransky.

Berwick Court Publishing Company.

316 pages. Trade paperback $16.95.

T

his book has a highly original focus that was first developed in Sidransky’s earlier Forgiving Maximo Rothman. Sidransky is able to intertwine the experiences of various cultural communities: the Dominican Republic, the Dominican section of Washington Heights (upper Manhattan), the neighboring population of Jews, and Jewish immigrants from the Soviet Union.

It highlights the improbable story of Sosúa, a story of desperate Jewish refugees Phil Jason who were given sanctuary in the Dominican Republic beginning in 1938. And, for good measure, there are excursions to Germany and Israel.

The author handles these largely unfamiliar relationships by building his plot around a case handled by two New York City police detectives, Anatoly Kurchenko and Pete Gonzalvez, who are not only partners on the force but also best friends. Their names will immediately signal their ethnic backgrounds.

Anatoly (“Tolya”) was an orphan who somehow made his way to the U.S. His Russian background is presented much more sketchily than Pete’s life in the Dominican Republic (it is detailed in Forgiving Maximo Rothman as is the wartime history of Sosúa).

Tolya remembers well his maternal

grandfather, whom he had visited in settings is handled with that develop the personalthe Ukraine as a boy. That grandfather vividness and authority and background of a mad was the last in the family to be given a genius who turns out to be a ity.

Hebrew name.

For many readers, serial killer, having used that Tolya identifies himself as Jewdeath machine on numerous the lessons in Judaism ish, though the rabbi who is preparoccasions. Sidransky skillthat Karin receives from ing Tolya’s wife Karin for conversion fully builds an understandRabbi Rothman and and the conversion of their two sons ing of his mad momentum transmits to her sons will wishes that Tolya would take action and his targeting, indirectly, be an inspiring highlight to strengthen his Jewish credentials. of Tolya – who represents – a moving example of Perhaps a rededication. Karin is a forthe conver- sion process at work. for him (ironically) the good fortune mer detective who now, on the brink Aside from all of its local color, inof the Jews who could get out of the of bringing another USSR. This man, who sights regarding immigrant communichild into the world, ties, police work, and ethnic/religious has taken many names has found work as during his depraved life, identity, Forgiving Mariela Camacho the planner of a and whose family had is a riveting thriller with distinctive tribute to Sosúa at a dialogue and sure-fire pacing. immigrated to Israel by Jewish museum. forging Jewish identiSidransky’s reputation is growing fast. The National Jewish Book Awards Pete has been ties, goes so far as to bemarried for many selected his first novel, Forgiving come a patron of Karin’s Maximo Rothman, as a finalist in Outyears to Glynnis, exhibit. Can you guess but his heart’s memwhere this is going? standing Debut Fiction for 2013. Next ory brings him over This novel, dark Generation Indie Book Awards selectand over again to his ed his next book, Stealing a Summer’s in so many ways, is thwarted passion for Afternoon, as a finalist for Best Second relieved by the “odd Novel for 2015. His third “Forgiving” Mariela Camacho, a couple” humor in the reDominican beauty lationship between Pete novel is slated for 2017. whom he courted and Tolya. Their banter Philip K. Jason is Professor Emeritus A.J. Sidransky but who wouldn’t of English from the United States Nais infectious, as is the inallow him to abandon his commitval Academy. He reviews regularly for terplay between their contrasting perFlorida Weekly, Jewish Book World, ments. sonal styles as detectives, immigrants The novel explodes when a corpse and husbands.

Southern Literary Review, and other is discovered attached to a diabolical Indeed, the large cast of characters publications. Please visit Phil’s website at www.philjason.wordpress.com. killing contraption – a suicide machine. is well-imaged, and each of the many Pete and Tolya are assigned to investigate. Shockingly, the corpse turns out Tuesday, February 23, 9:00 - 11:00 a.m. at Hilton Naples ~ Topic: Food to be that of Mariela. Pete is sick with Healthy continental breakfast included grief and guilt. Both men agree that Sponsored by U.S. Bank there is much about this death that does not look like suicide, and they get their captain to label the case a homicide investigation.

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20A Federation Star February 2016

JEWISH INTEREST

The February Strike of 1941

J

“

By Paul R. Bartrop, PhD

I

A R T O RCH E S T R A CIN E M A C U L IN A RY DA N CE O P E R A FA S H I O N T H E AT E R CH A M BE R M U S IC

n keeping with my preference to locate my column each month with an anniversary from the Holocaust – a time when history was happening everywhere at once – the choice of topic for this month’s column was, to use a modern-day term, a no-brainer.

It is almost inconceivable to imagine that during the Third Reich’s ramDr. Paul Bartrop page through Western Europe, a general strike against the Nazis could have been called in one of the occupied countries. It practically defies belief, furthermore, that this strike should have been called on behalf of Jews and in opposition to the Holocaust.

Yet this is precisely what took place 75 years ago this month, in February 1941, throughout Amsterdam in the Netherlands.

Willem Kraan, a road worker with the Amsterdam city council, was a member of the Communist Party of the Netherlands (CPN). Along with his friend Piet Nak, a worker in the sanitation department and a fellow CPN member, Kraan made the decision on Sunday, February 23, 1941, to initiate a strike in protest at the German treatment of the Dutch Jews.

In early 1941 the persecution of the Jews of Amsterdam had begun to intensify. Already there had been protests against the occupation, and on February 19, 1941, a group led by Ernst Cahn and Alfred Kohn, two German Jewish émigrés, raised their voice against the Nazis. Arrested for fomenting dissent, Cahn became the first resister executed by the Nazis in the Netherlands, and the February strike that followed was a direct outcome of Cahn and

Kohn’s protest.

On Saturday, February 22, the Germans raided Amsterdam’s Jewish Quarter, and more than four hundred Jews were arrested. A second raid took place the next day. Kraan witnessed firsthand the Sunday arrests, returning home with tears in his eyes.

Without hesitation he spoke to his friend Piet Nak, and together they decided that strike action was needed to paralyze the city so the arrests and deportations would stop. They began approaching workers on the street and at the docks, pleading with them to go out on strike on behalf of the Jews. They also sought the cooperation of the public transport workers, who, it was anticipated, would strangle the city and stop all movement.

On Monday evening, Nak spoke before some three to five hundred workers at the Noordermarkt (North Market). Another communist comrade, Dirk van Nimwegen, also made a speech, in which he emphasized that the Dutch people should not be seen to be behaving like the Germans. Strike action was agreed to from those attending, and the strike call then went out. Posters were made and distributed throughout the night, along with thousands of handbills.

By Tuesday, all municipal and government services in Amsterdam and nearby areas were on strike, with tens of thousands not showing up for work.

News of the strike spread through the city like wildfire.

The only widespread strike against a Nazi anti-Semitic action thus became reality. It only lasted two days, however, before it was called off on February 25, 1941.

In response, the Germans introduced draconian reprisals: the mayor of Amsterdam was threatened with

punishment and dismissal, four strikers were executed, 22 were imprisoned (with another 40 taken as temporary hostages), and the city of Amsterdam was fined fifteen million guilders.

The Gestapo then sought desperately to find and apprehend the organizers. Piet Nak was arrested and beaten severely, even though the Nazis were unaware of the extent of his involvement. Upon his release he went underground, but in November he was picked up again and interrogated under torture for four months as the Gestapo sought information on the nature and extent of the communist resistance.

Eventually he was freed, but in May 1943 he was once more arrested on charges of helping Jews before again being released.

On November 16, 1941, Willem Kraan was also arrested. After a brutal period of imprisonment, he and 32 others were executed at the Soesterberg airport on November 19, 1942.

In 1966, a monument to the strike and the memory of Willem Kraan was unveiled in the newly renamed Willem Kraanstraat. The bronze statue was supposed to be of Kraan but was, instead, of an anonymous dock worker. Its appearance caused consternation among many of the survivors, particularly Piet Nak, who emphasized that the strike

was organized by municipal workers, not dock workers. The monument – entitled De Dokwerker – was cast in 1952 by Mari Andriessen and based on a 1930s volunteer from the Spanish Civil War. Nonetheless, the monument, located in Jonas Daniel Meier Square, is the focus of an annual commemoration to the February Strike.

On May 31, 1966, Yad Vashem recognized Willem Kraan and Piet Nak as Righteous Among the Nations for their remarkable efforts in resisting the Nazis. As we know, their attempt did not work; the full-scale deportation of Jews from the Netherlands began in the summer of 1942, and over the next two years over 107,000 were deported to their deaths, mainly to Auschwitz and Sobibor. Only 5,200 of those sent to these places survived.

The important thing is that Kraan and Nak tried to save the lives of Jews in Amsterdam in February 1941. They did not know where their efforts would lead, but they did what they saw as the right thing despite this. Theirs is an example worth following.

Dr. Paul Bartrop is Professor ofE History and the Director of the CenterA for Judaic, Holocaust, and Genocide1 Studies at Florida Gulf Coast Univer-6 sity. He can be reached at pbartrop@ 1 fgcu.edu.

1

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STAY IN MAY

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JERUSALEM SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Debut Concert in Naples

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February 2016 Federation Star

JEWISH INTEREST

21A

Jerusalem Post Crossword Puzzle “Den Men” By Yoni Glatt

Difficulty Level: Medium

FEBRUARY-APRIL 2016 | SUNDAYS AT 7:30 pm SUGDEN COMMUNITY THEATRE | 5th AVE SOUTH presented by

SUBSCRIPTIONS ARE SOLD OUT Limited ticket availability for individual films

CALL OR EMAIL NOW! FEBRUARY 28 Editor: YoniGlatt, koshercrosswords@gmail.com Solution on page 23A Across Down 1. Brother of Gad 1. 1 2. Perform hachnasat orchim, 6. Rodriguez in Steven Levitan’s “Modern Family” essentially 10. Make like a mohel 3. Chabibi, in the U.S. 14. Decided on schnitzel over cholent, 4. The Torah, to Judaism e.g.

5. Unlike many a Chagall in people’s homes 15. Doubled month 16. Foreign currency often exchanged 6. Great rabbinic vintner in Israel 7. Like the Olympic performance of 17. Hanging hand Sarah Hughes 18. Like the Negev 8. Quarterback Derek on Mark Davis’ team 19. Ruler in “Fiddler on the Roof” 20. Minister of Defense during the 9. Cookie that has an OU-D, but isn’t 1982 Lebanon War technically dairy 23. Insect for Paul Rudd 10. Prepare a Shabbat table 24. Many a gap year student in Israel 11. Style of prayer started by 36-Down 12. Hezbollah funder 25. Need a refuah 26. “Joan of ___”, 1999 Leelee 13. Haifa has one Sobieski role 21. Like “Eicha” 22. Be a nudnik 28. Gefilte fish alternative to carp 30. Like Abrams’ “Star Wars Episode 27. Like new IDF soldiers 29. Moshav southwest of Jerusalem VII: The Force Awakens” 34. What strong security can do 30. Vulcan mind ___ 31. Slippery swimmer 37. Slapper Seinfeld might cause 32. Baal, e.g.

39. Walk through the Jordan 40. “Go, Maccabi!”

33. Started a drive, like Corey Pavin 34. IV item from Magen David Adom 41. Sister to those in this puzzle?

44. Some Kosher caviar 35. “___ on Down the Road” (song in 45. “___ The Light,” Mandy Moore Lumet’s “The Wiz”) song in “Tangled” 36. Mystical 16th century rabbi 47. Like a hand-me-down pair of tefillin 37. Paul Stanley’s band 48. What some Jews hope to do over 38. Golda Meir ___ Mabovitch 42. In a ___ (working the same job six the green line 50. Bamba ingredient days a week) 52. What Garfield and Goldlum do 43. Airer of the anti-Israel show 53. Classic alt-rock band whose only “Quantico” show in Israel was in 1995 46. Sderot to Beit Shemesh dir.

49. Society in the days of King Solo54. Sara, to Bibi 56. Sound that epitomizes tref mon, perhaps 60. Arm of Israel 51. She played Ulla in 2005’s “The 62. Great 20th century lion Rav and Producers” 52. Make like a child at a Seder author?

66. What can be visible in the distance 54. Shia’s “Transformers” co-star from the Pico-Robertson area 55. Kind of charger? (for short) 68. Berra elected to the Hall of Fame 57. Comic Glazer of “Broad City” the same year as Koufax 58. Former Tel Aviv mayor Mordechai 59. Amar’e Stoudamire was one, once 69. City that seems overrun with Jews in late January 60. “Oy, we’re in trouble” 70. Kind of law 61. Avodah ___ 71. Dershowitz of note 63. Title character in a Spielberg film 72. What IDF soldiers are trained not 64. “The motto,” according to a 2011 song by Drake to do in tense situations 65. Equipment for 37-Down 73. Balak of Chukas-Balak, e.g.

74. Like bread on Passover, e.g.

67. 2003 Jon Favreau directed family 75. Like some Lewis Black comments film

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THANK YOU FOR JOINING US IN 2016 EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS Melanie and Chuck Barry Susie and Ron Goldsmith Annette Pakula Elizabeth and Stanley Star FESTIVAL Phyllis and Hy Ackerman Trish Adkins Ruth and Marty Barber Goldie and Louis Bertone Rosalee and Jerry Bogo Jo and Barry Burka Linda and Dan Carp Karen and Ed Ezrine Pella and Jack Fingersh Madeline and Norman Foster Cindi and Harold Goldfine Jay Greenland

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22A Federation Star February 2016

JEWISH INTEREST

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presented by

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See the 4-page insert for a complete schedule of events, venue locations, author bios, book synopses, ticket packages and an order form. Individual events are also highlighted throughout this issue.

Shalom Gardens

at Palm Royale Cemetery

r B m m i f

Jewish Federation of Collier County sponsored group for Jewish senior singles of Collier/Lee County Jewish Federation of Collier County sponsored group for Jewish senior singles of Collier/Lee County

+

+

The third New Year for us to celebrate – the Chinese New Year. + + This is the Year of the Monkey.

= =

t b S I c F a S s t T

Generally speaking, great fortune find its way to Monkeys in 2016, The third New Year for us tounexpected celebrate – the Chinesewill New Year.

You’ve spent the best years of your life in Naples, why Palm Royale Cemetery is committed to serving seal memories anywhere else? overlook this the your Jewish community.

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Open 7 days a week Sunday business hours

Teresa Shepp Family Service Counselor

so they will not have to worry about food and clothes. The best months for them to This is the Year of the Monkey. make their fortune will be the second and twelfth Chinese lunar months, during which Generally speaking, great unexpected fortune will find its way to Monkeys in 2016, they should make full use of their time to invest and cash in. They should avoid so they will not have to worry about food and clothes. The best months for them to gambling, speculating, and collecting illegal or greedy gains, or they will lose everything make their fortune will be the second and twelfth Chinese lunar months, during which they have, especially in the third Chinese lunar month. They should also guard against they should make full use of their time to invest and cash in. They should avoid becoming poor due to greed. Monkeys should not show off their wealth, or they will be gambling, speculating, and collecting illegal or greedy gains, or they will lose everything persecuted by others. they have, especially in the third Chinese lunar month. They should also guard against becoming poor due to greed. Monkeys should not show off their wealth, or they will be So let’s celebrate: Monday, February 8 at 4:30 p.m. sharp persecuted by others.

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by February 1. Your check is your reservation: members ($20 for nonOrange beef, chicken with veggies, egg foo young, $15 iced for or hot tea members) payable to JFCC. Send to Judi Palay, 14648 Glen Eden Dr., Naples, FL 34110 Reservations by February 1. Your check is your reservation: $15 for members ($20 for nonAny questions?

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February 2016 Federation Star

JEWISH INTEREST

23A

Florida becomes 5th state to introduce Tennessee’s historic resolution condemning BDS movement Proclaiming Justice to The Nation’s Campaign grows as forty states consider adopting the resolution in 2016.

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n December 21, 2015, Florida became the fifth state in the nation to introduce a landmark resolution to confront the anti-Semitic BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement. Building on the nationwide momentum created by Tennessee, legislators in Florida have decided to confront this growing threat as well in 2016.

Numerous efforts have increased to boycott Israeli political leaders and businesses. Also, the number of antiSemitic attacks against Jewish and proIsrael students on university campuses continues to grow nationwide and in Florida specifically. Parents, students and grassroots activists in the Sunshine State are increasing pressure on their state legislators to publicly condemn this anti-Semitic movement by adopting Tennessee’s landmark resolution.

“Florida and Israel have enjoyed a long history of friendship and are great allies of our shared Democratic values,”

Jerusalem Post Crossword Puzzle Solution to puzzle on page 21A

stated Stanley G. Tate, Proclaiming Justice to The Nation’s Board Chairman. Mr. Tate, a resident of Miami, was instrumental in the early development of the Florida Prepaid College Program where he served as Chairman of the Foundation from 1987 to 2005.

Mr. Tate worked closely with Florida State Senator Miguel Diaz de la Portilla (R-Miami) and State House Representative Lori Berman (D-Lantana) in drafting SR 1184/HR1001, a bi-partisan resolution to condemn the BDS movement and halt the increasing incidents of anti-Semitism on Florida campuses.

BDS is an international anti-Israel, anti-Zionist propaganda campaign and by extension, an anti-Semitic and antiJewish campaign. The BDS movement calls for: • Boycotting Israeli products, academics and cultural leaders • Pressuring companies to stop doing business with Israel and divesting from companies that do business with Israel • Sanctioning Israel for its legitimate self-defense measures to protect Israelis of all ethnicities from terrorism, and Hamas rocket/missile attacks The BDS campaign was started in 2005 by 171 Palestinian non-governmental organizations in support of the Palestinian cause for boycott, divestment and international sanctions against Israel. Citing a body of UN resolutions and specifically echoing the anti-apartheid campaigns against South Africa, the BDS campaign called for “various forms of boycott against

Israel until it meets its obligations under international law.”

During a recent interview for an upcoming documentary exposing the BDS movement, Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz stated, “So what does BDS stand for? Bigoted, Double, Standard. That is what BDS is all about.

It is bigoted because it focuses only on the nation state of the Jewish people, and it applies a double standard to the nation state of the Jewish people.” Mr. Dershowitz went on to say, “The General Assembly of the United Nations has issued more declarations against Israel than all the rest of the nations in the world combined.”

Bottom-line...the BDS movement

promotes the delegitimization of Israel with the stated goal... to eliminate the State of Israel, utterly and completely.

The President of PJTN, Laurie Cardoza-Moore, stated, “The recent Florida resolution can serve as a positive example and concrete model of a firm step that other state legislators can take as we begin to expose the malicious intent of the BDS campaign and confront it head on! With 70% of Americans supporting Israel in the Arab-Israeli conflict, I am calling on Christians, Jews and people of conscience to add their voices to this groundbreaking initiative by contacting PJTN.org and launching this initiative in their states. It’s time to confront these anti-Semites head on!”

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Visit www.issuu.com Enter “Federation Star” in the search box and click on the cover image of the issue you’d like to read.

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This event is sold out! If you need to cancel your reservation, please contact Renee’ ASAP at rbialek@jewishnaples.org or 239.263.4205 so we can allow those on the waiting list to attend.

If you are attending, please be sure to bring your ticket with you.

Celebrating Jewish Life in Collier County, Israel and the World

Federation Star Published by the Jewish Federation of Collier County serving Naples, Marco Island and the surrounding communities

www.JewishNaples.org INSIDE THIS ISSUE:

9A Men’s Cultural Alliance 4A Women’s Cultural Alliance 10A Community Focus 14A Tributes 18A Jewish Interest 23A Business Directory 24A Israel & the Jewish World 27A Commentary 29A Focus on Youth 31A Synagogues 32A Organizations 34A Community Calendar 35A Community Directory 1B Jewish Happenings 6B Jewish Book Festival

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February 2016 - Shevat/Adar 5776

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Vol. 25 #6

“Shop with a Sheriff”

The Jewish Federation and the Collier County Sheriff’s Office partner to make the holidays brighter for 90 deserving children and their families.

By Joel Kessler

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member of the Jewish Federation of Collier County who wishes to remain anonymous made a generous $9,000 donation so that children could team up with Collier County deputies and shop for their parents and siblings. The donor’s goal was two-pronged: to help families in need enjoy the season and to give children an opportunity to interact and spend quality time with deputies.

Federation President/CEO Jeffrey Feld and Federation Board Chair Alvin Becker were in attendance on Monday, December 14, when 45 Golden Gate

students shopped with deputies. Each child was given $100 to spend at a local Kmart. The children and deputies then enjoyed snow cones and popcorn at the Golden Gate Community Center where volunteers wrapped the gifts.

A simultaneous shopping trip had an additional 45 deserving East Naples students accompanied by deputies who serve the East Naples community.

Jeffrey Feld was quoted as saying that the anonymous donor was looking forward to continuing “Shop with a Sheriff” each year during the holiday season as an ongoing program.

4A “Dining Out” – a favorite WCA pastime

6A Major Gifts and Lion of Judah event

At the “Shop with a Sheriff” event at the Kmart in Golden Gate: Joel Kessler, Federation President/CEO Jeffrey Feld, Sheriff Kevin Rambosk, Lt. J.J. Carroll, Stephanie Spell (Chief of Community Engagement Collier County Sheriff’s Office), Federation Board Chair Alvin Becker (photos courtesy Ted Epstein)

Phyllis Seaman to receive Kipnis-Wilson/Friedland Award 16A 20th Annual Women’s Hanukkah Tea

24A 15 Israeli wearable techs that will disrupt our lives

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he Jewish Federation of Collier County is proud to recognize Phyllis Seaman as the first Kipnis-Wilson/Friedland Award recipient from our community. The award, a prestigious, internationally-recognized honor to a Lion of Judah, is given to a woman who demonstrates the highest ideals of women’s leadership and involvement. The award was established in recognition of Norma Kipnis-Wilson and Toby Friedland (z’l), co-founders of The Jewish Federation of North America’s Lion of Judah Program.

Phyllis more than exemplifies the

Jewish Federation of Collier County Inc. 2500 Vanderbilt Beach Rd., Ste. 2201 Naples, FL 34109

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spirit of the Lion of Judah, far exceedmany board leadership positions including the recommended criterion considing Vice President. erations for the prestigious During the last 22 years, award.

Phyllis has chaired or co-chaired When Phyllis Seaman Jewish Federation of Collier relocated with her husband, County campaign events – the Michael, from New York to annual Community Dinner and Naples in 1992, she started Major Gifts/Lion of Judah – volunteering on social funcmany times and has sat on nutions at the Jewish Federamerous committees. tion. In 1994, her family went Phyllis was Campaign Chair on a Federation community from 2010 to 2014, and started Phyllis Seaman family mission to Israel, which sparked writing a monthly article in the Federaher desire to join the Federation board tion Star to keep donors informed as to and her commitment to Federation in continued on page 2A

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ISRAEL & THE JEWISH WORLD

15 Israeli wearable techs that will disrupt our lives By 2018, the global wearables market is expected to be worth $19 billion, and Israeli companies play a major part in reaching that goal.

By Abigail Klein Leichman, ISRAEL21c, www.israel21c.org

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oogle bombed with Glass, and Apple Watch sales are sluggish so far. Yet the success of many other wearable devices such as Fitbit attests that we’re living in the era of wearing, rather than holding, our connected devices. By 2018, the global wearables market is expected to reach a value of $19 billion.

Israeli companies are right in the thick of it, pioneering core technology and retail products for this market. One prime example is Pebbles Interface of Kfar Saba, a virtual- and augmentedreality technology for wearable gaming devices, acquired last July by Facebook’s Oculus Rift.

“I think a lot of the wearables will come out of Israel,” predicted American tech evangelist Robert Scoble at Israel’s inaugural WearableTech Conference in May 2014. Scoble singled out Omek Interactive gesture-recognition software bought by Intel, and PrimeSense motion-tracking chip technology acquired by Apple.

Here are 15 of the Israeli wearables already revolutionizing how we monitor our health and the well-being of our children, and how we play games.

LifeBEAM headgear is embedded with bio-sensors to measure vital signs.

The Tel Aviv company’s smart bicycle helmet, fitness caps and visors are available online and at vendors across the world, and LifeBEAM technology is built into Samsung’s new Simband platform for wearable devices to measure a range of fitness parameters.

The UpRight wearable training device, embedded with dual sensors, attaches to your lower back with hy-

poallergenic adhesive strips and gently vibrates every time you slouch. The Tel Aviv-based company claims that wearing UpRight less than an hour a day

will train your muscles and mind to sit and stand upright after only two or three weeks of use. An optional companion mobile app generates a customized training program, real-time feedback, posture analytics, statistics, tips and techniques.

The hWear line of tank tops and t-shirts by Healthwatch Technologies has conductive fibers woven in, performing the job of an ECG machine

and transmitting vitals to your doctor’s smartphone. Made in the Galilee, the shirts will be on the market by the end of the year in a range of colors and styles for men and women. hWear will be sold in Holland, the UK, Spain and the Balkan states to start, and later

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online and in pharmacies without a prescription.

Muv Interactive’s Bird ring-like device uses a simple Bluetooth connection to sense what your fingers are doing, where you are in the room and exactly where you’re pointing, enabling you to touch any of your devices remotely and turn the device’s display into a touch screen.

The hereO GPS watch is touted as the world’s smallest real-time connected GPS tracking device, created specifically for children three years and up in a variety of fruity colors. Newly available from the Herzliya Pituach- and UK-based company online and in U.S. and European stores in early 2016, the subscription-based product’s SIM card connects to local carriers in more than 120 countries. The free companion mobile app lets the family share locations with each other at all times.

AngelSense is the world’s only tracking and voice monitoring device designed specifically for children with special needs. The wearable is linked to cloud-based analytics and a web app to enable continuous monitoring and alerts in real time, providing subscribers with a visual diary of the child’s day, as well as an interface where parents and caregivers can share information and photos.

OrCam is a portable artificialvision device for the vision-impaired.

With a point of your finger or the press of a button, OrCam’s smart camera – mounted on the eyeglasses frame – recognizes text, products, faces and money, and speaks to the user through a mini earpiece. Developed in Jerusalem, OrCam currently is available in 22 U.S. locations.

RideOn augmented-reality ski goggles add a virtual layer of games, challenges and connectivity to skiers

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and snowboarders. They also can help you find the nearest ski lift or ski lodge, compete and communicate with friends on the slopes, post stats online – even throw a virtual snowball.

Hachiko Bluetooth-enabled waterproof collar clip-on measures your dog’s activities and transmits the data to you via a free iOS app. You get details and voice messages regarding activities such as walks, mealtime and meds taken, and you can add and share photos and comments on a timeline.

The devices are assembled in the Tefen Industrial Zone in the Galilee.

Nuvo Surround is a four-speaker sound system in a Spandex support belt, delivering a 360-degree in-utero listening experience for pregnant women. Nuvo Surround uses your iPod, mp3 player or smartphone to transmit music or even a recorded story to the developing baby. The Nuvo Group is based in Tel Aviv with offices in New York and Hong Kong.

MyMDband medical emergency bracelet provides instant access to medical information in the caregiver’s language by automatically adapting to

the location. When the caregiver scans the laser-engraved QR code on the silicon band’s stainless-steel buckle, it displays prior medical conditions, current medications, allergies, vaccinations and

last medical tests, and automatically notifies emergency contacts and apprises them of the wearer’s location.

Hyginex recently unveiled its Generation 3 wearable device for improving hand hygiene compliance and quality in hospitals. Founded in Israel and headquartered in Los Angeles, Hyginex helps prevent healthcare-associated infections by collecting individual data on employee hand hygiene.

The wristbands vibrate to remind staff when they forget to clean their hands before and after patient contact, and vibrate again when handwashing has been performed for the appropriate length of time.

The PulsePlay Bluetooth-connected smartwatch is built specially for players of amateur tennis, table tennis,

badminton and squash. Its main functions are live scorekeeping and score announcements; match history and statistics; player ranking among friends, clubs, leagues, cities and beyond; and access to a social network for racketsports players. Andy Ram, Israel’s three-time Grand Slam champion, is cofounder and CEO of the company, headquartered in Rishpon.

Vivo has a patented wearable technology that merges the creative world of computer games with the real world of physical activities. Proximity sensors embedded into a bracelet, a hilt of a sword or the handles of a skipping rope record the gamer’s movements, change in body temperature and quantity of perspiration generated, then translate this data into game points. Kids are prompted by the game to perform physical activities in order to advance to the next stage.

Re-Step by Step of Mind in Tel Aviv is a walking rehab system consisting of a pair of programmable shoes with sensor-embedded pistons.

The sole height and angles change in a specific given order to facilitate motor learning and problem-solving in real time. The shoes measure the parameters of the user’s gait, while data on progress and treatment recommendations are delivered to the clinician’s computer or mobile device.

Abigail Klein Leichman is a writer and associate editor at ISRAEL21c. Prior to moving to Israel in 2007, she was a specialty writer and copy editor at a daily newspaper in New Jersey and has freelanced for a variety of newspapers and periodicals since 1984.

For daily news stories related to Israel & the Jewish world, visit the home page of www.jewishnaples.org.

ISRAEL & THE JEWISH WORLD

February 2016 Federation Star

25A

FIDF Greater Miami Region brings hundreds of sufganiyot to Israeli soldiers for Hanukkah

H

undreds of Israeli soldiers on Israel Defense Forces (IDF) bases across Israel enjoyed Hanukkah celebrations thanks to support from the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (FIDF) Greater Miami Region.

FIDF’s ambassadors in Israel brought messages of hope and light – and sufganiyot (jelly-filled doughnuts traditionally eaten on Hanukkah) – to the IDF’s elite Golani Brigade, which the FIDF Greater Miami Region adopted as part of the FIDF Adopt-A-Brigade Program.

The FIDF Adopt-A-Brigade Program allows supporters to go beyond

their donation to get more involved, providing financial aid for IDF soldiers in-need and their families, supporting Lone Soldiers, and funding general well-being activities and weeks of rest and recuperation for soldiers of the adopted brigade.

About Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (FIDF): FIDF was established in 1981 by a group of Holocaust survivors as a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization with the mission of providing and supporting educational, social, cultural and recreational programs and facilities for the heroic men and women of the IDF.

BRIEFS ISRAEL’S POPULATION NEARLY 8.5M AT END OF 2015 At the end of 2015, Israel’s Jewish population had reached 6.335 million (74.9%), the Arab population 1.757 million (20.7%), and 370,000 (4.4%) are defined as others.

Over the past year, 176,700 babies were born and 28,000 new immigrants came to the country. 25% of the new immigrants came from France, 24% from Ukraine, 23% from Russia and 9% from the U.S. (Globes)

CHINA, ISRAEL START CONSTRUCTION OF INNOVATION-ORIENTED COLLEGE Construction began recently on the Guangdong Technion-Israel Institute of Technology (GTIIT) in Shantou City, being developed by Shantou University and Israel’s Technion.

The facility will eventually enroll more than 5,000 students. Some teaching staff will come from TechnionIsrael.

“The GTIIT will be home to the wise and the innovators,” said Li Kashing, Hong Kong’s richest man, who donated $130 million to found the institute.

Technion Nobel Prize winner Aaron Ciechanover will be vice chancellor of the new facility.

China has eight joint universities with foreign counterparts. (Xinhua China)

ISRAEL HOLDS TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION AND INVESTMENT SUMMIT IN CHINA Hundreds of businessmen packed the conference hall at the first China-Israel Technology Innovation and Investment Summit on January 5-6 in Beijing.

Chinese investors have begun parking their money in world-renowned Israeli high-tech industries at a stunning pace.

About 40% of all venture capital flowing into Israel came from China in 2015, according to Ziva Eger, head of the foreign investments and industrial cooperation division at the Israel Ministry of Economy.

With growing academic cooperation, collaborative programs, and shared vision from both governments, “the golden age for Israel-China innovation cooperation has come,” said Yin Hejun, China’s Vice Minister of Science and Technology. (Xinhua - China)

ISRAEL IS NOT ISOLATED, IT IS HIGHLY SOUGHT AFTER “Israel is not isolated,” Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely said in an interview. “Quite the opposite, actually.”

Israel enjoys flourishing commerce and active diplomatic relations with 80% of the world’s nations. “Today, Israel is holding the U.S.’s hand on one side – a

Today, FIDF has more than 150,000 loyal supporters, and 15 regional offices throughout the U.S. and Panama.

FIDF proudly offers its support to IDF soldiers, families of fallen soldiers, and wounded veterans through a variety of unique and innovative programs. These opportunities reinforce the vital bond between the communities in the United States, the soldiers of the IDF, and the State of Israel. For more information, please visit www.fidf.org.

IDF soldiers from the Golani Brigade’s 13th “Gideon” Battalion celebrate the first night of Hanukkah thanks to support from the FIDF Greater Miami Region (photo courtesy of FIDF)

Wednesday, March 2, 1:00 - 4:00 p.m. at Beth Tikvah ~ Topic: Israel Mike Kelly ~ The Bus on Jaffa Road Jessamyn T. Hope ~ Safekeeping www.JewishBookFestival.org ~ 239.263.4205

very strong ally – and on the other side the hands of India, China and Japan,” she says.

“In the East, the discourse is about what Israel contributes to the world...

There is a lot of warmth coming in Israel’s direction from countries that, for years, were aligned with the Arab world. These countries have become fans of Israel...In the Far East Israel is seen as a superpower. A country unparalleled in its work ethic. They want to learn from Israel about entrepreneurship.”

“In Europe there has also been a shift. The French know that global terrorism tops their agenda right now...

The main topic of conversation is how to fight terrorism and how to use Israel’s cyber know-how to fight radical Islamism...We have now entered a new era in international discourse. It is all about global solutions in medicine, agriculture, cyber warfare and technological innovation.” (Shlomo Cesana, Israel Hayom)

NEW VATICAN DOCUMENT: CATHOLICS SHOULD NOT SEEK TO CONVERT JEWS The Vatican’s Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews released a document on December 10 that emphasizes the Jewish roots of Christian faith, and stresses that God first revealed himself to the Hebrews. “The Church is therefore obliged to view evangelization to Jews, who believe in the one God, in a different manner from that to people of other religions and world views,” the document says.

“In concrete terms this means that the Catholic Church neither conducts nor supports any specific institutional mission work directed toward Jews.” The Vatican document also says: “A Christian can never be an anti-Semite, especially because of the Jewish roots of Christianity.”

At a press conference introducing the Vatican document, Rabbi David Rosen of the American Jewish Committee expressed satisfaction with the forthright statement that Catholics should not engage in programmatic efforts to convert Jews. (www.Catholic Culture.org)

Hadassah Academic College mourns the passing of a dear and devoted friend, Lois Ann (Lanny) Rashbaum, and conveys condolences to her beloved husband, children, and grandchildren.

Gary A. Layton, D.D.S.

Gentle Endodontics and second opinions

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DEFENSE SYSTEM PASSES FINAL TESTS With hit-to-kill precision, the joint U.S.-Israel David’s Sling Weapon System (DSWS) demonstrated recently its ability to destroy salvos of rockets and missiles during a series of tests conducted in the Negev Desert. The tests put the system through several operational scenarios against multiple targets. The system is slated for delivery to the Israeli Air Force in the first quarter of 2016.

Israel expects DSWS to be particularly useful in defending against the arsenal of Syrian 302 mm. rockets and Iranian half-ton warhead Fatah-110

continued on next page

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26A Federation Star February 2016

BRIEFS continued from previous page rockets in the hands of Hizbullah.

(Barbara Opall-Rome, Defense News)

ISRAEL DONATES FOOD, WATER TANKS TO KENYA FLOOD VICTIMS The Israeli government made dona-

ISRAEL & THE JEWISH WORLD

tions on December 28 to Migori county flood victims in a show of friendship with Kenya following a request by the governor.

Governor Okoth Obado said the county received 100 bags of maize, 44 bags of beans, three bulls, 400 blankets, 192 rubber boots, six water tanks, 200 mosquito nets and several cartons of cooking oil. The Israeli government also donated a solar water heater for a school.

CELEBRATE ISRAEL ITS CULTURE, PEOPLE & INNOVATION

Sponsored by the Israel Advocacy Committee of the Jewish Federation of Collier County

Sunday, May 15 ~ 1-4 pm on the lawn at the Mercato FREE admission

Join our community in this multi-cultural event celebrating Israel on the 68th anniversary of its independence.

Enjoy Israeli dancing, music by Simcha, games, speakers, crafts, art, food by Stage Deli, and a Mount Masada climbing wall.

Visit 20 Israel-themed booths covering travel insights, science, medicine, communications and more.

For more information, email jeffreymrandall@gmail.com

ISRAELI TECH IS IN ONE-THIRD OF THE WORLD’S SMART TVS

ISRAELI DISASTER RELIEF TEAM SUPPORTING UK FLOOD VICTIMS HAVE “BECOME HEROES”

One-third of the smart TVs sold in the world today contain an essential piece of technology made by Tel Aviv start-up Giraffic. “As of this year, both Samsung and LG are using our Adaptive Video Acceleration (AVA) technology to ensure flawless playback of streaming content on their Internet-connected televisions,” said Giraffic co-founder and CEO Yoel Zanger. “Right now we are the industry standard...It’s pretty cool.” (David Shamah, Times of Israel)

Residents in the flood-affected areas of Hebden Bridge, Mytholmroyd and Kirkgate in Leeds have been helped by four volunteers from IsraAID, an Israeli disaster relief charity, who flew in on January 4. The volunteers are working to repair homes and distribute blankets and food in the worst hit areas.

Team leader Navonel Glick said “people were shocked” when they realized we were from Israel. “When the victims realized we had actually traveled from Israel they couldn’t believe it. Suddenly they started to grin from ear to ear and then the reaction was, ‘Wow! Really? From Israel. You truly came to help us from Israel?’”

The delegation have become heroes, with people pointing to them as they walk through the streets. Many have approached them to shake hands and express their gratitude. “We have another team waiting to be sent from Israel. We just have to assess where they are most needed.” (John Fisher, Jewish Chronicle - UK)

JERUSALEM’S WALDORF ASTORIA RANKED 7TH BEST HOTEL IN WORLD

George Rubin, Photographer

Obado said Israel was the first country to respond to his pleas. (Manuel Odeny, The Star - Kenya)

Jerusalem’s Waldorf Astoria was ranked the seventh best hotel in the world in the Conde Nast Traveler 2015 Readers’ Choice Awards Survey, after 128,000 travelers rated the world’s top 100 luxury hotels.

The Waldorf Astoria, which opened in 2014, formerly served as the Palace Hotel during the British Mandate and later as a government ministry. (Daniel K. Eisenbud, Jerusalem Post)

ANCIENT INSCRIPTION POINTS TO JEWISH PAST FOR SEA OF GALILEE SITE

A team headed by Haifa University archaeologist Haim Cohen recently unearthed a monumental Hebrew inscription at Kursi, on the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee on the Golan Heights, providing conclusive evidence that the Roman- and Byzantine-era town mentioned in the New Testament and Talmud was Jewish.

Digs yielded a large slab of imported Greek marble on which seven lines of Hebrew and Aramaic text were carved.

Haggai Misgav, a Hebrew University expert in ancient inscriptions who studied the slab on site, said the text was a standard dedicatory text from a synagogue that likely dates to around the 4th or 5th centuries CE, with script highly reminiscent of an inscription found at the base of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. (Ilan Ben Zion, Times of Israel)

ISRAELI TOWN ACQUIRES “SMART” STREETLIGHTS

Urban officials around the world are aiming to swap existing energy-inef-

continued on next page c

ZIONIST ORGANIZATION OF AMERICA

Southwest Florida Chapter

Wednesday, March 9, 2016 at 7:30 P.M. The Chabad Jewish Center of Naples 1789 Mandarin Road Naples, FL 34103

Raymond Ibrahim Islam: A Continuity of Thought, Goals, and Deeds From the 7th to the 21st Century Raymond Ibrahim is a Coptic Christian and currently the Associate Director of the Middle East Forum. His resume includes a Ph.D. in medieval Islamic history from Catholic University, and he previously served as an Arab language specialist in the Near East section of the Library of Congress.

Currently, he is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

His topic of discussion will center upon the evident continuity between the words, deeds and goals of the 7th-century muhaidin (“jihadists”) whom he studied and that of 21st-century Islamic radicals.

Admission: $20.00 prepaid $22.00 at the door Students with valid ID $7.00

Refreshments Served To ensure prime seating we suggest prepayment

Make checks payable to: ZOA/SWFL 4003 Upolo Lane Naples, FL 34119 914-329-1024

February 2016 Federation Star

COMMENTARY

27A

Europe and migration: Five challenges

By David Harris, Executive Director, AJC, December 14, 2015

A

s Europe seeks to absorb a massive wave of newcomers, the challenges are becoming strikingly apparent.

First, with no advance planning, European countries have had to move quickly to address the immediate issues of shelter and other urgent needs, all the more so as winter arrives and options like tents for housing become unfeasible.

The task is formidable. More than one million new arrivals have come to Germany, the preferred destination, in 2015 alone. Each individual, as I know from my own experience working with refugees from behind the Iron Curtain, is a world unto his or her own, often with medical or psychological issues, concerns for family members left behind, anxiety about the uncertainty of what lies ahead, and a ton of questions about a new and totally unfamiliar country.

Second, EU member states, especially in Central Europe, are at loggerheads over the migration issue. Several countries – some openly, others quietly – blame Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel for triggering the wave of newcomers by her unexpected message of welcome in September, spurred by a humanitarian impulse to help people clearly in need. Indeed, The Times (of London) referred to “Merkel’s Migrants” in a page-one headline. Meanwhile, within her own political party, the CDU, and its Bavarian sister party, the CSU, debates surrounding her action have been robust.

Notwithstanding calls for EU unity and solidarity in “burden sharing,” the

feuding persists. In AJC’s recent meetings in Berlin and Brussels, it emerged that of the 160,000 migrants to be allocated by the EU Commission to various other member states, under a proposed plan of mandatory quotas, only a tiny handful have actually gone to their new homes so far. The resistance to resettlement by some, though not all, EU nations has been fierce. They insist that they were not consulted in the original decision and, in any case, already have enough social and economic difficulties without adding to the list.

Third, the security dimension of the migration wave cannot be ignored.

The migrants were not part of an orderly process that began in countries where they filled out applications for refugee status, were screened by officials, and then, if approved, sent to a country prepared to receive them.

Rather, the process has been quite chaotic. Overwhelmingly male and young, the migrants have reached Europe’s shores in unprecedented numbers, often after harrowing journeys, with identity papers that may or, in some cases, may not be authentic, or with none at all. How can receiving countries establish in each and every case who they are and verify their stories?

For instance, according to reports, a certain percentage who claim to be Syrian are not, but declare themselves to be because an informal pipeline, using social media, has conveyed that Syrians have the best chance for filing successful asylum applications in Europe.

Moreover, there are fears that ISIS and other groups are infiltrating terror-

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continued from previous page ficient streetlights with more efficient and smart LED streetlights. Ga’ash Lighting, an Israeli company, is installing smart LED streetlights that include Wi-Fi repeaters, security cameras, sensors to measure temperature and air quality, and systems to measure traffic congestion. The Apollo system will not only help cities save money on energy, but will give them data to determine where to deploy police, where to

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ists into the human wave, perhaps even providing them with stolen or counterfeit IDs. These fears have been intensified by the November 13 attacks in Paris that killed 130 people. Two of the perpetrators reportedly arrived in Europe via the migration wave through Greece.

Further, there is concern that if disillusion should set in among some newcomers – because, say, reality does not match expectations – jihadist cells will try to lure them as foreign fighters or local operatives.

As it is, many European security agencies are quite overwhelmed by the current challenges of tracking thousands of suspects, especially those who have traveled to Iraq and Syria and returned, and their recruiters.

Generally speaking, there is inadequate staff for 24/7 monitoring and surveillance; insufficient informationsharing among EU member states; years-long, inconclusive debates between advocates of privacy rights and data protection versus more intrusive security measures; outside, at times tolerated, funding (by Saudi Arabia, for instance) of Salafist and other extremist religious activity; and limited intelligence cooperation from Turkey, the preferred route for Europe’s foreign fighters heading to and from Iraq and Syria.

Adding new dimensions to Europe’s security agenda will prove an enormous burden for stretched agencies.

Fourth, acculturation of the newcomers looms large.

Until now, many EU member states have had difficulties in integrating waves of migrants from the Middle East and North Africa. Going forward, they will have to do better.

While there have been many remarkable success stories of integration, there have also been notable failures.

Examples abound.

Molenbeek in Belgium, Malmö in Sweden, and several “banlieues” (suburbs) of Paris illustrate the phenomenon of marginalized, forlorn communities that too often have resulted in parallel societies; cycles of high student dropout rates, unemployment and violence; and the blossoming of extremist religious groups. Apropos, it’s noteworthy that a number of foreign fighters are second-generation, born in France, Belgium, the U.K., etc.

In addition, the new migrants come

from overwhelmingly non-democratic societies – Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Eritrea, etc. They often have had little experience with norms of Western countries, including gender equality, faith as a private choice, separation of religion and state, and pluralism and mutual respect, and may or may not find the transition easy to embrace.

In a meeting with Yazidi refugees in Germany last week, an AJC delegation heard not only horrific accounts of the persecution they endured in Iraq, but also of difficulties experienced in Europe at the hands of other migrants who brought with them their prejudices against this oft-targeted, non-Muslim community.

And Europe’s Jews may wonder whether anti-Semitism in the countries of origin will also transfer with the migration, adding to rising levels of Judeophobia.

Finally, the migration appears to have no end in sight, given the hope of millions more to escape endemic war, poverty and despair in the Middle East and Africa, not to mention the desire of those who have already made it to Europe to reunite with family members left behind.

In turn, this has created a troubling backlash, most recently in France, fueling populist movements that assail the political establishment and the concentrated power of the EU, question Europe’s ability and will to control its own borders, and advocate nationalist, at times stridently nativist, platforms.

Thus, Europe, which has achieved such an extraordinary degree of postwar peace and cooperation, is now buffeted by large-scale migration; growing security concerns; internal feuding; invigorated extreme right-wing movements; and questions about the EU’s capacity to respond effectively to issues that may well define the character and cohesion of European nations in the years ahead.

In other words, the stakes could not be higher. Whether the EU and its 28 member states will pass the test of their most severe crisis to date remains to be seen. As a long-time transatlanticist and Europhile, I fervently pray they will, as they must.

If you haven’t already done so, please join the growing community of 52,000+ followers on Twitter and 176,000+ fans on Facebook to stay up-to-date on more AJC news and views. For more information, visit www.ajc.org.

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28A Federation Star February 2016

COMMENTARY

Lessons we Palestinians can learn

By Bassam Tawil, January 6, 2016 Originally published by Gatestone Institute, www.gatestoneinstitute.org

T

his past week, the Israelis arrested 25 Hamas terrorists in the West Bank, most of them students from Al-Quds University in Abu Dis. Not rebels without a cause or the unemployed with a chip on their shoulder, but the finest minds we have, the intellectuals of the future Palestinian academia! The group, which dealt with recruiting and guidance and was being handled by Hamas in Turkey and its terrorist wing the Gaza Strip, was planning to carry out suicide bombing attacks inside Israel.

The leaders of the terror cell arranged safe houses and storage sites, where they set up laboratories to manufacture explosives. They recruited Palestinians – from Bethlehem, Hebron, Qalqilya and even from Jerusalem, as well as Arabs from the Israeli Negev – to acquire the chemicals and other equipment necessary for making car bombs for these students, who were getting ready to die as suicide bombers.

The Israeli security forces uncovered the network and arrested its operatives, who had also been influenced by the Palestinian Authority’s non-stop incitement of the Palestinian population.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) wants to sacrifice our best and brightest to carry out terrorist attacks against Jews.

Unfortunately, recent events herald the end of the concept of establishing an independent state for the Palestinian people. The cracks in the wall of Palestinian history – which is barely a hundred years old – are growing wider.

The attempts to repair the fabric of Palestinian society with neon colors are a failure. There is also internal friction among the various Salafist organizations (Hamas, ISIS, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad) and the PLO and Fatah and other West Bank terrorist organizations.

There is also the issue of inheritance: Which organization will control the PLO? What are the differences in their agendas? The Hamas leadership in Gaza wants first to reconstruct the Gaza Strip and then renew the fighting with Israel. The Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military-terrorist wing, demands the immediate renewal of attacks and rocket fire against Israel.

Both are trying to establish new terrorist networks in the West Bank (like the one recently uncovered). The double objective of both groups is to kill Israelis and topple the Palestinian Authority.

We Palestinians seem incapable of agreeing on even the most basic productive and constructive issues, such as rebuilding houses, education, an intelligent use of the hundreds of millions of dollars received as donations,

opening the Rafah crossing and improving relations with the Arab world, especially Egypt. The greatest tragedy of the Palestinians is not 1948, it is 2015. The only thing the Palestinian leadership and terrorist organizations can agree on is their obsession to destroy the State of Israel and establish a Palestinian state on the ruins; and even there, they cannot agree on the ways, stages and means.

As long as the Palestinians thought they could get what they wanted through negotiations and intransigence, they concealed their true intentions.

Recently, however, when it became clear the Israelis would not waive their demand for the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state or their determined objection to the right of return, Palestinian extremism came out of hiding. That is evident from the results consistently obtained by opinion polls, carried out

by Palestinian polling centers, which show that the overwhelming majority of Palestinians support an armed campaign against Israel, and want to see it destroyed and the State of Palestine built on its ruins. The polls also show a troubling increase in popular support in the West Bank for Hamas, and a decrease in support for Mahmoud Abbas

more and more extremist, some Palestinians suffer from a passive desire to submit to Hamas, and fewer and fewer people dare to challenge Hamas instead of rejecting both it and the Muslim Brotherhood, and gaining the trust of wider, far more powerful backers: the world, the West, and even in some ways the Israelis. We are, instead, soaking up Hamas’s destructive extremism. We allow Hamas to brainwash our younger generation with its fanatic – and unproductive – web of hate, destruction and death.

The Palestinian leadership has not yet internalized the bitter consequences of our fruitless terrorist attacks against Israel. The leadership uses its media to spread false propaganda about knives, stone-throwing and car-ramming attacks, along with threats of another intifada. They do not realize that nothing will move the Israelis. Nothing will make them leave; nothing will make them give up one inch of land – certainly not terrorism. That only strengthens their resolve. We keep making the awful and perhaps irreparable mistake of educating our children, generation after generation, to hate the Jews and Israelis, and to want to destroy the State of Israel. At the same time, we can see that the Israelis and the I wish we Palestinians were only smart enough Americans follow to learn from the history of the Jews instead of our every move, document our totally rejecting them. We would immediately and hate propaganda. rid ourselves of Hamas and the other terrorist Little by little, our organizations. But instead we use them, because credibility is shredded as they lose they kill Jews. their trust. and the PA because of their inability to We broadcast children’s programs restore all of “occupied Palestine” to promoting violence and hate on govthe Palestinians. ernment-funded – and government-run I wish we Palestinians were only – Palestinian TV, and at the same time smart enough to learn from the history expect the Israelis to make concesof the Jews instead of totally rejecting sions to us that will compromise their them. We would immediately rid oursecurity. How stupid is that? Then we selves of Hamas and the other terrorcontinually brainwash viewers with ist organizations. But instead we use the nonsense that, with the help of Allah, the State of Israel is temporary and them, because they kill Jews. will eventually cease to exist. Whom Unfortunately, the late Yasser Araor what should the Israelis trust? The fat thought it would be easier to force elderly Mahmoud Abbas, without supthe Jews to make concessions if the neport in his own country, waiting until gotiations were held in an atmosphere the younger generation, brought up of terrorist attacks and to that end, he on hatred and war, pushes him out? subcontracted to Hamas.

We have the program Children Speak, Hamas, like Frankenstein’s monwhich declared on November 11, 2015, ster, grew to become a large terrorist with absolute certainty, that Israel’s end organization, now threatening not just was just around the corner and that all Israel but the PLO and the Palestinthe land of Palestine from 1948, “from ian Authority. In consequence, we are the River to the Sea,” including Israeli forced to collaborate with the Israelis cities such as Haifa, Jaffa, Acre and if we want to survive and avoid being Nazareth, “belong to us” and “will reswallowed whole by Hamas, as we turn to us.” If you were the Israeli govwere in Gaza. That is why the threats ernment, you would be suspicious too. from the Palestinian Authority to stop It is therefore mystifying why intelligence collaboration with Israel Greece’s parliament would now symare nonsense. As our rhetoric becomes

A triple dose of Dry Bones

bolically (non-bindingly) recognize a Palestinian State – thereby pushing actual Palestinian statehood farther away than ever. Abbas doubtless goes around trying to pick up such worthless endorsements, no doubt hoping that if he manages to bundle enough of them, stacks of internationally-binding agreements will be bypassed and an actual Palestinian state, with no need for any concessions, might magically spring up.

Has no one in the intelligence services of either country noticed that, according to Palestinian TV (December 4, 2015), some of the Palestinians who have lived on Palestinian land since 1948 did not leave and now defend the land from the abuse of the “racist occupation.” The very fact that they still live on our land, despite the occupation’s full control, means they preserve Palestinian existence and guard the land as Palestinian, and believe all the land will return to Palestinian control and be part of the State of Palestine.

Ahem. “The Palestinians who have lived on Palestinian land since 1948” are what the rest of the world calls “Israeli Arabs.”

The above are two examples of official Palestinian propaganda spread by the Palestinian leadership, media and educational system throughout the Palestinian territories every hour of every day. According to Al-Hayat AlJadeeda, the official Palestinian newspaper, on December 10, 2015, Jihad Jayyusi, the Palestinian Authority’s military liaison officer, visited a creative writing class in the Al-Awda girls’ school in Bethlehem, and presented them with a plaque of “Palestine,” which now includes all the territory of the State of Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. According to the same newspaper, on November 17, 2015, the prize in a photography contest held by the PLO’s “prisoner department” was a map of “Palestine,” which included the same territories.

It is particularly disappointing that we keep trying to defraud the Israelis and Americans with fictitious messages of peace and “two states for two peoples.” We assume they have no intelligence at all, do not understand Arabic and cannot read our Facebook pages, including the page of the Palestinian national security forces, where Acre and Jaffa are called “occupied.”

We assume that Westerners never read Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda, which on November 30, 2015, published a picture of two keys and a map of “Palestine” that included all the Israeli and Palestinian territories and read, “A memory that does not rust” – or if they do read

continued on next page

February 2016 Federation Star

COMMENTARY / FOCUS ON YOUTH

The Jewish calendar Rabbi Mark Gross

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ur secular New Year began just last month with the dropping of the ball in Times Square on January 1. Our Jewish New Year began last fall, at the season the Torah calls t’qufat ha-shanah, “the turn of the year.” And the Chinese lunar New Year that begins on the ninth day of February, is also a calendrical milestone of cultural significance to Jews – if only the basis of culinary affinity.

As I taught in my Shabbat sermon on January 1, all of these occasions represent conceptual beginnings, diverse possibilities for the fresh starts that each of us very much needs. Yet (as I will also express in our Life-Long Learning seminar on the last Sunday in January), a calendar is ultimately an artificiality – a useful and important administrative tool, but one created by humans for regulating our lives and governing our society. How the calendar is regulated, in turn, says a lot about who is in charge of that society, while the calendar itself says even more about the society that lives by it.

It is worth recalling the assertion of the great 19th-century German rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch that “the Jew’s catechism is his calendar.” In purely doctrinal terms, you could say that we already have a catechism: the Ten Commandments at the heart of our Covenant; the Sh’ma, which is our Jewish “pledge of allegiance;” and the Thirteen Principles of Faith which were articulated

by Maimonides and paraphrased in our hymns Adon Olam and Yigdal. Yet as central as these declarations of religious faith may be to our identity as a religious civilization, Hirsch suggests that the Jewish calendar has even more to say

about what we believe and who we are.

For the Jews – from the long-ago sages of the Sanhedrin who lit hilltop beacons to broadcast news of coming holy days to the suburbanites of today who drop by the synagogue in August to pick up the new calendar – the orderly flow of time is the calibration against which we measure our lives. Some of the holy days of the Jewish year are commemorations of long-ago events, allowing us not just to touch and relive pivotal moments in our fabulously ancient people’s past, but to recall and celebrate the role that God played in that history. Some of the sacred milestones on our calendar are seasonal holidays, connecting us to the planting and harvest times in our homeland of Israel. Across the board, the days highlighted in blue on our calendars lend unique meaning and substance to our lives, and speak volumes about what truly matters to us.

Our lunar month and solar year represent a ballet in time, fulfilling the Will of the Creator, Who in Genesis 1 not only established what the prayerbook calls “the orderly passage of the stars across their appointed watches in the sky,” but also invited humanity to notice and observe that orderliness as a celebration of God’s Presence in our midst. Indeed, the Talmud offers a hyperbolic teaching in the name of Rabbi IshmaEil, declaring that if the only mitzvah the Jews had to our credit was to go out once a month to recite the Qiddush ha-l’vanah blessing over the new moon, the merit of that one act alone would be enough to bring about our redemption.

You can see and bless the new moon this month, low out over the Gulf just atop the setting sun on Wednesday, February 10. Go for it, and bask in the glory of the moment – and of all the other moments in a year full of wonder and delight.

Rabbi Mark Gross serves at the Jewish Congregation of Marco Island.

Bassam Tawil...continued from previous page it, that they do not understand what they are looking at.

If there is to be peace between Israel and the Palestinians, the first step is for the Palestinians to coordinate their own expectations. Our leaders have to understand that the Middle East arena is in a constant state of flux, that descendants of the 1948 refugees clearly will never “return” to the State of Israel, Jerusalem will never be the capital of a State of Palestine, and we will never control the Jordan Valley (because of Israel’s unfortunately justified security concerns).

In addition, in a world staggering under the burden of Islamist terrorism,

Palestinian terrorism is likely, over time, only to strengthen the West’s support for Israel’s security and existence.

We should have understood a long time ago that Jews exist in Palestine, that they are here to stay forever, and that murdering them in the streets is not going to change anything. The time has come to try creating – for the first time in history – a peaceful and demilitarized Palestinian state, which the Israelis have indicated for decades they would be all too happy to help us achieve. I hope and pray we are not already too late.

Bassam Tawil is a scholar based in the Middle East.

Opinions and letters printed in the Federation Star do not necessarily reflect those of the Jewish Federation of Collier County, its Board of Directors or staff, or its advertisers.

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29A

Welcome to our newly minted 2016!

Rabbi Fishel Zaklos

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ew is always a thrill. Sometimes suspenseful, but usually exciting.

Today is the first day of the rest of our lives! When we begin a new year, it is an opportune time to take a fresh look at our lives, against a backdrop of reflection.

At the end of each year, Oxford Dictionaries chooses a Word of the Year.

For the first time ever, 2015’s selection was not a word at all. This year it chose a pictograph – the “Face with Tears of Joy” emoji.

And whereas recent years’ selections (such as “vape,” “selfie” and “GIF”) were used millions of times, this year’s “word” was used 6.6 billion times on Twitter alone! It is, by far, the most tweeted emoji. This caught my attention. If you include Facebook, emails and texts, this emoji must have been used over 10 billion times.

But when we reflect on this, it makes sense. An emoji in general is a very powerful expression because it transcends diversities, it seamlessly traverses cross-continent, it rises above languages, and it unites people with the universal, timeless experience of emotion.

As I look forward to 2016, I hope to take inspiration from the emoji. It reminds me that in a world that is plagued by conflict and strife, I must search for the truths that transcend our differences, and access the reality that although we are all different, we are also the same.

When I look past my superficial insecurities or doubts, beyond my struggles, I can find my inner-emoji; the deepest kind that exists.

I have within me a power that can defy adversity, mend conflicts, rise above suffering, bring goodness and light to our world, and that is the real me.

When we dig deeper into ourselves to discover this often-hidden truth of who we are, it makes us stronger.

When we access truths like our shared emotions, that we all have this inner-emoji called a soul, a piece of the Divine, and that we are all connected to

a Higher Power and each other, we are actually invincible.

In the Torah portion we are studying these weeks, we learn the story of the burning bush. There is one line that did not make it into Charlton Heston’s Ten Commandments, but it is there nonetheless. Moses, being sent by G-d into Egypt to care for the Jewish people, asks Him, “What is your name? Who should I say is sending me?”

And G-d responds, “I am what I am.”

Rashi, one of the foremost commentators on the Bible, explains that G-d is telling Moses, “I will be with you in difficult times.”

Wait, you ask, how does that answer Moses’s question?

Yet this is exactly the response Moses needed.

He is being told that when he tells the Jewish people suffering in slavery about G-d, he should tell them who He essentially is – “I am what I am” – a source of strength that helps us survive in a time of struggle.

There was a boy whose father was a militant atheist. One night when the boy was sleeping, the father put a note over the kid’s bed: “G-d is nowhere,” he wrote.

In the morning, the boy woke up and saw the sign, but since he was very young he could only read one-syllable words.

The boy stood up on the bed and read the words, but not as his father intended: “G-d is now here.”

This is how I’m looking forward to the new year.

In a very dark world that seems to get darker by the minute, the writing on the wall may read “G-d is nowhere,” but years of Jewish history, decades of Jewish survival, and centuries of perseverance tell me that G-d is now here, and that we as individuals, as a local community, and as a universal people, can overcome anything.

We must believe in ourselves, in the Divine, an eternal emoji that flickers within each and every one of us, strengthening us.

We must tap into our higher power, and we must reach out and hold hands with one another, regardless of language or perspective, and it is then that we literally change the world.

Rabbi Fishel Zaklos serves at Chabad Jewish Center of Naples.

Naples BBYO update

By Skylar Haas, Assoc. Regional Dir. of BBYO’s North Florida Region

T

he Negev Sharks and Sababa Peacocks have kicked off their 2016 Spring Term with new teens in executive leadership and a calendar full of exciting upcoming programs and events. During the month of January, Naples BBYO teens led Shabbat services at all of our partnering congregations, participated in Temple Shalom’s Mitzvah Day, and resumed their weekly chapter meetings at the Jewish Federation office.

Naples BBYO sent over 15 teens to participate in North Florida Region’s New Member Convention and Regional execs. All the teens left feeling inspired and ready to bring back their gained knowledge to help strengthen our movement here in Naples.

Over Presidents’ Day Weekend, more than 4,000 of the Jewish community’s top teen leaders, educators, professionals and philanthropists from across the world will come together in Baltimore for BBYO International Convention (IC) 2016. They will hear from and meet inspiring speakers, deepen leadership skills, immerse themselves in and serve the local community, celebrate Shabbat and learn together, have access to exclusive music performances, and do their part to ensure a stronger Jewish future.

For more information on programming for Jewish teens in our area, contact me at shaas@bbyo.org. Follow us on Instagram @NaplesBBYO and Like us on Facebook @ Naples BBYO.

Naples BBYO teens volunteering at the Community Chanukah Celebration

30A Federation Star February 2016

FOCUS ON YOUTH

Preschool of the Arts update

By Ettie Zaklos, Preschool Director

A

rt. The word brings to mind vivid images of finger paints in primary colors, teenage doodles in notebook margins, highbrow modern gallery openings, priceless and timeless museum heirlooms…the variety is endless.

For us at Preschool of the Arts, art is an intrinsic part of our identity. We know that children are naturally creative and derive much pleasure from involvement in the arts. They learn a host of developmental skills and acquire tremendous self-esteem when given varied opportunities to create. In our programs, we provide children with open-ended opportunities to create through a wide array of art media and quality materials. We celebrate children’s creativity by prominently and artfully displaying their work throughout the preschool building.

But is there really more to the seeming scribbles of marker on cardstock that your child proudly brings home from preschool? Is this truly artwork?

Yes, and we have the documentation to prove it.

At Preschool of the Arts, we believe that the artistic process is even more valuable than the final product, so we accompany each work with a transcription of the child’s thoughts about the piece. Using documentation as a tool for introspection, we encourage children to take time to reflect so that they can take ownership of their own thoughts, feelings and ideas.

And oh the things they discover!

Painting, clay work, and cutting & pasting develop incredible pre-academic skills like writing and calculating.

Creative thinking and appreciation for the natural world fosters a love for science and math. While these skills are intertwined in daily learning, our art specialist takes these concepts one step further, exposing children to age- appropriate lessons in art theory and appreciation, famous artists and artistic techniques.

It is our distinct Ettie and Rabbi Fishel Zaklos with artist Romero Britto honor to welcome

local Naples artists to visit and work with our preschool children on a regular basis, helping expand our students’ horizons of what is possible to create.

This February we have the exciting opportunity to welcome more than our hometown heroes – world famous popartist Romero Britto will be joining our students for a one-of-a-kind painting session!

Romero Britto is an artist, painter, serigrapher and sculptor who combines elements of cubism, pop art and graffiti painting in his work, using vibrant colors and bold patterns as a visual expression of hope and happiness. The self-taught artist was inspired

by Matisse and Picasso and eventually became known for his unique pieces of art commissioned by Absolut, Movado, Disney, Pepsi, the UN, BMW and more.

From his studio in Miami, he believes that art is not just for those in the highest echelons of society but a birthright of every person on earth. The acclaimed artist will be exclusively speaking with our young students and leading them in a painting session with a true master.

Romero has also graciously chosen to bestow the Preschool of Arts campus with a custom-made sculpture which he will unveil at a community event.

It is truly a realization of Preschool of the Arts’ long-held vision to have an artist of Romero’s caliber visit us. Our goal is for all of our students to be ar-

tistically stimulated inside the comfort of their classroom, but to also take that inspiration with them as they venture outdoors and explore artistic icons. We believe artistic expression is a constant process that begins with our youngest learners and explorers, and is deepened and refined as they form relationships and connections with their world. Each step is part of a larger story or narrative that has endless possibilities and applications well beyond the walls, spaces and environments that define Preschool of Arts.

Join our community!

Our innovative programs and incredibleA staff are an open Naples secret, and ourU award-winning preschool has growna exponentially every year. Enrollmenth opened in January for the 2016-2017g school year and classes are filling upi fast! With high demand and limitedA availability, we encourage prospectiveU J families to enroll today.

Want a taste of what makes Pre-w school of the Arts so popular? Try ourc unique Summer of the Arts experience.d The program for children ages 18w months to 11 years integrates variousv creative arts and educational themes in aJ safe, multi-sensory, and Jewish-spiritedp setting from June 6 through July 15. h For more information, contact meF at 239.263.2620 or naplespreschoolT ofthearts@gmail.com, or visit www. naplespreschoolofthearts.com.

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Temple Shalom Preschool update

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By Seyla Cohen, Preschool Director

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odah Rabah Jewish Federation!

The Jewish Federation of Collier County has once again pledged its support to Temple Shalom Preschool.

Through a very generous contribution, TSP will be able to give financial aid to the Jewish families that want to be part of our Temple Shalom Preschool family, but may need some assistance.

In addition to earmarking funds for the regular school year TSP Experience, the Federation has expanded its support to

our incredible summer programs, Camp Shalom and Camp Einstein. And just to round out our already spectacular program, it has allotted funds for some very special cultural programs. As the director of Temple Shalom Preschool, I would like to express a personal “Thank

You” to the Federation for this much appreciated grant.

Health-Safety Day/Open House Once again Temple Shalom Preschool is hosting its annual Health-Safety Day/ Open House, this year on Sunday, February 14 from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.

This is a very special activity-packed day-long program educating our young citizens about health and safety within our community. Various community helpers come to present awareness about their individual departments. The chil-

dren enjoy seeing fire trucks up close and personal. They are able to climb on board and view firefighter gear and equipment. EMTs shows up in their ambulances for the children to have a clear view of what is inside their vehicles, and the police department brings

its mascot, McGruff the Crime Dog, teaching the children about combating crime in the area.

Water safety, a major concern for parents in the area, is reinforced.

Domestic Animal Services is another presenter along with Smokey the Bear from the Department of Forestry. Not to mention that the rock climbing wall and the bounce house bring a lot of fun and excitement to the children as well as riding the ponies around our campus.

Health-Safety Day is an event open to the general public and is a welcome and well-received program for the community each year.

At Temple Shalom Preschool, we follow good nutritional eating habits, and children are taught about appropriate portion size, nutritional value of certain foods, and the importance of including fruits and vegetables with every meal. This year, we are adding this important aspect to our Safety Day and making it an even better event by introducing health education, healthy foods, a chance to see and taste our own TSP garden fruits and vegetables, and even participate in a fitness class.

Parents will also have a chance to tour our beautiful Preschool and meet our teachers. Children will have fun listening to a story in our famous Storyland Children’s Library, singing with our music teacher, checking out our brand new and futuristic Technology Lab, doing experiments in our Professor Einstein’s Laboratorium, having their face painted, jumping in the Bounce House, riding on a pony or climbing on the rock wall!

Next school year We experienced so much growth in the last few months that we welcomed two more teachers to our TSP family.

Our waiting list is growing! We feel so blessed and are extremely proud of our outstanding staff for going above and beyond to ensure every student has the TSP Experience.

Also in February, registration opens up for Temple Shalom Preschool for the upcoming school year.

Temple Shalom Preschool has been distinguished for many years as a top preschool in Naples. Its programs for children ages birth to 5 are top quality,

dedicated to preparing a firm foundation for students entering kindergarten and successive school years. Beginning with its “Baby and Me” and “Mommy, Me, and More” programs, children begin their formative years in a safe,

wholesome, academically-challenging environment, conducive to promoting self-esteem, confidence and individuality. Its dedicated and well-trained staff provides a caring and loving atmosphere in which each child flourishes and grows to meet his or her full potential.

Enrichment in Science, Art, Technology,B Storytelling, Puppetry, Drama, STEM, Gardening/Nutrition, Music, Fitness, and Foreign Language is offered.

General sign-up becomes available as space permits to the public once current families have had a chance to enroll their children.

For a tour or information about TSP, call the preschool office at 239.455.3227 or email preschool@naplestemple.org.

Winter Camp TSP Winter Camp was a blast. Throughout the first week, the children made snow, had a snowball fight, made snow angels, and cooked some yummy snacks. They created winter artwork and played non-stop with their friends.

Week two was just as good, with more non-stop fun enjoying our beautiful Florida ‘winter.’

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Save the Date: CELEBRATE ISRAEL Sunday, May 15, 2016

1:00 to 4:00 p.m. at the Mercato

February 2016 Federation Star

SYNAGOGUES BETH TIKVAH

31A

www.bethtikvahnaples.org / 239-434-1818

Beth Tikvah update Phil Jason President ne of the significant dates in contemporary Jewish history is that of Natan Sharansky’s Aliyah from incarceration in the Soviet Union to freedom in Israel, where he arrived on February 11, 1986. Having held many important posts in Israeli governments and now head of the Jewish Agency for Israel, he finds the America that stood up to the Soviet Union and made it possible for Soviet Jews to attain freedom no longer what it was. Echoing most of his fellow Israeli citizens, Sharansky considers the U.S. deal with Iran the misguided effort of a weakened ally. He yearns for the strong voice that brought a stream of Soviet Jewish refugees to new lives and opportunities. He can be a nuisance, but he’s worth listening to.

Fantastically full February The Naples Jewish Film Festival is sold

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out. To be on the waiting list, email info@naplesjewishfilmfestival.org.

Our lecture program continues on Thursday, February 4 at 7:30 p.m. A retired attorney and experienced lecturer, Neil Adelman has been a volunteer community lecturer for the Lyric Opera of Chicago for 11 years. In Naples, he has lectured at the Renaissance Academy of FGCU on opera and on voting rights the last two winters and plans to be lecturing at RA again this winter on several subjects. His topic is “Arthur Szyk: Freedom’s Artist.” No charge to members, $5 for nonmembers.

Next up, on Tuesday, February 9 at 7:30 p.m., is Odette Masliyah, who will present an illustrated talk on “The History of Iraqi Jews.” In part a personal story, it includes a history of the community and its exodus. Cost: $5 for nonmembers. For all lectures, RSVP to 239.434.1818.

Our next Rosh Chodesh Women’s Group meeting will be held on Sunday, February 14 at 10:00 a.m. The facilitators are Sylvia Whitman and Lee Henson. No Charge. Contact Elaine Kamin at 239.593.6821 for more information.

On Tuesday, February 16 at 7:30

CHABAD JEWISH CENTER OF NAPLES

p.m., Dr. June Sochen and Joyce Schrager present a roundup of fact and opinion on “Foreign Affairs.” Their spirited and informative presentation will be followed by a Q&A and refreshments. Cost: $5 for nonmembers. RSVP by calling 239.434.1818.

On Thursday, February 18 from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m., Beth Tikvah hosts a Collier County Jewish Book Festival event. The theme is “Russia.” The authors are Talia Carner and David Greene. For information and ticket orders, visit www.jewishbookfestival.org or see the four-page pullout in this issue.

Sunday, February 21 is “Yiddishkeit Night” – a feast of fine musical performances and splendid desserts. See details elsewhere in this issue.

Thursday, February 25 at 7:30 p.m. brings the second of Gerald Ziedenberg’s “Jewish Heroes” lectures. The subject is “Jonathan Netanyahu: The Hero of Entebbe.” Cost: $5 for nonmembers. RSVP requested.

Monday, February 29 at 7:00 p.m. brings a spectacular close to the month with “Unravelling Your DNA – What You Need to Know about Genetics.”

This program is designed to ensure that

you are an informed consumer who can ask appropriate questions regarding genetics to your health provider.

Moderator: Dr. Karen Ezrine. Sponsor: Myriad Genetics.

Myriad Genetics is a leading molecular diagnostic company dedicated to making a difference in patients’ lives through the discovery and commercialization of transformative tests to assess a person’s risk of developing disease, guide treatment decisions, and assess risk of disease progression and recurrence. No charge. RSVP to Karen Ezrine at karencme@gmail.com.

Religious services schedule Friday services begin at 6:15 p.m.; Saturday services begin at 9:30 a.m. and conclude with a Kiddush luncheon.

Sunday morning minyan is at 9:00 a.m.

Yahrzeit minyanim upon request. Please join us at any service. Our participatory worship services and most other events are held at 1459 Pine Ridge Road, just west of Mission Square Plaza. For more information, call 239.434.1818, email bethtikvahnaples@aol.com or visit www.bethtikvahnaples.org. You can reach Rabbi Chorny directly at 239.537.5257.

www.chabadnaples.com / 239-262-4474

Chabad Jewish Center of Naples update

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habbat Family Dinner n with Yarom Ettinger g Join Chabad Naples for the last , nof our popular Shabbat Family Dinner series with special guest Ambassador Yarom Ettinger on Friday, February 26 at 5:30 p.m. An Ambassador and consultant to the Knesset, Ettinger is an expert on Mideast politics with the rare insider view on U.S.-Israel relations. With security issues and terrorist concerns crowding the airwaves more than ever, come sit down for an intimate conversation with the political expert over a warm plate of Moroccan-inspired cuisine. The dinner takes inspiration from all thing Middle East. The beautiful evening of unity, delicious food, and inspiration from the strength of the tiny but mighty Jewish nation will make it a Shabbat to remember. Ettinger will

follow his keynote address on current issues with an open Q&A session for dinner attendees. Space is limited and sells out quickly, so call 239.262.4474 or visit www.chabadnaples.com for reservations and details.

Rena Finder shares her story of survival In the past two years we have endeavored to bring speakers with powerful insights and relevant messages to the community. Eva Schloss in 2013 and Dan Alon last year left our rapt audiences visibly moved with their emotional stories of valor. On Thursday, February 11 at 7:00 p.m. we will bring you another moving and inspirational evening as we present the courageous Rena Finder, the youngest survivor on Schindler’s List. “In this world of bullying and hate crimes, it’s important to

teach children not to stand by. You have to go and get help. Don’t stand by and do nothing.”

Reserve this date for what promises to be another memorable evening. Tickets are $18; $8 for students. Patrons, at $180, get two preferred seating tickets and a VIP private cocktail reception with Rena Finder. Sponsorships available: Remembrance Pillar - $1,800; Soul Supporter - $540.

To purchase tickets and for more information, visit www.chabadnaples. com or call 239.262.4474.

Partners Project Each year we celebrate with gratitude, our ever-growing group of benefactors and supporters with a special evening where we honor and entertain members of the Partners Project. Call now. It’s not too late to become a member of

this special group!

Flying Challahs Here is your chance to bring a smile to someone’s face! If you know people who need a visit or just a little caring attention, your suggestion via a phone call will bring a freshly-baked challah flying to their doorstep.

Weekly services and children’s program Join us every Shabbat at 10:30 a.m. for weekly uplifting services, and bring the kids to the incredible children’s program at the same time. Kiddush and social gathering for the family follow services.

Thursday Minyan We hold a regular Thursday morning Minyan in the Herstein Library at 8:00 a.m.

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f e

NAPLES JEWISH CONGREGATION

www.naplesjewishcongregation.org / 239-234-6366

Naples Jewish Congregation update

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By Suzanne L. Paley, President

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’m so grateful , I want to start this message on a very , personal note. Recently I have had . to deal with a personal situation that was s tphysically and emotionally stressful. lAs soon as people found out about my situation, the phone calls started com,ing with genuine concern and offers of 7support and any assistance I might need.

I cannot begin to tell you how much I appreciate my temple family.

We members of NJC are so fortunate to be a part of a congregation that ecares so much for its members. I realize yI am in a position that tends to be a bit kmore transparent than others. That being .said, unless we know of the needs of a member, we cannot respond with the care and support to help address a situation.

Rabbi Wolf, the co-chairs of our Care Connection, Bonnie and Dick Lechtner, and I want to hear from our members, whether it’s a bowl of chicken soup to help ease a cold, or an immediate need to address a crisis that is brewing.

We want to be able to help.

On a happier note Our Roaring 20s Jazz Night was very successful and enjoyed by all who attended. We are now looking forward, with great anticipation, to our Artist/ Scholar-in-Residence program on Thursday, February 4 with Rabbi/StandUp Comic Bob Alper! Rabbi Alper’s comedic performances have been enjoyed by audiences all over the world.

He even tours Israel with an Arab friend/ comedian and they perform together!

His comedy is clean, good old-fashioned humor that does not insult anyone, but that everyone can relate to. On Friday night, February 5, Rabbi Alper will speak during our Shabbat service on the spirituality and holiness of humor from a Jewish perspective.

February and March is the time for our Sisterhood and Men’s Club to shine! Both auxiliary organizations join together for their annual luncheon on Wednesday, February 17, with a special presentation on minorities in sports by Dr. Stan, the Stats Man. Sisterhood’s

Shabbat service is Friday, February 12, and the Men’s Club Shabbat service is Friday, March 4. On Monday, March 14, Sisterhood will have its annual Game Day at Cypress Woods Country Club.

Jewish Book Festival Naples Jewish Congregation is a proud sponsor of the first annual Collier County Jewish Book Festival. On Monday, March 14 at 6:30 p.m., two authors will present their books with the theme being “Inspiration.” We are also pleased to tell you that the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Greater Naples (where we gather for services) has donated its facility as the venue for this evening.

As a special way to close out the Fes-

tival, since this is the last of 11 events, together our two congregations will be hosting a dessert reception at the end of the evening. Please see the four-page pullout in this issue for more information and a ticket order form.

Please join us for a Shabbat service and find out why “NJC is where you should belong!” We gather at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation on Napa Woods Way in Naples. An Oneg always follows our services, which gives everyone a chance to greet, meet and chat. For further information about Naples Jewish Congregation, please call 239.431.3858 or visit www.naples jewishcongregation.org.

Naples Jewish Congregation-sponsored event: Monday, March 14, 6:30 - 9:00 p.m. at UUCGN ~ Topic: Inspiration Megan Feldman Bettencourt ~ Triumph of the Heart Goldie Milgram ~ New Mitzvah Stories

www.JewishBookFestival.org ~ 239.263.4205

32A Federation Star February 2016 JEWISH CONGREGATION OF MARCO ISLAND

SYNAGOGUES / ORGANIZATIONS www.marcojcmi.com / 239-642-0800

Jewish Congregation of Marco Island update

By Sue R. Baum, President

W

e enter a new and exciting phase in the 33 years that the synagogue exists – the arrival of Rabbi Mark Gross.

I want to thank the congregation for its prompt return of the ballots. The response was significant in numbers and approval of the hiring of Rabbi Mark

Gross. It demonstrated to me that the congregants care.

The vote was also recognition of the months of the laborious work of the 11 members of the Rabbi’s Search Committee. As president, I could listen, but had no voice or vote. And listen I did. I was impressed with the efficiency and

dedication of the committee members in establishing the criteria and conducting the search.

This synagogue enhances and enriches the quality of our Jewish lives.

The immediate next step will be to promote the value of a Jewish presence to the unaffiliated in our community.

See you at the 22 nd year of the Cultural Series, the 17th year of Bingo, the 15th year of the Jewish Film Festival, and the 3rd year of the Jewish Deli Fest!

ORGANIZATIONS HUMANISTIC JEWISH HAVURAH

www.hjhswfl.org / 239-398-3935

Humanistic Jewish Havurah hosts Rabbi-in-Residence Paula Creed HJH President

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he Humanistic Jewish Havurah of Southwest Florida is looking forward to the visit of Rabbi Miriam Jerris, Society for Humanistic Judaism Rabbi, who will be visiting our area the weekend of February 19-21.

Shabbat Rabbi Jerris will be participating in our Humanistic Jewish Shabbat celebration Friday evening at the Pelican Marsh Community Center. This is a potluck event. The charge, $10 per person, covers our expenses. To attend, contact Dean Sklaroff at 239.591.0101, as she coordinates what each participant should bring.

South Regional Lee County Public Library discussion On Saturday afternoon at 2:00 p.m., Rabbi Jerris will be at the South Regional Lee County Public Library

Saturday afternoon will be an oppor(21100 Three Oaks Parkway, Estero) to tunity to meet face to face with Rabbi explain and discuss Humanistic Judaism Jerris to learn more. If you would like to anyone interested in learning more to attend, call 239.495.8484. about our movement.

Community meeting Are you uncomfortable in a tradiThen on Sunday at 2:00 p.m., the Hational temple or synagogue? Do services vurah meets in the David G. Willens seem somehow disconnected from your Community Room of the Jewish Federabeliefs or how you live your life? Did tion of Collier County (2500 Vanderbilt you abandon the belief in a personal Beach Road, Suite 2201, Naples). Rabbi deity years ago? In spite of being pretty Jerris will talk about “Livsecular, do you find youring an Authentic Jewish self drawn to things Jewish?

Life.” What is the value Would you like to congregate of Jewish identity in a with other Jews who feel the same about their Jewish idensecular world? Can you be a part of the Jewish tity? Many suffer from the community and question disability of not feeling legitisome of the basic premmately Jewish. Others do not ises of Rabbinic Judaism? even know that another option What if you question the exists. Rabbi Jerris has been notion of an omnipotent, involved in Humanistic JudaRabbi Miriam Jerris omnipresent deity? Do ism for more than 40 years and you feel hypocritical saying the words at is adept at explaining the humanistic option that serves the needs of people a traditional Shabbat or holiday service?

Rabbi Jerris will explain how secular who have these concerns.

Humanistic Judaism provides a way to Secular Humanistic Judaism is a participate in Jewish communal celebraviable alternative to the existing theistic varieties that dominate the American tion while “saying what we believe and believing what we say.” The rabbi will scene. It may be your alternative and

ORT AMERICA – GULF BEACHES CHAPTER

reflect on the reasons she feels that Humanistic Judaism enables her to be both a Jew and a Humanist simultaneously.

Dena Sklaroff (denas27@aol.com or 239.591.0101) is accepting reservations for this event.

Most secular and humanistic Jews have never bothered to deal with the philosophic and historic foundations of their commitment. Judaism is no single religion or philosophy of life. It embraces a spectrum of alternatives that find significance and value in Jewish identity. A secular approach to Judaism is an important alternative among Jewish people throughout the world.

A basic tenet of Humanistic Judaism is that our power resides within each of us. No matter what we say we believe, it’s what we do that counts.

Jewish identity needs to find some way to express itself that does not violate other values that are equally important, or more important. It needs to promote personal integrity. It needs to present a realistic version of Jewish history and to incorporate it into Jewish celebration.

www.ort.org / 239-649-4000

ORT to eternity

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Marina Berkovich ORT Gulf Beaches President ven those who have followed ORT’s progress for years may be interested in knowing more about its founders and how ORT has influenced Jews and the world since 1880. (continued from the January 2016 issue) Part IV. ORT Work During World War II By the mid-1930s, despite growing antiJewish legislations, ORT expanded into a well-functioning network of Jewish trade schools providing physical and psychological relief for the unemployed during the depression in Eastern and Central Europe.

ORT’s wartime work began in August 1939, when over a hundred pupils and eight instructors of the ORT Berlin Engineer School were transferred to England. In Leeds, the boys carried on the work and training they started in Berlin. The school operated for two years, also training refugees from Czechoslovakia, Austria, Germany and Poland. ORT provided education courses for Jewish refugees in all the countries into which Jews fled. More than 3,000 Jewish refugees obtained training in the ORT school in Shanghai.

Vocational schools were set up for wartime refugees in New York and Cuba.

According to ORT reports, among those attending in New York were 1,002 former merchants, 405 former physicians, 161 rabbis, 743 lawyers and 98 former government officials, including several judges.

During the early years of the war, ORT’s headquarters were still based in France. There it came to the rescue of the refugees from Germany and Austria who were interned as ‘enemy aliens.’

ORT established vocational courses in the internment camps and at the same time was fighting for the refugees’ release. Those released were placed in ORT agricultural training projects.

Similar projects were carried out among Jewish refugees in Switzerland.

ORT continued its work in a number of Eastern European ghettos. The idea of ‘rescue through work’ – utilizing work projects to make as many Jews as possible indispensable to the German war economy, and through this delaying the destructions of the ghettos – was essential in that effort. Participation in vocational courses also had an effect on the emotional state of the students. It allowed them to get away for the duration of the class from the everyday horror of ghetto life. ORT was most active in Warsaw, Poland, and Kovno, Lithuania.

Warsaw ORT started immediately upon the establishment of the ghetto.

The Nazis permitted ORT to only run

technical basic courses. In reality the classes were often run at university preparation levels, and clandestinely, on academic subjects. Teachers in the Warsaw ghetto included eminent professors and specialists.

From ORT Warsaw ghetto staff member’s memory from ORT Bulletin Vol. XVII No.2: “When I look back and think about the variety of courses which were suddenly opened, I find myself incapable of explaining how it was possible…

Everything around us was demolished.

People arrived at the school naked and barefoot. But every student attending the course was able to learn something…

Undernourished, humiliated and oppressed, four and a half thousand ORT pupils between the ages of 16 and 60 were absorbed in their activities, and

in them they found their consolation and hope for the future. It seems like a fairy tale to recall that in those days the distribution of ORT certificates was celebrated in the schools, that Chanukah and Purim were observed. In ORT, one could forget the nightmare of reality and find new courage to live. The classroom became a kind of literary and cultural circle.” (to be continued in March 2016 issue) *** ORT provides scholarships to 300,000 students annually in over 60 countries. GulfBeaches ORT Chapter 2015 fundraising efforts benefit ORT in Israel. Please help us with our financial challenge by mailing your renewal or donation check, payable to ORT America, to Hella Amelkin, 3200 Gulf Shore Blvd. N., #307, Naples, FL 34103.

ORT America (Organization for Rehabilitation through Training) Did you know that: ¡¡ ORT supports 300,000 students annually in 59 countries by providing technical education that emphasizes employable skills? ¡¡ ORT’s most famous (and least publicized) mission was to educate Holocaust victims in DP camps so they were able to move on with their lives? ¡¡ ORT America has four college campuses in the U.S., including two in New York, one in Chicago and one in Los Angeles, that serve the most vulnerable communities? ¡¡ ORT America is active in Southwest Florida? Please attend Gulf Beaches Chapter events and support ORT’s educational mission.

Help ORT raise funds to save lives through education.

To join/renew/transfer, please contact ORT America Gulf Beaches Chapter President Marina Berkovich at 239.566.1771, or Membership Chair Marebe Crouse at 239.263.4959.

Please visit www.ortamerica.org for a virtual ORT experience.

February 2016 Federation Star

ORGANIZATIONS

33A

www.hadassah.org / 239-370-6220

COLLIER/LEE CHAPTER OF HADASSAH

Hadassah update Karen Cohn

e ,

Collier/Lee Hadassah Co-President

ne of the first tasks as the new Co-President of our Chapter was to attend the Florida Central Region Board meeting December 12-13 in Tampa. Gayle Dorio and I were installed as Co-Presidents, and Ruth Barber as Vice President of Fundraising for Collier/Lee Chapter of Hadassah.

Lynn Weiner was installed as PRAZE (Program, Advocacy, Zionism, Education) Vice President for the Florida Central Region. About 40 Hadassah Chapters from Jacksonville to Naples hand in between were represented. The .weekend began with a Havdalah service ron Saturday evening and ended on Sunday with the installation of the Executive Board. The Region Board Meeting provided very important information to ethe incoming Co-Presidents. s Next, Gayle an I attended our Chapoter’s Donor Recognition Luncheon on December 20 at Quail West Golf and

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Country Club. We were treated to a presentation by Dr. Eyal Banin, Director of the Center for Retinal and Macular Degeneration in the Department of Ophthalmology in Hebrew University, Hadassah Medical School. Dr. Banin is also an invited lecturer at Scripps Research Institute in San Diego. His special area of focus is a new 21st-century treatment for macular degeneration using stem cell therapy. In fact, he has initiated the first treatment in the world in a human patient using this technology. It is amazing what has been accomplished with stem cell therapy and what the future holds. And this was made possible from Hadassah funding.

On Tuesday, January 26, the new officers will be installed at a luncheon at Bonita Bay Golf and Country Club.

The new officers are: ¡¡ Co-Presidents Karen Cohn and Gayle Dorio ¡¡ Co-Vice Presidents of Membership - Donna Goldblatt, Carol Hirsch and Roberta Ury ¡¡ Vice President of Education/ Programs - Elyse Morande ¡¡ Vice President of Fundraising Ruth Barber ¡¡ Co-Treasurers -

Collier/Lee Chapter of Hadassah-sponsored event: Wednesday, March 9, 6:30 - 9:00 p.m. at Beth Tikvah ~ Topic: Memoir Dafna Michaelson Jenet ~ It Takes a Little Crazy To Make a Difference Sally Fingerett ~ The Mental Yentl www.JewishBookFestival.org ~ 239.263.4205

m

Fran Nossen and Elissa Goldstein ¡¡ Corresponding Secretary Iris Shur ¡¡ Records Administrator Carol Weisberg The position of Recording Secretary has not been filled yet. If you are interested in helping Hadassah with this important position, please contact Gayle Dorio at gayledorio@gmail.com.

The Sarah Wetsman Davidson Tower, our major project, is almost com-

pleted, but donations are still needed to equip the Tower.

Other interesting Hadassah projects include “Hadassah Yahrzeit in Israel.” A one-time donation of $1,000 will make it possible for Kaddish to be recited perpetually for a loved one beneath the Marc Chagall windows in Jerusalem.

Throughout the year Gayle and I will be writing about the many different Hadassah projects that you may not yet know about.

SAVE THE DATE:

¡¡ Monday, February 1: Annual Mahj and Card Party, 11:30 a.m., Cypress Woods Country Club - SOLD OUT ¡¡ Sunday, February 7: New, Prospective, Transfer Member Brunch at 11:00 a.m. at a private home for all new members or anyone who wants to learn more about Hadassah and our Chapter. RSVP to Donna Goldblatt at mom443@ail.com or 239.597.3441 ¡¡ Monday, February 15: All day in honor of the 103rd birthday of Hadassah, California Pizza Kitchen will donate 20% of your purchase to Hadassah.

Just mention Hadassah. ¡¡ Friday, February 19: Daytime Study Group at Temple Shalom at 1:00 p.m. ¡¡ Thursday, February 25: Spring Meeting and Luncheon, Speaker Dr. Caroline Cederquist, 10:45 a.m., Tiburon Golf and Country Club ¡¡ Tuesday, March 1: Hadassah Benefit “Sail Away With Hadassah,” 6:00 p.m., Heritage Bay Golf and Country Club, honoring Ida and Jeff Margolis ¡¡ Wednesday, March 9: Hadassah-sponsored Jewish Book Festival event, 6:30 p.m., Beth Tikvah, www.JewishBookFestival.org ¡¡ Thursday, March 10: Evening Activity Group, Speaker Hollis Chalem, 7:00 p.m. ¡¡ Friday, March 18: Hadassah Shabbat, 7:30 p.m., Temple Shalom ¡¡ Wednesday, March 23: Knowledge & Nosh @ Noon, Speaker Shelley Goodman, 11:30 a.m., McCormick and Schmick’s ¡¡ Wednesday, April 13: Knowledge & Nosh @ Noon, Speaker Deena Baxter, 11:30 a.m., Cypress Woods Golf and Country Club ¡¡ Thursday, April 14: Evening Activity Group, Travel lecture and dinner, Speaker Dori Wexelbaum, 6:30 p.m.

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www.jwi.org / 239-498-2778

JEWISH WOMEN INTERNATIONAL

JWI honors 10 women for the Annual Women to Watch Event

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Millie Sernovitz JWI Past International President

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ewish Women International (JWI) s held it 15th annual Women to Watch event on December 7 at the Washington Marriott Wardman Park hotel. e The “Up Close & Personal” Symposium d mwith an unscripted question-and-answer lsession with the honorees was held 6beforehand. Over 700 people attended this year’s luncheon.

This year, JWI honored women who have been game changers in the worlds o of social justice, technology, global rhunger and poverty, and Jewish life. JWI nselected an inspiring group of 10 women lleaders and role models who represented ra diverse array of fields. Each is leaving -her mark on her own community, on the ecountry and on the global community of women JWI works to better every day.

This year’s honorees were individually profiled in the fall issue of Jewish Woman magazine as well as at its website, www.jwmag.org.

Selected for their unique contributions across a wide array of professions, the 2015 honorees are: Rebecca Alexander, New York, NY Psychotherapist, author, extreme athlete and activist; raised awareness and more than $100,000 for the Usher III Initiative, which promotes research

on Usher Syndrome, the genetic disease she was diagnosed with as a teen.

Deborah Berebichez, New York, NY Physicist, educator and entrepreneur dedicated to promoting education in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields; the first Mexican woman to graduate with a Ph.D. in physics from Stanford University; currently serves as vice president of risk analysis at MSCI on Wall Street.

Sherre Hirsch, Los Angeles, CA The first female rabbi of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, now spiritual consultant to Canyon Ranch in Arizona and Massachusetts, and a nationallyrecognized speaker; author of We Plan, God Laughs: What to Do When Life Hits You Over the Head and Thresholds: How to Thrive Through Life’s Transitions.

Allyson Kapin, Washington, DC Online advocacy expert; co-author of Social Change Anytime Everywhere; founding partner of the Rad Campaign; named one of the Top Tech Titans by Washingtonian magazine, one of the Most Influential Women in Tech by Fast Company and one of the top 30 women entrepreneurs to follow on Twitter by Forbes.

Roberta Kaplan, New York, NY Litigator; adjunct professor of law at Columbia University Law School; author of Then Comes Marriage: United States v. Windsor and the Defeat of DOMA. Linda Lipsen, Washington, DC CEO of the American Association

for Justice (formerly the Association of Trial Lawyers of America); widely honored as an influential lawyer, lobbyist and advocate for injured Americans.

Lynn Morgan, Washington, DC (Sondra D. Bender Community Leadership Honoree) Co-founder and president of Morgan Language Services Corporation; member of the board of directors of the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington; co-chair of synagogue outreach for AIPAC’s Greater Washington, DC, Council.

Laurie Moskowitz, Washington, DC Political organizer; senior director of U.S. campaigns for ONE, the anti-poverty advocacy organization cofounded by Bono of U2; co-founder of consulting agency FieldWorks.

Jane Randel, New York, NY Co-founder of NO MORE; copresident, Karp Randel LLC; advisor to the NFL and NASCAR on domestic violence/sexual assault policy, protocol and programs.

Paula Shoyer, Chevy Chase, MD French-trained pastry chef teaching classes in French pastry and Jewish cooking in the Washington, DC, area and around the world; author of The Holiday Kosher Baker and The Kosher Baker: 160 Dairy-Free Desserts from Traditional to Trendy.

To learn more about the JWI’s 2015 Women to Watch Honorees or other JWI endeavors locally and nationally, please contact Millie Sernovitz at

239.498.2778 or millie@sernovitz.com.

Also, please visit the JWI website at www.jwi.org or its companion website for Jewish Woman magazine at www. jwmag.org.

Jewish War Veterans meeting

In keeping with our new plans, we will have our next meeting at Temple Shalom on Sunday, February 7 at 10:30 a.m. The entire community is invited to attend.

We have a great speaker and everyone will enjoy the bagels and lox.

The Federation Star is a monthly nonprofit newspaper supported by generous readers, committed advertisers and the Jewish Federation of Collier County.

34A Federation Star February 2016

COMMUNITY CALENDAR

Get the Service you Deserve February 2016 – 5776 SUNDAY

MONDAY 1

2

9:30am TS Pre-K Orientation 10:00am BBYO Board Mtg 11:30am HDH Mahj & Cards 10:00am TS Yiddish Club 12:15pm BT Torah Study 5:30pm JCMI Bingo 1:00pm HDH Board Mtg -TS 1:00pm JCMI Duplicate Bridge 1:30pm CJD Committee Mtg 4:00pm BT Torah Study 4:00pm JFCC Exec Board Mtg

FRIDAY

SATURDAY

3

4

5

6

1:00pm JCMI Bridge 4:30pm BT-CHA-TS Hebrew Sch 6:30pm TS Adult B’nai Mitzvah 7:30pm BT Torah Study

11:00am JCMI Mah Jongg 11:30am CHA Men’s Club 1:00pm JFCC Backgammon 5:00pm NJC Community Event 6:30pm BBYO Youth Activity

5:30pm TS Table Shabbat 6:15pm BT Services 6:30pm JFCC TER Shabbat Dnr 6:30pm TS Shir Joy Shabbat 7:30pm NJC Services 7:30pm TS Services 8:00pm JCMI Services

8:30am TS Torah Talk 9:30am BT Services 10:00am CHA Services 10:00am JCMI Services 10:00am TS Services

10

11

12

13

8:30am JCMI Mah Jongg Tnmt 11:00am MCA Luncheon 11:30am CHA Men’s Club 1:00pm WCA Jewelry Show -TS 12:00pm NJC Board Meeting 3:00pm HM Exec Comm Mtg 5:30pm TS Rosh Chodesh 6:30pm BBYO Youth Activity

6:00pm TS Seasonal Affiliate Pot Luck Dinner 6:15pm BT Services 7:30pm NJC Services 7:30pm TS Services 8:00pm JCMI Services

9:30am BBYO - BT Services 10:00am BBYO - CHA Services 10:00am JCMI Services 10:00am TS Services 6:00pm MCA Doo Wop Dinner Dance 7:30pm JCMI Cultural Event

15 Presidents’ Day 16

17

18

19

20

10:30am JFCC Game Day 12:00pm NJC-S Book Club 1:00pm JFCC Origami Class 3:00pm JFCC The Interview 5:30pm JCMI Bingo

9:30am HJH Board Mtg 11:30am NJC-S-M Luncheon 1:00pm JCMI Bridge 4:30pm BT-CHA-TS Hebrew Sch 6:30pm TS Adult B’nai Mitzvah 7:30pm BT Torah Study 7:30pm JFCC Evy Lipp People of the Book

11:00am JCMI Mah Jongg 11:30am CHA Men’s Club 1:00pm Jewish Book Fest -BT 1:30pm TS-S Book Bag 4:00pm BT Board Meeting 6:00pm HM Elliott Katz Lect 6:30pm BBYO Youth Activity

6:15pm BT Services 7:30pm NJC-S Shabbat Svcs 7:30pm TS Services 8:00pm JCMI Services

9:30am BT Services 10:00am CHA Services 10:00am JCMI Services 10:00am TS Services

23

24

25

26

27

9:00am Jewish Book Fest Naples Hilton 12:15pm BT Torah Study 1:00pm JCMI Duplicate Bridge 4:00pm BT Torah Study 7:00pm IAC Film -TS 7:00pm TS Board Meeting

9:00am HM Edwin Black 1:00pm Jewish Book Fest Naples Daily News 1:00pm JCMI Bridge 4:30pm BT-CHA-TS Hebrew Sch 7:30pm BT Torah Study

9:00am HM Edwin Black 10:00am JFCC E’day Healing 10:45am HDH Luncheon 11:00am JCMI Mah Jongg 11:30am CHA Men’s Club 6:30pm BBYO Youth Activity 7:00pm JCMI Board Mtg 7:30pm BT Lecture

9:00am WCA Board Meeting 6:05pm CHA Community Services & Dinner 6:15pm BT Services 7:30pm NJC Services 7:30pm TS-S Shabbat Services 8:00pm JCMI Services

9:30am BT Services 10:00am CHA Services 10:00am JCMI Services 10:00am TS Services 8:00pm JFCC Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra

8

9:00am BT Sunday Minyan 9:00am BT Sunday School 9:30am TS Sunday School 10:00am TS-S Board Meeting 10:30am JWV Meeting - TS 11:00am HDH New Member Br

10:00am HM Elliott Katz Lect 10:30am JFCS Naples Jewish Caring Support Group 1:00pm HDH Daytime Study 4:30pm JFCC M&M Dinner 5:30pm JCMI Bingo

14 9:00am BT Sunday Minyan 9:00am BT Sunday School 9:30am TS Preschool Safety Day & Open House 10:00am BT Rosh Chodesh 10:30am NJC Adult Enrichment

21

22

28

THURSDAY

1:00pm JCMI Bridge 1:00pm WCA TS Canasta 1:30pm IAC Committee Mtg 4:30pm BT-CHA-TS Hebrew Sch 6:30pm TS Adult B’nai Mitzvah 7:00pm GS Film -TS 7:30pm BT Torah Study 7:30pm ZOA-CHA Speaker

7

9:00am BT Sunday Minyan 9:00am BT Sunday School 9:30am TS Sunday School 10:00am TS School For Adults 1:30pm HJH Meeting 2:00pm JCMI Film Festival 4:30pm GS Meeting & Film 7:30pm BT Musical Program

WEDNESDAY

TUESDAY

9

9:00am HM Edwin Black 10:30am JFCS Naples Jewish Caring Support Group 11:30am JCRC Comm Mtg 1:00pm Jewish Book Fest -TS 5:30pm JCMI Bingo 6:00pm Technion Inst Recept 7:30pm BT Book Group

29

5:30pm JCMI Bingo 9:00am BT Sunday Minyan 6:30pm Jewish Book Fest -CHA 9:00am BT Sunday School 7:00pm BT Lecture 9:30am TS Sunday School 10:00am TS School For Adults 10:30am NJC Adult Enrichment 3:00pm NJC Sunday Movie 7:00pm Naples Jewish Film Fes

10:00am Jewish Genealogy 10:00am TS-S Luncheon 12:15pm BT Torah Study 1:00pm JCMI Duplicate Bridge 4:00pm BT Torah Study 6:00pm JFCC TER Cardozo Dnr 7:00pm IAC Class 7:30pm JFCC Board Mtg 10:00am TS Yiddish Club 11:00am JCMI Book Club 12:15pm BT Torah Study 1:00pm JCMI Duplicate Bridge 3:30pm JFCC Board Games 4:00pm BT Torah Study 7:00pm TS Exec Comm Mtg 7:30pm BT Lecture

Due to space considerations, not all events have been included in this printed calendar. Please check the calendar on www.jewishnaples.org for an updated and complete list of events.

Candle lighting times: February 5: February 12: February 19: February 26:

5:55 6:00 6:04 6:09

Throughout the year, some holidays fall within the normal work week. The Federation office will be closed in observance of those holidays which are listed in all CAPITAL LETTERS.

Key: • AJC: American Jewish Committee • ATS: American Technion Society • BT: Beth Tikvah • CHA: Chabad Jewish Center of Naples • CHA-M: Chabad Men’s Club • CJD: Catholic-Jewish Dialogue • GS: GenShoah of SWFL • HDH: Hadassah • HJH: Humanistic Jewish Havurah • HM: Holocaust Museum of Southwest Florida

Federation Star Publication Policy

The Federation Star is a subsidized arm of the Jewish Federation of Collier County (JFCC).

Its purpose and function is to publicize the activities and programs of the Federation, and to publicize the ongoing activities of the established and recognized Jewish organizations within Collier County.

The mission of the JFCC is to reach out and unite all Jews of the greater Collier County area. While offering opinions and points of view do, and will continue to, exist about many issues of importance to Jews, the Federation Star will confine itself to publishing ONLY items that report the facts of actual events of concern to Jews and will only offer commentary that clearly intends to unite all Jews in a common purpose or purposes.

Critical or derogatory comments directed at individuals or organizations will NOT be published in the Federation Star.

PLEASE SUPPORT THE ADVERTISERS WHO HELP MAKE THE FEDERATION STAR POSSIBLE. Be sure to mention you saw their ad in the Federation Star.

• JCMI: Jewish Congregation of Marco Island • JCMI-M: JCMI Men’s Club • JCMI-S: JCMI Sisterhood • JCRC: Jewish Community Relations Council • JFCC: Jewish Federation of Collier County • JFCS: Jewish Family & Community Services • JHSSWF: Jewish Historical Society of SWFL • JNF: Jewish National Fund • JRCA: Jewish Russian-American Cultural Alliance • JWV: Jewish War Veterans (Adopted by the Officers and Board of Trustees of the Jewish Federation of Collier County 1/98) To avoid misunderstandings, controversies and destructive divisions among our people, the Officers and Board of Trustees of the “Federation” have adopted the following publication policy: Advertisements: All advertisements, regardless of their sponsor, shall be paid for in full, at the established rates, prior to publication. The contents of all advertisements shall be subject to review and approval of the Federation Board or its designee. Commercial advertisers may make credit arrangements with the advertising manager, subject to the approval of the Federation Board.

Regular Columns: Regular columns shall be accepted only from leaders (Rabbis, Presidents, Chairpersons) of established and recognized Jewish organizations within Collier County and the designated Chairpersons of the regular committees of the Jewish Federation of Collier County.

Create a Jewish Legacy I give, devise and bequeath…

Create a legacy to benefit the Jewish Federation of Collier County and our overall Jewish community in your will or trust.

Call 239.263.4205.

"I did not find the world desolate when I entered it.

And as my parents planted for me before I was born, so do I plant for those who will come after me."

-The Talmud

• MCA: Men’s Cultural Alliance • NJC: Naples Jewish Congregation • NJC-M: Naples Jewish Congregation Men’s Club • NJC-S: Naples Jewish Congregation Sisterhood • ORT: Organization for Rehabilitation/Training • TS: Temple Shalom • TS-M: Temple Shalom Men’s Club • TS-S: Temple Shalom Sisterhood • WCA: Women’s Cultural Alliance • ZOA: Zionist Organization of America

Special Announcements: Special announcements shall be accepted from established Jewish organizations within Collier County and may, at the discretion of the Federation Board, be subject to the conditions applicable to paid advertisements, as set forth above.

News Items: Only those news items pertaining to matters of general interest to the broadest cross-section of the Jewish Community will be accepted for publication.

Note: Items of controversial opinions and points of view, about political issues, will not be accepted for publication without prior approval of a majority of the Federation Officers and Trustees.

All persons and organizations objecting to the actions and rulings of the Editor or Publications Committee Chairman shall have the right to appeal those rulings to the Officers and Board of Trustees of the JFCC.

February 2016 Federation Star

COMMUNITY DIRECTORY TEMPLE SHALOM OF NAPLES (Reform) 4630 Pine Ridge Road, Naples, FL 34119 Phone: 455-3030  Fax: 455-4361 Email: info@naplestemple.org www.naplestemple.org Rabbi Adam Miller Cantor Donna Azu James H. Perman, D.D., Rabbi Emeritus Neil Shnider, President Dr. Anna Solomon, Dir. of Cong. Ed. Seyla Cohen, Preschool Director Peter Lewis, Organist/Choir Director

JEWISH CONGREGATION OF MARCO ISLAND

NAPLES JEWISH CONGREGATION

BETH TIKVAH

(Reform)

(Conservative)

991 Winterberry Drive Marco Island, FL 34145 Phone: 642-0800  Fax: 642-1031 Email: mgr.jcmioffice@embarqmail.com Website: www.marcojcmi.com

Services are held at: The Unitarian Congregation 6340 Napa Woods Way Rabbi Sylvin Wolf Ph.D, DD 431-3858 Email: rabbi@naplesjewishcongregation.org www.naplesjewishcongregation.org

1459 Pine Ridge Road Naples, FL 34109

Rabbi Mark Gross Hari Jacobsen, Cantorial Soloist Sue Baum, President Shabbat Services Friday 8:00 p.m.

Torah Study and Saturday Services

Shabbat Services: Shabbat Eve - Friday 7:30 p.m.

Shabbat - Saturday 10:00 a.m.

Sisterhood • Men’s Club Brownstein Judaica Gift Shop

Sisterhood • Men’s Club • Adult Education Havurot • Youth Groups • Religious School Judaic Library • Hebrew School • Pre-School Adult Choir • Social Action • Outreach

Rabbi Fishel Zaklos Dr. Arthur Seigel, President Ettie Zaklos, Education Director Shabbat Services Shabbat - Saturday 10am • Camp Gan Israel • Hebrew School • Preschool of the Arts • Jewish Women’s Circle • Adult Education • Bat Mitzvah Club • Friendship Circle • Smile on Seniors • Flying Challah • Kosher food delivery

The Federation Star is published monthly, September through July, by the Jewish Federation of Collier County.

2500 Vanderbilt Beach Road Suite 2201 Naples, FL 34109-0613 Phone: 239-263-4205 Fax: 239-263-3813 E-mail: info@jewishnaples.org Website: www.jewishnaples.org Volume 25, No. 6 February 2016 48 pages USPS Permit No. 419 Publisher: Jewish Federation of Collier County Editor: Ted Epstein, 239-249-0699 fedstar18@gmail.com Design: Federation Media Group, Inc. Advertising: Melody Klein 239-633-2895 March Issue Deadlines: Editorial: February 1 Advertising: February 5 Send news stories to: fedstar18@gmail.com

(just west of Mission Square Plaza)

Phone: 434-1818 Email: bethtikvahnaples@aol.com Website: www.bethtikvahnaples.org

Suzanne Paley, President Jane Galler, Cantorial Soloist

Rabbi Ammos Chorny Phil Jason, President Sue Hammerman, Secretary

Shabbat Services Friday evenings at 7:30 p.m.

May - August: services once a month

Shabbat Services Friday evenings at 6:15 p.m.

Saturday mornings at 9:30 a.m.

Sisterhood • Men’s Club Adult Education • Adult Choir Social Action • Community Events

Youth Education Adult Education Community Events

Happy Hunting Ground

Naples’ only Judaica Shop

CHABAD NAPLES JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER serving Naples and Marco Island 1789 Mandarin Road, Naples, FL 34102 Phone: 262-4474 Email: info@chabadnaples.com Website: www.chabadnaples.com

35A

Bear with us if we remind you not to worm or weasel your way out of our request of you to consider a gift to the Endowment Fund of the Jewish Federation of Collier County. Or play possum if and when you are asked.

It’s easy to squirrel away assets and groundhog them for oneself.

But hare’s a solution where your charitable giving can do a lot of good and skunk the tax collector at the same time.

Beyond a shadow of a doubt, we would like you to make a lifetime gift or bequest to the Federation’s Endowment Fund.

Gopher it. Make your gift a real killer.

Jewish Organizations to Serve You in Collier County (All area codes are 239 unless otherwise noted.)

Jewish Federation of Collier County Phone: 263-4205  Fax: 263-3813 Website: www.jewishnaples.org Email: info@jewishnaples.org • Federation Board Chair: Alvin Becker • Federation President/CEO: Jeffrey Feld

American Jewish Committee • Regional Dir: Brian Lipton, 941-365-4955

American Technion Society • Chapter Dir: Kelley Whiter, 561-395-7206

Collier-Lee Chapter of Hadassah • Co-President: Karen Cohn, 370-6220 • Co-President: Gayle Dorio, 530-8992

Friends of the IDF • Exec. Dir.: Dina Ben Ari, 305-354-8233

Holocaust Museum & Education Center of Southwest Florida

Be a deer!

• President: Joshua Bialek, 263-9200

For more information on gift planning, call Jeffrey Feld at the Federation at 239.263.4205.

Humanistic Jewish Havurah of Southwest Florida

Please note our email addresses: Jeffrey Feld, Federation President/CEO – jfeld@jewishnaples.org Renee’ Bialek, Community Program Coord. – rbialek@jewishnaples.org Stacy Hersha, Business Operations Mgr. – shersha@jewishnaples.org Julie Hartline, Administrative Assistant – jhartline@jewishnaples.org General information requests – info@jewishnaples.org Melody Klein, Advertising Account Rep – mklein@jewishnaples.org Ted Epstein, Editor, Federation Star – fedstar18@gmail.com

Like us on Facebook!

ConneCt with your Jewish Community

www.facebook.com/ facebook.com/jfedsrq JewishFederationofCollierCounty

• Paula Creed, 495-8484

Israel Bonds • Reva Pearlstein, 800-622-8017

JFCS of Southwest Florida Phone: 325-4444 • Chairperson: David Rutstein • President/CEO: Dr. Jaclynn Faffer

Jewish National Fund • West/Central FL Office, 800-211-1502 Uri ext 8910, Beth ext 8911

Jewish War Veterans Post 202,Collier Co. Chapter • Commander, Gil Block, 304-5953 • Senior Vice Commander, M/Gen. Bernard L. Weiss, USAF Ret. 594-7772

Men’s Cultural Alliance • President: Steve Brazina, 325-8694

Naples Friends of American Magen David Adom (MDA) • SE Reg Dir: Joel Silberman, 954-457-9766

ORT - Gulf Beaches Chapter • President: Marina Berkovich, 566-1771

Women’s Cultural Alliance • President: Elaine Soffer, 431-7905

Zionist Organization of America • President: Jerry Sobel, 914-329-1024

Federation membership

According to the By-Laws of the Jewish Federation of Collier County, members are those individuals who make an annual gift of $36 or more to the Annual Federation Campaign in our community. For more information, call the Federation office at 239.263.4205.

36A Federation Star February 2016

SHOW YOUR SOLIDARITY

Through Federation, you stand shoulder to shoulder with Jews everywhere.

Through Federation, you stand shoulder to shoulder with Jews everywhere.

Europe,where whereJews Jewsare arefacing facingattacks attacks on on schools schools and and businesses. businesses. On North InInEurope, American college campuses, where Jewish students are all too often encountering On North American college campuses, where Jewish students are all a hostile environment. too often encountering a hostile environment.

Donate.

You are standing up for any Jewish community in need of support, protection and You are standing up for any Jewish community in need Volunteer. solidarity. Please give to <<NAME.>> today. of support, protection and solidarity. Please give to Get involved. the Jewish Federation of Collier County today.

239.263.4205 www.jewishnaples.org

YOU MAKE IT POSSIBLE!

Everything Federation does is made possible through the generous donations from members of the community. Please consider making a gift today!

FS0216

 I hereby pledge and promise to pay my Federation for the 2016 JFCC/UJA Annual Campaign a contribution of:  $36  $72  $180  $540  other $_________  Contribution enclosed (Check #__________)  Please charge my:

 MasterCard

 Visa

 Please bill me  American Express

Jewish Federation may add a 3% donation to my payment to offset credit card service fee _____ (initials or √ denote authorization)

Account #___________________________________________________ Exp. Date____________ ccv#__________ Name: ____________________________________________________ Signature:__________________________________________ Billing Address:______________________________________________________________________________________________ City: _____________________________________ ST: ______ Zip: _______________ Phone: __________________________________ Please send to: Jewish Federation of Collier County, 2500 Vanderbilt Beach Rd., Suite 2201, Naples, FL 34109-0613 JFCC/UJA CAMPAIGN OF THE JEWISH FEDERATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA

Celebrating Jewish Life in Collier County, Israel and the World

Federation Star Published by the Jewish Federation of Collier County serving Naples, Marco Island and the surrounding communities

www.JewishNaples.org

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February 2016 - Shevat/Adar 5776

Vol. 25 #6

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Jewish Happenings

Collier County Jewish Book Festival: 100% Money-Back Guarantee

Presents the First Annual

By Ted Epstein, Jewish Book Festival co-chair

W

hen I was the marketing director for several publishing firms, we offered a 100% money-back guarantee to subscribers.

If for any reason they were not satisfied at any time during the length of their subscription, all they had to do was ask and we’d refund the entire price of their subscription.

Wouldn’t it be nice if restaurants, movie theaters and live shows offered the same kind of guarantee? Pretty unheard of, right? Well…I am so confident that the authors who have been invited to present at the Jewish Book Festival will entertain, educate, engage and delight you, that if you’re not satisfied with any of their presentations, simply send me an email at fedstar18@gmail.com, and I will have the Federation send you a refund for that event.

All I ask is that you buy your tickets in advance so we have a record of your purchase.

How can I offer you such a bold guarantee?

As the person who brought the idea of a Collier County Jewish Book Festival to the Federation, and as one of its co-chairs, I attended the Jewish Book Council’s Network Conference in New York City last May. At the conference, I heard 200 authors make a two-minute pitch for themselves and their books.

They were hoping to be selected by the 100 Jewish Book Festival coordinators in attendance.

As I listened to the authors, I rated them based on communication/presentation skills, sense of humor, connection with the audience, enthusiasm, and a passion for their books. I also rated the content of the books and how they would relate to the Collier County audience. I narrowed my top choices to about 40 authors, and our Festival committee members then read all or portions of the 40 books to assure they

Indulge Yourself or Someone Else s av e u p t o

70% Of f R e ta i l p R i c e s

Over 140 designeR outlets

were well-written and appropriate for our audience. That narrowed the field to 25 authors. Then, based on schedules and logistics, we were able to invite 19 authors to our Festival.

Phil Jason, my Festival co-chair, and I then met with several local authors, and added them to the mix.

So why not spend an afternoon or evening at an event with two of our authors? For the same price as a movie, you’ll be guaranteed to laugh, cry, think, be moved or entertained. Choose the event on Tuesday, February 23 with Chef Rossi, and you’ll also be served breakfast!

It’s okay if you don’t read any of the books in advance. You are still guaranteed to enjoy the presentations.

However, once you hear the authors talk passionately about their books, I’m sure you’ll want to own several of them. So after each presentation, books will be available for purchase and signing.

For complete information on the authors and their books, ticket packages and an order form, see the special 4page insert in this issue. You’ll also find this information on the official Festival website at www.jewishbookfestival.org.

The website has links to each author’s website or Facebook page as well.

Patron Festival Package The Jewish Federation of Collier County would love everyone to purchase a Patron Festival Package. For only $180, you get to hear all 23 authors at 11 events, including the two special events. So when you become a Patron, you don’t have to decide which programs to attend! You also get reserved seats in the front rows at each event, and an invitation to a Patron Reception with one of the authors. And $51 of the package is a tax-deductible contribution to the Federation. If you can’t make it to all 11 events, the tickets are transferable and make great gifts for your friends, colleagues and family members.

I look forward to seeing you at the Book Festival events. If you have any questions or need additional information, please contact me at fedstar18@ gmail.com or 239.249.0699.

“Thank You” to the Patrons of the Collier County Jewish Book Festival:

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Belle Agronin Carole Greene Dina Shein Elaine Soffer Helen Paulin Ida Margolis Irene Pomerantz Iris Shur Jane Schiff & Lon Gratz Judith Peltz Judy Zahn Lourene Rapport Nancy Garfien Patti Boochever Phil & Ruth Jason Jason Susan Garelick Susan Pittelman

February 18 - March 14, 2016 11 events ~ 23 authors All events take place in Naples These are just a few of the books you’ll hear about at the Festival:

For more information on the 23 authors, their books, tickets, venues and more:

www.JewishBookFestival.org Thank You to Our Sponsors

Women’s Cultural Alliance

Calendar of Events THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 18 ~ 1:00 - 4:00PM Theme: Russia Talia Carner, Hotel Moscow David Greene, Midnight in Siberia

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 22 ~ 1:00 - 4:00PM Theme: Family Dr. David Bernstein, I’ve Got Some Good News and Some Bad News: YOU’RE OLD Dani Klein Modisett, Take My Spouse Please

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 23 ~ 9:00 - 11:00AM Theme: Food Chef Rossi, The Raging Skillet

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 24 ~ 1:00 - 4:00PM Theme: Local Authors B.A. Shapiro, The Muralist Marc Simon, The Leap Year Boy Bob Mandell, Stroke Victor Jerry Greenfield, Secrets of the Wine Whisperer

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 29 ~ 6:30 - 9:00PM Theme: Spirituality Sarah L. Kaufman, The Art of Grace Jay Michaelson, The Gate of Tears

TUESDAY, MARCH 1 ~ 1:00 - 4:00PM Theme: Holocaust Daniel M. Cohen, Single Handed Steven Pressman, 50 Children

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 2 ~ 1:00 - 4:00PM Theme: Israel Jessamyn T. Hope, Safekeeping Mike Kelly, The Bus on Jaffa Road

THURSDAY, MARCH 3 ~ 1:00 - 4:00PM Theme: Fiction Julia Dahl, Run You Down Susan Jane Gilman, The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 9 ~ 6:30 - 9:00PM Theme: Memoir Sally Fingerett, The Mental Yentl Dafna Michaelson Jenet, It Takes a Little Crazy To Make a Difference

THURSDAY, MARCH 10 ~ 6:30 - 9:30PM Theme: Powerful Women Lisa Green, On Your Case Julia Pimsleur, Million Dollar Women

MONDAY, MARCH 14 ~ 6:30 - 9:00PM

Theme: Inspiration Megan Feldman Bettencourt, Triumph of the Heart Goldie Milgram, New Mitzvah Stories

www.JewishBookFestival.org

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Federation Star February 2016

JEWISH HAPPENINGS

Producer to bring highly controversial film about FDR to Temple Shalom

By Ida Margolis

T

he film Complicit explores the impact of the WWII Jewish refugee issue on the Roosevelt legacy through a mythical courtroom drama that puts Franklin D. Roosevelt on trial for complicity in Crimes Against Humanity.

Complicit includes never before seen footage of U.S. Special Envoy Hannah Rosenthal’s powerful expose of America’s inadequate response to the Jewish refugee crisis. Highlights include the 2012 U.S. State Department ceremony in which Deputy Secretary of State William Burns makes the first ever apology to a delegation of surviving passengers from the refugee ship the S.S. St. Louis, before a delegation of highranking diplomats and foreign service officers. The tragic history of the S.S. St. Louis took place in 1939. Over 900 Jewish refugees on this ship, desperate to escape Nazi terror after being denied

entry into Cuba, were also refused safe harbor in the U.S., even while anchored off the coast of Miami Beach.

Film producer Robert Krakow is scheduled to bring his film to Temple Shalom on Wednesday, February 10 at 7:00 p.m. This 60-minute documentary presents rare and candid interviews with these heroic refugees who were turned away by the U.S. but eventually were among those fortunate to survive and finally come to the U.S. where many made extraordinary contributions to American society. Complicit integrates painful history with compelling drama.

Krakow will be bringing a special display about the St. Louis to Temple Shalom. This display can be viewed at 6:30 p.m. at Temple Shalom prior to the film screening. In addition, a survivor of the St. Louis, Charles Mendel, is scheduled to accompany Krakow. A

See Oz Pearlman, The Mentalist, from America’s Got Talent

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ou don’t want to miss witnessing Oz Pearlman in action. His natural charisma and charm make him the perfect choice for events such as the one coming up on Sunday, February 21 from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. at the Osprey Room in the Pelican Preserve Golf Club, 9802 Pelican Preserve Boulevard, Fort Myers.

Tickets to this fundraising event, brought to you by Temple Beth El and the Alvin A. Dubin Alzheimer’s Resource Center, are $100 and include continuous entertainment, full dinner-

by- the-bite and a signature cocktail. The event, sponsored by RE/MAX Realty Group, White Sands Treatment Center and The Forest Country Club, is open to the community. You must purchase your tickets in advance – online at www.templebethel.com or by calling 239.851.7211 x201 or 203.

We hope you will join us for this outstanding event as Oz astounds you with his “magic of the mind.” The show blends magic, mindreading and a sense of humor into an intriguing experience actively involving the audience.

Q&A with Krakow will take place immediately after the film.

Steve Brazina, Program Chair of GenShoah SWFL, has arranged for this award-winning film, its producer, and accompanying display to come to Naples.

Reservations are required and a taxdeductible donation will be requested at the door to help with the cost of this program. For more information or to RSVP, contact me at genshoahswfl@ icloud.com or 239.963.9347.

Rabbi Bob Alper, stand-up comic, coming to Naples

By Chuck Naumoff, NJC Publicity Chairman

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aples Jewish Congregation is greet Oneg Shabbat will follow services. proud to bring Rabbi Bob AlpWe gather at the Unitarian Universalist er, nationally-known comic, Congregation, 6340 Napa Woods Way, to Naples. He will be featured at two Naples. For more information, call unique events.

239.431.3858.

On Thursday, FebruRabbi Alper is the ary 4, Bob will be doing a world’s only practicing 90-minute show featuring clergyman doing standhis clean, hilarious comup comedy…intentionedy routines. Join us from ally. He recently was 5:30 to 9:30 p.m. at Longchosen as the Official shore Lakes Clubhouse for Honorary Comedic Adfood and a fabulous show. visor to the Pope. He Cash Bar. Tickets are $45 is heard daily on Sirius and must be purchased in XM Radio and has been advance. Mail your check seen on the Today Show, (payable to NJC) to NJC, ABC Evening News, P.O. Box 111994, Naples, Good Morning America FL 34108. and CNN. He has writBob Alper On Friday, February 5 at 7:30 p.m., ten three books, as well as articles for Bob will be our guest at Shabbat serNewsweek and hundreds of newspapers. vices and will give the sermon on “The His humor is fast paced, sophisticated, Spirituality of Laughter – A Jewish Look yet gentle and unhurtful. Don’t miss at the Holiness of Humor.” A meet and these two unique events.

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February 2016 Federation Star

JEWISH HAPPENINGS

Yiddishkeit Night at Beth Tikvah

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unday, February 21 at 7:30 p.m. brings the return of Boris Sandler and Bella Gutshtein to Beth Tikvah. This couple is well known for their connections to classical music performances at Artis—Naples and elsewhere in the Naples area. They also present programs on Russian culture and chamber music. Eric Dochinger, Cellist, Naples Philharmonic, will be playing with Boris and Bella as part of their Trio.

The theme for their presentation will be

Centers for the Arts Bonita Springs

classical music by Jewish composers.

To make an unexpected but delightful contrast, they will share the bill with local favorite Jane Galler, who has performed and taught Jewish music in Naples for many years. This vivacious performer is a fine cantorial soloist and also a featured member of the Naples Klezmer Revival Band. Who knows what the blend of talents and tastes will produce!

Superb desserts follow the performances. The cost is $25 in advance. For more information, contact Shelley at 239.580.8628.

Art-Theater-Dance-Music-Classes Painting - Drawing Clay - Workshops Mosaics - Dance Fused Glass - Jewelry Printmaking - Music Sculpture - Lectures One Evening Classes

Live Music Perfomances

Quattro Divos Meet the Composers February 4 Jan. 3 & Feb. 7 Meet the Composers Motown in Motion Classical January 8 Music Series O Som Do 7 Jazz February January 16 Jonathan Edwards Quattro Divos February 11 February 4

Bon Arts Chamber Series Tea for Three Boris Sandler and Bella Gutshtein

Jane Galler

An evening of music at JCMI

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he Naples Philharmonic Brass Quintet will entertain at the Jewish Congregation of Marco Island on Saturday, February 13 at 7:30 p.m., the second event of the Saul I. Stern Cultural Series. The synagogue is proud that this is the 22nd year of the Cultural Series, in partnership with the Jewish Federation of Collier County, bringing outstanding programs to the entire community.

The Naples Philharmonic started on Marco Island 33 years ago, the same year as the Jewish Congregation of Marco Island was founded. For the past 10 years, the brilliant musicians of the Naples Philharmonic have performed at the Cultural Series, a benefit to our community.

The musicians are Matthew Sonneborn, trumpet; David Dash, trumpet; Tracy Leonard, horn; Michael Zion, trombone; Aaron McCalla, tuba; and Brian Jordan, percussion.

The music is classical and modern.

Following the program is a Viennese table and Starbucks tasting. The evening is open to the community. For further information and tickets, please call the synagogue office at 239.642.0800.

The Naples Philharmonic Brass Quintet

For more information on these events, call 239.455.3030. amily Shabbat Experience: Friday, February 5, 5:30 to 7:00 p.m.: A different kind of Shabbat experience for families with young(ish) children. Activities, music, dinner and service. There is no charge to attend.

RSVP to the Temple Shalom Education office at 239.455.2233.

Torah Talk: Join us the first Shabbat morning of the month for a volunteer-led discussion of the week’s Torah portion. On February 6 the portion is Mishpatim. There will be a light breakfast at 8:15 a.m. with discussion to follow at 8:30 a.m. There is no charge and all are welcome.

Sisterhood Book Bag: Thursday, February 18 at 1:30 p.m.: Run You Down

by Julia Dahl; facilitated by Nancy Brother. In the sequel to her Edgar Award finalist, Invisible City, Julia Dahl has created a taut mystery that is both a window to a secretive culture and an exploration of the demons we inherit.

Julia will be speaking about the book at a Collier County Jewish Book Festival event on Thursday, March 3 from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. at Temple Shalom. Joining her will be Susan Jane Gilman, author of The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street. For more information and tickets to this and other Jewish Book Festival events, visit www.jewishbookfestival. org or call the Federation office at 239.263.4205.

Sunday School for Adults: Febru-

February February 917 “Riders the Sky” Jonathan in Edwards February 11 Tribute to Roy Rogers BonArts Chamber February 25 Music Series Dan Miller February 17 Jazz February 27Sky February Riders in the

L25 i vMiller e Theater & Comedy Dan Improv Tonight February 6 & March 5 Tea for Three February 9 Kevin Farley Comedy February 18 Assisted Living the Musical February 19-21

February 27

Bonita Springs National Art Festival

Temple Shalom events open to the community

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ary 21 & 28 from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m.: Rabbi James Perman again offers the Sunday School for Adults on two Sunday mornings in February. This year’s topic is Sampling the Psalms – Where Religion Meets Poetry. The talks are free and open to all. Bring a Bible (any version) and an open mind.

Speaker – Edwin Black: Sunday, February 21 at 7:00 p.m.: Awardwinning, New York Times bestselling author Edwin Black will present IBM & the Holocaust. Backed by exhaustive research, Edwin Black’s case is simple and stunning: That IBM facilitated the identification and roundup of millions of Jews during the 12 years of the Third Reich. Copies of his book, IBM & the Holocaust, will be available for purchase after the lecture and Mr. Black will be available for book signing.

RSVP to AdultEd@naplestemple.org or 239.455.2233.

Speaker – Dr. Amy-Jill Levine: Friday, February 26 at 7:30 p.m.: During Shabbat evening services, Dr. Levine will present “The Common Misconception Jews and Christians Have of Each Other” – Jesus, Judaism, and Jewish-Christian Relations. Judaism and Christianity share common roots but have different branches. Recognizing both roots and branches allows Jews and Christians to better understand our histories and celebrate our differences.

Everyone is welcome to attend.

Bonita Springs National Art Festival Riverside Park Saturday & Sunday 10:00am-5:00pm January 30 - 31 & March 5 & 6

200 National & International artists sell & display their work in this top rated festival.

w w w. a r t c e n t e r b o n i t a . o r g / a r t f e s t

Bonita Springs International Film Festival February 12-16

Presenting over 70 carefully curated narrative, documentary, animation and short films from around the world

National & Local Exhibitions Annual Members Exhibition

Opening Reception & Campus Open House Friday, February 5, 6-8pm On display February 5 - 25

Center for Visual Arts

26100 Old 41 Road Center for Performing Arts 10150 Bonita Beach Road Bonita Springs • FL 34135 www.artcenterbonita.org 239-495-8989

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Federation Star February 2016

JEWISH HAPPENINGS

Two theater performances JCMI Jewish Film Festival

By Sandra Hechler at Federation office

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uring the month of February, Collier County Repertory Theatre is pleased to present two performances for your entertainment in the David G. Willens Community Room at the Jewish Federation of Collier County.

If you missed the January performance of The Interview, an encore presentation will take place at 3:00 p.m. on Monday, February 15.

The play is a provoking episode in the lives of Abraham Moscowitz and Jim Shannon. Moscowitz, an aging Jewish tailor, has a small shop in Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

Shannon, is the insurance investigator who interviews the old tailor after he puts in a request to raise the value of his life insurance. Shannon’s questioning of Moscowitz becomes relentless.

It is then that the old man’s long-ago experiences from a concentration camp, and Shannon’s own personal issues, are revealed.

The Interview is powerful, poignant and not easily forgotten. A talkback

with the actors will be offered following the performance.

The Man Who Married His MotherIn-Law, by Jeffrey Hatcher, will be presented at 4:00 p.m. on Monday, February 29. Hatcher’s offbeat comedy demonstrates how one family drastically chooses to evade the IRS. Spend an hour with Gerald Halverson as he provides you with the sordid details of his family’s plot to hide five million dollars! A talkback with the actor will be offered following the performance.

Both performances are presented by special arrangements with Dramatists Play Service, Inc., New York.

Tickets to each performance are $35 and may be purchased by calling Collier County Repertory Theatre at 239.231.3741. If you reach a voice mail, please leave your name and number. You may also reserve your tickets by emailing rbialek@jewishnaples.org.

A portion of the proceeds from each performance will benefit the Jewish Federation of Collier County.

SIGN UP FOR THE FEDERATION’S WEEKLY COMMUNITY eNEWSLETTER! Get the latest information on upcoming community events and cultural activities, news from Israel and lots more.

Send an email to info@jewishnaples.org or visit www.jewishnaples.org.

KRISTEN COURY, PRODUCING ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

OFF-BROADWAY JUST OFF 5

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MOON OVER KEN LUDWIG’S

BUffALO

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eriodically, I add a piece of artistic bric-a-brac to my personal treasure trove: a book embedded in my memory, a painting hiding in my mind’s eye, a piece of sculpture taking me by the hand, or a film unfolding right before my eyes. These are my gems.

Recently, I acquired, once again, something special for my treasure chest. The Film Festival at the Jewish Congregation of Marco Island, recently presented an unusual bit of cinema entitled, Theodore Bikel – in the Shoes of Sholom Aleichem. Theodore Bikel, as actor and singer, would have been enough to capture the audience’s imagination. Bikel, however, enacting and expatiating upon the Yiddish stories of master writer Sholom Aleichem, left the audience breathless.

On Sunday, February 21 at 2:00 p.m., Apples from the Desert airs the problems of Rebecca, an unhappy, young woman, from an ultra-Orthodox family.

Last on the calendar but not least, Deli Man should grab filmgoers’ attention on Sunday, March 13 at 2:00 p.m.

This film is social history at its best as it examines the story of Jews in America via the story of the Jewish delicatessen.

Special thanks to Isabel Price, director of the Festival, for her excellent taste in unusual movies and for the enlightening introductions she provides for each film. She also sees to it that the audience enjoys a fabulous reception following each showing.

For additional information, contact the JCMI office at 239.642.0800.

ZOA Southwest Florida Chapter update

By Gene Sipe, ZOASWFL Vice President

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he ZOA Southwest Florida Chapter and Temple Shalom of Naples are pleased to present a special viewing of the film The Prime Ministers Part 2: Soldiers and Peacemakers. This film is the second of two films based on memoirs of former ambassador Yehuda Avner. This film opens in the U.S. on the eve of the 20th anniversary of Rabin’s assassination. It is presented from the perspective of an aide who drafted speeches and correspondence for the Israeli leaders and who sat in on many strategic meetings.

Based on the bestselling and awardwinning book, The Prime Ministers, by ambassador Avner, this film examines Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s election as the country’s first native born Israeli leader in 1974; the first bilateral treaty

between Israel and Egypt in 1975; the dramatic events surrounding Israel’s rescue of hostages in Entebbe in 1976; Rabin’s tense relationship with newly elected President Jimmy Carter; and his subsequent downfall in a financial scandal involving his wife Leah.

This program is to be presented on Wednesday, February 23 at 7:00 p.m. at Temple Shalom of Naples, 4630 Pine Ridge Road. The program is open to the public and the charge is $10 in advance and $12 at the door.

RSVP by prepaying with checks made to ZOA SWFL, and send to 4003 Upolo Lane, Naples, FL 34119. For additional information, go to www. zoaswfl.org, email info@zoaswfl.org or call 914.329.1024.

YIDDISH CLUB OF NAPLES

meets the 1st and 3rd Tuesdays of December, January, February, March and April at 10:00am at Temple Shalom, 4630 Pine Ridge Road, Naples You don’t have to speak Yiddish to enjoy.

You just have to enjoy hearing it spoken, read or sung.

Come Schmooze and Enjoy!

Stay connected at www.jewishnaples.org

Center for Judaic, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies A MADCAP COMEDY FROM THE WRITER OF THE GAME’S AFOOT!

FEB 13-MAR 13 www.gulfshoreplayhouse.org

Call for Tickets: (866) 811-4111

Dedicated to educating all sectors of society about Jewish civilization, the Holocaust, and genocide through: • scholarship • outreach • inquiry • sharing knowledge • preserving the record • helping teachers • encouraging students

The Norris Center 755 8th Avenue South, Naples, FL SHOW SPONSORS: CHRISTINE & TERRY FLYNN VALERIE & NIZAR GHOUSSAINI

SPONSOR-A-STAR SPONSOR:

SEASON BENEFACTORS: PATTY CORPORATE PARTNER:

& JAY BAKER

CORPORATE EXECUTIVE PRODUCER:

EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: MOSEY & DON GUNTHER, LINDA & BOB HARDEN, CHRISTINE PADDOCK, DOTTIE & JOHN REMONDI, DOUGLAS DANFORTH In Memoriam

Visit www.fgcu.edu/hc/ Dr. Paul Bartrop, Director

JEWISH HAPPENINGS

Upcoming GenShoah films and speakers

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Holocaust education: “The only way to Ida prevent it from happening again is to Margolis talk about it, and that’s what she’s taken the time to do for so many years. And , GenShoah we’re very grateful.”

Mrs. Dahme will be making a President . presentation on Sunday, February 21 at t 5:00 p.m. at the Holocaust Museum & a aud Dahme is a celebrity Education Center of Southwest Florida, in New Jersey. She was a 4760 Tamiami Trail N., Naples. Space member of the NJ State Board is very limited and reservations are e of Education and served as president of required at genshoahswfl@icloud.com. this important organization.

Dahme is On Wednesday, February 10 at h the subject of The Hidden Child, a PBS 7:00 p.m., there will be a special presentation that will examine the gfilm. She is an educator and longtime advocate for public education. When world’s indifference to the plight of Dahme was inducted into the NJ European Jewry on the eve of the t Hall of Fame, she was named as the Holocaust. Robert Krakow, the producer state’s “unsung hero.” A seventh-grade of the film Complicit: The Untold Story student who had heard her speak about of Why the Roosevelt Administration her experiences during Denied Safe Haven to WWII nominated her for Jewish Refugees, will the prestigious NJ Hall be presenting his film of Fame. a t Te m p l e S h a l o m .

As a six-year-old See the article on e Jewish child in the page 2B. Reserve at s Netherlands, Dahme genshoahswfl@icloud. ; survived the Holocaust com. y as one of that country’s GenShoah SWFL is “hidden children.” A a group open not only l farm family took in to children of Holocaust Dahme and her sister survivors (the Second n after the Nazis conquered Generation), but to all t Maud Dahme the country. Her parents those who are interested e survived the Holocaust (although not in the mission of GenShoah which e her grandparents) after hiding in an is: Preservation of the history and e attic. The family was reunited after the memories of the Holocaust, promotion war and came to the United States when of Holocaust education and human s Dahme was 14 years old. rights, connection of members of the 3 Dahme has spent some three decades Second Generation with one another, r dedicated to Holocaust and genocide and support of the Holocaust Museum & . education, sharing the story with school Education Center of Southwest Florida. and church groups of how she survived Additional information about because of the kindness and bravery GenShoah meetings and events are of strangers. She also guides groups to now emailed in a monthly newsletter. visit Holocaust sites and serves on the To receive emails, to RSVP for events, New Jersey Commission on Holocaust for additional information or to make a Education. In an interview with Hall tax-deductible donation to GenShoah, of Fame Foundation President Steven please email genshoahswfl@icloud.com Edwards, he said of Dahme’s work on or call me at 239.963.9347.

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GenShoah of SWFL: Upcoming Meetings & Public Programs Special Community Event: Wednesday, February 10, 2016 6:30 p.m.: Display about the S.S. St. Louis 7:00 p.m.: Film - Complicit: The Untold Story of Why the Roosevelt Administration Denied Safe Haven to Jewish Refugees; followed by a discussion with the producer and an S.S. St. Louis survivor - Explores the controversial topic of FDR’s and the U.S. State Department’s response to the Holocaust Temple Shalom, 4630 Pine Ridge Rd., Naples Sunday, February 21, 2016 4:30 p.m.: Meeting 5:00 p.m.: Presentation by Maud Dahme, Holocaust educator, subject of the film The Hidden Child, and inductee in the New Jersey Hall of Fame Holocaust Museum, 4760 Tamiami Tr. N., Naples Sunday, March 20, 2016 4:30 p.m.: Meeting 5:00 p.m.: Film - Hitler’s Courts: Betrayal of the Rule of Law in Nazi Germany Examination, using interviews and archival footage, of how those charged with defending the rule of law betrayed that trust during the Nazi era Holocaust Museum, 4760 Tamiami Tr. N., Naples Sunday, April 17, 2016 4:30 p.m.: Meeting 5:00 p.m.: Program TBA

RSVP required for all events.

Contact Ida Margolis at genshoahswfl@icloud.com or 239.963.9347.

Jewish Genealogy Group Meeting The next meeting of the Jewish Genealogy SIG (Shared Interest Group) at the Jewish Federation of Collier County offices (2500 Vanderbilt Beach Road, Suite 2201, Naples) is on Tuesday, February 9 at 10:00 a.m.

Seating is limited. RSVP to genresearch13@yahoo.com.

You will receive an acknowledgement that you have a reservation. Bring a notebook and pen with you to the meeting.

February 2016 Federation Star

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Hadassah’s magical Caribbean night

By Arlene Yedid

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n Tuesday, March 1 the Collier/ Lee Chapter of Hadassah sets sail on a magical Caribbean “cruise” where the ambiance and excitement will make you forget that you are actually at the lovely Heritage Bay Golf and Country Club in Naples.

Here’s a preview of this fabulous evening. Paige Reddick, a dazzling singer and steel drum player, will welcome you to the festivities and perform throughout the evening. An exceptional cruise-style meal awaits you. Singers from the New York stage will entertain with a show-stopping Broadway program produced and directed by the Jamibeth Margolis, the daughter of the event’s honorees, Ida and Jeff Margolis. You may remember that Jamibeth directed Hadassah’s exceptional event Warsaw - a Story in Song.

Ida and Jeff have redefined volunteerism through their extensive involvement in the community.

Issue after issue of the Federation Star is filled with articles by or about Ida’s and Jeff’s volunteer efforts. You may have read articles about Ida’s participation in GenShoah, the Catholic/ Jewish Dialogue, Hadassah, Warsaw a Story in Song, One Book Southwest Florida, and the Jewish Community Relations Council, to name a few.

You may know Jeff as a volunteer for the Holocaust Museum & Education Center of Southwest Florida, going on the road with the boxcar project, serving

Jeff and Ida Margolis

on the Israel Advocacy Committee of the Jewish Federation, serving as board member for the Men’s Cultural Alliance, Beth Tikvah and the Naples Press Club, and lecturing for the Holocaust Museum, Beth Tikvah, Collier County Libraries, Hadassah and the Renaissance Academy.

Ida and Jeff value other community service as well. Ida works with Safe and Healthy Children’s Coalition of Collier County, the Blue Zones Project, and the Naples Press Club. Jeff works with the Shriners.

We hope to see you at this exceptional event that benefits the Hadassah Medical Organization and Hadassah projects. Be on hand when we honor Ida and Jeff Margolis and, figuratively speaking, sail through a joyous, memorable night. For more information or reservations, call Lynn Weiner at 239.598.1009.

PLEASE SUPPORT OUR ADVERTISERS THEY HELP MAKE THE FEDERATION STAR POSSIBLE

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Federation Star February 2016

JEWISH BOOK FESTIVAL

Book reviews and author information 5th in a series of 5

presented by

Over the course of five Federation Star issues (October 2015 - February 2016), we have presented the Jewish Book Festival committee members’ reviews and synopses of the books (and their authors) being featured at the Festival. See the 4-page special section in this issue for a complete schedule of events, author bios, book synopses, ticket packages and an order form.

The Muralist by B.A. Shapiro Review by Philip K. Jason, Jewish Book Festival co-chair

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his book dazzles and excites with its penetrating look at the New York art scene during the Depression; the situation in Europe for Jews seeking to flee Nazi persecution and murder; and the present-time life of a young woman working for a major art auction house. The plot is carefully managed through two alternating time lines: one begins in 1939 and is focused on an obscure Jewish artist, Alizée Benoit; the other follows today’s Danielle Abrams, Alizée’s great niece. It becomes Danielle’s obsession to discover Alizée’s fate.

Alizée is an American citizen who lived for many years in France, returning to the United States in 1937 at the age of 19, already a well-schooled artist. When readers meet her in 1939, she is part of a circle of young artists who are creating a great new American art form – Abstract Expressionism. The

others include Jackson Pollack, Lee Krasner, Mark Rothko and, on occasion, Dutch-born Willem de Kooning. They challenge and inspire one another while living in dire poverty.

These and other artists survive on commissions received from a special branch of the Works Progress Administration that buys paintings for display in public buildings. This Federal Art Project favored representational rather than abstract art, handicapping the chances for this group’s experimentation being accepted.

When sporadic messages from her relatives describe their deteriorating situation in France and urge her to help, Alizée, who feels a deep and constant responsibility for saving them, becomes a political activist. Her target is Breckinridge Long, the man in charge of administering immigration controls, whose personal mission was to block

oppressed Europeans (and especially Jews) from getting visas. He was only too successful. Alizée tries to engage Eleanor Roosevelt to assist in this effort, an effort that includes politicallycharged art that Alizée develops to raise public awareness of the Jewish plight.

Impressed by the power of Picasso’s “Guernica,” she decides to create a mural for a forthcoming exhibition. With time running out, she enlists her artist cohorts to help her with the project.

Facing many frustrations and with her physical and mental health severely declining, Alizée disappears in 1940.

The 2015 timeline follows Danielle’s curiosity about her vanished great aunt. This curiosity is spurred into action by some mysterious paintings, fragments of a larger work, that she finds hidden in envelopes pasted to the back of paintings transmitted to Christie’s, the famous and influential auction house

Wednesday, February 24, 1:00 - 4:00 p.m. at the Naples Daily News B.A. Shapiro is the author of the award-winning and New York Times bestseller The Art Forger. She has taught sociology at Tufts University and creative writing at Northeastern University. She has a winter home in Bonita Springs.

Appearing with B.A. Shapiro at the local authors event will be Marc Simon (The Leap Year Boy), Bob Mandel (Stroke Victor) and Jerry Greenfield (Secrets of the Wine Whisperer).

where Danielle works.

Interviews, database searches, and other research slowly reveal an impression of Alizée’s life and artistic mission.

Still, Danielle’s struggle to establish the “historical” Alizée and to discover if she is alive is frustrated until she makes a last-ditch effort that takes her to France.

The brilliance of the book is in Ms. Shapiro’s ability to breathe life into a highly unusual fictional character who struggles under the circumstances of her past, her present situation, her loyalties, her fears, and her diminishing capacities. The author also brings to life the actual persons who surrounded Alizée in her Greenwich Village life. Scenes that bring Eleanor Roosevelt and Alizée face to face are amazing and compelling, however improbable.

This provocative book includes insights about artistic rebellion and revolution: What does it take to make a major breakthrough in art? How does this work for individuals and for groups?

Related issues include the question of art’s role as a change agent.

Ms. Shapiro’s action scenes describing an artwork being created, accompanied by the artist’s thoughts and emotions, have spectacular authenticity.

The Muralist, a historical novel about two determined women separately fighting against the odds, is a fascinating and suspenseful read from beginning to end.

This review originally appeared in Florida Weekly and is reprinted with permission.

Take My Spouse Please by Dani Klein Modisett Review by Ted Epstein, Jewish Book Festival co-chair

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ani Klein Modisett has spent most of her professional life – more than twenty years – either writing or producing live comedy shows or actually performing stand-up comedy herself. She could tell you why something was funny or why it wasn’t, and how to make it funnier. But what she couldn’t tell you or herself, was how to bring some much-needed levity to her marriage.

So she went looking for a book about marriage that focused specifically on how a couple could laugh more. She couldn’t find one. Hence, her new book.

Living in Los Angeles, Dani has access to many people who make their living being funny. She interviewed

dozens of successful long-term spouses, well-known comedians, comic writers, and marriage counselors to deliver unique message “material.” She sought out those who were successful in their marriages.

In Take My Spouse, Please, you’ll read about people such as Jerry Stiller and Patricia Heaton. With the help of generous, candid and entertaining couples, Dani has been able to show that despite the weight and complexity of a long marriage, there are, in fact, many laughs to be shared.

Here are some of Danni’s 13 rules of comedy that can help your marriage thrive: ¡¡ Show Up – even when you don’t

want to, even when it’s really hard ¡¡ Listen – not just to words – you have to take in everything ¡¡ Keep Surprising Them – doing the unexpected, essential for comedy, also great for marriage ¡¡ Don’t Quit After a Bad Night – don’t let one or two bad experiences take you out ¡¡ Have Patience – great marriages, like great comedy careers, take time The subtitle of Dani’s book is “How to keep your marriage happy, healthy and thriving by following the rules of comedy.” As someone who has recently studied, performed and taught improv comedy, I related to and agreed with

Monday, February 22, 1:00 - 4:00 p.m. at Temple Shalom Dani Klein Modisett is a comedian, actress and author. Her comedy act has toured nationally, and her one-woman show was featured at the HBO Aspen Comedy Festival. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Huffington Post, Parents Magazine and Los Angeles Times.

Appearing with Dani Klein Modisett will be Dr. David Bernstein, author of I’ve Got Some Good News and Some Bad News: YOU’RE OLD. This program is being generously sponsored by JFCS of Southwest Florida.

Dani’s experiences and tips. While I didn’t have the benefit of this knowledge in my first marriage, I hope to apply these ideas in the future.

The chapters end with tips on the 13 rules. Here’s one for Find Ways to Relax: “Laugh together – a running theme throughout this book, laughing together creates an immediate connection. Share a video or cartoon that makes you laugh, or find a comedian you both like and make a point to go see them live. Laughing immediately relaxes you and laughing together creates a shared experience that opens you heart.”

Do yourself – and your spouse – a favor, and come hear Dani share her comedy and marriage experiences, and laugh together along with other members of the Naples Jewish community. As comedian Wendy Liebman says, “We all know laughter is healing.

When we laugh in a group, the healing is exponential.”

When I attended the Jewish Book Council’s Network Conference in New York City last May and knew I was going to hear over 200 authors do a two-minute pitch for themselves and their books, I eagerly awaited Dani’s presentation. Looking back at my brief notes, I rated Dani a 9.5 out of 10, and wrote, “Funny, obviously. Didn’t disappoint!” I’m sure you’ll agree.

February 2016 Federation Star

JEWISH BOOK FESTIVAL

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The Bus on Jaffa Road by Mike Kelly Review by Judy Peltz, Jewish Book Festival committee member

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e have become all too familiar with the deaths of innocent people due to acts of terrorism. Even though Mike Kelly writes of a single incident that took place on February 25, 1996, it could have occurred yesterday, or today or tomorrow. r On that particular February Sunday hnearly twenty years ago, two young -Americans studying in Israel, Sara Duker and Matthew Eisenfeld, boarded Jerusalem’s Number 18 bus. The two were very much in love, happy, and excited to be getting away from work and study for a short vacation to Petra in

Jordan. At another stop along the road, a young Palestinian dressed as a student boarded the bus carrying a duffle bag.

Minutes later, this young Palestinian pressed a button in his bag and he, Sara, Matt and 23 other bus riders were blown into pieces.

An award-winning journalist, Mike Kelly covered this news story from the beginning. Years later, after he extensively covered the horror of 9/11, he went on a personal mission to learn more about the toll of terrorism on the families of its victims. He feels that terrorism is basically personal as well

as geo-political. Children lose parents, parents lose their children.

For those left behind there are three questions: 1. Who did this to the person I love?

2. Why did they do this to the person I love?

3. What can I do about it?

Kelly’s story tries to answer these questions along with Sara and Matt’s grief-stricken parents. He fleshes out the story of the two young students who had such promise. The two families decided that since Sara and Matt would never marry, they should be buried together in

Wednesday, March 2, 1:00 - 4:00 p.m. at Beth Tikvah Mike Kelly, a journalist for more than three decades, is the author of two books and many prize-winning newspaper projects and columns for the Bergen Record in northern New Jersey. His assignments have taken him to Africa, Northern Ireland, Israel, Palestine and Iraq. He covered the 9/11 attacks, the cleanup of Ground Zero, and the 9/11 Commission hearings in Washington, D.C., and has devoted much of his time to covering terrorism.

Appearing with Mike Kelly will be Jessamyn Hope, author of Safekeeping.

a single grave to spend eternity together.

The devastated parents then began their effort to get some answers and justice for their children’s murders.

Eventually, the Dukers and Eisenfelds discovered that Iran had financed the bombing that killed their children and others before them. The book describes in detail the legal efforts – small successes and large disappointments – as the families file lawsuit after lawsuit in U.S. courts to sue the Republic of Iran in order to seize Iranian assets that had been frozen in the United States.

To write this book, Kelly traveled from Jerusalem to the Gaza Strip to the West Bank to a prison in the Negev, and eventually to the White House, the U.S. Department of Justice, the FBI, the State Department, and a federal courthouse.

But Kelly writes: “Ultimately it was in the living rooms and kitchens of the families where I found the heart of this story – and the fact that each life taken by terrorism becomes a deep wound in the life of a family.”

The Bus on Jaffa Road may be the story of only one act of terror, but it offers many lessons and warnings about the current war on terrorism that now dominates worldwide politics.

On Your Case by Lisa Green Review by Harrilee Shevin, Jewish Book Festival committee member

A

new book has been published for women with questions about all things legal. The book, by a television legal analyst and attorney, has helpful information for women (and maybe men, too) on the legal questions in all phases of life. Let’s say you are getting married and need to know about prenuptial agreements. Lisa Green

discusses what should be in a prenup and how to word things to your best advantage. Most importantly, she has included examples and wonderful stories about what kind of trouble a prenup can bring.

Ms. Green’s style is witty and engaging. She takes information that could be dull and dry, and turns it into some-

thing easy to read and easy to absorb.

So, the marriage didn’t work out and you are getting a divorce. You have no idea what you need to ask an attorney, but Ms. Green can tell you. Similarly, she can provide practical advice with regard to creating wills, planning for retirement, and just about any turning point in life. She will guide you through

Thursday, March 10, 6:30 - 9:30 p.m. at Hilton Naples Lisa Green is a lawyer and legal analyst, appearing on NBC News and MSNBC. While attending law school, Lisa worked as a columnist for The National Law Journal, after which she practiced law in New York, before joining NBC News. She currently serves as communications director for a major NY law firm and is the mother of two young adults.

Appearing with Lisa Green will be Julia Pimsleur, author of Million Dollar Women.

This program is being generously sponsored by èBella Magazine and Heddy Z Designs.

all the legal areas you need to know about and will provide information on where to seek additional assistance.

Among other areas covered in this book are issues with children, employment, dating, dealing with aging parents, domestic violence, and estate planning.

Ms. Green also covers such important concerns as pregnancy and adoption, child custody, pet custody, playing it safe on social media, obtaining assistance for a special-needs child, keeping out of legal trouble with household help, and almost anything else one might encounter or imagine.

Each chapter is written from a lawyer’s point of view, but in words that a layman will understand. Ms. Green has some colorful stories to tell in each chapter. Some of these are humorous, some are personal, but all serve to explain whatever legal area she is addressing. At once friendly and professional, On Your Case is an excellent reference book to have in any home library.

The Jewish Congregation of Marco Island in conjunction with the Jewish Federation of Collier County presents The 2016 Saul I. Stern Cultural Series – now in its 22nd year!



Saturday, February 13, 2016, 7:30 p.m.

THE NAPLES PHILHARMONIC BRASS QUINTET: For the 10th season performing at the Cultural Series, the Phil returns its outstanding musicians with a delightful variety of music and accompanying commentary.

A Viennese table and Starbucks tasting follows the program.

Sunday, March 6, 2016, 7:30 p.m.

DAVID RUTHERFORD, NAVY SEAL: David served eight years in the Naval Special Warfare Community as a SEAL student, Combat Paramedic, Operator and Instructor. He has participated in clandestine operations in the Middle East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. His masterful ability to motivate, enables people from all walks of life to achieve success in any environment imaginable.

THE 2016 SAUL I. STERN CULTURAL SERIES

For more information, call the Synagogue Office at 239.642.0800. Please send this form and payment to the Jewish Congregation of Marco Island, 991 Winterberry Dr., Marco Island, FL 34145.

Please send me tickets for the following Cultural Series programs: ____ $20 Single tickets for members ____ $25 Single tickets for non-members

For those wishing single event tickets: # of tickets:____ The Naples Philharmonic # of tickets:____ David Rutherford

All events take place at the Jewish Congregation of Marco Island, 991 Winterberry Dr., Marco Island.

____ Enclosed is my check payable to JCMI ____ Please charge my credit card: Credit Card #_______________________________________ exp. ____/____ Please mail my tickets to the address below: Name_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Address______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ City, State, Zip____________________________________________________________ Phone: ___________________________________________

8B

Federation Star February 2016

DISCOVER THE LUXURIOUS RESULTS OF OUR mULTI-mILLION DOLLaR RENOVaTION. Just three blocks from Gulf beaches.

Complimentary beach package with beach shuttle, towels, chairs and bottled water.

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Each of the following services are provided to guests at no charge: Wi-Fi, garage parking, fitness center, 24-hour business center and bicycles Shulaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Steak House voted best steak house in Southwest Florida.

Plus no resort fees. It all adds up to luxurious value.

For reservations call the hotel at +1 239 430 4900 or +1 800 HILTONS or visit naples.hilton.com.

5111 Tamiami Trail North | Naples, FL 34103

Presents the First Annual

Thursday, February 18 - Monday, March 14 11 events ~ 23 authors Monday Morning event Afternoon events Evening events

February 22 ~ 1:00-4:00pm Temple Shalom Theme: Family

Calendar of events Tuesday Themes in red (2 events) are $25 each and include food.

All other events are $12 in advance and $15 at the door.

Tickets are less than $10 per event with a 9-event Book-Lover Package or 5-event package.

February 23 ~ 9:00-11:00am Hilton Naples Theme: Food

Wednesday Purchase a Patron Festival Package and get priority seating (front rows) at all 11 events, an invitation to a Patron Reception and more.

See order form for full details.

Thursday February 18 ~ 1:00-4:00pm Beth Tikvah Theme: Russia Talia Carner ~ David Greene

February 24 ~ 1:00-4:00pm Naples Daily News Theme: Local Authors

Dr. David Bernstein ~ Dani Klein Modisett

Chef Rossi

February 29 ~ 6:30-9:00pm Chabad Naples Theme: Spirituality

March 1 ~ 1:00-4:00pm Temple Shalom Theme: Holocaust

March 2 ~ 1:00-4:00pm Beth Tikvah Theme: Israel

March 3 ~ 1:00-4:00pm Temple Shalom Theme: Fiction

Sarah L. Kaufman ~ Jay Michaelson

Daniel M. Cohen ~ Steven Pressman

Mike Kelly ~ Jessamyn T. Hope

Susan Jane Gilman ~ Julia Dahl

March 9 ~ 6:30-9:00pm Beth Tikvah Theme: Memoir

March 10 ~ 6:30-9:30pm Hilton Naples Theme: Powerful Women

Sally Fingerett ~ Dafna Michaelson Jenet

Lisa Green ~ Julia Pimsleur

March 14 ~ 6:30-9:00pm Unitarian Universalist Cong.

Theme: Inspiration Megan Feldman Bettencourt ~ Goldie Milgram

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Each of the nine events on this 2-page spread are $12 in advance and $15 at the door. See the back of this 4-page pullout for two special events, an order form, Patron & ticket packages, venue locations and more.

Tickets are less than $10 per event when you purchase a 9-event Book-Lover Package or 5-event package.

Purchase a Patron Festival Package and get priority seating (front rows) at all 11 events, an invitation to a Patron Reception with at least one author, and your name listed in the Federation Star.

See the order form for more details.

• Ticket prices are per event and not for each individual author. You get to hear two authors for the price of one. (The Local Authors Event ticket is good for all four authors.)

• Buy your tickets early. Due to limited seating at some venues, events may sell out.

• Tickets will be mailed beginning in mid-January.

• Tickets are NOT tax deductible other than a portion of the Patron Festival Package (see order form).

• Tickets ARE transferable and can be given to others. Consider buying the 9-event Book-Lover Package or 5-event package and give some tickets as gifts to your friends or colleagues.

• Open seating at all events. Front rows will be reserved for Patrons and Sponsors.

• If an author cancels (weather, illness, etc.), we will attempt to reschedule the author in late March or April. Your original ticket will be good for the rescheduled event.

• No refunds unless entire event (both authors) is canceled and not rescheduled (for ticket packages, refund will be prorated).

• Venues may change based on ticket sales, due to limited capacity at some venues. Ticket buyers will be notified.

• All events will take place in Naples.

Thursday, February 18, 1:00 - 4:00 p.m. at Beth Tikvah ~ Topic: Russia Talia Carner ~ Hotel Moscow

David Greene ~ Midnight in Siberia

From the author of Jerusalem Maiden comes a thought-provoking novel that tells the riveting story of a daughter of Holocaust survivors who travels to Russia on business shortly after the fall of Communism and finds herself embroiled in a perilous mafia conspiracy that could irrevocably destroy her life. Brooke Fielding, a 38-year-old New York investment manager, finds her life suddenly upended in September 1993 and accepts an invitation to join a friend on a mission to Moscow to teach entrepreneurial skills to Russian business women. Though excited by the opportunity, Brooke also wonders what awaits her in the country that persecuted her mother just a generation ago. Hotel Moscow is an eye-opening portrait of post-communist Russia and a profound exploration of faith, family and heritage.

Talia Carner is formerly the publisher of Savvy Woman magazine and a lecturer at international women’s economic forums. The author of three novels and numerous stories, essays and articles, she is a committed supporter of global human rights, spearheading projects centered on female plight and women’s activism.

Midnight in Siberia chronicles David Greene’s journey on the TransSiberian Railway, a 6,000-mile cross-country trip from Moscow to the Pacific port of Vladivostok. In quadruple-bunked cabins and stopover towns sprinkled across the country’s snowy landscape, Greene speaks with ordinary Russians about how their lives have changed in the post-Soviet years. These travels offer a glimpse of the new Russia – a nation that boasts open elections and newfound prosperity but continues to endure oppression, corruption, a dwindling population, and stark inequality. Midnight in Siberia is a lively travel narrative filled with humor, adventure and insight. It opens a window onto that country’s complicated relationship with democracy and offers a rare look into the soul of twenty-first-century Russia.

David Greene is a cohost of NPR’s Morning Edition. He is NPR’s former Moscow bureau chief and has spent more than a decade covering politics and events from the White House and abroad. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Rose, a restaurant owner and fellow traveler.

Monday, February 22, 1:00 - 4:00 p.m. at Temple Shalom ~ Topic: Family Dani Klein Modisett ~ Take My Spouse Please In love as in comedy, timing is everything. One bad night doesn’t mean it’s time to quit. Have patience: great marriages, like a career as a comedian, take time. With her trademark humor and sharp yet reverent tone, writer and comedian Dani Klein Modisett shares a map for navigating your marriage through rough patches, bad jokes, and even nights when you bomb. Dani has interviewed dozens of well-known comedians, comic writers, and marriage counselors to deliver unique marriage “material.” The wisdom gleaned from these devotees of both comedy and marriage illuminates the core premise in every relationship: Humor matters. The celebration of love and humor – from gut-busting celebrity interviews to earnest advice – is the heart and soul of Take My Spouse, Please.

Dani Klein Modisett is a comedian, actress and author. Her comedy act has toured nationally, and her one-woman show was featured at the HBO Aspen Comedy Festival. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Huffington Post, Parents Magazine and Los Angeles Times. She lives in Los Angeles with her family.

Dr. David Bernstein ~ I’ve Got Some Good News and Some Bad News: YOU’RE OLD Written for the aging and the aged, their children, and younger people who aspire to grow old, YOU’RE OLD illuminates the emotional, psychological and spiritual aspects of aging, along with the diverse strategies people use to adapt to its realities. Dr. Bernstein’s compassion and connection with his patients has compelled him to share real patient stories, to explore what happens when we age – physically, mentally, spiritually and socially. Each chapter includes notes on living longer, and resources in each section provide topic-specific information. For a healthy, fulfilling life, he encourages the practice of GRACE: Goals, Roots, Attitude, Companionship and Environment.

Dr. David Bernstein is board certified in Internal Medicine and Geriatrics, practicing in Florida for over thirty years, a graduate of Albany Medical College and on the faculty of University of USF College of Medicine. He is a board member and past chair of Gulf Coast Jewish Family Services for twenty-six years.

Wednesday, February 24, 1:00 - 4:00 p.m. at the Naples Daily News ~ Local Authors Event B.A. Shapiro ~ The Muralist

Marc Simon ~ The Leap Year Boy

Entwining the lives of both historical and fictional characters, and moving between the past and the present, The Muralist plunges readers into the divisiveness of prewar politics and the largely forgotten plight of European refugees refused entrance to the United States.

B.A. Shapiro is the author of the award-winning and New York Times bestseller The Art Forger. She has taught sociology at Tufts University and creative writing at Northeastern University.

Born in Pittsburgh on Leap Year Day 1908, Alex Miller weighs just 2 pounds and is 9 inches long. Although healthy, his body only grows at the rate of ¼ that of a normal child – but his mind grows much faster, as do his special abilities. People see him either as a miracle or a freak.

How Alex saves himself from the designs of others is at the heart of the novel. Marc Simon’s short fiction has appeared in several literary magazines. The Leap Year Boy is his debut novel.

Bob Mandell ~ Stroke Victor

Jerry Greenfield ~ Secrets of the Wine Whisperer

Bob Mandell’s dedication to helping others stricken by stroke has led to a new career path as author, stroke coach, speaker and founder of The Stroke Research Foundation, whose mission is to improve post-stroke lifestyles through advocacy, outreach and 21st century research. In his prior life, he was a corporate marketing executive, partner in an international management consulting firm, an adjunct professor at Fairfield University, and an entrepreneur in the telecommunications field.

Jerry Greenfield’s memoir tells how he and his wife Debi became seduced by the “wine life,” and the adventures that resulted. An experienced public speaker and wine educator, Jerry is no stuffy sommelier; he makes great wine easy and fun to understand...and enjoy. He “de-mystifies” the subject and offers useful hints, tips and information that add elegance and fun to every lifestyle. Jerry holds a Master of Arts degree from the University of Florida, and has lived in Spain and Israel. He is Creative Director of Greenfield Advertising Group.

Monday, February 29, 6:30 - 9:00 p.m. at Chabad Naples ~ Topic: Spirituality Jay Michaelson ~ The Gate of Tears

Sarah L. Kaufman ~ The Art of Grace

The Gate of Tears: Sadness and the Spiritual Path is the sixth book

by Rabbi Dr. Jay Michaelson. Its message is a countercultural one: that sadness and joy can coexist, and that there is a great beauty to the vicissitudes of light and darkness that are inevitable parts of human life. By learning to make space for and even love these difficult emotions, they become like two notes of a minor chord – a song that is both beautiful and wise. With his blend of erudition and accessibility, Rabbi Michaelson weaves together Hasidic tales and Dharma teachings, Leonard Cohen and Langston Hughes. The Gate of Tears draws on his 15 years as a student and teacher of Jewish meditation, the recent passing of his mother, and the peace he has discovered along the way.

Rabbi Dr. Jay Michaelson is the author of six books, editor at The Daily Beast and the Forward, and affiliated faculty member of Chicago Theological Seminary. He has taught at Boston University Law School and numerous Jewish institutions, and has appeared on NPR, CNN, MSNBC and NBC. He holds a PhD from Hebrew University, a JD from Yale, and non-denominational rabbinic ordination.

A Pulitzer Prize-winning dance critic teaches us to appreciate – and enact – grace in every dimension: physical, spiritual and emotional.

Both social and physical graces have been taught since the dawn of civilization. Yet grace seems forgotten in our pushy, hectic modern world. Sarah L. Kaufman argues that we bring it back. She explores the concept of grace in faiths around the world, including Judaism, where grace is seen as a quality that engenders love. She singles out grace in sports, in the arts, and in the everyday ways people interact. Cary Grant is her muse: his uncanny ease flowed from training as an acrobat but equally from his wit, humility and compassion. So too, Kaufman suggests, we might unearth the potential for grace in ourselves.

Sarah L. Kaufman is a Pulitzer Prize-winning dance critic for The Washington Post, where she has written about arts, sports and living for twenty years. A former French-American Foundation fellow, she has lived in France and Germany, and has lectured at universities around the country. She and her husband have three children and live outside Washington, D.C.

Tuesday, March 1, 1:00 - 4:00 p.m. at Temple Shalom ~ Topic: Holocaust Steven Pressman ~ 50 Children

Daniel M. Cohen ~ Single Handed

In the spring of 1939, a Jewish couple from Philadelphia, Gil and Eleanor Kraus, traveled into Nazi Germany in a bold and daring attempt to rescue a group of Jewish children and bring them back into the safety of the United States. Despite incredible obstacles at home – fierce opposition by Jewish community leaders and organizations; rigid U.S. immigration quotas – the Krauses carried out their mission, resulting in the largest single group of unaccompanied children allowed into the United States during the entirety of the Holocaust.

Steven Pressman was born and raised in Los Angeles and worked for many years as a journalist in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. He wrote, directed and produced the Emmy-nominated documentary film 50 Children: The Rescue Mission of Mr. and Mrs. Kraus, which premiered on HBO and led to his book on the same topic. Steve lives in San Francisco.

When Tibor Rubin was 13, he spent a year in a Nazi concentration camp. When he was 18, Tibor came to America a penniless immigrant.

A year and a half later he volunteered for the Korean War. When he was 20, Tibor defended a hill from hordes of North Korean soldiers single handed. He was recommended for the Medal of Honor, but a virulently ant-Semitic sergeant ditched the paperwork. After other acts of selfless daring, Tibor was recommended for the Medal again. The same sergeant refused to file the paperwork. When Tibor was 21, he was captured and sent to a Chinese POW camp, where he stole food to keep starving buddies alive. When Tibor was 50, the men whose lives he’d saved lobbied the Army to get him the medal he had been denied. Twenty-five years later, he finally received America’s highest military distinction. Single Handed is the amazing story of the only Holocaust survivor to have received the Medal of Honor.

Daniel M. Cohen is a filmmaker and writer. He wrote and directed the award-winning feature Diamond Men. A film critic and essayist for over thirty years, Single Handed is his first book.

Wednesday, March 2, 1:00 - 4:00 p.m. at Beth Tikvah ~ Topic: Israel Mike Kelly ~ The Bus on Jaffa Road

Jessamyn T. Hope ~ Safekeeping

Mike Kelly tells the story of two New Jersey teenagers who were killed in 1996 in a bus bombing on Jaffa Road in Jerusalem. In pursuit of justice, the parents of these American teenagers encountered political obstacles (from the White House and State Department, among others), adding suspense to the story of crime and punishment. The parents won a tremendous cash verdict against Hamas and Iran when a United States Federal Judge decided in their favor.

Mike Kelly, a journalist for more than three decades, is the author of two books and many prize-winning newspaper projects and columns for the Bergen Record in northern New Jersey. His assignments have taken him to Africa, Northern Ireland, Israel, Palestine and Iraq. He covered the 9/11 attacks, the cleanup of Ground Zero, and the 9/11 Commission hearings in Washington, D.C., and has devoted much of his time to covering terrorism.

Set against the backdrop of Jewish history, Safekeeping is a novel about love, loss and the courage it takes to keep starting over. At its heart stands a sapphire brooch – forged in a medieval ghetto – with a perilous backstory spanning three continents and seven centuries.

In 1994, Adam, a drug addict from New York City, arrives at Kibbutz Sadot Hadar with the priceless brooch. To redress a past crime, he needs to give it to a woman his grandfather loved when he was a Holocaust refugee on the kibbutz 50 years earlier. But finding this mystery woman proves more complicated than expected. On the kibbutz, Adam joins other damaged souls trying to turn their lives around.

By the end of that summer, they each get their last shot at redemption.

Jessamyn Hope’s fiction and memoirs have appeared in Ploughshares, Five Points and Colorado Review, among other literary magazines.

She was the Susannah McCorkle Scholar in Fiction at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College. Originally from Montreal, she lived in Israel before moving to New York City.

Thursday, March 3, 1:00 - 4:00 p.m. at Temple Shalom~ Topic: Fiction Susan Jane Gilman ~ The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street

As a child in 1913, Malka Treynovsky flees Russia for New York with her family – only to be crippled and abandoned in the streets. Taken in by a tough-loving Italian ices peddler, Malka survives. When she falls in love with Albert, they set off together across America in an ice cream truck to seek their fortune. Slowly she transforms herself into Lillian Dunkle, “The Ice Cream Queen of America” – doyenne of an empire of ice cream franchises and a celebrated television personality.

Spanning 70 years, Lillian’s rise – fraught with setbacks, triumphs and tragedies – is inextricably linked to the course of American history itself, from Prohibition to the disco days of Studio 54. And when her past starts catching up with her, Lillian’s world implodes spectacularly.

Susan Jane Gilman was a 2014 National Jewish Book Award finalist. She provides commentary for NPR and has written for The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Ms. magazine, among others. She earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Michigan.

She divides her time between Geneva and New York.

Julia Dahl ~ Run You Down Aviva Kagan was a just a teenager when she left her Hasidic Jewish life in Brooklyn for a fling with a college boy from Florida – and then disappeared. Twenty-three years later, the daughter she walked away from is a New York City tabloid reporter named Rebekah Roberts. And Rebekah isn’t sure she wants her mother back in her life. But when a man from the ultra-Orthodox enclave of Roseville, NY, contacts Rebekah about his wife’s mysterious death, she is drawn back into Aviva’s world. Pessie Goldin’s body was found in her bathtub, and her husband is certain she was murdered. Once she starts poking around, Rebekah encounters a whole society of people who have wandered “off the path” of ultra-Orthodox Judaism – just like her mother. But some went with dark secrets – and rage at the community they left behind.

Julia Dahl writes about crime and justice for CBSNews.com. Her first novel, Invisible City, was named one of the Boston Globe’s Best Books of 2014 and was a finalist for the Edgar Award, the Mary Higgins Clark Award, and the International Thriller Writers Award for Best First Novel. She was born in Fresno, CA, and now lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Wednesday, March 9, 6:30 - 9:00 p.m. at Beth Tikvah ~ Topic: Memoir Sally Fingerett ~ The Mental Yentl Known for her sharp wit and warm heart, Sally Fingerett is a freespirited, award-winning singer-songwriter who spent twenty-five years touring with the highly-acclaimed musical comedy group, The Four B**chin’ Babes. Holding artistic and contemporary Jewish life up to the light with love, humor and heart, Sally has written down the stories behind her best-loved songs from the stage and recordings. In these hilarious and endearing stories and essays, she celebrates her own personal goofs and flaws: having married, had a baby, divorced, trolled JDate, remarried, blended three teenagers into one family, while feeling that she’s really just a nine-year-old with a credit line. This designated daughter wanted only to fit in, be loved, do the right thing and – oops, almost forgot – have a career. Isn’t this what women do?

Sally Fingerett is an award-winning composer and founding member of the musical comedy group The Four B**chin’ Babes. Sally has appeared on over seven-hundred stages, NPR’s What’ya Know, Mountain Stage, and World Cafe. Sally lives in Columbus, OH.

Dafna Michaelson Jenet ~ It Takes a Little Crazy To Make a Difference

Struggling with her divorce and commitment to life as an Orthodox Jewish woman and mother, Dafna Michaelson takes off to all 50 states to find and share stories of ordinary people solving problems in their community. Driven by her commitment to tikkun olam, she learns as she shares the stories of others to find her place and follow her conflicted heart when her non-Jewish boyfriend proposes. During her travels, Dafna’s quest was shared by Charles Osgood on CBS’s Sunday Morning, driving many to hear the stories of the 500 people she met.

65% of the people she interviewed are Jewish men and women driven to heal the world. The book recounts her journey over one year and shares her struggles with her commitment to faith and community.

Dafna Michaelson Jenet, President of the Journey Institute, holds a BA from Stern College and an MBA from the University of Denver, and is a StorahTelling Maven. She held directorship posts at the Holocaust Awareness Institute and The March of the Living, BJENY. She currently sits on Hadassah’s National Board.

Monday, March 14, 6:30 - 9:00 p.m. at UUCGN ~ Topic: Inspiration Megan Feldman Bettencourt ~ Triumph of the Heart

Goldie Milgram ~ New Mitzvah Stories

Veteran journalist Megan Feldman Bettencourt had never considered herself a forgiving person. She’d just gone through a breakup and felt perfectly justified in hating her ex forever. But then she encountered a man who had truly forgiven the teenager who murdered his only son. How could anyone forgive that? Was there something wrong with him? Or was there something wrong with her? So Megan set out on a global adventure – not just to find out what forgiveness is, but how it works. Examining situations as mundane as road rage, as painful as cheating spouses, and as unthinkable as war crimes, she discovers the physical and psychological benefits of forgiveness, revealing some of the best ways we can learn to do it ourselves. The ability to forgive really is what determines our quality of life.

Megan Feldman Bettencourt is an award-winning writer and adjunct professor of Journalism and Public Relations at Metropolitan State University, Denver. Her features have appeared in magazines such as Glamour, Details and 5280: The Denver Magazine, and in newspapers including Newsday, the Dallas Observer and the Miami Herald.

This collection of 43 true and fictional stories by leading Jewish authors, storytellers and educators has found its audience with all ages and groups across the spectrum of Jewish life. Each tale excites the imagination, opens the heart, and stimulates reflection, discussion and action. The stories pose challenges that highlight the lifeenhancing effect of mitzvah-centered living. Over 60 Jewish values are covered, with stimulating tales about Shabbat and Holy Days to core Jewish ethics like refraining from holding a grudge and taking revenge. New Mitzvah Stories celebrates contemporary Jewish values.

Included are a study guide by co-editor Rabbi Dr. Goldie Milgram, accessibly translated sacred texts, discussion questions, learning activities, and tikkun olam possibilities for all ages and settings.

Rabbi Goldie Milgram is Executive Director of Reclaiming Judaism and Dean of the Maggid-Educator Training Program, before which she served as 92nd Street Y Director of Innovative Jewish Programming.

She is a widely published author, master teacher, public speaker, and professional Jewish storyteller.

Two Special Events:

Tuesday, February 23, 9:00 - 11:00 a.m. at Hilton Naples ~ Topic: Food $25 ~ No tickets sold after February 18 ~ Healthy continental breakfast included Chef Rossi ~ The Raging Skillet

When the microwave replaces her mother’s slow-cooked, traditional Hungarian dishes with meals from a box, Rossi takes to the kitchen – and a chef is born. This heartfelt and hilarious memoir takes us on the wild ride of Rossi’s life, from her Passover seders spent in the family camper to her 1980s Crown Heights adventures as a “wayward” girl living in a Chasidic rabbi’s home, to her observation of the High Holidays at Ground Zero as she served as a cook for first responders in the days just after 9/11. The Raging Skillet shows us how the creativity of the kitchen allows us to give a nod to where we come from.

Includes unpretentious recipes for real people everywhere.

Rossi, as the owner and executive chef of The Raging Skillet, has earned a reputation as the one to call when it’s time to do things differently. The Raging Skillet has been described as a “rebel anti-caterer”

by The New York Times. Rossi has written for Bust, The Daily News, The New York Post, The Huffington Post, Time Out New York and McSweeney’s. She is the host of a long-running radio show called Bite This, and has been featured on The Food Network and NPR.

Thursday, March 10, 6:30 - 9:30 p.m. at Hilton Naples ~ Topic: Powerful Women $25 ~ No tickets sold after March 7 ~ Champagne & Cheese reception Lisa Green ~ On Your Case

Julia Pimsleur ~ Million Dollar Women

Television legal analyst and attorney Lisa Green offers something new: a witty, direct and empowering legal guide for women, filled with accessible information they can employ to understand and respond to common legal issues throughout their lives – from dating, marriage and kids to jobs, retirement, aging parents and wills. Lisa has an urgent message for women of all ages. Whether or not you invite it into your life, the law will find you. When it does, will you be ready to respond? Leveraging her professional training as a lawyer and her personal experience as a wife, ex-wife, mother and daughter, Lisa explains common, even complicated, legal issues in practical, easy-to-understand terms.

Lisa Green is a lawyer and legal analyst, appearing on NBC News and MSNBC. While attending law school, Lisa worked as a columnist for The National Law Journal, after which she practiced law in New York, before joining NBC News – first as a lawyer and then as a senior producer and on-air analyst. She currently serves as communications director for a major NY law firm and is the mother of two young adults.

There’s a lot for feminists today to feel happy about. But there is one stubborn barricade that just won’t come down: the one that keeps women outside the room where the capital to build a big business is doled out. Lots of women start mom-and-pop businesses, and they start businesses at nearly twice the rate that men do. But only 3 percent of female business owners have revenues over one-million dollars – and even fewer of these women are Jewish. So how do you go big with your own business? In Million Dollar Women, Julia Pimsleur shares the inspiring story of building her own company, Little Pim, which produces a program for young children to learn foreign languages, and teaches the concepts, the lexicon, and the steps for heading a multimillion-dollar business. She shows you how to network, when to delegate, and how to overcome the emotional hurdles you have to jump to join the million-dollar club. This is the essential guide for female entrepreneurs, from someone who’s followed the same path.

Julia Pimsleur is the CEO and Founder of Little Pim, a leading system for introducing young children to a second language.

Venue Locations

Jewish Book Festival Committee:

All locations are in Naples (area code 239): Special thanks to Beth Tikvah: 1459 Pine Ridge Road (434-1818) these organizations for Chabad Naples: 1789 Mandarin Road (262-4474) providing space for the Hilton Naples: 5111 Tamiami Trail N. (430-4900) Festival events.

Naples Daily News: 1100 Immokalee Road (262-3161) Temple Shalom: 4630 Pine Ridge Road (455-3030) Unitarian Universalist Cong. of Greater Naples: 6340 Napa Woods Way (455-6553)

Carole Greene Dina Shein Harrilee Shevin Ida Margolis

Co-Chairs: Ted Epstein & Phil Jason Irene Pomerantz Linda Smith Iris Shur Marc Simon Judy Peltz Patti Boochever Lee Henson Robin Mintz

Steve Brazina Sue Bookbinder Susan Pittelman

Festival Sponsors

Book Sales

All of the Festival’s books are on display on the second floor in the Barnes & Noble store at the Waterside Shops. Be sure to pick up a free Festival bookmark while you’re there. Books will also be available for purchase and signing at each author’s event. Books make great gifts for friends and family.

We are grateful to the following businesses and organizations for their support of the Collier County Jewish Book Festival.

Festival Website & Email

Visit the official Festival website at www.jewishbookfestival.org for more information on the authors and their books, event updates and a printable order form. Have questions that have not been answered in this 4-page pullout? Send an email to fedstar18@gmail.com.

Jewish Book Festival Ticket Order Form Patron Festival Package:

Includes all 9 events at right & 2 special events below for $180 # of packages: ___ = total $______

Personalize your festival experience with these options

Includes reserved seat in front rows at each event, Patron Reception with at least one author, and listing in the Federation Star. $51 of each package is tax deductible.

9-event Book-Lover Package:

Includes the 9 events at right for $79 # of packages: ___ = total $______ Does NOT include the two Special Events below.

• Tickets will be mailed beginning in mid-January.

• Tickets are NOT tax deductible other than a portion of the Patron Festival Package (see above).

• Tickets ARE transferable and can be given to others.

• Open seating at all events. Front rows will be reserved for Patrons and Sponsors.

• If an author cancels, we will attempt to reschedule the author in late March or April.

• No refunds unless entire event (both authors) is canceled and not rescheduled.

• Venues may change based on ticket sales, due to limited capacity at some venues. Ticket buyers will be notified.

Event Date - Authors: 2/18 - Carner/Greene 2/22 - Modisett/Bernstein 2/24 - Local Authors 2/29 - Michaelson/Kaufman 3/1 - Pressman/Cohen 3/2 - Kelly/Hope 3/3 - Gilman/Dahl 3/9 - Fingerett/Jenet 3/14 - Bettencourt/Milgram Total:

5-event Individual package: tickets: $49 ea. $12 ea.

Pkgs: ___ ($15 at the door) Please indicate # of tickets:

___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ $____

___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ $____

Special Events: 2/23 - Breakfast - Chef Rossi

# of tickets: ____ x $25 = $_____ 3/10 - Green/Pimsleur

# of tickets: ____ x $25 = $_____

YES! I’d love to attend the Jewish Book Festival!

Please send me the tickets I’ve reserved above for a total of $_______.  Check enclosed - payable to Jewish Federation of Collier County  Please charge my:  MasterCard  Visa  American Express

Women’s Cultural Alliance

Account #____________________________________ Exp. ____/____ ccv#______ Name: _______________________________________________________________ Address:_____________________________________________________________ City: ____________________________________ ST: ______ Zip: _________________ Phone: _______________________ Email: __________________________________

4 easy ways to order your tickets: 1 Mail this order form to

Jewish Federation of Collier County 2500 Vanderbilt Beach Rd., Ste. 2201 Naples, FL 34109

2 In person

at the Federation office. Please fill out form in advance.

3 Charge by phone 239.263.4205 Please fill out form prior to calling.

4 Fax this order form

with credit card info to 239.263.3813 FS0216