_________ Oceanside/island park ________
Edition Graduation Keepsake
June 22, 2023
HERALD
GRADUATES the C L A S S
OF 2023
the best and brightest
Vol. 58 No. 26
lemonade stand raises $5,000
Awards for school and service
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JUNE 22 - 28, 2023
BAL
$1.00
A transition in leadership At Oceanside’s Temple Avodah, rabbi and president both plan to retire By KARINA KoVAC kkovac@liherald.com
Temple Avodah of Oceanside is preparing for a significant change in leadership, as Rabbi Uri Goren, who has faithfully served the congregation for 26 years, has announced his retirement on July 30, and President Marian Kelison is also stepping down. Stepping into Goren’s shoes is Rabbi Shai Beloosesky, who shares a few similarities with his predecessor, like relocating from the state of Georgia for the role. In addition to a spiritual
LON, NAS, LYN, MAL
Karina Kovac/Herald
Godspeed, lenny the lobster Lenny, a 111-year-old lobster, was pardoned by the Town of Hempstead from Peter’s Clam Bar in Island Park and set free in the Atlantic on national lobster day. Story, Page 16.
switch, the temple’s vice president, Matthew Phillips will take over for Kelison. For Goren, it’s simply the right time to retire. “Every rabbi should know there is really a time to leave,” he said, “Too much longer would have been too much.” The 26-year span is a rarity in reform movement synagogues, and one of the things that drew both Goren and Beloosesky in. Before Goren, the previous rabbi, Philmore Berger, spent over 30 years as rabbi at the temple and the first rabbi before him tragically died Continued on page 5
Three years later, a look back at the global pandemic By KARINA KoVAC kkovac@liherald.com
In December 2019, Adhi Sharma, the president of Mount Sinai South Nassau, first heard of the coronavirus. He thought back to the 2012 outbreak of the Middle East respiratory syndrome, known as MERS, which had a high mortality rate but was short-lived. Nonetheless, Sharma beginning preparing MSSN for
whatever might come, because, he said recently, “You never know what these emerging infectious diseases are going to do.” By January 2020, it was clear that the coronavirus was not going to be contained like MERS, and at a planning meeting the following month, the hospital administration began anticipating a “very, very bad pandemic,” Sharma said. What worried him most, he recalled, was, “If it is
global, there’s no place to go for resources. Everyone’s competing for the same resources.”
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The beginning of the wave
That February, the hospital purchased 40 ventilators from Florida, and scrounged locally for about a dozen more. On Feb. 27, MSSN had its first confirmed diagnosis, and the staff began masking immediately to limit exposure. The hospital couldn’t JUNE 22, 2023
Great Homes the Ultimate Local Home showcase Pull Out
afford to lose staffers before the approaching wave. In March, “Our beds (were) getting filled with Covid patients and there was really no good treatment,” Sharma said. “We were stuck with really no scientific data and trying to manage the sickest of the sickest patients in the county with no good tools.” Besides the fact that there was no treatment available, the mortality rate was frightening. The
hospital’s morgue can hold eight bodies under normal circumstances, and 12 if needed. But 17 people a day were dying at the height of the pandemic, and three freezer tractor-trailers were needed to handle the management of remains. “The mortality rates are one in three, one in four,” Dr. Aaron Glatt, chief of infectious diseases, recalled, “especially since we Continued on page 10