Vol. LXXXV No. 41 Omaha, NE
Celebrating 85 Years of Service to Nebraska and Western Iowa
March of the Living Trip Inspires Beth El Teen to Become an Active Witness
27 Sivan, 5766 June 23, 2006
Jewish Press Wins Another Rockower Award
active witnesses. We would go out into the community by JILL BELMONT Beth El Publicity Coordinator and do our best to spread the message [about the Seth Rich went on the March of the Living trip as an Holocaust] so that others could spread the message.” Seeing the camps made a powerful impact on him, observer, but he returned home an “active witness.” Rich said, as the group Rich, an incoming senior “spent just about every wakat Central High School, paring moment going from ticipated in the two-week camp to camp, from memotrip which brings together rial to memorial, doing our teens from around the world best to honor the memory to observe Yom HaShoah at of those who were taken the sites of Nazi concentrafrom us in the Holocaust.” tion camps in Poland, folHe cited the visit to lowed by a week in Israel Majdanek as particularly during Yom HaZikaron and powerful. The camp is still Yom Ha’Atzmaut. He spoke intact, “standing just as it about the journey during a stood when it was liberated Shabbat service several by the Russians. It is so weeks ago at Beth El Seth Rich, second from right, and a fellow March of the intact that with proper staff, Synagogue. Speaking extemporane- Living participant pose with several Israeli soldiers following it could be up and running ously, Rich explained that he a Yom HaZikaron memorial service at the Golani Military in 48 hours,” he noted. “We Photo courtesy of Seth Rich went to Majdanek on the eschewed the use of a writ- Base. ten speech or notes, as they would have muffled his fifth day of the trip. We had previously seen bits and desire to connect with the congregation on a more emo- pieces of what the Holocaust was, but Majdanek was the first place to bring every aspect of the Holocaust togethtional level. The opportunity to share his experience made it pos- er. This is what hit me.” At Treblinka, a camp completely destroyed by the sible for Rich to fulfill a promise he and his fellow travelers made at Auschwitz. “As we walked through the Nazis, all that remains is a field of stones, each repregates, we vowed to each other that we would never for- senting a town, a shtetl or community from which Jews get what we had seen, and we would never forget what were taken and killed. While walking through the field, happened there, and we would never let it happen again. Rich said he reached the stunning realization that “Essentially, we would become not just witnesses, but Continued on page 3
Last week’s annual conference of the American Jewish Press Association in Baltimore, MD, became a minireunion as former Lincolnite Danny Allen, now Executive Director of the Friends of Magen David Adom (sponsor of the Rockower awards evening), was reunited with Omahans Ozzie Nogg, left, and Carol Katzman, Editor of the Jewish Press. The Press, picking up a second place in the category of Special Sections for its 2005 New Year’s issue, “The Path to Judaism,” now has won seven Rockower awards in the last 10 years. Nogg is the first freelancer to have been elected to the AJPA’s executive committee. The Jewish Press also won a third place award from the Nebraska Press Association for its coverage of last year’s March of the Living. (See related story about the organization’s hope and concerns about admission to the International Red Cross on page 16.)
Best-selling Authors Compare Notes on Jewish Families, Israeli Influences by DINA KRAFT KIRYAT ONO, Israel (JTA) -- In their first meeting, Nathan Englander and Etgar Keret playfully joust about influences and literature and how experiencing Jewish and Israeli life informs their writing. Englander, 36, a former Long Island yeshiva boy turned darling of the American literature scene and his Israeli counterpart, Keret, 38, in turns adored and excoriated for his fantastical and rebellious short stories, came together recently at a conference sponsored by Bar-Ilan University’s master’s program in creative writing. Their rapport was instant and full of good humor. When audience members at a public discussion between them requested that they speak up, Englander offered, “I’ll project from the diaphragm.” Keret quipped, “and I’ll try to speak from Nathan’s diaphragm.” Englander’s 1999 debut collection of short stories, For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, became an international best seller with its tales of the secret desires of Orthodox wig makers, condemned Yiddish writers awaiting death in a Stalinist prison and Jews on a train to a concentration camp who transform into acrobats and tumble their way to safety. His upcoming novel, The Ministry of Special Cases, eight years in the making, is about the Jewish community in Buenos Aires on the eve of Argentina’s 1976 military coup.
Inside Opinion Page see page 8
American Jewish author Nathan Englander, left, and Israeli author Etgar Keret take part in a public dialogue last month at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan. Credit: Jonathan Beck/JTA Englander eventually rejected his Orthodox upbringing and immigrated to Israel, where he wrote his first book in a Jerusalem cafe. He sees the book as part of his transition out of the Orthodox world. “It was clear it was about my leaving the religious community,” he said. His upcoming novel, he said, is about “the idea of community as a whole, how it functions and how it corrupts.” He at first did not intend the book to
focus on the Jewish community, but Jews “kept creeping in.” Englander said being labeled as a “Jewish writer” following the publication of his first book did not bother him. “It’s not a tag. There is nothing for me to shake off,” he told JTA in an interview. Unlike Englander’s rich, literary prose, Etgar's stories have a casual, zany tone. Modern Israel is his usual backdrop, populated with slackers, soldiers and factory workers. His work has been praised for
tapping into the Zeitgeist of Israeli youth with witty, but often less than pretty portraits of alienation and fear. Keret’s most recent collection, The Nimrod Flip-Out, published last month in the United States, was written during the second intifada and was influenced, he said, by the daily toll of violence. In one story, a pathologist examines the body of a woman killed in a suicide bombing only to discover tumors had taken over most of her body and that she would have died within weeks. The pathologist cannot decide whether or not to tell the woman’s bereaved husband. Breaking ranks with Israel’s old guard of writers who try to infuse their work with ideological themes, Keret’s cheeky stories seem to mock the country’s literary conventions and convictions. Keret was born in Israel but feels himself an outsider. Englander, at odds with his Orthodox upbringing in America, for a time chose Israel as his home. It was in Israel that he met a group of young Argentine immigrants who would become close friends and whose stories would help inspire the idea for his novel. It was also in Israel that he began to feel how politics imprints itself onto life. “Living in Israel made me understand when politics is in your front yard,” he said. “Living in Israel obviously I learned a lot. I became shaped. I became a different person from living in the center of Jerusalem.” Continued on page 2
This Week: Children’s Book Author Has Local Ties: Page 6 Coming Next Month: Health & Wellness Issue: July 14 See Front Page Stories at: www.jewishomaha.org, click on ‘Jewish Press’
Young Omahans Among Recent Birthright Trip: Pages 4-5
Israel Podcasts to the World: Page 9
Searching for a Jewish Past in Spain: Page 11