March 2022

The Voice of Greater Rhode Island’s Jewish Community

MARCH 2022 | ADAR II 5782

JEWISHRHODY.ORG

Ukraine under siege Learn about shemitah and burnout

Check out Jessica Seinfeld’s new cookbook

Get ready for Purim with our comic strip

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Jewish Rhode Island | jewishrhody.org

EVENT CO-CHAIRS Jeffrey Brier Doug Emanuel Jeffrey Vogel HOST COMMITTEE Lawrence Sadwin Mindy Sherwin HONORARY CHAIRS Richard Bornstein

Monday, June 27, 2022 Lake of Isles at Foxwoods One Clubhouse Drive, North Stonington, CT

Bruce Leach Alan Litwin Rose Malkin Mark S. Mandel Richard Mittleman Sam Suls

More information including golfer and sponsor registration coming soon at jewishallianceri.org/Golf

MARCH 2022 | 3

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Helping our brethren in Ukraine LIKE MANY OF YOU, I have been glued to coverage of the war in Ukraine – in print, online and on TV. Yes, I have my favorite media outlets. But I tend to flip from one to another during this kind of news-heavy event. It’s always good to see who is covering what and how. Each adds a new perspective.

As I’ve said before, information is power and the more you have, the better.

While I have never had the opportunity to visit Ukraine, I know many people who have.

Everyone I know speaks warmly about the country. And, like me, many more trace their roots to Russia and Ukraine.

So the news coming out of Ukraine is personal for many of us – as well as being both horrifying and inspirational as Russia launches a deadly invasion on the democratic nation and Ukrainians mount a fierce resistance.

As with many world events, information coming from the Jewish media adds another important point of view to the conflict and its human toll.

Between the Jews who have loved ones in Ukraine and those whose roots are from Ukraine, many have a reason to watch the war quite carefully – and to want to help the estimated 200,000 to 350,000 Jews in the country, including 60,000 Jews in the capital of Kyiv and the nation’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky.

Here are a few things I’ve learned about efforts to help the Ukrainian Jewish community: • The Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island has an emergency Ukraine fund. All money collected will go to emergency humanitarian efforts to help the nation’s Jewish community with such needs as food, housing and medicine. Through the Alliance’s association with Jewish Federations of North America, the funds support partner agencies on the ground, including JDC (The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee), The Jewish Agency for Israel, and World ORT. You can donate at jewishallianceri.org/donate. Select Ukraine Relief from the

drop-down menu.

• Jewish organizations from all areas are now working together. JAFI, JDC, World ORT, Chesed and Chabad are coming together because we are all one people.

• The American Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) workers are in the shelters and subways where Ukrainians are taking cover, helping Jews with basic needs and tracing relatives they have lost contact with.

• The Jewish Agency for Israel (JAFI) is preparing to help Jews who want to make aliyah as soon as they are able to do so. They are also gearing up to help Ukrainian Jews come to the United States if they have American relatives.

• An online channel has been set up to allow seniors to continue to observe Shabbat and to ensure people can maintain a Jewish connection.

WE HAVE PULLED TOGETHER our own coverage on Ukraine, on pages 17 and 18 of this issue, including Aaron Ginsburg writing about comments on the situation made during services at Touro Synagogue, in Newport, on Feb. 26.

Meanwhile, because Jewish Rhode Island is a monthly newspaper, you will see a wide swatch of coverage in the March paper. Spring is on the way, and it’s Adar, the month of happiness, which culminates in Purim on March 17.

In other happy news, this month, on page 15, we debut a new comic strip Tobi and Zaide Tomer, featuring Tobi and her Israeli grandfather, Tomer. The artwork is by Brown University student Kendall Krantz and the story is by Amit Moshe Oren, Rhode Island’s Israeli shaliach (emissary). Stay tuned for their adventures each month.

And finally, still more good news: Our community institutions are opening up and programming is expanding! Check our calendar, either in the newspaper or the full listings online, at www.jewishrhody.com/calendar, for a wide range of events.

As we gather more often in the spring let's hope for for better days for our community at home and around the world.

Fran Ostendorf, Editor

D'VAR TORAH 5 | CALENDAR 6 | OPINION 8 | FOOD 10 COMMUNITY VOICES 14 | UKRAINE 16 | JUDAICA AT BROWN RISD HILLEL 17 COMMUNITY 18 | BUSINESS 28 | OBITUARIES 29 THE MISSION OF JEWISH RHODE ISLAND is to communicate Jewish news, ideas and ideals by connecting and giving voice to the diverse views of the Jewish community in Rhode Island and Southeastern Massachusetts, while adhering to Jewish values and the professional standards of journalism.

JEWISH RHODE ISL AND

EDITOR Fran Ostendorf DESIGN & LAYOUT Alex Foster ADVERTISING DEPARTMENT Peter Zeldin | 401-421-4111, ext. 160 pzeldin@jewishallianceri.org CONTRIBUTORS Cynthia Benjamin, Larry Kessler, Robert Isenberg, Emma Newbery COLUMNISTS Michael Fink, Geraldine Foster, Patricia Raskin, Rabbi James Rosenberg, Daniel Stieglitz

VOLUME XXIX ISSUE III JEWISH RHODE ISLAND

(ISSN number 1539-2104, USPS #465-710) is published monthly except twice in May, August and September.

PERIODICALS POSTAGE PAID at Providence, R.I. POSTMASTER Send address changes to: Jewish

Rhode Island, 401 Elmgrove Ave., Providence, RI 02906.

PUBLISHER

The Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island, President/CEO Adam Greenman, Chair James Pious, 401 Elmgrove Ave., Providence, RI 02906.

401-421-4111; Fax 401-331-7961

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ALL SUBMITTED CONTENT becomes the property of Jewish Rhode Island. Announcements and opinions contained in these pages are published as a service to the community and do not necessarily represent the views of Jewish Rhode Island or its publisher, the Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island. We reserve the right to refuse publication and edit submitted content.

ON THE COVER: Young girl protesting in Berlin, Germany, Feb. 22, 2022.

PHOTO BY MATTI/PEXELS.COM

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Jewish Rhode Island | jewishrhody.org

UP FRONT

Alan Bernstein – musician, educator par excellence director of the Community String Project, an inclusive music-education program or decades, Alan headquartered in Bristol.

“I like to be busy,” the Bernstein has lived Newport native says. “I two lives. One is always have. Teaching school five days a week – largely orchestral, the and obviously I put more into it than that, because, as other is pure jazz. a music teacher, you don’t just stop at 2:30, you go until ONE LIFE, the orchestral, takes you’re done. So I would do place in classrooms; the other that, and then on the weekis on stages. One involves ends, I’d be playing gigs. That students, most of them young; was kind of my life. It’s hard the other caters to adults. to back off from that.”

Bernstein, 69, has always Bernstein grew up in an managed to balance these two Orthodox Jewish family and lives and to excel at both: He attended services at Touro is an acclaimed instrumentalSynagogue, in Newport, ist who has performed in the where his Bar Mitzvah was Newport area since the 1980s; held. He had a strong affecthe Newport Public Schools tion for Rabbi Theodore Lewis named him Teacher of the [Touro’s rabbi for 36 years] Year in 2013; and he received and his rich Irish accent. a Distinguished Music Educa“I just thought that’s how tor’s Award from Yale Univerall rabbis talked,” he said sity in 2007. with a laugh during a recent On paper, Bernstein, of interview.

Newport, is retired. But in At 10 years old, Bernstein practice, he continues to was considered “a hyperperform every week, and active child,” and doctors he also serves as executive

BY ROBERT ISENBERG

F

recommended medication.

Then a jazz band invited “My mother refused,” Bern- Bernstein on a national tour, stein recalls, “and bought me as long as he switched from a guitar instead.” guitar to electric bass. BernThe instrument helped him stein signed up, and the bass focus his energy, and it also heightened his appreciation for jazz.

“I was always drawn to jazz,” he recalled. “Even as a young child, I remember hearing Ray Brown play, and I’m thinking, ‘Whoa, I like that.’ ” At the Atlantic Beach club (left to right): His aptitude for Mike Coffey, Alan Bernstein, Mac guitar led him to the Chrupcala and Greg Abate.

Rhode Island School of Music in 1972, proved to be a revelation. an institution inspired by “I found my voice,” he said. the Berklee College of Music, For the next seven years, in Boston. The non-accredthe young musician lived and ited R.I. music school closed performed on the road. shortly thereafter, but not “When you’re in your twenbefore Bernstein met lifelong ties, you’re not really thinkfriends and mentors there. ing of your grand future,” “[The school] was a great he said. “I was a young man, idea, and it introduced me free and traveling around the to a lot of people I presently country and enjoying being a engage with musically,” he vagabond musician.” said.

But, after he started dating

PHOTOS | ROBERT ISENBERG

Karen, whom he would marry in 1985, he decided to stop touring and return to Rhode Island. He also pondered going back to school.

So, at 27, Bernstein started calling different music programs until he stumbled upon Don Burns, the legendary music professor at the University of Rhode Island.

“Don was just an amazing band leader,” Bernstein said.

“He just said, ‘Hey, what are you doing? Why don’t you come over?’ That was the kind of guy he was.”

URI didn’t teach electric bass in its undergraduate music programs, so Bernstein once again changed his focus – to the upright bass.

Returning to the classroom helped him refine his understanding of musical theory, and he grew more familiar with classical and orchestral composition, he said.

“You start thinking about the big picture. I was going to do something with music.

Fill in the gaps for the things CONTINUED ON PAGE 11

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Shemitah: A biblical response to languishing and burnout

I

n her recent book “Burnout – The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle,” researcher Emily Nagoski focuses on the physiological

manifestations of chronic stress in the body and the disconnect between these physical manifestations and most proposed solutions.

D' VA

AS A WORKING definition, burnout is defined as chronic, unending stress cycles and the weakening of the body’s ability to ultimately dampen stress. Fairly analogized to a computer that is running too many programs, slows down and ultimately crashes, many of us are running from one reboot to the next.

And for so many people, it feels as though the increasingly depersonalized and burdensome modern systems under which our lives take place are blind to the problem, promoting unending work cycles and impossible-to-achieve obligations at an ever-increasing rate. And we’re the lucky ones.

As always, identifying the problem accurately is key.

Nagoski posits that chronic stress is not really the problem, it’s the disconnect between stress, our lifestyles and our strategies for managing it.

She writes, “The good news is that stress is not the problem. The problem is that the strategies that deal with stressors have almost no relationship to the strategies that deal with the physiological

R

reactions our bodies have to those stressors. To be ‘well’ is not to live in a state of perpetual safety and calm, but to move fluidly from a state of adversity, risk, adventure, or excitement, back to safety and calm, and out again. Stress is not bad for you; being stuck is bad for you.”

The downsides of chronic stress are felt and RABBI well-known: Lack BARRY of motivation, DOLINGER inflammation and disease, decreased immunity, anxiety, depression, lack of productivity, weaker relationships … and the list goes on and on.

On a basic level, it’s hard for many people to enjoy life when they’re, to use the buzzword, languishing.

If the effects of chronic stress are largely manifest in the body, what are wellaligned strategies to close those extra applications and keep the system running smoothly? How can we begin to reclaim joyful living and being present in our precious lives?

Nagoski posits many wellsuited remedies, but chief among them is rest.

Now, it’s important to state

TO R A H

the fact that a host of factors, including socioeconomics and race, render this whole discussion frustrating for so many populations. Many groups of people are subject to systems of stress over which they have little control and little escape. The point of this d’var Torah is decidedly not to blame people for their own stress and negative health outcomes, or to elide discussions about the inequity of said systems.

Still, and with those caveats, it’s important to raise and promote an alternative view about how we can better order our society and our lives. “[W]e think that rest matters not because it makes you more productive, but because it makes you happier and healthier, less grumpy, and more creative.”

How much rest should a person get? According to Nagoski’s book, bodies and brains need to be at rest 42% of the time to function optimally, or about 10 hours a day.

“We’re not saying you should take 42 percent of your time to rest; we’re saying that if you don’t take the 42 percent, the 42 percent will take you,” Nagoski writes.

Currently, we are in a shemitah year, the last year of a seven-year agricultural cycle in which, in the land of Israel, commercial agriculture is forbidden and debts must be forgiven.

Mainly, these are observed today as technical problems deserving technical halachic workarounds. But, in the words of educator Jeremy Benstein, “what if we looked

at shmitah not as a problem but a solution, and then considered which problem it is meant to solve? In that light, shmitah becomes a political statement of social and environmental import, raising deep questions about the nature of a healthy and sustainable life – for individuals, society, and the land.”

As Benstein notes, more of us are working harder than ever, despite the relative affluence of our society. Something’s clearly amiss.

He writes, “[P]eople are indeed like the land: for both, when overwork leads to exhaustion, we engineer continued ‘vitality’ not with true renewal, but with chemicals.”

The spiritual master Rabbi Abraham Isaac Hakohen Kook wrote an influential guide to the laws of shem shemitah, “Shabbat Ha’aretz,” to promote its observance as Jews returned en masse to Israel during the early 20th century.

In the introduction to his book, he wrote, “Human beings will return to a state of natural health, so that they will not need healing for sicknesses, which mostly befall us when the balance of life is destroyed and our lives are distanced from the rhythms of nature; ‘for you to eat’ but not to make medicine and not to use as bandages.23 Talmud Bavli, Sukkah 40a. A holy spirit will be poured out upon all life; ‘it will be a year of complete rest for the land – a Sabbath of the Lord.’ ” For Rav Kook, shemitah serves as a counterweight to

balance greed, consumerism and a disconnect with the rhythms of nature. This lack of balance in relationships – with each other and with the land – is an underlying cause for so many societal ills.

Shemitah as a solution implores us to turn off phones, take real breaks, use the vacation days we’re afforded and treat the weekly sabbath as a crucial element of holistic living.

Collectively, we are a tired, stressed-out society in serious need of deep rest and recalibration.

BARRY DOLINGER is the rabbi of Congregation Beth Sholom, in Providence, and president of the Board of Rabbis of Greater Rhode Island.

Candle lighting times March 2022

Greater Rhode Island March 4

5:19 pm

March 11

5:27 pm

March 18 6:35 pm March 25 6:43 pm

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Jewish Rhode Island | jewishrhody.org

CALENDAR HIGHLIGHTS FOR COMPLETE MONTHLY LISTINGS, VISIT JEWISHRHODY.ORG

Ongoing

Kosher Senior Café and Programming. In-person lunches 11 a.m.-1 p.m. Monday – Thursday at the Dwares JCC, 401 Elmgrove Ave., Providence; Friday at Temple Sinai, 30 Hagen Ave., Cranston.

In-person and Zoom programming includes “Exercise for Everyone” with exercise science professional Laura Goodwin on Monday and Wednesday from 11-11:45 a.m. and chair yoga on Tuesday and Thursday from 11:30 a.m.-noon followed by lunch and a guest speaker or discussion from noon-1 p.m. The second Tuesday of the month is “Susie’s Corner” with Susie Adler from noon-1 p.m. The third Thursday of the month is a book chat with Neal Drobnis from noon-1 p.m. Suggested donation: $3 per lunch for 60 and older as well as for younger adults with a disability.

Other adults may purchase a meal for $6.50. Information and RSVP, Neal Drobnis at neal@jfsri.org or 401-421-4111, ext. 107.

Brown/RISD Judaica Exhibition.

Brown RISD Hillel, 80 Brown St., Providence. Thru 3/20. Annual student-curated gallery space of student artists from RISD and Brown. Explore work across a range of media through the lens of students’ Jewish identity, history and meaning. Gallery hours: Monday through Thursday 9 a.m.10 p.m., Saturday 9 a.m.-8 p.m., Sunday noon-6 p.m. Information, Lex Dorfman at alexis_dorfman@ brown.edu or 401-863-2805.

Spiritual Accounting: Benjamin Franklin and Rabbi Mendel Lefin’s Course of Character Development. Sundays 10:15-11:45 a.m.

3/13-6/26. No class: 4/17, 5/1, 5/29, 6/5. Dwares JCC, 401 Elmgrove Ave., Providence. In-depth textual study including readings and journaling at home. Taught by Rabbi Eliahu Klein. Funded by the Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island.

Information and to apply, Shai Afsai at shai.afsai@ppsd.org.

Project Shoresh Ladies Partners in Torah Night. Sundays 7:45-8:45 p.m. Providence Hebrew Day School, 450 Elmgrove Ave., Providence. Partner-based study group. On-site facilitators available.

Free. Information, Naftali Karp at naftalikarp@gmail.com or 401-6323165.

Advanced Beginner and Intermediate Conversational Hebrew Classes. Mondays 7-8 p.m. Improve your speaking skills. Sponsored

by Temple Emanu-El and the Jewish Alliance. Offered via Zoom; Intermediate also offered in-person at the Dwares JCC (401 Elmgrove Ave., Providence). Information, Toby Liebowitz at tobyaane@gmail.com.

Beginner and Advanced Conversational Hebrew Classes.

Tuesdays 7-8 p.m. Improve your speaking skills. Sponsored by Temple Emanu-El and the Jewish Alliance. Offered via Zoom; Beginner also offered in-person at the Dwares JCC (401 Elmgrove Ave., Providence). Information, Toby Liebowitz at tobyaane@gmail.com.

Project Shoresh: For Young Professionals – A Walk Through Torah. Tuesdays 7-8 p.m. 132 Lancaster St., Providence. Explore the Five Books of Moses with Rabbi Chaim Yehuda and Mrs. Guta Shaps. RSVP (requested but not required) or information, text or call Rabbi Shaps at 732-822-0028.

Temple Habonim “The Wisdom’s Literature.” Wednesdays 11 a.m.-noon. Study the texts found in the Writings, the final section of the Hebrew Bible. These provocative texts offer perspectives on our relationship with God and the meaning and purpose of our lives.

Via Zoom. Information, Adina Davies at office@templehabonim.org or 401-245-6536.

Project Shoresh Men’s Partners in Torah Night. Wednesdays 7:45-8:45 p.m. Providence Hebrew

Day School, 450 Elmgrove Ave., Providence. Partner-based study group. On-site facilitators available.

Free. Information, Naftali Karp at naftalikarp@gmail.com or 401-6323165.

Temple Torat Yisrael Virtual Kabbalat Shabbat Songs & Torah Services. Fridays (except 3/18) 5:45-6:30 p.m. Led by Rabbi Aaron Philmus. For information or Zoom link, Temple@toratyisrael.org.

Temple Habonim Lunch and Learn via Zoom. Thursdays noon-1:30 p.m. Weekly Torah discussion with Rabbi Howard Voss-Altman. No Hebrew fluency or background in Jewish textual analysis needed.

Free. Information, Adina Davies at office@templehabonim.org or 401245-6536.

Cape Cod Synagogue Shabbat Services. Fridays 7 p.m., except second Friday of the month 6:30 p.m., when Family Shabbat Services take place. 145 Winter St., Hyannis, Mass. With Rabbi David Freelund. In-person and livestreamed on multiple platforms (website, Facebook, Cape Media, YouTube and Community Television Comcast channel 99). In-person for all ages with mask – proof of vaccination needed for those old enough to have been vaccinated.

Information, 508-775-2988 or capecodsynagogue.org.

Delve Deeper: “The Jews of Italy.” Thursdays 7:30-9:30 p.m.

Thru 4/7. Using primary and secondary sources, explore via Zoom the special position of Jews in Italy from the Roman Empire until the Holocaust. Instructor: Professor Dana W. Fishkin, Ph.D., associate professor of History & Humanities at Touro’s Graduate School of Jewish Studies in NYC. Cost: $250.

Information, Morty Miller at mortymiller1945@gmail.com.

Project Shoresh presents “Jew in 2022: Exploring a Meaningful Life” with Rabbi Eli Kasirer.

Thursdays 8-9 p.m. Providence Hebrew Day School, 450 Elmgrove Ave., Providence. Rabbi Moshe Don Kestenbaum’s book “Olam Ha’avodah – A guide to understanding and achieving our purpose in this world” will be the basis for discussion. Information, Naftali Karp at naftalikarp@gmail.com or 401-632-3165.

Music with Raymond Buttero via Zoom. Fridays 3-3:30 p.m. Temple Sinai’s pianist performs. Link at templesinairi.org. Information, dottie@templesinairi.org or 401942-8350.

Temple Sinai Shabbat Services.

Fridays 6 p.m., except 3/25, when joint Reform service will take place at 7:30 p.m. 30 Hagen Ave., Cranston. Song, prayer and reflection offered in-person or on Zoom. With Rabbi Jeffrey Goldwasser and Cantor Deborah Johnson. Zoom link at templesinairi.org. Information, dottie@templesinairi.org or 401-942-8350.

Project Shoresh Lively Kabbalat Shabbat. Fridays. Services will begin at the commencement of Shabbat. Contact for exact timing each week. Providence Hebrew Day School (side entrance), 450 Elmgrove Ave., Providence. Welcome Shabbat with a few inspiring words, melodious songs and traditional services. Open to all. Information, Naftali Karp at naftalikarp@ gmail.com or 401-632-3165.

Temple Beth-El Torah Study. Saturdays 9-10 a.m. (No Torah study second Saturday of the month.) 70 Orchard Ave., Providence. Delve into the weekly portion with Rabbi Sarah Mack and Rabbi Preston Neimeiser. Multi-access – in-person or via Zoom. Information, Joie Magnone at jmagnone@temple-beth-el. org or 401-331-6070, ext. 100.

Temple Beth-El Shabbat Morning Service. Second Saturday of the month 9-10:30 a.m. 70 Orchard Ave., Providence. Shabbat morning minyan with lay participation incorporating study, Torah and Haftarah readings. Multi-access: in-person or via Zoom. Information, Joie Magnone at jmagnone@temple-beth-el. org or 401-331-6070, ext. 100.

Temple Torat Yisrael Virtual and In-Person Shabbat Services. Saturdays 9:30-10:30 a.m. 1251 Middle Road, East Greenwich. Led by Rabbi Aaron Philmus. Information or Zoom link, Temple@toratyisrael. org.

Temple Sinai Shabbat Breakfast & Torah Study In-person and via Zoom. Saturdays 9:30-11 a.m. Temple Sinai, 30 Hagen Ave., Cranston. Breakfast followed by interactive discussion with Rabbi Jeffrey Goldwasser or others in the community. Zoom link at templesinairi.org. Information, dottie@ templesinairi.org or 401-942-8350.

Temple Habonim Torah Study.

Saturdays 10-11 a.m. Rabbi Howard Voss-Altman leads weekly Torah study. Via Zoom. Information, Adina Davies at office@templehabonim. org or 401-245-6536.

Cape Cod Synagogue Shabbat Services. Saturdays 10:30 a.m.

145 Winter St., Hyannis, Mass. With Rabbi David Freelund. In-person and livestreamed on multiple plat-

forms. Services are in-person with proof of vaccination; must wear a mask. Services also available on website, Facebook and YouTube.

Information, Cape Cod Synagogue at 508-775-2988 or capecodsynagogue.org.

Temple Sinai Shabbat Morning Service In-person and via Zoom.

Saturdays 11 a.m. (10:30 a.m. when celebrating a Bar or Bat Mitzvah)-noon. Temple Sinai, 30 Hagen Ave., Cranston. Information, templesinairi.org or Dottie at 401942-8350.

Friday | March 4

Jewish Alliance Blood Drive.

8:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Dwares JCC, 401 Elmgrove Ave., Providence.

Donations by appointment. Walkins only accepted if safe spacing permits at time of arrival. Eat, hydrate and bring identification with you. Information, Stephanie Hague at shague@jewishallianceri.org or 401-421-4111, ext. 127.

Temple Habonim Tot Shabbat.

6-6:30 p.m. 165 New Meadow Road, Barrington. Interactive service for families with young children. Experience the joy of Shabbat through music, story and prayer.

No RSVP necessary. Information, Adina Davies at office@templehabonim.org or 401-245-6536.

Project Shoresh Community Pre-Purim Shabbat Dinner.

6:45 p.m. Providence Hebrew Day School, 450 Elmgrove Ave., Providence. Beautiful dinner with the community. RSVP (required), projectshoresh.com or avigayilps@ gmail.com. Information, Naftali Karp at naftalikarp@gmail.com or 401632-3165.

Temple Beth-El Shabbat Service and Festive Oneg. 7 p.m. 70 Orchard Ave., Providence. In celebration of Judy Moseley’s decadelong tenure at the temple. In-person and livestreamed. Registration required. Information, Joie Magnone at jmagnone@temple-beth-el. org or 401-331-6070, ext. 100.

Sunday | March 6

Temple Torat Yisrael Sprouts Program: Purim. 9:30-10:30 a.m.

1251 Middle Road, East Greenwich.

Active program to learn about Jewish culture and holidays with Rabbi Aaron and Morah Leah.

For children ages 3-5 and their parents. Open to the community.

Cost: $10. COVID precautions will be taken. Activities will be outside, weather permitting. Dress accordingly. Information, temple@ toratyisrael.org.

Temple Beth-El Sisterhood Purim Virtual Cook-Along. 2-4 p.m.

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CALENDAR Master Chef Nancy Wolfson-Moche is a certified macrobiotic counselor, chef, cookbook author and educator. An ordained Kohenet (Hebrew Priestess), she presents eating as a sacred Jewish practice and creates symbolic meals and menus infused with meaning and ritual. Information, Deborah Gordon at dxgordon@gmail.com.

Tuesday | March 8

Graphic Novel Club for Teens. 6 p.m. Dwares JCC, 401 Elmgrove Ave., Providence. This group will meet the 2nd Tuesday of each month through May. March meeting will feature a discussion of “Snapdragon” by Kat Leyh. Offered via Zoom and in person. Information, Amit Oren at aoren@jewishallianceri.org or 401-864-3786.

Wednesday | March 9

Preserving Holocaust History: Collecting Artifacts and Researching Fates. Noon-1 p.m.

Virtual program presented by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s National Institute for Holocaust Documentation, which collects, preserves and makes accessible to the public Holocaust records and artifacts. Free. RSVP (to receive link), ushmm.org/events/new-england-collections. Information, USHMM Northeast Regional Office at northeastoutreach@ushmm.org.

Israeli Culture Series presents “Bedouins in Israel.” 7:30 p.m. Dr. Abu-Fraiha will discuss Bedouins in Israel’s Negev region and provide background on the communities.

She will illustrate how Bedouins are meeting challenges by telling some of her personal story as well as the stories of some entrepreneurs and NGOs within the Bedouin communities. Via Zoom. Free. Information, Amit Oren at aoren@jewishallianceri.org.

Friday | March 11

Temple Torat Yisrael TGIS Musical Family Shabbat. 5-5:30 p.m.

1251 Middle Road, East Greenwich.

In-person service with Shabbat songs and story led by Rabbi Aaron Philmus with dairy dinner to follow.

Open to all. Information, Temple@ toratyisrael.org.

Temple Beth-El Shabbat Hallelu Service. 6:30-8:30 p.m. 70 Orchard Ave., Providence. Hors d’oeuvres followed by a musical Shabbat featuring Temple Beth-El musicians and a short D’var Torah.

Information, Joie Magnone at jmagnone@temple-beth-el.org or 401-331-6070, ext. 100.

Sunday | March 13

Congregation Beth David Story Time and Crafts with PJ Library.

9:45 a.m. 102 Kingstown Road,

Narragansett. Explore a variety of PJ Library books and participate in crafts and games. Free. Synagogue membership not required. For ages 2-8. Information, Amanda Stevens at greenspan.amanda@gmail.com.

idence. Multi-access: in-person or livestreamed. Information, Joie Magnone at jmagnone@temple-beth-el.org or 401-331-6070, ext. 100.

You Are NOT Alone. 2 p.m. Aviv Tessler, director of the Education Department at the Haifa Rape Crisis Center, will share strategies for working with victims of sexual assault and how to prevent further abuse. Presented virtually by the Southern New England Consortium & Afula-Gilboa Partnership.

Information, Larry Katz at lkatz@ jewishallianceri.org or 401-4214111, ext. 179.

Sandra Bornstein Holocaust Education Center Baxt Series Lecture. 2 p.m. Cranston Public Library, 140 Sockanosset Cross Road, Cranston. Author Howard S. Veisz will discuss his book “Henny and Her Boat,” a story about the Danes’ defense and rescue of their Jewish countrymen during the years of Nazi occupation. Information, Kelly Vest at kvest@hercri.org.

Mi Ani? Who Am I? Navigating the Intersection Between Jewish and LGBTQ+ Identities. 4:30-6 p.m.

Temple Torat Yisrael, 1251 Middle Road, East Greenwich. Hear personal stories as well as Jewish and mental health perspectives to spark dialogue. All welcome. Brought to you by Temple Torat Yisrael, Jewish Collaborative Services and the Jewish Alliance. Information and RSVP, Esme Ginsburg at eginsburg341@student.egsd.net.

Wednesday | March 16

Temple Beth-El K’tantan Purim Carnival. 5:30-6:45 p.m. 70 Orchard Ave., Providence. Kids 0-5 are invited. Costumes encouraged. Information, Joie Magnone at jmagnone@temple-beth-el.org or 401-331-6070, ext. 100.

Temple Beth-El Purim Spiel: “And All That Spiel”: A Broadway Purim Spectacular. 6:45-8 p.m. 70 Orchard Ave., Providence. Megillah reading followed by the spiel at 7 p.m. Information, Joie Magnone at jmagnone@temple-beth-el.org or 401-331-6070, ext. 100.

Sunday | March 20

Monday | March 21

Passover and the Modern-Day Struggle for Freedom Series: Human Trafficking. 7-8:30 p.m.

Dwares JCC, 401 Elmgrove Ave., Providence. We retell the Passover story to remember our history and continue to live by these values today. First of a three-part series.

Presented by Naomi Baine and Rabbi Barry Dolinger, co-founders, Mitzvah Matzos. Information and RSVP, Stephanie Hague at shague@ jewishallianceri.org. or 401-4214111, ext. 127.

Wednesday | March 23

Temple Shalom Pirkei Avot Class on Forgiveness and Apology. 1 p.m. Second virtual Pirkei Avot class in the series. With Rabbi Daniel Kripper. Free. Information and Zoom link, templeshalomrhodeisland@gmail.com.

Thursday | March 24

Behind the Book: “Nevergreen.” 7-8 p.m. Dwares JCC, 401 Elmgrove Ave., Providence. Author Andrew Pessin will discuss his book “Nevergreen” – a portrait of today’s liberal arts college scene, cancel culture and more. Free. Presented by the Jewish Alliance in partnership with the Jewish Book Council.

RSVP (required) and information, Lisa Maybruch at lmaybruch@ jewishallianceri.org or 401-4214111, ext. 111.

Friday | March 25

Annual Joint Reform Service.

7:30-9:30 p.m. Temple Sinai, 30 Hagen Ave., Cranston. Reform congregations of RI – Temple Sinai, Temple Beth-El, Temple Habonim and the Newport Havurah – come together to celebrate Shabbat.

Featuring the Sephardic ensemble Klezwoods. Oneg Shabbat will follow with homemade Sephardic desserts. Sponsored by Temple

Sinai. In-person and via Zoom.

Information, templesinairi.org or 401-942-8350.

Sunday | March 27

PJ Library and Camp JORI Circus Schmooze. 1-3 p.m. Dwares JCC, 401 Elmgrove Ave., Providence.

Games, crafts, snacks and more.

Mingle with Camp JORI and PJ Library friends. Learn about RI’s only Jewish overnight camp. Take home a PJ Our Way book and camp swag. Free. Information and RSVP, Lyndsey Ursillo at lursillo@ jewishallianceri.org, Kara Liberman at kara@campjori.com or info@ campjori.com.

Monday | March 28

Passover and the Modern-Day Struggle for Freedom Series: Fair Trade and Workers’ Rights.

7 p.m. Dwares JCC, 401 Elmgrove Ave., Providence. We retell the Passover story to remember our history and continue to live by these values today. Second of a threepart series. Presented by Susan Sklar, manager, Interfaith Team, Equal Exchange. Information and RSVP, Stephanie Hague at shague@ jewishallianceri.org. or 401-4214111, ext. 127.

Thanking our Jewish neighbors for their support over the past 30 years!

Thursday | March 17

Providence Purim Parade. 10:30 a.m.-noon. In front of the Dwares JCC, 401 Elmgrove Ave., Providence. Annual parade through the streets of the East Side. Featuring live music, special attendees, unique and antique vehicles, costume contest, candy count and more. Information, provpurimparade@gmail.com or 845-521-4952.

Project Shoresh Purim Seudah/ Dinner. 5:30 p.m. Dwares JCC, 401 Elmgrove Ave., Providence.

The climax of Purim is the festive meal. This is a time of great joy, celebration and inspiration. Cost: $18. Information and RSVP, Naftali Karp at naftalikarp@gmail.com or 401-632-3165.

Friday | March 18

Temple Beth-El Shabbat Service.

7-8 p.m. 70 Orchard Ave., Prov-

Join us for half price appetizers and pizza daily 4-6pm Visit us at Stockfoodgroup.com 762 Hope Street, Providence 421-4114

8 | MARCH 2022

Jewish Rhode Island | jewishrhody.org

COMMUNITY VOICES | OPINION Glorifying CRT “I HAVE A DREAM that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” – Martin Luther King.

Farrel I. Klein Providence, RI

Watch for the annual Pet parade!

COMING IN MAY – Jewish Rhode Island’s annual Pet issue, featuring your favorite pet photos. Get ready to send in your best pictures of Fido and Fluffy. We love featuring your pets in our May paper, and we hear every year how much our readers love to see the photos of their pets.

You can send photos with pet owner’s name and town of residence to Editor, Jewish Rhode Island, 401 Elmgrove Ave., Providence, RI 02906. You can also post the photo electronically at JewishRhody.org. Click on the “Submit News” button on our home page and follow the instructions. Please remember to include contact information.

Complacencies of the peignoir, and late Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair, And the green freedom of a cockatoo Upon a rug mingle to dissipate The holy hush of ancient sacrifice ….

SO BEGINS “Sunday Morning,” the best known of the early poems of Wallace Stevens (1879-1955).

STEVENS’ groundbreaking poem, first published in November 1915, focuses upon the musings, the daydreaming, of a wellto-do American woman who, instead of joining her family, friends and neighbors at church, has chosen to spend this particular Sunday morning luxuriating in her nightgown while enjoying a late cup of coffee along with fresh oranges.

The woman seems to feel at least a little guilty as she wonders, “Why should she give her bounty to the dead?/What is divinity if it can come/Only in silent shadows and in dreams?/ Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,/In pungent fruit and bright, green wings…/Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?”

She struggles to convince herself that the source of personal bliss does not come from some God “out there,” but rather from the God within, from her human capacity to drink deeply, even reverently, from the joyfulness and profound beauty of our world.

And in the blur of her wandering thoughts, the woman hears a voice that denies the central proclamation of Christian faith,

EM

employed from 1916 until his death in 1955 – working his way up to the position of vice president. On the other hand, he was burdened throughout his life by poor physical health and relentless depression.

His marriage to Elsie Kachel in 1909 turned out to be deeply painful and unsatisfying to both of them.

During his lifetime, Stevens penned scores of aphorisms; one of them reads, “Loss of faith is growth.” It is comments like this that lead some readers to misread him as being anti-religious.

To the contrary, Stevens is a seeker of the kinds of spiritual growth offered by many of the world’s religions. What he is rejecting is the rigid “my way or the highway” religious views that he absorbed during his childhood in southeastern Pennsylvania.

As he wrote toward the end of his life to the literary critic Sister Mary Benetta Quinn, “I am not an atheist, although I do not believe in the same God in whom I believed when I was a boy.”

the resurrection of Jesus as the Christ: “The tomb in Palestine/Is not the porch of spirits lingering./It is the grave of Jesus/ Where he lay.”

On the basis of this poem, many readers of Stevens have concluded that he is a “post-Christian poet,” RABBI JAMES but it seems ROSENBERG to me that it is foolish to give Stevens this label on the basis of a single poem that overflows with ambivalence and ambiguity.

During the course of his on-and-off writing career, Stevens com‘I am not an atheist, posed 400 or so published poems – some although I do not less than 10 lines, although his seven longest contain several believe in the same hundred lines each.

God in whom I believed While it cannot be denied that “Sunday when I was a boy.’

Morning” is one of Stevens’ most studied To which I feel compoems, it needs to be evalupelled to comment: Thank ated within the entirety of God! Who of us in midlife his writing. or beyond has maintained To get a sense of the the innocence and naivety trajectory of Stevens’ of our childhood notions poetry, we need to know of God? something about his life, I would suggest that which turns out to have much of Stevens’ poetry been neither an easy nor reflects – to echo the words a happy one. Yes, he was of the Israeli scholar Rabbi financially successful as Adin Steinsaltz – a strife a lawyer for the Hartford of the spirit. Stevens Accident and Indemnity struggled throughout his Company, where he was

S TO M

E

Ryan Forman [February 2022] has glorified the new racism, “Critical Race Theory.” This is a Marxist theory that attempts to blame disparities on “whiteness” and “white supremacy.” There are racists among all ethnic groups.

“Social Justice” stokes grudges by blaming disparities on the successful. How is blaming “whiteness” any different than blaming “blackness” or any ethnicity not a new form of racism? If society wishes to improve the lot of the poor, it would make sense to eliminate ideologies and welfare policies that promote lack of commitment of fathers, to allow parents who wish their children to escape the union/government plantation schools to choose where their children are educated, and to provide better law enforcement so the overwhelmingly poor victims of crime feel safe in their neighborhoods. Schools should teach history, including slavery in the US and all over the world. Schools should not be teaching that the color of skin determines achievement in the current United States.

Identity politics is fracturing the country.

Poet Wallace Stevens’ quest for meaning

IT S E

LETTER

life with the death of the God of his childhood. He is forever looking for a replacement for the religion he has abandoned; his new religion lives in the audacious imagination and the verbal majesty of his poetry.

Stevens’ spiritual inventiveness is embodied in such early poems as “The Snowman,” “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” and “The Emperor of Ice Cream,” through such late poems as “St. Armorer’s Church from the Outside.” The differing and often conflicting perspectives among Stevens’ many poems serve to celebrate his strife of the spirit.

It is not clear whether the chaplain/priest at St. Francis Hospital, in Hartford, actually baptized Stevens and gave him communion on his deathbed. But from all that I have read on the subject and from my close reading of many of his poems, I find no reason to doubt Stevens’ conversion to Catholicism.

The noted academic Mary Ann Glendon remarked in a 2019 essay, “It seems that if there is anything about Stevens that annoys the high priests and priestesses of the literary establishment more than his having been a successful businessman and a Republican, it is the suggestion that he might have become a Catholic.”

Wallace Stevens died on Aug. 2, 1955, two months before his 76th birthday.

May his words continue to inspire and to challenge his many readers – from generation to generation.

JAMES B. ROSENBERG is a rabbi emeritus at Temple Habonim, in Barrington.

Contact him at rabbiemeritus@templehabonim.org.

Jewish Rhode Island publishes thoughtful and informative contributors’ columns (op-eds of 500 – 800 words) and letters to the editor (300 words, maximum) on issues of interest to our Jewish community. At our discretion, we may edit pieces for publication or refuse publication. Letters and columns, whether from our regular contributors or from guest columnists, represent the views of the authors; they do not represent the views of Jewish Rhode Island or the Alliance.

MARCH 2022 | 9

jewishrhody.org | Jewish Rhode Island

OPINION

The Jewish community and the stain of denial

BY NINA TANNENWALD IT’S A SAD DAY when Jews pretend that international human-rights standards do not apply to Israel.

Jews have a long history of support for human rights.

The Jewish community should therefore respond to recent reports that describe Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians as apartheid, not simply reject the reports out of hand.

Jews have played a central role in the creation of international human rights. The man behind the 1948 Genocide Convention, the very first human-rights treaty, was Rafael Lemkin, a Polish Jewish refugee.

During that same period, Rene Cassin, a French Jewish jurist and judge, played a leading role in drafting the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the founding document of modern international human rights. In 1968, he won a Nobel Peace Prize for this work. Today, the European Court of Human Rights (where he served as

president) is situated on the 100 countries, investigating Amnesty International’s Rue Rene Cassin, in Strashuman-rights abuses by gov270-page analysis, released on bourg, France. ernments, insurgent groups, Feb. 1, is only the latest report Jews also founded the corporations and others. to describe Israel’s treatment world’s leading human-rights Kenneth Roth, the director of Palestinians as apartheid. advocacy organizations. since 1993, is Jewish (and a It follows reports in the last Amnesty International, the graduate of Brown Univertwo years by B’Tselem, Israworld’s oldest and largest el’s largest human-rights human-rights organiorganization; Yesh Din, This proud legacy and zation, was founded by another Israeli humanPeter Benenson, a British rights group; and Human lawyer, in 1961. Benenson deep Jewish commitment Rights Watch that made was born in London to similar arguments. to human rights arises out a large Jewish family.

These reports are painIn 1977, the organizaful to read. Amnesty Interof horrendous experiences. national calls Israel’s treattion was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for ment of Palestinians “a its work on prisoners of cruel system of domination sity). conscience. Today, Amnesty and a crime against humanThis proud legacy and ity.” The group reaches International has 10 million deep Jewish commitment this conclusion by applying grassroots supporters around to human rights arises out standards of international the world. of horrendous experiences. law, which outline the crime Human Rights Watch, the Jews know what it means to of apartheid, not by comparother leading human-rights be denied dignity and rights. ing Israel to apartheid South organization, was founded in So it is deeply disappointAfrica. The report states that 1978 by Robert L. Bernstein, a ing to see the mainstream key components of Israel’s publisher and rights advocate. American Jewish commusystem are “territorial fragIt began as Helsinki Watch, nity’s knee-jerk rejection mentation, segregation and a group created to monitor of Amnesty International’s control, dispossession of land Soviet compliance with the recent report on Israel [“U.S. and property and the suppreshuman-rights provisions of officials decry Amnesty Intersion of Palestinians’ human the 1975 Helsinki Accords. national’s use of ‘apartheid’ development and deprivation Human Rights Watch has to describe Israel,” February of their economic and social grown to almost 500 full-time 2022]. rights.” staff members who work in

Of course, the Israeli government has rejected the report as biased against Israel. In this, the Israeli government has behaved no differently from any other country scrutinized for its human-rights policies. When one reports uncomfortable truths about governments, no one should be surprised when government spinmeisters trot out denials.

But the American Jewish community can do better. The continued oppression and domination of Palestinians

by Israel is the single biggest moral stain on the Jewish community today. The longstanding Jewish commitment to international human rights should lead us to engage with these reports, and then to take action to bring the illegal and immoral situation they describe to an end.

NINA TANNENWALD teaches international human rights at Brown University.

The U.S. Constitution, not Marxism, is the law of the land

BY MOSES MORDECAI TWERSKY PROGRESSIVE POLITICIANS in Congress spin out the notion that a minority of Americans are growing too rich and the rest of Americans are therefore getting poorer. Their solution for this economic disparity is to tax the rich heavily and have the government redistribute the money to poorer Americans.

The objective is ostensibly to equalize all Americans economically.

The progressive theory behind this uniformity proposal is contained in critical race theory, which itself is rooted in Marxist ideas, such

as material determinism.

For racially oriented historians, the American experiment has been unfair from the very beginnings of the settlement of the coastline in Virginia in 1619, because that is where the first African slaves were brought.

But it was Carolina that saw the arrival, in 1670, of Barbados-style slave plantations, and the concomitant leisure-gentry class, which cemented the cancer of Black slavery in the Confederacy.

That was one strand in American development. The other strand, which stood opposed to this Southern development, was epitomized

by Massachusetts – and espe-

cially the English Puritans, led by John Winthrop, who settled in and around Boston in the 1630s. Winthrop saw America as the New Jerusalem, and created a Christian Old Testament theocracy in Massachusetts.

What came out of Massachusetts was the basis for the characteristics of the North – an ethic of hard work, frugality, idealism and religion that would strongly oppose the gentry-plantation class that lived off the work of millions of Black slaves.

What the progressives of today do not realize is that the development of the U.S. was due to the impact of laws, specifically our Constitution, and

the legal inheritance from English law, as well as Americans’ religious roots. It was not due to Marxist economic theory, which postulated a Black proletariat that has still not found freedom.

The quest for uniformity to coerce economic equality means impairment of our free-market system. In Federalist 10, James Madison profoundly disagrees with this quest, writing, “The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government ….”

In the 1800s, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall supported the Constitution as the supreme law of the land (Marbury v. Madison, 1803), and strongly supported market capitalism as the proper economic structure for U.S. and its development.

Furthermore, in 1819, in McCulloch v. Maryland, Chief Justice Marshall upheld the power of Congress to incorporate the Second Bank of the United States, while denying the right of a state to tax the bank.

In contrast to Marshall’s compelling arguments for the supremacy of the U.S. Constitution, John C. Calhoun of CONTINUED ON PAGE 12

10 | MARCH 2022

Jewish Rhode Island | jewishrhody.org

FOOD

Jessica Seinfeld shows us how to be vegan ‘at times’

BY RACHEL RINGLER (NEW YORK JEWISH WEEK VIA JTA)

J

essica Seinfeld’s parents were true children of the ’60s. They did yoga before it was cool and served their three daughters brown rice, tofu

and wholesome cereal purchased in their local food co-op in Burlington, Vermont.

THE YOUNG JESSICA, embarrassed by their focus on healthy eating, “always wanted regular cereal that you could buy on the shelves of typical supermarkets.”

These days Seinfeld, 50 – the wife of comedian Jerry, of course, and a mother of three – is known for being a devotee of healthy food.

Her first cookbook, 2007’s “Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food,” which included strategies for sneaking pureed veggies into meals, was a bestseller.

Since then, Seinfeld has devoted much of her time to thinking about getting families to eat healthfully. In addition to running Good+Foundation, a NYC-based nonprofit that aims to dismantle multi-generational poverty, she’s authored four additional cookbooks.

Each one tackles a different food-related problem and provides solutions. With her latest, “Vegan, at Times: 120+ Recipes for Every Day or Every So Often,” she shares meat-, egg- and dairy-free recipes she has developed for herself and her family.

And yet, Seinfeld insists you don’t have to be vegan to enjoy her recipes. Eating vegan meals doesn’t mean you have to swear off a good steak or a piece of fish forever – she certainly hasn’t.

“My entire life, I have been having bagels and lox every Sunday,” Seinfeld said. “When I married Jerry, we continued that tradition and my kids rely on it.”

These days, Seinfeld’s dream bagel order is a toasted everything flagel (flat bagel) with scallion

mornings and Jewish holidays, though, Seinfeld is mostly vegan.

She writes that when she was in her 40s, she began to notice a connection between what she ate and how she felt. “I realized that what I ate could either drain me or invigorate me,” she writes.

Once she considered how veganism is good for the planet and good for animals, Seinfeld was all in – well, mostly in.

But Seinfeld didn’t immediately get on a soapbox. Instead, she slowly experimented with recipes. The first vegan recipe that her family unanimously approved, which is in the new cookbook, was her egg- and butter-free banana bread.

She baked it, left it on the countertop in the kitchen, and returned not long afterwards to find just a few remaining crumbs. The kids

cream cheese, tomato, red onion – hold the lox. Her husband, Seinfeld said, enjoys his plain bagel topped with veggie cream cheese, Zabar’s double-smoked lox, tomato and red onion with a big sour pickle on the side.

In other words, being vegan “at times” means you don’t have to give anything up. As Seinfeld writes in the book’s introduction: “It’s time to eat, enjoy and live your life without fear of judgment.”

Veganism, and even “part-time” veganism, like Seinfeld’s, is on the rise.

While 9.7 million Americans identified themselves as vegan in a 2019 survey by Ipsos Retail Performance – a number that held steady from 2012 – Gallup found in 2020 that nearly a quarter of Americans reported eating less meat that year than they had previously.

According to a January 2022 story from Insider, in 2020, the plant-based foods market was worth $29.4 billion and could grow to $162 ‘It’s time to eat, enjoy billion in 2030.

That’s not because and live your life without more people are becoming vegans; fear of judgment.’ instead, “non-vegans are helping didn’t know that they had fuel the plant-based boom just devoured one of mom’s by trying to cut down on vegan creations. their meat, fish, and dairy “It’s through desserts that intake.”

Seinfeld serves traditional I got my children on board,” said Seinfeld, adding that foods for Shabbat and Jewthey came to realize “vegan ish holidays: brisket, kugel food does not have to taste and homemade, braided like kale and spinach.” challahs coated with an egg Other desserts in the book wash for a beautiful finish. include a chocolate sheet “I am not willing to give up cake, made with ripe banana on that flavor or that color,” and olive oil and iced with a she said. combination of coconut oil Aside from Sunday and cocoa powder. There’s

also a carrot cake with unsweetened applesauce and sweetened coconut and frosted with a vegan cream cheese which she happily would make for her nonvegan friends.

The recipes are meant not only to be delicious, but easy-to-make (like her Easy Green Hummus) and affordable. “I keep perspective on how hard many people struggle in this country to afford – especially right now with inflation – groceries and dinner,” she said. “The ingredients are all accessible because we [Seinfeld and her co-author, Sara Quessenberry] shopped at typical grocery stores. We did not go to fancy gourmet shops.”

Seinfeld is a fan of the vegetable-forward cuisine coming out of Israel. “Tel Aviv is one of my favorite cities in the whole world,” she said. “I love Israeli food and I love that America is

responding to it.”

Like all of Seinfeld’s previous cookbooks, “Vegan, at Times,” which was published last November, is a New York Times bestseller.

And, Jerry’s response, according to Seinfeld, has been enthusiastic, too: He is “blown away by the book’s success and people’s response to it,” she said.

But let’s get to the opinions of the people who really matter. Just how exactly do those “‘60s cats” – how Seinfeld describes her parents – feel about their daughter’s latest food foray?

“My mom is obsessed with the book,” she said. “She sends me photos three or four times a week of dishes she is making. Her friends are cooking from the book, too.”

MARCH 2022 | 11

jewishrhody.org | Jewish Rhode Island

UP FRONT CONTINUED FROM PAGE 4 I didn’t know. I didn’t have a lot of theoretical knowledge.

I needed the terminology and the historical examples to put it in place for me.”

Bernstein completed both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in music education at URI, graduating in 1986.

While in school, he continued to perform publicly, but now it was with established local musicians. One was the late Mac Chrupcala, who performed in Newport’s busy nightclubs and also taught music in the town’s public schools.

“He was a local legend,” Bernstein said. “I felt very honored that he would ask me to play with him in his ensembles. He kind of mentored me.”

Chrupcala introduced Bernstein to the idea of teaching music during the day and performing at night.

The demand for live music in Newport was boundless, and a skilled musician could book shows every night of the week. Teaching during the day meant a salary and health benefits, exactly what Bernstein needed to start a family.

In 1986, Bernstein was hired to teach in the Fall River, Massachusetts, public schools. He worked there for a year, learning the ins and outs of public education, before Chrupcala alerted him to an open teaching position back in Newport.

“I was torn, because I loved teaching in Fall River,” Bernstein said.

“They were a wonderful community. The children were wonderful. The administration was wonderful.

And I really developed a close, warm relationship with the staff and students and families. But Newport was my home, and that was where I went.”

For nearly three decades, Bernstein was a cornerstone of music instruction in Newport. Generations of pupils passed through his classrooms, learning a variety of instruments and genres, from band to jazz band to orchestra. He became a supervisor of music, then a supervisor of the arts.

“I had a wonderful career there,” Bernstein said of his public-school years. “I taught pretty much everything that can be taught.”

Along the way, Bernstein’s daughter, Chelsea, became an instrumentalist, mastering both the cello and the viola da gamba. She went

on to receive a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Maryland’s School for Music.

Toward the end of Bernstein’s teaching career, another opportunity came knocking: the Community String Project. Bernstein didn’t create the string project, which opened in 2009, but he was closely associated with its founder, Robert Arsenault.

Arsenault was the chair of the Performing Arts Department at Mount Hope High School, in Bristol, and he took inspiration from the “El Sistema” music education program in Venezuela.

The idea was to provide affordable instruction in stringed instruments. Tuition is heavily subsidized, so classes are accessible to almost any household. That first summer, 33 students started learning violin.

After retiring from the Newport Public Schools in 2015, Bernstein became executive director of the string project. He had already served as a consultant for the curriculum, and he knew the project’s model well.

“Empathy is a really strong skill. There’s all sorts of people in this world. The children have various ways of learning,” he said. “If you just open your eyes and listen to what the children are saying to you, you can see what their needs are.

It’s your job to be loving, fair, empathetic, nurturing.

I guess that would be my philosophy.”

As executive director, Bernstein has helped make sweeping improvements to the project, from digitizing enrollment to streamlining donations and filling out a roster of 10 artist-teachers.

Most students are young, but the project has adult classes and ensembles as well.

These days, Bernstein continues to perform, including a regular gig at Johnny’s Restaurant at the Wyndham Newport Hotel.

He rarely teaches now, but his dynamic style remains an inspiration to many.

Go to JewishRhody.org to hear Bernstein perform and discuss his career.

ROBERT ISENBERG (risenberg@jewishallianceri.org) is the multimedia producer for the Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island and a writer for Jewish Rhode Island.

LCOME! ALL ARE WE

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S T N D S! Grades K - 6: Campers PARE Grades 7 - 10: Counselor-in-Training (CIT) More information about Summer J-Camp coming soon at jewishallianceri.org.

Questions? Contact Jimmy Rawl at jrawl@jewishallianceri.org.

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Jewish Rhode Island | jewishrhody.org

OPINION

Duke U student government recognizes campus Zionist group (JTA) – Duke University’s student government granted recognition to a Zionist student group, reversing an earlier decision that had provoked the ire of some national Jewish organizations and a legal threat to the university administration.

In 2021, Duke’s student body president had vetoed a request for recognition by the Duke chapter of Students Supporting Israel over concerns that an Instagram comment of the group’s, which had implored a student to “please allow us to educate you,” had been “potentially hostile or harmful.”

That decision didn’t sit well with outside advocacy groups like the Brandeis Center for

Human Rights, the Israel on Campus Coalition and the Zionist Organization of America. All issued statements condemning the university and prompted Duke’s Offices of Institutional Equity and Conduct and Community Standards to investigate whether the SSI veto had been discriminatory. The pro-Israel watchdog group Canary Mission accused the student body president of “antisemitic hypocrisy.”

In December, the Brandeis Center attempted to legally pressure Duke administration to override the student government’s decision.

But in the end, the students sorted it out themselves. On Feb. 23, according to available meeting minutes, the student gov-

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 9

ernment voted to approve a re-submitted proposal from SSI to become an officially recognized student organization within the school’s Student Organization Finance Committee.

The vote to approve the group was unanimous, with some students abstaining.

Duke SSI’s submission for recognition described the group’s mission as “a clear and confident pro-Israel voice on college campuses, and to support students in grassroots pro-Israel advocacy.”

In a statement, the Brandeis Center praised the decision, while claiming the SSI group’s initial recognition was revoked “all because they support Israel.”

South Carolina, the preeminent slave state, authored the Nullification Doctrine (1828), a complex theoretical work with three principal points: that the states had agreed to the U.S. Constitution as sovereign entities; that they could therefore nullify federal laws; and that since the states were sovereign, they could secede from the U.S. Calhoun was a strong supporter of slavery, and his state, and the 10 other Confederate states, adopted his philosophical justification for secession. This was a completely false theory. James Madison, the fourth President of the United States and one of the major writers of the Constitution, was from the Virginia planter class and was very sensitive to states’ rights. He was appalled by Calhoun’s idea of state sovereignty, and sharply rebuked it.

However, the South’s slave culture was so strong that they thought they could successfully make war against their Northern brethren, and the new Republican Party, led by President Abraham

Lincoln. This was a grievous decision. Some 400,000 Union soldiers died fighting against slavery, and hundreds of thousands were wounded.

Progressives’ support of critical race theory, which uses Marxist ideas, blames the cancer of slavery for racial economic disparities today. This is a questionable view.

The Declaration of Independence, which Lincoln quoted in the Gettysburg Address, envisions “a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

Liberty posits a differentiation of talents and achievements, but equality of spirit before the Divine.

MOSES MORDECAI TWERSKY of Providence has a master’s degree in American history from Providence College. He is a scion of the Chernobyl Belz Makarov Hasidic rabbinical dynasty. His novel “Love Story in Greenwich Village: New York Iranian Adventure,” was published in January 2021 by Omniscriptum and is available on Amazon.

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COMMUNITY

Treats for Adar

Visit JewishRhody.org to hear the latest episode or to replay a favorite Our entire first season is now available! Join host Adam Greenman and local leaders from throughout greater Rhode Island.

PHOTO | PHDS

IN HONOR of Rosh Chodesh Adar I all Providence Hebrew Day School students were given “scratch art” masks to take home and decorate. This was so much fun! The Rosh Chodesh treat was sponsored by Stuart and Chary Greengart in memory of Mr. Greengart’s father whose yahrzeit is during Adar I.

Explore strengths, challenges and favorite moments as they discuss the ways human connection interplays with the titles we hold.

CHUTZPAH! IS ALSO AVAILABLE ON SPOTIFY AND APPLE PODCASTS

New episodes drop every two weeks.

Behind the Book a visiting author series

Nevergreen with Andrew Pessin March 24, 7:00pm

A chance encounter–if it is by chance– gives J. the opportunity of a lifetime. A physician in a midlife funk, he is invited to speak at a small college. But when he arrives at the secluded island campus of Nevergreen College he gets a lot more than he bargained for. No one actually shows up for his talk, but that doesn’t stop it from becoming the center of a firestorm of controversy—with potentially fatal consequences.

Florence Adler Swims Forever with Rachel Beanland April 3, 4:00pm

And A Cat From Carmel Market* with Alyssa Satin Capucilli May 5, 6:00pm

Beautiful Country with Qian Julie Wang | May 16, 6:30pm Qian Julie was born in Shijiazhuang, China. At age 7, she moved to Brooklyn, New York, with her parents.

For five years thereafter, the three lived in the shadows of undocumented life in New York City. Qian Julie’s first book is a poignant literary memoir that follows the family through those years, as they grappled with poverty, manual labor in sweatshops, lack of access to medical care, and the perpetual threat of deportation.

This event is made possible by a partnership with the Jewish Book Council, and sponsored by the Jewish Alliance’s Community Relations Council and the Interfaith Coalition of Rhode Island.

To learn more about the books and authors featured in this series, and to sign up, visit jewishallianceri.org/behind-the-book/ or scan here using your smart phone This series is in partnership with the Jewish Book Council, with select events sponsored by PJ Library*

14 | MARCH 2022

Jewish Rhode Island | jewishrhody.org

COMMUNITY VOICES

Twelve thoughts in tribute to one great quarterback T 6 o honor the retirement of former New England

Patriots quarterback Tom Brady – who spent 20 years in Foxboro and is known as “TB12” after

some local officials, insist on comparing pandemic medical policies to the Nazis’ Final Solution, it’s time to say enough!

Holocaust education update: One of

his jersey number – I’ve written 12 mini-columns about sports and other topics.

1

Brady proved me wrong: Two years ago,

in February 2020, I wrote that Brady was challenging Father Time by not calling it a career instead of becoming a free agent.

Brady, of course, left the New England Patriots and signed with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, where he won his seventh Super Bowl. He retired on Feb. 1 – although there’s been speculation that his retirement may be short-lived.

2

Misplaced anger: No fan base

SPE A

3

K IN

Ortiz is a Hallof-Famer: Speaking

of David Ortiz, he deserved to be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame on the first ballot, which he was. He repeatedly delivered for the Red Sox in a clutch, especially in the playoffs. Although he got just under 78% of the votes cast (75% is needed for election), that total compares favorably to the

4

They’re stealing spring: There is no joy

in Mudville as the baseball lockout, which the owners imposed on Dec. 2, has so far denied fans the ritual – and pleasure – of spring training. Even if talks lead to an agreement in time to play a full season, both sides have shown that they don’t care about the fans; the lockout followed the pandemic-shortened 2020 season and 2021, when most ballparks weren’t at full capacity until LARRY almost June.

KESSLER Rhode Island and Southeastern Massachusetts fans should be particularly miffed as this dispute follows the cancellation of the 2020 Pawtucket Red Sox season, its last at McCoy Stadium, due to the virus and the team’s move to Worcester last year.

G OU

T

holds a grudge like New England’s. Instead of being happy for Brady, radio talk shows for several days after his retirement announcement were full of people lamenting that he didn’t mention the Patriots or their fans in his original Instagram post.

Even after he released a follow-up video, thanking Pats’ fans, many were still upset.

Those complaints were shortsighted. The GOAT was the most amazing Boston-area athlete I’ve ever watched. And I don’t say that lightly, given that in my lifetime I’ve seen these Boston sports legends play: Ted Williams, 1967 Impossible Dream hero Carl Yastrzemski and David Ortiz (Red Sox); Bill Russell and Larry Bird (Celtics); and Bobby Orr (Bruins).

votes received by the legendary Jackie Robinson in 1962. Robinson was also elected the first time he was on the ballot – but should have been a unanimous choice.

Believe it or not, the Major League’s first Black player, with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, got just under 78% of the vote.

5

Stop trivializing the Holocaust:

Those who angrily oppose vaccine and mask mandates and other pandemic rules should stop comparing those actions to the Holocaust, when 6 million Jews and more than 5 million other individuals, for a total of 11 million, were slaughtered by Nazi Germany during World War II. It’s bad enough when people who are ignorant of the Holocaust repeatedly use such a despicable analogy, but when politicians, such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., members of Congress and even

the best ways to combat such thinking is to increase Holocaust education, so here’s an update to stories I wrote last summer for Jewish Rhode Island about where Holocaust education is mandatory.

Massachusetts became the 24th state (and the fifth in New England – all but Vermont) to require Holocaust education when Gov. Charlie Baker signed the genocide education bill into law in December. The legislation requires middle and high schools to incorporate the history of genocide, including the Holocaust, into their curriculum. It also creates a Genocide Education Trust Fund to ensure that teachers have the resources and training to develop the new curriculum.

Since my stories ran last August, the following states have also passed mandatory Holocaust education laws, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: Georgia, Maine, North Carolina and Tennessee.

7

A new Olympic sport? How about

adding car-scraping to the 2026 Winter Games? I burned a lot of calories scraping off my ice-encrusted car and windshield when the temperature plunged hours after we got hit with heavy rain, freezing rain, ice and snow, in that order.

8

Pandemic perspective:

The opening paragraph of my first pandemic-related column, two years ago, published online in March 2020 and in the April 2020 newspaper, now sounds like a huge understatement: “Uncertainty abounds over the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, but one thing is certain: No matter how long the outbreak and its fallout last, it has already hurt the quality of our lives and has made us care even more deeply about the kinds

of activities that we otherwise take for granted.”

No one in 2020 could have predicted that, two years later, COVID-19 would have killed over 930,000 Americans, caused havoc and division and changed our lives forever.

9

Pandemic misses: I resumed

road racing last summer, but have yet to resume many pre-pandemic pleasures, including going to a baseball game (my last one was in September 2019); concerts (my last was in November 2019); and watching a movie in a theater (February 2020).

10

Pandemic fears: I still keep

my distance from most people, and when I went to a neighbor’s holiday gathering, I wasn’t comfortable even though the adults were vaccinated. My psyche is so battered after two years of COVID-19 that I may never again feel comfortable around people indoors.

11

Brady or Belichick?

Which masks will be more popular at Purim carnivals – Brady or Patriots coach Bill Belichick? Neither? Masks showing what people’s smiles look like underneath our COVID masks?

12

Laughter is the best medicine: Watch

a Mel Brooks film and you’ll immediately feel better. “Young Frankenstein” and “Spaceballs” always do the trick for me.

LARRY KESSLER (larrythek65@ gmail.com) is a freelance writer based in North Attleboro. He blogs at larrytheklineup.blogspot.com.

MARCH 2022 | 15

jewishrhody.org | Jewish Rhode Island

COMMUNITY VOICES

More and more, I relate to Grumpy CH

I’m not even kidding in this rant. I would go so far as to assert that spell-check is lowering the level of American intelligence.

I can no longer bear to be in a room with a television and an audience uncertain of what to watch.

The very jumping from one choice to another seems to me a MIKE FINK perilous position, and I leave the chamber and climb the stairs to my solitude, where I continue my pleasantly lonely pursuit of thought, memory, consideration of an idea or the hunt for a lost thought.

BOOK

SKE

T

DOPEY WAS MY FAVORITE dwarf until recently. But now it’s Grumpy who appeals to me. My next purchase will be socks that proudly declare that I’m a grouchy grandpa.

To begin: I believe that fast editing causes brain damage. That loud ads that use such words as “now!” and “you deserve!” and “hurry!,” and that ignore the distinctions between “like” and “as,” and print “its” and “it’s” without distinction, are doing dangerous and irreversible damage to democracy.

If it were a summer month, I might be contemplating a butterfly that briefly disappears and then silently returns to a vine. But in crazy March, with its hares and its Hamans and its robins tucking their heads under their wings in the barn, I have only the Purim megillah to consider.

It is a Purim custom to leave a little treat on the doorstep of a neighbor. This reminds the household, if it happens to be connected to the tale of the hidden Esther, cousin of Mordecai, that there is tsuris ahead, so have a drink and a treat now, and put on a costume, but hold on to your Jewish identity and stand fast with its fables and

its facts.

American Jews are in trouble! We must summon the stubborn strength to stand up and be strong in the face of all forms of bigotry against us.

From the left, as from the right, there are ever-new dangers to our collective identity.

I even have a conspiracy theory: it’s the computer itself! It knows too much about each of us! I hate having to depend on computers, when in my boyhood, for one penny, I could reach out to the world. All I needed was a pen or a pencil.

So, think about your own life: Are we really better off with what we label “progress,” or, on the contrary, have we sold our birthright citizenship for the plastic conveniences of an overwrapped teabag?

Our world is now run by bosses who can hardly read a book, or a poem, or even tell a good slow Jewish joke.

MIKE FINK (mfink33@aol.com) teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design.

The ‘hidden’ miracles of Purim – and everyday life Y L I VI

HEA

TH

hear the plot to kill the king.

Haman happened to erect the gallows upon which he was eventually hanged .…

“There is no luck or coincidence here.

It’s all meant to be, directed behind the scenes by God’s guiding hand.”

I couldn’t agree PATRICIA more. I have had RASKIN so many miracles in my life! On the surface, they seemed like coincidences, but I know they were from God. In my book “Pathfinding, Seven Principles for Posi-

NG

L

MANY JEWISH holidays involve miracles, but I never thought to include Purim in this list until I read Slovie Jungreis-Wolff’s article “When God is Hidden: The Meaning of Purim” at aish. com.

“Purim’s miracles were intentionally hidden,” Jungreis-Wolff writes.

“Esther happened to be chosen. She happened to be Jewish. Achashverosh happened to be taken by her. We had one of our own in the palace and wow, were we lucky!

“Mordechai happened to

tive Living,” I write about my belief in miracles. I also believe we can create them with our thoughts.

We’ve all experienced those “coincidences” when someone we have just been thinking of calls us, or we bump into the person we really need to talk to, or we find the right thing at exactly the right time, or we miss a mishap by seconds.

But were they really just “coincidences”?

If you really want to experience a miracle, ask for it, pray for it and truly believe you will receive it. You won’t have to work at it because something greater than you is at work. I define that something as God.

For example, at one point, I was having a lull in my business and was getting concerned. I did some prayer about it. The very next day, out of the blue, I got a call from someone on the other side of the country who was referred to me by someone I had interviewed on my radio show three years earlier – someone I didn’t remember.

The person who called me became a client and paid half in advance on the spot! That to me is one of those hidden miracles that we might not always recognize.

Jungreis-Wolff concludes his article with: “The Book of Esther teaches us that even in the darkness of exile, even

in the looming shadows, we must never fear. God is watching over us. Perhaps His hand seems hidden. Perhaps the healing seems to be taking forever. We wonder, does God even care? ...

“Beneath the heavy clouds is the hand of God, tenderly watching over us.”

PATRICIA RASKIN, owner of Raskin Resources Productions, is a media host, coach and award-winning radio producer and business owner. She is on the board of directors of Temple Emanu-El, in Providence. She is a recipient of the Providence Business News 2020 Leaders and Achievers award.

TOBI & ZAIDE TOMER GET READY FOR PURIM! This year, I’m helping my

It’s a big deal. 8e ha&e to arrange

mom out with our world-

a donation, cast a dramatic

famous family Purim party.

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costume.

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and throw a huge party.

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necessary?

Absolutely!

Art and Dialogue by Kendall Krantz / Story by Amit Moshe Oren, Israeli Shaliach

16 | MARCH 2022

Jewish Rhode Island | jewishrhody.org

UKRAINE

18 things to know about Volodymyr Zelensky

BY PHILISSA CRAMER (JTA) – The world has had a crash course on Volodymyr Zelensky in recent days, as the Ukrainian president has galvanized his country against an unprovoked attack by neighboring Russia.

The broad strokes of Zelensky’s career have long been known to those who pay attention to Ukrainian politics – or to their spillover effects in American government. He’s young, funny, Jewish and committed to a strong democratic Ukraine, even at the risk of death. “I need ammunition, not a ride,” he reportedly told American authorities this week after they offered to evacuate him from Ukraine.

But as someone who has long been in the public eye, and not always in politics, Zelensky has left more to know than that. We scoured interviews in multiple languages, scrolled back through his social media posts and compiled some amazing YouTube clips to offer a more nuanced portrait.

Here are 18 things you should know about the man who has captured the world’s attention.

1. He had an “ordinary Soviet Jewish upbringing.” Zelensky told the Times of Israel in early 2020, on the eve of visiting Israel to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, that his family was typical of Soviet Jews in the 1980s when he was growing up. That meant, he said, that they were not religious, because “religion didn’t exist in the Soviet state as such.” Indeed, Jewish observance was illegal and Jews were routinely surveilled, although many Jews did preserve some elements of their Jewish identity as acts of resistance. If that was the case in Zelensky’s family, he hasn’t said so.

“I never speak about religion and I never speak about God because I have my own personal opinion about it,” he said in the interview. “Of course, I believe in God. But I speak with him only in those moments which are personal for me.”

2. He grew up in what was once known as the “Pale of Settlement.”

Like much of Ukraine, Zelensky’s hometown of Kryvyi Rih is located in the only region of the Russian Empire where Jews were permitted to live.

The area, known as the Pale of Settlement, was formed in the late 18th

and early 19th centuries after the Russian government barred Jews from living elsewhere under its supervision. Pogroms, or organized attacks against Jewish communities, originated in the Pale of Settlement and terrorized the Jews living there for generations.

3. As with most Ukrainian Jews, the Holocaust is part of his story.

Zelensky has said that his great-grandfather and three of his grandfather’s brothers died as a result of the Nazi invasion of Ukrainian territory.

His grandfather and his grandfather’s brothers took up arms against the Nazis in the Red Army; his grandfather was the only one to survive. He did not specify whether they died in combat or in the extended massacre of more than 1 million Ukrainian Jews that the Nazis carried out, often with local collaboration. His grandmother, he has said, survived because she left Kryvyi Rih for Kazakhstan; almost all of the Jews who remained were murdered. A Holocaust memorial not far from his parents’ home in Kryvyi Rih was defaced in January 2020.

4. He says being Jewish is a small part of his identity. Zelensky

rarely discusses his Jewish identity publicly, and by all accounts it was not a prominent part of his campaign, even by his detractors. Asked about his Jewishness by the French Jewish philosopher Bernard-Henry Levi in early 2019, Zelensky declined to explore it at length, Levy wrote when the interview appeared in the French newspaper Le Point. “The fact that I am Jewish barely makes 20 in my long list of faults,” he told Levi.

5. He has credited his Jewish parents with giving him his moral compass. Zelensky’s father,

Oleksander, is a mathematician who heads a university computer science department; his mother Rimma was an engineer for many years. He said in a 2018 interview, shortly before officially running for president, that because of them, he is unable to accept lies. “I always react painfully to lies,”

he said. “This is the main feature that my parents gave me.”

6. He has many personal ties to Israel.

Zelensky has said he has relatives who moved to Israel in the 1990s, during the wave of Jewish emigration from the newly dissolved Soviet Union.

He has also conducted business there as an actor and comedian, and performed in venues throughout the country. As Ukrainian president, he has visited just once, for the Holocaust commemoration shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic began. “I know Israel,” he said in the Times of Israel interview. “I know people there.”

7. Married for nearly two decades, he’s the father of two children.

Zelensky dated his wife Olena, a school acquaintance 11 days his junior, for eight years before they married in September 2003. Their daughter Oleksandra was born the following year, and they had a son, Kyrylo, in 2013. Olena has been an advocate for women and children since Zelensky took office, and on Tuesday she posted on Instagram about the bravery of Ukrainian women who are defending their country against the Russians.

Zelensky has said that his family remains in Ukraine but that he will not disclose their location; he told CNN on Tuesday that he had not seen them in three days.

8. He got a scholarship to study in Israel but

didn’t go.

In a 2018 interview

with a friend from the entertainment industry, he described scoring so high on an international English exam that he had an opportunity after high school to study in Israel. Most of his classmates took advantage of the option – he named one woman specifically who moved to Israel – but he did not, saying that his father prohibited him from moving. He studied law in Ukraine instead.

9. He won the Ukrainian equivalent of “Dancing with the Stars” in 2006.

10. His most prominent acting role foreshadowed his presidency. On the

political satire TV show “Servant of the People,” Zelensky played a history teacher so outraged by government corruption that he runs for president – and stuns the country and himself by winning. Produced by Zelensky’s company, the show aired on Ukrainian television from 2015 to 2019, its final episode launching just weeks before Zelensky was himself elected president.

11. He voiced Paddington in the Ukrainian-dubbed versions of the “Paddington” movies.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 19

jewishrhody.org | Jewish Rhode Island

MARCH 2022 | 17

JUDAICA AT BROWN RISD HILLEL ANNUAL EXHIBITION of the work of student artists from RISD and Brown is ongoing in the gallery at 80 Brown St., Providence, through March 20. For more information, see calendar listing on page 6.

Lily Joiner, left, and Bella Ferreira, right, both sophomores at RISD, look over a sculpture carved out of plywood by RISD student Asher White.

Ariel Aravot, left, shows glass work, “Negev,” to fellow RISD graduate student Jacob Sussman, right.

ABOVE: A tufted rug titled, “To Watch Your Child Play,” by Milo Kosofsky, a student at RISD. RIGHT: Nathan Allen, right takes in the art work with his fiancée Stephanie Gottlieb, a graduate student at RISD. GLENN OSMUNDSON / JEWISH RHODE ISLAND

“Dual Prayers,” an oil on canvas by RISD student Olivia Springberg.

A woodfire ceramic by RISD graduate student Jacob Sussman titled, “Innervation.”

18 | MARCH 2022

Jewish Rhode Island | jewishrhody.org

COMMUNITY

BUSINESS 28 | OBITUARIES 29

‘The Jews of Ukraine are part of our edah’ been mesmerized by the Russian invasion

of Ukraine. The human cost is horrifying, with many dead and injured; millions of people’s lives have become precarious.

I’VE VISITED Ukraine five times in the last 10 years.

In the past week, I’ve sent messages of support to many of the people I met there, including members of the Jewish communities of Lviv, Ternopil, Zbarazh, Kyiv, Cherkassy, Poltava and Lokhvytsya, my guides and several non-Jews who are attempting to preserve abandoned synagogues and Jewish cemeteries.

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said.

“Rabbi Dukhovny responded, ‘Thank you so much. I am in Kyiv! Just led a Kabbalat Shabbat service from a basement. Air strikes expected!

Praying for peace together!’ ” Then Rabbi PHOTO | COURTESY OF RABBI Mandel added, Jews pray in the basement of a synagogue in JONATHAN MARKOVITCH “The parashah Kyiv, Ukraine, Feb. 28, 2022. tells us, ‘Vayakhel Moshe at kol adat don’t have to be present bnei Yisrael. Then pants. I started thinking to be part of an edah. The Moses gathered together about the Jewish president Jews of Ukraine are part of all the people (literally, the of Ukraine. our edah.” entire community of the Volodymyr Zelensky After Shabbat, Rabbi children of Israel).’ It would had no political experience have been difficult to gather Dukhovny wrote, “The before he was elected pressecond night I am in the all the people. Moses must ident. He is an actor and a basement of the residential have gathered the leaders lawyer. (I think those are building. Crowded. Howof the community. The related professions, both ever, people are calm and word used, edah, refers to to each other and to polifull of optimism: peace will a community. For example, tics.) Today, he is a hero to prevail and Ukraine will our minyan is an edah. You Ukraine and an inspiration continue to keep its sovfor the whole world. ereignty and democracy!

How did he do it? It is his Amen!” down-home approach and As I walked in Boston on language – and that is not Sunday [Feb. 27], I came to an act! the end of a demonstration The Jews of Ukraine, Our Mission: To improve the supporting Ukraine that and all Ukrainians, have quality of life for those we serve. had about 5,000 particibecome part of our edah.

It is my hope that Rabbi BMW AUDI MERCEDES BENZ VOLKSWAGEN MINI Dukhovny’s wishes for peace, continued sovereignty and democracy will • Navigate the challenging process of be granted soon. providing care for a loved one.

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F

or over a week, we have

bat services at Newport’s Touro Synagogue, where I celebrated my Bar Mitzvah years ago. On Saturday, Feb. 26, during prayers for the sick, the Ukrainian defense forces were included.

As we prepared to return the Torah to the ark we recited prayers for the U.S. government and the Israeli government, and a combined prayer for the American, Israeli and Ukrainian defense forces.

Rabbi Marc Mandel quoted Rabbi Alexander Dukhovny’s response to my message. Dukhovny is the rabbi at the progressive (Reform) Hatikvah Synagogue, in Kyiv.

“Our congregant Aaron Ginsburg wrote, ‘Rabbi, I am very worried about my friends in Ukraine. My prayers are with you, Best, Aaron,’ ” Rabbi Mandel

MERCEDES BENZ VOLKSWAGEN MINI PORSCHE

BY AARON GINSBURG

AARON GINSBURG lives in Stoughton, Massachusetts and blogs at jewishnewport.blogspot.com. He helps reunite families separated over time by the Holocaust and the Soviet Union. He can be reached at aaron. ginsburg@gmail.com.

MARCH 2022 | 19

jewishrhody.org | Jewish Rhode Island

COMMUNITY CONTINUED FROM PAGE 16

12. He has … unconventional piano skills. One

piece of his comedy team’s shtick was to pound the keys with their pants at their ankles and their hands in the air – leaving little room for guessing how the music was getting made.

13. He likes dogs, working out and shawarma. Zelensky’s

pre-presidency Instagram account reflects his passions from before he was responsible for representing Ukraine on the world stage.

He frequently posted workout selfies, which continued at a less frequent pace after he became president. He also posted pictures of his dogs Peter and Nora. And shortly after taking office, he posted a picture of himself eating a shawarma sandwich, writing, “When you have a busy schedule, shawarma can be the solution. … For those in power, I recommend it!”

14. He went shirtless for his COVID vaccination. Most

world leaders posted pictures of themselves with rolled-up sleeves getting their inoculations against COVID19 in 2021. Zelensky went the distance, removing his shirt entirely, in a move that drew international side-eye.

15. The conversation about casting his inevitable biopic has already started. It’s unclear how the Volodymyr Zelensky movie will end, but his admirers have already started suggesting stars to play him. One suggestion that appears to have gained steam is Jeremy Renner, who has acted in war films and bears a resemblance to Zelensky. But Renner is not Jewish, leading some to suggest that he would not be an appropriate choice.

For his part, Zelensky was

dismissive of the adulation in a CNN interview from his bunker on Tuesday, saying, “It’s very serious, it’s not a movie … I’m not iconic, I think Ukraine is iconic.”

16. He reportedly changed the global response to Russia’s aggression this week in five minutes. Some world

leaders were reportedly hesitant to impose steep sanctions on Russia on Thursday night, after the first day of the country’s war on Ukraine. But after meeting with Zelensky by videoconference and hearing him deliver a five-minute, emotional appeal for aid, they changed course. “It was extremely, extremely emotional,” a European official briefed on the call told The Washington Post.

“He was essentially saying, ‘Look, we are here dying for European ideals.’ ”

Jews from Ukraine arrive at a Jewish community center in Chisinau, Moldova, Feb. 25, 2022.

17. He doesn’t like to lose.

In the 2018 interview with his entertainment industry friend, Zelensky characterized himself as someone who commits to a fight for the long haul – a resonant idea as his country nears the end of its first week at war with Russia. “I’m such a guy that if I get involved in a battle, I usually don’t get out of it. I can lose, but go out in the middle of it … no,” he said. “The white flag is not our flag!”

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18. People who know him say he is who he seems right now. “I’ve always

thought he is a person who has a profound sense of right and wrong,” a senior adviser to Zelensky told the Washington Post on the condition of anonymity in recent days. “He will never acquiesce when he thinks something is wrong.” The newspaper asked the adviser whether he believed Zelensky was prepared to die. “The adviser answered without hesitation: ‘Yes.’”

20 | MARCH 2022

Jewish Rhode Island | jewishrhody.org

COMMUNITY

Panel to explore the intersection between Jewish, LGBT identities Website Redesign Proposals Sought Organization seeking to hire a company to design and build new website.

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EAST GREENWICH High School senior Esme Ginsburg will host an in-person panel and discussion, “Mi Ani – Who Am I? Navigating the Intersection Between Jewish and LGBTQIA+ Identities,” on March 13 at Temple Torat Yisrael, in East Greenwich.

Ginsburg, who set up the event as part of their senior project, says they hope the program helps all of those who feel included, or excluded, from the Jewish or the LGBTQIA+ commuEsme Ginsburg nity to learn something about their peers and to create a safe environment for all to express themselves.

The panelists are: Rabbi Andrew Klein, who retired from Temple Habonim, in Barrington, in 2020, and who will share his personal perspectives and experiences; social worker Katie Giardino, who is part of

the Kesher team at Temple Sinai, in Cranston, and the clinical case manager for Jewish Collaborative Services, who will speak about how mental health plays an important role in the community; and Rabbi Aaron Philmus, of Torat Yisrael, who will provide a Jewish context.

The free program, on Sunday, March 13, from 4:30-6 p.m., at Temple Torat Yisrael, is co-sponsored by the Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island and Jewish Collaborative Services and is open to all. Please register at https://qrco.de/bcm7oJ or by emailing eginsburg341@student.egsd.net.

Temple Torat Yisrael is at 1251 Middle Road, East Greenwich.

Submitted by Esme Ginsburg

SUNDAY, APRIL 3

Good Deeds Day is an international day of service that was founded in Israel in 2007, now, with millions of people around the world participating annually. Join us on Sunday, April 3, for exciting service projects around our region!

More information coming soon at jewishallianceri.org/GoodDeeds/ 401 Elmgrove Avenue | Providence, RI 02906 | 401.421.4111 | jewishallianceri.org

MARCH 2022 | 21

jewishrhody.org | Jewish Rhode Island

COMMUNITY

Trans Jewish educator, performer keynotes annual URI symposium

T. Wise

minds and hearts. That would be the goal.”

She added, “Changing a mind is the hardest thing to

BY FRAN OSTENDORF

T

rans Jewish writer, educator, performer and social justice activist T. Wise will be the keynote presenter at the University of

Rhode Island’s 27th Annual LGBTQ+ Symposium, which is scheduled for March 23-24 on the Kingston campus.

ON WEDNESDAY, March 23, at 6 p.m., Christoph Green’s acclaimed documentary short film “Flux.1: T. Wise” will be screened in the Hope Room in the Higgins Welcome Center. Access will also be available on Zoom.

Wise will attend the screening and answer questions afterwards, along with his parents, Rabbi Irvin and Kathy Wise, who live in Barrington. Filmmaker Green will also attend and will take questions.

The 37-minute film is an intimate portrait of Wise, a Hebrew teacher living in Brooklyn, New York, who quits his job and gives up his apartment to follow his dream of pursuing a career in comedy just one year after beginning his transition from female to male.

The film follows Wise through the ups and downs of stand-up comedy as he performs at open-mic nights in bars, at parties for friends and at comedy clubs in New

York City. The viewer also spends time with Wise’s parents, as well as his sisters, friends and girlfriend. He is open about his sexuality, his emotional life and every other aspect of his life as a trans man.

In an interview, Rabbi Wise emphasized the importance of his son’s message for all Jews.

“As a rabbi, I think it’s really important for Jewish folks to know as much about LGBTQ issues as it is to know about issues of racism and poverty and justice equality.

It’s really important to educate ourselves to know more.

“We know in the Jewish community that there’s a lot of LGBTQ skepticism about how welcome they would be in the mainstream communities in the United States.”

Kathy Wise, an educator, said, “As in any area of relationships, whenever the human face can be inserted into the conversation, it is bound to open eyes, ears,

do.”

The film touches on many of the family’s emotions as the deeply connected Wises journey through T’s transition with him.

“To his credit, T shared all this, so we evolved,” said Rabbi Wise.

“T,” he said, “is committed to contributing to the ethical, spiritual moral evolution of this whole thing, to help families and communities get to where they need to get.

He could choose just to be private and quiet.”

Of his son’s transition, Rabbi Wise said, “It’s the good and right thing for who T is.

"He is a courageous and strong person.”

Kathy Wise agreed. She said T has said that he did not choose this, it is simply who he is.

On March 24, day two of the symposium, Wise and Green will work with URI students.

In a URI news release, Manuela Vadis, interim coordinator at the URI Gender and Sexuality Center and chair of the Trans Inclusion Events, Programs, and Services Subcommittee, said, “One of the goals of this program is to provide engaging events that move the campus toward greater inclusion and understanding of trans and nonbinary folks and their stories.”

Registration is required for in-person and Zoom attendance at the free film event.

Go to https://bit.ly/3t9aSz9.

FRAN OSTENDORF (fostendorf@jewishallianceri.org) is the editor of Jewish Rhode Island.

22 | MARCH 2022

Jewish Rhode Island | jewishrhody.org

COMMUNITY

Take a peek at Israel’s Bedouin community in March 9 program

Dr. Yasmeen Abu-Fraiha

BY LARRY KATZ

ON

LAND

IN

WATER

OR

ONLINE

401.421.4111

JewishAllianceRI.org 401 ELMGROVE AVENUE | PROVIDENCE, RI 02906 POWERED BY THE JEWISH ALLIANCE

HOW BEDOUINS MEET the challenges of living in Israel’s Negev is the topic for the Israeli Culture Series’ March program.

The Bedouins are nomadic Arab tribes in the Middle East, many of whom live in Israel’s southern desert, the Negev.

Despite disagreements with some of the Israeli government’s policies, Bedouins who live in Israel generally are known as loyal citizens whose men volunteer in Israel’s army.

In the March 9 Zoom program, Dr. Yasmeen Abu-Fraiha will discuss Bedouins in Israel’s Negev region, including the background of the communities and some of the challenges they face. She will illustrate how Bedouins are meeting these challenges by telling some of her own story, as well as the stories of some entrepreneurs and nonprofits in Bedouin communities.

Abu-Fraiha is a Bedouin doctor who specializes in internal medicine and is executive director of Rodaina, a nonprofit

she founded that aims to prevent genetic diseases in the Middle East, and especially in the Bedouin community, by spearheading premarital genetic testing and matching.

Abu-Fraiha also serves on the boards of several other social projects and nonprofits that aim to improve Bedouin lives in Israel.

The free virtual program on March 9 at 7 p.m., is part of the Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island’s Israeli Culture Series, which takes place on the second Wednesday of each month. The Consulate General of Israel to New England is a co-sponsor of this program.

For more information, contact Amit Moshe Oren at 401-421-4111 or AOren@ jewishallianceri.org.

LARRY KATZ (lkatz@ jewishallianceri.org) is the director of Jewish life and learning at the Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island.

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jewishrhody.org | Jewish Rhode Island

COMMUNITY

Rabbi Sanders offers inspiration from Purim story

New Adult Hebrew Class Level May Be Available A COUPLE OF PEOPLE have asked for the most basic Hebrew class level— learning how to read and the very basics of Hebrew conversation. If sufficient people are interested, the Jewish Alliance and Temple Emanu-El will offer a class at this level.

This class would be conducted in person at the Dwares JCC. Currently, four other levels of Hebrew conversation are offered weekly on Monday and Tuesday nights at 6:30 pm for one hour. Most take place on Zoom, thought there is an in person option for a couple of the classes.

These classes range from beginners who have already mastered the basics to people who are

mostly fluent in speaking Hebrew.

The next set of classes will begin towards the end of March. Co-sponsored by Temple Emanu-El and the Jewish Alliance, the cost is $100 for every eight sessions.

Some financial aid is available. Links to the Zoom will be forwarded after registration. For more information and to determine for which level class you should register, please contact Toby Liebowitz at tobyaane@ gmail.com .

Whether you want to visit Israel, just want to exercise your brain or spend a fun and challenging evening hour in Hebrew conversation, please join us.

Rabbi Moise Sanders speaks.

PROJECT SHORESH kicked off its many Purim events with inspirational words from Rabbi Moshe Sanders titled “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” One of the rabbis on the Project Shoresh staff, Rabbi Sanders pulled life lessons from the Purim story, specifically Mordechai and Esther. Project Shoresh has many events coming up in the weeks leading up to Purim. Check out projectshoresh.com.

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COMMUNITY

Haifa Rape Crisis Center to share its expertise during virtual program

BY LARRY KATZ

T

he Afula Branch of the Haifa Rape Crisis Center will share the professional practices it uses to support victims of sexual assault, and to teach and

promote appropriate education in the community, in a virtual program, “You Are NOT Alone,” on March 13.

AVIV TESSLER, director of the Education Department at the Haifa Rape Crisis Center, will create a safe space during the program to address this difficult topic with great sensitivity and to answer questions.

The Afula Branch of the HRCC receives funding from the Jewish Alliance

of Greater Rhode Island’s annual campaign and from the Women’s Alliance Endowment Fund.

The HRCC provides a professional and direct response to victims of sexual assault, helping to protect their rights and to manage the trauma they have experienced. Victims

N.Y. Times writer Bret Stephens to speak at the JCC on May 19 IN AN INTERVIEW with Jewish Rhode Island in September 2021, Bret Stephens called anti-Zionism the new antisemitism.

He said anti-Zionism is the 21st-century equivalent of antisemitism, explaining that he believes that anti-Zionism is the belief that Israel has no right to exist in any shape or form, whereas antisemitism is a political program based on conspiracy theories.

The New York Times opinion writer and foreign policy expert will discuss all this and more in a Conversation with Bret Stephens on May 19 at 7:30 p.m. at the Alliance’s Dwares Jewish Community Center, in Providence.

Stephens was set to speak in Providence last October but the Annual Campaign community event was postponed due to COVID-19 concerns.

Stephens, 47, has lived and worked in the United States and Europe. He joined the New York Times in April 2017

as an Op-Ed columnist. Prior to that, he worked at the Wall Street Journal, where he wrote “Global View,” for which he was awarded the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary.

He is also a past editor of the Jerusalem Post.

Stephens was raised in Mexico City and has degrees from the University of Chicago and the London School of Economics. He is the author of “America in Retreat: The New Isolationism and the Coming Global Disorder,” released in November 2014.

The May 19 event will include a question-and-answer session moderated by Torey Malatia of the Public’s Radio. The event will be livestreamed. Registration information will be available soon at jewishallianceri. org.

Fran Ostendorf

of sexual abuse receive emotional, legal and therapeutic support through the organization. The Afula Branch provides ongoing workshops and lectures on violence prevention to children, youth and adults, as well as training for professionals in the educational, health, social service and criminal-justice systems.

The branch reports that its 24-hour hotline had a 140% increase in call volume during Israel’s first 2020 pandemic lockdown, as many victims live with their abusers and therefore faced a greater risk of assault. In an immediate response, the Afula Branch trained far more volun-

teers and held additional workshops in the educational and criminal-justice systems.

The Afula Branch serves the Afula/Gilboa area, which is partnered with the Jewish Alliance and other federations in southern New England as our sibling region.

To learn more about the ways the Haifa Rape Crisis Center provides emergency long-term support and community education, and about its experiences, please join the free program, on Sunday, March 13, at 2 p.m. Register at https://bit.ly/3s9lyOR. For more information about the annual cam-

paign, the funding that the Jewish Alliance and the Women’s Alliance Endowment Fund allocate to the Afula/Gilboa region, or the important work of the crisis center, contact the Alliance’s chief fundraising officer, Sara Masri, at smasri@jewishallianceri. org.

LARRY KATZ (lkatz@ jewishallianceri.org) is the director of Jewish life and learning at the Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island.

Character development course to be offered at Dwares JCC CONGREGATION BETH SHOLOM, Core Connects Rhode Island, the Jewish Community Day School of Rhode Island, Temple Beth-El and Temple Emanu-El will offer a new collaborative 12-week in-person program: “Spiritual Accounting: Benjamin Franklin and Rabbi Mendel Lefin’s Course of Character Development.”

Taught by Providence’s Rabbi Eliahu Klein, a mussar (practical Jewish ethics) instructor and the author of “Meetings with Remarkable Souls: Legends of the Baal Shem Tov,” the program is funded by a grant from the Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island and is free for all participants.

A group of up to 15 Jewish adults from across the religious and communal spectra in the greater Rhode Island area will embark together on the course of reflection and character improvement outlined by Benjamin Franklin in his 18th-century autobiography and later presented in a Jewish context by Rabbi Menahem Mendel Lefin in his 1808 mussar work, “Sefer Heshbon Ha-Nefesh” (Book of Spiritual Accounting).

With in-depth textual study and close-knit, pluralistic community building, there is a significant time commitment (12 in-person meetings, as well as reading and journaling at home) from participants, who it is hoped will return to their organizations, synagogues and homes with a fresh Jewish religious and communal perspective that they can share with others.

The 12 in-person meetings will be held Sunday mornings, 10:15-11:45 a.m., beginning March 13 and concluding June 26, 2022. There will be no meetings on April 17, May 8, May 29 or June 5 due to Jewish and secular holidays.

All meetings will be held in the board room of the Alliance’s Dwares Jewish Community Center, 401 Elmgrove Ave., Providence, RI 02906.

For more information and to apply to this fully funded program, contact Shai Afsai at shai.afsai@ppsd.org Submitted by Shai Afsai

MARCH 2022 | 25

jewishrhody.org | Jewish Rhode Island

COMMUNITY

Touro donates meals to staff at 3 R.I. hospitals CRANSTON – Touro Fraternal Association continued its charitable mission in February by providing healthy lunches to the front-line workers at three hospitals in Rhode Island.

The association surprised the staff at The Miriam Hospital, in Providence; Kent Hospital, in Warwick; and South County Hospital, in South Kingstown, with more than 100 meals at each facility.

“We know how overwhelmed the hospital staffs have been for the past two years of treating seriously ill COVID

patients, and we wanted to offer a small token of our thanks,” said Stevan Labush, chairman of Touro’s board of directors.

“Especially with the latest surge of omicron for several months, we knew that the doctors, nurses and the support personnel are exhausted. Providing a nice catered lunch was the least we could do to help lift their spirits.”

Earlier in the pandemic, Touro provided lunches at both The Miriam and Rhode Island Hospital.

Last fall, the association donated $25,000 to The Miriam’s new Center

for Innovative Cancer Research.

In addition, the association recently contributed $5,000 to Operation Stand Down, an organization that provides comprehensive supportive assistance to homeless and at-risk veterans. The money will be used to aid in the construction of a climate-controlled facility in Johnston that will store donations of clothing, furniture, appliances and food.

In addition to regular contributions to Jewish Collaborative Services, Touro received nearly $5,000 in additional money

that members submitted with their 2021 dues payments. The funds were forwarded to JCS for multiple assistance purposes, such as food and heating.

Based in Cranston, Touro is the largest Jewish fraternal association in the Northeast and supports several charitable causes. More information about the organization is available on its website, tourofraternal.org, or by calling 401-785-0066.

Regional Hadassah event features Jews in Arab lands

Submitted by Touro Fraternal Association

PHOTO | TOURO FRATERNAL ASSOCIATION

Touro Fraternal Association recently presented healthy lunches to the front-line workers at The Miriam Hospital. Representing Touro: from left, Barry Schiff, Stevan Labush and Jeffrey Davis.

Participate in the Community Inclusion and Belonging Survey

BY ALCIDA ADAM

Levana Zamir

Dr. Benjamin Zalta

“FORGOTTEN AND IGNORED: THE HISTORY OF JEWS IN ARAB LANDS” is the topic of a region-wide Zoom event hosted by Hadassah Rhode Island on Sunday, March 27, from 1-2:30 p.m.

Jewish communities that have thrived over millennia were erased within decades. Speakers for the program – Dr. Edy Cohen, historian and journalist; Janet Dallal, Middle East studies graduate, community leader and Knesset lobbyist; Dr. Benjamin Zalta, associate professor of clinical radiology and cantor; and Levana Zamir, lecturer, researcher and founder of the Heritage Center of Egyptian Jewry –were all Jewish refu-

Dr. Edy Cohen

gees who for generations had lived in their native lands of Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Egypt, respectively. They now live in the United States and Israel.

These speakers and their families escaped persecution which occurred before and after the creation of the State of Israel, beginning with the Nazi-influenced Farhud Massacre in 1941 in Iraq – the first in a series of pogroms against Jews in Arab countries – and continued after the 1948 and 1967 wars throughout the Muslim countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

Israel, with enormous stress on its then tiny economy, together with the

Janet Dallel

almost one million new refugees, who were forced to leave behind their assets, made great strides in becoming a light for their people and for the world.

Hadassah hopes to bring awareness to this little-known chapter of modern Jewish history through this event.

For more information and to receive the Zoom link, send an email to chapri@hadassah.org Submitted by Hadassah Rhode Island

THIS YEAR, in honor of Jewish Disability, Awareness, Acceptance, and Inclusion Month (JDAIM), the Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island continues to work to shed light on the struggle of our fellow community members who are living with any form of disability and learn more about how some members of our community are living and coping.

We invite anyone with experience in the disabilities community, including professionals, teachers and those with disabilities, to share your opinion with us by filling out our Community Inclusion and Belonging Survey via the following link: www. surveymonkey.com/r/ YFN6NBS. Doing this will help the Alliance implement programs that will impact individuals with special needs/disabilities and inspire advocates to fight for legislation that protects

the rights of these individuals. Your response is an act of kindness toward fellow community members and is extremely valuable to this study.

Help us at the Alliance create more impact in the Rhode Island Jewish community according to the guiding values of tikkun olam (repairing the world) and hineni (standing with others so no one stands alone).

For this survey, a disability can be physical, cognitive, sensory, intellectual, learning, chronic pain or another condition that is a barrier to everyday living.

ALCIDA ADAM is a social work intern at the Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island. She can be contacted at aadam@jewishallianceri.org.

26 | MARCH 2022

Jewish Rhode Island | jewishrhody.org

COMMUNITY

‘Live to the Max’: A tribute to Max Gold Dwares

BY KEVIN DWARES FEB. 18, 2022, marked the 18th anniversary of the death of our son, Max Gold Dwares, who left the world way too early, at the age of 20, from complications related to a bone-marrow transplant to cure him of chronic myelogenous leukemia.

Losing a child is an unbear-

Celebrate Purim 2022

Wednesday night, March 16, 7:00 p.m.

Wednesday night, March 16, 7:00 p.m.

Drinks & Hamantashen

Thursday, March 17, 8:30 a.m.

Dwares JCC — 12:30 p.m.

Wednesday, March 16 – Purim is time to...

LISTEN to the reading of the Megillah (Book of Esther) this year Wednesday eve, March 16, and again on Thursday, March 17, thereby recounting and reliving in our own day, the great miracle of Purim.

FAST OF ESTHER We fast on Wednesday, March 16 this year. This commemorates the day of prayer when Jews fasted before the victorious battle. It is customary before the Mincha prayers on this day to give 3 half-dollars to charity.

This commemorates the yearly contribution by all Jews to the Temple in the Hebrew month of Adar.

able feeling. No parent should ever bury a child before they themselves take the final journey home to God. Max’s loss was and remains a crippling episode in our family. However, it has also taught us a valuable life lesson, which is to continue to live your life to the Max (fullest), and to also give back to those in need in the community.

I want to tell you a little about how Max lived his life to the fullest each and every day. I am not telling you for sympathy, but rather to show how an individual can truly impact not just his family, but everyone around them during and after a loved one passes away.

As you know, the Hebrew word for life is “chai,” which has a numerical value of 18. I know you are probably wondering how I can equate the number 18 with life when this is the 18th anniversary of my son Max's passing away. I will tell you how.

Max lived “life to the max” each and every day.

Max attended Hebrew school at Temple Torat Yisrael, and then became a Bar Mitzvah at the age of 13.

While in his teens, he participated in Midrasha at the Bureau of Jewish Education, in Providence, along with a group of similarly minded Jewish youths studying and doing good deeds for the Jewish and non-Jewish communities.

Max participated in Trevors Place, going to Philadelphia to hand out clothing and jackets to those less fortunate.

Max continued his Jewish learning, and was a member of a Temple Emanu-El group affectionately called “the Jew Crew.”

He also participated in “March of the Living,” which brings teens and adults from around the world to spend a week in Poland visiting the concentration camps, followed by a week in Israel.

Max called me one night from Poland, after visiting

Auschwitz, and asked, “How could man treat other people with such brutality?”

After Max returned home, he became a strict vegetarian since he felt that it was inhumane that humans could slaughter innocent people or kill animals.

Max came back from his trip with strong convictions about mankind, friendship and equality. These convictions would stay with him for the rest of his life.

Max continued to participate in activities that benefited less fortunate people. He organized his friends to get together to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to bring to Crossroads Rhode Island, in Providence.

After Max passed away, a family friend of ours organized “Max’s Lunch Bunch” at temple to teach students the meaning of helping and giving back to the community. Max also volunteered at The Tomorrow Fund at Hasbro Children’s Hospital.

Max loved movies, Coca-Cola, reading books, photography and his pets. Max had once decided to become a rabbi since he loved reading the Torah and living its principles. Max was a mensch in the true sense of the word.

Both my wife, Barbara, and I continue to continue Max’s legacy of good deeds. Weekly, year-round, we collect donations of food, clothing and non-perishable items and bring them to the McAuley House, 622 Elmwood Ave., Providence.

Barbara, along with her good friend Paula Goldberg, collects, bakes and brings up to 100-plus desserts a week to Help the Homeless Rhode Island, which distributes the goodies in bag lunches.

We continue to this day to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to give out to members of the community. We collect coats every November to give to an organization called BND (Buy Nothing Day). The coats are brought to the Rhode CONTINUED ON PAGE 27

MARCH 2022 | 27

jewishrhody.org | Jewish Rhode Island

COMMUNITY CONTINUED FROM PAGE 26 Island State House the day after Thanksgiving to be distributed to people who are homeless.

Max had the passion to change mankind, if only one step at a time. During 11th grade, he seemed to take on an added urgency for accomplishing things.

I always wondered if Max sensed that his future would be cut short. He became a charitable young man, always willing to lend a helpful hand to those in need.

When people ask me how many children we have, I say two. I say that our younger son, Jake, is an IT professional, and he and his wife, Maria, have a beautiful 10-yearold daughter, Maya, who is named after Max. And then I tell them about Max and his short but extraordinary life, which he lived to the fullest.

In conclusion, I will borrow a line from the movie “The Last Samurai.” When the Emperor asked Nathan Algren (played by Tom Cruise) how a famous warlord died, the reply was: “I will tell you how he lived.”

When people now ask me how Max died, I tell them that I would rather tell them how he lived.

And I just did!

KEVIN DWARES lives in Cranston. If you have any thoughts, questions or comments, feel free to contact him via email at: Kevindwares@gmail.com.

Celebrating a milestone

ON WEDNESDAY, Feb. 16 the first graders at the Providence Hebrew Day School each received their own siddur. This special event was a milestone as the students’ Hebrew reading is now sophisticated enough for them to use a siddur to daven, and they have also begun to learn Chumash in the text. The students marched in to music, sang songs about the power

of prayer and Torah learning, and received siddurim with their name written on the cover (in the same Hebrew font that a Torah scroll is written) and a special gift bag filled with yummy treats to share with their families. The students look forward to davening from their siddur every single day!

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Rhode Islanders get glimpse of intriguing Israeli startups

BY SETH CHITWOOD PROVIDENCE – Israeli startups focused on early detection of autism, at-home urine testing and sailing analytics were in the spotlight on Feb. 16 as the RI-HUB and the Rhode Island Israel Collaborative launched the second season of “Little States, Big Innovation.”

The monthly program introduces Rhode Islanders to some of Israel’s most exciting startups and the entrepreneurs behind them, who may be considering expanding into North American markets such as Rhode Island. Avi Nevel, founder of RIIC, said last year’s program was “very successful” and led to “multiple connections” between Israel and Rhode Island.

The first segment of the Feb. 16 Zoom program featured Jonathan Sadka, founder and CEO of Ladatt, which is focused on creating a platform for diagnosing certain diseases in babies, with a main focus on building a tool for the early detection of autism.

“In the U.S., around one

in 44 children is diagnosed with autism, often very late,” Sadka said. “Autism is often comorbid with other disorders or other problems, such as GI [gastrointestinal] issues, epilepsy, seizure disorders … many of those can be mitigated if treated early enough.”

Sadka said that research shows that using electroencephalography, or EEG, is a non-invasive way to track brainwaves to accurately diagnose autistic children at a very young age.

He said the company Ladatt has backing from a “large IT company in Israel” and plans to start clinical trials by 2023.

Sadka said that last September, he visited Rhode Island to assist in one of the neuroscience labs at Brown University, which he called an eye-opening experience of the tremendous potential for health-care research and development.

“We are looking for collaborations within the U.S., even at this point,” he said.

Annette Tonti, managing director of RI-HUB, said she

was thrilled to hear Sadka’s news.

“At RI-HUB, we give startups six months' free space [and] access to everything that Rhode Island has to offer, including our incubation services and mentorship,” she said. “We want to be able to … build economic development here in Rhode Island … with our friends from Israel.”

The second segment featured Varda Aberbach presenting her company, Samplify, which aims to revolutionize urine testing for early detection of kidney disease.

“Eighty million people are at risk of kidney disease, and 90% of them don’t even know they have it until much later down the line,” she said.

“People are just not taking the test, or are not completing it correctly.”

To solve these problems, Samplify has created a hygienic and easy way to take a urine sample and safely store it in a sealed case for 20 hours and then get an accurate reading on an iPhone.

Aberbach said Samplify is just starting trials in Jerusa-

lem, and would be “more than happy to have collaborations with an American hospital to run the trial.” Down the line, she said, the tests could be introduced to the American market.

The final entrepreneur to present was Omer Brand, founder and CEO of KINETIX, an advanced platform that helps organizations, coaches and athletes improve performances in sailing.

Brand, who has won national and international sailing championships, said he decided to join the hightech scene after retiring from competitive sailing.

He said the most effective way to analyze a sailing performance is by video analytics, but it’s difficult to get a complete and objective analysis from the perspective of any one coach or trainer.

KINETIX solves this problem, he said, with its fully automated platform, which is based on video and sensors and uses a unique algorithm and analytic platform.

“It [video] can be from any device like a cellphone,

GoPros or smartwatches,” Brand said. “The platform provides those golden moments that the athletes and coaches can learn from.”

Brand said KINETIX is up and running in Israel and has already changed the way athletes, coaches, managers and even parents are engaging with the sport. He is hoping to break into the American market next.

“Our main focus now is north of New York, like Rhode Island,” he said, adding that he knows Newport is a sailing capital.

“So, we’re definitely in the right place for us to collaborate,” he said.

The next program is March 17 at noon. Register at https:// bit.ly/3pnVtK6.

Andrea Ehrlich and her husband Stephen of Cherry Hill, New Jersey; three grandchildren, Amy Ehrlich, Rebekah Amaral and Louis Berger and two great-grandchildren, Ariel and Iris Amaral. She was the grandmother of the late Polly Connelly and the sister of the late Robert B. Abel.

Z. Kaplan and her husband, Dr. Kenneth Kaplan, of Delray Beach, Florida. He was the uncle of Dr. Jonathan Kaplan and his wife, Melissa, and Andrew Kaplan. He was the great-uncle of Matthew, Sophia, Alayna and Julia.

Contributions may be made to the charity of your choice.

Island, New England Tech, and Pilgrim High School. He was an avid sports fan and collector of sports memorabilia and cards.

Contributions in his memory may be made to the charity of your choice.

Joel Feinberg, 88

Richard Fine, 62

law degree from Boston Law School.

Mr. Fishbein was an attorney in Providence for many years before retiring and was a member of Temple Emanu-El. Survivors include: two nephews, Adam and Joshua Fishbein, and very close friends Christopher J. Kane and his wife Angela V. Kane and their son Giovanni J. Kane of Providence.

He was predeceased by his brother Hal R. Fishbein and seven uncles.

SETH CHITWOOD (www.sethchitwood.com), of Barrington, is a features reporter for The Standard-Times, in New Bedford. He is also the creative director of the award-winning Angelwood Pictures production company.

OBITUARIES Elizabeth Berger, 92

WARWICK, R.I. – Elizabeth H. (Abel) Berger, of Warwick, passed away on Feb. 23, 2022, at HopeHealth Hulitar Hospice Center in Providence.

Born in Providence, she was the daughter of the late Abraham and Betty (Berger) Abel.

Elizabeth received a bachelor’s degree from the Boston Conservatory of Music and worked as an elementary music teacher for many years until her retirement. She loved pottery, enjoyed traveling, and was a Brown University Continuing Adult Learning member.

Elizabeth is survived by two children, James “Jimmy” Berger and his wife Antonia “Toni” of Cranston and

CRANSTON, R.I. – Joel I. Feinberg passed away on Feb. 26, 2022, at HopeHealth Hulitar Hospice Center. He was the husband of Rosalie (Zusman) for 65 years. Born in Providence, a son of the late Norman and Edith (Karp) Feinberg, he had lived in Cranston for over 55 years. He was the former owner of A&W Restaurant of Smithfield. Joel was an avid sports fan.

He was the brother of Carol

WARWICK, R.I. – Richard “Rick” G. Fine passed away on Feb. 24, 2022. Born in Providence, he was a son of Gertrude (Kramer) Fine and the late Morton Fine of Warwick, and beloved brother of Robert Fine and his partner, Pamela Pandapas, of Rockland, Massachusetts.

Rick was a lifetime resident of Warwick and an inventory auditor for various retail companies. He was a graduate of Community College of Rhode

J. Ronald Fishbein, 89

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – J. Ronald Fishbein, Esq., of Providence, passed away on Feb. 20, 2022, at HopeHealth Hulitar Hospice Center. Born in Boston, he was the son of the late Nathan and Evelyn (Goldberg) Fishbein.

After receiving a bachelor’s degree in biology from Brandeis University, he earned a master’s degree in biology from the University of Vermont and a doctorate of

Doreen Harrison, 77

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Doreen E. Harrison passed peacefully, yet not without a fight, on Feb. 5, 2022, with family by her

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OBITUARIES side. Born Dec. 11, 1944, to Yetta F. (Blake) Harrison and Samuel M. Harrison, Doreen lived a life filled with chocolate, considerable world travel, amazing times with many wonderful friends and family, and close relationships with her parents, cousins, “nieces and nephews.”

A 1963 graduate of Hope High School in Providence, Doreen learned the ins and outs of finance and marketing during her high school years while working the first female-driven Del’s Lemonade truck with her lifelong friend Terry Newell – they were very successful! She went on to earn a B.S. in Business Administration from Bryant College in 1967 followed by a long career in accounting and

market research – and a happy period later in life as a driver education instructor – she loved the teenagers!

Doreen was a very private person, an avid yet savvy gambler and quite the social butterfly. She loved her casino adventures across the globe and treasured her escapades and time spent with friends and family – always eager to ask a lot of questions and learn as much as she could about them and anyone else who crossed her path – she never forgot any details! She never forgot ANYTHING!!!

She had a sign in her kitchen that read, “Friends are the family that we choose!” Certainly a void has been left in the hearts of us all – the Hiltzes, Hochmans and

CALDWELL, N.J. – Frederic D. Haas passed away on Feb. 3, 2022, at home. Born in Providence, a son of the late Sol and Jean (Friedman) Haas, he had lived in New Jersey for the past 40 years.

He was co-owner of the former Bace Disposal in Florham Park, New Jersey, and the former executive vice president of Dictograph Products. Fred was a former member of Temple Emanu-El, Providence.

He was the brother of Donna Levy and her husband, Sheldon, of Florida. He was the uncle of Josh Reitzas and great-uncle of Charlie. He was the nephew of Murray Friedman. He was the cousin of Diane and Robert Ducoff and their children, Gary Friedman, Brian and Carol Friedman, Bobby Friedman, Dennis and Shelly Friedman, and the late Alan Friedman and his surviving wife, Carol.

Contributions may be made to the Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island – Maccabi Games Fund, 401 Elmgrove Ave., Providence, RI 02906.

completion of his military service, Mort worked for both of his family’s businesses: Kessler’s Bakery and Ma Kessler’s Delicatessen. He was a master chef and baker, using his skills and experience as a chef instructor at William Davies Career Technical School in Lincoln.

He attended the University of Rhode Island, Bryant College and Rhode Island College.

Mort was a member of Overseas Lodge #40 F&AM, Consistory Scottish Rite Valley of Providence, Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite Palestine Temple, Touro Fraternal Association, University Society of Providence, Parents Without Partners – Providence Chapter, AARP and Jewish War Veterans – Rhode Island Post 23.

Mort is survived by his sister Rosalie Buckler of Providence; former spouse Elaine (Segal) Silva and their four children, Barry Kessler and his wife Vicky Kessler, of Barrington; Wayne Kessler and his wife Karen Meginsky, of Westwood, Massachusetts; Rhonda Kessler (retired PPD) and her husband Keith Tucker, of Smithfield; Lori Krawetz and her husband Edward, of Lincoln; eight grandchildren, several nieces, nephews, cousins and longtime friends.

Contributions can be made to the Jewish Alliance of Greater RI, 401 Elmgrove Ave., Providence, RI 02906 or Jewish War Veterans Wall Memorial Fund, PO Box 100064, Cranston, RI 02910.

Morton Kessler, 89

George Millican, 81

Blakes – and equally to those of the family she chose– her many remarkable and fabulous friends.

Donations may be made to St. Judes Children’s Research Hospital (Stjude.org), Hope Hospice (1085 N. Main St., Providence, RI 02904) or the Kosher Food Pantry at Jewish Collaborative Services (1165 N. Main St., Providence, RI 02904.)

Frederic Haas, 78

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Morton (Mort) H. Kessler of Providence passed away on Feb 2, 2022.

After several months of declining health, he died peacefully with his children by his side. Mort was born in Providence on Sept. 23, 1932, the son of Jacob and Sarah (Feldman) Kessler.

In his formative years, Mort was a poultry raiser, buyer and breeder, as well as a trombone player. Growing vegetables was a lifelong passion, and he enjoyed gifting family and friends with tomatoes and homemade pickles. If you were lucky enough, you would also be gifted with his famous hermit cookies. Later in life, Mort bred and raised poodles.

As a proud member of the Army, he served overseas during the Korean War. Upon

WEST KINGSTON, R.I. – George Ronald Millican (known as Ron) passed away Feb. 12, 2022.

Ron had a good life and a good death. Beloved by his wife Laurie Heineman, his daughters Annie and Yulan and his late son Nico Millican, Ron lived a full and varied life. After a more than 10-year journey with Alzheimer’s, COVID-19 led to a swift fiveday decline, and he passed on near dawn in no pain. He was cared for by his family and the angels of Beacon Hospice.

Ron loved to dance and in his final days he was surrounded by music, singing, love and with family photos nearby.

All who knew him remember his enjoyment of dressing with his own style, so his family added a lace pocket square for his transition to Rhode Island Hospital, where his brain was donated for Alzheimer’s research as he desired.

Ron spent most of his early life in North Carolina and on

Navy bases. While working his way through University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he waited tables during summers at a hotel in Nantucket where he received advice from one of the patrons. “Try a career for two years, and if it doesn’t feel right, try another.”

So after serving as a navigator on Navy supply planes during the Vietnam War era, he worked in advertising in New York City, and then at Citibank with a stint in London in the early years of venture capital investing.

Later Ron developed and sold real estate on Long Island and in Manhattan, including housing for the elderly. In 1995, after getting a master of arts in teaching, he, Laurie, and their girls, moved to Kingston, where Ron worked for the East Bay Collaborative and Rogers High School. He completed his career at The Education Alliance at Brown University.

Contributions to Doctors Without Borders or The RI Alzheimer’s Association would be welcome.

Susette Rabinowitz, 80

WARWICK, R.I. – Susette Rabinowitz passed away on Feb. 18, 2022, at Tamarisk Assisted Living. She was the wife of the late Warren Rabinowitz.

She was the mother of Gary Rabinowitz of Cranston and Jon Rabinowitz (Michal) of Tenafly, New Jersey. She was the sister of the late Robert Herz. She was the grandmother of Romi and Mia. Born in La Paz, Bolivia, a daughter of the late Fred and Ruth (Wolfe) Herz, she had lived in Warwick for 2½ years, previously living in Boca Raton, Florida, and a longtime resident of Cranston. A longtime activist and proponent for active senior care, she was the director of Senior Services for the City of Cranston for 20 years and the executive director for Jewish Seniors Agency, retiring in 2005. She was instrumental in the creation of Tamarisk, where she spent her final years. Susette was a co-founder of VICS (Volunteers in Cranston Schools) and was inducted into the Cranston Hall of Fame in 2000.

She was also a life member of Hadassah.

Contributions in her memory may be made to The Phyllis Siperstein Tamarisk Assisted Living, 3 Shalom Drive, Warwick, RI 02886.

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OBITUARIES Joseph Schleifer, 51

JACKSONVILLE, FLA. – Joseph M. Schleifer passed away on Feb. 13, 2022. Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, he was a son of Estelle (Chorney) Schleifer and the late Ernest Schleifer. He was the father of Samantha Schleifer and Max Schleifer and brother of Beverly Goncalves, her husband, Carlos, and their sons, Lyle and Arthur, all of Cranston. He is survived by his former wife, Ruth Schleifer. Joseph will be missed by his girlfriend, Deborah Cohen Peckham and extended friends and family.

He recently moved to Jacksonville. Previously he was a longtime resident of Cranston.

Joseph was a graduate of Cranston East High School, Class of ’88 and attended Northeastern University in Boston and University of Alabama. Joseph enjoyed golfing and loved spending the day at the beach where he bathed in the sun and walked with his dog, Daisy. He will be remembered for his great sense of humor.

Contributions may be made to Chabad of West Bay, 3871 Post Road, Warwick, RI 02886.

Steven Schleifer, 56

COVENTRY, R.I. – Steven H. Schleifer passed away on Feb. 21, 2022, at Respiratory and Rehab. He was the son of Linda (Abrams) Schleifer of Coventry and the late Robert Schleifer, brother of Elissa Schleifer of West Greenwich and uncle of Kamron, Sydni and Konor O’Brien.

Born in Yonkers, New York, he had lived in Coventry for three years. Previously he was a longtime resident of West Warwick.

Steven enjoyed reading and working at the family bookstore years ago. He was also always working with technology and on computers in his spare time.

Most of all, Steven loved animals and had a variety of unique pets throughout his life.

Contributions may be made to Amedisys, c/o Beacon Hospice, 1130 Ten Rod Road #A205, North Kingstown, RI 02852 or the animal welfare agency of your choice.

Eva Sheer, 108

WARWICK, R.I. – Eva (Sonkin) Sheer, of Warwick, passed away on Feb. 13, 2022, at Avalon Nursing Home in Warwick. She was the wife of the late Leonard Sheer. Born in Central Falls, she was the daughter of the late Jacob and Anne (Witchner) Sonkin.

Survivors include: three sons, Arthur Sheer and his wife, Barbara, of Providence and Florida, Neil Sheer and his wife, Charlotte, of Cape Cod and Stanley Sheer and his wife, Deborah, of

Warwick; seven grandchildren, Adam Sheer, David Sheer, Jason Sheer, Lisa Zenack and her husband, Scott, Lara Winn and her husband, Joshua, Leonard Sheer and his wife, Cathy, and Melissa Hatch and her husband, Matthew; 12 great-grandchildren, Philip Sheer, Penelope Sheer, Samuel Winn, Sophie Winn, Cassie Hatch, Andrew Hatch, Rom Sheer, Jod Sheer, Evangeline Sheer, Nathaniel Sheer, Jessie Zenack and Steven Zenack. She was the sister of the late Leo Sonkin, Nathan Sonkin and Edith Gordon Memorial contributions may be made to a charity of one’s choice.

Joyce Tesler, 91

WARWICK, R.I. – Joyce M. (Cohen) Schreiber Tesler, of Warwick, passed away on Feb. 21, 2022. Joyce was the wife of the late Ira L. Schreiber and the late Marvin J. Tesler. Born in Providence, she was the daughter of the late Max A. and Ethel J. (Blackman) Cohen.

Joyce graduated from Classical High School (’47) and attended Pembroke College (Brown University) earning a bachelor’s degree in sociology (’51). She began her career as a social worker but later devoted her time entirely to her four children. As her children grew older, she returned to the work force and became a successful real estate agent. She was also an active congregant of Temple Sinai for over 50 years.

Joyce could often be found at a card table enjoying weekly canasta, mahjong or bridge games. It was there she met so many who became her lifelong friends. She achieved life master status in bridge. The kitchen was another place of enjoyment where she baked blueberry pies and apple crisps that were known by all but eaten by only the fortunate.

She was the mother of four children: Jill Ann Schreiber of Hamden, Connecticut, Bruce J. Schreiber of Bradenton, Florida, Kenneth A. Schreiber (Anne) of Cranston, and Judith L. Schreiber Rowland (Ray) of Acton, Massachusetts; two stepchildren: Dr. Peter Tesler (Deborah) and Pamela Tesler Howitt (Steven). She was the grandmother of Max, Abby and Haley Schreiber, Julia and Jack Rowland, Jennifer Harper, Jake, Lucas and Zachary Tesler and three great-grandchildren: Hannah, Hayden and Hallie Harper.

She was the sister of the late Donald A. Cohen; sister-in-law of the late Lois Cohen; mother-inlaw of the late Nilda Schreiber

and niece of the late Ida Blackman.

Memorial contributions may be made to the Ira L. Schreiber Music Fund, c/o Temple Sinai, 30 Hagan Ave., Cranston, RI 02920.

We are read

Alan Uffer, 83

BOCA RATON, FLA. – Alan M. Uffer, of Boca Raton (formerly of Cranston) died on Feb. 12, 2022, of heart failure.

Alan lived his entire life focused on the things he loved most: his family, his sports teams, the beach and being poolside, telling jokes, wearing his blonde girlie wig, admiring beautiful women and driving his much-adored sister-in-law crazy.

Over the years he would never pass up a chance to fish, play cards, bowl or go to auctions.

His kindness and compassion knew no bounds, and he would be the first to tell you he just wanted to make people feel good and laugh. After the passing of his wife, he had to quickly learn “adulting,” including cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, paying bills and using an ATM. He was a work in progress.

Born in Providence, he was a graduate of Hope High School and Bryant College. He spent a career in retail, moved to business ownership and culminated in food distribution sales and marketing. In his retirement he dedicated a great portion of time to volunteering at Save the Bay, the Rhode Island Blood Bank, the Children’s Museum and Hasbro Children’s Hospital among others. He was a member of Touro Fraternal Association and served in the Army National Guard.

He is preceded in death by his wife, Janice Uffer; his parents Jenny (Goldstein) and Harry Uffer and brother Martin Uffer. He is survived by his daughter Ellice Uffer and son David Uffer; most beloved granddaughter Alexis Uffer; sister-in-law Adrienne Uffer, nieces Michelle Snoeren (Pieter Snoeren), and Debra Gold (Steve Gold); great-nephews Harris Sullivan and Henry Gold and great-nieces Sage Andone (Dakon Andone) and Jenny Gold; and favorite cousins Arlene Goldstein and Burt Goldstein (Elaine Goldstein) and grandpup Frankie Grace. He is also survived by his “Debbie” – loyal and devoted aide, companion and mostly importantly, best friend on earth.

Memorial donations may be made to Hasbro Children’s Hospital, Save the Bay or Camp JORI.

Larry Katz, director of Jewish life and learning at the Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island, attended the annual conference of the Jewish Educators Assembly, which honored former Rhode Islander Dr. Cathy Berkowitz with its lifetime achievement award. The conference was held Jan. 30-Feb. 2 in Boca Raton, Florida.

Certified by the Board of Rabbis of Greater Rhode Island Jacquelyn Aubuchon, Funeral Director

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