JEREMY BLACHMAN
is the author of two satirical novels about the legal profession, and a ghostwriter working with industry leaders. He and his wife, Nina, and sons, Micah (9) and Rafi (5), are members of WJC.
Awhat Israel has meant to us as a congregation, and as individuals. In that spirit, we asked Rabbi Arnowitz for his thoughts, as well as a number of congregants who have strong ties to the country.
Alan Queen shares memories of his father, Lenny, and his connection to Israel, and Corey Feldman, Stephen Kutno and Abbe Kellner-Kutno, Robin and Veronica Nazarnadeh, and Neil Wexler all share meaningful stories. And we are pleased to be able to share a set of fun photos from WJC’s recent Israel trip this winter.
We also have a moving, emotional piece about our very own Hanne Brenner Holsten, founding director of WJC’s Nursery School, as she shares her experience as a survivor of Kristallnacht
The other big event on the calendar this season is, of course, Passover, and we are thrilled to share an interview with cookbook author Benedetta Jasmine Guetta about the cuisine of the Italian Jews, and how you might be able to add some of it to your Passover table. Micah Blachman shares thoughts on the practice of bedikat chametz, with reflections from Janet and Alan Arnowitz, Debbie Katz, Jennifer Hirschhorn, Michael Weintraub, and Susan Brecher. And Myra Levine-Harris and Gail Koller bring us their gefilte fish memories.
As we look forward to our Scholar-in-Residence weekend, Rabbi Dalton spoke with Rabbi Ethan Tucker of Hadar about his career and egalitarianism in the practice of Judaism, for a conversation you’ll want to check out. And Sol Israel writes about the WJC cemetery and his personal motivation to become involved.
As if that’s not enough for one issue—we also have profiles of our WJC Spring Gala honorees, and, for the first time—a crossword! Passover-themed, and a lot of fun to create, we really hope you enjoy it.
May your Seders be lively and delicious—happy Passover!
Jeremy Blachman
, his wife, Jackie, and their children, Rachel and Jason, joined WJC in 1988. In addition to his leadership of the WJC cemetery, he has served as a WJC officer, trustee, and committee
RABBI CORNELIA DALTON
joined WJC as the Assistant Rabbi in 2020. A Westchester native, she received a B.A. in French and Francophone Studies and Russian Area Studies from Bryn Mawr College in 2011 and ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary in May 2020.
RABBI-TO-RABBI
A Conversation Between Rabbi Cornelia Dalton and Rabbi Ethan Tucker, this year’s Scholar-in-Residence, about egalitarianism and motivating people to dive deeper into their Judaism.
BY THE NUMBERS
A quick list of fun facts to celebrate Israel.
BOCCA DI DAMA/PASSOVER ALMOND CAKE
A sweet recipe for the holiday from Benedetta Jasmine Guetta.
VOICES FROM THE PAST: REMEMBERING KRISTALLNACHT
Hanne Brenner Holsten shares her experience as a survivor of Kristallnacht
I AND THOU AND ISRAEL
Rabbi Arnowitz looks at our relationship with Israel as it turns 75.
BREADY OR NOT? IT’S PASSOVER!
WJC congregants discuss their bedikat chametz practices.
A HELPING HAND, LONG OUTSTRETCHED, FROM WJC TO THE LOWER EAST SIDE
An effort that has supported Holocaust survivors for three decades has evolved to include Jewish residents who are “alone, frail, or have run out of resources.”
COOKING ALLA GIUDIA
The Jewish Food of Italy, at WJC, and on your Passover Table.
A NIGHT AT THE RIVIERA
Voices asked WJC members who know this year’s spring celebration honorees best to offer commentary and insight as to what makes each of them so valuable in our community.
HONORING AND REMEMBERING THE BURIAL GROUND OF A EUROPEAN JEWISH COMMUNITY RAVAGED BY THE HOLOCAUST
WORDPLAY
A Passover-themed crossword puzzle.
REWIND
A photo from the archives.
In honor of Israel’s 75th birthday, here is a quick list of fun facts to give appreciation for all that the country is, and for all that it has accomplished.
9.5 million
The total population of Israel (including 7.02 million Jews).
*As of May 2022
1,500 to 2,000
Age (in years) of the oldest tree in Israel, which is a jujube tree in Ein Hatzeva on the road to Eilat.
24 million
Doughnuts are served in Israel during Hanukkah.
1,315
1 million
Notes are left in the Western Wall every year.
5 million
Tourists visit Israel annually.
Did
Israel is the only country in the world that uses kosher glue for its postage stamps.
90
Percent of wastewater in Israel is recycled, making it the leading nation in the world for water recycling.
The number of ways to enjoy a Krembo, the chocolate-coated marshmallow treat that is the most popular confection in Israel (50+ million krembos are sold each year).
By Benedetta Jasmine Guetta
Bocca di dama, which translates as “mouth of a lady,” is a fluffy, delicate sponge cake made with almond flour and eggs. Since it doesn’t contain wheat flour and it doesn’t rely on baking powder for rising, it’s generally considered a classic Passover dessert, but it’s absolutely delightful year-round as well, and it’s gluten-free too.
This delightful dish was included in the awardwinning cookbook Cooking alla Giudia by Benedetta Jasmine Guetta. Guetta hosted a Zoom cooking class with the WJC Sisterhood last month and was kind enough to answer a few questions about her cookbook, Passover, and more. Check out the interview (and the recipe!) on page 14.
Hanne Brenner Holsten, founding director of WJC’s Nursery School, shares her experience as a survivor of Kristallnacht
“My mission is to relate my story to whomever wants to hear it, because silence allows evil to progress,” said Hanne Brenner Holsten, founding director of WJC’s Nursery School and survivor of Kristallnacht, the twonight pogrom in the German city of Nuremberg in 1938.
Amid escalating violence and persecution that Jews were facing in Nazi Germany, Kristallnacht marked a shift from a policy of discrimination and exclusion to one of extermination.
Holsten and her family escaped, but not without difficulty. She shared her story with Voices in January 2023.
The youngest of three children, Holsten enjoyed a typical childhood in Nuremberg, where her parents, Elisabeth and Adolph, owned and operated a prosperous jewelry store. “We belonged to a synagogue, celebrated the Jewish holidays, and did nearly everything that you would do if you lived without fear,” she recalled.
Before Kristallnacht, changes became noticeable: “I asked a schoolmate if we could play together. She looked at me and said, ‘I can never play with you again because you are a dirty Jew.’” Confused, Holsten scanned herself from head to toe. “I thought maybe I had stepped in mud.”
Adolph Brenner had recognized that it was time to leave Europe. He had gone to Brooklyn to scout out a new life. “He came back to settle his affairs and get us out,” said Holsten. During his return home, Adolph was arrested and sent to Poland, where he and Elisabeth had been born. Concentration camps were not yet the tightly-surveilled killing centers they would become, and, still possessing his visa, he walked off the premises and went to Holland, where he reunited with extended family and organized a plan for his wife and children’s escape from Nuremberg.
On the first night of the pogrom, Elisabeth and her children hid in the attic of an old house. “We waited in the dark, listening to the thumps of boots and screaming outside,” Holsten remembered. When the Brenners were discovered, they were not immediately arrested; instead, they were allowed to return to the apartment.
“My mother wasn’t allowed to take anything from the store, but she had hidden some jewels in my dolls. She must have done this in secret—she never told me.” Holsten remembered the devastation: “Everything was demolished. Synagogues, businesses, homes,” including the family’s apartment and shop.
“Germany was not at war with Poland yet, but the Germans wanted to get rid of all the Polish Jews,” said Holsten. The family was loaded onto a wagon without windows, water, food, or commodes. Holsten recalled “hundreds of screaming children and terrified adults.” At the border, no one was allowed to disembark. Many thousands of people were already there, waiting in the cold rain. Poland refused entry to the Brenner’s train, which returned to Nuremberg.
Undeterred, Elisabeth and Adolph began planning another escape. “My mother sent me and my eleven-year-old brother Siegfried to Holland. My oldest sister stayed with my mother.” Elisabeth gave Hanne a beautiful doll to keep her entertained, while Siegfried received a toy-filled suitcase. Both gifts were filled with gems, unbeknownst to the children.
When the train reached the Dutch border, Hanne and Siegfried were again barred passage.
“In some ways, this was a blessing because had we disembarked, we would’ve probably been arrested with my aunt Eva and sent with her to Auschwitz [Eva miraculously made it out alive],” said Holsten. “Eva boarded the train to see us. She created a tale about how my doll needed to stay with her to rest, and gave me a new one. She did the same with my brother.” The clandestine transfer complete, the children were sent back to Nuremberg.
The family soon attempted a third escape, this time through Cologne. “My father hired a smuggler with funds from the jewels,” said Holsten. The Brenners waited in Cologne for nearly six weeks until they could cross the border. “We met smugglers at the entrance to a forest. One took pity on me and carried me on his shoulders.” Eventually, they came upon a furniture van equipped with a fake wall, with a carve-out where the Brenners sat in silence for hours as the driver transported them, finally, out of Germany and into Holland.
After crossing, another smuggler took Elisabeth and the children to a farmhouse, where they spent two long, cold weeks in another dark attic waiting to cross into Belgium, which had not yet been invaded by Germany.
Also known as the Night of Broken Glass, Kristallnacht was a violent anti-Jewish pogrom that took place in Nazi Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland in the former Czechoslovakia on November 9 and 10, 1938. It is considered a turning point in the history of the Holocaust, the systematic persecution and extermination of Jews by the Nazis.
The pogrom was instigated by the Nazi regime in response to the November 7 assassination in Paris of Ernst vom Rath, a low-level German diplomat, by Herschel Grynszpan, a seventeen-year-old Polish Jew. Grynszpan’s exact motives for the assassination remain unclear, but it is believed he sought revenge for his parents, who had been expelled from Germany to Poland earlier that year along with other Polish Jews and were stranded at the border after being denied entry into Poland.
The Nazi regime used the Rath assassination as the pretext for the pogrom. Chief Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels suggested that “World Jewry” was responsible for Rath’s death and declared that “demonstrations should not be prepared or organized by the Party, but insofar as they erupt spontaneously, they are not to be hampered.” Indeed, firefighters were instructed not to interfere unless blazes threatened non-Jewish establishments.
On the night of November 9, Nazi paramilitary forces and civilians carried out coordinated attacks on Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues. Thousands of Jewishowned businesses and homes were destroyed, over 1,000 synagogues torched, and though the official death toll was 91, modern scholars estimate that number to be much higher. Tens of thousands of Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Many were eventually released on the condition that they not return to Germany. In fact, until October 1941, the official German policy was to encourage Jewish emigration.
Kristallnacht: Petrol being poured over the pews of a synagogue. Image from an album of unpublished photographs once “in the possession of a Jewish-American serviceman who was deployed to Germany during the second world war,” and subsequently donated to Israel’s Yad Vashem memorial by his descendants.
As for Grynszpan, he was arrested and extradited to Germany, where he was imprisoned. His fate remains unknown; he may have died in a concentration camp during World War II but was declared dead in absentia in 1960.
Following Kristallnacht, the Nazis declared that the Jewish community was responsible for the pogrom, confiscated all insurance payouts to Jewish homeowners and business owners, and fined the community a collective one billion Reichsmark in an “atonement tax.”
In the middle of a pitch-black night, the Brenners left the attic and found a hay wagon equipped with a false bottom waiting outside. “It could conceal four people without suffocating them. Sometimes I think it was my imagination, but it wasn’t.”
Covered by hay, the family hid in the false bottom of the wagon, which was soon stopped by soldiers. “They stuck in their pitchforks, but Hashem must have been watching us because they did not penetrate.”
A bridge guarded by armed soldiers separated Belgium and Germany, but the smugglers would not take them across—the Brenners had to walk alone. “I can only imagine what went through my mother’s head: We’re going to be arrested, tortured, or shot dead. Again, I attribute it to Hashem because the soldiers literally turned around and allowed us to cross.”
The Brenners waited in a roach-infested apartment in Belgium for five weeks until Adolph (who was by now waiting for them in London) procured tickets for passage to England. Now undocumented, the Brenners boarded the boat, but the captain got wind of their situation. “I remember the captain yelling for my mother, but she ignored him. Perhaps she figured he wouldn’t throw anyone overboard at sea.” Finally, the Brenners landed in the relative safety of the UK. They settled into a two-family home
I’m 99% sure I opted to focus on early childhood education because that was my way of reliving my childhood, by creating a program where children were safe and happy and laughing and doing all the wonderful things that children should.
in Cardiff, Wales, where Adolph found work as a toolmaker. War arrived in England shortly after the Brenners did, and Cardiff was targeted by near-daily bombing. “We always had to carry gas masks. We never knew whether our house would be shelled. And yet, I don’t think that was an unhappy time for me. We were warm and had enough to eat. I made a friend. I liked school.” Most importantly, the family was reunited.
When their visa came through, the Brenners left Cardiff for Flatbush, Brooklyn, before eventually settling in the Bronx, where Adolph opened another jewelry store.
New York was a chance to start over, but Holsten could not recreate a lost childhood. “I’m 99% sure I opted to focus on early childhood education because that was my way of reliving my childhood, by creating a program where children were safe and happy and laughing and doing all the wonderful things that children should.” During her three decades directing WJC’s Nursery School, Holsten grew the program from four children to the robust institution that it is today.
Holsten still struggles to process the events and the people who perpetrated them. “For years, I questioned if there was a God. I hated the Germans. But eventually, my husband, who was Viennese, wanted to show his children where he was born. My feelings dissipated. I don’t harbor hate, but I cannot understand how people like Mengele existed and still, presumably, loved their own children. I haven’t answered those questions. This [Nazi Germany] was not a population of maniacs. These were ordinary people.”
Rabbi Arnowitz looks at our relationship with Israel as it turns 75
In May of 1998, Tami and I were living in Israel and had the privilege to attend the Pa’amonei HaYovel ceremony in Jerusalem, a special Yom Ha’atzmaut concert to celebrate Israel’s 50th “jubilee” birthday. It was a heady time. The Oslo Process was still proceeding with hope for a peaceful, two-state solution. And, believe it or not, the biggest controversy was around the allmale dance troupe that would perform in the nationally-sponsored concert, because they were planning on performing shirtless — such a scandal! As Israel neared the half-century mark, the words of Leviticus imprinted on the Liberty Bell seemed within reach for the Jewish State: “And you shall hallow the fiftieth year and you shall proclaim liberty throughout the land for all its inhabitants.” Two states for two peoples. It sounded so simple.
Here we are today, with Israel’s 75th birthday fast-approaching, and the feelings are, well, anything but simple. “Complicated,” in fact, has become a favorite word for many of us when we describe the situation there. How did we get from proclaiming liberty throughout the land to where we find ourselves now? Is there still hope for a twostate solution? With this new government, will there be liberty, with equal rights and responsibilities for all the citizens of Israel, including Conservative and Reform Jews, not to mention for those who identify as LGBTQ+ and others? And what about Arab citizens of Israel? It’s all complicated. The trouble is, we live in a world that doesn’t really appreciate complexity. When something can’t be explained in a tweet, it is as easy to look away as it is to engage deeply.
And that is the dilemma facing American Jews today when it comes to Israel, for perhaps the first time in over a generation: Do we look away or do we engage more deeply and more passionately than ever before? Looking away is tempting,
particularly when the Israeli government includes cabinet members with inexcusable views and infuriating rhetoric; when the Knesset ponders laws to weaken the legal system and threatens the basic tenets of liberty and democracy. And yet, if we look away, what does it say about our relationship with the place, and with its people?
differences. We don’t need to necessarily approve of all of our partner’s actions or even their values, but we need to accept the other as they are, even while verbalizing disagreements and trying to influence where we can.
It is because our relationship with Israel is “I-You” that we must continue to engage, through trips and learning about Israel’s religious, cultural, and historical significance, as we work simultaneously toward a brighter, simpler, and freer future. Believe it or not, I am optimistic. (Yes, really!) Why? Because I am not only a student of philosophy, I am also a student of history.
In recently rereading philosopher Martin Buber’s I and Thou, the 1923 book in which he creates a theology based on relationships, I was reminded what having a real relationship entails. As Buber explains: treating the other as an object to be viewed only as it relates to you — your gain or loss — defines an “I-It” relationship, or mere objectification. Is that what our relationship with Israel is? Is Israel just a headline, a political entity to be evaluated in whatever way might best serve our perceived self-interest? Or is Israel worthy of more than that?
At a higher level than “I-It” is “I-You,” a relationship between true partners that demands respect and an attempt to understand, even if not always agreement. For many people, for many years, Israel was a source of pride in faith, security in place, and strength in identity. Now things may indeed be “complicated.” But an “I-You” relationship demands engagement, especially to bridge
Twenty-five years before Tami and I sat at the Pa’amonei HaYovel concert, Israel celebrated its 25th birthday. It was May 1973, and there was tremendous optimism at the time. Yet only a few months later, on Yom Kippur, Israel would experience its most vulnerable moment when Egypt and Syria attacked and caught the overconfident Israeli Defense Forces ill-prepared. Many thought Israel would not survive. Just five years later, Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat stood with U.S. President Jimmy Carter signing the Camp David Accords.
Things have had a way of changing quickly in Israel’s short history, and as the 17th century English theologian Thomas Fuller said, “...the darkest hour of the night comes just before the dawn.” I fervently pray that 25 years from now, as Israel’s next jubilee birthday approaches, we will once again be celebrating peace and “liberty for all its inhabitants.” What’s more, through engagement with Israel and her people as true partners, even when we disagree, I hope we as Jews can help that dawn come even faster. In the meantime, we will be sure not only to wrestle with the complications, but also to celebrate the miracles, like this 75th birthday.
WJC congregants discuss their bedikat chametz practices.
For seven days you are to eat matzot — on the first day remove the leaven from your houses. For whoever eats chametz [leaven] from the first to the seventh day is to be cut off from Isra’el.
—Shemot/Exodus 12:15
Bedikat chametz can be a challenging process for some, depending on how strict they are about it. Because bread is yeasted, it is fermented—the word chametz literally means “soured.” In one set of images I saw on a Passover humor page, someone had covered their house (and parts of their car too) with foil, in order to prevent chametz from getting out, perhaps. In her introduction to The New York Times Passover Cookbook, Joan Nathan says, “I start cleaning my house after Purim. I leave the kitchen for last, and let my twelve-year-old, David, check all boxed and canned goods to determine which are not kosher for Passover.” Purim happens to be 30 days away from Passover, so her cleaning takes a month, I suppose— she is a cookbook writer. No matter when you start your cleaning, the formal search for chametz is carried out on the night before Passover. After the last meal of chametz the next morning, the chametz is burned. (Not exactly child-friendly, but if you tell kids to leave so that they’ll be able to search for the afikoman after the Seder, they’ll probably buy in.) A good number of people symbolically “sell” their chametz to a non-Jew through a rabbi, in order to be able to feel that any remaining chametz is not theirs.
Rabbi Arnowitz’s parents, Janet and Alan Arnowitz, go to the Rabbi’s house for Passover. “I come a few days before to help Tami prepare, we have the Seder,
and then I spend the rest of Passover at my daughter’s,” Janet explains. However, before they started going to Rabbi Arnowitz’s house, they would turn over all of their kitchenware and dishes to a special cabinet in their basement where they would store their Passover kitchen items—but Alan hated the job. That’s why when their kids were old enough to have families, they gave them all of the items and told them to do the work. Despite that, Janet and Alan still clean and sell their chametz, and only after that do they go to the Rabbi’s house. As a child, Janet remarks that her family was nonobservant. “We would have more of a festive meal but not even what I would call a Seder,” she adds. “I never went to a Seder until I met Alan’s family.” When Alan was a child, he had a Seder, but they didn’t change dishes. “My grandparents were still alive, so I went to their house, but it was boring because my grandfather did it all in Hebrew,” he says. When his father was a child, they would search for chametz. “A few days or a week after Passover they found a piece of chametz that was still
there,” he laughs. That’s why they count to make sure they have all of the pieces. Many years later, when their children were little, they did a search—because it was fun for the kids—and they would put the chametz into a paper bag, and throw it out instead of burning it. Now, when they go to Rabbi Arnowitz’s house, each boy wants to make sure that they get ten pieces of chametz—Janet thinks that the Rabbi puts out ten. They put it into a paper bag and it is burned the next day. “They use feathers and flashlights now because candles are a little dangerous,” she notes. “I think it is a fun tradition—my kids always loved to do it.” After the chametz is back, her family always goes out for pizza.
Another WJC congregant, Debbie Katz, sells her chametz to the synagogue, but keeps it in her pantry. “I enjoy having grandchildren to pass down traditions and tell stories to at the Seder, and getting fun things like little plastic frogs for the young children,” she says. When she was growing up, she had Seders with a lot of people. Her family also emptied all the cabinets and put everything out on the terrace—it was screened in, therefore kept outside of their apartment. She waits until the last minute now to clean her house, but used to do it more in advance. She has another set of dishes, but lately she has been using a lot of paper and plastic since it is easier for her. “I’m older, so I take shortcuts,” she admits. She has a very small set of dishes, probably from the 1950s, that have been passed down in her family for generations. She fondly recalls eating on them as a child. She also likes pizza after the chametz makes its reappearance—plain cheese pizza is her preference.
Jennifer Hirschhorn, a third congregant, says, “My family
would close off certain cabinets, change dishes, and sell our chametz to Beth El.” When she eats bread again, she likes French toast.
Finally, Michael Weintraub and his wife, Susan Brecher, change over all of their dishes, wash many of the things that they use during the year, and sell their chametz. They clean out all of the shelves they use for food, and use only kosher for Passover dishes and certain silverware. They then put a tag on the cabinet they use to store the regular dishes. “It’s not locked, but it seems like it is, so we don’t go in and use it,” they comment. Susan’s mother did the same as they do now, but Michael’s parents were somewhat less observant. “There was no preparation—it was just like the rest of the year,” he observes. “However, we went to our cousins’ house, and I’m proud of my parents for doing that. Then, after I married Susan, they started to be more involved.” Susan’s favorite thing to do for Passover is to cook. “About a week before starting, we move the chametz into the dining room so that the kitchen is clean and I can start cooking in it,” she explains. Her favorite dish to eat when she starts eating chametz again is pasta, and Michael’s is pizza. “It’s always welcoming—it feels like going back to normal,” he says.
As my title says, sometimes Passover hits you by surprise. But it’s important to remember that bedikat chametz doesn’t have to be so stressful—it just helps you prepare for the exciting holiday—and maybe you’ll be glad you’ve bread this article!
Whether the subject is latkes, hamentaschen or challah, WJC members—like Jews around the world—have no shortage of opinions on what they like to eat (or don’t), and how they prefer these traditional foods to be prepared. But arguably no ritual dish is more polarizing than the humble gefilte fish, which is not really a fish at all, but an amalgam that may include carp, whitefish, and/or pike. With Passover soon upon us, we asked a sampling of congregants to reflect a bit on one of the Seder’s signature offerings
—Jacques Steinberg
“The first time I really enjoyed gefilte fish was when I was invited to my college roommate’s home in Columbus, Ohio for Passover. Her parents were survivors from Poland and made sweet gefilte fish. Luckily, Seasons makes it the same way. I’ve been eating it ever since!”
“I grew up one city block from the beach in Brighton Beach and, in my mind, the pike, carp, and whitefish that went into my Mom’s homemade gefilte fish are deeply connected to that beach and to the Atlantic’s briny water. My mother was well-known to the fishmonger at the corner of Brighton Beach Avenue and Brighton 3rd Street (picture Brighton Beach Memoirs). After she selected the fish she wanted, the fishmonger would descale, debone, and gut them and wrap them in brown paper. Then, in the small kitchen of our apartment, in a pre-war, six-story brick building, she would take out a wide wooden bowl and a chopping knife with a red, C-shaped metal handle, and begin to slowly chop and chop and chop the fish, then scrape the bottom of the bowl and repeat the sequence again and again and again... It was such hard work! I remember my Mom working up a sweat and not enjoying the process, but she would never use, or own, a food processor. She said the texture wouldn’t be the same. I’m sure she was right. She also added eggs, matzah meal, hand-grated parsnips and carrots, and gently sautéed onions to the mix before forming the footballshaped gefilte fish. The fish stewed in a pot with water and more carrots and onions. And the gefilte fish were heavenly! Nothing like the sugar-sweetened ones stuffed in jars or the frozen, rubbery ones from the supermarket. I still have the wooden bowl which looks like an object from a Rembrandt still life. I also still have the chopping knife. These are beloved objects that hold beloved memories of my Mom. God willing, I will bring them out of retirement this coming year to prepare homemade gefilte fish for our family Seder.”
An effort that has supported Holocaust survivors for three decades has evolved to include Jewish residents who are “alone, frail, or have run out of resources.”
et all who are hungry come and eat.” At Passover, these words call us to share holiday bounty with those who are less fortunate. At Westchester Jewish Center, the meaning of this phrase has long included a commitment to Jewish elders on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
More than 30 years ago, Janice Malett, as a recent transplant to Larchmont, brought Project Ezra to WJC. The project, she recalled, began in 1972, when “a couple of young zealots knocking on doors on the Lower East Side” discovered isolated, elderly Jews, mostly Holocaust survivors, and set about addressing their needs.
They named their project “Ezra” from the Hebrew word “to help.” The mission was straightforward: connect people to social services; help with appointments and paperwork; provide assistance, food, money, a human connection, as well as a place to go. Today, the organization’s offices and activity rooms occupy a suite in the Seward Park Cooperative on Grand Street, in the heart of what was once the largest Jewish neighborhood in the world.
For many years, Pesach food, collected and delivered by WJC volunteers, brought the holiday to this population. WJC’s Project Ezra luncheons transported clients to our Center for a festive annual “day in the country” with catered meal, live music, and gifts to take home. Nursery school children visited while Hebrew High Schoolers served.
Janice spoke of the joy of hosting this event, which fostered and honored a sense of Jewish peoplehood for the entire community. At one luncheon, committee member Meira Fleisch’s elderly parents, joining the party, were stunned to discover a friend from Europe, presumed lost at Auschwitz, among the Project Ezra guests.
After a hiatus necessitated by the pandemic, WJC hosted a small Project Ezra luncheon last fall. Meanwhile, WJC’s cash donations to Ezra help subsidize programming and purchases of food all through the year. Other synagogues, communities, and individuals throughout the Metropolitan New York region also provide in-kind gifts and services, and fund an annual budget of about $450,000. Project Ezra employs seven part-time staff members, including one remote worker in Minnesota, and is in the process of adding a social worker.
As an independent organization, taking no funding from government or UJA-Federation, the organization has forged a unique hands-on approach. “Other agencies help seniors, but with
paperwork and bureaucracy. We can do things directly and fill needs as we see them,” explained Geraldine Murphy, Ezra’s vice president and administrator. If a client needs a new mattress, a bag of groceries, help making medical appointments or arranging a burial, Ezra’s staff gets it done. “We can accomplish things quickly,” she said.
That work had to change in the past three years. With COVID fears, credit accounts at the local kosher market have replaced food deliveries. Snack packages supplant the hot lunches once enjoyed. Fewer clients come to activities than in the past. Those who do are cautious and masked.
The Holocaust survivors who inspired WJC’s early efforts have, of course, gone to their final rest. Today, Project Ezra focuses more broadly on Jewish residents of the neighborhood who are alone, frail, or have run out of resources, and those who arrived in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union. “We helped Russians connect to their Jewish heritage,” said WJC member Sharon Silver, who sits on Project Ezra’s board.
Sharon has been involved with the organization for two decades. For her, “the Lower East Side is a special place” with which she feels a personal connection. So it is with many of us living very different lives in more prosperous Jewish worlds. Many of our parents, grandparents, or other forebearers knew those streets around Orchard, Rivington, and Delancey. Sharon’s reminder: “It is a value to cherish that history.”
About 80 aging Russian Jews now comprise at least a third of the organization’s client base. On a recent Wednesday morning, Sam Rybalov worked the phone at his desk in Project Ezra’s offices. As Russian Group Coordinator, he leads a Russianlanguage discussion hour, drives the organization’s van, and, like others on staff, checks in on clients with weekly phone calls and home visits.
COVID, he laments, put a crimp in things: “We used to go to museums, to Brooklyn for shopping, to more than ten synagogues for lunch. Maybe it will start again?”
Maia Fiedler is another important presence in the Grand Street rooms. A young German intern assigned to Project Ezra by Action Reconciliation Service for Peace (ARSP), she shares in the phone check-ins, makes home visits, takes walks with clients, and listens to their stories. She assists in the office and leads a chair exercise group.
ARSP, which sends helpers from Germany to Jewish organizations around the world, has been assigning young people here for one-year stints since 1984. “At first the survivors were uncomfortable,” Sharon Silver recalled. But close relationships were forged, and the program became “a big and wonderful part of Project Ezra.” Maia commented simply: “I love it here.”
In an activity room down the hall, five women gathered over piles of beads and jewelry findings for a twice-monthly class.
Like such nearby institutions as Kossar’s Bagels, Moishe’s Kosher Bakery, and Henry Street Settlement, these women have long histories here.
Anne is a lifelong resident of the Lower East Side. Louise, cheerily dressed in a red sweater with manicure to match, arrived in the neighborhood from Cuba at age five. Mona, who sources beads at local flea markets, has lived here for four decades. Israeli Shoshana came for a visit 30 years ago and stayed. They have children and grandchildren in the area, a disabled husband at home, or no family at all. One appreciates Ezra’s kosher snacks, one the weekly calls, another the excursions.
For Florence, stringing a green necklace, the jewelry classes are a lifeline. “If I couldn’t come here, I wouldn’t look forward to life,” she said. A friend chimes in: “There is nothing else like this place.”
The Haggadah’s exhortation, “let all who are hungry come and eat,” refers to more than food. There are many kinds of hunger–for human connection, learning, friendship, conversation, creative activity. This year, because of COVID concerns, WJC will not be collecting Pesach foods, packing boxes, and delivering them personally. But with our contributions, and by staying close to our past, we continue to help Project Ezra fulfill its mission and ours.
On March 28th, the WJC Sisterhood hosted a Zoom cooking class with Benedetta Jasmine Guetta, an Italian food writer whose 2022 book, Cooking Alla Giudia: A Celebration of the Jewish Food of Italy, is a beautiful exploration of the history and traditions of Jews across Italy, and, of course, their delicious recipes.
From tibuia—a savory cheese pie also known as “Pie of the Jews”—to tortino di sarde e carciofi—a sardine and artichoke casserole dating back to the 1600s—to crostata di ricotta e visciole—a ricotta and sour cherry crostata that hid the cheese under a crust in order to get around an order from the Pope that forbade the Jews from trading dairy products—turning the pages of Guetta’s incredible book is both educational and inspiring. Winner of the Jewish Book Council’s Jane and Stuart Weitzman Family Award for Food Writing and Cookbooks, Guetta’s book will absolutely make you hungry.
I had an opportunity to interview Guetta about the book, and about how we all might be able to bring traditional Italian-Jewish food to our kitchens, on Passover and throughout the year. (This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.)
WJC Voices: The book is really such an incredible survey of recipes from all across Italy. Are there one or two you’d recommend readers start with as a way to get their feet wet when diving into the book?
Guetta: One relatively straightforward recipe is stracotto. It’s a long-cooked pot roast, with the most basic ingredients (beef round, tomatoes, onion, olive oil, and red wine) but when you stew them together slowly for three hours, it becomes delicious. In Rome they make this. It’s very saucy, and then you can take that sauce and use it over pasta, so it stretches into two meals. Another really easy one is a chocolate mousse cake for Passover—torta tenerina—mostly eggs and chocolate, ingredients you probably already have in the house. You end up with a meringue-like crust on top and a rich, soft chocolate center.
What were some of the biggest surprises you discovered when doing your research for the book?
One thing that surprised me is how minuscule the Jewish community in Italy really is. There are only about 35,000 Jews in Italy. It’s more or less the number you would find in a big American city, but in the whole country. It’s a declining, aging
population, and the younger Jews are moving abroad or becoming secular. Some of them are cooking these foods, but many are not. And even the ones who are, aren’t cooking all of them. Which was the other surprise, how fragmented the community is, and how Italy is such a regional country. In Rome, they cook the Roma dishes, in Florence, or Venice, it’s different dishes. Most people have heard of the Roman Jewish foods, like the fried artichoke, but I was interested to discover the ones from the regions we don’t hear of as often, and so I put in a lot of effort to represent the whole country.
What do you recommend if someone wants to bring more Italian Jewish cooking into their own home?
The food is Jewish, but it’s also very much Italian, and so garlic and onions are really the foundation of so many of the dishes. And I recommend that people use tomato paste more than they might be accustomed to. There are so many dishes where I throw in a bit of tomato paste and it just comes alive. In general, people shouldn’t forget about canned tomatoes. Not prepared sauces that already have seasonings, but just plain canned tomatoes. Especially since the fresh tomatoes in the U.S., sad to say, just can’t compare to the ones in Italy. When I go home to Italy, I actually try to smuggle some tomatoes back, they have more of a kick, more sour, more flavorful. Here they are all a bit watery and I worry that they harvest them too late. My mother-inlaw knows that the one thing she has to have for me when I visit is tomatoes.
What’s a dish you’d recommend if people want to push themselves out of their comfort zone for Shabbat?
A dish I would love people to try is not actually an Italian dish. Hraimi is a spicy fish starter originally brought over to Italy from Libya. Libya used to be an Italian colony, and after the state of Israel formed in 1948, the Jews there were struggling, and the Arabs were really persecuting them. Many fled to Italy, including my father—because it felt like a natural home, and a lot of Jews in Libya could already speak the language. It got so bad that the Italian Air Force had to help some Jews escape. And then the Jewish population from Libya helped to revive the Italian Jewish population, especially in Rome. A lot of Libyan Jewish dishes became Roman food, and today when you go to Rome, every other house will have a fish dish like this on the table.
The magazine is coming out for Passover—is there a Passover recipe you’d recommend that readers try?
Bocca di dama is a fluffy almond cake with a recipe that actually came from my grandmother, who brought it to Italy from her native Libya. It’s a fascinating story, all of the recipes she brought with her had Arabic names, of course, and then there was this one, in Italian with the strange translation (“mouth of a lady”) and I always wondered where it came from. So when I researched for the book, I discovered that the recipe had started in Italy back in 1660, in Livorno, when a local Jewish baker served it to the grand duke of the region. And from there it went to Libya, when Libya was an Italian colony — and while it thrived in Libya and became popular, it was completely forgotten in its native Italy. And so when the Libyans came back, they brought this cake and helped Italians rediscover it.
Finally, if someone from WJC is taking a trip to Italy, what are some Italian Jewish sites that they shouldn’t miss?
If it’s your first time in Italy, of course you have to go to Rome, and see the ghetto, the synagogue, and the Jewish museum. But if you have more time and want to explore, the Piedmont region has the most beautiful synagogues, jewels of architecture dotting these tiny towns. There are books on them, and, really, they can’t be missed. A Jewish-themed architecture trip to Piedmont would be amazing.
Guetta’s publisher was kind enough to allow us to share the recipe for bocca di dama (pictured on page 5) in the magazine, so we can all try it for the holiday.
Makes one 10-inch (25 cm) round cake; serves 6 to 8.
For the Cake
• 6 large (300 g) eggs, separated, plus 2 large (60 g) egg whites
• 2 cups (220 g) almond flour or finely ground almonds
• 1½ cups (300 g) granulated sugar
• Sliced almonds for sprinkling
1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C). Line the bottom of a 10-inch (25 cm) springform pan with parchment paper. To make the cake, in a large bowl, using a handheld mixer, beat the 6 (180 g) egg whites on medium speed for about 5 minutes, until stiff peaks form.
2. In another large bowl, using the handheld mixer (no need to clean the beaters), beat together the almond flour or ground almonds, egg yolks, granulated sugar, and the remaining 2 (60 g) egg whites on medium speed until well combined, about 5 minutes.
3. Using a rubber spatula, gently fold the beaten egg whites into the almond mixture until just combined, then scrape the batter into the prepared pan.
4. Bake the cake for about 35 minutes, until golden; a wooden skewer inserted into the center should come out clean. If the top of the cake starts to brown too fast, cover it loosely with foil.
5. Let the cake cool in the pan for 10 minutes. Run a knife around the edges of the pan and gently remove the springform ring. Let cool completely.
For the Icing
• 2⁄3 cup (80 g) confectioners’ sugar
• 2 large (60 g) egg whites
6. In a small skillet, toast the sliced almonds over medium heat for 2 to 3 minutes, until just browned. Remove from the heat and let cool.
7. To prepare the icing, in a large bowl, using a handheld mixer, whip the confectioners’ sugar with the egg whites on high speed to make a light, glossy icing.
8. Preheat the broiler (or use a kitchen torch).
9. Cover the cake with the icing, then sprinkle the sliced almonds on top. Place the cake under the broiler for 3 to 5 minutes, until the top of the cake is golden (or use the kitchen torch). Let cool.
10. Lift the cake carefully from the bottom of the springform pan and peel off the parchment paper, then transfer to a serving plate.
11. The frosted cake keeps well in the fridge, wrapped in aluminum foil, for a couple of days. If left unfrosted, the cake keeps well at room temperature for up to a week.
Excerpted from Cooking alla Giudia by Benedetta Jasmine Guetta (Artisan Books). Copyright © 2022.
Two Schapiro families stand in front of the Western Wall. A day later, we’d all return to the Western Wall to see just how incredible King Herod’s Temple project must have been as we toured the Western Wall tunnels.
Celebrating a very special birthday, WJC’s ECC director Ann Pardes climbs up Masada with Dale Klein. Even Sammy Spider braves the rain to climb. As for the rest of us, we couldn’t hack the weather and took the tram.
by the arrival of a Birthright group, we were thrilled to get our tour started.
This past Hanukkah, a group of WJC members, along with Rabbi Arnowitz and his family, spent ten days in Israel. This trip was not only a spiritual and moving experience but a bonding experience for all who attended. Led by our fearless tour guide Geoff Winston (Rabbi Arnowitz’s Camp Ramah counselor thirtyplus years ago) and teen leader Shlomit Frenkel of Keshet Educational Journeys, we ate, learned, hiked, and had tons of fun.
(Top, from left to right) As the kids in the group participate in an Escape Room, Major (res.) Yaakov Selavan shows us Syria from a bunker in Tel Saki and recounts heroic stories from the Six Day War. Harry and Pam Lebow enter the bunker. We greet Israeli soldiers with some American treats and goodies. We participated in an archaeological dig at the Beit Guvrin National Park. Ian Sitkowski and Elia and Jeremy Toeman are happily digging in the dirt to see what they can discover. Amazingly, our dig site is called Westchester because a group from Solomon Schechter Westchester (now The Leffell School) was the first to dig there a few years ago. (Bottom, from left to right) What is more fun (and scary) than rappelling off cliffs in the Golan?!?! Our group visits Save a Child’s Heart, an Israeli humanitarian organization that provides cardiac healthcare to children worldwide. We visit with patients undergoing treatment and share toys and gifts we brought from home.
WJC gratefully acknowledges the generous support and foresight of Joan and Stuart Schapiro in helping WJC members travel to Israel.
Rabbi Ethan Tucker is this year’s WJC Scholar-in-Residence. President and Rosh Yeshiva at Hadar, an organization that empowers Jews to create and sustain vibrant, practicing, egalitarian communities of Torah, Avodah, and Hesed, Ethan was ordained by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel and earned a doctorate in Talmud and Rabbinics from the Jewish Theological Seminary and a B.A. from Harvard College. For this issue of Voices, we asked WJC’s Assistant Rabbi Cornelia Dalton to talk with Rabbi Tucker about his work, and what emerged was a fascinating Rabbi-to-Rabbi conversation, which we have excerpted and edited below.
Rabbi Dalton: Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you ended up doing the work that you’re doing.
Rabbi Tucker: My childhood was split between New York and New Haven, as I grew up in two very involved and committed and observant Jewish homes, straddling different denominational spaces. I didn’t think I was going to be a rabbi, but my father [Rabbi Gordon Tucker] is a rabbi, and that was hard to escape at the end of the day. I ran the egalitarian minyan at Harvard and eventually decided that the world did not necessarily need me as another lawyer. So I decided to go into rabbinic work and devote myself to trying to strengthen and build and catalyze the Jewish community that I dreamed of, which synthesized a lot of the things that I grew up with and took from different spaces. My work at Hadar, which I’ve been doing since 2007, has really been focused on creating a culture of gender equality in all aspects of citizenship and leadership in the Jewish community, and to do that alongside a serious commitment to learning and observance, and to see those as reinforcement of one another.
What does egalitarianism mean to you? What’s important to you about it? What felt compelling to you about it as a path of exploration, either socially, morally or halachically?
It was really in college that I first kind of confronted a dissonance between what it meant that my female colleagues were going to be my total equals in all aspects of intellectual and social life, but that there would be some kind of disability or marginalization in shul and the synagogue. I was open to explanations or justifications for that, but it just never sat well. I started to see it as a problem that needed fixing, halachically. Like, how do we get around it, in a kind of Apollo 13 way: how do we make out of Scotch tape, and all the loose parts, something that can function as a landing apparatus? And over time, it emerged that the commitment to egalitarianism was bound up with a commitment to more people doing more
mitzvot. I began to feel like a commitment to gender equality in a committed religious environment is a commitment to stringency, to taking on more, to expanding the circles of responsibility and obligation.
One of the things you’re coming to WJC to teach about is community. And one of the conversations we’re having internally is how we can make sure we’re meeting the needs of all of our constituents, thinking about all kinds of diversity: economic diversity, interfaith diversity, young families, single folks, people with special needs, etc. When you’re thinking about more people doing more mitzvot, those expanding circles, whose voices are you thinking about, and who are you most afraid of leaving behind?
I start from a 30,000 foot view: what does vibrant community that will leave echoes through the ages look like? What kind of commitment does it require to be self-sustaining, and who are the people we have to gather in order to make that strong? The people I actually worry about leaving behind are the people primed to be major contributors, assets, pillars of this effort. I worry we’ll get something wrong and compromise getting our most passionate and committed people involved. But my hope, in the end, is to supercharge people’s motivation to get them to come together to build something extraordinary.
So what does that end up meaning on the ground? What is Hadar? What do you do there as an organization to achieve that vision?
The story of Hadar is about a range of different projects. The prehistory was a minyan called Kehilat Hadar that was designed to be a holistic davening experience, and then we moved to a professional-led organization that could bring a broader holistic vision to bear. We started a summer program in 2007 for 18 undergraduate-adjacent young adults, basically modeling a different kind of egalitarian yeshiva just for an experience of immersive study. That grew and we started offering public lectures and expanding to other cities, we have Devash magazine, our weekly parashah magazine for children and families, and we are trying to build to an ultimate dream that goes cradle to grave, radiating out Torah to the entire Jewish community.
Tell me more about the magazine, which I certainly use. We actually feel like we have a massive curriculum to teach. We got a grant from a foundation to help execute our dream vision of the kid reading it to themselves on the couch or the family around the Friday night dinner table. We want to give kids a feeling of ownership over the Torah and being protagonists in its story. The next goal with it is a book, a compilation you can get when your child is five and it can carry you for the next seven years.
So much of your work has straddled the halachic world and organizational work. What has it taught you about managing conflict, and people being on opposing sides of an issue? There might not be 39 different possible conclusions in any given passage in the Torah, but there’s usually at least three. And when you see that over and over again, I think it does train you to think a certain way, and help you go beyond talking points. I worry that our culture has hurt people’s ability to understand what motivates someone else. I think we should be able to appreciate that someone has a different position, motivated by something else, and then be able to put language around what would be lost if we followed their way. But when it’s all about winning and losing, power and vindication, then there’s no learning, there’s no wisdom. It’s not just about being for or against something but being able to say this is right, and it’s also complicated.
Finally, what’s your favorite thing about Jewish community?
I really love the experience and rhythm of davening and the cycle of the year, having a liturgical and communal frame that sort of tells me what today is, reverberating in a way that goes far beyond my personal narrative.
That’s my favorite thing, too, belonging to something that is much greater than myself. Thank you for taking the time. We’re so looking forward to having you with us in the spring. I can’t wait to continue the conversation.
It’s ironic—through media and technology we are more “connected” than ever before, yet many of us still want more. Join Rabbi Ethan Tucker of Hadar for a weekend filled with discussion and learning devoted to community, connection, and how we can find a deeper sense of belonging and meaning, both as individuals and as a congregation. To learn more and reserve your spot, please visit wjcenter.org/sir.
Friday, April 28, 2023
6:00pm: Rhythm & Ruach
7:00pm: Dinner
8:00pm: Lecture & Conversation: Where I Belong: Finding My Place in Meaningful Community
In his opening discussion, Rabbi Tucker shares his ideas about the foundations of Jewish gathering and how these may impact our relationships with each other and our community.
Saturday, April 29, 2023
9:15am: Morning Service/Sermon: Sacred Community
Rabbi Tucker delivers the weekly sermon on Parshat Acharei MotKedoshim, a Torah portion dedicated to the elements that make a sacred community.
12:15pm: Kiddush Lunch
1:00pm: Discussion: Building Bridges or Walls? Judaism has a rich history of bringing people together in vibrant communities. Using ancient Jewish texts, Rabbi Tucker offers insight into the dynamics of community building and belonging that can serve as guideposts today.
7:15pm: Champagne & Conversation Reception (Ambassador Circle Only)
8:30pm: Dessert Reception, Lecture, and Discussion: Torah: God’s Love Letter to Us
Judaism, and Jewish living, can be famously difficult to access and understand, it can look like a disconnected set of laws and practices without a coherent explanation.
Rabbi Tucker will help us see the forest through the trees, so to speak, by building on the often ignored, imaginative stories of the rabbis to see the Torah as God’s outreach to connect to us.
Sunday, April 30, 2023
10:00am: Bagel & Lox Brunch
10:30am: Closing Lecture and Conversation: Tik Tok, Netflix, and Torah: Helping our children their Jewish Identity
Using Jewish values to instill meaning in our children and grandchildren’s lives, Rabbi Tucker highlights the importance of Jewish learning as a family and provides tools that make Jewish living more accessible.
Sunday, June 11, 2023 at 6:00pm
For more than 60 years, WJC has held an annual gala to celebrate our community, raise funds, and honor key contributors to our shul. This year, the goal of our annual festivity is to welcome as many WJC members as possible. Chaired by WJC members Lauren Sholder and Joanna Shlesinger, we invite our entire community to bask in the breeze of the Riviera and partake in casino fun.
We are thrilled to offer tribute to a distinguished group of honorees who represent three different segments of our membership. Judy and Howard Zweig, Sharon Weinstock and Jacques Steinberg and Glenna Lee are all remarkable individuals. Even without formal titles in synagogue leadership, these changemakers show initiative and creativity to drive our congregation forward. Their contributions help make WJC the center of our Jewish lives.
Voices asked WJC members who know our honorees best to offer commentary and insight as to what makes each of them so valuable in our community.
When you meet Judy Zweig on any occasion, you are greeted with a beautiful smile and a warm embrace that signals immediately that you are about to have a wonderful time. And you are never disappointed. She first asks about you and your loved ones, and then starts a meaningful conversation about some common experience in which she shares her knowledge, her understanding, and her desire to know your opinion. This is usually followed by an interesting exchange from which we come away better than when we started.
Aside from being personable and interesting, Judy has the gift of being creative, energetic, and well-organized — all of which allows her to translate her creativity into activity. This has been demonstrated in her founding of the J.O.Y. Club with her husband Howard. The acronym J.O.Y. stands for Just Older Youth (the name was originated by one of the founding members) and it was designed to serve the social and intellectual needs of WJC members over the age of 70. This WJC institution brings delight to those of us who have the proper membership credentials and will be a mainstay of our congregation as long as there are eligible members. Not only did Judy co-found the club, but she has also assumed responsibility to make it a success, doing everything from selecting wonderful speakers to moderating the sessions and arranging dinners to promote wonderful conversations. The J.O.Y. Club has a perfect name: it brings joy to us all, and this is largely thanks to Judy, and the joy that lives inside her.
—Marion and Walter Reichman
Almost 30 years ago, Howard Zweig joined WJC. Just one week later, he and his wife Judy volunteered to co-chair the Membership Committee! Over the years, it became obvious that he took great satisfaction in helping WJC. You name the committee — Howard has been the chairman or at least the co-chair.
More recently, he and Judy were inspired to create the J.O.Y. Club, tapping into the WJC membership to take advantage of our doctors, lawyers, professors, businessmen, and authors willing to provide members an inside look on important issues of the day. It’s to Judy and Howard’s credit that it has been such a success. Personable, dependable, smart Howard Zweig is a mensch for all seasons, and we are thrilled to know him.
—Ed and Adi SteinIhe J.O.Y. Club has a perfect name: it brings joy to us all...
The person you want to greet you when you walk into a WJC program or service is Sharon Weinstock. Beyond her quick wit and intellect, you will quickly notice her warmth. Despite a full-time law career, and a rich and athletic family life with husband Jacques Steinberg and children Ali and Jordan, Sharon pops up regularly at WJC programs, making each event that much more an exercise in sincerity. She is devoted to enrichment and interested in Jewish life—and to sharing it with her friends, many found at WJC. Sharon savors engagement and participation, both hers and yours.
Opportunities to engage with fellow WJC enthusiasts include helping to lead planning for the high-holiday Study Service (together with the extraordinarily learned members of the Spiritual Life Committee), working on the Nominating Committee, where she was inspired by the contribution and involvement of long-time members, and, as she says, “the enthusiasm of younger newer ones eager to get involved, participate, and engage with the synagogue.”
Sharon cites a highlight of her service as a Jazz Night sponsored by the Musical Enrichment Committee featuring Renewal services’ percussionist Nadav Snir-Zelniker’s band. “It gave us a unique way for people to gather at WJC on a Saturday night,” she said.
You may recall seeing Sharon at a Koslowe Gallery opening, hiking through Sheldrake on a Sisterhood outing, finding mindfulness at Shabbat Yoga, or serving as a Shabbat Greeter. Her bright smile welcoming you. Her presence beside you would have made the experience that much more meaningful.
— Amy Levine-Kennedy
He has been on the Rabbi Transition Committee and the Strategic Planning Committee. He has lent his voice to the study service and to the renewal service. He, along with Sharon, his partner in life, love, and crime, co-chaired the grand mitzvah project of 2019. He has, within the sanctuaries of Westchester Jewish Center, mourned the death of his father and celebrated the coming of age of his children. He drew on his professional excellence to be a founding editor of Voices magazine under Rabbi Arnowitz, and to be a rousing force on the Letters to My Children keepsake under Rabbi Segelman. He spent four years as trustee. Someone once called him a Rabbi whisperer. In moments small and large Jacques Steinberg has served to the benefit of WJC—embodying the center’s best values, and furthering its salient missions—ever since he landed here in 2003. “In the nearly two decades that Sharon and I, and Jordan and Ali, have been members, WJC has added so much to our lives,” Steinberg says. “Close friends. Learnings from clergy and congregants. Spiritual and cultural enrichment. And WJC has never been more of an anchor for me, never more of a source of comfort and camaraderie, than during the year after my father passed away in November of 2018. I will always be grateful for that support.”
The essential point about Jacques, the point that friends and acquaintances will make, is one of kindness. Chesed. He will give you advice when you need it most. He’ll remember your favorite beer. He’ll make it to your early-morning minyan. He’ll pick you up from the airport if you only ask. Jacques is a mensch. And a gala honoree worthy in every sense of the word.
—Kostya KennedyMARION AND WALTER
REICHMAN have lived in Larchmont for 51 years and been members of WJC since the mid-1970s. Marion taught kindergarten in the ECC, Walter is a past Secretary and Vice President, and their children celebrated their B’nei Mitzvah at the shul.
For more information and to reserve your tickets, visit wjcenter.org/riviera
Be careful what you say to Glenna Lee. For example, let’s say you happen to mention that you like poetry. The next thing you know, she’s organized a poetry slam and you’re the headliner. Or you find yourself in the forest with the Sisterhood, writing an eco-poem about the wonders of burdock. Glenna makes things happen. Wonderful, heartfelt, and meaningful things. If Glenna plans it, you can be certain it will be a creative, spiritual, and intergenerational journey — usually with a delightful Jewish theme woven in. She’ll push you outside your comfort zone but only in the best ways possible. And you’ll find yourself immersed in a warm, friendly, welcoming community, even if it’s your first time joining in. We’re so lucky to have Glenna’s Sisterhood leadership at WJC, and her ability to create inspiring programs so effortlessly, bringing people together for the most magical experiences. The next time Glenna invites you to an event, I strongly encourage you to say yes.
—Julie MusicusED AND ADI STEIN have been members of WJC for 49 years and fortunate to have benefited from the guidance and inspiration of three rabbis: Rabbi Koslowe, Rabbi Segelman, and now Rabbi Arnowitz.
AMY LEVINE-KENNEDY lives in Larchmont with her husband, Kostya Kennedy, and their daughters Sonya and Maya. She is the curator of the Koslowe Gallery and an Officer at WJC.
KOSTYA KENNEDY lives in Larchmont with his wife
Amy Levine-Kennedy and daughters Sonya and Maya. He has been an active member of WJC since 2002, editing Voices and Rabbi Segelman’s Letters to My Children.
JULIE MUSICUS, a WJC member since 2006, is an educator at Sheldrake Environmental Center and a writer/editor for the American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science. She currently serves on WJC’s Israel Engagement Task Force.
Memories from Alan Queen, Corey Feldman, Stephen Kutno and Abbe Kellner-Kutno, Robin Nazarzadeh and Veronica Hogasten, and Neil Wexler.
As Israel celebrates 75 years, Voices asked some very special members of the WJC community what Israel has meant to them, and to share a few words about their personal connection to the Holy Land. Their stories moved us as we put together this issue, and we hope they move you as well.
Lenny Queen was a beloved member of WJC for many years. He passed away on January 12, 2023, at the age of 96. Lenny is remembered for his enormous presence, both physically and emotionally — his booming voice, singing along with the prayers (even if not always in the right key); or his car in the parking lot — LSQUEEN on the license plate — that announced he was in the building. Not everyone knows of Lenny’s 75-year love affair with the State of Israel. His son Alan agreed to share some words about a side of his father that we didn’t always see at WJC.
In 1950, not even 25 years old, my father made aliyah, moving to the newly-created State of Israel. He took up residence at a brand new kibbutz, Kibbutz Hasolelim, located in Emek Yizrael. In addition to meeting my mother, marrying, and becoming a father, he learned everything you would ever need to know about chickens and eggs. In cleaning out his apartment after his death, I found a letter returned to him by his cousin after he returned to the United States. The letter is dated August 21, 1952. In it, he talks about how hard the work is—but also about how happy he is to do it. His mind, as it often was, was focused on the food. He reported that some days, there were only vegetables. Other days, there were eggs for all three meals, but no other protein.
The scarcity of ingredients was perhaps unsurprising at the time, but as he returned to Israel in his later years— his last visit was well after his 90th birthday, at least until his final trip just recently for burial in Beit Shemesh— my father marveled at how the country had become a foodie’s paradise. He was amazed that he could now enjoy a famously large Israeli breakfast at every hotel where he stayed. He could go out to eat dinner and enjoy the meat
or fish of his choice. These small luxuries were missing at the start.
Nevertheless, my father was so dedicated to the kibbutz movement in his time. In later years, he grew to appreciate the growth of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa and the smaller cities, and how cosmopolitan they became, fulfilling Herzl’s vision of wide boulevards and sidewalk cafes. His oldest child, Nitza, who was born during his time on Hasolelim, returned to Israel as a young adult and lived on a kibbutz in the northern Negev, on the Gaza border. My father’s amazement at watching Ben-Gurion’s dream of making the desert bloom was never ending. He was so proud to have played a small but crucial role in what Israel has become, and he truly believed the words of Hatikvah: As long as within our hearts / The Jewish soul sings / As long as forward to the East / To Zion, looks the eye / Our hope is not yet lost / It is two thousand years old / To be a free people in our land / The land of Zion and Jerusalem.
Corey Feldman, who grew up at WJC and was Bar Mitzvah-ed at the shul along with his two siblings, is the author of A Line In the Sand: An American’s Story of Service and Sacrifice. He writes here, in an excerpt adapted from his book, about his time serving in the IDF.
Long before I joined the IDF, a friend of mine attended a Hanukkah party in the Old City of Jerusalem. The Rabbi, from whom the guests expected to hear a long sermon about the significance of the holiday, asked only a simple question: “What would you fight for?” At what point do the stakes of remaining a bystander outweigh your intervening? What would you risk life and limb for? Where do you draw the line?
In October of 2010, I enlisted in the IDF because I did not feel whole standing on the sidelines while terrorism threatened the right of Israel’s people to live in peace. I discovered that I draw the line when bomb shelters must be built in playgrounds. I draw the line when guards must be placed outside of stores, restaurants, and movie theaters for fear of suicide bombers. I draw the line when schools are closed not because of incoming snow, but because of incoming missiles.
Over the course of four years between the time I made that decision and the conclusion of my military service, I learned that drawing a line is a lot easier than the follow-through required to uphold that commitment. Serving in the IDF, I learned to be selfless, and to think about my teammates as an extension of myself. To take a friend’s shift at guard duty so that he could
catch an extra half-hour of sleep. To do an extra round under the stretcher to help a struggling comrade, content with the knowledge that he would do the same for me. I learned what it meant to be humbled, and to be broken.
Through it all, I persisted and persevered, because as much as it hurt at times, and as much as it may cost me in medical bills down the line, Israel is worth it. The tiny country, I came to realize, is not the “City Upon a Hill” that we who love her sometimes fantasize that she is, and that her founders dreamed she might one day become. But neither is she the tyrant that the international media often portrays her as; in a Middle East dominated by dictatorships, subjugation of minorities, and fanaticism, Israel remains a lone beacon of democracy, tolerance, and reform. Though I set down the path of military service with the intention of giving back to the country that meant and means so much to me, in the end, all that I received and all that I learned far eclipsed the sacrifice I set out to make.
Stephen Kutno and Abbe Kellner-Kutno joined WJC in 1996 when they moved to Mamaroneck, and were active members until moving to Israel in 2017. Stephen served on the Spiritual Life and Teen Engagement committees, and Abbe chaired the Spiritual Life and Clergy Search committees and was a member of the Board. Their daughter Sheva preceded them in making aliyah, in 2013, and the rest of the family (Stephen, Abbe, and their children Matan and Meirav) followed four years later.
For as long as we have been together as a couple, we dreamt of making aliyah. Abbe’s love for Israel grew from her Zionist upbringing and involvement in Young Judaea; Stephen’s love grew out of a gap year in college that he spent in Israel through Project Otzma. It helped that the two of us met during that year. Despite dreaming of aliyah, life happened—extended family, graduate school, careers, children, a mortgage, and a great Jewish community at WJC. Following a simcha trip in 2003, we returned as frequently as possible, each time discussing the possibility of making aliyah. There was a moment when we came close to making the move in 2007, but we found it impossible to leave our comfort zone.
We visited with even greater frequency during our daughter Sheva’s studies at the Technion. When Abbe was visiting Sheva in 2015 with Matan and Meirav, she decided it was time to explore the possibility again. After several pilot trips, we decided that it was time. To this day, we wonder “what were we thinking?” We were outside the demographics of most new olim, who are young people/young families or retirees. Some called us brave, others crazy. In 2017, we finally took the plunge to live our dream.
There are frustrating moments in a new country. Banking has its quirks; drivers are impatient; people don’t respect personal boundaries or understand queues. All of that is forgotten in a moment. So often we are reminded that we are all family. The cashier who won’t let us overpay for an item that is on sale; the store owners who know and greet us. We love that the Jewish holidays are the national holidays. “Shabbat shalom” and “shavua tov” are the greetings at the end and beginning of the week. And at Passover time the “destination signs” on the buses read “Chag Sameach!” The land, the beaches, and the sea are beautiful. We are home.
Robin Nazarzadeh and Veronica Hogasten have been members of WJC since moving to Larchmont in 2007. Their three children (Leo, Alina, and Liv) went through WJC preschool and Religious School and have been Bar and Bat Mitzvah-ed at the shul.
Israel is where our story began. We first met each other at Kibbutz Giva’t Brenner in December 1994. We were a part of an ulpan program and spent five months working various jobs at the kibbutz and also learning Hebrew. The program was sponsored by The Jewish Agency and meant for new immigrants beginning their integration into Israeli society. Jewish non-immigrants were also allowed to participate. Our group of ninety people consisted of immigrants, mainly from the former Soviet Union, along with a handful of American and European “tourists” like us. Our three workdays per week started very early and usually consisted of either picking avocados or working in the sod fields — thankfully neither of us got chicken coop or cow milking duty! We spent the other days in immersive Hebrew classes.
It was inspiring and daunting at the same time to witness the immigrants embarking on their new lives. It was amazing to see the sense of hope and optimism in the group, despite being in a country where most everything was new to them. It was also difficult not to be impressed by the efforts that Israel — and Israelis—made to welcome and absorb the new immigrants. That sense of family and optimism was what made a lasting impression on us.
After our time on the kibbutz, we spent a month traveling through Israel on our own. We camped, took buses, stayed in hostels, and on two occasions were invited into the homes of complete strangers who treated us like family. Before going to the
kibbutz, Veronica had been to Israel a number of times from her native Sweden, since her aunt and cousins live there. I (Robin) had been there once as a child—when there were direct El Al flights from Tehran to Tel Aviv, if you can imagine! We don’t know if it was because of the thrill of meeting there, but after those six months, Israel became even more of a special place for us. We even considered making aliyah, but it was not meant to be. Many other trips to Israel have followed—including another six month stretch for me. We still feel at home there.
Neil Wexler moved to Rye in 1984 and joined WJC with his wife, Arlene, in 1991. Their 3 children grew up at WJC and celebrated their B’nei Mitzvah from 2000-2003.
First I was a Jew, then an Israeli. I was born in 1954 in Iasi, Romania. Both of my parents were Romanians whose families had lived in Romania for generations. Before World War II, Iasi— which was Romania’s second largest city—was one-third Jewish, but Communist threats eventually forced us and many others to flee. In 1965, we left Romania for Israel. As refugees, we spent several months in Italy in somewhat squalid conditions, but in 1966, Israel welcomed my parents, me (age 12), and my 15-year-old brother with open arms, music, falafel, hora, and hugs. Not to mention an Israeli kova tembel (sun hat), which was invaluable in the heat.
I was astonished by the new country, the strong bright light of Israeli sunshine, and the amazing food and local architecture. My Aunt Gisella, who had made aliyah several years earlier, brought us to her Tel Aviv apartment. It was only two bedrooms but somehow it fit two families and four children until we were given our own apartment by the Jewish Agency in the in-settlement town of Or Yehuda. Or Yehuda was close to Lod Airport, and as a young boy I spent countless hours watching the air traffic.
I was the only Romanian, and the only Ashkenazi, in my school. The other students spoke Iraqi and Hebrew. It was a hard year trying to acclimate, made even harder as I was about to turn 13 and have my bar mitzvah. Given the timing of our aliyah, my parents were advised to delay the celebration until my Hebrew improved. I was given private lessons, which I enjoyed. The big day was scheduled for early June 1967. I thought that I was as ready as I would ever be—and then the Six Day War broke out the same week my bar mitzvah was scheduled and my celebration was postponed again. We spent the war in a communal shelter.
By the following year, my Hebrew had improved and I started
to feel more like an Israeli. We moved from Or Yehuda to Jaffa. In high school, I traveled via bicycle nearly an hour each way to and from school. In my last year before graduation, I was invited to apply for the Air Force for my army service. I was shocked when I got the invitation, and even more shocked when I was accepted. While I still spoke with an accent, my transition to becoming an Israeli felt more complete than ever.
My wife Jackie and I joined WJC more than 30 years ago when our oldest child, Rachel, was of nursery school age. WJC quickly became both our spiritual home as well as the place where we met some of our longest and dearest friends. Wanting to get involved, I soon joined the Cemetery Committee. Today, I am the President of WJC Cemetery Association, Inc., or WJCCA, the independent Connecticut corporation responsible for running WJC’s section of the Glenville Jewish Cemetery in Greenwich, CT.
As I will share in a moment, I had some very personal reasons for getting involved with our cemetery—stretching back decades to my family’s roots in the once-thriving but ultimately tragic, Jewish community in the port city of Salonika, in what is now Greece. But first, a bit of background on our own cemetery:
One of WJC’s first actions as a congregation, almost 100 years ago, was to locate and to purchase a burial place for its members. WJC found a beautiful, wooded and serene spot, and in 1926 joined congregations from Port Chester, White Plains, New Rochelle, and Greenwich. While the cemetery is over 60 acres, the initial portion reserved for burials was less than 8 acres.
I attribute my initial involvement in the Cemetery Committee to the charm and persistence of its then-president, Gerhard Spies. As many congregants remember, Gerhard had a special talent for getting WJC members to help him with various projects that interested him, including our cemetery; the establishment of a Holocaust Memorial and Holocaust Learning Center; and the care and preservation of one of the oldest Jewish cemeteries in Europe in Worms, Germany, which survived the Holocaust, unlike many of its inhabitants.
I agreed to help WJCCA more than 30 years ago because I believed that as a real estate lawyer interested in history and legacy, that I could be of service, and that I would find such service rewarding and challenging. I have not been disappointed.
Under Gerhard’s leadership as president, and with the assistance of many—including WJC officers, the Cemetery Committee and WJCCA’s board members and volunteers—we have modernized WJCCA’s corporate governance by adopting new bylaws, as well as rules and regulations for the operation and maintenance of the cemetery. We have also replaced its crumbling paper maps and supplemented our paper records with a specialized computer
burial records. Finally, with our assumption of the New Rochelle section of the Glenville Cemetery in 1984 upon the dissolution of its congregation, we had an opportunity to quadruple the size of WJC’s section. With the completion of our expansion project in the early 2000s, we have created a cemetery that should meet our future needs, along with a substantial endowment to ensure its continued maintenance.
What I have come to realize over time is that my lasting interest and commitment to WJC’s cemetery has parallels to Gerhard’s. In his case it was born out of his love for the people of Worms—including the family members and ancestors buried in its cemetery—and his appreciation for why all of that should be cherished and preserved.
My ancestors’ story of Salonika and its Holocaust history is different—but my love for them has compelled me to honor them and to follow in Gerhard’s footsteps.
As many of our longest-tenured members know, I am Sephardic. All four of my grandparents were born in the 1890s in the second largest city in Greece, then known as Salonika and later as Thessaloniki. It is an important port city in northern Greece at the head of the Aegean Sea and at the base of the mountains of Macedonia—part of what is commonly called the Balkans.
Salonika is a community where, remarkably, Jews, Christians and Muslims coexisted for centuries in relative harmony. Salonika became a significant Sephardic community after the expulsion of the Sephardic Jews from Spain in 1492. For many Iberian Jews, the Muslim countries that were part of the vast Ottoman Empire were a natural and comfortable choice to establish new roots without fear of further persecution.
Many immigrated to Salonika, a city that had fallen on hard
that could be their safe haven and city of refuge. In Salonika for more than 400 years, the Iberian Sephardic Jews were able to freely and openly practice their religion, speak Spanish and their unique tongue, Ladino or Judeo-Spanish, and observe their Sephardic traditions with minimal interference by their Ottoman rulers. Their world was a deeply religious one filled with Spanish traditions and Ladino parables, expressions, and superstitions.
My grandparents ate Middle Eastern and Turkish dishes, listened to Turkish and Middle Eastern music, and even danced with belly dancers. The Iberian Jews lived and prospered over the next four centuries, as Jews were the dominant religious faith in the city and dominant ethnic population. As the stevedores and merchants they ran the busy port—the commercial life blood of the city, closing it on Shabbat. They built more than 30 synagogues, religious schools, and other community facilities that became a model for Jewish communal life and Jewish learning. It was a city where Kabbalah was studied, famous Rabbis taught, and home to Shabbati Zevi, the self-proclaimed 17th century Messiah. Salonika was called “Little Jerusalem” or “Mother of Israel,” home to almost 100,000 Jews in 1900, a true Jewish jewel.
During those 400 years, they expanded the Jewish cemetery in the center of Salonika dating back to Roman times. At the time of my grandparents’ births, it was the largest Jewish cemetery in Europe, with an estimated 350,000 Jewish souls buried there.
The turn of the 20th century brought big changes to Salonika as the Ottoman Empire was crumbling. The Balkans Wars (1912-1913), the Greek nationalism movement with the formal incorporation of Salonika as “Thessaloniki” into Greece in 1913, and the winds of the impending first World War made Salonika less and less a safe haven for its large Jewish population. The Greeks expected the Jews—now as citizens of Greece—to speak
Greek rather than Ladino or Spanish, go to Greek schools, close their shops on Sunday rather than Saturday, and obey Greek laws.
It was at this point that my grandparents and many other Jews began making plans to come to the United States. Those who chose to remain faced rising anti-Semitism from their now “fellow Greeks” who did not understand their religion, culture or ways. Fortunately for my grandparents and for me and my relatives, they made the commitment and sacrifices to establish a new life in a new world.
Following Greek independence in 1913, the Greek government began a campaign to move the Jewish Cemetery out of the center of the city to make room for the expansion of the university, which was built adjacent to the Jewish Cemetery.
Thessaloniki was occupied by the Nazis in April 1941 and restrictive laws were imposed on its Jewish inhabitants. In 1942, all Jewish men were conscripted into forced labor, and only released—temporarily—when the Jewish community paid an enormous ransom. Ultimately, in 1943, 46,000 Jews, representing 96 percent of the remaining Jewish community, were deported to Auschwitz–Birkenau, with fewer than 2,000 surviving. That represented the highest fatality rate of any major Jewish community in Nazi-occupied Europe. Sadly, included among the dead were surely some of my grandparents’ relatives.
The Nazis together with their Greek collaborators seized the opportunity to destroy (and not relocate) the vast Jewish cemetery, bulldozing its stone monuments, looting its graves and ultimately re-using its valuable stone monuments, with inscriptions still visible, throughout the city in its churches, sidewalks, public buildings, and public works projects without regard for their sacred value. In the 1950s, the university was expanded over the footprint of the cemetery without a monument or an acknowledgment of its prior use. This was a unique end as most of the Jewish cemeteries throughout Europe were spared destruction by the Nazis and their collaborators.
The destruction of the Jewish Cemetery in Salonika, as well as the killing of its Jewish population, brought a tangible end to the city’s long, vibrant Jewish history. Today, there are fewer than 1,000 Jews proudly maintaining two synagogues, a school, an old-age home, a small museum, a small cemetery and a Holocaust memorial. Today most residents of Thessaloniki know little of its four centuries of Ottoman and Jewish history and the Greek authorities have done little to remind them.
This loss reminds me of the importance of honoring our ancestors and preserving their final resting places.
11 Approx. 12 of these in a nice bowl of soup (abbr.)
12 "Who ____ bag of flour remain in our pantry?"
13 Borders 18A
21 Greek letters
23 All Terrain Scout Transport, in Star Wars (abbr.)
25 Balak and Balaam's failed attempt on the Jews
26 The one who rolls gimel on the dreidel
27 Give your hands this twice during the Seder
28 Pre-Columbian Mexican
29 "Call it ____," say the people ready for the Seder to end
30 "May ____ your [31D]?"
31 Meaning of Seder
32 H-bomb trial, for one
34 Russian diminutive for Daria
37 "I ______ the Hebrew transliteration for my younger brother to sing the Four Questions"
38 Not laptops
40 Gastronomic university?
ACROSS
1 Common Passover question, "When ___ we eat?"
5 Important quality for a hospital during a health crisis
10 Something COVID has been compared to
14 Neighbor of Peru (abbr.)
15 "Great" or "Little" Bahamas island
16 Moses brag: "____ the people go"
17 40-Day Christian event near Passover
18 Potato state
19 "____ real bowl of cereal," someone eating Matzah-Os might say
20 What 22A isn't
22 Bread of affliction
24 Slanted typeface (abbr.)
25 ___ Field (home of the Mets)
26 Palestine, in the Bible
29 One of the 4 in the Maggid portion of the Seder
33 What you might steal from your teacher's desk (abbr.)
34 Limp Bizkit singer Fred
35 Flourless Chocolate ____, forgetting the "A"
36 Oohs and ___
37 Exodus verse: "This is how you shall eat it: with your belt on your ____, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand..."
38 Florida's Miami-___ county
39 East Lansing sch.
40 First, in Potsdam
6
8
9
10 "_____ nice to recline?"
a Cockney guest at the Seder might ask
41 Silicon Valley industry
43 What you might do with your Afikoman prize
44 They wandered here for so long, it had to appear twice
46 New employee
47 Teen-angst cause
48 "___ & Stitch" (Disney film)
49 Length times width
50 Shabbat restriction
51 To escape Egypt, ____ would have been helpful
52 Evening, casually
53 Suffix that could go with decor, medic, or origin
56 Acronym for the animated television series featuring a seven-year-old girl whose name rhymes with Hora
See page 33 for the answer key.
WJC Voices, the magazine of Westchester Jewish Center
Mamaroneck, NY 10543
Westchester Jewish Center members of all ages have long participated in the annual parade in New York City to celebrate Israel Independence Day, or Yom Ha’atzmaut. And some years, children and parents worked together to create a float. They did so here, on April 17, 1983, to commemorate the role and symbolism of Masada, the mountain fortress, in the history of Israel.
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