Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle 9-15-23

By Adam Reinherz | Senior Sta Writer

The shrill sound of the shofar blast signals the start of a new year. This Rosh Hashanah, local spiritual leaders are looking to emulate the auditory effect and similarly impact those nearby.

Through sermons and conversations, Pittsburgh’s Jewish clergy hope to prompt reflection and action this holiday season.

Cantor Rena Shapiro of Beth Samuel Jewish Center in Ambridge said she is addressing “inclusion” and focusing on Moses to generate an awareness of self, others and the divine.

Within Exodus 4:10, Moses tells the Lord, “I have never been a man of words, either in times past or now that You have spoken to Your servant; I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.”

Generations of commentators have parsed the passage. The takeaway isn’t

Chabad Jewish Center of Monroeville dedicates a new Torah

necessarily Moses’ inability to masterfully elocute, Shapiro said, but what it says about the parties.

Moses — like Miriam, Aaron and every human — was made “b’tzelem Elohim” in the image of God; by choosing Moses to convey divine instruction, she explained, God indicates that humans are not only physically and emotionally diverse, but that their differences were also created in God’s image.

Being made in God’s image, she continued, “doesn’t mean that we’re endowed with a divine perfection of sorts, but rather that we are who we are.”

When Moses serves as God’s mouthpiece, the lesson isn’t about power or ability, but rather — for both God and humanity — “we are all who we are,” Shapiro said.

Rabbi Elchonon Friedman of Bnai Emunoh Chabad in Greenfield said one

By David Rullo | Senior Sta Writer

Mindy Norman told the crowd assembled at the Gateway Hall in Monroeville that her golden years gave her the opportunity for an amazing journey.

Unlike others her age, though, her voyage didn’t include a trip around the world, seeing the Grand Canyon or chasing a passion she abandoned in her 20s or 30s.

“In my golden years, I traveled an amazing journey of commissioning a Torah,” she told the more than 100 community members who skipped the Steelers’ home opener for something a little more significant, even in Pittsburgh: the dedication of a Torah.

The new Torah is the second in roughly three years for the Chabad Jewish Center of Monroeville — or, as Rabbi Mendy Schapiro said, “A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that’s happened twice.”

Norman and Schapiro initially discussed creating a second Torah after the 2021 dedication of the center’s first Torah. Both thought there were occasions when one wouldn’t be enough.

“A shul should have more than one Torah,”

A survivor, witness and spiritual leader reflects back and looks ahead

A conversation with Tree of Life’s Rabbi Je rey Myers

collaboration for the greater good

Yeshiva boys temporarily housed in vacant JAA facility

The Zebra Lounge opens at Carnegie Mellon University

‘Looking back and looking forward’: Pittsburgh’s Jewish clergy prepare Rosh Hashanah messages

 The Holiday Series, Rosh Hashanah (1948), New Canaan, Connecticut Image by Arthur Szyk, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

a_namenko / iStock / Getty Images

 Mindy Norman and Rabbi Mendy Schapiro observe as Rabbi Dovid Lipschitz fills in the letters of a new Torah dedicated in honor of Norman’s late husband, Martin Ira Norman.

Photo by David Rullo

Headlines

Tree of Life’s Rabbi Hazzan Jeffrey Myers contemplates a post-trial Pittsburgh

has not expressed remorse over his actions. Myers said that not having the opportunity to forgive the shooter hasn’t been difficult.

By David Rullo | Senior Staff Writer

Tree of Life Congregation’s Rabbi Hazzan Jeffrey Myers has been a national face of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting.

He’s appeared on the “Today Show” and in National Geographic, was interviewed by the Associated Press and has been featured in documentaries. He’s arguably the most public survivor of the attack, while also serving as the spiritual leader of his congregation.

Myers understood shortly after the attack that people would want to hear from Pittsburgh’s Jewish community and, given that the shooting occurred at a synagogue, they would want the words of a rabbi.

“That’s part of my responsibility,” Myers said. “That’s the mission that God has given me. Like Jonah, there was no escape. I couldn’t get on a vessel and go to Tarshish. I accepted that responsibility and tried to do my best.”

The man who stormed the Tree of Life building and murdered 11 Jewish community members in the most violent antisemitic attack in U.S. history was sentenced to death on Aug. 3. Myers was a witness at his trial. Sitting in the courtroom was both traumatic and aweinspiring, Myers said. The experience brought the survivors, victims and families together.

“Everyone didn’t necessarily know each other before,” he said. “Through this shared experience we all got to know each other, and it just made tighter bonds for what some are calling ‘our club.’”

Throughout the trial, Myers filled multiple roles. He was a witness and survivor forced to

grapple with the emotions that come along with a mass shooting. At the same time, he was the leader of his congregation and others looked to him for spiritual and emotional support.

He said there were periods when he had trouble performing both roles.

“There were times I just couldn’t do it, when I just knew that I had to take care of me because I couldn’t take care of anyone else,” he said.

Still, Myers said he’s mindful that in his role as rabbi, people see him as a communal healer.

“Everyone in our community, Jew and gentile, have varying degrees of being a victim in this and they come seeking spiritual health and a path for healing,” he said. “That’s just a permanent characteristic of the nature of this event.”

Myers said that he has been able to find

his path to healing as well. Sometimes it comes unexpectedly; other times it’s more deliberate, like when Myers led a healing service on the Shabbat immediately following the end of the trial.

Members stayed long after the service was finished. The rabbi sat back and watched the experience unfold.

“My wife asked me, ‘Is everything all right?’ And I said, ‘I’m just taking this all in because I’m watching healing,’” he recalled. “So, it’s not that you can describe what that should be or what you can do — it just sort of naturally happens.”

One common discussion in the larger community post-trial concerns the idea of forgiveness. Judaism does not allow for a person to be forgiven for an act if they haven’t sought forgiveness. The Pittsburgh synagogue shooter

“It’s just an acceptance of reality,” he said. “Sometimes there are no answers. And I think, for my own well-being, since I can’t find answers, to continue to do that is not going to be productive.”

Focusing on forgiving the shooter, or on his lack of remorse, Myers said, can perpetuate victimhood.

“So, I’ve made the conscious decision to not focus on that reality,” he said. “I will say that, at the end of our lives, from a Jewish perspective, we each appear before God and give an explanation. That happens to Jews and gentiles.”

G od, Myers said, will have only one question for the shooter: Why?

“ His answer will determine the dispensation of his soul for eternity,” the rabbi said. “To me, that’s probably the most terrifying moment I could ever imagine. So that’s not for me to worry about.”

For his own future and that of Tree of Life, Myers said there is still much to be determined.

Since the attack, the congregation has been housed at Rodef Shalom Congregation and has held High Holidays services at the Calvary Episcopal Church in Shadyside.

“We’re still a homeless congregation,” Myers noted, “and we’ll certainly be that way for another two years. So, when you don’t have a home to grab onto as your foundation and your safety, what is home? What does it look like? What is being a Jewish community in that sense look like?”

Moving forward, he said, the congregation will honor its 160-year history and acknowledge that the synagogue is standing

Please see Myers, page 17

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Headlines

JAA, Yeshiva Schools create an unusual shidduch

By David Rullo | Senior Staff Writer

Rabbi Eliezer Shusterman had a problem. School was about to begin and Schusterman, the menahel of the mesivta (principal of the Yeshiva Schools Boys High School), needed somewhere to house his students.

Yeshiva bought the St. Rosalia site in Greenfield in 2021, but the property’s rehab — turning its two buildings into both a school and dorm facility — wasn’t completed in time for the start of the 2023-’24 school year.

Shusterman, who is also the associate rabbi at Shaare Torah, told his tale of woe to congregant and Hillel Academy of Pittsburgh CEO Daniel Kraut.

“[Kraut] mentioned, ‘Why don’t you reach out to the JAA and see what’s available — basically the building is empty besides their AHAVA unit,’” Shusterman said. “Thank God, it worked out.”

Jewish Association on Aging CEO Mary Anne Foley was happy to collaborate.

“I got a call one Sunday morning from Rabbi Shusterman, asking whether this was even a possibility,” Foley recalled. “We chatted about it, and I said it could be a possibility, but I needed to understand more.”

The two met the following day and discussed

the fact that since the Charles Morris Nursing and Rehabilitation Center closed in January 2021, and residents had moved out, there were several vacant rooms. The students could be contained on a single floor where they would neither be interrupted nor cause interruptions.

“We began very quickly to work together to set the space as both a dormitory and classrooms,” Foley said.

The school occupies the JAA’s former Darlington Nursing Unit on the second floor of the old Charles Morris building. Two of the bedrooms were converted into classrooms.

There are approximately 40 students and dorm counselors staying at the

facility, Foley said.

The school is also using a former inpatient rehab space on the first floor that was set up as a larger classroom as well as a shul.

Shusterman and Foley said the students are interacting with the seniors on site, as the AHAVA Memory Care Center still operates in the building. The seniors, Foley said, could, in effect, serve as “adopted grandparents” for the students.

For example, Foley said, a few days after the students arrived, she was making her way through the building and heard someone playing a piano.

“It was this incredible music,” she said. “I

was walking down the hall and poked my head into the shul, and [a Yeshiva student] was sitting at the piano playing for his friends. His friends saw me, but I told them not to tell him. Afterward, he turned to me and said, ‘I’m sorry, was I playing too loud?’ I said, ‘That is so beautiful, it’s wonderful to hear. I would love for you to be able to go down to our memory care unit and play music for our residents.’”

Foley said another opportunity might be for the students to play games like chess with some of the residents.

The students have met with the JAA’s volunteer coordinator, Sharyn Rubin, to begin coordinating activities.

And while construction will start at some point on the JAA’s new senior development, Foley said it hasn’t begun and that this isn’t slowing the project.

“The building is vacant,” she said. “None of the construction slated has started at this point. It’s vacant space and was sitting idle. From a community perspective, it was a great way of partnering with a provider that needed the space. We were honored to do that.”

Both parties might have entered into the agreement with some skepticism, but Foley said the sound of shuffling desks and children’s voices have become a welcome addition.

“Our building has life again,” she said. PJC

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

p Drone shot of the JAA campus Image provided by the Jewish Association on Aging

Along with the mud, Burning Man brings a reminder of

By Adam Reinherz | Senior Sta Writer

The ancient Israelites spent 40 years exiting the desert. Two Pittsburgh Jews decided to go back.

Andrew Mallinger and his mom, Lauren Mallinger, were among 73,000 people who attended Burning Man earlier this month.

The Nevada-based festival features an annual week of art, music, dancing and myriad activities offered by temporary residents in a makeshift city.

Before attending the gathering in Black Rock Desert, Andrew Mallinger, 35, had seen scores of pictures and videos online and spoke to past participants about spending time in the desert with strangers and limited resources.

It seemed like it would be a “super fun, really unique, opportunity to get away and be disconnected for a week,” he said.

In 2022, Mallinger, and his partner, Adrienne Faurote, became “virgin burners” — the term is used to describe first-time attendees — and traveled to the desert.

Located about 100 miles north of Reno, the area is a silt playa surrounded by mountain ranges.

“It’s extremely remote,” said Mallinger, a former Squirrel Hill resident who lives in Florida.

During one week, more than 70,000 people created an enclave, coexisted and committed to leaving “no trace.” Numerous small camps were erected on site. Mallinger and Faurote stayed in “Hot Cheeks.” The camp had a generator, kitchen, several tents and a shaded sitting area.

Temperatures topped 100 in conditions where “you’re looking around and you couldn’t see 10 feet in front of you,” Mallinger said.

Still, the experience was incredible, he added.

At week’s end, another camp — Milk+Honey — operated a Shabbat service and meal for hundreds.

“It’s a really beautiful thing,” Mallinger said. “Everybody is just kind of gathered around. It’s dusty, it’s the end of the

week. You’re tired. You’ve been there for a while and everybody just kind of bands together, has a beautiful service and then they serve a meal afterwards for those who want to stay.”

Celebrating Shabbat in the desert was “raw,” he continued. “People cried. Everybody’s hugging. Everybody’s singing the songs together. It’s a really, really, beautiful thing.”

After returning from last year’s festival, Mallinger invited his mom to join him and Faurote at Burning Man 2023.

Squirrel Hill resident Lauren Mallinger, 69, agreed and, on Aug. 26, she arrived in the desert. Along with her son and his partner, she stayed in Hot Cheeks.

The first several days were dedicated to setting up the camp. “It was hot,” Lauren Mallinger said, “but everybody got to know each other, which was really nice.”

She met several people who had attended Burning Man for nearly 15 years; despite being a virgin burner, Lauren Mallinger was greeted “with open arms,” she said. “In the beginning, everybody at the camp made sure that I was OK, that I got my feet on the ground and that I was able to spread some wings to go off on my own.”

One morning, after waking to use the restroom around 7 a.m., two members of the camp invited her to attend “the 7 o’clock rave.” Still dressed in her pajamas, she agreed.

“Off we went, and there was this little female DJ rocking it, bumping it,” Lauren Mallinger said. “There were people crowded in. Some of them you could tell had been up all night.”

The “7 o’clock rave” was one of countless moments throughout the Aug. 24-Sept. 4 festival where she was warmly welcomed into a group largely comprised of people half her age, she said.

“There’s not a lot of people in their upper 60s and 70s — you see them but it’s more like 30s, 40s and 50s,” Lauren Mallinger said. “It’s a younger generation, but we were all able to communicate together. We built a camp, and we were cohabitating, eating and recreating together.”

Please see Burning Man, page 17

 Bottom row from left, Lauren Mallinger, Adrienne Faurote and Andrew Mallinger at Burning Man.

Photo courtesy of Lauren Mallinger

Headlines

Pittsburgh’s kosher options grow on campus

— LOCAL —

By Adam Reinherz | Senior Sta Writer

Campus life just got sweeter: A kosher coffee house opened at Carnegie Mellon University on Aug. 28.

Operated by Elegant Edge Catering, Zebra Lounge serves beverages, baked goods, salads and wraps.

“The hope,” owner Judah Cowen said, “is to open a bagel and panini bar. We have the equipment, but right now we are starting off with coffee, grab-and-gos and pastries.”

Lined with eclectic paintings and various zebra-themed decor, Cowen called the space “artsy,” while touting the java as a regional favorite.

“We partnered with Mechanic Coffee Co., which is based out of Verona,” he said. “They have a really unique offering. They are all about the human connection.”

The coffee is roasted fresh daily and then delivered within 24 hours, Cowen said: “It’s not coming packaged from somewhere else.”

Open Monday-Friday from 8 a.m. until 4 p.m., Zebra Lounge is one of several kosher spaces Cowen operates in Oakland.

At Carnegie Mellon, there’s The Edge — which serves pizza, bourekas, bagels and pastries — and Tahini — which serves shawarma, falafel, hummus bowls and grain bowls.

At the University of Pittsburgh, there’s The Delicatessen; though the Pitt eatery existed last year, the space was renovated and reopened on Aug. 21.

“The more robust the meal plan, the greater the possibility of a student attending,” he said.

Cowen agreed and said his eateries are a boon to local college life and Pittsburgh’s

The Delicatessen’s lunch menu boasts bagels and bourekas. For dinner, there’s shawarma, falafel, spicy beef and specials, including schnitzel, sweetand-sour chicken, and spaghetti and meatballs.

Food is prepared in Squirrel Hill, at Elegant Edge’s kitchen at Congregation Beth Shalom, then delivered twice daily to Pitt, where staff employ toasters and turbo chef ovens, Cowen said.

The abundance of kosher food in Oakland aligns with national reports regarding colleges in Pittsburgh. According to Hillel International, Carnegie Mellon and Pitt are among the top 60 schools for Jewish students.

Additionally, Pitt was listed among “28 Great Schools For Going Jewish Greek” by the Forward.

Rabbi Louis Fliegelman, who headed college guidance for the past 13 years at Ida Crown Jewish Academy in Chicago, told the Chronicle that kosher food on campus enables many Jewish parents to see a university as “a viable option” for their child.

larger Jewish community.

“People come here for school and some will stay here, so this helps people make Pittsburgh their home,” he said. “I also see a lot of people from the community utilizing these spaces, whether for a date, a meeting or a grab-and-go. People are utilizing it more and getting more comfortable coming on campus.”

Many of Pittsburgh’s kosher consumers live in Squirrel Hill, but the drive to Oakland, Cowen said, only takes from three to five minutes. Parking during the day is tricky, but by the afternoon — and certainly evening — it’s “a lot easier.”

The kosher caterer and restaurateur is confident that bringing people to campus is a win for the city and the suburbs.

“I believe that the broader Jewish community will benefit from this,” he said. PJC

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

 From left: Zebra Lounge Manager Mike Moses and Judah Cowen

Photo courtesy of Judah Cowen

The kosher caterer and restaurateur is confident that bringing people to campus is a win for the city and the suburbs.

Submit calendar items on the Chronicle’s website, pittsburghjewishchronicle.org. Submissions also will 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.

q FRIDAY, SEPT. 15

Chabad of Greenfield presents a Rosh Hashanah dinner. 7 pm. $25/adult; $18/child; $100/family, max. Shadtreez Event Space. ChabadofGreenfield.com/ highholidays.

q FRIDAY, SEPT. 15, SUNDAY, SEPT. 24

Join The Center for Interfaith Collaboration for Two Sacred Evenings — a High Holy Days experience. Celebrate the richness of Judaism’s entry into the New Year 5784 with Erev Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur/Kol Nidre services. 7:30 p.m. $100. Hicks Memorial Chapel, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, 616 N. Highland Ave. C4IC.org.

q SUNDAYS, SEPT. 17 – DEC. 3

Join Chabad of Squirrel Hill for its Men’s Tefillin Club. Enjoy bagels, lox and tefillin on the first Sunday of the month. 8:30 a.m. chabadpgh.com.

q SUNDAYS, SEPT. 17 – DEC. 17

Join a lay-led online parshah study group to discuss the week’s Torah portion. No Hebrew knowledge needed. The goal is to build community while deepening understanding of the text. 8:30 p.m. For more information, visit bethshalompgh.org.

q MONDAY, SEPT. 18

Join the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh First Person and Generations Speakers Series: A Talk by Holocaust survivor Oscar Singer with his daughter Lee Fischbach. 6 p.m. Free. hcofpgh.org/events.

q MONDAYS, SEPT. 18 – DEC. 18

Join Congregation Beth Shalom for a weekly Talmud study. 9:15 a.m. For more information, visit bethshalompgh.org.

q WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 20

The Squirrel Hill AARP welcomes all seniors to its first meeting of the school year and hear speaker Michael H. Marks, principal attorney at Marks Elder Law. He will explain what elder law is, estate planning and administration and asset protection planning for long-term care. 1 p.m. Rodef Shalom Synagogue, Falk Library 4905 Fifth Ave. Call Marcia Kramer at 412-656-583 with any questions.

q WEDNESDAYS, SEPT. 20 – MAY 15

Hadassah Greater Detroit

The Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh virtually presents two Melton courses back-toback: “Ethics” and “Crossroads.” In “Ethics,” learn how Jewish teachings shed light on Jewish issues. “Crossroads” will present an emphasis on reclaiming the richness of Jewish history. 7 p.m. $300 for this 25-session series (book included). jewishpgh.org/series/meltonethics-crossroads.

Wishes You a New Year filled with

Health, Happiness, Laughter and

Love.

q WEDNESDAYS, SEPT. 20 –DEC. 20

Join AgeWell for an intergenerational family dynamics discussion group, led by intergenerational specialist/presenter and educator Audree Schall. Third Wednesday of each month. Free. 12:30 p.m. South Hills JCC.

q WEDNESDAYS, SEPT. 20 –DEC. 27

Bring the parashah alive and make it personally relevant and meaningful with Rabbi Mark Goodman in this weekly Parashah Discussion: Life & Text. 12:15 p.m. For more information, visit bethshalompgh.org/life-text.

Temple Sinai’s Rabbi Daniel Fellman presents a weekly Parshat/Torah portion class on site and online. Call 412-421-9715 for more information and the Zoom link.

q  THURSDAY, SEPT. 21

New(ish) to Pittsburgh and looking to connect with the Jewish community? Join the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh’s Young Adult Division for YAD New(ish) & Jew(ish) Happy Hour. Come and connect with fellow newcomers, alongside the YAD Council, in a laid-back and informal setting. This is your chance to socialize and inquire about YAD and the Pittsburgh Jewish community in a comfortable atmosphere. 6 p.m. Lolev Beer, 5247 Butler St. jewishpgh.org/event/newish-and-jewish.

q WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 27

The Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh welcomes back to Pittsburgh Tony McAleer, the subject of the documentary “The Cure for Hate” and a reformed white nationalist, for an enlightening conversation on how conspiracy theories begin, take root and how we can stop them.

6 p.m. Free. Chatham University. Woodland Road. hcofpgh.org/events.

q MONDAY, OCT. 2

Join Chabad of Squirrel Hill in the sukkah to shake the lulov, eat pizza and enjoy music and crafts. 5 p.m. 1700 Beechwood Blvd. chabadpgh.com.

q WEDNESDAY, OCT. 4

The Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh’s new Tzelem Teen Group is a safe, inclusive space for nonbinary, trans, gender-expansive and LGBTQ+ teens. It will focus on topics such as healthy relationships, stress, belonging and identity; sessions also include opportunities to meet other teens and Jewish adult mentors and to discuss issues around transition and gender expression. Teens will meet monthly, with the Pittsburgh Tzelem group leader to explore the issues through games, art, discussion and by drawing on Jewish teachings. Learn more at a virtual information session for teens and their parents. 8 p.m. jewishpgh.org/event/pittsburghtzelem-information-session. PJC

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The Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle invites you to join the Chronicle Book Club for its Nov. 5 discussion of “The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store,” by James McBride. From The New York Times: “The book is a murder mystery locked inside a Great American Novel. The story opens in 1972, with the discovery of a skeleton buried in a well in Pottstown, Pa. The identity of the corpse is unknown but the few clues found (a belt buckle, a pendant and a mezuza) lead authorities to question the only Jewish man remaining from the town’s formerly vibrant Jewish community. However, instead of a simple whodunit, the novel leaves the bones behind and swings back to the 1920s and ’30s, to Chicken Hill, the neighborhood in Pottstown where Jewish, Black and immigrant folks make their homes. It’s a community of people bonded together by the links of love and duty, and it’s here that McBride’s epic tale truly begins.”

Your Hosts:

Toby Tabachnick, editor of the Chronicle

David Rullo, Chronicle senior staff writer

How and When:

We will meet on Zoom on Sunday, Nov. 5, at noon.

Noble stores and from online retailers, including Amazon and Barnes & Noble. It is also available through the Carnegie Library system.

Email: Contact us at drullo@ pittsburghjewishchronicle.org, and write “Chronicle Book Club” in the subject line. We will send you a Zoom link for the discussion meeting.

Happy reading!

PJC

Toby Tabachnick

West Bloomfield, MI 48323

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©2022 Hadassah, The Women’s Zionist Organization of America, Inc. Hadassah, the H logo, and Hadassah the Power of Women Who Do are registered trademarks of Hadassah, The Women’s Zionist Organization of America, Inc.

What To Do Buy: “The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store.” It is available at area Barnes &

©2022 Hadassah, The Women’s Zionist Organization of America, Inc. Hadassah, the H logo, and Hadassah the Power of Women

Who Do are registered trademarks of Hadassah, The Women’s Zionist Organization of America, Inc.

www.pittsburghjewishchronicle.org

Headlines

Tcame from Penn State University and SUNYStony Brook, Kent State and Harvard, Purdue and Duke, and thousands more.

Corps was formed more than a century ago, through President Woodrow Wilson’s National Defense Act of 1916. But the military has recruited officers from civilian colleges for much longer, possibly as early as 1819, the Army said.

duty Army general officers were commissioned through the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps — better known by its acronym, ROTC.

And a Pittsburgh-based rabbi dived into the opportunity to serve those ROTC officers during intensive Army Cadet Command training this summer in Fort Knox, Kentucky.

“These are the future leaders of the Army — and all of this is about leadership,” said Rabbi Elisar Admon, a Squirrel Hill-based mohel and Army chaplain. “What we tried to do as chaplains is to be with the cadets from Day 1, helping them to become better leaders and to deal with emotional crises. Our mission is to bring God to the soldiers, and the soldiers to God… I was there at every moment.

“When the cadets were on the field, we were on the field. When the cadets were in the barracks, we were in the barracks.”

Admon took a winding path to get where he is today.

Born in Israel, he and his wife, Tovi, moved to Pennsylvania several years ago. Previously, Admon worked as an educator and EMT and also served in the Israel Defense Forces. There, among other duties, he gathered the blood and displaced body parts of victims of terrorist attacks and disasters for proper burial according to Jewish law.

Admon became a mohel around 2018, then graduated in September 2020 from the Army Chaplain Center and School at Fort Jackson in South Carolina. Since then, he’s continued practicing both professions and was attached as a chaplain with the Army Reserves at the 316th Sustainment Command (Expeditionary) in Coraopolis, part of a unit that counts among

to kill,’” Admon said. “‘But how can we kill if God says not to murder?’

“There were some pretty deep conversations.”

Army ROTC, which bills itself as the American military’s largest officerproducing organization, has commissioned about a half-million second lieutenants “since its inception.

Admon, who lived and worked in Kentucky from June 20 through Aug. 18, worked alongside 10 advanced regiments with about 500-600 cadets each and three basic regiments with about 1,200 to 1,300 cadets each, he said. The regiments are separated based on years studied in college.

The “advanced” regiments, for example, took part in a 35-day training event designed “to develop a cadet’s critical thinking and problem-solving skills, and to forge them into tough, adaptable leaders who can thrive in ambiguous and complex environments,” the Army said on the cadet program’s website.

“Cadets are mentally and physically tested during a 12-day, consequence-driven field training exercise that replicates a combat training center rotation,” the Army said.

In the meantime, Admon and his group of chaplains conducted 12 different services each week, from Jewish, Catholic and Muslim to Wiccan, and for cultural groups such as Native Americans and the African-born, he said.

Please see Chaplain, page 17

p Rabbi Elisar Admon leads a service for cadets in Ft. Knox, Kentucky. Photo courtesy of Rabbi Elisar Admon

Shady Side Academy student takes on leadership role to fight antisemitism

— LOCAL —

By Justin Vellucci | Special to the Chronicle

Avery Litwin has been busy since she started attending Shady Side Academy two years ago.

Litwin, 16, studies multiple languages — French for the past 12 years and German for six — helps lead Shady Side Academy’s Model U.N. and International Club, and serves on the student council. During her free time, she volunteers at the Friendship Circle of Pittsburgh, loves eating at Mercurio’s and watches Michigan football.

The Fox Chapel teen recently added another line to her growing resume when StandWithUs, an educational group that supports Israel and fights antisemitism, named her as one of six area students participating in the 2023-24 Kenneth Leventhal High School Internship. The internship, which was launched for student leaders 12 years ago, runs for two semesters for a select group of high school juniors and seniors.

“I am excited to learn how to effectively bring awareness and education to my school and to Pittsburgh at large about antisemitism, in order to minimize it,” Litwin, who is Jewish, told the Chronicle.

The interns will join hundreds of others from high schools and universities throughout

North America and SWU chapters worldwide, officials said.

SWU, now in its 22nd year, created the internship “to formalize a growing network of Zionist students who proudly educate their peers about Israel and stand firmly against antisemitism,” officials said.

SWU runs campus and high school chapters throughout the U.S., Canada, in Israel, the U.K., Brazil, South Africa and the Netherlands.

Longtime Israel advocate Julie Paris, a Pittsburgher who serves as SWU’s Mid-Atlantic regional director, believes Jewish and pro-Israel students “are facing a crisis today at their schools and in their communities as antisemitism rises.”

“This year, there was an increase in the number of students who reported being victimized by antisemitic incidents,” Paris said.

“More students are reporting that they are

The She'elot Fellowship

made to feel isolated because of their religious or national identity,” she continued. “Our programs aim to give students the tools, education and support they need to participate in their schools and communities confidently and fully while proudly expressing core parts of their identity, including their Zionism.”

Litwin admits she was a little nervous before attending her first SWU conference, a weeklong affair, in August in Los Angeles.

“I didn’t know any of the other students who would be attending,” Litwin said. “It turned out to be an amazing experience. It was empowering to meet students from all over the U.S. and Canada who were passionate about fighting antisemitism and learning about their Jewish identity.”

Litwin will join Leventhal interns in a second SWU conference, “Israel in Focus,”

from Feb. 29 to March 3 in Los Angeles. The conference is open to both student leaders and community members.

Litwin, who moved to Pittsburgh from Portland, Oregon, considers herself lucky to already have experienced Israel first-hand. Her family and friends visited the Jewish state in December, and her sister became a bat mitzvah at the Western Wall. (Litwin had a Zoom-based virtual bat mitzvah during the pandemic.)

“It was fascinating to hear from our non-Jewish friends who traveled with us that Israel was not like what they see portrayed in the American news,” she said. “I realized that it is important to fight antisemitic disinformation.” PJC

Justin Vellucci is a freelance writer living in Pittsburgh.

p SWU Kenneth Leventhal High School Interns, 2023-24 Photo courtesy of StandWithUs

p Avery Litwin Photo courtesy of StandWithUS

Headlines

Holiday services to return to a Texas synagogue damaged in a 2021 arson

A portion of the stained glass that survived the 2021 arson of an Austin, Texas, synagogue was rebuilt into a three-dimensional eternal flame that will be installed in the social hall of the synagogue’s building, JTA.org reported. While the main sanctuary of the synagogue, Congregation Beth Israel, is still not open, the social hall was renovated into a transitional worship space. On Aug. 25, the congregation hosted its first Friday night services in the building in nearly two years and will gather there for the High Holidays.

In November 2021, then-18-year-old Franklin Barrett Sechriest was arrested on local and federal arson charges for setting fire to the synagogue, a Reform congregation. The fire caused more than $250,000 in damage, according to an email from a spokesperson. It destroyed the synagogue’s historic carved wooden doors, damaged the building’s exterior and its stained glass windows, and caused smoke damage throughout the sanctuary, according to a donation page on the synagogue’s website.

The glass refashioned into an eternal flame, which stays perpetually lit, sits on a square wooden platform and is carved into the shape of a fire rising up from the wood in red, orange, yellow and blue. It will be hung over the bimah.

In April, Sechriest pleaded guilty to two federal charges, including the destruction of religious property, which is a hate crime.

Fan ejected from US Open match after chanting Nazi phrase at German player Alexander Zverev

A spectator was ejected from a U.S. Open tennis match on Sept. 5 after allegedly chanting a Nazi anthem at German player Alexander Zverev, JTA.org reported.

During the fourth set of Zverev’s match against No. 6 Jannik Sinner, the No. 12 seed approached the umpire’s chair, pointed toward the stands and said, “He just said the most famous Hitler phrase there is in this world. It’s not acceptable.” The exchange was shown on ESPN’s broadcast.

The umpire, James Keothavong, turned to the crowd and asked the fan to identify himself, before reminding the arena to be respectful to both players. The fan was ultimately identified by security and removed.

After the match, Zverev explained that the fan “started singing the anthem of Hitler that was back in the day,” according to the Associated Press. “It was ‘Deutschland über alles,’ and it was a bit too much.”

Zverev, who lost the interrupted set but won the match, said he likes when fans are loud but that he had to intervene.

“I think me being German and not really proud of that history, it’s not really a great thing to do and I think him sitting in one of the front rows, I think a lot of people heard it,” said Zverev, a native of Hamburg born to Russian parents. “So if I just don’t react, I think it’s bad from my side.”

Barcelona resumes ‘Sister City’ relationship with Tel Aviv, reversing former mayor’s decision

Six months after Barcelona’s then-mayor

Today in Israeli History

Sept. 18, 1949 — Compulsory Education Law is implemented

severed the Spanish city’s relationship with Tel Aviv over what she said were Israel’s “apartheid” practices, her successor is renewing the ties, JTA.org reported.

Jaume Collboni, who became mayor in June, announced the restoration of the 25-year “sister cities” relationship between Barcelona and Tel Aviv.

Collboni’s decision elicited relief from the Federation of the Jewish Communities of Spain, which had said the suspension had “caused pain in the Jewish world and among many Barcelonians and Catalans.”

Ada Colau, Barcelona’s liberal mayor, surprised many by unilaterally breaking off the relationship in February, citing what she said was Israel’s “flagrant and systematic violation of human rights.” The move — which the Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain decried as “sophisticated antisemitism” — threatened the commercial, cultural and economic bond that the two cities have nurtured.

Colau was unseated in June after an eight-year tenure. Collboni had been her deputy mayor.

98-year-old German man charged with accessory to murder at Nazi concentration camp

A 98-year-old German man accused of working as a guard at a Nazi concentration camp is being charged with 3,300 counts of accessory to murder, JTA.org reported.

Prosecutors in the town of Giessen, north of Frankfurt, are accusing the man of having “supported the cruel and malicious killing of thousands of prisoners as a member of the SS guard detail” at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin between July

1943 and February 1945, according to the Associated Press. Prosecutors did not release the suspect’s name.

A psychiatric report conducted on the suspect in October determined that he is at least partially fit to stand trial, the AP reported.

Despite his advanced age, because he was younger than 21 at the time of the crimes, the suspect is being charged under juvenile criminal law at Hanau Regional Court, which holds jurisdiction over his place of residence.

Rare Roman weapons cache uncovered in Judean Desert

A cache of weapons believed to have been hidden by Jews during their revolt against the Romans nearly two millennia ago was uncovered in the Judean Desert, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced on Sept. 5, JNS.org reported.

The cache, comprising four well-preserved 1,900-year-old Roman swords and a shafted weapon, was found in a crevice in a cave in the Ein Gedi Nature Reserve near the Dead Sea about two months ago. They were apparently hidden by Judean rebels after being seized from the Roman army, according to researchers.

“We’re talking about an extremely rare find, the likes of which have never been found in Israel,” Eitan Klein, one of the directors of the IAA’s Judean Desert Survey, said in a video accompanying the announcement. “Four swords amazingly preserved, including the fine condition of the metal, the handles and the scabbards.”

“Finding a single sword is rare — so four? It’s a dream! We rubbed our eyes in disbelief,” the researchers said. PJC

— Compiled by Andy Gotlieb

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

Sept. 15, 2009 — Goldstone presents Gaza war report

South African Judge

Richard Goldstone presents his U.N.sponsored report criticizing the actions of Israel and Hamas in the 2008’09 Gaza war. In April 2011 he recants suggestions that Israel intentionally killed civilians.

Sept. 16, 1977 — Dayan meets with Egyptian official Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan holds secret talks in Morocco with Egyptian Deputy Prime Minister Hassan Tuhami to assess each side’s willingness to negotiate toward peace. The United States isn’t notified.

Sept. 17, 1948 — Lehi assassinates

U.N. envoy

Count Folke Bernadotte, a Swedish mediator who negotiated a one-month Arab-Israeli cease-fire in June, is assassinated by members of Lehi (the Stern Gang) over his plan for a permanent peace with an international status for Jerusalem.

The Compulsory Education Law goes into effect. It requires all children ages 5 to 15 to attend school, provides free elementary education, and facilitates alternative public systems for Arabs, religious Zionists and Haredi Jews.

Sept. 19, 1988 — Satellite Ofek 1 is launched

Israel becomes the ninth country with a space capability, launching the 340-pound Ofek 1 satellite from an undisclosed site. Named for the Hebrew word for horizon, Ofek 1 completes an Earth orbit every 90 minutes.

Sept. 20, 1890 — Poet Rahel Bluwstein is born Rahel Bluwstein, considered the founding mother of modern Hebrew poetry, is born in Russia. A poet from age 15, she makes aliyah in 1909 and is one of the first to write poetry in modern Hebrew in a conversational style.

Sept. 21, 2008 — Olmert resigns as prime minister

Facing corruption charges on which he later is convicted, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert resigns. A Knesset election in February 2009 results in Benjamin Netanyahu’s return as prime minister. PJC

L’shanah Tova

WISHING EVERYONE A HAPPY AND HEALTHY NEW YEAR

p Rahel Bluwstein is seen as the mother of modern Hebrew poetry.

p Richard Gladstone acknowledged in 2011 that his 2009 report on the Gaza conflict was flawed.

In first, leading kosher authority Orthodox Union certifies lab-grown meat

needs, making our cultivated chicken meat accessible to audiences around the world,” Ido Savir, CEO of SuperMeat, said in a statement.

By Luke Tress | The Times of Israel

NEW YORK — The Orthodox Union has certified a strain of lab-grown meat as kosher for the first time, marking a significant step forward for the food technology’s acceptance under Jewish dietary law.

Orthodox Union Kosher, the world’s largest and most influential kosher certification authority, recognized poultry products from Israeli startup SuperMeat as kosher, the company announced on Wednesday.

SuperMeat’s chicken cell line products were recognized as kosher Mehadrin meat, meeting the most stringent qualification for kosher supervision.

“It’s a big deal because just in terms of the technology itself, not just in poultry but in meat, it may have real significance for the future,” said Rabbi Menachem Genack, CEO of the Orthodox Union Kosher Division.

The certification came after SuperMeat hosted two rabbinic delegations and kosher authorities held a series of discussions on halacha, or Jewish law, and the science involved in the company’s technology.

Certifying lab-grown meat is complicated

because the meat cultivation process often starts with stem cells from living animals, and kosher law bars consuming any part of a living animal, Genack told The Times of Israel.

The New York-based Orthodox Union says meat products must come from a slaughtered animal, and nothing can be derived from a living creature.

SuperMeat’s lab-grown poultry sidesteps this requirement by taking the stem cells from eggs, in a process that could open the door for more kosher certification of

poultry products.

“I hope it will be a gateway to trying to find consensus among different supervising agencies in terms of what the standards should be” for lab-grown meat, Genack said. “We’re hoping that this will set the trend. One of our goals that we would like to do is to have something that is universally accepted.”

“Aligning our technology with kosher dietary laws holds immense significance for us. This step represents our commitment to inclusivity and respect for diverse dietary

SuperMeat’s process takes chicken cells from a fertilized egg and plants them in a meat fermenter, providing the cells with warmth, oxygen and nourishment with a plant-based liquid. The cells mature into meat tissue as they would in a chicken’s body.

The meat grows rapidly, with its mass doubling in a matter of hours, the company says. When the meat is ready, it is harvested from the fermenter by removing the liquid feed.

The company says its chicken products have advantages over farmed meat because the process is animal-friendly, more streamlined and environmental, does not use antibiotics or genetic engineering, has a high level of quality control, and the products have a long shelf life because they eliminate slaughter, a major setting for contamination.

The company, founded in 2015, serves up its products to the public at an eatery called The Chicken in central Israel’s Ness Ziona.

In addition to Genack, SuperMeat hosted Rabbi Hershel Schachter of New York’s Yeshiva University, Israeli halachic judge Rabbi Asher Weiss, and Rabbi Yosef Zvi Rimon of the Gush Etzion Regional Council and Jerusalem College of Technology. PJC

For a vision of Israel as bold

future

Alex Edelman Comedian and Broadway star

Virág Gulyás Advocate for Jewish Civil Rights

Ambassador Michael Oren Statesman, Historian, Soldier and Author

Ambassador Gilad Erdan Israel’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations

Jared Polis Governor of Colorado Leah Soibel Founder of Fuente Latina

 Orthodox Union’s Rabbi Menachem Genack, left, visits Israeli startup SuperMeat as part of the company’s kosher certification process.

Photo courtesy of SuperMeat via The Times of Israel

Moroccan

By Philissa Cramer, Eliyahu Freedman | JTA

Jews and Jewish sites appear to have largely been spared following the devastating earthquake that struck Morocco late Friday, killing at least 2,100 people and plunging some of the poorest areas of the Northwest African country into ruins. The export of etrogs, the citrus fruit harvested locally and used ritually in the upcoming festival of Sukkot, also appears to be continuing largely unabated.

it was aware of 479 Israelis in the country at the time of the quake and had accounted for the safety of all of them.

The quake came on the eve of a major pilgrimage timed to the anniversary of a Moroccan rabbi’s death and as the country’s etrog farms were completing their harvests of etrogs leading up to the fall harvest festival of Sukkot, which begins this year on Sept. 29. Hundreds of thousands of etrogs are grown in Morocco annually ahead of the holiday.

Tradition holds that etrog trees were first planted in the Atlas mountains nearly 2,000 years ago by Jews who found shelter amongst the Berber tribes there after the destruction

Israeli rescue teams were on the ground and the country offered additional aid to Morocco as a massive humanitarian effort took shape in the hours after the quake, the region’s largest in more than a century. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which has operated in Morocco since 1947, sent staff to begin an aid operation there.

Dov Maisel, vice president of operations at Israel Hatzalah, an emergency aid nonprofit, said a preliminary team of four people with experience in disaster management had traveled to Morocco early Sunday.

“They are describing terrible sites of destruction,” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, adding that his group would determine the size and scope of its ultimate mission based on what the team observes. “Will it be more medical? Search and rescue? Psycho-trauma? This is the evaluation they are doing right now.”

The 6.8-magnitude earthquake, centered in the Atlas Mountains near Marrakesh, struck at a time of heightened Jewish tourism, following Israel’s normalization of relations with Morocco in 2020. Israel said

of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. Today, the etrog farms in the Atlas mountains are largely staffed by Berbers and owned by Jews living in Israel or in Agadir, a coastal city that was flattened in 1960 by an earthquake that, according to JTA’s reports at the time, killed a third of the local population overall and two-thirds of its Jewish community, about 1,500 people.

Like many people involved in the etrog trade, Tsvi Dahan was spending Shabbat in Agadir, where there is a tiny remaining Jewish community that grows during the etrog harvest. An Israeli who owns a grove about an hour away, Dahan was sleeping in a local hotel when the earth started shaking.

“I knew immediately that it was an earthquake,” Dahan said. (His wife, Deborah Danan, is a JTA correspondent in Israel.)

“I put my head on the pillow and felt the bed move. I saw that the room was continuing to shake. In seven seconds I was downstairs without anything, just my shirt and underwear.”

Please see Morocco, page 12

Jews and Israelis reportedly all safe in devastating quake that killed at least 2,100

p A United Hatzalah volunteer helps people on Sept 10 in Morocco’s High Atlas Mountains after last week’s damaging earthquake. Photo courtesy of United Hatzalah

Headlines

Headlines

Morocco:

The hotel did not let guests reenter, so Dahan and others spent the rest of the night sleeping outside the synagogue, where etrog season means prayer quorums can be assured. The building, like the rest in the city, was built after 1960 as Agadir was reconstructed closer to the shore, downhill from the ruined city.

Dahan said he had quickly connected with Bilaid el Bouhali, the Berber who manages his grove, and learned that while el Bouhali was safe, his city of Oulad Berhil, in the mountains between Marrakesh and Agadir, was in ruins. A video taken by el Bouhali shows widespread devastation in his town, which had grown quickly in recent years.

Continued from page 11

20 kilometers outside of Marrakesh where the earthquake really wiped the villages off the face of this earth,” Maisel said.

He said his group had been alerted to the earthquake first by volunteers who happened to be in Morocco as tourists, including some who were preparing for a pilgrimage, called a hiloula, to the grave of Rabbi Haim Pinto. That pilgrimage to the coastal city of Essouira, which was set for Tuesday, drew about 2,000 people last year.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opened his Sunday Cabinet meeting by pledging support to Morocco and his counterpart there. An official request for aid had not yet been made by midday

“It’s not so nice to say but when I saw the lamp posts all leaning, one of my first thoughts was, what about my [etrog] trees? I hope they’re still standing,” Dahan recalled. “Bilaid came to pick me up from Agadir and we went straight to the mountain to check on them. Thank God they’re fine.”

On Sunday, Dahan was trying to figure out how to get himself and the etrogs out of the country. The Marrakesh airport is closed until further notice, but Dahan said he thought the first etrog shipments would depart on schedule.

In Marrakesh, where about 120 Jews live, many buildings have collapsed, and authorities have instructed residents to sleep outdoors for the next several days in case of aftershocks. (The majority of Morocco’s 1,500 Jews live in Casablanca, which was not affected by the earthquake.) But while many homes lay in ruins — including Dahan’s family home, where his grandmother and uncles lived until recently — relatively few deaths occurred there.

“Everything is okay — not a single Jew was injured,” said Menachem Danino, a Casablanca-born Israeli who runs a Facebook group for Moroccans in Israel. “All of the houses in the quarter were destroyed except the synagogue, which is fine with the exception of some cracks in the walls.”

Just a few miles outside the city, entire villages have crumbled, and an accounting of the injured and dead is still underway. Maisel said the Hatzalah team is part of that effort.

“They have been throughout the day on the ground meeting with officials and going out on the ground to villages between 15 to

Sunday, Israeli officials said.

Another Israeli nonprofit, SmartAID, said it had sent 20 people late Saturday night, along with technology that could facilitate communication and medical care in areas without electricity and running water. And JDC is building up a team around its Casablanca-based Morocco director for a sustained aid operation.

“As we mourn the harrowing loss of life and devastation in Morocco, we’re working quickly with the Moroccan Jewish community to provide assistance to those most impacted in Marrakesh and ensure their most basic needs are being met,” Pablo Weinsteiner, JDC’s chief operating officer, said in a statement. “As we in the Jewish community approach the High Holidays, weighing the uncertain balance between life and death, and the importance of aiding those most in need, we are on the ground in Morocco to preserve life, to comfort and support the most vulnerable, and to fulfill our commitment to repairing a broken world.”

Danino said he saw divine intervention in the fact that Morocco’s many Jewish sites had apparently survived the quake.

“Graves of Jewish sages [in the affected area] were not damaged,” he said, noting that he had spoken to the people responsible for the upkeep of the tomb of Rabbi Shlomo Bel Hench, a chief rabbi of Marrakesh who died 500 years ago and is buried outside the city in Ourika.

“There have been funerals day and night at the cemetery but the tomb of Rabbi Shlomo was not damaged at all,” Danino said. “How do you explain this?” PJC

“As we in the Jewish community approach the High Holidays, weighing the uncertain balance between life and death, and the importance of aiding those most in need, we are on the ground in Morocco to preserve life, to comfort and support the most vulnerable, and to fulfill our commitment to repairing a broken world.”

–PABLO WEINSTEINER

L’Shana Tovah!

Wishing you a year of good health, happiness, peace and prosperity.

‘Who rewards the undeserving with goodness’

Hashem spoke and raised a storm wind that lifted up the waves

Jonathan Weinkle

Aug. 18, 2023/1 Elul 5783, the Atlantic coast of New Jersey — The sea has knocked me on my behind several times today. Waves I thought I could ride, or jump through, smacked me in the face, sucked me under or went up my nose. Fallen in the sand, a second or third swell would often arrive before I had time to get my feet under me and take me down again.

Twenty-five years ago, I naively chose a verse to work into my tallit seemingly praising the sea as an example of Hashem’s handiwork. I had recently been discharged from the Israeli navy and, though back in the U.S., sought to preserve that period in my life in the tallit my soon-tobe-bride had commissioned for me. The artist recreated the sea, not in the traditional parallel blue stripes, but in swirls of blue, purple and green batik ink. From my friend’s concordance, I added the kavvanah: Psalm 107:23-24: “Those who go down to the sea in ships, who do their craft in the great waters, they have seen the works of Hashem and Hashem’s wonders in the deep.”

What I didn’t realize at the time was that this psalm is the source of the gomel blessing that we say in shul after a brush with disaster. It speaks of “the redeemed of Hashem whom Hashem redeemed from the hand of adversity (Psalms 107:2).” Among these redeemed are four groups: those who have crossed the desert, those who have been held captive, those who have been ill or suffered greatly, and those who have gone down to the sea.

My treasured verse, the one I wrap myself in, is not about the wonders of the sea, but about its dangers. I have taken it out of context, for the next verses (Psalms 107:25-28) read:

They rose to heaven, fell to the depths, disgorged their souls in misery

They reeled and wavered like a drunkard; all their wisdom swallowed itself

They cried to Hashem from where they were trapped and Hashem brought them out of their troubles.

Suddenly my choice seems questionable, both as an inspiring verse to wear about my shoulders every day and as an inscription on a wedding gift — especially from the bride to the groom. Or is it?

Hashem, with the Torah as our ketubah.

The six verses in the psalm about going down to the sea are curious in that they are among only a handful of verses in the whole Tanakh preceded by an inverted letter nun. The speculation on what this means is mindbendingly complex, but one theme emerges in most of the sources: The nuns signify that these verses, like Bamidbar 10:35-36, are out of place.

As the waves crashed over my head that morning, occasionally turning me upside down or dragging me out from shore when I thought I was moving toward the beach, I felt that displacement most concretely, if only for a few seconds each time. I understood that not only

didn’t deserve it — no matter, we should nonetheless see it and accept it as a blessing.

So perhaps receiving this verse and the beautiful tallit on which it was painted at the miniature Sinai of my own wedding and wrapping myself in it under the chuppah for the first time, was entirely appropriate. In our lives, we often find ourselves in such displaced situations, including, yes, ones of our own idiotic making. As in all things in this world, many of the great works of Hashem are not achieved through visible miracles, but through handing off the work to human beings. And as we learn, ani l’dodi v’dodi li — I am for my beloved and my beloved is for me, the verse from Song of Songs for which this month of Elul is an acronym.

The four examples enumerated in the psalm mirror the foundational story of the Jewish people, the Exodus. The Israelites were prisoners in Egypt when they were enslaved, suffered greatly and experienced the “sivlot Mitzrayim (sufferings or illnesses of Egypt),” crossed the desert to the Sea of Reeds and ultimately went down to the sea — all the way to the bottom, where they indeed saw wonders. Verse 28 even uses Exodus language: The word I translated as “trapped” is ba-tzar lahem, literally, “where it was narrow to them” — tzar being the root of Mitzrayim, Egypt. “Brought them out” is va-yotzi’em, a different conjugation of the same word used in the first of the Ten Commandments and in “Dayenu” to describe Hashem bringing us out of Egypt.

And where did the redemption from those four trials culminate? At Sinai, where we are often taught that the giving of the Torah was like an eternal marriage between Am Yisrael and

the sea verses, but the whole psalm, is about people who have been displaced, uprooted, separated from themselves and the things that sustain them. We feel that displacement whether we are underwater, lost in the desert, in captivity, or seriously ill. We bentsch gomel to give thanks to Hashem for bringing us back to ourselves.

Rabbi Neal Gold points out that we give these thanks with an acknowledgment that we may not always be worthy of the kindness Hashem has shown us, as the blessing says, “Who rewards the undeserving with goodness.” We may even be tinged with guilt, especially if others who shared our suffering have not yet been redeemed. Perhaps our own behavior caused the troubles in the first place and Hashem has bailed us out of our own self-inflicted mess. For this reason, he says, citing author Ellen Frankel, we recite the prayer in front of the entire congregation, and their response is to ask that Hashem “continue to reward you with only goodness.” Maybe we

All of us together: The call and the warning

Guest Columnist

Arnold M. Eisen

Reading last week’s Torah portion with the crisis prompted by Israeli “judicial reform” in mind, I was struck with special urgency by a call and a warning that the Torah clearly wants us to hear and obey.

The call comes at the very beginning of Parashat Nitzavim. “You stand this day, all of you, before the Lord your God — your tribal heads, your elders and your officials, all the men of Israel, your children your wives, even the stranger within your camp, from woodchopper to water carrier — to enter into covenant of the Lord your God.” Absolutely everyone is included in this call. “All of you:” men, women and children, from the wealthiest to the poorest, the greatest to the least, “even the stranger within your camp.”

The Torah goes on to widen the circle still further: “I make this covenant…not with you alone, but with those who are standing here with us this day before the Lord our God and with those who are not with us here this day.”

Moses seems to be speaking to me — a Jew who strains to hear his words several thousand years after they were spoken; one who does not live in the Land that the Children of Israel were about to enter. Yet here I am, an integral part of the people and tied inseparably to the Land; a person for whom the covenant of Sinai is as precious to me as life itself.

It’s hard at this moment of disappointed expectations to grasp the excitement that the Book of Deuteronomy seeks to convey at the moment of the people’s arrival in the Land. Cross a narrow river, they are told, and possibilities will open for a Life unlike any the world has ever seen. They will have God close at hand, and “laws and teachings” wiser than any that had gone before.

I was emerging into adulthood when I first encountered the promise that the Torah was holding out to me, a child of Israel, and

I immediately connected that promise to the state that was likewise coming into its own in those years. It could be a just society, founded on the finest principles of Judaism and the best of modern Western thought! The prospect was thrilling. Like millions of Jews around the world, I fell in love with Israel as well as with Judaism, grateful for the gifts that our generation had been given.

The years leave their mark on a person — and on a society. I’ve had to reckon each Yom Kippur with personal failings as well as achievements; each Yom Ha-atzma’ut marking the state’s independence I’ve come to terms with the fact that Israel too, for all its many wondrous accomplishments, remains far from perfect. “It’s still a young state,” I told myself and others. “Israel will never be perfect, at least until the Messiah comes. No state is. But Israel is already doing

We were married on the first of Elul, as if to remind us that we exist now for each other, that we are tasked with being the gomel when the other is displaced, caught in the undertow, not themselves. And as I look back 25 years, like the 25 years Tevye and Golde sing about, they are filled with moments for which I could bentsch gomel, like the clever ruse of a puppy “for the boys” during the first year of pandemic. That puppy, and the puppy-for-the-puppy that followed, saved me from despair. Even when I have not been my best self, have not deserved it, there has been one hand there to extract me from the waves.

May we all be blessed, even if not through marriage, to have such a gomel in our lives, whether a sibling, a child, a friend or a neighbor. May the one who has blessed you, who is more deserving than you know, continue to bless you with only goodness, always and forever. PJC

Jonathan Weinkle MD, FAAP, FACP is a primary care physician in a community health center in Pittsburgh. He is an amateur singer-songwriter, teaches at both Chatham University and the University of Pittsburgh, and is the author of the book “Healing People, Not Patients.”

great things and will get even better with the years. Give it time.”

The events of the past few months have made it much harder to believe that. Something decisive has changed in Israeli politics and society (eerily parallel to worrisome developments in America that are likewise unprecedented). Jews find ourselves divided by an effort to invest the prime minister of Israel and his governing coalition with nearly unlimited power, unchecked by the courts, the checks and balances, and the Constitution that have thus far saved American democracy from attempted tyranny.

Hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens have protested in the streets. A strong majority of Israelis express support for compromise. Israel’s president has worked assiduously to fashion such a compromise — and still, the governing coalition has pushed ahead, inclusiveness, let alone unity, be damned. Because it can. It has the votes needed.

“This is the meaning of Zionism,” I’ve heard more than one person say. “This is what we wanted: normaliyut, a state like every other; a people governed by might as well as right

Please see Eisen, page 15

Like millions of Jews around the world, I fell in love with Israel as well as with Judaism, grateful for the gifts that our generation had been given.

Guest Columnist

May we all be blessed, even if not through marriage, to have such a gomel in our lives, whether a sibling, a child, a friend or a neighbor.

Chronicle poll results: High Holiday plans

Last week, the Chronicle asked its readers in an electronic poll the following question: “How will you be attending or participating in High Holiday services this year?” Of the 287 people who responded, 54% said “in person”; 19% said “remote streaming”; 15% said “combination of in person and remote streaming”; and 12% said they would not be participating in or attending High Holiday services this year. Comments were submitted by 46 people. A few follow.

Overjoyed to be back together in person.

I belong to a Reform synagogue whose services I no longer find to be interesting or inspiring. I used to attend services regularly but no longer do so. I dislike the heightened use of Hebrew and the prevalence of modern music rather than beloved hymns that have long been a part of our cherished history.

Can you assure me that there is no resurgence of COVID? Can you guarantee me that my rabbi’s sermon won’t be its usual sleep-inducing diatribe? Can you move the Steelers-Raiders football game from Kol Nidre?

Eisen:

Continued from page 14

and interest as well as principle. Your side has lost. Your vision of Judaism, your reading of Deuteronomy, your definition of democracy — they’re so not what matter now. Get with the program! And, sitting in Diaspora, there is not a whole lot you can do about the situation. The main action of Jewish history is happening in a country where you have chosen not to live. That action is now under our control.”

Parashat Nitzavim offers a powerful rejoinder to that argument. This people is bound to covenant, not just to normalyut, and that covenant includes all of us. So does Jewish history. I knew, marching in a demonstration this summer in Jerusalem, that far more than the fate of a particular piece of legislation was on the line. Jewish history is being made these days.

Should the government carry through with announced proposals for “judicial reform,” unjust treatment of Palestinians and curtailing of civil rights, Jews living hundreds of years from now will shake their heads at the tragedy of a promise abandoned, incredible achievements tossed aside and ideals betrayed. Jews like me will remain attached to Israel but will do so with far less joy and pride. Others, Jewish and gentile, will quietly or noisily walk away from concern

How will you be attending or participating in High Holiday services this year?”

Since I’m unaffiliated, streaming is the best I can do. Not sure if it will be a local congregation or a congregation out of New York.

Apparently people are losing ties and forgetting about the benefits of congregational participation. Not only does

with the state, or join the ranks of its detractors. A great deal is at stake right now. There is still time to avert tragedy. We owe it to ourselves and our history not to go down this road.

I take comfort from the warning in Parashat Va-yelekh, the second part of last week’s Torah reading, that the project to which Moses has given his life is about to fail. “You are soon to lie with your fathers. This people will thereupon go astray after the alien gods in their midst, in the land that they are about to enter; they will forsake Me and break My covenant that I made with them.” Va-yelekh was my bar mitzvah portion. I wondered then at God’s apparent cruelty to Moses. Did he have to know before he died that his life’s work had been in vain? Years later I came to understand that Moses had not failed: here we are centuries later, still trying to prove worthy of the Torah’s teachings. And the words of warning are a wake-up call. They are not directed at Moses, but at us.

The risk of failure is clear to all of us, and so are its consequences. Presented with a third chance to build a just society in the Land of Israel, we dare not act recklessly. Wisdom and good sense can surely be found, together. PJC

Arnold M. Eisen is chancellor emeritus of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. This piece first appeared on The Times of Israel.

Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle Poetry Contest

Our readers are invited to submit poems to the Chronicle’s Poetry Contest. Winning entries will be published in our Oct. 6 issue. The theme is “harvest.”

Three winners will each receive a $54 gift card to Pinsker’s Books and Judaica, supplied by an anonymous donor. All submissions must be received no later than Sept. 22.

Guidelines:

Poems must be submitted to newsdesk@ pittsburghjewishchronicle.org. Please type “Poetry Contest” in the subject line. The poem must be in a Microsoft Word file. No PDFs or handwritten entries will be accepted.

• One submission per author.

• Must include the author’s name, address, phone number and email address.

• Poem should reflect the theme of harvest.

• Unpublished poems only. PJC

it help to connect to our spiritual selves, but ties into our communal relationships and our historical connection to our people.

I can’t meaningfully pray on Yom Kippur in my living room. If I can’t be with people in my own synagogue, I’ll find another instead.

I will not be there because I have no family to go with. Also, I’m concerned about being exposed to COVID.

Definitely streaming this year! As COVID cases are rising I am grateful for the opportunity to Zoom and stay healthy!

At 74, I have no interest in the holidays. No interest in sermons by self-absorbed rabbis. No interest in putting on a suit for three hours and thinking any of it makes the slightest difference.

In my experience, there is no substitute for the impact of a congregation of Jews together with the collective intention of praying for the good of all Jewish people everywhere and our whole world!

We are so unhappy with the Pittsburgh Jewish community. It has become too liberal for us, and we are not interested in hearing another liberal sermon.

Because I have no family or close Jewish friends in the area, I find celebrating and attending services depressing.

I greatly enjoy the sense of community I feel when I attend service in person, especially on Rosh Hashanah.

The experience of being in a synagogue, surrounded by other Jews, is far more powerful and meaningful than any other option. PJC

— Compiled by Toby Tabachnick

Chronicle weekly poll question: Is it your High Holiday custom to approach friends and family to apologize for hurt you have caused? Go to pittsburghjewishchronicle.org to respond. PJC

Community stakeholders’ voices not heard or acknowledged

As a former administrator of Weinberg Terrace, as well as Riverview Towers and the former Covenant at South Hills, I worked to ensure that proper kosher supervision took place in the kosher kitchens and dining facilities. The change in kosher dining has left many stakeholders uncertain of the future. I spent a great deal of time listening to thousands of residents and their families over the years and know that their voices and concerns need to be heard and addressed. It is paramount that the Jewish Association on Aging’s board and administration listen to all the stakeholders — past, present and future users of the services, residents and their families, staff, donors and the Jewish community at large.

JAA leadership must realize that there are many people who may need these services and will have no facility to call upon in their time of need. It is the deconstruction of the Jewish culture for our elders.

Amid the rush to accomplish this dismantling of services — including the Charles Morris Nursing & Rehabilitation Center and Weinberg Village, as well as eliminating proper kosher meal service at Weinberg Terrace — many in the community are left wondering if the long-range plan of higher rent apartments will be affordable to them and are concerned that there is a gaping hole for those in the Jewish community who need different levels of health care.

In 1906, the JAA’s predecessor organization began as “a home or house for aged Hebrews in conformity with ... Orthodox Judaism.” Fast forward to today: Sadly the Jewish Home, which became Charles Morris, was closed in January 2021 and residents had to find new homes in the winter during COVID. One year later, in the winter of 2022, the JAA closed one of its personal care facilities, Weinberg Village, again forcing families to scramble to find new homes for their loved ones. Now, at Weinberg Terrace, the JAA wants to serve non-kosher food; residents opting for kosher food will be served pre-made double-wrapped meals. This move takes away the continuity of heritage, which is why the JAA was originally established. What will differentiate Weinberg Terrace from any other senior living facility, where someone could request a kosher meal and get a prepackaged tray?

In geriatric practice we know that socialization is key to good mental health. Sharing meals minimizes loneliness and isolation. The alternative leads to negative emotions directly affecting nutrition and overall health. Now, some friends won’t be able to dine together if one’s religious observance prohibits them from sitting with someone who is eating non-kosher food.

The costs may be debatable and could be managed — none of this was beyond the scope of being worked out. However, this was sprung on the community after the fact and transparency was severely lacking. To start this right before the High Holidays is beyond insensitive.

Why can’t we slow the process down and wait until the secular New Year to see what we could accomplish with everyone’s input? Those sharing our concerns can contact our working group, unitypittsburghvoices@gmail.com.

Rena Becker Squirrel Hill

Headlines

Rosh Hashanah:

Continued from page 1

concept he’s gravitated toward this holiday season is refining the relationship with God.

“Very often we tend to look at Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur as days of judgment, and that the more merit we have helps us get a good verdict for the coming year,” Friedman said. “But we also know that the way we act, God reciprocates for us. When we judge another person favorably, and we help someone just for the sake of kindness, God will reciprocate.”

Interacting positively with people yields a greater spiritual connection, he continued. Instead of merely reading High Holiday liturgy and asking God for “complete kindness,” it behooves people to exhibit similarly godly behavior when dealing with others.

Cantor Michal Gray-Schaffer, spiritual leader of Congregation B’nai Abraham in Butler, said her intention this holiday season is to remind congregants about their various strengths.

One of the defining features of B’nai Abraham, she said, is its commitment to hospitality.

“When we say that we are a welcoming congregation it is really the truth,” GraySchaffer explained. “Every single person in the congregation — and it is a smaller congregation — talks to someone new, and strangers are quickly integrated into our community.”

Another quality she will address is the congregation’s sense of responsibility.

“When something needs to be done they really step up and do it,” Gray-Schaffer said. “We lost a very beloved president, Eric Levine, last year. He was kind of the person

Torah:

the rabbi said.

who liked doing everything, and we got used to him doing everything.”

After Levine’s death, however, “the board stepped in and everybody took parts of the myriad number of things that he had done,” Gray-Schaffer said, adding that Rosh Hashanah is a critical time to remind congregants of their talents.

After 13 years at the helm of B’nai Abraham, Gray-Schaffer is retiring on June 30.

“This is going to be a big year of transitions for my congregation, and they are very nervous,” she said. “I want them to realize, from my viewpoint, what their strengths are, and what they have exhibited and are exhibiting to me, regardless of who is their spiritual leader.”

Rabbi Daniel Fellman of Temple Sinai said the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting trial helped him identify critical Rosh Hashanah topics. During the holiday, he will deliver a

sermon on what’s next for the community after the trial. Another sermon will focus on what it means to be a liberal Zionist.

Regarding the trial, Fellman said he wrestled with whether to use his pulpit to broach such a sensitive subject.

“Somewhere between the second and third phases of the trial, I concluded that I wanted to talk about it and that, as a community, I think we need more framing of the thing,” he said. “I think it’s still very much on our minds as a community. We’ve witnessed something extraordinary, in that the perpetrator was convicted and held accountable. Regardless of whether you support the death penalty or not, the fact that the perpetrator has been held accountable is a giant step forward in Jewish history and the question for us is, ‘So what? Now what?’”

Answering these questions requires exam ining “our tradition,” he added.

Fellman pointed to the Torah’s description of the binding of Isaac (the passage is typically read during Rosh Hashanah). Although the text records Abraham and Isaac’s travels to the land of Moriah, mountainous ascent and near filicide, “we don’t hear about what happens after,” he said.

There’s a parallel to what happened in Pittsburgh, Fellman continued.

“We spent all this time focused on the trial, but what comes after?” he asked. “There are lessons from Abraham, Isaac and Sarah about moving forward and what we do as a community.”

Fellman’s other Rosh Hashanah address will ask listeners to consider Jewish peoplehood and international ties.

“The Reform movement has a colorful history with Zionism,” he said. “Still, the call to be a Zionist is stronger than ever.”

Fellman will address the “messy and complicated” relationship between the Diaspora and the Jewish state while advocating for those abroad.

“We are called to be supporters and lovers of Israel, even if we disagree with its policies and government,” he said.

Fellman said that both of his talks should hit at the heart of Pittsburgh’s Jews.

“What are the big issues facing us as Jews, what are we facing in Pittsburgh and where are we headed?” he asked.

Investigating these questions requires tradition and introspection, and Fellman thinks Rosh Hashanah is a perfect time to do so.

Continued from page 1

For Norman, the idea of commissioning a Torah was a way to honor her late husband, Martin Ira Norman. Other community members could dedicate portions of the Torah as well.

Her husband, Norman said, would have been pleased with her journey. He grew up in New York, she said, and was a bit of a perfectionist. He appreciated what a Torah meant — free of blemish and with its letters properly spaced.

“The real beauty of this Torah,” she told those assembled, “is what’s inside. That’s what keeps us Jewish.”

The Torah was dedicated on Sept. 10, less than a week before Rosh Hashanah and only a day before the yahrzeit of Norman’s husband. Its completion was supervised by Rabbi Dovid Lipschitz, who sat by those wishing to help fill in the letters outlined in the new scroll. The sofer actually did the work, lest the newly written Torah suffer a poorly completed letter rendering it non-kosher and unusable.

Each participant uttered, “I am hereby writing a sefer Torah,” fulfilling a mitzvah. The celebration included not only the completion of the scroll but a catered lunch, children’s craft and, of course, song, dance and a Torah procession. The mayor of Monroeville sent a proclamation read by Gabbai Alan Iszauk.

Schapiro said the Torah’s journey began

in Monroeville, where several letters were outlined before the scroll was shipped to Israel to be completed. Once it was mostly completed, the Torah traveled back and forth between Israel and New York, verifying that all of the letters and spacing were correct.

It was even examined by a computer.

“It’s quite amazing,” Schapiro said. “It points out things like, these two letters look like they’re touching, or, in that letter the line of the vav is not long enough so it needs fixed.”

Norman helped to choose the mantle, crown and yad for the newly completed scroll.

The last time the 14-year-old Chabad center commissioned a scroll, it already had been started, so they joined the progress in the middle, Schapiro said. This time was different because they traveled the journey together from beginning to end.

“It was something special,” he said.

That feeling of awe was shared by the entire community.

Michael Glasser said it was the first time he was able to take part in such a ceremony.

“I think it’s fantastic,” he said. “This is my first experience with writing a Torah. During the course of my life, I’ve never had the opportunity before now.”

The experience also was a first for Jeff Baldel.

“It was very moving,” he said. “It was the first time for me ever doing this, and it’s a continuation of the faith, so I think that’s very special.”

Dedicating the Torah right before the High Holidays carries special significance, Schapiro explained.

“The High Holidays represents a time of renewal, a time to recommit ourselves to God and God to us,” he said. “It’s a two-way street.

God recommits himself to be our king and our leader over the universe and over us and to provide for us, and we commit ourselves to doing that for Hashem. What better way to do that than with a brand-new Torah?”

And like the round challah symbolizing the circle of life, or the repetition of the Torah’s cycle that starts again as soon as it is completed, the dedication of a new Torah is another beginning, Schapiro said.

“It’s not the end — it’s the beginning of a new chapter,” he said. “While we have completed the project of a new Torah, we are working on some more projects coming to continue growing Chabad Monroeville and the Jewish community in the eastern suburbs.” PJC

p Apples and honey

Photo by Lilach Daniel via Flickr

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

p Chabad Jewish Center of Monroeville’s Rabbi Mendy Schapiro lifts the center’s new Torah.

Photo by David Rullo

p Back row: Mindy Norman (left), Gerri Moldovan, Esther Schapiro; Front row: Rabbi Mendy Schapiro, Rabbi Dovid Lipschitz, Gabbai Alan Iszauk Photo by Yehuda Welton.

Headlines

Myers:

Continued from page 2

on the shoulders of those who came before — while continuing to chart a new course for the next generation.

It’s hard to be visionary, though, Myers said.

“We’re still trying to work on what we can be because I think there was incredible potential to take the foundational aspects of what any synagogue should be, which is that trifold house of prayer, of study and of gathering and expanding it,” he added. “What does 10/27 mean to all of those?

I think we’re still grappling with that.”

What’s important, he said, is what emanates from the attack, something the congregation is still struggling to figure out.

“I think we’re still in the process of becoming,” he said. “I think the past five years of being in limbo have left limited opportunities to dream about it, but I think now that we’ve got the yoke of the trial off of our shoulders, there are

Burning Man:

Continued from page 4

When meeting others in the desert she often asked if they would bring their mother to Burning Man — the reply was always, “no,” she said. “I guess I felt special that I still had that free spirit, and I was still a free enough spirit that I could handle this.”

Whether setting up camp, helping cook or build a bike in the dust and heat, Lauren Mallinger dealt with “an environment that wasn’t exactly inviting,” she said. “You have to have a sense of humor about it because some of the stuff you saw is not everyday stuff. People were very uninhibited there.”

Part of what helped, she added, was being able to “roll with the punches.”

Nowhere was this trait more necessary than at week’s end.

Between Friday afternoon and Saturday, the desert got between half an inch and an inch of rain. The downpour was unusual — average rainfall in Reno during September is 0.21 inches, according to the Associated Press.

“It went from a very hard, dusty surface to this globbly guck that you could only walk barefooted on or in socks to get any kind of traction,” Lauren Mallinger said. “It was a mess. It was an absolute mess.”

Burning Man organizers told attendees to shelter in place, so Lauren Mallinger didn’t attend the Shabbat service at Milk+Honey camp. She also had to forgo another scheduled activity.

Chaplain:

opportunities to really engage fully in the creative thought process.”

Because no one has had the same experience as those who were in the Tree of Life building during the attack, he said, there is no road map for the congregation, which is beginning the work of creating something new.

Myers serves on the interim governance

create a new Tree of Life building on the synagogue’s site at the corner of Wilkins and Shady avenues.

The rabbi likens the work to creating with Legos of all shapes, sizes and colors instead of a prefabricated Lego kit where the builder follows a blueprint.

“We’re all trying to go through the process,

of collaboration, a lot of thoughtful partners,” he said.

Myers said there are a few things to keep in mind, whether it’s combating what he calls the “h” word (hate) or preparing for the High Holidays.

“It’s about building relationships,” he said. “Working together, embracing what Fred Rogers preached for decades: loving our neighbors. Sometimes the get-up-and-go is not always there. It’s easy to be frustrated by the constant negative news cycles. Where does one find hope? We just began Elul singing Psalm 27. It ends powerfully with hope in God. There is hope. We just have to find ways to embrace that and integrate it into our beings to be hopeful people.” PJC

David Rullo can be reached at drullo@

This story is part of ongoing coverage of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting trial and its aftermath by the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle

Continued from page 7

Admon led every Friday night Shabbat service the group held.

Admon is a family life chaplain at the 80th Training Command Center and was a supervisor chaplain at Fort Knox, serving cadets of many faiths. And he sees big differences between his work there and with soldiers in Israel.

“It’s totally different,” he said. “As a rabbi in the IDF, they’re focusing on religious life in the army — the kosher kitchen and all of that. Here, I have more time to deal with a soldier as a human being.

Temple and leaving a collection of photographs.

The images, Lauren Mallinger said, included Andrew, his siblings and their grandmother Rose Mallinger — one of 11 Jewish worshippers murdered during the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting.

“We were going to put them in The Temple, but unfortunately we didn’t get there,” she said.

Lauren Mallinger said she doesn’t plan on

“A lot of the time, when I’m counseling, I don’t even bring up religion, if the soldiers do not feel comfortable to bring it up.”

Admon said that’s fairly common among chaplains.

“People can fight but, as a religious figure … we’re above the politics,” Admon said. “As religious people, we support everyone — and that’s important.”

“We have, over the course of the summer, over 6,500 cadets,” said Jonathan Lorenz, an Indiana native and Lutheran chaplain for 16 years and the program’s lead chaplain — also known as deputy cadet command chaplain at Fort Knox.

“They represent every faith group you could

“One Israeli guy looked at me, and he’s like, ‘We’re gonna band together, and we’re gonna help each other, and we’re gonna get out,’”

Andrew Malinger said.

Passersby stopped, dug and pushed the vehicles through seemingly endless piles of goop.

A ndrew Mallinger drove for miles. He headed toward Reno and noticed a trailer with a purple wheel cover. He

possibly think of in the United States,” Lorenz said. “We want to be able to accommodate every member of every faith group we can. We also want to make sure these future leaders of the Army see their faith group represented.”

Senior Army ROTC has 274 programs at colleges and universities in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, with an enrollment of more than 33,000 cadets, according to the Army. There are 1,709 Junior ROTC units and more than 300,000 junior cadets.

Due to Admon’s previous expertise with the cadet program, he was selected to supervise and mentor three “intern chaplains,” Lorenz said.

remembered an Israeli in the camp owned a similar accessory. He flashed his lights and dialed

I asked him, ‘How did you get out?’ He said, ‘You’re in the middle of a caravan of Israelis — eight, nine cars deep — who figured out how to

The call was a “mind-blowing moment of community,” Andrew Mallinger said. “Burning Man is a community where everybody’s supposed to help each other. But within that, there’s this Israeli Jewish community that always feels a little closer, a little tighter, just because of who we are.” PJC

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

“I think Chaplain Admon did very well,” Lorenz added. “He represented to the brand-new cadets what it really means to take care of soldiers, from a chaplain’s perspective. He was really the face of that.”

Admon’s happy to be back in Squirrel Hill, he said. He missed his wife and six children, as well as the larger Jewish community in Pittsburgh.

But, he also has his sights set on his next deployment as chaplain. This winter, shortly before Chanukah, Admon will travel to Kuwait for 45 days to serve soldiers there. PJC

Justin Vellucci is a freelance writer living in Pittsburgh.

“Everyone in our community, Jew and gentile, have varying degrees of being a victim in this and they come seeking spiritual health and a path for healing.

– RABBI JEFFREY MYERS

Photo courtesy of Lauren Mallinger

Life & Culture

Adding some spice to honey cookies

By Jessica Grann | Special to the Chronicle

Honey cookies show up every year at Rosh Hashanah and people often make them for Sukkot as well.

I don’t think that I’m alone in feeling that our beloved honey cookies are a bit boring. I usually try one but rarely go back for seconds. I love the texture of honey cookies, but I find the flavor a bit flat, so I decided to spice things up a bit with cardamom and extra cinnamon.

Cardamom is such a warming spice to add to autumn recipes yet it’s much more subtle than ginger or clove. It heightens the flavor without overpowering the overall taste of a honey cookie. The cinnamon and cardamom spice mix make a really lovely cookie.

If you want to take the flavor up a level, or are looking for something with Sephardic vibes, then you can add orange blossom water to the cookie dough.

I love that this is a one-bowl recipe that can be easily mixed by hand. I like to share one-bowl recipes as often as possible for their easy mixing and cleanup but especially because they are simple to make with children or on Yom Tov.

These cookies keep well for days in a tin and they also freeze very well, so you can make them ahead of time and pull them out of the freezer as you need them.

The cookies are not dry, but they hold up

well if you want to dunk them in a cup of tea or coffee. They are also the perfect size for children to eat — not too big and not too small.

Spiced honey cookies

Makes about 22 medium-sized cookies; doubles easily

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour

6 tablespoons sugar

6 tablespoons honey

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon baking powder

L’shanaTova

from the Stein mishpucha!

Jackie, Ronen, Evan and Sam

1½ teaspoons cinnamon

½ teaspoon cardamom

A pinch of salt

1 tablespoon orange blossom water (optional)

3 tablespoons of sugar and 1 tablespoon of flour, for rolling the cookie dough balls

Combine the eggs, oil, honey, sugar, salt and spices in a medium-sized bowl with a whisk. If adding the optional orange blossom water, mix that in at this time.

Add 1 cup of flour and mix by hand with a spatula.

Once the first cup of flour is incorporated, mix in the second cup until you don’t see any white spots of flour.

Cover the bowl and refrigerate it for at least one hour.

This is a sticky dough. I recently tried refrigerating it overnight to see if it would be easier to work with, but I didn’t see enough of a difference to suggest doing so.

Use a measured tablespoon or cookie scoop to form dough balls that are uniform in size. The dough should be gently rounded on the top (not a flat measure).

Use another small spoon to release the dough from the measuring spoon. Roll each cookie in the palm of your hand to make a ball. You’re going to have slightly messy fingers with honey cookies — there’s just no way around it. I keep a small dish of water to dip my fingers in if things get really sticky.

Mix the sugar and flour in a small dish and roll each dough ball completely into this mixture.

Bake the cookies on parchment-lined baking sheets for about 14 minutes at 350 F. Remove the cookies from the baking pan and cool them on a wire rack.

Store them in a cookie tin for 4-5 days or freeze in plastic bags for later use.

Enjoy and bless your hands! PJC

Jessica Grann is a home chef living in Pittsburgh.

p Spiced honey cookies

Photo by Jessica Grann

Wishing you Sweetness, Good Health, and Peace

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Centuries-old Jewish prayer book smashes expectations at UK auction

By Times of Israel Staff

Arare centuries-old Jewish prayer book has sold at auction for several times the expected price, surprising the sellers who only had it assessed “by chance” alongside a Harry Potter book.

The volume had been estimated at between £5,000 and £10,000, but the winning bid was £57,000. With the buyer’s premium, the total price paid was £71,250, or almost $89,000.

The sellers were retired teachers Susan and Martin Wilson from Cumbria, in northwest England.

According to the Lancs Live outlet, three international bidders competed by phone to buy the book, which was sold on Sept. 5. Reports did not identify any of the bidders, or who made the eventual purchase.

“It was with a degree of incredulity that we watched the sale,” Martin told the outlet. “We are a little stunned by the outcome.”

The Wilsons had taken a Harry Potter book to be assessed by Hanson’s Auctioneer and only brought the Hebrew volume along as an afterthought.

“We were selling a Harry Potter book with Hansons and, by chance, took the prayer book with us to show their books expert Jim Spencer,” Martin said in a report from Fine Books Magazine. “He took an interest in it and organized expert consideration.”

“It was shown to me as something of an afterthought,” Spencer said.

“The vendor visited me to consign a Harry Potter book,” he said.

“However, before we shook hands to leave, he pulled this little leather case out of his bag and asked me if it was anything worth

looking at. I was completely bowled over by it. It’s beautiful,” he said.

Ilana Tahan, lead curator of Hebrew and Christian Orient Collections at the British Library, came to examine the book.

In addition, “one man from London came to view it and his reaction on studying it made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck,” Spencer said.

“He just kept saying, ‘this is so important.’ He was completely in awe. I’ve never had a client appreciate an object like that before,” Spencer said.

The tome originally belonged to Susan Wilson’s uncle who lived in Amsterdam, and went to his wife after he died. She passed away last summer, aged 98, at which point it was passed on to Susan Wilson.

“We think it’s been in the family for around 50 years,” Martin said in the report.

The title page shows Moses holding the two tablets of the Ten Commandments, with his brother Aaron in the clothes of the High Priest.

The book’s contents include Sabbath hymns, the prayer for the New Moon and songs of praise.

A Hebrew inscription in the book says it belonged to Abraham ben (son of) Meir Emden, along with the date 13th of the Hebrew month of Shevat, 517 (meaning 5517 in the Hebrew date system), which corresponds to February 3, 1757.

Though there is no proof, the inscription suggests the possibility that it belonged to the grandson of prominent German rabbi and Talmudist Jacob Emden (1697-1776).

Meir Emden (1717-1795) was himself a rabbi and av beit din (senior jurist) at Constantine in the Ukraine, according to the report from Fine Books and Magazine. PJC

— WORLD —

p A rare Jewish prayer book that sold for tens of thousands of pounds at auction on Sept. 5 Photo courtesy of Hansons Auctioneers via The Times of Israel

Life & Culture

Colorful Rosh Hashanah sides

By Keri White | Contributing Writer

With the High Holidays on the horizon, I’ve been considering my menus.

Although the main course is fairly traditional — a roast chicken, a brisket, salmon — creativity can blossom with the side dishes. These dishes add color and interest and a visual pop to the table.

The two below hale from opposite sides of the world; the cabbage is a classic Eastern European preparation, and the beans use Indian spices and techniques.

The red cabbage requires a long braise, but after the initial prep, it’s a love-it-and-leave-it recipe, which is great news for a busy host. The beans can also be made ahead and reheated or can be thrown together just ahead of the meal; they require a bit of chopping, but the recipe comes together rather quickly.

Braised red cabbage with apples and honey | Pareve

Serves 8 generously

This makes a large batch; I’m always surprised at how far a head of cabbage goes. The good news is that it keeps well. As for leftovers, think of it like a fancy sauerkraut and use it on sandwiches, to accompany meat or fish or with a charcuterie board.

2 tablespoons of olive oil

¼ cup honey

¼ water

¼ cup white vinegar

1 head red cabbage, sliced thinly

2 apples peeled and cubed

3 -4 bay leaves

Salt and pepper to taste

Heat the oil in a Dutch oven. Add the honey, water and vinegar. Bring it to a quick boil, then turn the mixture down to low. Add the red cabbage and apples slowly, mixing the cabbage and apples with the vinegar mixture thoroughly to coat. Once all of the cabbage and apples are coated, add the salt, pepper and bay leaves. Cover the pot and simmer for 2 hours

or until the cabbage is very soft. Check it periodically to ensure that it doesn’t burn — add a bit of water if the liquid has evaporated during cooking. Serve it warm or at room temperature.

Please see Sides, page 23

Shana Tova!

p Braised red cabbage

Photo by Keri White

Although the main course is fairly traditional — a roast chicken, a brisket, salmon — creativity can blossom with the side dishes. These dishes add color and interest and a visual pop to the table.

Life & Culture

Sides:

Continued from page 22

Masala string beans | Pareve Serves 4

If beans are not to your liking, you can swap out any other vegetables — greens, peas, carrots, okra, broccoli, cauliflower … or a mélange, which would be gloriously colorful!

A note on the spices: If you do not have all of these items in your cabinet and do not wish to provision for one recipe, there is a handy workaround. Skip the cumin-coriander-turmeric-chili and just use a tablespoon or two of garam masala or curry powder. These blends contain the elements listed below (and other spices besides).

1 medium white onion, finely diced

1 tomato, chopped

1 tablespoon cumin seeds

1 clove garlic, minced

1 teaspoon cumin powder

1 teaspoon coriander powder

1 teaspoon turmeric powder

¼ teaspoon red chili powder or cayenne pepper (optional/to taste)

¼ teaspoon salt (or more to taste)

1 pound green beans sliced into rounds

2 tablespoons canola or olive oil

Chopped fresh cilantro for garnish

Heat the oil in a skillet. Add the onions and garlic and sauté for 2 minutes. Add the cumin seeds and all the spices; sauté until fragrant, about 1 minute.

Add the tomato and cook it for several minutes. Add salt. Add green beans and stir to coat with the spice mixture. Cook for a few minutes until the vegetables are tender. Garnish it with a handful of chopped cilantro, if desired. PJC

Keri White writes for the Jewish Exponent, an affiliated publication where this first appeared.

Honey-mustard glazed salmon with pomegranate salsa

By Miriam Szokovski | Chabad.org

This recipe is perfect for Rosh Hashanah. Pomegranates symbolize our wish to have a year filled with mitzvot and good deeds, just as a pomegranate is filled with luscious seeds.

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons Dijon mustard

1 pomegranate

2 tablespoons chopped mint leaves

Squeeze of fresh lime

Directions:

1.Preheat oven to 400 F.

2. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Place salmon skin-side down on the pan.

3. Whisk all the ingredients in a small bowl. Pour (or brush) evenly over the salmon. Bake until fish is just cooked through and the top is glossy, approximately 20 minutes.

4.Mix the pomegranate seeds, mint and lime juice and let sit for 30 minutes. Spoon over salmon just before serving. PJC

ThisRoshHashanah,wewanttowish youanewyearfilledwithlove,happiness andpeace.

Thankyou,sincerely,foryoursupport.

L'shalom,

 String beans

Photo by OksanaKiian / Getty Images Plus

 Honey-mustard glazed salmon with pomegranate salsa Photo courtesy of Chabad.org

Life & Culture

Ireland’s first kosher restaurant in decades attracts local Jews and non-Jewish celebrities

— WORLD —

By Jacob Judah | JTA

The first kosher delicatessen to open in Ireland in over half a century is proving a surprise hit among Dubliners since it opened its doors in March — and not only among Jews.

Located in the southern part of the city, Deli 613 has served a mix of local fare, such as salt beef sandwiches and chopped herring, alongside Israeli comfort food. And the cozy deli — named after the number of mitzvot, or commandments, in the Torah — has quickly cultivated a following.

In May, the Irish Times awarded Deli 613 four and a half stars out of five in a rave review that described the eatery as a “great addition” to the Dublin scene. Leo Varadkar, Ireland’s head of government, stopped by for latkes and matzah ball soup in July. Former Scottish soccer star Graeme Souness, “Star Trek” actor Colm Meaney and TV chef Donal Skehan have also dropped in.

“We have a counter full of food, shelves and a full fridge with grab-and-go items like sandwiches and salads,” said Rifky Lent, who runs the restaurant with her husband Zalman, a

rabbi. The pair are Chabad-Lubavitch emissaries who live in Dublin. “We also have typical things, like hummus, tahina, chopped liver and herring, that we make in-house.”

Celebrities aside, Deli 613 has won a following among both local and visiting Jews. “We also have the local Jewish population, a lot of whom are elderly, and they

were very excited to come and buy things like

Dublin, a technology hub, plays host to a large number of Israelis who have been scouring the city for favorites from back home. “We have Israelis that are looking for things like Bamba, as well as Israeli dishes like hummus, shawarma and sabich,” an egg and

eggplant sandwich, she added.

Since the space is small, patrons tend to sit and enjoy coffee and food on the tables outside.

In the future, the deli plans to offer formal table service once a week.

For now, reviewers have praised both the quality and freshness of the food on offer — which is made by a non-Jewish chef.

“We decided to hire a very good chef who was very experienced in the Irish food market who is not Jewish,” said Lent. “He was super excited about trying something new and different,” she said, adding that he was working alongside a part-time Jewish chef in the kitchen.

The Lents, who have lived in Ireland since 2000, had planned for the opening of a new Chabad Center in southern Dublin. They had also been helping Ireland’s local community grapple with a shortage of kosher food that followed the United Kingdom’s recent withdrawal from the European Union, of which Ireland is a member. Jews in Ireland had traditionally relied on suppliers in neighboring Great Britain for kosher products, but new regulatory checks on goods crossing the Irish Sea have added costs and entailed mountains of paperwork.

These complications had made it difficult for Irish Jews to find the goods they needed.

LONG TERM CARE ASSET PROTECTION STRATEGIES

This is one in a series of articles about Elder Law by Michael H. Marks., Esq. Michael H. Marks is an elder law attorney with offices in Squirrel Hill and Monroeville. Send questions to michael@marks-law.com or visit www.marks-law.com.

$12,859 PER MONTH! The average cost of nursing home care in PA last fiscal year was $12,869.59 per month, or almost $155,000 per year. If you have to go to a nursing home, would you rather lose it all, or keep some of your hard-earned savings? Would you rather end up with less, or more?

You don’t have to spend it all. If you just let the nursing home staff advise you, they will tell you to spend down almost ALL of your money on a private pay basis till there’s very little left, then get Medicaid. They’re not going to advise you about proactive, affirmative, creative strategic planning to get you what you need but save money for you.

For most of my clients of more ordinary middleclass means – that is, who aren’t rich – and who need nursing home long term care, one of my goals is often to get you eligible for Medicaid benefits to pay for you. (Medicaid pays for nursing home and home nursing care, but not assisted living or personal care home.)

Even though Medicaid financial eligibility rules are stringent, there are still legal, lawful planning strategies and techniques that work, that we can use to save you money and get you a much better bottom line result. Here are some of them.

Medicaid Qualified Spousal Immediate Annuity: If one spouse from a married couple is entering a nursing home but the husband or wife remains at home, with this technique I can help you protect and save almost everything you have, except for only the expenses of putting the plan in place. In court cases contesting this strategy it has been validated repeatedly, and I use it whenever I can to help married clients get a much

better bottom line result when nursing home care is needed. Perhaps best of all, it works on a “wait and see” basis, as it is used only later when the need for nursing home time has arrived.

Gift and Medicaid Annuity Strategy: When a widow or widower or an unmarried, single person is headed to the nursing home for long term care, with this approach I’m able to save about half of whatever financial assets you have left – and that’s a lot better than losing it all! Like the first example, this plan can only be implemented later, when someone needs to go to the nursing home.

Irrevocable Asset Protection Trust: For the right client, this method can conserve assets, avoid probate, preserve capital gain tax advantages, and reduce or sometimes even eliminate Pennsylvania Inheritance tax – but unlike the first two strategies, it must be implemented in advance, prior to when you need it, sooner rather than later, because you need to wait five years to get the benefit and protection. It’s most useful when there is somewhat more money involved rather than less; when the need for nursing home care is less imminent and more distant; or when someone has long-term care insurance, to buy time for the plan to work. Disadvantage? In addition to giving up control of a chunk of your money and needing to plan ahead, it’s more complex and takes more time, energy and money to put in place.

Exempt Transfers: Medicaid ordinarily prohibits you from giving away gifts in order to safeguard your money. Making such forbidden gifts impairs your eligibility for benefits. Some gift transfers are allowable when done correctly, such as gifts to your husband or wife, your child who is disabled, blind, or under age 21, your qualifying, live-in “Caregiver Child,” a sibling co-owner of your home, or to a proper special needs trust for any disabled person.

Family Care Agreement or Personal Services

Contract: Using this tactic you can protect assets

by transferring wealth - or sometimes your home - to family or other caregivers, to pay them and get those assets out of your name. The written agreement converts a transfer to a family member that would be presumed by Medicaid to be a disqualifying gift, to compensation in return for services rendered, instead.

Irrevocable Prepaid Funeral and Other Prepaid Bills or Repairs: You can also put resources into allowable transfers, such as depositing funds into a prepaid burial/ funeral trust account at any time; or other purchases prior to becoming Medicaid eligible such as: buying or upgrading a car; paying off an existing home equity loan or mortgage; making needed repairs to your home (though timing is important with these techniques); or prepaying any bills that you can.

Real estate strategies: You may be able to protect and shelter resources under other real estate related

Please see Ireland, page 25

strategies such as using financial assets to purchase an exempt, protected home instead of renting, purchasing a new shared home with a family member, paying for a life estate interest in someone else’s home, or installment-sale-and-lease-back.

VA “Aid and Attendance” Benefits: Though the financial limits were tightened several years ago, eligible veterans and their spouses or widows may be still be able to get VA “Aid and Attendance” benefits, especially to help boost your ability to pay for home care or assisted living (more so than for nursing home care).

The crucial point to appreciate is there are many available strategies to protect your hard-earned nest-egg even when you or a family member are on the way to catastrophically expensive long-term care in a nursing home -or even If you’re already there. It’s never too late to try. I’ll help you fight to get what you need and to keep what you can keep.

helping you plan for what matters the

With the increasing costs of long-term care, having the help of a legal professional when planning for your family’s future can help you make better decisions that can result in keeping more of your money.

We help families understand the strategies, the benefits, and risks involved with elder law, disability and estate planning.

 Deli sandwich

Photo courtesy of 613 Deli

Life & Culture

Ireland:

Continued from page 24

Deli 613 has managed to fill some of that niche.

“There were a few things that happened at the same time that made us think: let’s do it,” recalled Lent.

But she added that the deli itself has had to overcome some Brexit hurdles.

“It is really complicated,” Lent said. “We tried getting suppliers from England, and we did manage to order a few times from there, but it is very difficult ordering directly from Britain now. It is a nightmare with paperwork and businesses are generally not very willing to do it.”

For example, in a process that Lent called a “bit ridiculous,” the deli orders meat that originates in Britain but must first pass through somewhere farther away in the EU to get to Ireland.

Despite those difficulties, stocking the products that Irish Jews recognized — such as specific cold cuts — was important, Lent said. “The Jewish food culture here is much more aligned with British food culture, so they are much more used to what Jews in England are eating.”

Deli 613’s full shelves may also provide a long-term supermarket option for kosher-keeping Jews in Dublin. After Brexit, the market that had traditionally supplied Irish Jews announced that it would no longer stock kosher foods.

While the local synagogue has opened a shop temporarily, Lent said that “It was not a long-term thing.”

“We are selling kosher meat, kosher chicken, matzah meal, the essentials of life,” she said.

Maurice Cohen, president of the Ireland Jewish Representative Council, believes that Deli 613 is the first fully kosher eatery in Ireland since the late 1960s. There is, however, a nearby bakery that sells kosher bread. Only a few thousand Jews live in Ireland, a country of about 5 million people.

“That there is kosher food available is tremendous,” Cohen said.

While only a few dozen families are thought to keep fully kosher in Dublin, many in the community have already begun to frequent Deli 613. “It has become a meeting place,” Cohen said. “People are going there at lunchtime. They sit outside and they have coffee.”

While Lent says that she was initially surprised by how much Dubliners have embraced Deli 613, Cohen says that its success reflects how much Ireland’s tastes have changed.

“Dubliners are very interested in different foods and cuisines,” said Cohen, who said that the quality and types of food on offer in Dublin have grown exponentially over recent decades.

“I’ve been involved in the food industry for a very long time,” he added. “Irish people have gone from having no palate to having a very sophisticated palate.” PJC

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BE OUR GUEST FOR COMMUNITY HIGH HOLY DAY SERVICES!*

TOT SERVICES & PROGRAM

Looking for an informal, inviting way to teach your little ones about High Holy Days? Join Cantor David Reinwald and Rabbi Daniel Fellman for a fun, active service of stories, singing, and dancing for families with children ages 0–5.

Erev Rosh HaShanah: Kol Nidre:

Friday, Sept 15, 5:15 PM

Sunday, Sept. 24, 5:15 PM

(Snacks & Fun start at 5 PM) (Social Time starts at 5 PM)

Tot Program with Danie Oberman, Saturday, Sept. 16, 8:15 AM Join Danie for fun holiday activities for children ages 0–5.

YOM KIPPUR SERVICES*

Monday, Sept. 25

1:30 PM Beit Midrash

• 1:30–2:30 PM Jewish Journeys with David Johnson, WPXI-TV anchor and Temple Sinai member, will talk with several congregants about their Jewish journeys.

• 2:30–3:45 PM Beit Midrash Discussions including topics on gun violence prevention, Chevra Kadisha, lessons of the Yom Kippur War, and guided meditation.

4 PM Minchah Afternoon Service

5:15 PM Yizkor and N’ilah Service

(Rabbi Emeritus Jamie Gibson will deliver the Yizkor Service sermon.) Break Fast (a light snack to break your fast) follows N’ilah

ROSH HASHANAH SERVICES*

Friday, Sept. 15

7:45 PM Erev Rosh HaShanah & Shabbat Evening Service

Sunday, Sept. 17

10 AM Rosh HaShanah 2nd Day Morning Service

Visit TempleSinaiPGH.org to order your Card of Admission for High Holy Day Community & Tot Services or contact Danie Oberman at (412) 421-9715 ext. 121 or Danie@TempleSinaiPGH.org.

*Donation requested. For security reasons, registration is required for all services.

With the growing threat of a war with Hezbollah, we can’t ensure this Rosh HaShanah will usher in a peaceful year. But with a new campaign to add 300 urgently needed ambulances to MDA’s fleet, we can save lives no matter what 5784 brings.

Make a donation today or contact us about how you, your family, or synagogue can provide the ambulances MDA will need.

Visit afmda.org/give or call 866.632.2763.

The shofar’s call: Are you focused or busy?

This Rosh Hashanah we will swarm to synagogues to hear the shofar. Some may need to lean over the railing to see the ram’s horn or cup their ears to hear it clearly, but we will make sure to be there. The shofar is often likened to an alarm clock because, like an alarm clock that wakes the person from his sleep, the shofar of Rosh Hashanah wakes us from our spiritual slumber. This comparison is based on a passage by Maimonides where he writes that the message of the shofar’s call is: “Wake up you sleepy ones from your sleep, and you who slumber, arise. Inspect your deeds, repent, remember your Creator. You, who … devote your energies to vanity and emptiness which will not benefit or save, look to your souls.” Maimonides powerfully presents the image of the shofar waking the sleeper and calling him to repent.

the contrary, the abundance of work itself is what Maimonides categorizes as sleep, because a person overly engaged in the world around him is busy but not focused on his personal spiritual mission, and so requires repentance. His work is his sleep, and he needs to be awakened. In this way, the shofar is less an alarm clock and more a whistle blown to end the workday. The shofar beseeches that we not constantly busy ourselves with the outside but instead focus inward on who we are.

Likewise, R. Moshe Chaim Luzzato (17071746) in his “Path of the Just” writes that Pharaoh’s original intention in Jewish servitude was to make the Jews so busy that they would not realize their own strength and take advantage of Egyptian society. Pharaoh feared the Jews and sought to remove their self-awareness and determination. The same thing happens in each of our lives; we trade true self-awareness by overly engaging in everything we pursue outside ourselves. We are too busy to know who we are and our priorities. This busyness is the slumber of

Yet, Maimonides’ choice to call the penitent’s state “slumber” is ironic. The term “slumber” conveys a picture of the person listening to Maimonides’ shofar as passive — one who is not engaged in activity and productive work, and so he needs the shofar to call him to action. Yet Maimonides’ language belies a different image. This person is “devoting his energies.” He is busy and productive. From dawn till dusk he works, and yet he is still “sleeping.” This sleep is not the lack of productivity; on

Maimonides, and the shofar is meant to jolt us, to focus us on our mission.

As we listen this year to the shofar’s call, let’s tease out its question. How can we be more focused, less busy? What are the goals and mandates to which God is directing our attention and how can we move toward them with engagement? PJC

Rabbi Yitzi Genack is the rabbi of Shaare Torah Congregation. This column is a service of the Vaad Harabanim of Greater Pittsburgh.

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As Israelis rejoice in the sound of the shofar, we’re also preparing for the wail of the siren.

Pharaoh feared the Jews and sought to remove their self-awareness and determination.

The same thing happens in each of our lives; we trade true self-awareness by overly engaging in everything we pursue outside ourselves.

HARLOW: Randi Harlow, on Saturday, Sept. 9, 2023. Beloved mother of Kristofer Padawer. Cherished sister of Glenn Harlow (E.B. Pepper). Daughter of the late Ellen and Murray Harlow. Loving aunt of Max Harlow. Loving dog mother and loyal companion to Romeo. Survived by spouse David Padawer. Randi was a devoted mother. A loving and generous spirit stricken with debilitating illness yet persevered to live a passionate and productive life. She was an avid dog lover and a vigorous fighter for animal causes and rights. She was never deterred by a challenge and was relentless in achieving positive results for her causes. Graveside services and interment were held at Beth Shalom Cemetery. Contributions may be made to the Humane Animal Rescue of Pittsburgh, 6926 Hamilton Ave., Pittsburgh, PA 15208. Arrangements entrusted to Ralph Schugar Chapel, Inc., family owned and operated. schugar.com

NAIMARK: Helen (Bluestone) Naimark, age 92, passed peacefully in the loving care of her family on Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2023. Beloved mother of her three sons, Allen (Jane) Naimark, Larry (Therese) Naimark and Arnold (Donna) Naimark. Cherished longtime partner of the late Angelo Joseph Nardi. Loving grandmother of Jessica Pratti and Andrew Naimark, and adoring great-grandmother of Ian, Nathan and Aaron; extended family Tonya (Sean Leonard) Nardi, Natasha, Isaac and the Nardi family. Born in Long Island, New York, to the late William and Ann Bluestone on April 16, 1931, stepdaughter of Bernice Bluestone. Helen moved to Pittsburgh in the late 1940s. She was known for her colorful, adventurous and enthusiastic personality by all who knew her. Helen was devoted to her artistic talents and passion for the Pittsburgh art community for over 50 years through the JCC of Greater Pittsburgh, CCAC and countless creative engagements where she forged many treasured friendships that endured until her passing. An avid gardener and member of the Garden Club of Monroeville, Helen also enjoyed many years square dancing and traveling the globe with her late partner, Joe, friends and family. She was a consummate provider of fashion and decorating advice and treasured every opportunity to enjoy time with her loved ones, friends and neighbors, which kept her perpetually young at heart. Helen’s sunny disposition will be missed by many, including her beloved feline companion, Phantom. Services were held at Ralph Schugar Chapel, Inc. Interment at Temple Sinai Memorial Park in Plum. Please call the funeral home at 412-621-8282 for Thursday’s shiva information. Contributions may be made to your charity of choice in Helen’s memory. Arrangements entrusted to Ralph Schugar Chapel, Inc., family owned and operated. schugar.com

OSHRY: Elliott Stephen Oshry, on Wednesday, Sept. 6, 2023. Brother of DeeJay Oshry (Bart Rack). Predeceased by his parents, Frank and Clarice Oshry. Elliott was a graduate of Duquesne University and received his master’s degree from West Virginia University. He was on the board of the Pittsburgh Symphony, Allies Health and Wellness, the Jewish Association on Aging and the Fred Rogers Company. Elliott enjoyed fundraising and earned many philanthropic awards through the American Fundraising Professionals. He was the executive vice president of Ketchum, Inc., where he was a part of their fundraising council since 1973. Elliott enjoyed traveling, working with his fundraising clients and was devoted to his dogs. He even owned a small newspaper company called the Revere.Services were held at Temple Sinai. Interment Temple Sinai Memorial Park. Contributions may be made to the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, 600 Penn Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15222 or Humane Animal Rescue, 6926 Hamilton Ave., Pittsburgh, PA 15208. Arrangements entrusted to Ralph Schugar Chapel, Inc., family owned and operated. schugar.com

REZNICK: Sylvia Miller Reznick, on Wednesday, Sept. 6, 2023. Beloved wife of the late Aron Reznick. Loving mother of Barry (Kathy) Reznick and Paul (Jean) Reznick. Grandmother of David (Stephanie) Reznick, Sara (Jason) Berliner and Rachel (Aaron Greengard) Reznick. Great-grandmother of Alexandra, Leo and Lillian. Graveside services and interment were held at Ahavath Achim Cemetery, Forest Hills. Contributions may be made to Alzheimer’s Association (Greater Pittsburgh Chapter), 2835 E. Carson St., Suite 200, Pittsburgh, PA 15203, or a charity of one’s choice. Arrangements entrusted to Ralph Schugar Chapel, Inc., family owned and operated. schugar.com PJC

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Contact the Development department at 412-586-2690 or development@jaapgh.org for more information. THIS WEEK’S YAHRZEITS —

Sunday September 17: 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

Monday September 18: 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

Tuesday September 19: Hyman Berman, Sarah Brown, Sarah Lynn Dupre, Yeruchem Fireman, Harry Abe Geduldig, Albert Goldblum, M .D , Pearl Gould, Nathan Lautman, Sarah Reich Moses, Anna B Papernick, Solomon Paul, Sarah Persky, Isaac Sissman, Jacob Zwibel

Wednesday September 20: William Glick, Beatrice Barnett Goldhamer, Ida E Goldstein, Marlene Rofey Kaufman, Samuel Sandor Klein, Marcus Landman, Gertrude Lieb, Pauline Marcus, Jacob M Mogilowitz, Helen Moskovitz, Jennie Routman, Harry Soffer, Isadore Steinman, Norman Weizenbaum, Morris L Wolf, Jacob Zinman

Thursday September 21: 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

Friday September 22: Goldie Bardin, Irene Berliner, Jeanette Broner Chernoff, Isadore Davis, Harry Dell, Otto Dubovy, Alvin Glass, Louis Goldenson, Tillie Kalson, Ralph R Kartub, Herschel Klein, Ruth Levy, Arch Lhormer, Evelyn Maryn, Leslie Lou Mullen, Sharon Ruttenberg Post, Dr Sanford Press, Clara Rosenfeld, Matilda Amdur Seidman, Rebecca Feiner Sigal, Max Sussman, Alice Tales, Bessie Shrut Weiner, Morris H Winer

Saturday September 23: Joyce Berger, Libby Kaplan Cooper, Howard Harris, Harry Levin, Ernest Marcus, Aaron “Barney” Moldovan, Ruth I Perlman, Myer Reznick, Harvey Sandy Rubenstein, Rebecca Shiner, Elizabeth Silverman, Ruth E Supowitz

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Life & Culture

Member of Goyim Defense League extradited to Netherlands after allegedly projecting antisemitic message onto Anne Frank House

By Andrew Lapin | JTA

Wishing You And Your Family And Friends A Happy, Healthy New Year 5784 L’Shana Tova

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Aprominent member of an American neo-Nazi group was extradited to the Netherlands, where he will stand trial for projecting an antisemitic message onto the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam.

Robert Wilson is accused of being behind a February incident in which a message was laser-projected onto the house where Anne Frank hid during the Holocaust. The message read “inventor of the ballpoint pen,” a reference to a widely debunked antisemitic conspiracy theory alleging that Frank’s famous diary is a forgery because it was originally written with a ballpoint pen, which was invented only after World War II.

Frank was discovered by the Nazis in 1944 and died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp the following year. The house where she hid is now a museum.

Wilson is scheduled to make his first court appearance in early October. Originally from Canada, he is a member of the Goyim Defense League, a prominent neo-Nazi group now based in Florida.

several months later, at the time of the Anne Frank House incident. His presence there was discovered by a group of Dutch citizen sleuths devoted to rooting out terrorist activities.

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Wilson lived in Chula Vista, California, a suburb of San Diego, from 2016 to 2021, when he was accused of assaulting a neighbor and targeting them with homophobic slurs. Soon after the alleged assault, Wilson was accused of hanging an antisemitic banner over a San Diego freeway overpass. He fled the country before he could be prosecuted for a hate crime in the assault.

Since then, Wilson has been largely based in Poland, where he holds citizenship, and has documented himself committing various antisemitic acts, including displaying vulgar signs directed at the Anti-Defamation League while outside the site of the Auschwitz concentration camp in 2022. Goyim Defense League founder Jon Minadeo Jr. also posed in the same photo, which Minadeo said led to his arrest by Polish authorities.

Wilson reportedly traveled to Amsterdam

In the spring, the Netherlands issued a European arrest warrant for him, and Polish authorities first arrested him in April, ordering him not to leave the country while the investigation was ongoing. But Wilson was arrested again in July while trying to flee to Canada from an airport in Germany. He was held in Germany before being transferred to Amsterdam in late August.

In July, the Netherlands outlawed speech that specifically takes the form of Holocaust denial, but Dutch prosecutors did not indicate in their press release announcing Wilson’s extradition what they would be charging him with.

The unclear nature of the projected message will be a “test case” for the Netherlands, Willem Wagenaar, an extremism researcher who works at the Anne Frank House, told San Diego’s inewsource.

“Is this a punishable offense in the Netherlands, or is this freedom of speech?” Wagenaar said. “It’s in the gray area in between. So we will find out.” PJC

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p The Anne Frank House alongside the Prinsengracht in Amsterdam, the Netherlands Photo by Massimo Catarinella, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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Life & Culture

Jewish sailor Bill Pinkney, first Black person to circle the globe solo, dies at 87

— NEWS OBITUARY —

By Andrew Silow-Carroll | JTA

Captain Bill Pinkney, a Jewish sailor who became the first African American to sail around the world solo, died Aug. 31. He was 87 and had suffered a fall.

Starting in 1990, the Chicagoan’s 22-month, 27,000-mile journey aboard a 47-foot cutter captivated thousands of schoolchildren who followed his trip via an educational television channel. The footage was used in an award-winning documentary, “The Incredible Voyage of Bill Pinkney,” that aired on the Disney Channel, National Geographic and PBS stations.

The former cosmetics executive also wrote a children’s book in 1994, “Captain Bill Pinkney’s Journey.”

A very different journey captivated readers in 2019, when Pinkney and his former wife, Ina Pinkney, were featured in a New York Times photo essay about their marriage and extremely amicable divorce. Bill, who grew up poor on Chicago’s South Side, and Ina, who grew up Jewish in Brooklyn and Long Island, married in 1965. It was his second marriage.

Ina Pinkney was 21 years old when she met Bill Pinkney at a coffee place in Greenwich Village. “As soon as I spotted him across the crowded room, I said to my friend, ‘Susan, I’m going to marry him,’” Ina Pinkney said. “And I sat down and I talked to him for a little bit, and we went out and we had something to eat. And that was it. It was a done deal for me. And what even helped more is that he was Jewish.”

Yet although Bill Pinkney considered himself Jewish starting in childhood and converted to Judaism as an adult, her parents broke off contact with the couple and none of her relatives attended the wedding.

According to Ina Pinkney, Bill Pinkney was 12 years old when he came home from church with his mother, who divorced his father when he was 6. “He said, ‘I can’t go there anymore.’” When his mother asked why, Bill Pinkney explained, “Because all I hear about is that everything gets better after you die. It can’t be that way.” His mother encouraged him to discover something he could believe

in, and after a visit to the library, the preteen announced, “I’m Jewish.”

When Ina Pinkney, who grew up in a Conservative Jewish home, and Bill Pinkney were engaged, he decided to go through a formal conversion, choosing the Hebrew name “Barak ben Avraham Avinu.” When Ina Pinkney asked why he felt he needed a formal conversion, he explained, “Because without this I could not be buried in a Jewish cemetery next to you.”

Ina Pinkney said that, late in life, Bill Pinkney would regularly Zoom into services held at the Hebrew Congregation of St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and she would occasionally join him online.

The two were married for 36 years. The couple went their separate ways in 2001, when Bill decided to continue to pursue his sailing dreams and Ina her career as a celebrity baker and chef in Chicago.

“My life was on the sea, hers was on the land,” Bill Pinkney told The New York Times in 2019. According to Ina Pinkney, he would say, “If it doesn’t have a lobby, it would never

be her hobby” — that is, she preferred a hotel or a cruise ship over the sail boats he favored. Ina used saltier language to describe how bored she felt on the water.

He later married Migdalia Vachier Pinkney. She survives him, along with his sister, Naomi Pinkney, as do a daughter from his first marriage and two grandchildren.

William Pinkney was born Sept. 15, 1935, in Chicago. After serving eight years in the Navy, he became a makeup artist and designed a line of women’s cosmetics, eventually working as a marketing manager for Revlon and director of cosmetics marketing for Johnson Products Co. He became director of marketing for the Chicago Department of Human Services in 1980, according to the History Makers.

Pinkney first learned how to sail small cargo skiffs while stationed in Puerto Rico with the Navy in the 1950s. He began sailing in earnest on Lake Michigan when working in Chicago.

Pinkney also served, starting in 2000, as the first captain of the reconstructed Amistad, the Spanish schooner whose crew was killed

in a revolt by enslaved Africans in 1839. The reconstruction of the ship was inspired by Steven Spielberg’s 1997 film, “Amistad,” about the revolt; as captain, Pinkney took schoolteachers to Africa on a route tracing the Middle Passage crossing by which enslaved Africans were taken from Senegal to the Americas.

In recent years he ran a charter boat business in Fajardo, Puerto Rico.

Pinkney was also a senior adviser for National Geographic. In 2021, he was inducted into the National Sailing Hall of Fame.

Discussing his round-the-world voyage on a boating website, Pinkney said that one of the highlights was sailing past South Africa two weeks after Nelson Mandela had been released after 27 years behind bars. “I sailed past Robben Island, where he’d been imprisoned, flying a red, black, and green spinnaker, the colors of the African liberation movement,” said Pinkney. “As an afterthought, I should’ve put a big yellow Star of David on there as well [laughing], because I’m Jewish.” PJC

 Left, Bill Pinkney and his former wife, Chicago food celebrity Ina Pinkney Photo courtesy of Ina Pinkney  Capt. Bill Pinkney speaking in New Haven, Connecticut

Photo ©2021 Captain Bill Pinkney

Community

Cohort 15, take 1

Diller Cohort 15 held its first Mifgash on Sept. 10. The group mingled, learned about Diller’s mission and goals, and began strategizing how best to work together. In preparation for next summer’s travel to Israel, cohort members will develop new relationships and become more rooted in their Jewish identities.

Big awards at big meeting

The

of

its

at

p Marlene Silverman was honored with the Emanuel Spector Memorial Award.

Jewish Federation

Greater Pittsburgh hosted

annual meeting

the Jewish Community Center in Squirrel Hill. The Sept. 6 program enabled the umbrella organization to share news of the past year and honor community members.

p Stefanie Small received the Doris & Leonard H. Rudolph Jewish Communal Professional Award.

p Keeping it cool with the cohort

p Welcome to the good place. Photos courtesy of Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh

p From left: Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle’s Toby Tabachnick, David Rullo, Abigail Hakas and Adam Reinherz

Photo by Kimberly Rullo

p Past chair David Sufrin receives a gift from Federation CEO Jeff Finkelstein. Photos by Joshua Franzos

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