Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle 9-27-19

September 27, 2019 | 27 Elul 5779

Candlelighting 6:51 p.m. | Havdalah 7:48 p.m. | Vol. 62, No. 39 | pittsburghjewishchronicle.org

Congregations prepare for High Holidays security

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LOCAL From grief to comfort

By Adam Reinherz | Staff Writer

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Jewish High Holidays,” noted Jordan Golin, president and CEO of JFCS. “For some, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is the first time they attend synagogue services since the shooting, and many are feeling increased anxiety, while for others, attending High Holiday services without their loved ones may be overwhelming. JFCS therapists will be present at several congregations and available to step in as needed.”

Golin explained that JFCS has been involved with providing counseling and therapy for those affected by the massacre since the morning of Oct. 27. JFCS will be placing clinicians on site during High Holiday services for Tree of Life*Or L’Simcha, Dor Hadash and New Light, and is able to provide clinicians to other congregations upon request.

The Center for Victims also has been providing victim support since the day of the shooting, said Cindy Snyder, the Center for Victims’ clinical director.

“It is important to note the shooting did not target Dor Hadash, New Light, or Tree of Life*Or L’Simcha congregations,” Snyder said. “All people of the Jewish faith were targeted. As such, the impacts of the action

igh holidays are around the corner and congregations are preparing for potentially new faces and increased numbers of attendees. In an effort to address security needs, congregations throughout the area have taken steps to create optimal, safe and comfortable environments for congregants to gather and pray.

“Since Oct. 27, Beth El has totally revamped how we approach the safety and security of our congregants and guests. The High Holidays offer a number of different logistical challenges just based on the sheer amount of people throughout our facility. But, we have taken numerous steps to educate through trainings and help ensure less response time between us and emergency responders,” said Steve Hecht, executive director of Beth El Congregation of the South Hills.

Maintaining good rapport with first responders is critical, explained Leslie Hoffman, executive director of Temple Emanuel of South Hills.

“We’re very fortunate to have such a longstanding partnership with Mt. Lebanon police,” said Hoffman. “They have always been our partners and will continue again this year.”

Apart from working closely with police, Hoffman regularly consults Brad Orsini, Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh’s director of security, she added.

Temple Emanuel is one of many congregations and organizations Federation has worked with on security matters, explained Orsini.

“We are working with all our congregations that are requesting help,” he said.

Each group has different needs, but the commonality is developing “good security plans,” continued Orsini.

Recommendations range from placing armed personnel outside of buildings to ensuring bolstered doors throughout each

Please see Insights, page 22

Please see Security, page 22

Shternie Rosenfeld made change at the Medical Examiner’s Office.

Page 2 LOCAL

Victims, community leaders share insights from Oct. 27 massacre

Fall Foundation Brunch

By Toby Tabachnick | Senior Staff Writer

Annual meeting updates the public, spurs conversation Page 3 LOCAL Rosh Hashanah spin

Congregations find creative ways to usher in the new year.

Page 8

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embers of Pittsburgh’s Jewish community keenly affected by the Oct. 27 synagogue massacre, and other community leaders, convened at the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh on Sept. 20 before dozens of reporters and photographers to discuss reflections on the past year and plans going forward, including for next month’s commemoration events.

Representatives included those from Congregation Dor Hadash, New Light Congregation, Tree of Life *Or L’Simcha Congregation, the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh, the Jewish Community Center, Jewish Family and Community Services, the 10.27 Healing Partnership and the Center for Victims.

Andrea Wedner, who was seriously injured in the attack and whose mother, Rose Mallinger was killed, and Michele Rosenthal, whose brothers Cecil and David Rosenthal were murdered, also addressed the media.

The comprehensive, nearly three-hour press conference featured panels of stakeholders discussing various aspects of the massacre and its consequences.

“September 29 marks the beginning of the

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Headlines ‘Comfort Room’ signals intended purpose at Medical Examiner’s Office — LOCAL —

By Adam Reinherz | Staff Writer

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hortly following last October’s attack, after the bodies were moved from the Tree of Life*Or L’Simcha building to the Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office, Shternie Rosenfeld was among those who volunteered to perform the act of shemira, guarding.

“The Jewish custom is that we do not leave the bodies alone until they’re buried,” said Rosenfeld during a Sept. 17 program at the Medical Examiner’s Office. “When I was asked to come down here to be with the holy bodies, to stay with them ... I came through the door over there, and a very nice gentleman brought me in and took me to this room here and I just remember seeing the word ‘Grief.’”

As Rosenfeld sat in the Medical Examiner’s “Grief Room” and upheld Jewish tradition, she recited passages from Psalms. All the while she thought about her spiritual mentor, the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, “who campaigned for so many things in his life, but one of them was the power of words,” she said.

Rosenfeld understood the role she played, and the purpose of the place, but still couldn’t understand why her location was called the “Grief Room.”

“My feeling was I need words of comfort, of love and support, right now, and ‘Grief ’ was what I saw.”

Months passed, and Rosenfeld, who teaches courses through her nonprofit, The Jewish Sisterhood, kept pondering why such a bizarre designation would exist for an area intended to console.

p Daniel Leger, left, and Shternie Rosenfeld stand near the rededicated “Comfort Room” at the Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office.

Photo by Adam Reinherz

Finally, after speaking with one of her students about the matter, Rosenfeld worked up the courage to call the Medical Examiner’s Office.

Mandy Tinky, manager of operations, answered the phone.

Rosenfeld introduced herself, shared her experience in the “Grief Room” and suggested possibly changing its name to the “Comfort Room.”

Tinky was receptive, and described Rosenfeld’s idea as “beautiful.”

The small room, with its pale painted walls, black couch, matching armchair and flowers is typically used for families to make identifications, noted Tinky. “That’s the room that we will take them into so that we can discuss their individual loved one’s case with them

and have privacy while we’re doing it.”

Tinky promised to speak with her administrators and other city staffers about the request. Shortly thereafter, Tinky contacted Rosenfeld and said the proposal was approved.

On the day of the rededication, Tinky promoted the value of changing the room’s name.

“Our primary goal in this office is to provide information and closure for families, and comfort them,” she said.

Rosenfeld noted she is pleased that those entering the room will better understand its comforting purpose, but also hopes people recognize that substituting one word for another is an act of defiance.

“The word ‘comfort’ is very empowering.

It’s just a word, but we managed to transform

something negative — being in grief — to something positive,” she said. “Terrorists seek victims, and the way we heal is not only to get through the trauma and grief,” but to transform “that pain and grief into something positive, into change, into growth.”

Following Rosenfeld’s public remarks, city employees, victims’ loved ones and congregational representatives observed as Daniel Leger, a survivor of last October’s massacre approached the door and removed a blue cloth covering. Appearing on the wall was a maroon plate with white lettering reading “Comfort Room.”

“Words are important, and we grieve when we lose people we love. I was privileged to be with the 11 people who died that day. Words don’t fit that incident. There’s no words to be able to encompass it,” said Leger. “We grieve and we heal, but in the meantime we do need comfort. So I think that the idea that this room is being renamed and dedicated in honor of the memory of those blessed souls is so appropriate.”

Karl Williams, Allegheny County’s chief medical examiner and a Squirrel Hill resident who met with victims’ families on the evening of Oct. 27 at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh, attempted to frame the totality of actions.

“The dedication today is just a small little remembrance that maybe when we pass it we will all keep it in our hearts, because it was extraordinarily tragic for this office too,” said Williams. “Maybe this is a beginning step of being able to have everybody in the community move forward and try to figure out their individual ways to deal with the event.” PJC Adam Reinherz can be reached at areinherz@ pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.

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Headlines Dr. Erica Brown, Rabbi Danny Schiff discuss contemporary Jewish issues at Foundation Fall Brunch — LOCAL —

By David Rullo | Staff Writer

T

he Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Pittsburgh welcomed Erica Brown to its annual Fall Foundation Brunch on Sunday, Sept. 22, at Rodef Shalom Congregation.

Rabbi Danny Schiff interviewed Brown in a wide-ranging conversation that touched on the aftermath of the Oct. 27 attack, the High Holidays and Jewish leadership, among other topics.

Brown is an associate professor at George Washington University’s Graduate School of Education and Human Development and the director of its Mayberg Center for Jewish Education and Leadership. She is the author of 12 books on leadership, the Hebrew Bible and spirituality; serves as a faculty member of the Wexner Foundation; and is an Avi Chai Fellow.

The brunch, according to Jewish Community Foundation Director Daniel Brandeis, acts as the Foundation’s annual meeting and serves as both a way to update the public about the Foundation’s work and as “a wonderful opportunity for those that support the Foundation to get together in a social environment.”

That work was highlighted during introductory speeches by Brandeis and Foundation Chair Woody Ostrow.

Brandeis pointed out that the Foundation is composed of more than 1,400 individual funds with assets totaling more than $260 million.

Special note was given to the Harold Grinspoon Foundation Life & Legacy program begun in 2018. This four-year program offers resources and mentoring to local synagogues and organizations to promote posthumous giving by their members. In the first year, 14 Pittsburgh organizations participated and, as the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh Director of Marketing Adam Hertzman explained, the program recently added five more cohorts.

Federation CEO and President Jeff Finkelstein presented Sandy and Larry Rosen with the 2019 Gift of Consequence Award.

The award, according to Hertzman, “recognized people who hold funds” in the Foundation and, “through planned giving and volunteer endeavors, demonstrate an outstanding commitment to the enduring strength and vitality of the Jewish community. “ Following the presentation, Schiff began his conversation with Brown noting that she had previously spoken in Pittsburgh at an event marking the shloshim of the 11 victims murdered at the Oct. 27 Tree of Life*Or

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p Rabbi Danny Schiff interviews Dr. Erica Brown at the Jewish Community Foundation’s Fall Foundation Brunch at Rodef Shalom Congregation Sept. 22.

Photo by Joshua Franzos

L’Simcha building massacre. It was then that Schiff asked Brown to come back to the city.

“Thirty days after the attack,” said Schiff, “we were in the deepest depths of mourning.

Now we are at the first year commemoration.

How do we remember but not be defined by that event?”

Brown recounted that in some Jewish traditions, at the end of observing shiva, mourners will sometimes walk around the block alone to “symbolically re-enter the world.”

Please see Brunch, page 23

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Headlines Local rabbis grapple with massacre in preparing sermons for High Holidays — LOCAL —

By Toby Tabachnick | Senior Staff Writer

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ittsburgh area rabbis face a formidable task in preparing their High Holiday sermons this year, working to craft words of inspiration for the future while also addressing the spiritual and emotional challenges following the most violent anti-Semitic attack in U.S. history.

The Oct. 27, 2018, Pittsburgh synagogue massacre occurred at the Tree of Life building in the heart of Squirrel Hill, but its horror reached the whole of Western Pennsylvania Jewry, and beyond.

“You can’t not address it,” said Rabbi Yaier Lehrer, spiritual leader of Adat Shalom Synagogue in Cheswick. “I don’t believe it is possible to not address what has been such a history-altering event in the community. It is an earth-shattering, earthquake-type event and there is no way to avoid it. People are thinking about it, and when you are speaking to people on the High Holidays, you need to talk to them about what they are experiencing.”

Anxieties could be especially acute for those who have not attended synagogue since the High Holidays last year, he noted.

“The pain of loss, the shock to the internal security we had in our hearts that we were all safe and sound — those are all things that people are thinking about,” he said.

Lehrer intends to speak about “the power of hate and also, at the same time, the power of love, because you can’t just talk about the power of hate without talking about the power of love. Those are countervailing forces. The power of hate is what caused what happened, but the power of love hopefully will bring some measure of healing, or has brought some measure of healing to some folks who probably will never fully heal.”

The rabbi also will be sharing insights

on what can be done in response to the massacre, including how best to honor the memories of those who were murdered, and how to address security issues.

Also, “how will we bring our community together and make it stronger so that we can defeat the hate that brought that about in the first place?” he asked. “Because we have to be strong, we have to redouble our efforts to strengthen our community so that the hate doesn’t prevail.”

Although Cheswick is 14 miles from Squirrel Hill, “our congregation, I think emotionally, certainly had the same reaction that any other congregation had to the massacre,” Lehrer said.

“We were cut to the core. And our hearts went

out to everybody who suffers and continues to suffer and we were shaken, we were shaken in a way we never thought we could be.”

At Temple David in Monroeville, Rabbi Barbara Symons also will be addressing the massacre of Oct. 27 in her sermons, but the subject of the anti-Semitic attack and its aftermath will be interwoven throughout the High Holidays, including in the tenor of language she will be using and within a special memorial during the Yiskor service.

Symons has seen a heightened level of concern, and awareness, within her congregation since the massacre, she said.

“I’ve heard the challenge of safety, including from someone who converted, if this is the right place for her,” Symons said.

“And including a therapist who is trying to figure out how to professionally respond to a client who is saying anti-Semitic things based on the event. There have been many examples of that kind of eye-opening and repositioning, I would call it.”

In her sermons, she plans to “address the clear rise in anti-Semitism and what our responses need to be.”

Jews can, and should, take lessons from their past, she said.

Please see Sermons, page 23

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Headlines Webinar offers advice for coping with High Holiday triggers — LOCAL —

By Toby Tabachnick | Senior Staff Writer

A

nticipating heightened emotions during the High Holidays this year — the first High Holidays since the Oct. 27, 2018, massacre at the Tree of Life building that targeted congregations Dor Hadash, New Light and Tree of Life*Or L’Simcha — counseling professionals shared tips for coping during a Sept. 23 webinar organized by the Greater Pittsburgh Jewish Council.

The half-hour webinar, titled “Responding to Heightened Emotion and Triggering that Can Happen This Year at the High Holidays,” featured Maggie Feinstein, director of the 10.27 Healing Partnership; Cindy Snyder, clinical director of the Center for Victims; and Angelica Miskanin, a trauma therapist at Jewish Family and Community Services.

The experts offered practical advice on self-care as well as caring for others during the holidays. The webinar was recorded and can be accessed at jewishpgh.org/gpjc.

It is essential, Feinstein said, that people take care of their own mental and physical health needs to be fully present for others.

“We can’t be there for other people until we start with the person we bring to the table,” she said.

Snyder encouraged all those feeling

p Maggie Feinstein

Photo provided by Maggie Feinstein

affected by the massacre to “think about and have conversations with others regarding your own response,” particularly in preparation for taking on the role as a “helper” during the High Holidays.

People should check in with themselves to see if they are sleeping and eating well, for

example. They should also reflect on whether they are able to have conversations about what they expect the holidays to feel like for them this year.

“It’s about engaging in a process of self-reflection and relationship with others as you talk about your own reactions and your own thoughts and feelings as we look forward to the upcoming Jewish High Holidays,” Snyder said.

Many people in the Jewish community have particular roles they play within their congregations during the High Holidays.

This year may be different, the experts said, and a person may not feel up to assuming their traditional role, or, on the other hand, may want to take on a larger role. Others may need to prepare themselves for difficult feelings that will arise when a person who traditionally assumed a particular synagogue role is not present because they were murdered on Oct. 27.

“The same people oftentimes fulfill the same function in the context of life in your congregation, and particularly around the traditions of the High Holidays,” said Snyder. “And that may be something you want to specifically think about. What’s it going to be like if some of the people who have filled those functions happen to be one of those who were killed last year, or who were injured? What’s it going to be like for you as you become aware of those

differences, and have to sit in the presence of those differences?”

It is important to notice physical reactions that may be linked to emotional responses, said Miskanin. Symptoms such as tightening in the chest, increased heart rate and nausea can often be addressed with breathing techniques, she said, and it may be helpful to learn those techniques prior to attending services.

Environmental grounding, using all five senses, can also be helpful, the experts agreed.

“Breathing and having sense awareness are two really simple ways that if we, as helpers or as givers that day, start to notice things with ourselves, that is a really good first step. Both of those are easy to do,” said Feinstein.

Ensuring that one makes times for “calming moments” is also important, said Snyder.

“There’s going to be a lot of emotional heavy lifting through these upcoming holidays just because it is so poignant that these are the first Jewish High Holidays since 10-27-2018, and as much as we talk about that — and sometimes people are going to say, ‘Oh, you’re making too big a deal of it, it’s been 10 months now going on 11 months’ — it’s a big deal,” she said. “It’s a big deal for many people.” PJC Toby Tabachnick can be reached at ttabachnick@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.

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Headlines Local expert offers in-depth look at Middle East civil wars during World Affairs luncheon — LOCAL —

By David Rullo | Staff Writer

T

he World Affairs Council of Pittsburgh welcomed Ross Harrison to the Omni William Penn on Tuesday, Sept. 17, for a lunchtime lecture.

Harrison is a senior resident fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C., and a faculty member at both Georgetown University and the University of Pittsburgh, where he teaches strategy and Middle East politics.

Harrison’s talk, “Civil Wars: The Future of the Middle East and Implications for Global Security,� examined the current state of the Middle East and the civil wars engulfing Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Libya.

These civil wars, Harrison stated, are “the first time the Middle East is getting a vote in terms of its own future.� As he explained, the region’s boundaries and political fortunes were largely set after the World War I by both French and British mandates. These mandates were responsible for demarcating much of the region as it is today.

That vote, according to Harrison, is the Middle East’s push back, not only against these mandates but also the involvement

of the United States and the Soviet Union/ Russia, which have complicated relations since the Cold War. In Harrison’s analysis, the civil wars and the shape of the Middle East are being primarily shaped by four regional actors: Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Israel.

Harrison provided a brief summary of the civil wars taking place in the region.

In Syria, he explained, despite claims by both Russia and the government, the civil war “is not over.� The Syrian government has become weaker, with only tenuous control over some of the region dependent on outside forces.

Iraq represents the best-case scenario in the Middle East with the formal civil war over. But underlying tensions from before the war remain.

Yemen’s future is bleaker, according to Harrison. Even without the outside involvement of different powers, his assessment included a rare promise: “I can’t promise many things about civil wars in the Middle East, but if you ended Iranian involvement in Yemen, and Saudi Arabia’s, and the United Arab Emirates ‌ the civil war would still be ongoing.â€?

Lastly, Libya is unique because it has two groups claiming to be the legitimate government — one internationally recognized

2. The civil wars in individual countries are now morphing into regional wars.

As an example, he cited the recent attack on the Saudi Arabian oil production facilities. Harrison pointed out that while we don’t yet know who is responsible for the attack, “the likelihood is that Saudi Arabia and Iran will exchange blows, and maybe even the United States.�

Before these civil wars, the two countries were rivals but have now become “blood enemies,� Harrison explained, in effect creatinng proxy p Ross Harrison speaking at the World Affairs Council of Pittsburgh on Sept. 17.

Photo by Jim Busis wars in the region.

3. The United States and by the United Nations and other countries Russia are in competition in the Middle and another backed by Saudi Arabia, the East, creating a new cold war. Before these UAE and Egypt. This conflict is sensitive to civil wars, “the United States was the only regional powers and might be solved if these superpower� in the region. Russia, however, revarious powers were able to push the two engaged once the Syrian civil war began to groups together. protect its interests.

Harrison highlighted six reasons why the 4. The crisis could spread into both world should pay attention to these civil wars: Lebanon and Jordan, the countries Harrison 1. Humanitarian disasters. He identified terms the “most vulnerable� in the region. the conditions as “breeding grounds for disease and terrorism.�

Please see Wars, page 23

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Wishing you sweet things for the New Year

Headlines From social justice to ‘slacker service,’ groups offer High Holiday alternatives — LOCAL —

By Toby Tabachnick | Senior Staff Writer

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Shana Tova to you, your family, friends, and neighbors.

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8 SEPTEMBER 27, 2019

9/18/19 6:44 PM

ormal High Holiday services are attended by just 52% of Jewish adults in Pittsburgh, according to the 2017 Jewish Community Study, commissioned by the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh.

Yet there remain potentially thousands of others in the region who might want to engage in some type of High Holiday program, even if a traditional service does not resonate.

Several local organizations are responding to this need by offering out-of-the-box Jewish programming on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

For example, the Jewish Community Center’s Center for Loving Kindness is hosting afternoon social justice programs on the first day of Rosh Hashanah and on Yom Kippur. The programs run from 3-4:30 p.m., to accommodate those who might want to attend traditional synagogue services as well.

“We are having social justice forums on the afternoons of the High Holidays because we believe that we can be having sacred conversations on sacred time,” said Rabbi Ron Symons, senior director of Jewish Life at the JCC and director of the Center for Loving Kindness. He cited the 2017 Jewish Community Study, which showed that “the vast majority of the members of the community understand that morality, ethics and social justice are an essential part of their identities as Jews,” he said.

The Jewish Community Study revealed that almost three-quarters of Pittsburgh’s Jews — 73% — believe that social justice is “very important.”

Symons also noted the relatively low attendance rate at traditional services.

“So, last year, we began to experiment with the idea that if we could do something on the afternoons of the High Holidays that helped people connect with core cultural experiences, and connect that with social justice, we would be doing good by the Jewish community,” he said.

The JCC panel on Rosh Hashanah will feature those whom Symons calls “UPstanders,” and includes Leah Lizarondo of 412 Food Rescue; Tammy Thompson of Circles of Greater Pittsburgh, who will speak on the cycle of intergenerational poverty; and Kristy Trautman from the FISA Foundation and SWPA Says No More, who will address domestic violence and sexual assault.

The program will also include the blowing of the shofar as a “call to action,” Symons said.

Following the Rosh Hashanah panel, participants will be invited to “go to the tables that are set up all around in the JCC of 15 different organizations who are doing the same kind of UPstander work, that they can take inspiration of the shofar, and the words of the speakers and the inspiration of the sacred day and make a difference in our community,” Symons said.

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p Kesher gathers in Frick Park for a reflective Yom Kippur walk.

Photo provided by Keshira haLev Fife

The JCC’s Yom Kippur program, “Forgiveness and Repentance,” will feature Dan Leger, a retired hospice nurse and certified clinical chaplain, and a survivor of the Oct. 27 Pittsburgh synagogue massacre, and Ivy Schamis, a teacher at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and a survivor of the 2018 shooting there. The talk will be moderated by Rev. Tim Smith, CEO of the Center of Life and Pastor of the Keystone Church of Hazelwood.

This will be the second year the JCC has offered social justice-themed High Holiday programming. Last year, about 250 people participated.

“Last year we found that 30 percent of the participants also went to synagogue, but for the remainder, 70 percent, it was the sole thing they did for the High Holidays,” Symons said.

Keshira haLev Fife, the Hebrew Priestess who runs Kesher Pittsburgh — “a noninstitutional, post-denominational” communal space underpinned by Jewish values and practices — is pleased to see a variety of alternative High Holiday programs offered in Pittsburgh.

“I think in times past, if people didn’t resonate with what was happening in synagogue, they didn’t do anything,” she said. “And now it’s good that we have alternatives.”

For the first day of Rosh Hashanah, Kesher, which meets at Winchester Thurston School, will offer a Shacharit service followed by a Torah service, but with its own unique spin.

“It follows the arc of traditional liturgy but it’s not straight liturgy,” Fife said.

During the Torah service, although Kesher participants are reading from the same portion “that everybody else is reading around the world,” there will be group aliyot on different themes.

“Anybody in the room that feels called to the Torah because the themes resonate for them and they want to draw near is welcome to come up and gather around the Torah when we read,” she said.

The group breaks for “halftime,” between Shacharit and the Torah reading, to enjoy snacks, give the kids a break, and allow time for the adults to “refuel and schmooze,” Fife said.

Kesher generally attracts about 250 people Please see Alternatives, page 23

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High Holidays of Hope at the JCC FREE AND OPEN TO EVERYONE

Rosh Hashanah UPstanders

Yom Kippur Forgiveness and Repentance

Monday, September 30 3-4:30 PM JCC LEVINSON HALL The sound of the shofar will inspire us to move from being bystanders to UPstanders

Wednesday, October 9 2-3 PM JCC ROBINSON BUILDING Gather on the holiest day of the year to explore the role that forgiveness and repentance have in our daily lives and in light of traumatic circumstances

These community leaders will share their passions:

Our conversation features:

Leah Lizarondo 412 Food Rescue

Food Justice

Dan Leger

Member of Congregation Dor Hadash Retired Hospice Nurse and Certified Clinical Chaplain Survivor, October 27 Pittsburgh Synagogue Massacre

Tammy Thompson Circles Greater Pittsburgh

The Cycle of Intergenerational Poverty

Ivy Schamis

Kristy Trautmann FISA Foundation SWPA Says No More

Social Studies Teacher Survivor, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Shooting, Parkland, FL

Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault

Casual Attire RSVPs requested For Rosh Hashanah: tinyurl.com/9302019 For Yom Kippur: tinyurl.com/yk1092019

Moderated by Rev. Tim Smith

Community Advocate CEO, Center of Life Pastor, The Keystone Church of Hazelwood Chair, Greater Hazelwood Community Collaborative

For more information: Rabbi Ron Symons, rsymons@jccpgh.org 412-697-3235

Kesher

Pittsburgh

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SEPTEMBER 27, 2019 9

Calendar workshop/$99 for all four. Visit sthielpilates. com for more information and to register.

q SUNDAY, OCT. 27 Remember. Repair. Together. Join the Pittsburgh Jewish community for the one-year commemoration of the Oct. 27 massacre. Take part in community service opportunities (11 a.m.-1 p.m.), Torah Study (2 p.m.-4 p.m. at Rodef Shalom Congregation) and a community gathering at Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall & Museum beginning at 5 p.m. Registration is now open. Visit PittsburghOct27.org to learn more.

q SUNDAY, OCT. 6 Apples taste better when you pick ’em yourself! Join the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh’s Young Adult Division for a lunchtime apple picking adventure.

11 a.m., Soergel Orchards (2573 Brandt School Road, 15090). For more information visit shalompittsburgh.org/event/yadgoes-apple-picking. q MONDAY, OCT. 7 Dr. Barbara Burstin discusses her new book, “Sophie: The Incomparable Mayor Masloff” at First Mondays with Rabbi Alex Greenbaum.

All First Monday events begin with lunch at 11:30 a.m., $6. To RSVP, call 412-561-1168.

>>Submit calendar items on the Chronicle’s website, pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.

Submissions will also be included in print.

Events will run in the print edition beginning one month prior to the date as space allows.

The deadline for submissions is Friday, noon.

15220 at 7:30 p.m. Come to the office/school entrance at the end of the building to be buzzed in. Call Karen at 412-563-3395 and leave a message for more information. q SATURDAYS, OCT. 5; NOV. 2; DEC. 7

q THURSDAY, OCT. 17

q WEDNESDAYS, OCT. 2, 9, 16, 23, 30

Join Lauri Lang, RDN LDN Concierge Wellness LLC for a four-part (once a month Sept.-Dec.) Holistic Nutrition and Wellness Series which will contain the following elements under four umbrella themes: Interactive Lecture with Q&A; Featured Item for Sampling and Discussion; Guided Meditation and/or Breathwork (Pranayama).

The three umbrella themes are: Oct. 5, 2019: Chronic Disease and Cancer Prevention; Nov. 2, 2019: Women’s Health Across the Lifespan; Dec. 7, 2019: Enhancing Immune Function, Vitality and Graceful Aging. Each workshop is 75 minutes in length. $59 for one

Join the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh at 4:30 p.m. at the Cathedral of Learning Lawn (4200 Fifth Ave.) for the opening of Luigi Toscano’s latest iteration of Lest We Forget.

This internationally renowned exhibit that has traveled from Berlin to New York City is coming to the University of Pittsburgh campus this October. To learn more visit hcofpgh.org/lest-we-forget.

Jewish Family and Community Services presents Trauma Resiliency Group: An Integrative Approach to Healing, a free weekly gathering for anyone suffering the aftermath of the trauma of Oct. 27.

Offered by Amy Lohr, LCSW, integrative psychotherapist, at JFCS, Room A/B, second fl., 5743 Bartlett St., Squirrel Hill at 4 p.m.

“Heal, Grow and Live with Hope” Nar-Anon and NA meetings every Wednesday evening at Beth El Congregation, 1900 Cochran Road,

KNOW A YOUNG ADULT WITH INTELLECTUAL OR DEVELOPMENTAL DISABILITIES WHO IS READY TO ASSUME MORE INDEPENDENCE? Jewish Residential Services, in partnership with Verland, is creating a new group home in Squirrel Hill offering 24-hour support in a community living arrangement that celebrates Jewish culture. Find out more at this community meeting.

RSVP to akarabin@jrspgh.org or 412-325-0039 by October 22nd.

SPONSORED BY:

COMMUNITY MEETING

Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2019 7:00pm - 8:30pm Community Day School 6424 Forward Avenue Pittsburgh, PA 15217

Sukkah from 8-9:30 p.m. at Young Adult Wine & Wisdom in the Sukkah. Sip wine and share some words. Non-alcoholic beverages and nosh will be available. Visit jewishpgh. org/event/young-adult-wine-wisdom to register for this free event. q WEDNESDAYS, OCT. 23, NOV. 6, 20 In More than Manischewitz: A Taster of Jewishness for Interfaith Couples, participants tackle how to confront the challenges faced by today’s interfaith families. By the end of the 12 classes, students will be more knowledgeable and comfortable about Jewish ways of living and making informed family decisions together.

Each session begins at 7 p.m. at the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh (2000 Technology Dr.) Visit foundation.jewishpgh. org/more-than-manischewitz. q FRIDAY, OCT. 25 Come together with other young adults beginning at 6 p.m. at Together at the Table: A Community Building Shabbat Dinner. Reflect on the past year and look forward to the future of Jewish Pittsburgh. Visit shalompittsburgh. org/event/young-adult-commemorativeshabbat-dinner to learn more.

With the USC Shoah Foundation No-Cost Professional Development Opportunity, ITeach Seminar, educators will learn to use testimony to address challenging social

q SATURDAY, OCT. 19 Join other Pittsburgh Jewish young adults and enjoy an evening in the Beth Shalom

Please see Calendar, page 11

This week in Israeli history Sept. 30, 1986 — Mordechai Vanunu returns

— WORLD — Items provided by the Center for Israel Education (israeled.org), where you can find more details.

Sept. 27, 1950 — Third Maccabiah Games open

The Third Maccabiah Games, originally scheduled for 1938 but canceled by the British, begin in the 50,000-seat stadium in Ramat Gan. The games draw 800 athletes from 20 countries.

Sept. 28, 1995 — Interim Palestinian deal signed

Mordechai Vanunu, who in 1985 leaked details about Israel’s nuclear program, is brought back to face trial after being lured from London to Italy by an undercover Mossad agent. He is convicted in 1988 and serves 16 years in prison.

Oct. 1, 1981 — Aircraft for Saudi Arabia President Ronald Reagan announces a plan to sell American F-15 fighter jets and Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) planes to Saudi Arabia despite Israel’s adamant opposition.

Oct. 2, 1187 — Saladin captures Jerusalem

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Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat sign the Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement, known as Oslo II, at the White House. The deal establishes the Palestinian Authority as an elected, self-governing body.

Sept. 29, 1923 — Syria gains Golan

Under borders drawn primarily by Britain and France, the new nation of Syria gains control of the Golan Heights. The French block Zionist efforts to buy large portions of the Golan over the next two decades.

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Saladin, the sultan of Egypt, captures Jerusalem from crusaders after a siege that began Sept. 20. Unlike the crusaders, Saladin is tolerant of Jews, and he allows them to live in the holy city again in 1190.

Oct. 3, 2005 — Choreographer Levy-Tanai dies

Sarah Levy-Tanai, a choreographer who won the Israel Prize in art, music and dance in 1973, dies at age 94 or 95. The Jerusalem native founded the Inbal Dance Theater in 1949 and directed it into the 1990s. PJC

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Calendar Calendar: Continued from page 10 climate issues such as contemporary antiSemitism and the rise in hate crime, learn how IWitness provides students a unique primary source that connects learners with contextualized first-person views of history through multimedia activities, and learn effective strategies to teach with IWitness, an educational website that offers students over 3,000 full life testimonies of survivors and witnesses to genocides. Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh (826 Hazelwood Ave.), 11 a.m. Free. To register, visit trainingreport. formstack.com/forms/pa_registration_form q SATURDAY, OCT. 26 Celebrate with Chabad House on Campus at their 31st Anniversary Event dessert reception honoring University of Pittsburgh Chancellor Patrick Gallagher at the William Pitt Union, Tansky Lower Lounge (3959 Fifth Ave.) beginning at 8:30 p.m.

Couvert $54/person; $100 per couple; $1,800/VIP reserved seating for 10 guests. q MONDAY, OCT. 28 Music at Rodef Shalom presents: Theater Songs … The Music of Douglas Levine.

Pianist, composer and music director Douglas Levine presents an evening of original musical theater compositions from the last 20 years. Performers include six outstanding

q SUNDAY, OCT. 13 Donate Blood. Save Lives. Schedule an appointment to give blood at Beth El Congregation of the South Hills between 8 a.m.-2 p.m. Walk-ins welcome. To make an appointment visit vitalant.org, click on the Donate button and search with group code G0020005.

local singers backed by an instrumental combo with Levine at the piano. The event is free, 7:30-9:30 p.m. 4905 Fifth Ave. q WEDNESDAY, OCT. 30 Celebrate with the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh at the CHUTZ-POW! Volume IV: Women’s Stories Launch Party beginning at 6 p.m. at Chatham University’s Boardroom

(Woodland Rd., 15232). Hear from the creators about the process of putting the book together. Light hors d’oeuvres served.

Learn more at hcofpgh.org/cp4kickoff

a discussion with the audience. For more information, visit hcofpgh.org/kristallnacht19.

q SUNDAY, NOV. 3

The Jewish Pro-Life Foundation invites you to attend Judaism: The Original Pro-Life Religion, an uplifting educational program exploring Judaism’s traditional principles regarding unborn life. A short slideshow will be presented followed by Q&A. Bring your curiosity and conversation, but please leave any politics and polemics at the door. The program is free of charge. Light refreshments will be served. Carnegie Library Squirrel Hill Branch, Meeting Room B, 1 p.m.

Join the Jewish Federation Young Adult Division, PJ Library and Community Day School for some Noah’s Ark themed fun beginning at 1 p.m. at the Pittsburgh Zoo. Spend the afternoon at 2x2 at the Zoo with PJ Library learning about and getting up close and personal with some animals and participate in fun activities and crafts. Visit jewishpgh.org/event/2-x-2-at-the-zoo for more information. q MONDAY, NOV. 4 Jack Mostow presents “RoboTutor: $1 Million Finalist in the Global Learning XPRIZE competition” at First Mondays with Rabbi Alex Greenbaum. All First Monday events begin with lunch at 11:30 a.m., $6. To RSVP, call 412-561-1168. q SATURDAY, NOV. 9 The Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh presents “Etty,” the one-woman play based on the diaries and letters of Etty Hillesum and adapted and performed by Susan Stein. The play will be performed at 7:30 p.m. at the Carnegie Library Lecture Hall (4400 Forbes Ave.). Commemorating the 81st anniversary of Kristallnacht, the play will be followed by

q TUESDAY, NOV. 12

q TUESDAY, NOV. 19 Celebrate with the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh at the CHUTZ-POW! Volume IV: Women’s Stories South Hills Launch Party beginning at 7 p.m. at the South Hills JCC (345 Kane Blvd., 15243). Hear from the creators about the process of putting the book together. Light hors d’oeuvres served.

Learn more at hcofpgh.org/cp4kickoff q SUNDAY, DEC. 8 Volunteer at Super Sunday, the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh’s annual mega phone-a-thon, at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh from 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Three time slots available.

For more information, visit jewishpgh.org/ event/super-Sunday-2. PJC

May the New Year Bring Sweetness and Happiness to You and Your Family

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SEPTEMBER 27, 2019 11

Headlines End of formal mourning period marked by special recitation — LOCAL —

E

leven months after 11 Jews were murdered on Oct. 27, 2018, families and loved ones of the deceased uttered a concluding Kaddish on Sept. 18, 2019.

Yahrtzeit for the deceased will occur approximately two months later given the Hebrew leap year, however, according to Jewish tradition, the formal mourning period, in which the Mourner’s Kaddish is recited daily, has ended.

According to the Jewish calendar, the formal 11 month mourning period began on the 18th day of Elul and ended on the 18th day of Heshvan, noted Rabbi Hazzan Jeffrey Myers, of Tree of Life*Or L’Simcha.

No ceremony exists for marking the end of the 11 month period apart from no longer saying the Mourner’s Kaddish on a daily basis.

“The starkness of just stopping the recitation might not provide the closure that some need,” explained Myers in a message to congregants.

Because of the possible abruptness in activity, Myers marked the transition by chanting the “A. Malei Rahamim for the 11” at the conclusion of morning services on Sept. 18.

— WORLD — From JTA reports

Extreme Jewish religious sect Lev Tahor requested political asylum from Iran Lev Tahor, a fringe haredi Orthodox sect, requested political asylum from the Iranian government.

In its request, the group “declared their loyalty and submission to the Supreme Leader and Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran.” It asked for “asylum, protection and religious freedom of the families of its loyal members,” and also called for “cooperation and help to counter Zionist dominance in order to peacefully liberate the Holy Land and the Jewish nation.”

The request was part of a batch of documents filed in U.S. Federal Court last week ahead of trials against five Lev Tahor members on charges of kidnapping, child abuse and identity theft.

The Yeshiva World News first reported the documents containing the request.

Lev Tahor, which has about 230 members, relocated to Guatemala from Canada in 2014 following allegations of mistreatment of its children including abuse and child marriages.

Arranged marriages between teenagers and older cult members are reported to be common. The group shuns technology and its female members wear black robes from head to toe, leaving only their faces exposed.

Grounds of Boston-area synagogue vandalized The grounds of a suburban Boston synagogue were vandalized.

Congregants of Temple Sinai in Sharon, about 25 miles south of Boston, discovered graffiti of unidentifiable defacing symbols 12 SEPTEMBER 27, 2019

“A. Malei Rahamim for the 11” was written by Rabbi Daniel Yolkut of Congregation Poale Zedeck and amended slightly

by Rabbi Seth Adelson of Congregation Beth Shalom.

An English translation of the prayer reads: “God full of mercy, who dwells on high, establish proper rest under the wings of the Divine Presence, on the levels of the holy and pure ones who shine like the splendor of the firmament, for the souls of the Kedoshim of Pittsburgh, murdered al kiddush Hashem, because we pray for the elevation of their souls. And remember for us their sacrifice and let their merit stand for us and for all of Israel. Let the earth not cover their blood and let there not be a place sufficient for their cries.

Master of mercy, cover them in the cover of Your wings forever and may their souls be bound up in the bonds of life. God is their inheritance, may their rest be in Gan Eden, and let them

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And remember for us their sacrifice and let their merit stand for us and for all of Israel.

Let the earth not cover their blood and let there not be a place sufficient for their cries.

Master of mercy, cover them in the cover of Your wings forever and may their souls be bound up in the bonds of life. God is their inheritance, may their rest be in Gan Eden, and let them rest in peace upon their places of repose, and let them stand for their fate in the end of days.

And let us say Amen.

splashed over the large Star of David in the pavement near the synagogue’s front entryway as they arrived for Shabbat services. The Sharon Police Department is investigating.

Two similar markings made with a sticky liquid substance were found in the plantings in the mulch beds on either side of the building, according to a police department statement posted on its Facebook page, along with photos of the vandalism. The town has a sizable Jewish population and is home to several synagogues.

“While these markings were easily removed with soap and water, we imagine that their presence may remain in your minds, hearts and spirits,” synagogue president Cindi Crutchfield wrote in an email to congregants and shared with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Crutchfield offered congregants support from clergy, as well as from mental health professionals who are temple members.

In an earlier email, Rabbi Joseph Meszler encouraged congregants to attend religious services and synagogue programs planned for the weekend.

“We will share in a prayer for strength when faced with adversity: Am Yisrael Chai — the Jewish people lives,” the rabbi wrote.

“This is not only a chant of defiance but also a statement that we should continue to lead our lives fully, without fear.”

Speaking to JTA, Robert Trestan, regional director of the New England Anti-Defamation League, said: “Synagogues are increasingly becoming ground zero as anti-Semites continue sending messages of hatred to Jews.”

Israeli kindergarten ordered closed after segregating children by race An Israeli kindergarten was ordered closed after segregating students by race.

The children of Ethiopian descent in

rest in peace upon their places of repose, and let them stand for their fate in the end of days. And let us say Amen.”

Ending the formal mourning period marks another place on the path to healing, explained Myers.

“We will always be healing, never healed. Reminders surround us every hour of every day. The uniqueness that is Pittsburgh is the ability to do this together.

We are not merely our brother or sister’s keeper, as God rhetorically inquired of Cain, but also our brother and sister’s helper, as so eloquently encouraged by Mr. Rogers,” noted Myers. “The support from all those around us, regardless of color, religion or sexual orientation, is what propels us headlong through each day, each hour. Knowing that there are helpers regularly placed along our path is a reminder that God’s presence continues in ways that we may never truly understand.” PJC — Adam Reinherz

the southern town of Kiryat Gat met in an auxiliary room with a separate entrance, The Times of Israel reported.

They were spread out to kindergartens and day cares throughout the town, with transportation provided by the municipality.

Officials discovered the issue after a parent of Ethiopian descent posted on Facebook on the first day of school that she and her 3-year-old daughter were directed to a classroom of exclusively EthiopianIsraeli children. She immediately left with her daughter and went to the municipal hall to complain.

“Because of the color of their skin they cannot mix with other children,” wrote the mother, Sefy Bililin. “My daughter is worth as much as anyone else.”

“She was born here,” the mother said, “and she is as good as anyone.”

Benny Gantz meets with peace envoy Jason Greenblatt at US Embassy in Jerusalem Blue and White head Benny Gantz met with outgoing White House Middle East peace envoy Jason Greenblatt at the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem. The meeting also included the U.S. ambassador to Israel, David Friedman.

Gantz’s party was the top vote-getter in Israel’s national elections last week.

Greenblatt, Friedman and Gantz “had a cordial discussion on various topics, including the importance of the U.S.- Israel relationship, security challenges within the region and efforts to promote peace,” according to a Blue and White statement.

Greenblatt had met a few days earlier with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose party finished second to Blue and White in the voting on Sept. 13.

Greenblatt, an architect of the Trump administration’s Israeli-Palestinian peace plan, announced earlier this month that he

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would step down from his position to return to his family and the private sector.

The Trump administration had said it would release the Israeli-Palestinian peace plan in the days following the election in Israel, though no date has been announced.

Fellow writers defend British author stripped of prize for her support of Israel boycott More than 250 writers have come to the defense of British author Kamila Shamsie, after a German literary prize withdrew its award due to her support for the anti-Israel boycott movement.

They signed an open letter published on Monday in the London Review of Books that said that the Nelly Sachs prize has chosen to “punish an author for her human rights advocacy.”

The prize, named for the Jewish Nobel Prize-winning German-born poet and playwright Nelly Sachs (1891-1970), recognizes authors who champion “tolerance, respect and reconciliation.” The 15,000-euro prize, or about $16.5 thousand, is presented every two years. The German city of Dortmund runs the award.

Shamsie has refused to allow her works to be published in Israel.

The eight-member jury awarded Pakistanborn Shamsie the prize on Sept. 6, but after learning of her support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement against Israel announced on Sept. 20 that it would withdraw the award.

Shamsie responded that it was a matter of great sadness to her “that a jury should bow to pressure and withdraw a prize from a writer who is exercising her freedom of conscience and freedom of expression,” The Guardian reported.

In May, the German parliament passed a motion labeling the BDS movement as anti-Semitic. PJC

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Headlines Ruth Bader Ginsburg on why she did not retire during Obama’s term — NATIONAL —

By Emily Burack | JTA

I

t was a blunt statement in the midst of a cordial conversation: “I’m wondering why you’re here.”

That was Nina Totenberg, the NPR legal affairs correspondent, to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg at Thursday night’s Moment magazine awards dinner, where the justice had just walked out to a standing ovation.

Ginsburg, 86, is aware that she has been out and about just after completing radiation therapy during her latest bout with cancer, and she answered the question gracefully.

“This latest has been my fourth cancer bout,” she said. “And I found each time that when I’m active, I’m much better than if I’m just lying about and feeling sorry for myself. It’s necessary — a necessity — to get up and go. It’s stimulating. And somehow, in all of these appearances I’ve had since the end of August, whatever my temporary disability is, it stops, and I’m OK for the time of the event.”

The longtime justice held up throughout the entire evening, where she was the inaugural recipient of the Jewish magazine’s Human Rights Award. But Ginsburg didn’t shy away from talking about her retirement

with Totenberg, her “favorite interviewer.”

When Totenberg asked if Ginsburg had any regrets about not stepping down during the Obama administration, shocked whispers rippled throughout the crowd.

“It has been suggested by more than one commentator, including some law professors, that I should’ve stepped down during President Obama’s second term. When that suggestion is made I ask the question: Who do you think the president could nominate that could get through the Republican Senate that you would prefer to have on the court than me?” Ginsburg replied to loud applause.

The justice also spoke candidly about her Jewish heritage.

“Neither one of us is a person who goes to temple every Saturday,” Totenberg observed.

“But you are a very, I think it’s fair to say, faithful Jew.” Ginsburg replied, “Some of my most treasured moments growing up were of my mother lighting the candles on Friday nights.

I love Passover because we would change the dishes, and I wish we could use the Passover dishes year round.”

Ginsburg went on to speak about sitting shiva for her mother, Celia, who passed away when she was in high school.

“The house was filled with women, but only men could recite the Mourner’s Kaddish. I thought that was wrong,” she said.

The duo then went on to discuss how the Supreme Court used to be in session during the Jewish High Holidays, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Ginsburg, of course, changed that tradition.

“The chief [justice’s] first response was, ‘Well, we confer on Good Friday. So why can’t we sit on Yom Kippur?’ And I was trying to think of an argument that would appeal to him, and I came up with a winner,” Ginsburg said to a large laugh.

Her argument? For the Jewish lawyers who had come into town, it was their once-in-a-lifetime moment to argue on the Supreme Court.

(Two years ago, she was a surprise Rosh Hashanah visitor at a D.C. synagogue.)

In her acceptance speech later in the evening, Ginsburg began, “I know that good fortune, ‘mazel,’ accounts in large part for the success of my effort to achieve equal citizenship stature for women, and also for the office I have now held for more than 26 years.

And, most recently, for the Notorious RBG.” Her speech also addressed the question of role models. She pointed to two Jewish women who were both raised in the U.S., “whose humanity and bravery inspired me.”

The first: Jewish writer Emma Lazarus.

“Emma Lazarus was a Zionist before that word came into vogue. Her love for humankind, and especially for her people, is evident in all her writings,” Ginsburg said about

p Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Photo by Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Getty Images

Lazarus. “Her poem ‘The New Colossus,’ etched on the base of the Statue of Liberty, has welcomed legions of immigrants, including my father and grandparents — people seeking in the USA shelter from fear and long-fought freedom from intolerance.”

The other role model she discussed was Hadassah founder Henrietta Szold.

“My mother spoke of her glowingly. Szold, too, was a Zionist — even before Theodor Please see Ginsburg, page 29

As we reflect on this past year and venture into a new one, let us remember all of the reasons to be hopeful - our loved ones, the strength of our communities, and the kindness that keeps us moving forward.

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Headlines Ro Khanna, a rising star among progressive Democrats, navigates a careful pro-Israel line — NATIONAL —

By Ron Kampeas | JTA

R

o Khanna, a rising star among progressive Democrats, wants to make a point about how to be progressive and pro-Israel, so he quotes Alan Dershowitz.

Yes, that Alan Dershowitz, the Fox News habitue who has accused the Democratic Party of “tolerating anti-Semitism.”

“I don’t agree with all of Professor Dershowitz’s book,” the California congressman said, referring to “The Case for Israel,” Dershowitz’s 2003 effort to advance a liberal argument for Israel. “But where he makes that point about not singling out a country unfairly — you have to stand up for human rights consistently around the world.”

Khanna, 43, whose House district encompasses much of Silicon Valley in Northern California, initiated an interview in his Capitol Hill office with The Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Here’s the point he wants to make: The United States and Israel have a “deeply intertwined” relationship that ought to continue, but that shouldn’t preclude the American government from using the relationship

arrived in Silicon Valley to practice as leverage to push for changes in and teach law. In 2016, the year he was Israeli policy. elected to Congress, Khanna was among “The vast majority of the Democratic a handful of Democratic candidates who Party wants this relationship to endorsed Sanders’ bid for the party’s continue to succeed,” he said, “[but] we presidential nomination. want it to succeed on progressive values One of the first things Khanna that bring peace and human rights.” mentioned in the interview was the It’s a fine line to walk as Democrats close ties between Silicon Valley and grapple with accusations — including Israel’s high-tech sector. In December, from within — that the party is drifting he moderated a panel discussion in away from Israel, and as its progressive his district titled “Israel-Silicon Valley wing grows increasingly vocal in its Roundtable on Entrepreneurship.” He criticism. Republicans, chief among praised Irwin Federman, a constituent them President Donald Trump, have and venture capitalist who has invested in sought to imprint the party with the Palestinian businesses in the West Bank. stamp of four congresswomen known On Israel issues, Khanna is closer as “The Squad,” two of whom back to Squad member Ayanna Pressley the boycott Israel movement: Ilhan Ro Khanna Photo by Ron Kampeas of Massachusetts, who similarly Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib p represents a district with a large popuof Michigan. Trump has called the Born in Philadelphia to Indian immi- lation of wealthy liberal Jews. Khanna and party anti-Semitic.

Yet Khanna, a seasoned Democratic grants, he has been ensconced in the party’s Pressley both voted for a House resolution activist and a formidable fundraiser able progressive wing for decades, having condemning the Boycott, Divestment and to tap the deep reserves of wealthy liberals campaigned as a University of Chicago Sanctions movement targeting Israel, and in his district, is intent on establishing his student for Barack Obama’s first run for state both said they were heeding the sensibilities approach to Israel as a valid position within Senate in 1996. Khanna went on to earn a of their Jewish constituents.

“We each take these votes alone but aim his party’s progressive wing. A senior adviser law degree at Yale and was named by Obama, to the presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie during his first term, to a top Commerce to represent the districts we serve,” Pressley said on Twitter after the vote, responding to Sanders of Vermont, Khanna is a rising Department role. star in the party, having ousted a veteran In 2011, Khanna started exploring a Democrat, Mike Honda, in 2016. congressional run almost as soon as he Please see Khanna, page 29

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Headlines ‘We feel like we failed’: How one Jewish school is processing the arrest of a teacher who preyed on children — NATIONAL —

By Ben Sales | JTA

S

itting at the front of a large room lined floor to ceiling with Jewish holy books, Rabbi Joseph Beyda’s voice broke as he processed, seemingly in real time, the idea that a trusted teacher had preyed on his students.

“I think the overarching feeling of the administrators and the faculty and the board of the school is, we know you trust us, we take that trust very deeply, we dedicate our lives to it, we failed on this,” said Beyda, the principal of the Yeshivah of Flatbush’s Joel Braverman High School. “You could say it’s not our fault, but we feel like we failed.”

Beyda was speaking at a forum for parents and alumni at the Brooklyn high school that was called in the wake of the recent arrest of Rabbi Jonathan Skolnick, a former teacher charged with soliciting naked photos of students for years, going back to at least 2012. An FBI special agent sitting to Beyda’s left confirmed the rabbi’s assertion: There was no way for the school to have known what Skolnick was doing.

“This is a man who hid in plain sight,” said the agent, Aaron Spivack. “There is nothing this school could have done. There’s nothing that anybody could have done. A wolf in sheep’s clothing, if you want to use that analogy. Predators are predators for a reason.

They find ways to be predators.”

Skolnick, who moved last year to an administrative position at SAR Academy, another Orthodox school in New York City, was arrested Friday night by the FBI and charged with the production, receipt and possession of child pornography and child enticement.

He was immediately fired by SAR. He had taught at Flatbush from 2012 to 2018.

Days after the arrest, which came only weeks into a new school year, parents, faculty and administration are still in shock. They want to know if there is any way to prevent this in the future, what to tell their kids and how to encourage them to talk about any abuse by Skolnick. SAR also held an open meeting for parents to speak with an FBI representative and school administrators.

“It’s just very sad that it took a long time until this came out in the open,” said the grandmother of one of Skolnick’s students, who declined to give her name for fear of being publicly linked to the scandal. “But it’s understandable because people are reluctant to expose such incidents. It’s sad, and I know he was a good teacher, he had a good reputation. My granddaughter and her friends, they were shocked.”

At the Flatbush forum, Spivack reviewed the FBI investigation of Skolnick’s alleged crimes. The rabbi is accused of posing as a teenage girl online and soliciting underage boys to send him explicit photos. At least one boy complied, and Skolnick threatened to release them publicly after the boy said he wouldn’t send more. Spivack said there is no evidence at this time suggesting that Skolnick inappropriately touched students or distributed the photos.

According to the FBI’s criminal complaint, Skolnick admitted that he had requested explicit photos from 20 to 25 people, most of them children. Beyda said he believes that many Flatbush students were solicited.

“The number is really high,” the principal said. “And it’s not going to be surprising to be greater than 100, and maybe more than that.”

Both SAR and Flatbush have policies governing the reporting of sexual harassment, teacher communication with students and the boundaries of teacher behavior with students. SAR conducted a background check before Skolnick was hired that came up clean, as did an FBI check. Beyda said Flatbush has an extensive interview and reference-checking process, and now does criminal background checks as well.

Advocates for preventing sexual abuse in the Jewish community said that the key for schools is to recognize and prevent what are called “grooming” behaviors — actions such as inviting kids over for sleepovers or luring them to secluded spaces — that lay the groundwork for abuse.

“If you see a rebbe insisting that a child spend Shabbos at his house without any other supervision there, that’s a red flag,” said Asher Lovy, the director of community organizing for Zaakah, which combats child sex abuse in the Orthodox community.

p A view outside the Yeshivah of Flatbush Joel Braverman High School in Brooklyn, N.Y. Photo courtesy of Google Street View

Joel Avrunin, the parent of a child who allegedly was sexually abused by a rabbi at a Jewish camp in Maryland, said that schools should hire an external firm to investigate Skolnick’s behavior and the school’s response to it. That’s what SAR did following revelations that Stanley Rosenfeld, an assistant principal at SAR in the 1970s who later taught English there, had abused students.

“What are the schools doing to find out the extent of his involvement with children?”

Avrunin asked. “I’d like to see any school first hire an outside investigator. Who did he have contact with and what anti-grooming policies did the schools have in place?”

SAR did not respond to a JTA request for comment.

Parents at the Flatbush event expressed concern about limiting online contact between teachers and students. Beyda said the school is addressing the issue, creating a service on the messaging platform WhatsApp that allows teachers and students to communicate in a supervised space.

Parents and administrators said it appears that Skolnick was in a group chat where students told him about requests they were getting for explicit photos. The students did not realize it was Skolnick who was sending the requests.

A recent Flatbush graduate who attended the event said she appreciated having her teachers’ cellphone numbers.

“I think that all of us felt more connected to the teacher if they had our number,” she said. “We’re calling them in the middle of the night like, ‘I need help with this answer, explain this to us.’ All of these things. Even in school, like, ‘Hey, I’m coming late to class, I wanted to get coffee.’ We were very close to the teachers here.”

Parents also expressed concern about communicating to their kids that they should speak up if they experienced abuse.

Laura Rizzo, a victim specialist with the FBI, said the key is to give children space and to emphasize that they should not feel guilty for their actions.

“You can’t force a child to talk to a parent,” Rizzo said. “A lot of kids feel like it’s their fault, they’re in trouble. They’re afraid to get other people in trouble. They’re afraid to out their friend who might be a victim. So it’s very complicated. It’s scary.”

Beyda said the community also needs to encourage people to report abuse rather than hide it for fear of being ostracized.

“We have an uphill cultural battle,” he said.

“A lot of our parents are saying, ‘I don’t know why my child wouldn’t have said something.’

We teach our children not to say anything.

We teach our children that when we say something, we might become cultural, societal outcasts, and that’s the worst possible thing that can happen to you. It’s a mistake.

We should stop doing it.” PJC

The Trump-Ukraine controversy, and the Jews involved, explained — WORLD —

By Ron Kampeas | JTA

U

ntil recently, impeachment was not the flavor of the season.

The interest in Robert Mueller’s special counsel report into Russian election interference had waned, and the testimony

by Mueller before Congress in July failed to advance the narrative much.

President Donald Trump seemed to

16 SEPTEMBER 27, 2019

have come through the controversy politically unscathed.

Then came reports about the president involving a phone call, an intelligence community whistleblower and an allegation that Trump extorted a U.S. ally for political gain. It has reinvigorated Democratic calls for Trump’s impeachment. Even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, up to this point reluctant to launch impeachment proceedings, warned that the new scandal has led to “a grave new chapter of lawlessness which will take us into a whole new stage of investigation.”

Here’s a look at the charges, who the Jewish players are and what the stakes could be.

The phone call There are several twists and turns likely to come in this story, but here’s what we do know.

Reports trickled out that an anonymous whistleblower within the intelligence community filed a complaint about Trump in August with the community’s inspector general. The inspector general, Michael Atkinson, deemed the complaint “credible and urgent,” which by law necessitated

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informing Congress — but the acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, refused.

It emerged from further reporting that the complaint related to a phone call on July 25 — the day after Mueller testified to Congress — in which Trump pressured Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter over ties to a corrupt Ukrainian energy company. Joe Biden is currently Please see Ukraine, page 36

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Opinion Heading into the New Year, let’s reflect on kindness and community — EDITORIAL —

F

or Pittsburgh’s Jews, 5779 was a tough year.

As we are all acutely aware, on Oct. 27, 2018, a depraved anti-Semite with an assault rifle stormed into the Tree of Life synagogue building during Shabbat services and murdered 11 innocent worshippers at congregations Dor Hadash, New Light and Tree of Life*Or L’Simcha. He also seriously injured two other congregants, and six first responders.

It was the deadliest attack against Jews in U.S. history and it left us numb.

Eleven months later, we as a community are still grappling with the aftermath of the massacre. The attack permanently changed the lives of some members of our

community. Many of us remain emotionally hobbled, anxious, depressed, scared, or at the very least, susceptible to triggers that cause us to relive the horror of that day as if it were happening in real time.

But we are not alone, and have not been alone. In that we take solace.

Almost immediately, letters and money and works of art arrived from all over the world. We as a community felt the love of local politicians and sports teams and churches and mosques and schools. We offer our deepest gratitude to friends, neighbors and strangers, representing diverse faiths and ethnic groups, that have stood by our side in solidarity since the morning of Oct. 27.

We at the Chronicle have served as witness to community reactions and struggles during these long months following the shooting, and have been particularly moved by the sheer generosity and goodness of our

own Jewish community’s leaders and institutions. We have been present at myriad events in which the love and the care and the compassion have been so palpable it was as if the concept of chesed had assumed a physical shape.

The Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh, the Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh and Jewish Community and Family Services instantly rose to take on the daunting task of providing support to the victims, families and survivors of the shooting — as well as to those in the wider community who wrestle with the reality of Oct. 27 — and have continued to proffer that support ever since. Their thoughtful professionalism, always putting first the well-being of those most acutely affected by the attack, cannot be overstated.

So, too, we commend Pittsburgh’s congregations that have opened their

hearts and their doors to those who found themselves displaced after Oct. 27, and provided Dor Hadash, New Light and Tree of Life*Or L’Simcha with brick and mortar facilities to hold services and come together in sacred space as congregations.

Rodef Shalom Congregation has housed Dor Hadash and Tree of Life*Or L’Simcha, and Congregation Beth Shalom has been home to New Light.

In the darkest of times, with no playbook — and there is no imaginable playbook here — the organized Pittsburgh Jewish community took care of its own. We are so proud. And we are so grateful.

As we look ahead to 5780, let us recall the goodness and the generosity of Jewish Pittsburgh, and find comfort and security in the knowledge that we can depend on one another.

L’shana tova. PJC

A ‘unity government’ cannot exclude religious parties Guest Columnist Alex Traiman

T

ry as some politicians might to make the current election about rifts between secular and religious Israelis, both the April and September polls were about a single issue: whether or not Benjamin Netanyahu will continue to serve as Israel’s prime minister.

As part of a strategy to hurt Netanyahu and his preferred coalition partners, fiercely secular opponents have taken secondary aim at the politics of ultra-Orthodox political parties, while calling for a “secular unity government.”

Since his foray into politics from his chair as a television presenter, Yair Lapid has been working to advance an anti-religious political agenda, just as his father, Tommy Lapid, did when he led the Shinui Party to 15 seats in 2003.

The younger Lapid, running on a similar agenda, secured 19 seats in 2013 as head of the Yesh Atid Party, but fell to 11 seats in 2015 following a brief and relatively unsuccessful stint as finance minister.

Today, Lapid is co-leader of the Blue and White Party and, according to the terms of a conditional rotational agreement he signed with Blue and White leader Benny Gantz, potentially a prime minister-in-waiting.

Blue and White, a technical alliance between Lapid’s Yesh Atid, Gantz’s Resilience Party and the Telem Party under Moshe Ya’alon, was created with a singular goal in mind: to defeat Netanyahu—something no single party, including the left-wing stalwart Labor Party, was able to achieve in previous elections.

In fact, many of Blue and White’s votes in April, as well as in September, came directly from Labor, which received 24 mandates in 2015, but collapsed down to six in April and September. That 18-mandate differential by all

accounts went directly to Blue and White, and accounted for the majority of Blue and White’s 33 seats following the Sept. 17 elections.

Avigdor Lieberman first entered the Knesset as part of the right-wing National Union Party that has typically been run by religious settlers.

Even after Lieberman’s Russian-speaking Yisrael Beiteinu first ran as an independent party, Lieberman often joined right-wing coalitions supported by religious parties.

In November 2018, Lieberman resigned as defense minister, citing a spat with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the nation’s response to the ongoing conflict with Hamas in Gaza. Netanyahu preferred a softer and more cautious approach, and imposed his will on his more hawkish defense minister.

However, many believe that Lieberman resigned to get the jump on an early election season that was coming as part of Netanyahu’s strategy to insulate himself from pending indictments on multiple corruption charges.

Following April’s elections and his initial endorsement of Netanyahu as prime minister, Lieberman refused to join a rightwing government, citing the inability of the government to pass a controversial law that would increase the number of religious conscripts to the IDF. Unable to forge a compromise within his right-wing camp—and without Lieberman’s critical five seats—Netanyahu fell one seat short of a majority and forced the dissolution of the Knesset just weeks after it had been sworn in.

Throughout the September election campaign, Lieberman, like Lapid, has run on a secular political agenda. His recent maneuvers have secured Yisrael Beiteinu eight seats—three more than he achieved in April and two more than 2015. The otherwise small increases are noteworthy because the votes appear to have been siphoned away from Likud, which ended two seats behind Blue and White in the September elections, placing Netanyahu’s political future in doubt.

Together with Lieberman, Israel’s right wing

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would still produce a 63-seat majority. However, Lieberman, a longtime Netanyahu nemesis, seems intent on ending the reign of Israel’s longest-serving prime minister. Lieberman’s strategy has involved turning on his longtime religious political colleagues, who remain Netanyahu’s preferred coalition partners.

Now, in the absence of a clear winner in the current election, both Lieberman and Lapid have been calling for a “secular unity government” to be formed by Blue and White, Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu. The only problem with these calls is that they in no way represent a unity approach.

The disagreements that many non-religious Israelis and political parties have with haredi (ultra-Orthodox) parties represent significant social issues. They center around long-standing political agreements that provide exemptions from military service to religious men; disproportionately large stipends to religious learning institutions that support a majority of religious men studying Torah full time, instead of entering the workforce; and political monopolies over key state religious services, including kashrut certification, marriage, conversion and key holy sites, such as the Western Wall plaza.

Failing to carefully address these issues fuels societal rifts that rise to the surface on an ever-increasing basis. As difficult to reach or implement in the short term as they may be, delaying resolutions will make future solutions even more complicated. Yet with significant geopolitical and security threats, economic challenges and the looming possibility of a major post-Netanyahu leadership vacuum, the formation of the next government should not hinge on its ability to suddenly solve long-standing and complicated issues of religion and state.

Furthermore, solutions to these issues cannot be imposed by secular Israelis intent solely on breaking the religious-political structure, just as religious parties cannot blindly impose their will on a majority of

PITTSBURGH JEWISH CHRONICLE

Israelis who are uncomfortable with the status quo. Solutions also cannot be hastily imposed by a government that has yet to establish the stability requisite to deal with any major societal issue.

Forcing the religious parties out of politics fails to address the reality that the religious sector is the nation’s fastest growing population and as much a part of the fabric of Israel as secular kibbutzniks and everyone in between.

Solutions will come only from putting aside differences and working together for the collective good of society. Inherent in any solutions must be compassion for diverse religious and secular sectors alike, both of which are negatively impacted by the current political compromises.

In addition, while the Likud itself is not a religious party, it is supported in large numbers by religious and traditional Israelis, meaning that it is not a classic secular party and is not advancing a secular agenda.

Without the Likud, the secular parties are far from being a political majority.

At a time of increasing political rifts and the seeming inability of either right or left to govern alone, unity and repairing fractures is necessary to keep Israel on a growth trajectory. An alliance between Blue and White, Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu could legitimately be termed a politically centrist government and may represent a likely coalition outcome in the absence of a strong majority rightwing or left-wing bloc.

Religious parties may or may not be part of the next government for a number of reasons. Yet there is currently no mandate in Israel for a specifically “secular” government, just as any political alignment that was specifically hinged on the exclusion of a particular sector could not be considered a “unity” government. PJC Alex Traiman is managing director and Jerusalem Bureau Chief of Jewish News Syndicate.

SEPTEMBER 27, 2019 17

Opinion Finding strength in Israel Guest Columnist Rachel Adelsheimer

I

’ve always felt at home in Israel, ever since my first trip when I was 9. When my mother chatted with the locals in Hebrew, it made me feel like a native (even though I didn’t speak Hebrew myself). I’m proud to be Jewish, and Israel is a place where I can really feel that pride and connect to the broader Jewish community.

The tragedy last October deepened that connection. I live in Squirrel Hill, less than a mile from Tree of Life synagogue, but I was in Penn State when I found out what had happened. My parents were calling, my friends were texting, but it all felt surreal.

And then I came home a few weeks later and my community felt different. There was

a sense of vulnerability, like nowhere was safe anymore. But at the same time, we felt closer to each other — and to Jews all over the world — than ever before.

Two months after the shooting, I went to Poland, to the concentration camps. I wanted to learn more about anti-Semitism and its devastating effects. It was a really difficult experience. The horrors of the Holocaust were on a far different scale than the Tree of Life shooting, but underneath both events have the same root: Jews being targeted and murdered just because they’re Jews. Suddenly, the Holocaust wasn’t just something that had happened to my great-grandparents — I had become part of a larger story, a continuum of history. AntiSemitism is still destroying lives.

I always knew I wanted to go back to Israel, but now I felt even more strongly that it was where I wanted to be. I’m looking forward to continuing my Israel experience with Masa Israel Teaching Fellows.

I’m excited about the program because of the chance it gives me to connect with the worldwide Jewish community on a different level — through its children. I got a taste of how rewarding this bond can be when I interned in Gan Bein Cramim V’sadot in Rishon LeZion a few years ago, teaching eight kindergarten boys on the autism spectrum. Even though I have a brother on the spectrum, I didn’t realize until I got there just how diverse the classroom would be: There was one child who asked me every day to teach him more English words, and there was another who couldn’t really speak and ate dirt and grass. I loved how I could relate to each of them on a different level.

I’m hoping for a similar experience with Masa, because, even though the children don’t necessarily have autism, each child still learns differently. As a future speech pathologist, I’m eager to find out if I can help any kids in my classrooms with speech delays or learning disabilities, and to see how the

process differs in America and in Israel. I hope I can impact my students’ lives — and maybe learn a little Hebrew, too.

But, maybe more importantly, I think going to Israel is really important for young Jews today. I’ve seen myself how visiting the country opens people’s eyes, especially if it’s their first time there. I’ve seen people discover a new connection to Judaism and pride in being Jewish, and I think that’s an important thing for every American Jew to experience. Not to become more religious per se, but just to see that there’s a large community of people who are similar to you, who are there for you and support you.

Because at the end of the day, in this crazy world where Jews are murdered for being Jews, Israel is a place we belong. PJC Rachel Adelsheimer is a 2019-2020 Masa Israel Teaching Fellow, teaching in Rishon LeZion as part of the Israel Experience programs.

October 27, one year later Guest Columnist Iris Valanti

T

here is no prescribed path out of trauma. As the one year mark of the shooting on Oct. 27 approaches, it is natural to be sharply reminded of “that day.”

What you were doing, how close (or not) you might have been to the scene of the massacre, how you coped (or didn’t) with your feelings about the day our community changed forever.

As much as therapists might say everybody’s reaction to trauma is different, as is the path to healing and recovery, many people

might struggle with their feelings one year later. Why do I still feel so bad when I wasn’t even there? I survived when others didn’t; I can’t get past that. It didn’t affect me because I wasn’t there — am I a terrible person?

“The key is to take the time to face your feelings whatever they are,” says Stefanie Small, clinical director at Jewish Family and Community Services. “Sweeping things under the rug is a very apt metaphor. The dirt doesn’t go away.”

JFCS will be offering community support opportunities during the month of October for anyone struggling with suppressed or unresolved issues related to the events of Oct. 27. Visit the JFCS Community Support webpage (jfcspgh.org/communitysupport).

All activities are free.

Angelica Joy Miskanin is an art therapist who specializes in trauma. She was hired

by JFCS after the tragedy to help individual clients cope with the aftermath of the shooting. “I’ve often heard some of my clients report feeling they should be over it by now, despite the fact that they are experiencing very real and common symptoms that follow this kind of traumatic event.”

She stresses once again that reaction to trauma and the path to resolution is influenced by any number of personal factors: age, previous trauma history, socioeconomic status, support systems, self-care practices, and many other factors. And anniversaries of significant and traumatic events can certainly reignite symptoms. This could include the anniversary date itself, but often can include

the days leading up to and following that date.

The prevalence of mass shootings since last October also merits serious consideration. As these events happen more and more, in all kinds of different settings, it’s not surprising that some level of anxiety and/or depression persists for many people.

The old saying about the best time to plant a tree — 20 years ago — and the next best time: today, applies here. The best time to look for help is sooner than later, but now is also good. If you need help, please visit the JFCS Community Support webpage (jfcspgh. org/communitysupport), or call 412-5213800 for individual counseling. PJC Iris Valanti is public relations associate at Jewish Family and Community Services.

Guest Columnist Lauren Bairnsfather

I

t is an unavoidable fact of working in Holocaust education that there will come a day when no living survivors remain.

In the late-1990s, at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, we dreaded the arrival of that day. Children of Holocaust survivors formed an advisory group and created an exhibit about Displaced Persons Camps called Life Reborn. I participated in the gathering of photographs for that exhibit and later wrote a master’s thesis called “The Second Generation and the Future of Holocaust Remembrance.” We were preparing to remember the Holocaust without the witnesses.

18 SEPTEMBER 27, 2019

That was nearly 20 years ago. I was certain, as we were in Washington several years before, that long before the present day, we would have to face our work, and our lives, without the guiding light of Holocaust survivors.

Nevertheless, the death of Herman Snyder last week at the age of 98 came as a terrible blow. The intellectual understanding that no one can live forever is quite different from the emotional experience of losing a friend.

Herman (Chaim) Snyder was born on Jan. 21, 1921, in Vilna, Lithuania, then part of Poland. After the Nazi invasion, Herman escaped from the ghetto, prevailed upon strangers for shelter, hid in the swamps of Belarus, and made his way East to escape the Nazis. He fought in the Soviet Red Army and remained loyal to Russia, a point of contention at many a Café Europa — the monthly program for Holocaust survivors

which is sponsored by the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh.

Chaim settled in Pittsburgh to join family in nearby Greensburg and went on to have a very successful career as a home builder. It was a point of pride until his last days that he could work with his hands.

One recent memory will stay with me: In April 2019, the German-Italian artist Luigi Toscano visited Pittsburgh to photograph Holocaust survivors at the Holocaust Center.

We were surprised to see Herman. His friend Albert Farhy, a Holocaust survivor from Bulgaria, had met up with Herman at the JCC and they came to the Center together.

After a lovely afternoon of photography and kosher lasagna, we gathered outside of the Center in front of the moving truck that Toscano and his team drove across the country. At the top of the truck were written the words: “United Against All Forms of

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Exclusion, Discrimination, Anti-Semitism, and Racism. Are you with us?”

My phone began to ring. It was security at the Jewish Association on Aging, asking if we had seen Herman. I responded with a smile, “He is right in front of me.”

How lucky many of us were to have had the opportunity to know Chaim, to listen to him switch between seven languages, and to hear him spontaneously burst into song. Each survivor we lose takes with him an entire lost world. We share the responsibility to remember and to continue to tell their stories.

The Lest we Forget exhibit will be displayed on the Cathedral Lawn at the University of Pittsburgh from Oct. 18 through Nov. 15. PJC Lauren Bairnsfather, Ph.D., is the director of the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh.

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Photo by Melanie Wieland Photography.

Holocaust remembrance, with and without survivors

Opinion A town as victim Guest Columnist Sam Yolen

L

ast week Pennsylvania state Sen. Mike Folmer, a Republican lawmaker representing Lebanon County and parts of York and Dauphin counties, resigned after being arrested on charges of possession of child pornography.

The obvious victims when it comes to this kind of crime are the young children in images or videos. Their futures are stolen, and as they grow up they’re at increased risk for suicide, depression and anxiety. They will never be the same.

But in this particular case, there is a less obvious victim of the former senator: Lebanon, Pennsylvania, where I serve as rabbi.

Once a manufacturing powerhouse, Lebanon’s economy has been diminished since the 1970s, when a flood closed the smallest Bethlehem Steel plant in the town’s center. Over the last 30 years, as globalization pushed factories and retail stores overseas and online, the town slumped further into the rusted underbelly of America’s manufacturing carcass. The town population never recovered from what it was in the 1960s.

But what about the Jews? Lebanon’s

heartland story does not exempt the Jewish people. The erosion of the middle class is indiscriminate and, each year, our membership directory gets more lopsided as successful individuals leave for nearby cities like Harrisburg or Philadelphia, or disappear to Florida. A few months ago I commemorated the closing of the last Jewish retail business in town with a local article titled “Saying Mourner’s Kaddish for a Business.”

Another congregant who trains me at the YMCA used to run a clothing business that employed around 100 people. Now he’s a retired city councilman.

I’m able to work as a rabbi in Lebanon because the great donors of the 1990s set up a perpetuity fund. The Jews of Congregation Beth Israel believed so firmly in Lebanon that they couldn’t imagine the town without a Jewish voice. Most members, rather than move to a nearby Jewish home for the aged, remain in local facilities where they can continue to participate in town affairs.

More than one congregant has given me the opportunity to teach at their alma mater Lebanon Valley College. The matriarch of our community, a frail and beautiful woman of 93 years young, is the widow of a beloved town mayor. When traveling through town, I count three roads named after members, and one park monument.

Lebanon has also changed drastically in its demographic makeup. In the same short span of declining economic opportunities, the Hispanic population rose to more than

40%, thanks in large part to accepting hurricane refugees in the mid 2000s (one of our congregants built the Section 8 housing units that holds a portion of this demographic).

The Muslim community is visibly growing and present at many town functions. The white community is shrinking, and hardest hit by the opioid crisis. As Jews, we play an important role in local town politics.

Without hesitation, the incumbent mayor read our congregation’s opening prayer to 400 visitors in commemoration of the Tree of Life shooting in Pittsburgh last year.

From there, like-minded clergy formed an interfaith group advocating for each other. This is the type of coalition that the American Jewish Congress encourages rabbis to cultivate — reciprocal relationships with many different groups of people that could help quash anti-Semitism, should it rear its ugly head. Some of our initiatives were to increase amenities in sections of the town that had been underfunded, register voters, provide medical services to impoverished families, open up the schools for longer hours so children would have a safe place to play and do homework, and more.

One of the biggest supporters of our interfaith clergy group was former Sen. Folmer, who ostensibly shared our vision of unity, and committed his energy to these initiatives.

During our meeting with the then-senator, he wasted no time in sharing how rigorously he prays every morning. You can see him in a picture of our interfaith clergy

group. Folmer, a man who will most likely be convicted of a litany of charges related to sex abuse, was a local persona who stood by the Lebanon community. “Marijuana Mike,” as he was called (because of his role in passing medical marijuana legislation in Pennsylvania), worked on bringing jobs and retail stores back into town. He wanted to register new voters and cut down partisan gerrymandering.

It’s with a unique sadness that the town of Lebanon cut ties with its senator recently, as the crime he committed is too grave for forgiveness. And our town will pay the price for his sins, as Pennlive reported it’s unclear how many initiatives will be affected by his resignation. What is clear is that the hours spent developing a special relationship with Lebanon’s only senator is known in economics as a “sunk cost.” An entire year of advocacy wiped out.

From my office you can see news trucks reporting the latest in front of the state building. Members, strangers and friends mutter in shock, “Can you believe it?” and “He must be so stupid…” and pray that the changes he promised don’t disappear entirely. That’s the complicated reality of politics. A senator’s heinous action can stall a town’s economic recovery, while a few blocks away children go hungry. PJC Rabbi Sam Yolen is the spiritual leader of Congregation Beth Israel in Lebanon, Pennsylvania.

My congregation prays at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue. Here’s how we are coping this Rosh Hashanah.

Guest Columnist Beth Kissileff

O

ur sages teach us that “kol hatchalot kashot,” all beginnings are difficult.

This phrase feels especially resonant this Rosh Hashanah.

The man who blew the shofar last year at my Pittsburgh synagogue, New Light, is not here to blow it now. He was murdered on Oct. 27 at the Tree of Life synagogue, where the New Light and Dor Hadash congregations rented space.

The sounds of the shofar, which Ashkenazi Jews have a custom of blowing in synagogue the entire month of Elul, have a different resonance to me now. The Sefer Hachinuch explains that “the Torah commanded us to make a sound similar to wailing” when we blow it.

That won’t be hard; there is plenty to wail about this year.

The Sefer Hahinuch adds, “Since a person is physical, he is only aroused by something that arouses, like the way of people during wartime [to] blow and even scream in order that they should be properly aroused for war

… and the voice of the shofar arouses the heart of all its listeners … when he hears the broken sounds, he breaks the evil inclination of his heart for the desires of the world and his cravings.”

We need to hear this wailing, and be induced to wail ourselves, so that we can change.

The Talmud (Rosh Hashana 33b) associates these sounds with the wailing of a bereaved mother of an enemy general. In Judges 5:28, the mother of Sisera wails that her son has not yet returned from battle, nor returned with any captive women or spoils.

It is hard to know how to interpret this.

Even though Sisera’s mother is awful in glorifying her murderous son, she is still a mother and still has compassion for her son — it is that human piece of her we are told to identify with. Perhaps Sisera’s mother is wailing out of sheer human instinct. Her wailing is a sign that she knows that her son will never return, though her words, possibly spoken out of false bravado, suggest otherwise.

The guttural scream of someone trying to comprehend that life will be lived without a loved one is sheer terror. I hope never to hear it again. I have been with families at the moment they received official notification from the FBI of their loved one’s

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deaths. Though they knew in their hearts that their loved one was gone when they did not hear from them hours before, the moment of irrevocable understanding that they will never see their loved one again is a dreadful one.

But sometimes the deepest pain can also bring healing.

The concept of post-traumatic growth is a psychological theory about transformation after trauma. It shows that people who undergo significant trauma can emerge from the experience with an improved appreciation for life, relationships with others, personal strength and spiritual growth. This does not remove the many challenges and anxieties connected to coping with trauma, but adds that growth is possible, too.

When we hear the shofar, if we hear it as a wail and scream, perhaps we can change our lives and make what comes after Rosh Hashanah irrevocably different from what comes before.

I have seen it happen in my own community. People have changed over the course of the year. Some have made and kept commitments to attend synagogue more regularly.

Some of our new haftarah chanters have not used the skill since bar mitzvah, if ever, but are committed to reading every few weeks in

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honor of our three devoted haftarah readers at New Light — Dan Stein, Rich Gottfried and Mel Wax — who are no longer able to chant the prophetic words. There are those who did not have much interest in the spiritual side of Judaism who now attend any classes we hold. People who have always wanted to learn Hebrew have been studying it for the first time.

This Rosh Hashanah, all American Jews, shocked to our core at the resurgence of violent anti-Semitism here — a country to which our ancestors immigrated as a haven from such things in the rest of the world — will hear the shofar as a wail and scream. We have undergone the deeply painful trauma of knowing that in Pittsburgh and Poway, Jews have been murdered solely because they are Jews.

However, this deep trauma we have experienced also means we can and need to think about how as a community we can attempt to work through the trauma to achieve meaningful growth.

It is not uncomplicated, but Rosh Hashanah is coming, and we all have the opportunity to begin again — however difficult. PJC Beth Kissileff is a Pittsburgh-based writer.

This piece originally appeared on JTA.org.

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Headlines Insights: Continued from page 1

were and are both specific and far-reaching.

“People were gathered in a space of safety, a building where each of the three congregations practiced their faith,” she continued. “The events of that day shattered for many fundamental concepts of safety and security. These are significant and long reaching effects.”

It is essential, she explained, that the community remains focused, with “a trauma-informed lens,” to the needs of all those who remain traumatized by the massacre.

The Center for Victims, she added, will continue to offer support through the High Holidays and at all public and private commemoration events.

Even those who have made strides in their healing journeys are susceptible to being re-traumatized, and events such as the date itself, or holidays, can be triggering, according to Golin.

“Trauma can be reignited around lots of things that remind the person about the experience that they went through,” Golin explained.

Over the next couple months, he said, “we are paying special attention to providing whatever kind of support we can for something we expect will be difficult for a lot of people.”

Rabbi Amy Bardack, director of Jewish Life and Learning at the Federation, discussed details regarding the “Remember.

Repair. Together” programming which will mark one year since the massacre.

“The reason to have official events at all is that this is a difficult day and we wanted to provide something for people to do that would be sensitive to the wishes of those most closely impacted as activities of honor,” she explained, adding that the planned volunteer opportunities as well as Torah study are Jewishly appropriate ways to honor those who were killed.

A full schedule of activities can be found at pittsburghoct27.org.

A panel of leaders from the three congregations that were housed in the Tree of Life building discussed how their members have been coping and responding in the aftermath of the attack.

“This healing requires us to be an example to the Jewish community, an example to Squirrel Hill and Pittsburgh, and to all who have suffered gun violence,” said Donna Coufal, president of Dor Hadash, noting her congregation’s commitment to social justice in response to the attack.

Security: Continued from page 1

venue’s premises.

Temple Sinai is adopting various tactics to increase its security and “make sure people feel comfortable when attending services” this High Holiday season, said Drew Barkley, Temple Sinai’s executive director. “We want people to have the same sense of connection and comfort that they’ve had in prior years, so we are upping the security in a way that won’t scare people but make them feel more comfortable.”

22 SEPTEMBER 27, 2019

Dor Hadash, she said, “stands against gun violence and supports immigration. Out of our congregation sprung the community-wide organization Squirrel Hill Stands Against Gun Violence. We spoke out against the death penalty. We refuse to stay victims.”

Ellen Surloff, immediate past president of Dor Hadash, brought to the fore the sharp reality that mass gun violence continues to pose a threat to Jews and others.

“Eleven months ago a white supremacist, a virulent anti-Semite who wanted to rid the world of all Jews walked into the Tree of Life building where three congregations worshipped with an assault rifle in hand and he murdered 11 of our fellow congregants, including our beloved Dr. Jerry Rabinowitz, a longtime and vital part of the Dor Hadash community,” Surloff said. “And the sad reality, and it’s something that each and every one of us in this room today knows, is that 11 months later, another mass murder carried out with yet another assault rifle, another deadly act carried out at the hands of a white supremacist could, God forbid, take place at any moment and at any place in this country.”

Barbara Caplan, co-president of New Light Congregation noted the particular difficulties faced by New Light, having “had three different homes in three years.”

“Two years ago we celebrated our last High Holiday service in our home of 75 years,” she said. In November 2017, the congregation moved to the Tree of Life building, and was planning to hold its first anniversary party there the first week of November 2018.

“Instead, we were homeless, having been driven out of the Tree of Life building by the most horrific anti-Semitic act in U.S. history.”

Stephen Cohen, co-president of New Light, said his congregation, which is currently housed at Beth Shalom, is “committed to moving back to the Tree of Life building,” but added that he expects that process “to take many years.”

He called for a broad discussion, involving state and city officials, on “what to do with the Tree of Life building and how to memorialize the event for future generations.”

He suggested a public-private partnership “with broad public input to discuss the question of what exactly a memorial should be to record this horrific event,” including input from the victims and other interested groups “to create a foundation to begin the long process of crafting an appropriate memorial remembering the worst anti-Semitic attack in U.S. history.”

Sam Schachner, president of Tree of Life*Or L’Simcha emphasized the lessons of community that became evident following the attack. “What we’ve learned in this process is that there really is a community, that the In an effort to familiarize attendees, Barkley lined out several strategies in an August newsletter. Security measures mentioned include welcoming uniformed and plain clothes security, increasing training for greeters and staff prior to the holidays and requiring attendees to bring admission tickets to each service.

“We have no pushback from our congregants with what we’re trying to do,” said Barkley. “People understand.”

Achieving a particular environment that is both absolutely secure and completely welcoming is a balance, explained Kohenet

p Michele Rosenthal, Andrea Wedner, Cindy Snyder

Photo by Toby Tabachnick

whole community, not only Squirrel Hill, but all of Pittsburgh has been impacted by this event,” he said. “So our focus going forward is really looking at how we can be inclusive and collaborative with that whole community.

“It has been a remarkable experience over the past 10 months that the whole city, the whole community, people of all different faiths have really reached out to us and been tremendously supportive,” he added.

Faith leaders representing the three congregations discussed the challenges of taking care of their congregations while caring for themselves.

Rabbi Doris Dyen, a member of Dor Hadash and a Reconstructionist spiritual leader, was outside the Tree of Life building, preparing to enter to co-lead services with Dan Leger — who was shot and seriously injured — when the attack began.

“Since the shooting, it has been a long, slow journey of physical, emotional and spiritual recovery in which I have found myself taking care of others including many in the Dor Hadash congregation,” she said.

While she has been “essentially trying to make sense of an unfathomable event,” she has found “inspiration and resilience in the community and that is very much a part of the Reconstructionist approach to life.”

Rabbi Jonathan Perlman of New Light described in detail the trauma he has undergone since the day of the event.

“I have discovered that trauma has many faces and has many highs and lows and that it is something that will remain with me the rest of my life,” he said. “It is a wound. It’s not like grief that you can recover from and make peace with. Trauma is something that is ready to attack you at any moment of the day. Hearing gunshots, TV, hearing a loud boom in the street, it might be from a car backfiring or something like that. Being

aware of crowds and suspicious people, and it has deeply affected me.”

Trauma is worse the second year after the event, he said he has been told.

“So, I am preparing for that,” Perlman said.

As the rabbi of Tree of Life, as well as a survivor, Rabbi Jeffrey Myers has been tasked with finding strength for himself as well as for others.

“I live with Oct. 27 every minute of every hour of every day and I will for the rest of my life,” he said. “Each of us finds the strength and the courage to integrate what happened into our beings, to move forward. I refuse to let the perpetrator make me another fulltime victim. I won’t let it happen. I refuse.

“My faith is strong,” he added. “I look to God every day for the guidance to say the right things and do the right things.”

Wedner, despite her injuries and the murder of her mother, said she has a “positive outlook.”

“I am going to live my life,” she said. “It was almost taken away and I’m not going to let that happen, so I am going to enjoy.”

Although Rosenthal has become a member of a group she never wanted to be a part of, she has found strength in the other families affected by the massacre.

“These families have just been such a huge support system,” she said. “I try to focus on the new relationships and the bonds and the people who have gotten us through this.”

She also finds strength in the stories she continues to hear from others about her brothers.

“The lives that they touched,” she said.

“I was so protective of them, but they had a whole world to themselves. That gets me through.” PJC

Keshira HaLev Fife, of Kesher Pittsburgh.

“It’s not an easy choice for us just to beef up security because we are aware that while conventional wisdom is that having armed guards and visible security is safer, or at least feels safer, that may be an incorrect assumption,” said Fife. “For people of color and marginalized people, seeing an armed guard, particularly if the guard is white and male, is not equated with making people feel safer.

It can make people feel less safe, so what we are doing for Rosh Hashanah is having an armed guard. We are taking the good advice of people who are urging us to err on the

side of caution, and we are requiring that the armed guard be either female or a person of color or both.”

Challenges will always exist on the High Holidays, but people should follow prior protocols, said Orsini.

“As we always say in our community, ‘Be aware, be vigilant and report everything,’” said the Federation staffer. “That’s how we build this holistic security program to help keep our congregations safe.” PJC

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Toby Tabachnick can be reached at ttabachnick@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.

Adam Reinherz can be reached at areinherz@ pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.

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Headlines Brunch: Continued from page 3

“We do move on,” she explained, saying it is important that we ask ourselves if mourning is the sum total of who we are. To illustrate this point, Brown said Jews under 40 aren’t defined by the Holocaust. “They aren’t interested in a legacy of sadness.”

Schiff shifted the conversation to Jewish leadership and the recent Israeli election.

“Jews believe in succession,” Brown claimed. “Abraham was succeeded by

Sermons: Continued from page 4

“I think we need to know that, per Jewish history, both in the last century and before, as much as we might feel this is something new, it isn’t,” Symons said. “And if we are going to really enact the words ‘never forget,’ then we really have to enact them. Lip service isn’t enough anymore and being isolated to action within the Jewish community isn’t enough either.”

Building alliances and relationships with the interfaith community is crucial, she said, as is education.

“And I think we need to not allow incidents to go by, whether it is an off-color joke that possibly is just out of naiveté or whether it is something fully intentioned,” Symons added. “We can’t just sit by because that is not what ‘never again’ means.”

Rabbi Seth Adelson, senior rabbi of Beth Shalom in Squirrel Hill, will be addressing

Wars: Continued from page 6

That would extend the current regional war even wider with “more moving parts.”

5. The security vacuums created by the civil wars and the failed states involved have attracted non-state actors like ISIS and Al Qaeda. These organizations are likely to serve as “spoilers” to any lasting peace in the region.

Alternatives: Continued from page 8

for Rosh Hashanah, according to Fife, mostly “non-affiliated people who would not be going anywhere otherwise,” she said.

“I have a lot of people who are coming who are not engaged with mainstream congregations. Whether it is the interpretation of prayers, whether it is the lack of English, whether it is folks who don’t feel welcome because they are multifaith or multiracial in their family constellations.”

On Yom Kippur, Kesher moves a little further out of the box.

For Kol Nidre, the group engages in a “chanting circle,” co-led by Fife and David Goldstein from Tikkun Chanting.

“The idea is to drop in to Yom Kippur and to gently open our hearts and fill our minds, and allow our bodies, to come to stillness

Isaac … Moses had Joshua … ” Trust was important to that succession, she explained, and continues to be so with our leaders today.

“We’ve taken nobility out of leadership …

If we tell our children not to be president, we’ve created pathways to no possibilities.”

Judaism values involvement, Brown said.

“We need to tell our children, ‘Your job is to be involved and to lead.’”

A theme of future renewal continued as Schiff asked about the acts of disgraced Jews like Jeffrey Epstein. Brown pointed out that this was the consequence of peoplehood and that we can’t eliminate bad acts. It’s our

future actions that matter, she explained. “I want to go back to being the light.”

The conversation concluded with thoughts on the High Holidays. Schiff asked Brown what should be said to people who don’t want to go to services because of boredom.

Boredom has a purpose, Brown said.

“Tradition joins me to the congregants near me, to the congregants before me and those that come after me. I see vulnerability attached to everyone. We all have something to pray for, even if the words of the liturgy don’t move us. I think we all need to be trapped in ourselves a little bit.”

Reflecting on the upcoming year, Brown said she hoped for “the blessing to be patient, to not stand on the sidelines of history. To sustain the belief that good will overcome, that trust is possible, that happiness is likely.”

Brunch attendee Tanya Koul Strausbaugh found Brown’s talk engaging, “especially her thoughtful discussion of our role in promoting leadership to the next generation.” PJC

“the communal need for healing,” although the Pittsburgh synagogue attack of Oct. 27 will not be the primary theme of his sermon cycle.

In referencing the massacre that occurred just blocks from his own synagogue, Adelson will talk about “reestablishing our sanctuaries as spiritually safe, sacred spaces.”

“I want for people to feel they can come to synagogue and not be afraid to gather with their people in our sanctuary and do what we as Jews have always done on these days and not be troubled by fear,” he said. “I hope to offer words of comfort that will make us feel like we can worship and be together in peace and security.”

Adelson is concerned about the emotional state of many in Jewish Pittsburgh, he said.

“I think that the anxiety level in the community is unusually high and that has expressed itself in many different ways,” he said.

But robust engagement in Jewish life, its

teachings and traditions, could help provide an antidote to the angst.

“I try to emphasize in my sermons and teachings that God is an ongoing source of good in our lives and an inspiration to reach out to others and to do good works, now in the present,” Adelson said. “And I feel that by engaging with our tradition, living a Jewish life, and digging deeply into the meaning of our sources, our holy texts and what they teach us today, that we have the opportunity to change the world for the better and to make this a healthier, safer world for everybody.

“Let’s hope that 5780 is a better year,” he added.

Rabbi Yisroel Altein, co-director of Chabad of Squirrel Hill, also will be addressing the Oct. 27 massacre, but the focus of his sermons will be “about the positive strength that we need to find in this situation, and in all situations throughout the year, when we experience such horrible things, and seeing how we can as individuals

and as a community come together to create more positive environments,” he said.

It is important, he stressed, to “reach out to other people.”

“A lot of times we get caught up with ourselves, not realizing there are other people around us in the community that can use help, that can use a hand that get overlooked,” he said.

He suggests engaging in positive actions, and that each person choose a mitzvah to “increase and do better on” this year.

Although he has seen a heightened concern with security among Jews in Pittsburgh, he stressed there has not been a decrease in community involvement.

“On the contrary, if anything, we’ve seen more people getting involved than less people,” he said, although they “are definitely comforted that we are taking security seriously.” PJC

6. The civil wars are changing the Middle East. “We are seeing a Middle East transforming itself. Not by any one leader, not by a few leaders.” These wars are a “violent renegotiation of the Middle East as we know it. These civil wars will lead to a reorganization of power.”

Along with Paul Salem, Harrison is the editor of the newly published book “Escaping the Conflict Trap: Toward Ending Civil Wars in the Middle East.”

The book is divided into three overarching

themes: focused accounts of the civil wars in the region, the historical and geopolitical drivers of civil wars in the region, and topical contributions.

Although the book’s subject matter is daunting, its slim and focused approach allows readers to easily consume the material presented. And while its focus is toward the academic, its structure enables the reader to read only those chapters they find of interest.

Harrison concluded his talk by saying, “The civil wars are cutting a new path;

they are the birth pangs of a new region.

The United States can be a spoiler, but it can’t create a new Middle East … That’s not currently where we are. The United States is attempting to tilt the balance in favor of one or two of the actors against another … The future of the Middle East is going to depend on the four regional powers going from part of the problem to part of the solution.” PJC

so that we are ready for Yom Kippur,” she explained. “Then for Yom Kippur, we meet in upper Frick Park. We do an abbreviated Shacharit, so moving our bodies and offering gratitude and praise in Hebrew and in English and in songs.”

The prayers are followed by a reflective walk and talk.

“We walk through the upper part of Frick Park and we have various prompt questions around the themes of teshuvah and forgiveness,” she said.

Kesher, she said, crafts its programs with the aim of taking “something that is an ancient practice and to think about how it is relevant to us in this modern time. What does it mean to make teshuvah? When we return, what are we returning to, what are we committed to in our return? How do we learn the practices to help us make teshuvah?

What does it mean to enact tzedakah, tefilla and teshuvah, and what does it mean

to do that individually and collectively as a community?”

Chabad Young Professionals, a group geared to the “post-college, pre-family” demographic, also is offering alternative Rosh Hashanah programming. “Holy Hour, Happy Hour” is a social/spiritual program scheduled to begin at what may be a convenient time for many — 6 p.m. on the first day of the holiday, Sept. 30 at a private residence.

CYP was launched to “bring authentic Judaism to as many people as we can,” said Rabbi Henoch Rosenfeld, who co-leads the group with his wife, Sarah Rosenfeld.

“In our new age, in our generation, many people don’t relate to Judaism the way they have in the past,” Rosenfeld said. “So, our idea is — as we do at most of our events — to bring a modern twist to a typical Rosh Hashanah service and we are doing it at a venue that is accessible to everybody as well as a time that many who may not have had

the opportunity to either attend service or be involved in a Rosh Hashanah activity during the day can then hop on over to us for a social experience as well as a spiritual experience.”

Participants can enjoy holiday inspired cocktails and salads, “as well as some Rosh Hashanah inspiration,” he said.

Rosenfeld will lead what he calls a “slacker service,” which he described as a “truncated version of the Rosh Hashanah service, with a full-fledged shofar blowing.”

“The idea is obviously not to pull anyone away from synagogue,” he stressed. “Anyone who is able to definitely should attend services when they can. Our idea is for those who have already attended, and those who have not had the opportunity to attend, to come together for a social and spiritual experience on Rosh Hashanah, hence the name, ‘Holy Hour, Happy Hour.’” PJC

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David Rullo can be reached at drullo@ pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.

Toby Tabachnick can be reached at ttabachnick@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.

David Rullo can be reached at drullo@ pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.

Toby Tabachnick can be reached at ttabachnick@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.

SEPTEMBER 27, 2019 23

Life & Culture All the Jewish moments from the 2019 Emmys — TELEVISION —

By Emily Burack | JTA

A

ASSURE JEWISH TOMORROWS

LEAVE A LEGACY

LIFE & LEGACY Community Partners Beth El Congregation of the South Hills Community Day School Congregation Beth Shalom The Edward & Rose Berman Hillel Jewish University Center of Pittsburgh The Friendship Circle of Pittsburgh Hillel Academy of Pittsburgh Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh Jewish Association on Aging Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh Jewish Family and Community Services

Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh Jewish Residential Services Kollel Jewish Learning Center Mikvah – Jewish Women’s League National Council of Jewish Women, Pittsburgh Section Rodef Shalom Congregation Temple Emanuel of South Hills Temple Ohav Shalom Temple Sinai Yeshiva Schools of Pittsburgh

To create your Jewish legacy contact: Jan Barkley jbarkley@jfedpgh.org 412.697.6656 24 SEPTEMBER 27, 2019

fter winning an Emmy Award for the second straight year, Alex Borstein of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” movingly dedicated this victory to her Holocaust survivor grandmother, who defied the Nazis to stay alive.

“My grandmother turned to a guard …

She was in line to be shot into a pit. And she said, ‘What happens if I step out of line?’

And he said, ‘I don’t have the heart to shoot you, but somebody will,’ and she stepped out of line,” said Borstein, whose mother also is a survivor and American immigrant. “For that I am here, and my children are here. So step out of line, ladies. Step out of line!”

Borstein won the best supporting actress award for her portrayal of Midge Maisel’s manager, Susie Myerson.

Hers was among six Emmys picked up by “Maisel,” a show about a Jewish stayat-home mom in the 1950s who decides to try her luck as a stand-up comedian, in categories announced on Sunday night. The show had won two others last week at the Creative Arts Emmys.

Tony Shalhoub, who plays Midge’s dad, won for best supporting actor in a comedy series. At the Creative Arts Emmys, Jane Lynch won for playing the fictional comedian Sophie Lennon and Luke Kirby picked up a trophy for his portrayal of the famed Jewish comedian Lenny Bruce.

Patricia Arquette, whose mother is Jewish, was nominated in two categories and won in one: outstanding supporting actress for her role in “The Act,” a Hulu true crime show.

Arquette used her acceptance speech to call for support for transgender people and speak about her sister, Alexis, who died in 2016.

“In my heart, I’m so sad. I lost my sister Alexis,” she said. “Trans people are still being persecuted. I’m in mourning every day of my life, Alexis, and I will be the rest of my life for you, until we change the world so trans people are not persecuted. And give them jobs!

They’re human beings. Let’s give them jobs.”

Julia Garner won for best supporting actress for her role in “Ozark,” and the Jewish performer seemed stunned to win

over the four “Game of Thrones” actresses nominated in her category. Garner’s mom, Tami Gingold, is Israeli and had a successful career as a comedian in her native land.

Craig Mazin, the Jewish creator of “Chernobyl,” won for outstanding writing in a limited series and outstanding limited series. Actress-director Elizabeth Banks tweeted to congratulate Mazin that he is a “wonderful writer” and also a “mensch.”

“I hope in some small way, our show has helped remind people of the value of the truth,” Mazin said. He gave a shout-out to Lithuania, where “Chernobyl” was filmed.

“Saturday Night Live,” under the helm of Jewish creator Lorne Michaels, took awards for outstanding variety sketch series and outstanding directing for a variety series. The episode Michaels submitted for consideration was hosted by Jewish comedian Adam Sandler.

“He came back to host 24 years after he left,” Michaels said, “and in the middle of the show he did a tribute to Chris Farley, and the crew and the cast and everyone who was in that studio, most of whom worked here when Chris Farley and Adam Sandler were young men, it’s rare that you see a cameraman tear up or the boom crew crying. It was a very chilling moment, and very powerful.”

The “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver” writing staff, including Jewish comedian Josh Gondelman, won in outstanding writing for a variety series for the fourth consecutive year.

Arguably the biggest winners of the night?

The Jewish “Game of Thrones” creators, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, who won for outstanding drama series. “Game of Thrones” won 12 Emmys in total.

Last weekend, at the Creative Arts Emmys, Rachel Bloom won for outstanding music and lyrics for “Antidepressants Are So Not a Big Deal,” a song from the fourth season of “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.” Bloom shared the award with her creative partners, Adam Schlesinger and Jack Dolgen.

In addition, the Emmys posthumously awarded Anthony Bourdain, a Jewish chef, television host and author, for outstanding writing and outstanding informational series on the last season of “Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown.” The program aired after Bourdain’s death in June 2018. PJC

p Alex Borstein accepts the best supporting actress in a comedy series award for ‘The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’ at the 71st Emmy Awards in Los Angeles, Sept. 22, 2019. ÇPhoto by Kevin Winter/Getty Images

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Life & Culture ‘Dial it Down’ podcast seeks remedy through civil discourse — PODCAST —

By Adam Reinherz | Staff Writer

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nationally distributed conversation on matters ranging from policy and politics, to personal responses and involvement to last year’s Oct. 27 attack, began last week.

“Dial it Down with Dan & Drew,” a bimonthly podcast recorded in front of a live studio audience, recorded its first episode on Sept. 17 at the Carnegie Library in Homestead. The Tuesday evening program began with co-hosts Dan Berkowitz and Drew Goldstein describing their immediate reactions to the murder of congregants from Dor Hadash, New Light and Tree of Life*Or L’Simcha, and pivoted to a larger conversation with guest panelists on topics including remembrances from Oct. 27, justifications for votes cast in the 2016 presidential election and thoughts on the upcoming 2020 presidential contest.

“Dial it Down” is an outgrowth of earlier efforts to harmonize dialogue and storytelling, explained its co-hosts.

In the days after Oct. 27, Berkowitz and Goldstein found themselves at political

p Co-hosts and panelists at last week’s recording

opposites but united in a sense of loss. While Pittsburgh’s Jewish community debated the value of a possible visit by President Donald Trump, Berkowitz and Goldstein decided to invite 13 additional community members to co-author and sign a letter seeking to restore civility in national discourse. The message was sent to the president, Congress, locally elected officials and national Jewish organizations.

Berkowitz and Goldstein were inspired by the act of bringing together a diverse body for the greater good, and sought to re-create the experience by demonstrating their own example of civil discourse.

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Photo by Jim Busis

In the months leading up to their Sept.

17 debut, Berkowitz and Goldstein partnered with Michael Sorg, a producer at Sidekick Media Services in Pittsburgh, to develop a website and social media presence explaining “Dial it Down’s” intentions.

Sorg is also working with the co-hosts to produce the podcast.

“One thing I love being a part of is being able to help distribute and widen important discussions like they’re having,” said Sorg. “I think it’s important to get it out there, grow it, continue the discussion. That’s why I have been involved in things like podcasting for about 14 years.”

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Being able to gather a group of people with competing views and engage in civil discourse is one of “the only ways we’re going to move forward and not backwards,” said Becca Ackner, a signer of Berkowitz and Goldstein’s original letter and a “Dial it Down” panelist.

Participating in the Sept. 17 program was “a great exercise in restraint, and also community, and community outside your normal comfort zone community.”

At points during the podcast taping, such as when Berkowitz said that he had voted for Trump in 2016 or that some of the president’s policies were moving the country in a better direction, Ackner took issue with the co-host’s claims.

That ability to talk to someone about their beliefs provides a greater benefit than simply retorting to digital rebuke or silence, she explained.

“It’s so much easier to just tweet instead of actually having a conversation.

Conversations make people uncomfortable, confrontation makes people uncomfortable, but if you’re willing to stick it out and get to some sort of end of the conversation you’re going to be better for it. Or at the very least Please see Discourse, page 29

SEPTEMBER 27, 2019 25 8/28/18 11:28 AM

Life & Culture Amar’e Stoudemire is now an undergrad, goes to his campus Hillel and wants to boost black-Jewish relations The basketball star has a longtime connection to Judaism. He is in the process of completing a second conversion — “more Orthodox,” he says — and also has associated with the Hebrew Israelites, African-Americans who believe they are connected to the biblical Israelites and adhere to some Jewish customs.

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency talked with Stoudemire last week about the initiative, his Jewish identity and his plans for the upcoming High Holidays.

On why he decided to launch the program: “It’s kind of a branch of myself. Being AfricanAmerican and also being Jewish, I’ve learned so much and was able to change my life and understanding how to articulate the positivity in one’s life, so that’s something the AfricanAmerican community can also learn from.

And then students who are in that environment for education, it’s even more of a sharper way to learn, so I felt like it was important to put out those programs on campuses.”

p Amar’e Stoudemire is leading an initiative to connect Jewish and AfricanAmerican students at Florida International University.

Photo courtesy of FIU Hillel

— SPORTS —

By Josefin Dolsten | JTA

D

espite his serious thoughts about an NBA comeback, Amar’e Stoudemire is taking a little break from basketball to go to school. The former six-time NBA All-Star, who had never attended college, started this fall as a freshman at Florida International University in Miami.

Though the semester just started, Stoudemire — who has converted to Judaism, has Israeli citizenship and spent three years in the Jewish state playing for Hapoel Jerusalem — has already become a big name at the campus Hillel.

On Wednesday, he launched an initiative to strengthen ties between Jewish and African-American students at FIU. Stoudemire is working with Hillel and the campus Black Student Union to host bridgebuilding and educational events.

On the similarities between the Jewish and African-American communities: “There’s a lot that both cultures have endured.

From us African-Americans in slavery to the Jewish people having been in the Holocaust, there’s a lot of hatred toward both groups.

I think this is an opportunity to understand our differences, but also educate each other on the future.”

On spending a year learning Jewish texts at Ohr Somayach, an Orthodox yeshiva in Jerusalem: “It was captivating, breathtaking. It was an amazing experience. I loved it all. We studied it all, we studied everything from Chumash to Gemara to halacha. We studied everything at the yeshiva for sure.”

On his connection to Judaism: “I’ve been studying Judaism for many years.

I’ve converted into Judaism. My family are Israelites, we’re descendants of the ancient tribes of Israel who came to the Diaspora.

So I’ve been able to connect myself with the Jewish people because they’ve been able to keep the laws to a strict, sharp standpoint that I dream of getting to. That was the goal for me to go to learn at the yeshivas, and with the rabbis there and being in Israel, to really try to change my life and be as firm in my learning as they are.”

On converting to Judaism: “It happened years ago, it happened about seven or eight years ago, so I can’t remember the actual date. But recently I’m going through more of an Orthodox conversion now. I’m pretty familiar with the teachings, it’s just a matter of now being able to express that in my actions and the way I live.”

On leaving Israel: “I miss Israel big time, I think about Israel every day. For sure I miss it. I miss the atmosphere, I miss the learning, to be honest — most I miss the learning at the yeshiva.”

On how his line of kosher wine is doing: “It’s going amazing. I’m getting calls daily about the wine, they can’t believe it’s a kosher wine and tastes so amazing. Every event I go to I’m hearing people saying they want to order more wine, they want to order more cases.”

On how he will be celebrating the High Holidays: “It’s going to be a feast, it’s going to be more steaks upon more steaks, the minhag, steaks, wine and cigars. That’s the minhag for Rosh Chodesh before the High Holidays, it will be a sick feast.” PJC

Josh Gondelman is the nicest guy in comedy

omedian Josh Gondelman wants you to know up front: He’s a nice Jewish guy.

“I’m Jewish. I was bar mitzvahed, and I enjoy the ritualized eating of carbohydrates. But more than that, I was raised nice,” he writes in the opening meditation on “nice guys” in his new book, “Nice Try: Stories of Best Intentions and Mixed Results,” which came out this week.

In that way, Gondelman, 34 — who won three Emmys for his work on “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver,” and currently works as a writer and producer for the Showtime series “Desus & Mero” — is a bit of an outlier in the modern world of comedy, which often values mocking and R-rated themes.

going to happen,” Gondelman told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “There is a strong element of Judaism, which is obviously important to me, but the book really focuses on niceness versus goodness.”

It’s a deeply enjoyable arc: The essays cover everything from Jewish summer camp to working as a preschool teacher to romantic failures, and they are laugh-out-loud funny.

Which makes sense — in addition to working on those shows, he has also had a successful stand-up career and back in 2012 started the popular Modern Seinfeld Twitter account, which won hundreds of thousands of fans by imagining what contemporary episodes of “Seinfeld” would involve.

Gondelman spoke with JTA about the concept of “niceness,” his favorite Jewish holidays, discovering the Wu-Tang Clan at Jewish sleepaway camp and his evolving thoughts on Twitter.

Why open with talking about being a nice guy?

“It sets the tone for the overall arc that’s

How do you distinguish between niceness and goodness?

By Emily Burack | JTA

— COMEDY —

C

26 SEPTEMBER 27, 2019

Niceness is pleasantness and politeness and the kind of surface-level things you do to get by, which are important. And then goodness is kindness and righteousness, and sometimes it’s the same as niceness, and sometimes it’s in conflict.

I really resonated with your chapter about trying to apologize less.

Oh, yeah.

It is something that I find so challenging.

You write about how your favorite part of Judaism is that time between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and how you used to write a mass apology email. What was in those emails? And why did you stop sending them?

It was a recurring thing that I did. I would try to be very sincere [and] email a lot of people in my life. It was a vast mass email. I would give a little primer on Yom Kippur, and then say, so in that spirit, if I have done anything that was hurtful to you that I didn’t realize, I want to say that I’m sorry and I would

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love to restore whatever was breached. It’s different than [writing], “I’m sorry if you were offended” because there’s a value to being like, “Hey, if I did something that I didn’t realize, like please let me know. This is the time where I would like to clean the slate.” It’s nice to have a moment [where] it’s easy to explain why am I hitting the reset button today. It’s a nice excuse, as opposed to just doing it on like a random Sunday afternoon. I don’t know, people might go “why is this? What is this?”

Yeah, it gives it context.

It does. It gives it a context, which is a really beautiful thing about Judaism. There’s moments that are like structures for being a good person. [It’s] the kind of thing that I appreciate most about any kind of religion: These opportunities to go and do better and be reminded of the best ways to behave and treat people.

Please see Comedy, page 27

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Life & Culture Comedy:

stuff, so it feels like this weird hybrid of West Coast sonics and East Coast reference points.

Continued from page 26

One of my favorite parts of “Nice Try” was when you wrote about your time at sleepaway camp. You talk about discovering rap music. I love how you connect studying for bar mitzvahs and learning rap music with “learning and parsing dense, opaque lyrics,” but “only one felt like it prepared you for adulthood.” How formative were those years for you?

Some of my best friends are the guys that I went to camp with those years. We’re still in super close touch. I have a couple of close friends from high school and college, but numerically a disproportionate amount of the people that I still consider really close to my heart were the guys [from camp].

That brings me to my next question: You write a lot about the impact of the Beastie Boys on you. Why do you think the Beastie Boys were so important to you and to young Jews more generally?

I think the Beastie Boys are like the cool Jewish kids that you know. They were visibly and clearly — by their proclamation and by their heritage — Jewish, but were also doing cool stuff. Their music was both really enmeshed in the broader hip-hop culture, but also didn’t feel like they were putting on airs or pretending to be people they weren’t.

They were goofing around and having a good time. It was like, oh there’s a place to

p Josh Gondelman’s new book is “Nice Try: Stories of Best Intentions and Mixed Results.” Photo by Mindy Tucker

be a sarcastic Jewish kid. [Their Jewishness felt] more modern than the Mel Brooks and, at the time, the Woody Allen version of popular culture male Judaism.

They’re very important to me. They felt like such an entry point into this world that I felt like I didn’t have access to; there was a point of commonality being white guys, but being Jewish guys specifically. When I heard Eminem, I wasn’t like, oh that guy is me! When I heard the Beastie Boys, I was like, oh, there’s a way to appreciate and have access to this world in a way that’s not appropriate or disrespectful and that feels related to my own life experience.

What’s your favorite Beastie Boys album?

Oh, man, I think it’s become “Paul’s Boutique.” It’s just so out there and so silly.

I think [they] made it in L.A., but there are parts of it that [are] nitty-gritty New York

Switching gears a little: You’re very visible on Twitter, and the social media platform has been a large part of your career. What’s your relationship to Twitter these days?

I’ve had so much good fortune with it, professionally and personally. It’s like if you fell into a sewer and found $100, and you fell in a second time and found a diamond ring, and you’re like, wow, this sewer has been really good to me. Even though it is full of human waste.

Can you talk about the origins of your Modern Seinfeld account?

I started one afternoon — I think while I was seeing a tutoring client, while they were doing a practice test — I started tweeting a couple things of like, here are some Seinfeld plot lines that might happen if the show was on now. I was doing it kind of idly and my friend Jack saw it, and [said] “This should be its own thing.” He immediately jumped on the Twitter handle [@SeinfeldToday]. People really latched onto it, which was very incredible. A lot of credit to Jack Moore’s vision. It was a lark that turned into something that people really got into. Part of it is that we did a nice job executing it, but the other part is that people just have so much affection for “Seinfeld” — and “Curb.” [It’s] a specific, beloved thing for a generation of people, if not more than one generation. It was very nice to stand on the shoulders of giants in that respect.

One thing you still do on Twitter is give pep talks to strangers. You write about this in “Nice Try,” but could you talk about why you decided to start?

I started doing it [when] I felt kind of down about certain things. I [thought], I could ask for something online and say, “Hey, does anyone have any ways to feel better?” Or, you know, “Is there anyone that wants to book me for a show?” But [I thought], I bet I’ll get the same charge out of trying to do something for someone else. So, I said, “if anyone needs to hear a kind word, I’ll be here for five minutes.” This is maybe six, seven years ago.

So I did that, and it went well, and it was fun.

And I got the thing out of it that I wanted.

What do you hope readers take away from “Nice Try”?

I hope that, first and foremost, they have a fun time reading it. That it feels warm and funny. I want people to enjoy it thoroughly, and to come away being like, wow, what a good time, I feel better than when I started because it was invigorating and entertaining.

The second thing is, if there’s a good other level to it, I want people to take away that things are often hard and bad, [but] they can get better. There are things to latch onto amongst how difficult things are. One thing that is really inspiring to me is people doing really hard activist work, and people really standing up for what they believe in. So I hope that there’s like a little bit of encouragement.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity. PJC

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SEPTEMBER 27, 2019 27

Rosh Hashanah Meringue-topped apple pie bars: An innovative Rosh Hashanah dessert — FOOD —

By Dikla Frances | JTA

L

ooking for an innovative way to incorporate apples into your Rosh Hashanah menu? Look no further than these meringue-topped apple pie bars. With layers of buttery pastry, cinnamon-scented apples and fluffy meringue, they’re sweet, toasty and sure to be a hit.

The following recipe has been reprinted from “One Sarcastic Baker.”

For the apple filling: 3 large apples 1 tablespoon lemon juice 1/2 cup sugar 1 teaspoon cinnamon 2 tablespoons potato starch 1/4 cup water For the meringue and toppings: 1/4 teaspoon salt 4 large egg whites, room temperature 3/4 cup sugar 3/4 cup sliced toasted almonds Directions: For the shortcrust dough:

1. In the bowl of a standing mixer, beat butter, salt, corn syrup and sugar for 4-5 minutes until light and smooth.

Photo by Dikla Frances

Ingredients: For the shortcrust dough: 1 cup unsalted butter, softened 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon light corn syrup 1/2 cup sugar 1 large egg, beaten 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

2. Scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl.

On low speed, add the beaten egg. Mix until fully incorporated. Add vanilla, then flour 1/2 cup at a time. Mix until you have a soft, smooth dough. Do not over-mix!

3. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight. Remove from the refrigerator 10-15 minutes before baking.

For the apple filling:

1. Peel and slice apples into 1/8-inch cubes. Coat with lemon juice, then place into a pan over medium heat. Once apples start to boil, reduce to a simmer and cook for 3-4 minutes.

2. Strain apples into a bowl, leaving the liquid in the pan. Add sugar and cinnamon to the liquid and stir until the sugar dissolves.

3. Mix potato starch with 1/4 cup water and add to the pan. Once thickened, re-add apples, remove from heat and blend. Allow to cool until room temperature.

For the meringue:

1. Place egg whites and salt into the bowl of a standing mixer fitted with the whisk attachment. Gradually increase speed to high and beat until frothy.

2. Reduce speed to low-medium and slowly sprinkle in sugar.

3. Return speed to high and beat for 4-5 minutes until you have a shiny, strong meringue.

To assemble:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

2. Line a 13-by-9 baking pan with parchment paper and grease the sides. Flatten shortcrust dough evenly inside baking pan.

Using a fork, prick it thoroughly. Bake for 12-14 minutes until the sides of the pastry are starting to lightly brown.

3. Remove from oven and let cool in the pan for 15-20 minutes. Note: Make the meringue at this point.

4. Evenly spread apple filling on top of baked dough and top it with meringue.

Sprinkle with almonds.

5. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until the meringue is evenly golden on top. Let cool completely before slicing. Serves 6-8. PJC This recipe originally appeared on The Nosher.

Thousands to celebrate Rosh Hashanah at JDC events from India to Morocco — RELIGION — JNS Staff

T

housands of Jews from emerging, established and ancient Jewish communities around the world will be celebrating Rosh Hashanah at scores of JDC events, including concerts, workshops, volunteer opportunities, trainings and cultural performances.

As part of this effort, more than 8,500 poor, elderly Jews from in the former Soviet Union will receive a special holiday package of food and traditional holiday items, including honey, to connect them with the global Jewish community and celebrate the Jewish New Year.

This annual tradition is made possible

by JDC through its partners: the Jewish

28 SEPTEMBER 20, 2019

Federations, Claims Conference, and the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.

“The power of Jewish tradition is especially intense during Rosh Hashanah, when we gather with our loved ones to engage in timeless customs that remind us of our many blessings — from hearing the shofar to dipping apples in honey,” said JDC CEO David Schizer.

“From a homebound 80-year-old woman in Moldova who is visited by volunteers bringing a gift basket, to a young Jewish leader teaching his peers New Year traditions in Poland, we are empowering other Jews around the world to share in these rituals, to taste the sweetness of community, and to create new opportunities for the new year and generations to come,” he said.

Please see JDC, page 32

p Judafest cultural festival in Budapest, Hungary.

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Source: Facebook.

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Headlines Ginsburg: Continued from page 13

Herzl came on the scene. Among her many undertakings, she started night schools to teach English and trades to waves of Jewish immigrants coming from Russia and other Eastern European countries,” Ginsburg explained. “My father, born near Odessa, arrived in New York in 1909 at age 13. He was the beneficiary of a night school.”

She told an anecdote about Szold declining

Khanna: Continued from page 14

Israel-critical leftists who berated her for her vote. On Twitter, Khanna quoted Pressley’s tweet and added: “I believe @AyannaPressley we can work on a progressive agenda for peace on these principles. 1) Halt all settlement growth; 2) Halt Palestinian home demolitions; 3) Ease the terms of the Gaza blockade.”

In the JTA interview, Khanna said it makes sense to heed a minority in determining what constitutes bigotry — to a point.

Though he opposes BDS, Khanna like many Democrats opposes bills that would penalize Israel boycotters.

“Every person needs to be very careful with the language and listen to the communities being impacted,” he said. “That doesn’t mean you suppress your political views.”

Khanna declined to name Omar or Tlaib, or to directly address the comments that have drawn fierce criticism from some pro-Israel sources. In addition to backing BDS, both freshman lawmakers have fretted about what

Discourse: Continued from page 25

you’re going to go home and you’re going to lie in bed and you’re going to go over and over and over some of the things that Dan said. That’s what I’m going to do,” said Ackner. The process may “make me angry. It may make me frustrated, but I really respect him as a person, and it helps me get out of my own way with things that I believe, but also could use a little different perspective on.”

Getting onstage and hosting a dialogue

the offer of a male friend to say Kaddish for Szold’s mother. In Jewish law, men traditionally say the prayer daily for a loved one who has passed away. Ginsburg quoted the entirety of a 1916 letter that Szold wrote, which displayed her passion for her Jewish heritage and for feminism: “You will wonder, then, that I cannot accept your offer. Perhaps it would be best for me not to try to explain to you in writing, but to wait until I see you to tell you why it is so. I know well, and appreciate what you say about, the Jewish custom;

and Jewish custom is very dear and sacred to me. And yet I cannot ask you to say Kaddish after my mother. The Kaddish means to me that the survivor publicly and markedly manifests his wish and intention to assume the relation to the Jewish community which his parent had, and that so the chain of tradition remains unbroken from generation to generation, each adding its own link. You can do that for the generations of your family, I must do that for the generations of my family.”

Ginsburg wrapped up her remarks by

referring back to an older statement she gave on her own heritage as a Jew and her occupation as a judge.

“I am a judge, born, raised and proud of being a Jew,” she said. “The demand for justice, for peace, for enlightenment, runs through the entirety of the Jewish history and Jewish tradition. I hope that in all the years I have the good fortune to continue serving on the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States, I will have the strength and courage to remain steadfast in service of that demand.” PJC

they see as excessive pro-Israel influence in terms that critics say are anti-Semitic. Omar has apologized for some of her statements.

“I don’t want to re-litigate,” Khanna said.

Instead, Khanna broadly called for toning down the rhetoric and fostering greater tolerance. He cited the cooperation between Tlaib and Andy Levin, a Jewish progressive representing a Detroit-area district neighboring hers as a model.

“What I would suggest is the Levin-Tlaib peace plan,” he said.

Khanna’s progressive bona fides would seem to repudiate the thesis advanced recently by New York Times columnist Bari Weiss, author of the new book “How to Fight Anti-Semitism,” that leftists focus intently on the Palestinians but ignore the plight of oppressed Muslims elsewhere.

Khanna is co-sponsoring two separate bills that would counter China’s treatment of Uighers, an oppressed Muslim minority in China that Weiss alleges progressives have ignored. And he has called repeatedly for an end to arm sales to Saudi Arabia over its war in Yemen.

“What would be hypocritical for me is not to speak out for the human rights concerns of Palestinians,” he said.

Nonetheless, Khanna is sensitive to how pro-Israel Americans feel singled out, especially on college campuses.

“I’ve had students and their parents saying they’re uncomfortable about going to Hillel or being open about their faith,” he said. “Just like I think we shouldn’t penalize boycotts, or speaking about Palestinian rights, we have to have equal respect for people who are practicing Jews or supportive of the U.S.Israel relationship.”

Khanna said his views hew close to younger Jewish Democrats in favoring a close U.S. relationship with “progressive values.” Just as young Indian Americans like himself favor relations with India but long for peace with Pakistan, Jewish Democrats of his generation support the relationship with Israel but long for peace with the Palestinians.

The political action committee affiliated with J Street, the liberal Israel lobby that supports a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, has endorsed Khanna.

In an aside, Khanna said his brother was married in a Hindu-Jewish ceremony, noting that a combined chuppah-mandap (the wedding tent used by Hindus) is increasingly common.

“You can buy them online,” he said.

Khanna backed a bill this year to consolidate U.S. defense aid to Israel at about $3.8 billion per year, but he also favors leveraging U.S. aid as a means of pressuring Israel to end Palestinian home demolitions, release imprisoned Palestinian minors and stop settlement building. During the interview, he whipped out his smartphone and Googled instances of presidents (Eisenhower, Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr., Obama) who had used American assistance to extract concessions from Israel on territory or other issues.

Khanna, who is gathering signatures for a letter calling on Israel to stop the demolitions in the West Bank, declined to go into specifics about what aid he would favor using as leverage.

“I support continued aid to Israel,” Khanna said, “but the American president has a whole range of options.” PJC

with those opposed to one another was a learning experience not only in camaraderie but in production, explained Berkowitz.

“We’re building the plane as we fly it. Every episode we’re going to learn about technical things and conversations, and hopefully as we build we will get tighter and make it better,” he said.

“This is our brainchild that we started almost 11 months ago,” echoed Goldstein.

“The idea to put this on took a lot of sweat, blood, tears and we’re pretty happy about how it turned out.”

Audience member Brooke Franco, of

Munhall, described an evolution of attitude experienced during the evening. Whereas the panelists’ personal connections to the Oct. 27 attack was emotionally stirring, “the conversation got too political,” said Franco.

“The whole time they were talking I was remembering what happened in Tucson.”

Franco splits her time between Munhall and Tucson, and said her feelings regarding Oct. 27 are very much spurred by remembrances of the January 2011 supermarket attack in Casas Adobes, Arizona, when U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 18 others were shot.

“These shootings bring about larger issues.

We have to learn about anger,” said Franco.

The benefit of civil discourse as public remedy was evident that evening, explained Goldstein.

“Dial it Down” presents a space for people “to share how they’re feeling, and not worry about having to protect their own opinions,” noted the co-host. When people “come together and they’re able to just kind of share a legitimate perspective, that’s when the magic happens.” PJC Adam Reinherz can be reached at areinherz@ pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.

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SEPTEMBER 27, 2019

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Anonymous (62) Ed Abes Barbara K. Abraham Gertrude and Evan Adams David and Meryl Ainsman Robert and Patti Americus Stan and Sarah Angrist Marcella Apter Kathy Arnheim Jay Aronson Leonard Asimow Associates in Neurology Philip Auron and Deborah Galson Nancy and Bob Averback Zivi Aviraz Jane Axelrad Ronna and Harry Back M. Brian Balk Hannah and Sam Balk Alan Balsam Deborah and David Baron The Bassins Marvin Batten The Beckermans Marlene Behrmann Cohen and David Plaut Neila and Danny Bendas Saul Bergad Jack Bergstein Melvin Berkovitz David Berman Helen and Don Berman Patti and Sandy Berman Jonathan Bernstein Sharon Bernstein Ellis Berzon Aya Betensky and Robert Kraut Mark Bilder Rabbi Aaron Bisno Charlotte Bluestone The Bluestones Eva Tansky Blum Richard Brean Lila Brody Lois and Jerry Browdie Betsy and Marc Brown Michelle Browne The Jack Buncher Foundation Jim Busis and Maureen Kelly Busis Neil Busis

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iva Night at Yesh Curriculum

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SEPTEMBER 27, 2019 31

L ’Shanah Tovah!

Dan and Debbie Frankel

Rosh Hashanah JDC:

In Morocco, the Old Age Home of Casablanca will host a holiday party for Continued from page 28 residents, with local volunteers delivering holiday gifts to the elderly.

In Hungary, JDC’s annual Judafest — a In Berlin, 50 home-hosted meals will be Jewish cultural festival in Budapest that organized by young adults around the city draws thousands of people each year—will for those looking to connect and celebrate focus on Jewish High Holiday traditions the holiday, stressing the Jewish value of through music, art, food and performance. welcoming strangers.

At the Jewish Community Center in In a number of cities throughout Romania, Warsaw, local families will attend Rosh cooking classes, ceramics workshops, Hashanah “seders,” learning holiday tradi- wine-tastings and educational events will focus tions and creating their own for years to come. on the foods and ritual aspects of the holiday.

In India, holiday services will be offered Among Rosh Hashanah events in post-Soat the local JCC in Mumbai, together with viet nations, volunteers in Kharkov, Ukraine, mindfulness classes and a retreat on the and Rostov, Russia, will visit with hometheme of empowerment and deeper listening. bound and elderly community members to deliver holiday packages and provide company to the loneliest without family to share the holiday, while in Moldova and Belarus, special concerts by local performers will be held in honor of the holiday.

In Krasnodar, Russia participants will have the opportunity to attend a pottery class dedicated to making holiday-related products, while participants in Yekaterinburg, Russia, will make challah and jam for community members in need. Most events in this region will be held at p More than 8,500 poor, elderly Jews from the JDC’s vast network of Hesed former Soviet Union will receive a special holiday social-welfare centers and package of food and traditional holiday items for Rosh Hashanah, including honey. Photo courtesy of JDC Jewish community centers. PJC

Tekiah!

Congregation Bet Tikvah www.bettikvah.org (412) 256-8317 Bet Tikvah is a queer-centric independent minyan, including family and friends. We hold services at Rodef Shalom Temple, Fifth & Morewood Aves.

Services are free and open to all. Get tickets at Rodef Shalom.

Temple David calls out for a year of hearing one another, being present and celebrating community.

May 5780 be a year of peace.

Temple David Monroeville, PA | www.templedavid.org | 412-372-1200

NEW LIGHT CONGREGATION 5915 Beacon Street | Pittsburgh, PA 15217 | 412-421-1017 | newlightcongregation.org

Rabbi Jonathan Perlman Brighten Your Life!

JOIN NEW LIGHT FOR THE 2019 HIGH HOLY DAYS Friendly, Egalitarian, Conservative ROSH HASHANAH SERVICES

Sunday, September 29th ......................................................7:00 PM Monday, September 30th ................................................... 8:45 AM Tuesday, October 1st .......................................................... 8:45 AM

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32 SEPTEMBER 27, 2019

Rosh Hashanah

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HOLIDAY VISITATIONS Sunday, September 22 Sunday, September 29 Sunday, October 6

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For more information, visit www.adathjeshuruncemeterypgh.org Questions, Reserve a Plot or Need a Ride call 412-443-6714 Adath Jeshurun Cemetery | 4779 Roland Road | Allison Park, PA 15101

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‫לשׁנה טובה‬

L’Shanah Tovah A Sweet Year

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SEPTEMBER 27, 2019 33

Celebrations

Torah

Birth

Eyes wide, incense ablaze

Dodi Walker Gross and Dr. Daniel Edelstone are pleased to announce the birth of their grandson, Óðinn Elías (Odin Elias) Gross on Aug. 18, 2019. Óðinn’s parents are Hannah Hjördis McVeety and Brian Jeffrey Gross. Odin’s other grandparents are Sara Rafaelsdottir and Adalstein Magnuson of Iceland and the late Stephen Gross. His great-grandmothers are Iris Walker of Pittsburgh, Maria Baraque of Florida and Hjördis Björnsdottir of Iceland.

Wedding

Munro/Jegart: Deneen Stevenson and Michael Jegart of New Orleans, Louisiana, and Paul and Avi Munro of Squirrel Hill joyfully announce the upcoming marriage of their children, Yosef Munro and Hannah Jegart. Hannah’s grandparents are Barbara Stevenson and the late Healis Duplantis of Louisiana and the late Jane Boyle of Speyside, Tobago and the late Rudolf Jegart of Tallahassee, Florida. Yosef ’s grandparents are Moshe Baran and the late Malka Baran (z’l) of Squirrel Hill (formerly of Forest Hills, Queens and originally from Poland), and Ruth Munro and the late Walter Munro (z’l) of Livingston, New Jersey, formerly of Northampton, Massachusetts. Hannah studied printmaking at Tulane University and is a program manager for Sylvain Labs, a brand strategy and innovation agency in New York. Yosef is a graduate of McGill University and is a composer and sound designer for commercial and film production. Hannah and Yosef met in New York City. Plans for a November 2019 wedding in New Orleans are underway. PJC

Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman Parshat Nitzavim Deuteronomy 29:9-30:20

A

few years ago, my buddy (and now rabbi) Benny Katz was leading daily prayer and, as he began the service, took out a little ceramic dish and a small round bundle of something called copal.

He lit the disk and a waft of smoke plumed throughout the small chapel we were in.

A shot of panic hit me. Can he do that?

In Jewish prayer? Light … incense? I was immediately unsettled and anxious.

And then he began to chant the familiar prayers and I began to feel ... spiritual. And in a way that I hadn’t felt before. I was surprised to be feeling spiritual in a synagogue. And the reason was because the basic paradigm of what a synagogue was and how it behaves was upset by some smoke and a pleasing odor. My normal expectations were broken, and they allowed for something better to take their place.

It is something I think we all need to think about as we go into High Holidays. I don’t mean to say that we should demand that the rabbi light incense at shul this year. I mean that we all need to realign our expectations for High Holidays — the itchy, uncomfortable clothes; the stuffy, serious atmosphere; the long, possibly boring service. We need to conceive of it differently than we presently do.

Most of us presently conceive of synagogue attendance as our act of religious observance. Maybe the prayers are familiar and comforting. Maybe the act feels like a worthwhile sacrifice in order to please God. Maybe we love the rabbi’s sermon; or that one song the cantor sings. Maybe we like kiddush.

Few of us walk into our synagogue’s main sanctuary with a deep sense of entering into spiritual space and time. We do not

place that experience on par with arriving at Dharamshala to meditate with Buddhist monks, or standing on a beautiful beach to see the sunrise over the ocean.

We expect to be bored and so we are bored. We do not expect to feel spiritual and so we do not feel spiritual.

But guess what? It is spiritual. Those words that we say connect us to our ancestors and our homeland and to God and to each other.

There is a kabbalistic teaching that one of the many names of God begins with the opening words of our morning prayer and concludes with our final line of “Adon Olam” — that the act of prayer is the act of revealing one of God’s secret names out loud.

Even when we aren’t aware of it, when we are most distracted or unaware, we are engaged in a deeply spiritual act. But how much more valuable an experience it would be if we went into it, eyes wide, fully awake to the potential of that spiritual time and space.

The last parsha we learn before Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Nitzavim, includes in its outset, “All of you stand here this day” — and concludes with Moses adjuring the people to “choose life.” We stand here this day with intent and purpose to live our lives with connection. And holiness.

And, yes, spirituality.

That is the act of choosing life: choosing to be elevated and uplifted; choosing to make the most of the special moments of sacred prayer. Reframing and rebooting ourselves to be more in tune with the spirituality that exists in the world but that we do not notice.

And if you need to, light a little incense.

But, please — do it at home, before you leave for shul. Don’t get me in trouble with your rabbi. PJC Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman is rabbi at Brith Sholom Jewish Center in Erie, Pennsylvania. He lives in Pittsburgh.

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SEPTEMBER 27, 2019 35

Headlines Ukraine: Continued from page 16

leading polls among Democrats seeking to oust Trump next year.

Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, has been openly pressing Ukraine to investigate the Bidens for months, with State Department assistance. In 2015, at about the same time Hunter Biden was on the board of the Ukrainian company, Ukraine’s top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, was ousted.

The elder Biden took the lead among Obama administration officials in seeking the prosecutor’s firing, but there is no evidence that he acted on behalf of his son or that the firing of the prosecutor benefited the younger Biden. Trump and Giuliani say the incident reeks of corruption.

Trump acknowledged that he raised the issue of the Bidens and corruption in his call with Zelensky.

Another important piece of context behind the phone call: Trump for a number of weeks had delayed delivering hundreds of millions of dollars in defense assistance to Ukraine that was approved by Congress with bipartisan backing to help protect the country from Russian encroachment.

On Monday, appearing at the United Nations General Assembly, Trump said it was legitimate to use assistance to pressure a country to combat corruption.

“If you don’t talk about corruption, why would you give money to a country that you

think is corrupt?” he asked reporters. Trump denied, however, withholding the aid to pressure Ukraine to investigate the Bidens.

That is what has Pelosi sounding more ready than ever to start formal impeachment proceedings — something she has long resisted over fears of a political backlash.

The key Jews: Ukraine’s president and U.S. Congress members President Volodymyr Zelensky At the heart of the scandal is the relationship between Trump and Zelensky, Ukraine’s youthful president elected in May who is Jewish. Zelensky walks a tightrope between standing up to Russia, cultivating friendships with the West and discussing his identity in a country with an anti-Semitic past.

The former comedian, 41, is a popular figure — the July 25 phone call from Trump was to congratulate him for his party’s overwhelming wins in parliamentary elections.

Ukrainians are looking to Zelensky and his cadre of young reformers to deliver a stable government after years of enduring widespread political corruption.

Compounding Zelensky’s challenges is his Jewishness. He shies away from repudiating Ukraine’s anti-Semitic past and from what many see as its lingering anti-Semitism issue.

Prior to his election, for example, an influential pundit said that the president of Ukraine should be Christian. He resists delving too deeply into his own Jewishness, joking at one point that “the fact that I am Jewish barely makes 20 in my long list of faults.”

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The potential impeachers: Reps. Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler and Eliot Engel These Democrats chair House committees that would take the lead in impeachment proceedings: Schiff heads Intelligence, Nadler guides Judiciary and Engel leads Foreign Affairs. Schiff, who also has been reluctant to pursue impeachment, now seems ready for the fight.

“This would be the most profound violation of the presidential oath of office, certainly during this presidency, which says a lot, but perhaps during just about any presidency,” he told CNN this weekend.

Nadler was said to be leaning toward impeachment before the Ukraine-Biden news broke, and was frustrated by Pelosi’s resistance. It didn’t help his case that his investigations into Trump appeared to stumble at times. In addition to the Mueller hearing falling flat, Corey Lewandowski, a top outside adviser to Trump, taunted and defied Nadler’s committee at a hearing last week related to the obstruction of justice allegations.

On Monday, Engel, Schiff and House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings released a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo demanding information about the extent of assistance provided to Giuliani by the State Department on the Bidens.

“If press reports are accurate, such corrupt use of presidential power for the President’s personal political interest — and not for the national interest — is a betrayal of the President’s oath of office and cannot go unchecked,” the letter said.

The freshmen Jewish Democrats feature prominently among the freshmen who won swing districts in the 2018 elections — the very group that until now has been wary of impeachment.

Monday evening brought a watershed symbolic moment: Seven of those freshmen, all coming from the national security community, said in a Washington Post op-ed that Trump had crossed a line and they were ready to consider impeachment.

Two are Jewish — Elaine Luria of Virginia, a former Navy commander, and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, a former CIA agent.

“It is clear to me that he has betrayed the public trust and abandoned his obligations to the Constitution by elevating his own interests over the national interest,” Luria said in a separate statement. “Allegations of this gross misconduct meet the threshold of high crimes and misdemeanors set by the Constitution.” PJC

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Even prior to the Biden story, Trump was said to be disinclined to assist Ukraine, not wanting to alienate Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom he sees as his more natural ally. But Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., met with Zelensky earlier this month and said Monday that Zelensky “directly” told him during that meeting that he believed Trump was withholding funds over the lack of an investigation into the Bidens.

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Obituaries MANES: Carol Freeman Manes died on Sept. 12, 2019 in Seattle, Washington at age 96. She was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania and grew up in Sunbury, Pennsylvania. She attended Duke University, graduated in 1945 and married Milton Manes later that year. Early in their marriage they moved to Pittsburgh, where she earned a Master of Letters degree in English literature from the University of Pittsburgh and later volunteered for many years at the Family Court Children’s Waiting Room and the Riverview Center for Jewish Seniors. In 1967, she and Milton moved to Kent, Ohio; upon his retirement in 1985, they returned to Pittsburgh. After his death in 2014, she moved to The Summit at First Hill in Seattle.

She is survived by a son, Stephen (Susan Kocik), and a daughter, Eleanor (Siegfried Wevering). Funeral arrangements are private. Memorial donations may be made to a charity of one’s choice.

WOLFSON: Beverly Wolfson, on Thursday, Sept. 19, 2019, at age 86. Beloved wife of 59 years of Bernard Wolfson, mother of Ronald, Ivan and Alan, grandmother of Rafi, Tamar, Jacob, Benjamin, Ava and Levi. Sister of

the late Bernard (surviving spouse Erma) Caplan and the late Gloria (late Albert) Weiss. She was born in Pittsburgh and was a graduate of Taylor-Allderdice High School and the University of Pittsburgh. Beverly taught elementary school in Pittsburgh before moving to Glasgow, Scotland with her husband. She returned to Pittsburgh two years later. She was a long-time volunteer for ORT Jewish Women’s Organization. Services were held at Ralph Schugar Chapel, Inc. Interment Homestead Hebrew Cemetery.

Contributions may be made to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, 262 Danny Thomas Place, Memphis, TN 38105 or World Jewish Congress, 501 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10022. schugar.com

Unveiling

SISKIND: A monument in loving memory of Harriet Speiser Siskind of Media, PA, formerly of Pittsburgh, will be unveiled on Sunday, Oct. 6 at 10:30 a.m. at the New Gemilas Chesed Cemetery in White Oak, PA. Friends and relatives are invited. Following the unveiling, the Speiser and Siskind family will receive visitors at Weinberg Terrace, 5757 Bartlett Street, Squirrel Hill.

Frankel hosts meeting on gun violence

S

tate Rep. Dan Frankel, D-Allegheny, hosted a House Democratic Policy Committee meeting at the University of Pittsburgh on Sept. 13 to discuss gun violence impacting communities across the commonwealth from a public health perspective.

“Once we recognize a public health crisis in our commonwealth, we can act on it,” Frankel said. “We’ve seen that with opioids. We’ve seen it with Lyme disease.

Unfortunately, too much of the discussion about gun violence has been about restricting or protecting gun ownership, and not enough discussion has focused on the actual health impact of easy access to these weapons.”

Frankel has proposed legislation which would allow local governments to pass their own firearms ordinances, toughen the state’s hate crime laws and strengthen gun safety policies at the state and local level.

Testifiers at the meeting included Dr. John Rozel, medical director of Re:Solve Crisis Service, and president of the American Association for Emergency Psychiatry; Dr. Raquel Forsythe, director of trauma, UPMC Presbyterian; Heath

Johnson, crime analysis coordinator, Pittsburgh Bureau of Police; Ross Watson, violence prevention program manager, Allegheny County Health Department; and Councilperson Erika Strassburger, District 8, Pittsburgh City Council.

“Today was constructive,” Frankel said.

“We heard from a number of experts and others who helped us understand what bullets can do to the human body, the family unit, the neighborhood and the state of Pennsylvania. We were able to hear from people who are in our communities, working to save lives and addressing the overwhelming damage left in the wake of every incidence of gun violence.

“It is more clear than ever that there are legislative remedies that could stop the spread of gun violence and protect communities from the trauma that accompanies every gunshot,” Frankel added. “We will not stop talking about these issues until our Republican colleagues join us in finding legislative solutions to this public health crisis.” PJC

Jewish Association on Aging gratefully acknowledges contributions from the following: A gift from ...

A gift from ...

In memory of...

Natalie Kleinberg ........................................................ Harry Dell Stanford J. Levin ......................................................Harry Levin Elaine Levine ...................................................... Betty Ainsman Marsha Lieb ...............................................Sidney H. Lefkowitz Ivan Marcus....................................................... Pauline Marcus Robert Miller...................................................Lawrence I. Miller Howard Perlman ............................................... Ruth I. Perlman Selma P. Ryave ............................................Esther Y. Podolsky Selma P. Ryave ............................................. Irving L. Podolsky Selma P. Ryave .................................................Sol E. Podolsky Bernard Shire ........................................................Joseph Shire Jules Spokane................................................... Freda Spokane Lynda Stern .............................................................Sylvia Stern Lynda Stern .......................................................... Edward Stern Yettanda Stewart...................................................Carle Enelow Yettanda Stewart................................................June Y. Enelow Yettanda Stewart..............................................Leonard Enelow Selma Weiss............................................................ Louis White

THIS WEEK’S YAHRZEITS — Sunday September 29: Maurice Robert Colker, Benjamin F. Cooper, Irving Farbstein, Jack H. Goldstone, Solomon Lehman, Max Levine, Beulah Lobl, Philip Seltzer, Minnie C. Serrins, Isadore Simon, Sheldon N. Topp, Herman Louis Turk Monday September 30: Anna Chinn, Anne Betty Frand, Louis Frischman, Henry Goldberg, Lena Roscow Goldberg, Sorali E. Lubarsky, Marilyn Hope Manela, Jack N. Pearlman, Sandor Shaer, Samuel Silverblatt, Karl Solomon, David Terner Tuesday October 1: Morris Barnett, Jacob Borovetz, Jennie Cohen, Stella H. Cohen, Harold Dunhoff, Melvin Gordon, Arlane Horewitz, Harry Hostein, Sylvan Joseph Israel, Aron Mayer, Abraham Volkin, Ida R. Weiss, Gertrude Zubin Wednesday October 2: Julius Abrams, Minnie Berman, Edythe Gelman Buchman, Bella G. Cohen, Sylvia Diamond, Harry Frieman, Charles B. Goldstein, Nathan Lupovich, Stella Smith Madenberg, Harry Mittleman, Meyer Sachnoff, Louis Sadowsky, Nellie R. Tobin, Agnes Venig, Leon Verk Thursday October 3: Hyman Berman, Sarah Brown, Fannie Coon, Sarah Lynn Dupre, Yeruchem Fireman, Jennie Fisher, Harry Abe Geduldig, Albert Goldblum, M.D., Pearl Gould, Nathan Lautman, Sarah Reich Moses, Anna B. Papernick, Solomon Paul, Sarah Persky, Alexander Sharove, Isaac Sissman, Jacob Zwibel Friday October 4: Belle L. Bloch, William Glick, Beatrice Barnett Goldhamer, Ida E. Goldstein, Samuel Sandor Klein, Marcus Landman, Gertrude Lieb, Pauline Marcus, Jacob M. Mogilowitz, Helen Moskovitz, Jennie Routman, Harry Soffer, Isadore Steinman, Morris L. Wolf, Jacob Zinman Saturday October 5: Rose W. Cohen, Sylvia Drucker, Emanuel Friedman, Sara Gruskin, Murray Hersh, Morton Israel, Sidney Moskovitz, Abraham Opter, Samuel Papernick, Milton E. Ruben, Grace Z. Schwartz, Florence R. Stevenson, Minnie Wander, Alan Zeman

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Rachel Letty Americus ....................................Leo M. Americus Rachel Letty Americus ....................... Bessie Taback Americus Anonymous .............................................................Jean Serbin Marvin R. Berk .................................................Alexander Reich Karen & Allison Broudy ..................................... Allen A. Broudy Janet & Gordon Campbell .............................. Selma Luterman Harriet Cohen ........................................................ Stella Cohen Frank & Barbara DeLuce .....................................Sandor Shaer Edward J. Dobkin............................................ Bertram W. Roth The Goldberg Family...............................................Bessie Roth Ruben Goldberg..................................................... Fannie Stein Anonymous ............................................................David Lester Lucille C. Gordon & Corrine C. DenmarkMary Levinson Cohen Dean Hansell ......................................................... Bess Hansell Dean Hansell .................................................. Abraham Hansell Dean Hansell ........................................................ Elliott Hansell Dean Hansell .......................................................Sunny Hansell Sandford Hansell ........................................... Abraham Hansell

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SEPTEMBER 27, 2019 37

Community Hillel JUC paints ‘happy little accidents’

‘We Remember Them’

Hillel JUC’s Arts and Culture group, 70 Faces, joined with Panthers for Israel to host a Bob Ross-style paint night for students.

p Painters sought inspiration from the iconic sheep paintings of Israeli artist Menashe Kadishman.

p These students found “the joy of painting.” p Congregation Beth Shalom will showcase Rochelle Blumenfeld’s painting in memory of the Oct. 27, 2018, victims over the High Holidays.

Photo courtesy of Anthony Colaizzi

Photos courtesy of Hillel JUC

Pittsburgh-centric work discussed

Macher and Shaker JFCS volunteer attorney Hilary Spatz received the Allegheny County Bar Foundation’s Jane F. Hepting Award. The annual award is given to an attorney who has shown exemplary commitment to or made substantial achievements in pro bono legal services and dedication to public service, the legal profession and the community.

p From left: Joyce Ramirez, Hilary Spatz, Megan Walker, Orlando Portela and Jamie Englert Photo courtesy of JFCS

38 SEPTEMBER 27, 2019

p Pittsburgh author David Harry Tannenbaum shared a behind-the-scenes discussion during the release of his new book, “The Padre Pirate,” on Sept. 12 at Mystery Lovers Bookshop in Oakmont.

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Photo courtesy of Lydia Blank

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Community Smiles and speed along the course

p Hillel Academy of Pittsburgh Cross Country coach Dayna Greenfield stands next to Hillel Academy eighth-grader Noam Azagury after Azagury placed first at the Shady Side Academy Invitational in the varsity boys division on Sept. 15.

p Akiva Sunshine, left, Yoni Kanal, Dov Gelman, Rami Shaw and Noam Azagury are joined by Hillel Academy coaches Dayna Greenfield and Dan Goldstein after winning second place in the varsity boys team competition at the Winchester Thurston Invitational.

Photo by Adam Reinherz

Photo by Alice Sahel-Azagury

p Noam Azagury tallied another first place finish on Sept. 22 in the varsity boys division at the Winchester Thurston Invitational.

Photo by Adam Reinherz

p Coby Shaw, of Hillel Academy, placed first in the junior varsity boys division at the Shady Side Academy and Winchester Thurston invitationals.

p Hillel Academy cross country runners Talia Azagury, left, Tamar Isenberg, Amalia Weinberg, Bella Reinherz and Miri Shaw took third place in the novice girls team competition at the Winchester Thurston Invitational.

Federation hosts special training

Teen Scene Kickoff at The Friendship Circle

p The Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh welcomed 14 Pittsburgharea Jewish clergy for a training about trauma-informed spiritual care and counseling with Rabbi Beth Naditch on Sept. 19.

p The Friendship Circle started a new programming year by welcoming teen members for a Teen Scene Kickoff event on Sept. 15.

Photo courtesy of Daniel Shaw

Photo courtesy of Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh

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Photo by Adam Reinherz

PITTSBURGH JEWISH CHRONICLE

Photo courtesy of The Friendship Circle

SEPTEMBER 27, 2019 39

OCTOBER 27, 2019 Honoring the lives lost and the people affected by the attack of October 27, 2018

A commemorative day of service, study and community

REMEMBER. REPAIR. TOGETHER. Join the Pittsburgh Jewish community as we commemorate one year since the anti-Semitic attack on October 27, 2018. Volunteer activities, Torah study, and a community gathering will be available to the public.

Community Service

Resiliency Center Drop-In

Torah Study

Community Commemoration

11AM – 1PM

11AM – 4PM

2PM - 4PM

5PM - 6PM

Various Sites

10.27 Healing Partnership

Rodef Shalom Congregation

Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall

pittsburghoct27.org/event/ community-service

5738 Forbes Ave. Pittsburgh PA 15217

pittsburghoct27.org/event/ torah-study

4141 Fifth Ave. Pittsburgh PA 15213

PLANNING COMMITTEE Congregation Dor Hadash New Light Congregation Tree of Life * Or L’Simcha Congregation 10.27 Healing Partnership Center for Victims City of Pittsburgh – Department of Public Safety

Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh Jewish Family and Community Services Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh Victims’ Families and Other Advisors

PITTSBURGHOCT27.ORG 40 SEPTEMBER 27, 2019

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