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Parenting Parenting When students
Movies Cooking AGet Hasidic out family’s upsgrill! and downs. the
Reaching across come back home. parental borders.
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Cooking Movies ‘Hammer’Grilled detailsto perfection. are nailed down.
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Spinning Wheels Ezekiel’s Wheels, one of the Boston area’s leading klezmer bands, has been keeping busy lately with live performances and a new album. See Page 4
Established 1902 Vol. 207 No. 24 Q 6 Tammuz 5773 — June 14, 2013 Q www.TheJewishAdvocate.com Q $1.50
Journalist gives take on Israel
Same old story Steven Stotsky writes that a recent batch of current instructional material offers new evidence of an old problem in the Newton public schools. See Page 9
Former Reuters scribe offers analysis June 19
Comic relief
By Alexandra Lapkin
Daniel M. Kimmel says the new book “Overweight Sensation: The Life and Comedy of Allan Sherman” is a great read for anyone interested in the late comic. See Page 13
Advocate Staff
Fit for a King The musical “King Matiusz I,” based on the novel “King Matt the First,” will make its premiere at Brighton’s Center Makor next week. See Page 14
Prized memory The memory of the late Nora Ephron is being kept alive through an annual $25,000 prize presented at the Tribeca Film Festival. See Page 15
Armchair art A new Israeli art kit for home use, “In the Armchair with Picasso,” can help those whose loved ones are suffering from dementia. See Page 17
JCC Boston Diller Teen Fellows spray paint new handicap-parking logos in the lot at Newton’s Leventhal-Sidman Jewish Community Center on a recent Sunday as part of the Accessibility Icon Project. The teens worked with Triangle, an organization that serves people with special needs in southern New England. The new logo, which is gaining in popularity across the country, is a more active and engaged image of the disabled. Visit www.accessibleicon.org for more information.
Author took comfort in camp, reading Local novelist discusses her childhood and its impact on her writing By Alexandra Lapkin
SHABBAT CANDLE LIGHTING TIMES PARSHAT HUKAT BOSTON FALL RIVER LOWELL SPRINGFIELD WORCESTER PORTLAND, MAINE MANCHESTER, N.H. PROVIDENCE, R.I. ERUV STATUS: BOSTON MALDEN SHARON
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781-446-9797 781-322-5686 781-695-0505
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A Kennedy comes to breakfast
Advocate Staff Growing up, Randy Susan Meyers’ favorite book was “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” a 1943 novel by Betty Smith. Meyers drew many similarities between Francie, the story’s main character, and herself. They both lived in Brooklyn, N.Y.; they both loved reading. But most of all, “I identified with Francie very strongly because I also had a father who had a lot of problems,” Meyers said, “both with alcohol and drugs, and yet who was charming. …I felt he was the person who noticed me.” Meyers, now an author herself and a resident of Jamaica Plain, published her first novel in 2010, “The Murderer’s Daughters,” about a man who killed his wife and the impact this tragedy had on his two young daughters, who had witnessed the murder. “My books are all a big ‘what if?’ Meyers said. “My father tried to kill my mother; he hadn’t succeeded, but it was a huge ‘what if,’ combined with the fact that I worked with men who were batterers.” In her 10 years of social work with violent men, Meyers began to understand her own father, and the
Alan Elsner’s relationship with Israel is multifaceted. Elsner first came to the country when he was 19, during the Yom Kippur War, to live and work on a kibbutz. When he became a journalist, one of the first events he reported on was Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem in 1977, a moment of great promise for Israel. “I’ve seen and covered both times of war and times of peace,” Elsner, who will present a talk titled “Making Sense of the Middle East: A Reporter Examines Reality and Becomes an Activist” at Newton’s Leventhal-Sidman JCC on June 19, said in a phone interview with The Advocate. By 1982, during the first war with Lebanon, Elsner was fighting in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), a unique position that allowed him the dual role of defending his country, while trying to make sense of those events through his reporting. “I covered the [First] Intifada; I
Congressman discusses peace process and more By Ian Thal Advocate Staff
Randy Susan Meyers recently released the novel “The Comfort of Lies.” baffling dichotomy in his personality: his kindness, taken over with bursts of anger. “I never experienced my father as abusive,” she said. “I remember my father as being funny and warm, which is not an unusual thing, because batterers are not necessarily walking around holding bloody knives all the time.”
Meyers coped with the issues in her family by losing herself in books. “Reading probably saved my life,” Meyers said. “I spent every day as a child going back and forth to the library and I told myself stories all the time from when I was very little.” In
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U.S. Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy III visited Temple Shalom in Newton on Sunday for a Brotherhood Breakfast. Over coffee, bagels, rugelach and madelines, the freshman congressman – son of former U.S. Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy II and grandson of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy – answered questions on issues that concerned voters in his district. Kennedy sits on the Foreign Affairs Committee’s Middle East & North Africa and Terrorism, Nonproliferation & Trade subcommittees, and the Technology Committee’s Space and Energy subcommittees. He agreed to sit down for a brief interview with The Advocate afterward in one of Temple Shalom’s smaller meeting rooms.
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