NA'AMAT WOMAN Spring 2010

Spring Na’amat2010 Woman

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features

4 Photos, courtesy, of the Flomenhaft Gallery Courtesy, of Flomenhaft Gallery

The Power to Create, Survive, Act.....................4 Magazine of Na’amat USA

The Flomenhaft Gallery in New York brings together an

Spring 2010 Vol. XXV No.2

extraordinary group of Jewish women artists whose strength

Editor Judith A. Sokoloff

and soul infuse their work. By Rahel Musleah

Assistant Editor Gloria Gross

Middle-aged Moms.........................................10 There are a growing number of Jewish women in their 40s

Art Director Marilyn Rose

and 50s who are giving birth or adopting. They have many problems unique to their age group, but few regrets. By Michele Chabin

Na’amat usa Officers

The Story of Chayale Ash.............................................................15 Courtesy, Chayale Ash

Editorial Committee Harriet Green Sylvia Lewis Sharon Sutker McGowan Liz Raider Shoshana Riemer Edythe Rosenfield Lynn Wax

PRESIDENT Edythe Rosenfield

The 87-year-old actress had a vital role in Yiddish theater in pre-war Europe and in Israel.

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Now she’s involved in the important work of speaking to students about her wartime experiences. By Harvey Gotliffe

Na’amat News...............................................................................20 Na’amat honors leaders in the fight against domestic violence, receives thank you letters

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from students and moms, welcomes German visitors, advocates for women’s rights in the Knesset — and more updates from our sisters in Israel.

VICE PRESIDENTS Harriet Green Sylvia Lewis Lynn Wax Chellie Goldwater Wilensky

FINANCIAL SECRETARY Deborah Weiner

Our cover: Detail from Ellen Frank’s “Jerusalem: A Painting Toward Peace (Israel)” from Cities of Peace™ See story on page 4.

RECORDING SECRETARY Reggie Rog

Courtesy of Ellen Frank Illumination Arts Foundation, Inc.

TREASURER Irene Hack

Na’amat Woman (ISSN 0888-191X) is published quarterly: fall, winter, spring, summer by Na’amat USA, 350 Fifth Ave., Suite 4700, New York, NY 10118, (212) 563-5222. $5.00 of the membership dues is for one year’s subscription. Nonmember subscriptions: $10.00.

Signed articles represent the opinions of the authors and not necessarily those of Na’amat USA or its editors. Periodicals class postage paid at New York, NY, and additional mailing offices. Postmaster, please send address changes to: Na’amat Woman, 350 Fifth Ave., Suite 4700, New York, NY 10118.

E-mail: naamat@naamat.org Web site: www.naamat.org

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departments President’s Message

By Edythe Rosenfield........................3

Heart to Heart: An Empty Nest..................................23

By Barbara Trainin Blank

22-karat gold leaf and egg tempera on Belgian linen, 69” X 104”, 2004.

Book Reviews.................25 Around the Country.........28 Convention Update.........31

Na’amat Usa Area Offices Eastern Area 350 Fifth Ave., Suite 4700 New York, NY 10118 212-563-4962 easternarea@naamat.org Southeast Area 4889 Lake Worth Rd. Lake Worth, FL 33463 561-433-0644 mcmoidel@comcast.net

Mission Statement The mission of Na’amat USA is to enhance the status of women and children in Israel and the United States as part of a worldwide progressive Jewish women’s organization. Its purpose is to help Na’amat Israel provide educational and social services, including day care, vocational training, legal aid for women, absorption of new

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immigrants, community centers, and centers for the prevention and treatment of domestic violence.

Na’amat USA advocates on issues relating to women’s rights, the welfare of children, education and the United States-Israel relationship. Na’amat USA also helps strengthen Jewish and Zionist life in communities throughout the United States.

Midwest Area 10024 N. Skokie Blvd., Suite 226 Skokie, IL 60077 847-329-7172 naamatmdw@aol.com Western Area 16161 Ventura Blvd., #101 Encino, CA 91436 818-981-1298 wanaamat@sbcglobal.net

Dear Haverot,

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art of my job as president, and one of the most rewarding, is visiting Na’amat USA clubs and councils throughout the United States. Our members are deeply involved in raising funds for the social services that Na’amat provides for the women and children of Israel. On my recent trip to the southwest and California, I witnessed our members in action and experienced their warmth and spirit.

I made a whirlwind speaking tour, visiting six cities and eight clubs, all in six days. Thanks to Marilyn Bristol, Western Area coordinator, who arranged the trip, I was able to enjoy home hospitality in most places.

We started in Las Vegas, where I spoke at the Rimonim club’s gala fund-raising event. President Lois Joseph and her committee put together a great evening featuring the singer/impressionist Tom Stevens.

His wife has family in Israel, and when he heard their praises about Na’amat, he donated his services for the evening — and announced that he would do it again. This speaks volumes about how much Israelis admire the work of Na’amat. By the way, the event raised $5,000.

From Las Vegas, I headed for Phoenix, Arizona, where I spoke to the Kinneret and Rina clubs. I enjoyed meeting with Ruth Becker, president of Kinneret, and talking with Honey Yellin, local coordinator. In Scottsdale the next night, Marilyn, Western Area director Aviva Cohen and I had dinner with Susan Rudolph, president of Hatikvah club, and several of the board

members. In conjunction with the Arizona Jewish Theater company, Hatikvah will be doing a play reading, and I was asked to write a message for their program.

Among the news I shared with our members during my travels (you can find more details in this issue’s “Na’amat News” feature), was that the Na’amat Hadera Technological High School has been chosen by Israel’s National Educational Award Committee as one of the finalists from hundreds of schools across the country to receive a special achievement award. The committee was deeply impressed with the school’s overall approach to teaching: “To accept every pupil with love, to give every student the ability to find the light within them, and to enable them to grow for their own sake and for society.”

I also shared some of the heartwarming letters that Na’amat has received from mothers of our day care children, recipients of our university scholarships, and mothers of teenagers in our technological high schools. These women made it clear that Na’amat turns people’s lives around, helping them to

achieve their goals and dreams for a better life.

The next day, Aviva drove us to Palm Desert, California, where we met with acting president Rose Levy and board members of the Leah Rabin East Valley club.

The following afternoon in Palm Springs, I met with Golda Meir club president Goldie Krechman and spoke at the club’s luncheon. I was gratified by the generous donations that members made.

My last stop was in the San Fernando Valley. There I spoke at a membership brunch held by the Nili club, headed by president Gail Simpson. Elaine Skopp opened her lovely home and served a sumptuous brunch — and Nili gained several new members.

These many gatherings had both social and business components, as we discussed ways of moving forward with membership drives, fund-raising events and combined meetings of clubs.

I had told Marilyn to fill my time — and she sure did! It was wonderful meeting with our members. Their warmth and enthusiasm still lingers. continued on page 26 In Las Vegas, NA’AMAT USA president Edythe Rosenfield, far right, is shown with, from left, Western Area coordinator Marilyn Bristol, singer Tom Stevens and Rimonim club president Lois Joseph.

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The Power to Create, The Flomenhaft Gallery in New York brings together an extraordinary

group of Jewish women artists whose strength and soul infuse their work.

by RAHEL MUSLEAH

L

ife-changing choices have never deterred Eleanor Flomenhaft; in fact, she has embraced them.

Flomenhaft began teaching piano at the age of 14; received her degree in art history at 35 after raising three children; and, in 1991, resigned her position as director of the Fine Arts Museum of Long Island to become a stockbroker.

She continued to curate exhibits independently. So when she turned 70, she

decided on yet another new chapter: She and her husband Leonard founded the Flomenhaft Gallery in Manhattan.

Dedicated to nurturing artists who are well known to the museum community but not to the general public, the five-year-old gallery represents 16 artists, half of whom are Jewish women hailing from places as distant as Egypt and India and as close as the Bronx. “We’re drawn to artists of excellence with great stories to tell about their own lives, each of which contributes to the fabric of America. They are pieces of a whole,” says Flomenhaft. “If there is a theme to the gallery, it is that each artist is distinctive. They care about something deeply and their work captures it.”

Flomenhaft, who comes from an Orthodox Jewish background of scholars and rebbes (she is now Conservative), says that

the concentration of Jewish women is not intentional. “Their work doesn’t necessarily even have a Jewish quality to it.

But it has to have the kind of strength and nobility to touch me. Their soul has to come through. For me, they are all women of valor.”

A recent show featured works by Miriam Schapiro, a pioneer of feminist art and originator of the Pattern and Decoration movement in which artists incorporated complex and bright patterns in their work. Schapiro encouraged women to express their own identities in their work and created “femmage,” a vibrant and richly sensual feast that layers typically female materials like aprons, doilies, handkerchiefs, curtains, fans and dolls. Siona Benjamin, the ninth generation of a Bene Israel Indian family (relocated to New Jersey) paints in a Persian miniature style, inspired by Indian mythology, biblical midrash and contemporary issues of identity and immigration. Mira Lehr’s abstract paintings reflect her poetic love of nature; and Amy Ernst, the granddaughter of German surrealist/ Dadaist Max Ernst, creates abstract landEleanor and Leonard Flomenhaft, owners of the Flomenhaft Gallery in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City, stand next to a fabric collage by Miriam Schapiro.

Photos, courtesy of the Flomenhaft Gallery

Survive, Act scapes and photo-collages. Flomenhaft is currently planning a traveling show of women’s art called “Female Force.”

Other artists, featured below, include Linda Stein, Ellen Frank, Estelle Kessler Yarinsky and Dina Recanati.

Married for 58 years, Flomenhaft values family highly. The artists she represents feel like family, too. “What do I need?

Another scarf? A piece of jewelry? I’ve created a community of artists through the gallery. This is not just a commercial endeavor. It’s an endeavor of love.”

herself feels especially powerful in “W 629,” dominated by a Winnebago hubcap around the abdomen.

The “Knights” series scrambles expectations of power and vulnerability, masculinity and femininity, and what it means to be a warrior or peacemaker. It was partially born out of Stein’s traumat-

“As I looked at these figures with curiosity

Linda Stein

and wonder, I

L

inda Stein’s art is meant to be worn. But hers are hardly ordinary garments. Stein crafts suits of armor suggestive of the female body. She fashions them from metals, bits of urban debris, acrylicized paper, wood and found objects from garage sales: magnesium printing plates, security badges, flattened silver pillboxes, brass numbers from laundromats. Put on one of Stein’s “Knights” (many encircle the body with velcro straps), look in the mirror, and the updated classical torsos embrace the wearer with an empowering feeling of protection, strength and vitality. “Knight at Ease 652,” a 3-D sculpture of black leather, metals and zippers, exudes a potent authority. Stein

said, ‘What am I doing? I’m a peacemaker!

I jog around anthills! Are ic experience on 9/11. When the planes exploded into the World Trade Center, she was working nearby in her studio.

Running north holding hands with her studio assistants, she witnessed the towers’ collapse. Two months later, following major surgery, Stein fainted and fell in her bathroom. “It was only for a brief moment,” she recalls. “I fell straight down, not atilt: simply, quietly, softly onto one knee. No damage. No panic.

But as I fell, I was aware, at my core, of being the Twin Tower, as I had seen it neatly disappear in its vertical descent.”

When Stein returned to her studio eight months after 9/11, the abstract

these women warriors?’”

— Linda Stein Above: Linda Stein wears a suit of armor from her “Knights” series. Left: Stein’s “Coat Rack Installation with Two Sculptures, ‘Silver Knight 666’ and ‘Knight of New Thoughts 667,’ 2009.”

sculptures she had been creating took on figurative forms. “It was a complete surprise to me,” says Stein. “As I looked SPRING 2010

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Ellen Frank stands in front of “Sarajevo: Here,” one of several monumental illuminated paintings honoring the history and culture of cities that have suffered major trauma and strife.

cal insurance.” For a long time, she says, “We have the potential every instant to share in the act of creation, she signed her pieces “Linda J” (J is the initial of her middle to generate sparks of impenetrable darkness or brilliant light.” name), both because she was afraid her — Ellen Frank obviously Jewish last name would hurt her artistic advancement and because she was “waiting for a husShe has since added two other at these figures with curiosity and wonband to give me a last name and a life.” symbols of female protection: Princess der, I said, ‘What am I doing? I’m a As an adolescent, she says, “I turned myMononoke, the Japanese anime environpeacemaker! I jog around anthills! Are self inside out to be feminine and girly.” mental warrior; and Kannon (or Quanthese women warriors?’” Stein realized She was an exceptional athlete, but Yin), an Asian goddess of mercy and she was creating a fearless manifestation always made sure the boys won.”

Praccompassion.

“Swords to plowshares: This of herself to combat her vulnerability. ticing deference began to grate on her.

Her process of reflection brought is what my work is all about,” she says.

With determination, therapy, and the Stein agreed to be filmed for Sasha Wonder Woman to mind. The 1941 support of friends and feminist writers, Baron Cohen’s film, “Borat,” because he Amazon comic-book heroine, a guardshe learned to express herself and fulfill said he was exposing anti-Semitism, racian of justice, combined power and her potential, strength and Jewishness. ism and homophobia.

Incensed by his compassion. “She never killed,” says Today, she is a member of the Veteran anti-feminist comments and behavior, Stein. “She confronted the bad guys, usFeminists of America and takes pride she threw him out of her studio and now ing her indestructible bullet-deflecting in being a Jew. Stein’s sculptural knights uses him as an anti-hero in her sculpture. bracelets and magic lasso that bound help her internalize protection. “They Stein was always sensitive to issues people to tell the truth. I loved that. make me feel stronger,” she says, “so of discrimination, gender and power.

Her One wonders how she did this wearthat I can be whoever I am.” father, who left Germany when he was ing a swimsuit. But she was the least a child, recounted being beaten up and Stein has founded the nonprofit sexist of the superheroes and the least corporation “Have Art: Will Travel” to called a “goddam Jew” as well as other violent.” Stein began incorporating encourage “constructive male/female instances of anti-Semitism.

Growing up Wonder Woman icons into her bodygender roles leading to parity, protection in the Bronx, Stein had recurring dreams guard figures, imagining the heroine’s thoughts about today’s world. “What of running away from danger. In one, and peace.” She views HAWT as a “labodefines bravery? What makes a hero?” she escaped electrocution at the hand of ratory of social change” and dialogue the Nazis only because she had “electri- through exhibitions, readings, videos, lecone bubbled reflection reads.

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tures, interactive performances and collaborative associations with art experts.

(See her Web sites www.lindastein.com. and www.haveartwilltravel.org.)

Ellen Frank

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llen Frank specializes in the art of illumination — and the profound and layered meanings of the medium she has chosen do not escape her. For her, illumination evokes awareness and wakefulness. Her love of the ancient method of gilding manuscripts and paintings with 22-karat gold, silver and copper leaf; painting with egg tempera, and balancing text and design reflects her own attempt to become enlightened. “The luminous quality of gold makes air and space a charged field of energy so space is not empty of connection,” says Frank, who delights in the realization that “Ellen” means “light.”

Frank’s nine-painting series, Cities of PeaceTM, honors the history and culture of cities that have experienced and survived conflict and trauma. The initial piece, “Jerusalem,” was inspired by a visit to Israel in 1999. A brown, green and gold study of the city’s walls, domes and hills, it is bordered by an Islamic floral pattern that branches into Stars of David. Four full-scale figures — two standing, two floating — appear almost inseparable from the city, while hundreds of tinier figures stretch their arms upwards in joy and yearning. “It’s the perfect vision of peace for me,” says Frank.

The other cities include Baghdad, Kabul, Beijing, Hiroshima, New York, Sarajevo, Monrovia and Lhasa, each shimmering with imagery drawn from

diverse artistic traditions and transforming anguish into beauty. Crimson leaf, the color of blood, “is tucked into each painting to honor the dead,” explains Frank, who is now at work on Beirut and Phnom Penh and plans to add either Berlin or Dresden. “The power to see suffering in a new way is what my work is about,” says Frank.

Like Stein, Frank is driven in her pursuit of peace through art. “Life is short and art is long,” she states. “The Cities of Peace series is outside politics, beyond the normal concepts of the good guys and the bad guys, right and wrong. It is dedicated to the transformative power of art to build a global culture of understanding.” Frank does extensive research, and each piece requires a minimum of a year to complete.

Except for “Jerusalem,” all represent collaborative efforts between Frank and her apprentices at her Illumination Atelier in East Hampton, New York. As artistic director and master teacher, Frank has trained 40 interns from 20 countries in the past five years. (She currently has four interns: an Israeli from Jerusalem and three Roman Catholic students from Slovenia). The not-forprofit Ellen Frank Illumination Arts Foundation is developing a peace education curriculum, hopes to establish Cities of Peace traveling exhibitions and global satellite centers, and to provide

educational training for economically disadvantaged youth in conflict zones.

Frank’s spiritual journey has taken her from an anti-religious but culturally Jewish upbringing in Los Angeles to Buddhism and back to Judaism. Her father, a physician, and her mother, a writer, were victims of McCarthyism. Though they were not officially blacklisted, her father lost his medical practice and the family received hate mail and bomb threats.

Painting was discouraged in Frank’s psychoanalytically oriented family, so she pursued a literary path. At 26, she became professor of English literature and esthetic theory at the University of California at Berkeley, the seventh woman on a faculty of 90 men and the youngest to be offered a professorship. But by 1978, she felt her “spirit would die” if she did not paint. She resigned her position and spent the next three years teaching herself how to paint by copying works she loved. She showed them to no one but her husband.

At the same time, Frank hid her academic background because she felt it was not fashionable to be a scholar in the art world. An exhibition by artist Joseph Beuys changed her

“Scrolls and manuscripts are man’s creation of thoughts. They preserve history. I am always paying homage to the concept and mystery of the book.”

— Dina Recanati Recanati’s scrolls and manuscripts, made of recycled materials, refer to humankind’s ability to create thoughts and preserve history.

Shown, “Scroll IV.”

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Fiber artist Estelle Kessler Yarinsky’s fabric construction depicts events in the life of the dancer and choreographer Anna Sokolow.

“Fabric wraps us at birth, warming, cooling, or adorning us in life, covering us when we leave this physical world.”

— Estelle Kessler Yarinsky thinking. “It was about knowing what charges you. I realized that I am charged by words and language,” says Frank. She discovered illuminated manuscripts and found that they also appealed to her spiritual side. Illumination marries gold and clay (the gold leaf adheres to a bed of clay), joining divinity and mortality: “Illumination is the divine made visible, without anthropomorphism,” she says.

Her Jewish “homecoming” has been influenced by the writings of philosopher Abraham Joshua Heschel, professor of mysticism Daniel Matt and biblical translator Everett Fox. Hanukkah Illuminated: A Book of Days also grew out of Frank’s struggle to celebrate what is inherently a military holiday. The 60 illuminated pages of texts including Maccabees I and II (translated by Fox, to be published by Welcome Books and distributed by Random House) offers a mystical meditation and non-military solutions to 8

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conflict. It posits that the darkness of oppression, destruction and ignorance can be illuminated by light. “We have the potential every instant to share in the act of creation, to generate sparks of impenetrable darkness or brilliant light,” says Frank. “Hanukkah endured because the rabbis infused the story with the miracle of light. They wanted people to live not by might but by the power of the spirit.” (See her Web sites www.ellenfrank.com and www.efiaf.org.)

Dina Recanati

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urvival and continuity are also key themes for Dina Recanati. She not only lost her father when she was five, but his name was never mentioned at home again. Her uncle died three months later. Recanati married young and, at 18, left a comfortable way of life in her native Egypt. She and her husband traveled to study in England and

later moved to New York, where Recanati continued at the Art Students League. Those personal experiences of pain, loss, displacement and renewal emerge in Recanati’s sculptures of columns, gates, scrolls and books, “silent remnants of the past, marked and weathered by time,” in her words.

Recanati’s “archisculptures,” basic pillars upon which to build hope for the future, echo the pyramids in their solidity. Yet many are battered and worn. “Jerusalem Crown,” a group of six bronze columns through which a viewer can move, evokes ancient ruins and unresolved conflict. Recanati later began working in layers of wood veneer, an expression of the fragile yet flexible nature of existence. The tree-like “Three Pillars,” strongly colored in red, white and black painted veneer, spread out at the bottom like roots. “Forest,” an installation that recalls an oasis of meditation, is “a place to ponder, to

stop and to gather energy to move on,” says Recanati, who still lives in New York and has a home in Herzliya, Israel.

“I was always in search of something to build upon — until I realized those columns had to be in me.”

Recanati’s manuscripts, books and scrolls are made of recycled materials infused with new meaning and content.

The scrolls bundle a personal and historical past, rolled and kept through the ages and dragged into the present.

Though Recanati says most of her work is not specifically Jewish, her scrolls do reflect a Jewish sensibility. “Scrolls and manuscripts are man’s creation of thoughts. They preserve history. I am always paying homage to the concept and mystery of the book.” “Diaries,” rolls of wooden sheets tied together with ropes, lean vertically against one another like ancient manuscripts.

A 2001 installation at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, “Passage” featured tents, books and faceless women cloaked and covered, a caravan frozen in mid-journey. The soft sculptures and painted canvases that fall in folds and drapes salvage scraps of fabric in a battle against the passage of time.

Recanati also paints scenes of the cosmos and firmament that are filled with movement and struggle. She is currently working on a series of canvases and columns called “Gathering Winds” and will have a show at the Flomenhaft May 6 to June 17, 2010. “Only by cultivating memory can a person find their own identity,” says Recanati.

“I fight loss with creativity, death with life.” (See www.dinarecanati.com.)

Estelle Kessler Yarinsky

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stelle Kessler Yarinsky also uses fabric as her medium of expression because, she says, its soft and tactile nature “cooperates and is compliant; it does not resist me…. Its palette of colors and surface textures is endless.... It wraps us at birth, warming, cooling, or adorning us in life, covering us when we leave this physical world.” She adapts the Jewish tradition of fiber design (ark curtains, Torah mantles, tallitot) as a way to express her human, Jewish and female identities.

Kessler Yarinsky’s fabric wall hang-

ings honor historical figures, many of them Jewish women. She patterns each with printed and textured fabrics, and surrounds them with “props” and texts that tell the stories of their distinctive lives. The series began with her own family: “The Sisters Project” depicts her mother Augusta and four aunts, who came from a large Eastern European clan and helped raise their younger siblings while their brothers pursued higher education. Kessler Yarinsky inherited her love of textiles from her Aunt Rachel. “My mother had secretarial training and my Aunt Rachel made her clothing. The legend was she could see a garment in a fashionable storefront, come home, and make the pattern on the dining room table.” Into a portrait of her Aunt Dorothy in a blue polka-dotted dress, the artist stitched the words of Harriet Beecher Stowe, “The most loved are they of whom Fame speaks not with her clarion voice.”

Kessler Yarinsky learned about feminism from women younger than she is, but calls it a “wonderful revelation.” When she was in her 40s, she augmented the associate’s degree in textile design she had earned years earlier from the Fashion Institute of Technology with an art education degree.

On a trip to Turkey, the Albany, New York-area artist learned about the dominant role women had in pre-JudeoChristian societies and later crafted a piece she entitled, “When God Was a Woman.” The composite figure resembles a stern yet reassuring high priestess with a Pharoah-like headdress, a robe adorned with a full-length breastplate of flora and fauna and a serpent encircling her body. Arcs of red suns and blue moons intersect by her head, and images of ancient fertility amulets appear in the background.

As the feminist movement uncovered information about remarkable women who were not well known, Kessler Yarinsky began researching biblical and historical figures. “I enjoyed peeling away layers of tissue to reveal delicious nuggets of information,” she says. “I wanted to depict people I could emulate, respect and learn from and who embodied Jewish values like the importance of family — even if they

were not Jewish,” says Kessler Yarinsky. “Miryam” dances at the sea — her face, arms and legs a dark collage moving fluidly from a mantle of white hair and under a flowing white dress. The sea (“yam”) contained in her name cuts a blue swath behind her body.

Other portraits of Jewish women include the 16th-century converso Gracia Nasi; dancer Anna Sokolow; Rosalind Franklin, a British chemist whose basic research contributed to the discovery of the structure of DNA; and Polish-born, Italian-trained, Chicago Opera diva and philanthropist Rosa Raisa. Since universality is important to Kessler Yarinsky, she has added non-Jewish women like environmentalist Marjory Stoneman Douglas and African-American writer Zora Neale Hurston.

A visit to Paris motivated Kessler Yarinsky’s five-piece series of quilted wall hangings about the Holocaust. “I Love Paris When It Sizzles,” its title an ironic adaptation from the playful film “Can Can,” is a collage of train tracks, swastikas and Magen Davids that reflects the deportation — with the collusion of the French population — of 12,000 Jews from Paris in 1942.

“Kristallnacht” depicts a Jewish milliner’s shop from the inside after the Night of Broken Glass.

One of her most recent works “L’Dor Vador,” reinvents the traditional wimple, a Torah binder inscribed with a baby’s name and birthday. She has appliquéd the names and birthdays of her own 10 grandchildren against a silk-screened background of Hebrew letters. The gray-haired grandmother doll seated on the tiny chair next to the wimple? “That’s me,” says Kessler Yarinsky.

Her work, she sums up, encompasses a “great sisterhood.” Kessler Yarinsky could just as easily be talking about the Flomenhaft sisterhood of artists.

Rahel Musleah is a New York-based journalist, author, singer and educator who presents programs on the Jews of India and Iraq. She is the 7th generation of a Calcutta Jewish family that traces its roots to 17thcentury Baghdad. She wrote “Today I Am a…” in our fall 2009 issue. Please visit her Web site: www.raheljewishindia.com.

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Moms Middle-aged

There are a growing number of Jewish women in their 40s and 50s who are giving birth or adopting. They have many problems unique to their age group, but few regrets.

by MICHELE CHABIN

A

t age 41, nine years ago, Miriam Sushman got married and set about the task of starting a family. A Milwaukee-based professional photographer, Sushman stayed busy on photo shoots and tended her backyard

miriam and esther

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vegetable garden, all the while praying to become a mother. When her dream failed to materialize, Sushman and her husband, Owen, decided to adopt.

It took time, but when Sushman was 45, the couple received the phone call they had been longing for. They flew down to Guatemala to meet their new baby, a darling little girl with sparkling eyes and a ready smile.

Esther was six months old when her parents, modern-Orthodox Jews, brought her home to Wisconsin.

“I’ve always loved babies and enjoyed the company of children,” Sushman, now 51, says of her determination to become a mom.

Anne Levine, her husband and two children visit the Kotel in Jerusalem.

“If I had married earlier I would have become a mother earlier, but things turned out differently.”

Watching Esther frolic at her sixth birthday party, long silky hair cascading down her back, Sushman breaks into a smile. “I can’t even remember what my life was like before I became a mother,” she says.

Sushman is one of a growing number of Jewish women around the world who have become first-time moms in their 40s and even 50s.

While the majority of Jewish women still continue to start their families during the more traditional child-bearing years, “middle-aged moms” are no longer a rarity.

In New York and Jerusalem, London and Los Angeles, there is nothing unusual about mature mothers cheering on their kids at soccer games or Little League practice. Most are nonplussed by the fact that some of the other moms cheering on their kids are young enough to be their daughters.

Adoption aside, significant advances in fertility treatments have made it easier than ever before to become a mother, and Jewish women — many of whom marry a decade later than their mothers did, or not at all — are using every reproductive option at their disposal.

Yet even with these options, United States-based fertility treatments aren’t for everyone, and not everyone

I have a stepdaughter in the army and two teenage stepdaughters, but I also have two kids who will need my full-time attention for at least another 10 years.

I’ll be 62 when they’re bat mitzva’d. Now that’s a thought! who undergoes treatment becomes pregnant. The high price tag, which can reach $15,000 for a single IVF cycle and $20,000 for an egg donation, often isn’t covered by insurance. Some women simply cannot afford treatments while others empty their bank accounts in the process.

The situation is different in kidcrazy Israel, where government subsidized HMOs provide an unlimited number of nearly free (for Israelis) fertility treatments for the first two children. Non-Israeli women who travel to Israel for fertility treatments — and there are quite a few — pay one-third to one-half of the sum they would be paying in the States.

Yet there are fertility challenges even in Israel. Several years ago, after an Israeli physician illegally harvested and sold eggs from women undergoing fertility treatments, there remains an acute shortage of donor eggs. Every year, hun-

dreds of Israeli women feel compelled to travel to Europe for donor eggs.

Some of these overseas egg donor programs, which take place in European hospitals and clinics under the supervision of Israeli physicians, have a 50percent per cycle pregnancy rate. Most accept women into their early 50s.

Even without fertility treatments, a small number of women in their mid to late 40s manage to get pregnant without any outside intervention. Some years ago, researchers at Hadassah Hospital studied 250 Ashkenazi women (most had at least six children) who had conceived naturally in their late 40s. According to an article in the Independent, a leading British newspaper, the researchers found a pattern of gene expression that appears to protect the ovaries and therefore fertility.

While it is now possible for many women to become pregnant in middle age, the vast majority of older moth-

ers wish they could have started their families earlier. Many put everything into their careers or waited for the right man to come along, or both, thinking there would be time to raise a family afterward.

As grateful as she is to be a mom at any age, Anne Levine from Oakland, California, says older motherhood is tiring, both emotionally and physically.

She gave birth to her daughter, Sarah, a month before turning 45 and her son, Charlie, at 47-and-a-half. She also has a stepdaughter.

Levine, who conceived without fertility treatments, says that when her children were young, “being an older mom was a positive for me. I had patience and energy and was happy to put my focus on them and their needs rath-

Left: Debbie Miller and her family live in New Zealand.

Right: Miriam Sushman and her daughter Esther.

o Taitz

Shlom

er than to continue to work outside the home.” But now, at the age of 57 (her husband is also 57) and with a daughter on the cusp of adolescence, Levine says her energy “has waned a lot, post menopause, and so has my patience.”

Levine, who decided to become a stay-at-home mom when her children were born, says that it was “sometimes frustrating not to have a ‘real’ job with measurable goals that I could sit back and say, ‘I feel good about what I did there.’ With young children, there is never a point where you can sit back and say, job well done. And if I were to have an evaluation as ‘mother,’ it would be done by the children, and they are never satisfied with the job you are doing; so I did have to find new ways to validate myself and that was challenging. I also found being a stay-at-home mother, especially with the first child, could at times be isolating, and since I was much older than my other ‘new mom’ cohorts, I didn’t find the new mom’s group especially engaging.”

Levine continues: “By the second child, I was busy being a parent in the synagogue preschool, so I was far less isolated. The challenge then became splitting my emotional and physical resources between two very young children and a child just entering adolescence — Rayna was 11 when Charlie was born.

“Again, in some ways being older was helpful — more ability to put others first, more insight into myself and others. But in some ways, it was limiting — physical energy and therefore emotional resilience was less I think. Also, as an older parent you think way too much.

Younger parents have a healthy selfishness that I think helps them keep a better balance between their needs and the needs of the child. I definitely erred on the side of putting my first child, Sarah, before my own needs too much.”

A

lthough Jewish society has welcomed these older women and their offspring with open arms, physicians warn that motherhood past age 40 comes with additional medical risks.

Seeing the uncertainty and pain his infertile patients experience, Professor Neri Laufer, chairman of the Department of Obstetrics and Gyne12

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cology at Hadassah-Ein Kerem, wishes more women would try to get pregnant sooner. “I think it’s a big mistake to put off pregnancy, a mistake that emanates from ignorance,” Laufer says. “Women believe that we doctors can solve everything through advanced reproductive techniques. The truth is, if women want a pregnancy with their own eggs, they should conceive between the ages of 25 and 35.”

Afterwards, Laufer explains, fertility drops precipitously and the rate of miscarriage rises. “What a lot of women don’t realize is that the vast majority of those pregnant over 45 conceive their children through egg donation.”

The chance of conceiving with one’s own eggs at age 40 is about 20 percent, Laufer adds, a number that drops to just 10 percent at age 41, and to only 1 percent by age 45.

Dr. Eyal Anteby, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Barzilai Medical Center in the Israeli port city of Ashkelon, points out that the older a mother is, the higher the likelihood she will develop hypertension, diabetes, chromosomal abnormalities (with the mother’s own eggs) or experience a miscarriage.

But Anteby also sees a positive side to older motherhood, noting that the post-40 women he treats tend to be better informed medically, and better off financially, than younger women. “I’ve noticed the maturity of these women, who are very different from young mothers in their 20s and 30s,” Anteby observes. “They are usually established financially; they know what they want to give their children and are ready to do whatever it takes emotionally to give their children a happy life.” Anteby says his older patients “have given thought to the process. They become pregnant because they want to be pregnant. They use the Internet. They’re usually very informed of the risks of older parenthood and know they need to be monitored carefully.”

Sylvia Barack Fishman, professor of contemporary Jewish life at Brandeis University, has studied the phenomenon of delayed childbirth, and it frankly worries her. “If we look at American Jewish women between the ages of 25 to 34,” she says, “we see that more than

one-third have never been married.

More than half of American Jewish men in this age have never been married.”

Back in the 1950s and ’60s, Fishman notes, most women gave birth between the ages of 20 and 35. Today, that’s between 27 to 42.

Not that Jews are unique in this regard, she adds. “This is the culture among well-educated people in Western countries that encourages young people to not rush into a profession or other commitments. They can travel, they can do volunteer work in the Congo, or whatever.”

In contrast to Israel, which has the highest birth rate in the developed world and where child-bearing tends to start younger to allow for larger families, “in the Diaspora communities, young people are encouraged to feel they have open choices and lots of time to start a family,” the professor says.

Fishman insists that parenthood is a priority for most young Westernized Jews, but that “they are not making personal decisions in their 20s and 30s that would be conducive to having children. “Today, most young people don’t feel the same financial pressure to earn a living that other generations did.

Their parents support them longer and they go to college and graduate school.

What’s interesting is that Jewish American women who go for professional degrees or a master’s or a Ph.D. still say they want two to three children.”

While Fishman does not begrudge the right of any woman to become a mother at any age, she believes that many younger women are woefully uninformed about their own choices.

“Many women have choices, but they don’t have control in their lives and that concerns me as a feminist.”

Fishman is amazed that young women “who very often receive good advice about career choices and graduate schools and which networks to cultivate” don’t know that it becomes increasingly difficult to conceive naturally. “They see women in their 40s and 50s who look young and energetic. They don’t realize that when it comes to reproductive biology, a woman will have trouble conceiving after a certain age, even if she can play a mean game of tennis.”

Older parenthood also has implica-

I’ve put my kids into various kinds of day care and in all the situations where I was twice the age of virtually everyone.

Everyone assumed I was their grandmother.

tions for the wider Jewish community, Fishman warns. “Many people do not become affiliated with Jewish communal institutions or shuls until they become parents, so this culture of postponement makes it more likely that young Jews, unless they are Orthodox, will not be connected to Jews or Jewishness.”

In contrast, Tova Hartman, an Israeli feminist and professor of gender studies at Bar-Ilan University, isn’t worried about delayed motherhood.

“I think having children at any age is a wonderful thing,” she asserts. “I can’t think of anything negative about it.”

Hartman, co-founder of the popular modern-Orthodox Shira Hadasha congregation in Jerusalem, which attracts large numbers of both singles and families, says concerns over parenting and affiliation are misplaced. “These recipes are so shallow and shabby. I wouldn’t make a correlation. I also don’t think children are objects through which we should raise Jewish consciousness or increase affiliation. Shuls and Jewish life need to be compelling in their own right,” Hartman insists.

Hartman, who has stood before her congregation countless times to welcome babies born to women of all ages, says it is “a beautiful thing. I see the mothers interact with each other — learn from each other. The idea that everyone has to do things at the same time is ridiculous.”

Although she had her own children in her 20s and 30s, Hartman, who is 52, says the joy she sees in older mothers makes her “very grateful for the development of the technologies for this contribution to our lives. I thank God for this contribution to our lives.”

W

hile the technology is relatively new, the subject of how to beat infertility goes all the way back to biblical times. Three of the four Matriarchs experienced childlessness before being granted the gift of motherhood.

Even in 2010, women can readily understand why the 90-year-old Matriarch Sarah burst into laughter when visitors informed her husband, Avraham, that she would give birth in the coming year. They can also relate to the desperation of Rebecca, who lived through many years of “barrenness.” She asked her husband, Isaac, to pray for a child — and God gave her two sons, Jacob and Esau. And though today’s women take advantage of modern technology, some also find that good old prayer is helpful.

“Joanie,” a modern Orthodox mother who lives in the northeastern United States, says reading these Bible stories gave her solace during her own years of childlessness.

After marrying in her early 40s, Joanie, who asked that her real name not be published, tried exorbitantly expensive IVF treatments, but all of them failed. Still, she never gave up hope. “God and I spoke daily,” she recalls. “I strongly believe that God helps those who help themselves. Nothing comes knocking on our door. I spent a lot

of heartache and pain while dating until God realized I was taking it seriously and gave me the perfect man for me. The same with fertility. It’s not enough to want a child. You have to be proactive.”

Eventually, Joanie, now 47, contacted friends in Israel who had become pregnant with donor eggs. She enrolled in Dr. Laufer’s egg donation program via Hadassah Hospital, and she and her husband flew to Israel and then to the Czech Republic for the implantation. The first attempt failed and then Joanie’s father died, and soon afterward, her father-inlaw. She tried again — a last ditch effort — and became pregnant with twins.

I believe my father and father-inlaw’s spirits helped a lot,” Joanie says, her voice breaking. “How else can a woman with weak eggs and cervical stenosis be able to have twins in her mid-40s? I still thank God for these children.”

Jerusalemite Sharon Greenblatt Deitch gave birth to her twin girls at age 50.

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Sharon Greenblatt Deitch, a Jerusalemite, also feels that her deceased parents somehow intervened with God on her behalf. She gave birth to her first children, also twins, at 50. “My father died two years after my wedding, and my mother died two years before I became pregnant,” she says. “ It made me sad to think that they would never meet my children, but that’s part of being an older parent. I wish I’d been able to do this earlier, so my parents would have been around, but I’m at least happy that I was able to name one of my daughters for them.”

No longer having parents, or having elderly parents that may not be around for their grandchildren very long, is one of the downsides of later childbirth.

Devora, whose father was recently diagnosed with terminal cancer, is glad that she decided to have a baby five years ago, in her mid-40s, via an egg donation. “I don’t know how long my father will be around to enjoy my son, but I’m incredibly grateful that the two of them have had these five years together,” says Devora, a 51-year-old secular, single mother from Tel Aviv.

“Had I waited till I was married to get pregnant, my father and son would have missed out on so much.”

And there are other negatives. Like other women who become parents, middle-aged mothers say their lives have been turned upside down by motherhood, only more so. They also have to deal with the problems caused by various age gaps that appear in their lives.

“Normally, when you’re in your 50s, you’re leaving the kids at home and having some freedom, some weekends away with your husband,” observes Deitch. “I have a stepdaughter in the army and two teenage stepdaughters, but I also have two kids who will need my full-time attention for at least another 10 years. I’ll be 62 when they’re bat mitzva’d. Now that’s a thought!”

Now 53, she comments on the age gap between her and most of the other parents in her three-year-old daughters’ preschool. “I’ve put my kids into various kinds of day care and in all the situations where I was twice the age of virtually everyone. Everyone assumed I was their grandmother, but they think that of my husband, too, and he’s seven14

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and-a-half years younger than I am!” she says with a laugh. “It’s not surprising.

Many people my age are having grandchildren.”

Debby, from Miami, hangs out with mothers closer to her own age, 48. She married for the first time at 44 (her husband, also a first-timer, was 57), and gave birth to a daughter three months before her 46th birthday.

“I gravitate toward other mothers who are also in their 40s,” Debby says.

“They’re still five years younger, but I don’t feel a big age difference. We are all new mothers finding our way in the world of parenting. It is different for my husband, who is that much older. None of the fathers is close to his age, and it sometimes makes it hard for us to socialize as couples and families. And, of course, his friends and peers are becoming grandparents.”

Debby is very grateful that her own mother is alive, and wishes her daughter “could have what I did growing up, which was four grandparents, a great-grandmother, slews of great aunts and uncles and three siblings. She will have to form her own ‘family-like’ relationships and I will do whatever I can to nurture that. I am very conscious of this.”

The main downside to older parenthood, Debby explains, “is that my daughter will likely be on her own at a younger age than I would like her to be. Fortunately, I have a brother who is eight years younger than I, and his kids are seven, five and one-and-a-half, so my daughter will have cousins close in age. I think about where we should live so that she can have friends from her toddlerhood on for all of her life.

There are many, many adults in her life who adore her.”

Debby comments that some people consider her daughter, who was conceived naturally, “a miracle child, which I don’t promote so much,” but says that she is happy that her child “is so loved and seen as so special. There are pluses to be an older mom, and I focus on those.”

Debbie Miller, an American who lived in Israel for many years before settling in New Zealand, became a stepmother at 30 and gave birth to two children in her 30s and another two at ages 43 and 46. Her life is a juggling act.

“I would say the biggest problem is divergent ages. My older kids’ needs often conflict with my younger kids’ needs.”

Miller, 49, says New Zealanders “are amazed” that she has four kids at her age. “I remember at my daughter’s bat mitzvah, they had to wait until I changed my six-month-old’s diaper before they could start. They said it was probably a first. Everybody helped take care of the kids while we participated in the prayers because I was breastfeeding. New Zealanders just weren’t used to having such an informal family affair with the mother on the bima holding the baby while doing an aliyah.”

Miriam Sushman says her Jewish community has been very welcoming.

“If there have been any challenges, it is about peoples’ perceptions about adoption. Not long ago a mother asked me on the playground if I knew where Esther’s parents were. I was a bit stunned since we are her parents. I answered, “Oh, you mean her birth mother?”

On a more positive note, following the megillah reading at Purim, a shul friend remarked that Mordechai adopted Esther, his niece. “We named Esther after my beloved aunt, and when I heard this, it was bashert — meant to be — that we choose this name,” Sushman says. “I think about this every Purim. When we were first notified that Esther was available, they told us that her birth date was a day before mine, and I knew then it was meant to be.”

Though Chana, a 49-year-old Jerusalem mother of a two-year-old, had hoped to start a family a decade or two ago, she has no regrets.

“I love being my daughter’s mom.

I experience joy, an explosion of joy that just gets bigger and bigger every day. If I’d gotten married at 30 I might have had five or six kids by now, but not my daughter,” Chana says, hugging her blue-eyed toddler. “She is the exact daughter I want, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Michele Chabin is a journalist living in Jerusalem, covering the Middle East for the New York Jewish Week, Religion News Service and other publications. She wrote “Live and Let Live in Tel Aviv” in our fall 2009 issue.

The Story of Chayale Ash The 87-year-old actress had a vital role in Yiddish theater

in pre-war Europe and in Israel. Now she’s involved in the important work of speaking to students about her wartime experiences.

by HARVEY GOTLIFFE

S

tand outside San Jose’s Chai United States, Canada, ArgenHouse Senior Apartments tina, Brazil and Venezuela. and ring the doorbell for However, a résumé is merely Apartment 258. It may seem like an organized listing, and Chayale an eternity before you get buzzed has yet to settle down and does in, but patience is a necessity, not even want to think about for everything inside seems to playing her final performance. move in exaggerated slow moA recent fall slowed her down a tion. Walk into the lobby, and you bit, but as she cautiously moves may feel as if you’ve entered into along behind her bright maroon the world of those who are waitmetallic walker, Chayale Ash still ing to leave it. Elderly men and exudes the same grand eloquence women bolstered by wheelchairs she displayed during her years of and walkers are anxiously poised acting in the Yiddish theater. to greet any member of a younger Although her gait is dimingeneration who may be showing ished, her heart is alive and well. up for an abbreviated visit.

“I fell on my tush,” she says with When you take the equally a groan. “My bones are old, but slow-moving elevator to the secmy mind is young and my mouth ond floor and walk to your right, is young. As long as I am alive, the door to 258 will be open. Here I want to give to the young you’ll find a much different scene people.” She is dedicated to doPhotos, courtesy, of Chayale Ash in this primarily Jewish “retire- Chayale Ash stars in London, 1959. ing so by speaking to students ment home.” Chayale Ash will in middle schools, high schools be standing there with an inviting smile, At the age of 87, Chayale can easily and colleges to help future generations and if you’re lucky, you will be greeted recite her ample unwritten résumé from understand what the world was like with an uplifting “Hello, bubeleh” as her heart. She’s a great-grandmother when she was young and encouraging she ushers you in with a warm, generous of seven, a grandmother of four, and a them to do good and be positive. hug. Her voice conjures up visions of a mother of two. She was a Yiddish acShe plops into her chair for a moonce-was world with her Eastern Euro- tress traveling through Europe at the ment, saying: “My heart is also not so pean, grandmotherly vocal inflections, age of three (she came close to being young, yet it feels young. My soul feels cultivated while living throughout Eu- born on the stage), she was a slave la- young.” Then she gently rises and takes rope. Her command of six languages borer during the war, walked across Eu- you on a walking tour of her own miniwas engendered by her need to survive rope after the war with her small daugh- museum of the Yiddish theater and Yidduring turbulent times. ter who was born with a hole in her dish life in Europe before it, too, was Chayale graciously and enthusiasti- heart, lived in a tent in the new State of nearly engulfed in what became a funercally greets any guest to her home. Al- Israel, helped to organize the first Yid- al pyre for some six million Jews. Withthough she stands barely five-feet tall, dish theater there, traveled once again out the earnest endeavors of people like this elegant lady has the stature and and performed in Yiddish productions Chayale after the war, it could also have demeanor of a performing artist. Act- in England and South Africa before set- been the death knell for centuries of ing was her career long ago, and she still tling in Philadelphia in 1962. Although Yiddish culture. performs in front of receptive audiences she occasionally took an intermission, Her one-bedroom home holds a — but now she uses a far different script. Chayale continued to perform in the cornucopia of Yiddish theater memoSPRING 2010

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rabilia. The walls are filled with an array of theater program covers, her own cross-stitching of a scene from “Fiddler on the Roof,” photographs of her in the height of her acting days, framed articles about Chayale and her theatrical past, and awards that honor her continual humanitarian efforts. Crammed in one corner of her living room are two shelves of Yiddish books including one about the biographies of performers who made it through the Holocaust and another about those who perished.

“Whenever I used to perform,” she says, “I’d talk about the Holocaust and the Jewish actors who were killed. And the audience would contribute donations to help publish that book.”

Last January, the Forverts (The Yiddish Forward) ran a front-page article on Chayale, complete with a recent photograph of her quite oysgeputst — elegantly dressed — and another of her as a much younger actress on stage in Israel in the late 1950s. “The theater was my family’s work of love,” she says.

It’s a love that she still holds dear today.

Chayale reaches for the Atlas of the Yiddish Theater on her bookshelf and flips through it, knowing what treasured pages she is trying to find. “Look here,” she says with a gleeful excitement that abides within her as she points at photographs and biographies. “My daddy.

My mommy.” And she deftly translates the Yiddish words into English.

Her parents, Abram and Pola Averbuch, were both Yiddish actors who met when her father was the director of a small dramatic group in Romania.

Therein begins the first act of her tale when she enjoyed an auspicious prenatal debut in the theater as her pregnant mother performed.

C

hayale was born on March 19, 1920, in Kishnev in Bessarabia, Romania.

“Two weeks after I was born, my parents took me to the theater,” she says.

At three, she had a non-speaking part, “waving to the audience,” and when she was six, Chayale became a true Yiddish actress with a speaking part in the play “Kiddush ha Shem” by Sholem Asch.

During her youth, she quickly became adept in three languages for utilitarian reasons. In the home, Yiddish prevailed, as it did on stage. In the streets, Russian was the language; in school, she spoke Romanian. Since then, she hasn’t stopped speaking nor stopped speaking out.

Chayale lived with her grandparents from the age of two and during the school year. She anxiously awaited the joyous summers when she traveled with her parents by horse and wagon, playing in different venues from shtetl to shtetl, town to town, staying in inns or furnished rooms. “There’s not a town in Poland and Romania we didn’t play,” she recalls. From ages 12 through 19, Chayale played character roles. During the winter of 1936, Chayale attended the Professional School for Girls in Kishnev, and along with regular lessons she learned sewing, a skill that one day would help her to survive.

The turmoil that was to disembowel Europe had not yet reached Chayale’s family in 1940, when she was accepted into the Yiddish State Theater in Bessarabia. One year later, she was invited to join the prestigious Moscow Yiddish State Theater, but the war temporarily derailed her stage career and like too many others, she became mere

flotsam on a sea of confusion.

In 1918, the territory where she lived had been taken over from Russia

by Romania, and it wasn’t until 1940 that Russia once more controlled it.

Chayale’s life during World War II was one fraught with debilitating experiences she is unable to forget. In 1941, when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, the theater group and her family fled east. “We were taken to the train station, and I never saw home again,” Chayale says with a sigh that connects with a deeply embedded bitter memory.

“It was a cattle train,” Chayale remembers. “As we were leaving Kishnev, the German planes came to bomb us in the Russian territory. We were a moving target. The train stopped and there was an order to jump from the train. Everybody had to jump off. Jump.

Jump. Jump. My grandmother, too, and she was close to her 80s. Everyone was afraid from the bombardment. When we came back, I saw that my grandmother wasn’t there. We found her and she was dead. We had to take her back to the train, and later on when we arrived in the Ukraine, we buried her by the tracks. The train was never bombed.”

Whenever troop or equipment trains came through, Chayale and the theater troupe were forced to wait in stations to let them pass. The exhaust-

Left: Performing in a comedy in 1954, and, above, a musical in 1959, both in Israel.

I was arrested in Israel for performing in Yiddish.

They came from the government and wouldn’t let us open the curtain. Ben-Gurion specifically.

He was afraid that the country would not have a national language — Hebrew — and wouldn’t have a real basic culture. ing journey took two months before they finally arrived in Kharkov, Ukraine.

They were not allowed to travel any farther and became unwilling forced laborers under the Russians, helping to harvest the crops in the fields while the Russian men were fighting on the front.

It was there that Chayale and her family felt the brunt of abject hatred, as they were bombarded with scurrilous and hurtful anti-Semitic comments. “Jews.

You are not in the front fighting for us.

You are hiding from the war,” Chayale recalls someone saying. “One woman screamed, ‘I will scratch your eyes, you stinking Jew.’” Chayale was young enough and strong enough to be able to endure the laborious chore of packing and lugging hay by hand. “All the time I felt hay on my body. Scratching. Itching. Always

this dust of hay on me.” However, when she saw her mother stomping in a big hole filled with manure and straw to make crude bricks, she suffered more.

“We slept in the fields. In barns. Lice we had everywhere. I never imagined a world without lice,” she still laments.

When the harvest ended, they traveled to Tashkent, trying to link up with the Russian theater, but the theater had been disbanded. They were now stranded on their own in the province of Uzbekistan near the Afghanistan border, then were taken to a forced labor camp where they lived under abhorrent conditions for four long years.

“They sent me with a group of women on the backs of camels to the highest mountains. We were forced to

Left: Chayale (bottom right) at age of 12 with a group of actors in Romania, 1932. Above: Performing in Philadelphia, 1965. Top right: Program from a play in London, 1960.

pick frozen cotton while armed Uzbek men watched us as we worked,” Chayale says. During wartime, cotton is needed for medical reasons, and cottonseed oil is used for the airplanes. “They used to send us to take out the cotton from the frozen flowers and put it in an oven. I used to go to sleep at night with fingers frozen, bleeding and cracked.”

The brutality of her physical endeavors increased when she was removed from the fields and “elevated” to lugging pails of tar while precariously climbing a ladder. “They took us to repair the roofs of ammunition factories that were bombed. We used to carry two pails of tar, hot tar. They weighed a lot. A lot. A lot.” Chayale then laughs: “For a long time, I was building the socialism.”

Her own tribulations seemed miniscule compared to the anguish her parents went through. “I was young. I didn’t have shoes. I went barefoot three miles to dance” [after a day’s work], she says. “Still, I survived with my mother.

We suffered terribly from malaria. My mother was a nice, plump actress. I saw her naked in a bath and started crying.

She was all skin and bones with her breasts hanging like strings. My mother looked the same way as the people you see from the extermination camps.”

The rations were meager at best.

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They sent me with a group of women on the backs of camels to the highest mountains.

We were forced to pick frozen cotton while armed Uzbek men watched us as we worked.

Chayale Ash in 2003.

than soup,” she remembers. She used her sewing skills to work in a military sewing unit laboriously pumping away on foot-pedaled machines. “The more shirts I sewed, the more chances I earned to get a little extra bread to eat.” When the authorities learned that Chayale knew several languages including German, she was often called upon to be a translator.

Her father had been placed in a labor battalion and was disconsolate.

“Life without theater was nothing for my father at all,” she says. “He was not rational.” Her father and other starving members of his group decided that if cows could eat grass and get fat, why couldn’t they. When they did, all 50 suffered from blood dysentery and could no longer work, so they were shot. “My poor father was buried in this mass grave. He was 48 years old.”

In 1942, Chayale met Pesach Ziskind, who was working as a mechanic at the labor camp. He came from a family of bakers in Lublin. When he found out that Chayale was a fellow 18

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Yiddish speaker, he began relating his heart-rending tales to her. He was the youngest of nine children, and when his father had a premonition that something horrific might happen to Lublin’s Jews, Pesach was sent out of town. He later discovered that his father, mother, six brothers and two sisters had all been shipped to Majdanek to be exterminated. He also learned that his wife and three-year-old baby might have also met the same fate.

Pesach stayed with Chayale, and, in 1944, she announced that she was his wife and registered as Chayale Ziskind.

“I couldn’t get married legally. Where could I look for a rabbi?” she muses.

After the war there was an exchange of citizens between Poland and the Soviet Union; as “the wife” of a Polish citizen, she and Pesach were able to go to Poland together. “We left Russia in rags and without shoes. I sewed myself a pair of slippers from old burlap material, just so I wouldn’t walk barefoot.”

Although she was free, Chayale and many other survivors’ lives were still in complete disarray. She recalls: “We felt pain in our hearts and at the same time fear and confusion. Where shall we go now? How can we find who of our family and friends survived?”

Throughout her life, Chayale has been a determined woman, and during those chaotic post-war times, she steadfastly believed that things would work out. “To survive, you did things you couldn’t believe you could do, and my will to persevere was so strong,” she says. “My optimistic nature was what kept me going.”

Along with other survivors, Chayale and Pesach were put on an old military train that took four weeks to reach Poland. The train stopped at stations for hours and sometimes for days. “We had to search for food and water at local vil-

lages,” and when they arrived at the east Polish border town of Kamena Gura, they were greeted with hateful shouts: “You still alive? Go to Germany and they will finish you off.” The Holocaust may have unofficially ended, but the anti-Semitic hatred was still alive among Polish peasants.

When Chayale learned that Jews had been massacred in the town of Kielce, they moved to the western region of Silezia and settled in the town of Waldenberg — Walbrzych in Polish, where Chayale’s mother joined them.

The first of several post-war miracles occurred when the Jewish Committee asked them to organize a Yiddish theater group. “Who could have imagined that we would be able to perform after living through such a tragedy?” she wonders. At that moment, Chayale took up a cause so dear to her heart, one that she has fostered, nurtured and still maintains.

“We started living six million times stronger for the many Yiddish poets, writers, singers and actors who perished during the Holocaust,” she remembers. So much of their works had also vanished, so Chayale made it her mission to write down entire works from memory. “I was blessed with a wonderful memory, and I felt it was my duty to use it to preserve some of the beautiful stories, plays and songs.”

Chayale was also dedicated to bringing new life into the world to replace the children who were murdered by the Nazis — and she was not alone.

“When the war ended, every Jewish woman wanted to have a child,” she says. “Every one was praying to God to have a child to replace the million and a half kids they killed. And I couldn’t have a child. I had a husband, but couldn’t have a child,” she says with a voice filled with anguish.

Because of the strenuous work she was forced to do carrying tar in the slave labor camp, Chayale’s uterus had been moved “five fingers” away from its normal position, but once again her indomitable nature would not let her give up.

“After the war I came to Poland and found a doctor called ‘buja renser,’ which means God’s hand. He made me massages. He made me needles with iodine and needles with hot milk. Right here in the tush. And I don’t know what he did, but in a couple of months I was pregnant. I got pregnant in Poland in 1947,” she says with a broad smile and adds, “And when I tell this to some doctors, they think I’m crazy.”

“I was scared,” Chayale recalls, as she described how they walked the entire length of Czechoslovakia to get to the Wegsheid Displaced Persons camp near Linz in Austria, which was occupied by the American military. The camp was designed for people who did not want to return to their old country, yet it was ominously surrounded by barbed wire, reminiscent of what many survivors endured under Nazi rule.

Chayale helped relieve some of the tension. “In the barracks I’d perform for the people,” she says. “It was a miracle to see Holocaust survivors smiling, humming and laughing. It was amazing to see how theater brought them back to life.” They performed mostly songs and scenes from plays that Chayale and her mother had written down from what they were able to remember.

It was there, on April 18, 1948, that Chayale gave birth to her first child Chana Feiga, and less than a month later, the State of Israel was born. “I decided to go there,” she says, but the birth of her daughter and of the new nation were both laden with complications. “It was bashert (fate) that I gave birth to a little girl who had a hole in her heart.

No doctor could guarantee that she would survive. No country would take us in, except Israel.”

The family was without money and couldn’t travel through other countries without a visa and with a four-monthold daughter. “We took a backpack with one pillow and walked for two and a half months through the mountains to Italy.” Chayale remembers the clandestine journey well. “We got help from young

Israeli soldiers ready to take survivors to their new country. We sailed from Genoa in a small fishing boat to Eretz very quietly at night. We had to have the courage to come illegally.”

At first they lived in tents in Israel, but nothing deterred Chayale from being true to one of her life missions. She helped organize the first legitimate professional theater — Haifa Yiddish Operetta Theater — and performed there for eight years. “We performed on rooftops and in orange groves. Sometimes from the dressing room to the stage we had to walk in deep sand. Nothing could stop me from bringing joy to the remnants of Jews who returned at last to their homeland,” the actress smiles.

But Yiddish theater and even the use of Yiddish language were not without opposition and related problems, this time instigated by fellow Jews in a Jewish state. “I was arrested for performing in Yiddish,” Chayale explains.

“They came from the government and wouldn’t let us open the curtain. BenGurion specifically. He was afraid that the country would not have a national language — Hebrew — and wouldn’t have a real basic culture.”

When the country was flooded with survivors from Europe, most everyone of them spoke Yiddish. “It was not a good thing for Israel,” Chayale

says. “We survivors understood that, but they didn’t understand us.”

The Yiddish theater group was put on trial for impeding the development of national character of the new country, and almost immediately the actors organized a union, sued the government, and won.

On January 18, 1950, Chayale and Pesach’s son, Moishe Ziskind, was born in Israel, where he now resides along with his children and grandchildren.

Chayale acted throughout Israel from 1948 through 1962 in Yiddish and Hebrew theaters. During that time, she also performed on the road in both London and South Africa in front of appreciative Yiddish-speaking Jewish audiences.

Chayale divorced Pesach Ziskind when she left to perform for six months in South Africa in 1959, and they remained very good friends until he died.

She met her second husband, Ari Fuhrman, in Israel in 1950. “He was an actor and we were in the same troupe.

Because he was from Romania we started working together.” In 1960, Fuhrman left for America where his parents lived and became a citizen, while Chayale was still performing in South Africa.

“I learned that I could find a doctor for my daughter if I could come to America, so I wrote Ari a letter,” Chayale continued on page 27

Above: Chayale plays a bag lady in the 1970s. Right: Giving a speech in 1952.

SPRING 2010

Na’amat Woman

19

News Na’amat

Helping Victims of Abuse

services to thousands of women and hundreds of children plagued by domestic violence.

Na’amat certificates of honor were given to the following four ong before the problem people for their achievements of domestic violence was in the fight against domestic publicly acknowledged in Israel, violence.

Na’amat was helping victims of Ronit Lev-Ari was the first abuse. A special event was held director of the Na’amat Departon November 25, 2009, to mark ment for the Prevention and the anniversary of the formal Treatment of Violence in the establishment, in 1983, of Family. Later on, she was one of the organization’s Department the main initiators of the Glickfor Prevention and Treatment man Center for the Prevention of Violence in the Family. and Treatment of Violence in The event occurred on the the Family, built in 1996. day designated by the United Yael Dayan, former Member Nations as the International of Knesset, has done outstandDay for the Elimination of ing work initiating laws relating Violence Against Women. to women’s rights. The past Speakers Talia Livni, attorney deputy mayor of Tel Aviv, she and president of Na’amat; M.K. is now chairperson of the city Itzhak Herzog, Minister of council and is a key figure in Welfare and Social Services; and the struggle for human rights.

Ron Huldai, Mayor of Tel Aviv, Ze’ev Friedman served as the talked about the gravity of the head of the Welfare Department issue and Na’amat’s vital role in in the Tel Aviv municipality, as its prevention and treatment. well as the director of social The story of the Na’amat Glickservices. Through the years, he man Center in Tel Aviv was told worked in full cooperation with — about how it became the Na’amat, helping to promote and leading and most professional enhance the Glickman Center. center in Israel, providing Nurit Rogel’s daughter, Einav, was murdered by her ex-boyfriend when she was 19 years old. Einav didn’t share the problems of her relation-

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ship with her family — it was only after she was murdered that her sad story was revealed.

Since this tragedy, Rogel has been traveling all over the country giving lectures to youngsters in high schools to raise their awareness about the problem of domestic violence and the ways to prevent it.

She feels that her dialogues with the students are her life mission and a way to honor her daughter’s memory.

For this event, a unique booklet was prepared, covering legal aspects of domestic violence. It was written by attorney Hadara Matar from the Glickman Center and attorney Gali Etzion from the Na’amat Legal Department, with the supervision and counseling of attorney Dafna Bustan, Na’amat legal adviser and head of the Na’amat Legal Bureaus, and Orit Earon, director of the Glickman Center.

Na’amat will distribute this booklet to all major figures and professionals in Israel who deal with domestic violence. “We are certain that it will greatly assist them and help them to cope better with the difficult situations that they face,” said Talia Livni.

Na’amat president Talia Livni, right, presents a certificate of honor to Ronit Lev-Ari for her pioneering work in helping victims of domestic violence.

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SPRING 2010

Bees, Awards and More

H

arriet Green, Na’amat USA’s national vice president in charge of fund-raising, always has interesting news about what’s going on in our Na’amat family in Israel.

She talks enthusiastically about the honey project at Ayanot Agricultural High School, which is buzzing with activity. Students have renovated the old sheds that house the hives, replenished the bee population and are getting ready to package and sell the honey to raise funds for the school.

Another innovation at Ayanot, says Green, is the addition of a course of study in emergency medical care, taught by a senior team from Magen David Adom and Assaf Harofeh Medical Center in Zrifin. Students will be able to take matriculation exams in this field. A select group of Ayanot teenagers will learn the basics of emergency medicine that will train them to continue their studies at an MDA station and learn to cope with mass catastrophes and work in an intensive care ambulance. Each student will have a personal instructor and participate in advanced study at the hospital.

She is also glad to report that Na’amat’s other agricultural school, Kanot, won first prize — five stars — in a contest for youth villages sponsored by the Council for Beautiful Israel.

Looking ahead to the conference of the International Movement of Na’amat, June 13 to 14, 2010, in Tel Aviv, Green says that delegates will participate in a “dedication day.” They’ll visit Ayanot for the dedication of a theater newly renovated by Na’amat USA. Kanot High School The 500-seat gets five stars. auditorium features a state-of-the-art sound system and beautiful American-made seats.

Delegates will also dedicate the new day care center in Ra’anana, endowed by the Singer Family Trust of Garden Grove, California. The three-classroom facility services 70 children in a neighborhood filled with young families.

Thank You, Na’amat!

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e’d like to share three of the many heartfelt thank-you letters that Na’amat receives from students and parents. The first is from a pupil who just graduated Na’amat Technological High School in Tel Aviv and will soon be drafted into the Israel Defense Forces. The second is a letter that a mother of one of the students at the school wrote to Ron Huldai, the mayor of Tel Aviv. Another comes from a Tel Aviv University student who received a Na’amat professional scholarship. She is working toward a bachelor’s degree in the social sciences.

These are just a few of the thousands of compelling stories that are part of the everyday life of Na’amat.

To all the teachers at Na’amat Technological High School in Tel Aviv: I don’t know how to express my feelings about this school — its atmosphere and especially its teachers. I cannot find the words for the precise emotion I feel for you. Is it love? Appreciation?

Gratitude? Or perhaps it is an emotion that hasn’t been recognized or named yet.

We’ve been together for a year, but I feel as if we’ve spent the past 12 years together. I guess it’s because this is the best year I’ve ever had since I started the school system in first grade.

Waking up every morning knowing that I’m going to a place where people actually believe in me, want me and support me; to go to school and smile at one of the teachers not just to be polite but because of this emotion I cannot find a name for; to walk into a classroom not because I have to, but because I want to; to hear a teacher say good morning and to know indeed it is going to be a good morning; to get a high mark in a test, not only for me but for all of you, as well, so that you’ll know you’ve done a good job and not to let you down.

You won’t be able to see the tear stains on this letter because you’ll receive a printed copy, but they will remain fossilized in my heart, the place where I keep good people like yourselves. I truly hope that this imprint in my gut will melt away the concrete block I have there so that it won’t

It’s The Law!

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he Na’amat Legal Department recently sent us a review of legislation the organization has been pursuing over the last couple of years. Its impressive work includes laws passed in the Knesset regarding the following: helping to promote women in the workplace and adapt workplaces to the lives of working women and parents;

hurt so much. The moment of truth has arrived, saying goodbye, this thing I’m so bad at, and even worse if it’s someone I love. I pray to God that when it will all end and I will no longer go to school every day, I will find the strength within me to hold up and not to cry.

But enough about me — you are what’s truly important, this wonderful staff that believed in me, supported me and helped me after so many others before you gave up on me and were sick of me. I arrived here, and all of you in ways that only you know what they are proved that this plant was wilted because the roots were rotten and you managed to help it grow and flourish once again.

I’m afraid to only say “thank you,” because that would do you injustice, but you understand what I mean.

That’s it, it’s over, that scary moment in which we need to part has arrived, and I am finishing this letter because I have no more ways to express myself with words — I’ll try to make it short because it’s difficult for me to say goodbye.

Thank you all.

Love you all.

Hope to see you again.

I really and truly love you.

Yair Ben Moshe Dear Mayor Ron Huldai: I would like to tell you about my son, Eliran.

For two years (since junior high) he fell between the chairs in the educational system, when he started the Hadash High School, where there was no cooperation from the teachers, and he had to switch to a different school.

Eliran switched to Ironi Tet High School, and unfortunately there, as well, he did not receive the attention he needed. As a result, Eliran lost his faith in the school system and felt as if it was the end of the road for him.

At the end of the previous school year, I heard about the new Na’amat technological high school in Tel Aviv. I went to see the school and talked with the principal, Shulamit Levi, and I must say that I met an amazing intelligent woman who restored my faith and confidence and gave me hope. I immediately understood Eliran found the right place for him and was going back on track.

improving income support for single parents enrolled in school; expanding the rights of victims of severe acts of violence, including sexual offences, so they can get information and be able to state their position regarding defendants’ plea bargains; making property division possible before a divorce is granted, thus avoiding possible extortion by spouses (usually the husband); and dividing pension

Once Eliran came to school, he received all the attention he needed — a lot of warmth, patience, caring and setting of boundaries.

I wish to express my gratitude and great appreciation and to commend the wonderful staff who work tirelessly and pour their hearts and souls into their jobs. Their attitude spurred my son to continue his studies, and every day he comes home from school in a good mood and he’s happy to be there.

I would like to thank the wonderful staff for all their warm support and encouragement.

I would like to thank Shulamit, the principal, for opening her door and being attentive to every problem.

I would like to thank Yossi, the discipline officer, who calls when there are good things to say as well.

I would like to thank Ayala, the guidance counselor, who knows how to listen and address every problem.

I would like to thank Hila, the caring homeroom teacher, who always shows an interest and gives a word of advice.

I would like to thank Dina for her support and tutoring and help to prepare for exams.

Well done and yishar koach (congratulations)!

Respectfully, Dalia Osmo Dear Na’amat: would like to thank Na’amat from the bottom of my heart for the scholarship I received.

Words are insufficient to express my emotions and gratitude.

This year, I was forced to quit my B.A. studies due to a dire financial situation. Thanks to the Na’amat scholarship I received, I can keep on studying in order to acquire an academic education, which is key to integrating in society.

The academic world has been my heart’s desire since I was a child, but due to the heavy financial burden it entails, it did not seem feasible.

Thank you for helping me and encouraging me to succeed and for opening up so many options for self-fulfillment.

Regards, Linda Shabat-Targan

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rights more equitably for couples getting divorced.

Working to improve the status of women, Na’amat also has submitted a proposal to the Employers Organization and the Histadrut to establish tribunals to conduct disciplinary hearings in cases of sexual harassment.

And it is working with the Histadrut’s bylaws committee toward ensuring women’s representation unions.

The Legal Department also

published a comprehensive booklet on women’s rights in the workplace and has been distributing thousands of copies.

Na’amat legal aid bureaus handle more than 10,000 inquiries a year and counsels women in matters of work, domestic violence, finances, wills, divorce and premarital agreements. Some of the centers also provide family counseling, workshops on various issues and support groups.

SPRING 2010

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High School Gets Top Grades

F

rom hundreds of schools all over Israel, the National Education Award Committee chose Na’amat ’s Hadera Technological High School to be one of the finalists in the competition to receive a special achievement award this year.

According to the school’s 370 students, this is a place where they enjoy unconditional love. The faculty, led by Avraham Hadad, treats each teenager individually. They really know the students and are able to nurture their talents.

The staff’s commitment to encouraging the growth and development of each student, along with individual therapy they receive, enable the students to start respecting themselves. The awakening of self-respect brings about personal growth, boosts their self-image and awakens their belief in their capabilities.

This belief is the foundation for the students’ significant academic achievements, which has given the Na’amat school its special position within the educational system.

“Before I came to Na’amat, I was kicked out of nine schools, and I was expecting it to happen here as well,” a graduate, now 24, told the award committee. “I didn’t cooperate. I didn’t want to study. Here they didn’t cut me any slack and didn’t give up on me; they were insistent. What moved me the most was all the talk about love of Israel, Zionism and giving, and then slowly, slowly I also started to study….

I finished my senior year, was drafted to the IDF to a combat unit and completed a combat paramedic course. I finished my military service, and I’m now going through the screening for the police’s youth unit.”

During their visit to the school, committee members

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learned about the various fields that students choose to study and observed the teaching process, which places the development of

learning and thinking skills at its center. They witnessed the socialvalue based education and the students’ extensive involvement in the school and the community, through volunteering and contributing according to their academic fields.

Members also observed a discussion by a group of students who had recently visited Poland. The teenagers talked about education for Zionism and love of Israel as well as their impressions of the journey and what it meant to them.

At the school’s learning center, the committee met a group of seniors who movingly described the journey they’ve made from frustrated pupils to efficient, aware learners who make methodic use of learning strategies. They

acquired these skills with great effort in the learning center under the loving guidance of professional learning-disorder specialists and the staff.

And from there, the road was paved to success in the matriculation exams.

Even if the school doesn’t win, reaching the national stage is significant and conveys a message to the entire educational system.

Hadera Technological High School trumpets an empowering message for educators everywhere: “Believe it is possible, all you need is to accept every pupil with love; to give all students the ability to find the light within themselves; and to enable them to grow for their own sake and for society.”

German Women Visit Na’amat

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agenda and Na’amat’s projects. It was all so new and delegation of 10 women who hold senior positions in Germany’s social service institutions came to interesting that even today, a week after I returned.

Israel for a one-week seminar. The gathering was I’m still digesting everything I saw there. You have enorganized by the International Department of Na’amat riched us in so many ways. You, the women of Na’amat, and AWO (Arbeiterwohlfahrt) from Germany, which have left an immense impression on me: so strong, so have been exchanging professional delegations for 20 devoted and attached to your job. years. Most of the women had never visited Israel.

“The weather was nice and warm, and the meals AWO is one of Germany’s largest and most promiwere especially tasty with special flavoring, but the nent social service providers. According to its Web thing we enjoyed most was the atmosphere: You welsite, it coordinates 12,000 local branches that provide comed us warmly, hosted us in a dignified way with a diverse services, educational activities and vocational lot of warmth, and it really meant a lot to me. training. AWO targets various groups in need including “I did not expect from a people that suffered so the disabled, immigrants and the elderly, while promuch in my grandfather’s time to welcome us so warmmoting non-discrimination, equality and equal access. ly. As a German woman, I felt guilty and wanted to ask Among its facilities are centers for women’s empoweryour forgiveness throughout the seminar, a feeling that ment, old-age homes, educational centers for children was further magnified after the visit to Yad Vashem. and adolescents in distress, kindergartens, rehab and “I would like to thank you and your colleagues for health facilities, shelters for battered women and help giving me the opportunity for such an intense emocenters for families and immigrants. tional experience, beyond the professional enrichment.”

The members of the delegation met with Talia Livni, president of Na’amat, and Na’amat board members. They visited Yad Vashem and the Knesset and toured Sderot. They visited Na’amat day care centers, the Glickman Center for the Treatment and Prevention of Violence in the Family, and women’s empowerment projects.

And they discussed crucial issues in Israeli society with various officials.

At the end of the seminar, the participants expressed how impressed they were with Na’amat’s activities and their importance, saying they had learned a lot about Israel and the complex issues it faces.

German social service professionals visit Na’amat. They are shown with After returning home, seminar participant Shirli Shavit, head of Na’amat’s International Department, front left; Gavriella Kaifer wrote: and Talia Livni, NA’AMAT president, front, third from left.

“The visit to Israel was an extraordinary learning experience for me: the country, its

SPRING 2010

An Empty Nest:

Ruffled Feathers or Time to Soar?

by BARBARA TRAININ BLANK

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n unexpected association comes to mind when I think about empty nesting. Before taking a baby bird for food, the Torah commands us to send away the mother — so she won’t suffer by witnessing her child’s fate. The assumption is that animals as well as people have a maternal instinct. The commentators tell us the purpose of this mitzvah is to teach us compassion. The very word in Hebrew for “compassion” comes from the same root as the word for “womb” (sorry, guys). In fact, the mitzvah is deemed so important that its fulfillment brings with it a promise of long life.

It is one of only two commandments in the Torah that does — the other, interestingly, being Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother.

A strange juxtaposition, indeed. How hard is it, I wonder, to balance our love and concern for our children with the necessary task of letting them spread their wings? How hard is it for them to honor us, while at the same time following their own fates — no matter what the potential hazards and rewards?

I’m not sure of the answers. As a middleaged-plus adult, I’m still struggling with the latter question with regard to my elderly mother.

But one thing I do know: Being an empty nester isn’t the easiest thing in the world, Marilyn Rose

though it is inevitable. To paraphrase Maurice Chevalier about getting older, what’s the alternative? Surely I wouldn’t want my kids to live with me forever, or to never break the umbilical cord. Surely I want them to have rewarding professions and satisfying relationships, with kids of their own — who can aggravate them as much as they did me.

And bring as much joy.

And yet... Since my kids left home a while ago — one for college, the other for culinary arts school and then a job out of state — a number of people have asked how I feel about the empty nest. Well, at least, they used to. As in most situations concerning other people’s problems, they seemed to lose interest after the first few months, and I alone ask myself if, when and how much it hurts to be without my baby birds.

Being an empty nester means a lot of pits in the bottom of my stomach and feelings of emptiness. It also means a shift in tenses. When my kids were home I rarely thought about the past.

And there often wasn’t time to think about the future. We lived very much in the moment — who needed what when.

Who wanted what when. Could the needs and wants of the two of them be balanced?

Whether whatever balance we struck would SPRING 2010

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How hard is it, I wonder, to balance our love and concern for our children with the necessary task of letting them spread their wings? leave any time for me. Sometimes the moment was pleasant; sometimes not. Sometimes it was incandescent, sometimes horrific. It was run-run-run, even though I tried to keep the lid on the potentially out-of-hand every-minute scheduling other parents were falling prey to.

But it was always of the moment. The only interjection of the “past” might be my talking endlessly (did I bore them?) about my previous experiences from which they were supposed to learn — and probably didn’t. And about the pitfalls of life, which for sure they ignored.

Now, a day doesn’t go by when I don’t see images of them in front of my face — sometimes bombarding it, sometimes more subtly embracing it — of the past of my children. Helena standing on her bookcase, threatening to jump. After several failed attempts to convince her to come down, to pull her down, she makes good on her threat — and has the mark of a deep gash on her hip to prove it. Cynthia eating the oatmeal in her bath when she had chicken pox. The shows they were in at the local Jewish community center. Cynthia’s “debut” in community theater. Helena’s acceptance letter to the French Culinary Institute, partially based, it seems, on her writing in her essay that I bought her lots of toy foods and pots when she was a kid and on my letting her make “original” concoctions in the kitchen that I was later forced to eat. The birthday parties, the fights with friends, the reconciliation with friends. The times they made noise in shul, or trouble in school. The bat mitzvah celebrations and the graduations. The family celebrations at which they were always the “stars.” My late father carrying them and telling them stories.

As with any loss, conjuring up memories of what I’ve “lost” (willfully or unwillingly) is both painful and consoling.

I want to wallow in the images — and I want to escape from them. There are times when I’m alone, driving or working, or getting ready for dinner, that tears come to my eyes. But I can’t give in to the impulse to call my kids. I know I have to get a grip on myself, and only occasionally say “I love you” or “I miss you” when we do speak — when my gut tells me the declarations will be well received.

The truth is, it isn’t just about the empty nest in the physical sense — the unmade beds and the piles of discarded toys, stuffed animals and children’s books they probably wouldn’t be using in any case if they were home. And the feeling isn’t even assuaged, necessarily, by seeing them. I know the time is limited and can never be quite the same.

The truth is, also, there are times I’m glad my kids aren’t home. There’s no fighting for the car. No worrying about when they’ll come home. Well, there’s worrying, but not being able to hear the door open and close at those moments means sleeping a little better. There are no long silences during which, at the height of some mood, they refuse to talk. Or, to the contrary, endless chatter or argu24

Na’amat Woman

SPRING 2010

mentation. There are no fights about the rules or curfews or who they go out with or who their friends are. No having to put their needs above mine — all the time.

There are no more endless trips to the supermarket to satisfy quirky and sudden tastes — I hate shopping — and no more teen movies that make me wince. Certainly I get more work done, and come and go as I please — even if sometimes the extreme silence threatens to disturb my work, and if sometimes it feels I have no one to go places with. And even if I sometimes miss those stupid movies (and the good ones we watched together) and sometimes I have no one to go to the theater with, especially when my wandering Jew of a husband is traveling or has different tastes. It’s certainly easier to run to see my mother 180 miles away without the added responsibilities of caring for my children on a daily basis. While I am, technically, a member of the sandwich generation, it’s more like half a sandwich than a whole. On the other hand, if my children were here — being now 18 and almost 20, and one of them a far more superb chef than I am — I’d feel less guilty leaving my husband alone so I could run off frequently to see my mother.

And there’s the inexorable passage of time. Even if I were a young mother to start with — I wasn’t — the absence of children makes one aware that one no longer is.

It’s a reminder few of us want, but one we must have if our children are to grow up. And the sense of loss of “control.”

Maybe our time to influence our children has really passed.

Maybe we did our jobs, and we’re finished, and now they’re on their own — oy vey.

Trying to respect my children’s newfound and cherished independence, I try not to call, text, e-mail, instant message, bang the drum or send smoke signals too often. That isn’t easy, either. But maybe it’s good practice, actually, to respect people’s space — and privacy. To resist picking up the phone or sending an e-mail every time the impulse strikes. To sense when even the best and closest of pals needs a break.

A friend of mine once said that we raise our children in to be able to do without us. A kind of independence-building dependence. At the time, having only one child who was a few months old, her statement — like Mark Twain’s comment about his father getting smarter over time — didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. Many years later, I not only understand what she said — I can appreciate the simplicity and truth and wisdom of it. So, our kids have to learn to do without us — and we have to help them. The question is: How do we raise ourselves to be able to do without them?

Barbara Trainin Blank writes feature articles and art previews/reviews for Jewish and general publications. She wrote “Overcoming Denial” in our winter 2009/2010 issue.

Book A Fine Romance: Jewish Songwriters, American Songs

by David Lehman New York: Schocken Books 249 pages, $23

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ou don’t have to be Jewish, or American, or a romantic (or a musicologist) to enjoy A Fine Romance. David Lehman has woven together a wonderful book that is part appreciation, part analysis, part personal memoir and entirely engaging. We meet all the major songwriters of the first half of the last century, those Olympian figures whose compositions comprise the “Great American Songbook.” We also encounter some of Lehman’s relatives and others who helped to foster his appreciation for this marvelous music.

All of this era’s greats of songwriting are here — Irving Berlin (Baline), Jerome Kern, George and Ira Gershwin (Gershowitz), Harold Arlen (Arluch), Richard Rodgers (Abrahams), Lorenz Hart, Oscar Hammerstein, Frank Loesser, Leonard Bernstein, Steven Sondheim, “Yip” Harburg, Sammy Cahn, Jule Styne, Mel Tormé and so many others.

Mention is made of some non-Jewish composers, including Cole Porter, who claimed the secret to having hit songs was writing “Jewish tunes.” If you need proof, just hum “My Heart Belongs To Daddy,” the most obvious example.

We meet some of these giants through a series of interviews — a few that Lehman conducted as a college student, and others that take place in his imagination, supported by excellent research and wonderful stories. Richard Rodgers, for example, wanted his songs performed exactly as they were written, and did not like singers changing the styles or tem-

pos. When he heard Peggy Lee’s swinging version of “Lover,” which had been composed as a waltz, Rodgers said, “I don’t know why Peggy picked on me when she could have [screwed] up “‘Silent Night.’”

Lehman mixes these stories with his own and others’ scholarly analyses to excellent, thought-provoking effect.

One section discusses Berlin’s “White Christmas”: “You could argue, for instance, that Christmas became a secular holiday thanks to the efforts of Irving Berlin, who gave ‘White Christmas’ to a fearful nation in a state of total war in 1942. That was some Christmas present. Berlin knew it, too. ‘I want you to take down a song I wrote over the weekend,’ he told his right-hand man, Helmy Kresa. ‘Not only is it the best song I ever wrote, it’s the best song anybody ever wrote.’ ” After noting that the other most popular Christmas song (“Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…”) was written

by Tormé and Bob Wells to counteract the effects of a mid-July Hollywood heat wave, Lehman takes off on an essay on assimilation both in pre-war Germany and post-war America.

Another wonderful passage conveys the changing musical landscape of the 1960s, juxtaposing Lehman hearing Bob Dylan’s break-out electric performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 on a day off from his duties as a summer camp music counselor, then returning to lead rehearsals of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Carousel.” He quotes Dylan acknowledging his kinship with the earlier generation of songwriters: “‘In Harold’s songs [referring to Arlen], I could hear rural

blues and folk music.’ ” Lehman lays out his version of the argument attesting to the “Jewishness” of these songs, noting the minor keys of their melodies and “urban” tone, as well as the mixing of humor, romance and melancholy in the lyrics. He also touches on their relationship to blues and jazz, and the connection of black music to “Show Boat” and “Porgy and Bess.”

A Fine Romance is part of the valuable Jewish Encounters Book Series of Nextbook Press, which, in collaboration with the publisher Schocken, is designed to bring together “writers of the first rank with people and ideas and events from the Jewish past” to satisfy “the hunger for books on Jewish subjects written in a lively, intelligent and popular manner.”

David Lehman, a poet and editor whose work has appeared in all the major literary publications, has more than filled that bill. A Fine Romance is a nostalgic, funny, scholarly and heartfelt account of a wild and wonderful time and the wild and wonderful music that it produced.

— Les Taub

Day After Night

By Anita Diamant New York: Scribner 320 pages, $27

T

he Allied internment camp Atlit for illegal refugees near the coast north of Haifa in 1945 is the setting for this engrossing novel. Day After Night is based on the true story of the rescue of some 200 prisoners of the camp, which was run by the British military. In her last novel, The Red Tent, Anita Diamant gives voice to women of the Old Testament. Now she gives voice to women who have survived the Holocaust and are hoping for a

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life of freedom in the Promised Land.

Because they don’t have the right paperwork, the women again are trapped behind barbed wire. They hope to get to a kibbutz, which seems like a hair’s breath away, but meanwhile they have to endure British rule.

There is precious little love for the British as expressed in the scuttlebutt of the camp: A boy says: “The limeys don’t want your respect…they are in bed with the emirs and the effendis, and that makes them our enemies.” Someone objects: “But we are not at war with the British.” Another: “Not yet. But if we are to have a state and a homeland for our brothers and sisters in Europe, we must kick the empire out of here.”

The story is told by four women with vastly different experiences.

Shayndel, a Polish Zionist partisan fighter, now plots escape routes from Atlit; Leonie, a Parisian beauty who had been forced into prostitution, now cuts herself; Tedi, a hidden Dutch Jew from

President

continued from page 3 Updates from our four Areas awaited me at home. Clubs and councils have been busy this winter, despite the snow and cold weather in many places. They report improvement in providing news to members by e-mail, which we are working to effect on the national level.

If you’d like to improve our communication with you — and help us save on paper, postage and trees, send your e-mail address to the national office: naamat@naamat.org.

Debra Kohn, Eastern Area coordinator, reports that clubs have been busy with gift-wrapping fund-raisers, book and author luncheons, Spiritual Adoption functions and Hanukkah and other holiday activities. The Area’s informative newsletter keeps members up to date about not only Na’amat activities, but also issues of interest to the Jewish community in general.

Southeast Area coordinator Marjorie Moidel, reports about the success of 26

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Amsterdam, tries to forget everything and start over again like a baby; and Zorah, a concentration camp survivor, is filled with hatred. As their friendships develop and as they struggle to create a new life for themselves, the women are reminded of the unspeakable horrors they experienced. Some they relate to each other, some they think to themselves, and some they have nightmares about.

The women work in the infirmary and dining hall and take care of the children in addition to other chores. They gain a sense of purpose in their work as exemplified by Shayndel who takes over the kitchen when the escape organizer, the cook Tirzah, doesn’t show up. “Shayndel was flying around the kitchen — stirring, setting out platters and swearing at Tirzah, who had not shown up to prepare dinner [the escape plans were not known to Shayndel at this time]. She had waited as long as she dared before starting

on her own, but once she settled down to work, she began to enjoy herself.

She used to hate kitchen work as a girl at home; the endless cycle of cooking and cleaning always wanted to make her scream with boredom. But taking charge of feeding more than 200 comrades made her feel like she had planned and directed a battle. Best of all, it kept her occupied.”

The author sensitively portrays the four women, revealing glimpses of their pasts and the way they each deal with the traumas that have consumed them.

The true story of the escape from the camp, where women play a defining role, is breathtaking. The themes of tragedy and redemption are paired artfully in this stirring novel.

Readers interested in modern Jewish Zionist history will enjoy this book tremendously as well as readers in general who are interested in a riveting rescue and human interest story.

— Molly Abramowitz

card parties, white elephant sales, teas, raffles, souvenir books and scholarship luncheons. She and the local convention chairwomen are hard at work publicizing our national convention (more on that later).

Jan Minnick, Midwest Area coordinator, pointed to a wide variety of fundraisers: Hanukkah appeals, afternoon at the movies, musicales, oneg Shabbats, theater events, yearbooks and an upcoming Women’s Passover Seder. The Midwest Area has brought in the most members in 2009. Mazal tov!

Western Area coordinator Marilyn Bristol reported on luncheons, scholarship dinners and holiday appeals. She announced a new project of raising funds for books that are urgently needed in our technological high schools and the formation of a new young professionals group.

Exciting plans are being made for our national convention, to be held July 11-14, in Boca Raton, Florida. It’s a great opportunity for you to meet and interact with your Na’amat sisters from around

the country and to experience the warmth and passion of our organization.

As our theme proclaims, we will be “Spreading the Sunshine With Na’amat.” Among our featured speakers are Gabriela Shalev, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations; Talia Livni, president of Na’amat Israel; Masha Lubelsky, representative to the World Zionist Organization executive and former Na’amat Israel president; and Rebecca Higman from Network for Good. Some of the issues we’ll be addressing are women in the workplace, anti-Semitism around the world, and using social media to increase membership and raise money. I strongly urge you to send in your reservation now (form and other details are on page 31 and the back cover).

I look forward to meeting you, so be sure to introduce yourself during what will surely be a memorable 40th national convention.

Chayale

continued from page 19 recalls. After he replied positively, she came to Philadelphia in 1962 and married Ari (whom she divorced in 1984).

Most important, in the next year, her prolonged quest over four continents to find a doctor to repair the hole in the heart of her then 15-year-old daughter ended with a successful operation.

In 1962, the couple organized the Philadelphia Yiddish Musical Operetta Folk Theater, and during her years in Philadelphia she performed on local television. Chayale also returned to one of her deep loves as director of the children’s Yiddish Theater Group.

In 1971 and 1972, Chayale was on the road just as she had been as a young actress traveling with her parents’ troupe in Europe. This time she went on a tour sponsored by the Yiddish National Farband and Workmen’s Circle, performing in 36 United States towns and cities and others in Canada.

Chayale has a slightly devilish smile as she philosophizes as to why she has acted in so many places. “If an actor performs in only one place and the audience knows his underwear, you have to go elsewhere.

“I performed all over Canada including Manitoba, and the audiences were not necessarily older people. I have letters from kids after I performed in Sioux City. I performed so many times in Detroit. There was a big poster there that read Sold Out,” she joyfully remembers.

Chayale has a thick file folder crammed full of letters from Jewish community leaders and articles that she has amassed through the years, praising both her performances and also her presentations about the world of Yiddish. As her glasses slide a bit down her nose, she squints a bit and happily reads some of the plaudits, not with vain pride, but with the knowledge that time and time again she has tried to preserve a part of a glorious and sometimes forgotten Jewish past.

Chayale performed so many roles to so many adoring audiences, yet her ego never got in the way of her art. “I tried to be one of the best actresses,” she emphasizes. “Not the greatest —

one of the best because this was my life.

I was born backstage.”

C

hayale’s deep love for Yiddish plays invokes a meaningful connection between Yiddish and a once nearlyobliterated past. “They are a source of joy and wisdom.”

She becomes melancholy when she thinks about the world that once was — the world of Yiddish language, music, the arts and especially the theater. She laments how the Nazis tried to eliminate the Jewish people and nearly destroyed 1,000 years of a special culture.

Chayale has devoted her life to ensuring that the past will not be forgotten. “It is a holy duty; by doing so, we honor the memory of our martyrs with deserved dignity,” she observes.

“It’s my duty to keep alive what we cannot bring back. It’s the duty of the older generation to remind,” she continues. “We can’t bring back the six million, but we can keep alive the culture and heritage to live and pass it on to future generations.” But Chayale wants to go a step beyond. “I am striving not only to keep the culture alive, but also to give a gift of tolerance and understanding. I didn’t survive to be quiet.”

Chayale also has made it her lifelong responsibility to reawaken and even resurrect the glorious and descriptive Yiddish language that flows from her heart.

She is keeping alive an understanding of the rich and vibrant culture both in her firm connection with younger generations whenever she speaks at middle schools, high schools and colleges, and with older generations in synagogues and Jewish community centers.

Chayale came to San Jose in 1998 to be with her daughter, Chana, and started teaching Yiddish a year later. She kvells whenever she conducts classes in synagogues, community centers, and best of all, sitting around her kitchen table in her apartment with a small group of eager students. There, in between the lessons, she shares dozens of photographs as well as articles and advertisements printed in Yiddish with her students, the same as she would with a friend.

She also shares another reality.

“Yiddish was and still is my mother tongue and is closest to my heart.”

Chayale considers Yiddish to be more

than just a language, for even among the poor of pre-war Europe, it was an essential part of a rich, fulfilling lifestyle.

“Yiddish literature portrayed not only the holiness of the Sabbath, but also the struggles of everyday life of ordinary people,” says Chayale. “Yiddish not only taught us to live, it lived in us and with us…. It is the finest jewel of Jewish culture.”

The students in her classes are like an aphrodisiac for the actress. “Because they want to learn, they come to me,” she says.

“They are an eclectic mix of younger and older people, and the latter offer something special. They come to sit with me and talk Yiddish. Some remember songs.”

When it comes to students, Chayale has a special affection for those she speaks to in the middle schools and high schools, primarily because of what happened to her during the tumultuous days of her own youth.

“The nicest dreams of my young life were destroyed by hatred, intolerance and by the murder of my loved ones,” says Chayale. “The youth were caught by a war that changed them forever. Some felt that they missed their adolescent years and were forced to grow up into adulthood very fast in a world without a future.”

In contrast, when she speaks to students in a single classroom or in an overflowing school auditorium about the ravages of the Holocaust and her own life, she also proffers a positive and inspirational philosophy.

“I give the young thoughts of harmony, love and peace — of tolerance and understanding. I tell them to appreciate your life, your freedom, and have a positive attitude. Keep up your hopes and dreams. Life is short. Live.

Love. Be good to each other.”

Chayale continues softly: “I feel so happy to be alive. I am thankful for everything.”

Harvey Gotliffe is an author living in Santa Cruz, California. He writes stories on the lives of Holocaust survivors and is now working on his own memoir. Gotliffe writes and edits a socially conscious newsletter, The Ho-Ho-Kus Cogitator, available free in PDF form: contact him at hohokuscogitator@att.net.

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AROUND THE COUNTRY √ Everyone enjoyed the potluck dinner and karaoke singing at the annual Hanukkah party held by Shalom club (Long Island/ Queens Council). From left, front: president Nadine Simon, Diane Hershkowitz, council fund-raising vice president Tal Ourian and Eleanor Blackman; back: Carol Knecht, Linda Weiss, Florence Lefkowitz, Maddy Berger, Linda Biderman, Doris Fridkin, Trudy Sinn, council treasurer and national board member Reggie Rog and Madeline Zember.

√ Detroit Council holds its gala annual Spiritual Adoption/Donor Dinner honoring women who have been members for at least 60 years. Cantor Daniel Gross of the Adat Shalom Synagogue provided the entertainment. From left: president Evelyn Noveck, Cantor Gross and Adele Staller (Sharona club). π The annual Spiritual Adoption Dinner of Kadima club (Cleveland Council) was a great success thanks to Linda Schoenberg, who prepared one of her legendary vegetarian gourmet meals. From left: chef Schoenberg, council president Robin Lieberman, club president Luisa M. Aviv, Pat Averbach and Wendy Zohar.

πMany people show up for the informative and provocative meetings held by the Esther Goldsmith club of Toms River, N.J. At a recent luncheon, Ido Dechtman, “adopted” son of longtime member Lorraine Caris, spoke about his experiences during the war in Gaza. Dechtman (pictured) is in the United States to take an exam for a specialty in his medical certification.

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πLong Island/Queens Council gathers for a paid-up membership luncheon honoring Sylvia Osler for her many years of dedicated leadership in the council. Guest speaker Mindy Perlmutter, from the Nassau County Coalition Against Domestic Violence, was given clothes and toiletries to be donated to the Nassau County shelter for women and children. From left: Rhoda Orenstein, Sylvia Osler and her daughter Miriam Hyman, and council co-president Doris Shinners.

π Doris Crudup, right, of the Esther Goldsmith club, Toms River, N.J., decided to gift her cousin, Fay Berlin of Bayonne, N.J., left, with membership in NA’AMAT USA. She was surprised to find out, when the dues were submitted, that Fay has been a life member for the last 30 years!

π Bessie Choina club (Brooklyn) holds “reacquainting dinner” with Rochelle Berger, daughter of club founder Bessie Choina. From left, seated: Judy Poretsky and Rochelle Berger; standing: Jenia Shestakovsky, Eastern Area coordinator Debra Kohn, Pamela Delgado, Blanche Sohn and Esther Eisenberg.

πMembers of Cleveland Council had a great time at its Membership Tea, which featured singing duo “Rent-a-Yenta.”

From left: singer Beverly Simmons, president Robin Lieberman, accompanist Jennifer Heemstra, singer Cheryl Eitman and membership vice president Natalie Landy.

πAt Washington Council’s annual Book and Author Luncheon, Pamela Relkin was honored with the Woman of the Year Award for her outstanding leadership achievements. Guest speakers were Naftali Bendavid (The Thumpin’: How Rahm Emanuel and The Democrats Learned to be Ruthless and Finally Ended the Republican Revolution), Barbara Graham (Eye of My Heart: 27 Writers Reveal the Hidden Pleasures and Perils of Being a Grandmother) and Steve Luxenberg (Annie’s Ghosts: A Journey into a Family Secret).

In the photo, council president Ruth Reid (right) presents award to Relkin

√ Shalom club (Long Island/Queens Council) had a successful gift-wrapping fund-raiser at a Long Island mall; Plainview-Old Bethpage club also participated. From left: council treasurer and national board member Reggie Rog, Diane Hershkowitz, Trudy Sinn and council fund-raising vice president Tal Ourian.

π IN ISRAEL… Sylvia Shapiro (Cypress Lake club/ Palm Beach Council) took a group of tourists to Israel through Amsalem Tour & Travel where they visited Na’amat’s HaShalom Day Care Center in Jaffa. She could “not get over how happy and loving the children were.” Participants were delighted with the visit and the talk by Shirli Shavit, director of the Na’amat International Dept. Photograph on left, from left: Shirli Shavit, Sylvia Shapiro and two Na’amat day care workers. Photo, right: Jewish and Arab kids play together at the center.

πCleveland Council holds Oneg Shabbat. The guest speaker was Rabbi Stacey Blank, who made aliyah in 2005, and serves as rabbi of Kehillat Darchei Noam, a Reform synagogue in Ramat Hasharon. She spoke about “Planting the Seeds of Religious Pluralism in Israel: Where is the Woman’s Voice?” From left: Rabbi Blank and her mother, Ilene Nolish, a new member of Kadima club.

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Circle of Hope Donors

Na’amat USA is grateful to the following for their generosity. Thank you for helping at-risk Israeli teenagers achieve scholastic success and personal growth in Na’amat technological high schools.

One ($1,600) or More Circles Shirley Collins Naomi & Mark Goddis Trust Aurelia Goldberg Evelyn Mady Hopkins Trust

Malkin Holding Company Dorothy Margolis Selma Nichols Niki Schwartz

Others Shirley W. Diamond Alma & Gabriel Elias Trust Shirley M. Hirsch Alice & Harold Hoffman Naomi Lehr Maxine Miller

Welcome to the New Life Members of NA’AMAT USA EASTERN AREA Barbara Deutsch Roslyn, N.Y. Myrna Goldman Silver Spring, Md. Ronis Raeburn Silver Spring, Md.

Zelma Feder Delray Beach, Fla. Grace Frier Deerfield, Fla. Lynn Levy W. Palm Bch, Fla. Ruth Shlachter Boca Raton, Fla.

Tomar Green Youngstown, Ohio Laurie Lustbader Northbrook, Ill. Irene Schankman St. Louis, Mo. Barbara Shafton Mequon, Wis. SOUTHEAST Ronna Sherman AREA MIDWEST AREA Solon, Ohio Judith Baker Ronit Golan Rita Stein Boynton Bch, Fla. Rockford, Ill. Akron, Ohio

Janet Lorin Laguna Niguel, Calif.

Fannie C. Meyer Seal Beach, Calif.

WESTERN AREA Jennifer Neeman Dina Goreshter Las Vegas, Nev. Long Beach, Calif. Jinous Shavalian Judye Hendlish Los Angeles, Calif.

Los Angeles, Calif.

Carol Levine Seal Bch, Calif.

Barbara Weber Shaker Hts., Ohio Susan Zolno Long Grove, Ill.

FRIENDS – FRIENDS – FRIENDS Make the man in your life a Friend of Na’amat USA. Encourage him to join you in making a commitment to the women and children of Israel who depend on Na’amat. $250 will make him a Friend for Life, or just $25 will make him a Friend for a year.

Enclosed is my check for _____________.

Or you may charge the life/annual membership to: American Express

Visa

MasterCard

Account #

Convention Features Top Speakers

N

ational convention chairwoman Chellie Goldwater Wilensky has announced a line-up of exciting speakers for the Na’amat USA convention July 11-14, 2010. Under the theme “Spreading the Sunshine With Na’amat!” the 40th national convention will be held at the Marriott Boca Raton Hotel in Boca Raton, Florida.

“We are pleased that Gabriela Shalev, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, will be our keynote speaker,” says Wilensky. “Rebecca Higman from the Network for Good will talk about using social media to raise money, connect with members and attract new members; and Rabbi Charles Simon, executive director of the Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs, will speak on building a successful volunteer culture.”

She also announced that Andrew Rosenkranz, Florida Regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, will address the subject of worldwide anti-Semitism; Talia Livni, president of Na’amat Israel, will update the convention on the organization’s activities; and Masha Lubelsky, former Na’amat Israel president and member of the executive of the World Zionist Organization, will speak about the relevancy of Zionism today.

“Convention-goers will enjoy three festive evenings,” notes Wilensky.

Exp. Date Signature

Please send to Na’amat USA 350 Fifth Ave. Suite 4700 New York, NY 10118

My name Address City/State/Zip Council/Club

phone: 212-563-5222

E-mail Friend’s name Address City/State/Zip E-mail

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What can I say that gives the full emotion you get in attending convention?

It broadens your mind and hopefully not your waist. You meet wonderful people, hear speakers you would normally only see on television or read about in the papers. Most of all, you leave with such a Na’amat high that you think you were drinking Sabra at every meal. — Raena Zucker, Florida

Convention chairwoman Chellie Goldwater Wilensky, center, with program chairs Gail Simpson, left, and Sharon Sutker McGowan.

“There’s the opening night with Ambassador Shalev; our Monday night celebration of Tel Aviv’s 100th anniversary; and our gala installation dinner on the final evening. There

will also be an important forum on women in the workplace and other stimulating discussions.” In addition, delegates will elect national officers, discuss the challenges facing Na’amat and shape plans for the future.

The convention chairwoman encourages members to bring their families, pointing to some of the exciting attractions in the area: Lion Country Safari, the Miami Seaquarium, Boca Raton Museum of Art, beaches and recreation parks.

“Enjoy the entertainment, great food and the camaraderie of women

working for women in both the United States and Israel,” says Wilensky. Spread the Sunshine With Na’amat -- you’ll have a memorable experience!

Having been to several conventions, I always come away from the experience energized, more informed and proud.

— Debra Kohn, New York

Convention registration form

My experience at the last convention was a memorable one. I felt very proud to be a part of this wonderful organization that helps to strengthen Israel.

NA'AMAT USA 40TH NATIONAL CONVENTION BOCA RATON, FLORIDA, JULY 11-14, 2010 Please print your name as you wish it to appear on your badge.

— Doris Shinners, New York Name Address City/State/Zip

Win a Convention Package!

To be entered in the Convention Membership Contest, a woman must meet one of the following requirements between July 1, 2009 and June 15, 2010.

• be a new member of NA'AMAT USA • be a sponsor of a new member • be a new Life Member of NA'AMAT USA • be a sponsor of a new Life Member The Grand Prize is a Convention Package for the NA'AMAT USA 40th National Convention in Boca Raton, Florida, July 11-14, 2010.

Package includes 3 nights at the Marriott Boca Raton Hotel, opening night reception, 2 breakfasts, 2 dinners and closing brunch.

Please submit information to your club or council to be eligible for the contest drawing.

Phone

E-mail

Club

Council

Delegate

Alternate

Life Member

First-timer

Rooming with Arriving on

Departing on

Name of guest/spouse Address City/State/Zip Phone

E-mail

Club Friend of Na’amat USA

Council First-timer

Convention Package: $400 (per person, double occupancy); single supplement $150. The package includes all hotel taxes, service charges and tips, plus opening night reception, 2 dinners, 2 breakfasts and closing brunch.

Total registration fee(s) $________________ Enclosed is my check payable to Na’amat USA Please Charge:

Visa

MasterCard

American Express

Name on account Account number Expiration date Signature

Please send to Na’amat usa, 350 Fifth Avenue, Suite 4700, New York, NY 10118.

For further information, call your area office or the national office at 212-563-5222 or fax 212-563-5710.

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Spreading the Sunshine With NA'AMAT! Join us in Boca Raton, Florida, for the 40th National Convention of NA'AMAT USA.

July 11-14, 2010 at the

Marriott Boca Raton

Experience the spirit and excitement of a NA'AMAT USA convention. Join dynamic women in stimulating discussions and important plenaries.

Enjoy socializing with members from across the United States and visitors from Israel. Generate new ideas and help shape the future of the organization.

Top Israeli and American personalities Gala banquet and festive entertainment Sessions on critical issues Election of national officers And much, much more!

Make our convention part of your family vacation!

See page 31 for convention package details and registration form.