Vol. LXXXII
No. 39
Omaha, NE
28 Iyyar, 5763
May 30, 2003
COMING NEXT WEEK: THE ANNUAL FATHER’S DAY/GRADUATION GIFT GUIDE!
Endowment Award Stacey Rockman and Todd Simon Honored as Federation Young Leaders Goes to Joel Alperson by PAM MONSKY, Federation Communications Director Stacey Rockman and Todd Simon will receive the Jewish Federation’s Young Leadership Awards at the 100th Meeting of the Jewish Federation on Monday, June 9, 7 p.m., in the theater of the Jewish Community Center. Recipients of the prestigious Bruce Fellman and Lois Jeanne Schrager Memorial Young LeadStacey Rockman ership Awards are selected by a committee of past Young Leadership winners from nominations from the Omaha Jewish community. Award winners are also provided with a stipend of up to $1,500 to attend the United Jewish Community’s General Assembly or National Young Leadership Conference and their names are engraved on a permanent plaque displayed in the corridor of the JCC. Stacey Rockman is this year’s Lois Jeanne Schrager Memorial Young Leadership Award winner. This award was established in 1980 to honor a young woman who has demonstrated personal commitment, dedicated involvement and exemplary leadership qualities in service to the Jewish and general community. Rockman, 40, was nominated for this award by the Women of Reform Judaism. Rockman’s service to Temple Israel is commendable. As the current president of Women of Reform Judaism, Rockman has put her energy into developing the working committees for WRJ. She has involved hundreds of women in WRJ projects over the past year by combining her passion with her organizational skills. Rockman believes that personal contact makes all the difference and she has proven this by reaching out to members of Omaha’s Jewish community of all ages, backgrounds and interests.
One of her most satisfying projects has been leading Temple’s Torah Restoration Project. She took it upon herself to personally seek out the necessary funding and recruit the numerous volunteers needed to make the project such an overwhelming success. Rockman’s other volunteer involvement with the Jewish community Todd Simon includes service to the Temple Israel Board, on both the Nominating and Membership Committees. She has chaired various events for the Jewish Federation, most notably last year’s “Shabbat in Elmwood Park,” one of the House parties for the 2002 Women’s Campaign. In addition, she serves on the Pennie Z. Davis Child Development Center Advisory Board. In the general community, Rockman has been involved with the Omaha Children’s Museum, the American Cancer Society and Planned Parenthood. She also volunteers weekly at Swanson School and is in charge of maintaining Swanson’s grounds and their arboretum. Rockman and her husband Jonathan have two children, Oliver, 9 and Caroline 7. Her parents are Mike and Jill Erman and the late Eileen Erman. Todd Simon, 38, is the recipient of the 2002 Bruce Fellman Memorial Young Leadership Award. This award, in memory of the son of Tom and Darlynn Fellman, is awarded annually to honor a young man who has demonstrated personal commitment, dedicated involvement and exemplary leadership qualities in rendering service to the Jewish and general community. Simon was nominated by the National Council of Jewish Women, Omaha Section. (Continued on page 2)
The Road Map Rekindles Arab War for the “Right of Return” by DAVID BEDEIN, Bureau Chief, Israel Resource News Agency “The Americans rejected one of Israel’s central demands, which states that the Palestinian Arabs would agree to concede the right of return in return for Israel’s recognition of a Palestinian Arab state. They also rejected Israel’s demand to remove the Saudi proposal (a full withdrawal to the lines of June 4, 1967, recognition of the right of return, in return for the recognition of Israel by the Arab countries and natural relations) as one of the main sources of the road map’s authority,” said Shimon Shiffer, Senior Diplomatic Correspondent, in last Friday’s Yediot Aharonot newspaper. In other words, what
Israel Navy commandos seized an Egyptian fishing trawler off the Haifa coast last week, loaded with bomb making components and CDs for instruction on how to prepare bombs and bomb belts for suicide bombers. Among the captured crew was a top Hizbullah bomb expert, Hamad Photo by ISRANET. Muslam Moussa Abu Mara.
our agency has been reporting for 15 years is indeed the case: The U.S. State Department, together with all the western governments, indeed support the Arab world campaign for the “right of return” to the Arab villages lost in 1948. None of these villages where they expect to return lie in Judea, Samaria (Also known as the West Bank) or Gaza. The U.S. support for the “right of return” is no theoretical matter. That support was translated into the $114 million that the US contributed last year to UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. UNRWA continues to confine more than one million Arabs to the squalor of Arab refugee camps, who wal(Continued on page 11)
by CLAUDIA SHERMAN Foundation Communications Director Joel Alperson, this year’s Endowment Achievement Award recipient, learned from his parents, Margie and the late P a c e y Alperson, how to support the O m a h a Jewish community. Joel thought he had “done it all” until he attended his first United Jewish Appeal Young Leadership Cabinet caucus in 1992 when his conception of Jewish community took on profound new dimensions. When he joined the National UJA Young Leadership Cabinet that year, the experience changed his life as he developed new relationships with others his age who were making tremendous commitments to the Jewish people. Alperson’s first high-profile national position was as a Co-chairman for a national singles mission to Israel in 1995 with 485 participants which he described as “overwhelming.” A few years later, he co-chaired another mission, the Chazak III mission to Israel and Spain. In 1996, Alperson accepted the Jewish Agency’s prestigious International Young Leadership Award given to two international young leaders. He was also the recipient of Omaha’s Young Leadership Award in 1994. In 1997, he was named National Young Leadership Chairman. While Alperson held that position, the Ben Gurion Society, a campaign division for donors under the age of 45 who give $1,000 or more to the annual campaign, and the Jewish Leadership Institute, a leadership development program, were both created. In addition, he was part of the first Cabinet mission to Cuba. UJA elected Alperson to its Board of Trustees in 1998. He served on the Campaign Cabinet as the Midwest Region’s Major Gifts Chairman. In Omaha, he served in the crucial role of Pacesetter Chairman during the Federation’s 1999 Campaign and then as General Chairman for the 2000 Campaign. Since 2002, as National Chairman for UJC’s Network Communities, Alperson has been responsible for pockets of Jewish populations too small to support a Federation. There are 360 network communities that together raise more than $12 million. He established “a very substantial” Perpetual Annual Campaign Endowment (PACE) Fund with the Foundation of the Jewish Federation of Omaha in 2000, said Marty Ricks, Foundation Executive Director. This gift serves to endow his annual UJC/Federation campaign gift. “The Omaha Jewish community is forever indebted to Joel for establishing this PACE Fund,” added Ricks. “In the tradition of previous endowment award winners in Omaha, Joel Alperson is clearly the model of a deserving recipient.”
INSIDE: Monthly Calendar ............................. pages 6-7 Shavuot articles ................................. pages 8-9 Spizman Honored at Temple .............. page 12