by Judy Berger

Conversations with our Newest Members

by Judy Berger

Leah and Shaya Suffin, originally Californians, Leah from Napa Valley, Shaya from Los Angeles, were living comfortably for the past seven years since their retirement in Sarasota, Florida, but they became dismayed by the climate of intolerance and polarization in the States, and on June 10th 2021 they made Aliya, fulfilling a life-long dream. At the moment their three married children live in the States—a daughter in Parsipanny, New Jersey, a son in Lakewood, and a son in Baltimore—though Leah and Shaya hope their children will one day follow their example.

To summarize Dr Shaya’s 30 page resume, he has degrees in Mathematics, Medicine and Business. He was Chief Laboratory Officer of a Fortune 300 Company and has many patents in the field of neuroscience. Leah has a Masters in Library Science and has worked in public and private libraries, including the World Bank and Library of Congress. Leah, an artist, works in acrylic and watercolors and is a calligrapher. Shaya is currently looking for a workshop to pursue his hobby of furniture making and wood sculpting. The Suffins have recently moved into their new apartment, where they are methodically unpacking boxes. They look forward to getting to know the Netanya community.

Rita Potash Platsky and Basil

Platsky moved from South Africa to Israel in stages. Rita made Aliya ten years ago, but stayed for only two months before returning to Seapoint, Cape Town. She made another Aliya in July 2018 and is now delighted to be living in Netanya. Basil was born in Kinross, which was the center of the largest number of Jewish farmers in the world between the 1900s and late 1940s, and where Basil’s father was working at that time. Later the family moved to Johannesburg. Sixty years ago, Basil traveled to Israel to attend Kerem B’Yavneh Yeshiva. He made Aliya in October 2020—with some difficulty due to Covid rules and regulations. Basil’s son made Aliya twenty-eight years ago and lives in nearby Tel Mond. Rita’s two sons live in Ramat Beit Shemesh Gimmel, and her daughter lives in London, England.

Basil worked as a Civil Engineer. He chose the field after Yeshiva because he wanted to contribute to building up the new country of Israel. A Bnei Akiva boy, and ever a fervent Zionist, he has always been involved in the Jewish community of Johannesburg. He was Honorary Treasurer in the Zionist Federation (SAZF) for many years and also worked in the Mizrachi organization. Rita worked as a legal secretary in addition to raising her children in Cape Town. She is proud to be a ba’alat teshuva and marvels at the serenity of Shabbat, Chagim and happy family time. She is on the kiddush rota for McDonald’s shul and Basil’s connection to the Rabbi’s father and siblings dates back to early days in Jo’burg.

Rachel and Josh Shore have been living in Israel all their adult lives. Rachel was born in San Francisco, California. Her family have lived in the States since 1849, dating back six generations. Rachel went to Bnei Akiva and

when she was eighteen she came on her own to Israel on Hachshara at Kibbutz Lavi. She went to Orot College in Elkana, and while there she applied for Aliya. Josh was born in Philadelphia and moved with his family to Israel when he was ten. He attended Rehovot high school, completed Army service and graduated from Bar Ilan Kolel with a degree in Biochemistry. He then took computer training courses at IBM, where he has been working for twenty-six years. Rachel trained as a teacher at Orot, received her Real Estate License and sold real estate for three years until 2008, then changed direction and became a travel agent in 2010, becoming a Certified Travel Agent in 2012, working on incoming tourism for twelve years. She was in charge of operations, logistics, accounts and staffing for well over 150 groups a year, mainly European Christian tourists, who were visiting Israel. In October 2019 she started towards her MBA degree at Ariel University. Her timing was fortunate because while the tourist industry came to a standstill, she

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continued and completed her studies on zoom. She has now resumed working in Tourism, for the time being.

Rachel and Josh have lived for twenty-eight years in Yakir, near Ariel in the Shomron, where they raised their three children, Noam 28, who’s single and living in Givat Shmuel, Chana 25, living with her family in Tel Aviv and Meir 21, a soldier. Finding themselves empty nesters they decided to relocate to Netanya in December 2021, join the shul, and start a new chapter in their lives. In her spare time Rachel volunteers for AACI, Laniado, and luckily for us, McDonald shul.

Colin Goldberg, originally from Durban, Cape Town, South Africa, made Aliya in July 2020 from New Rochelle in Westchester County, New York, where he had been living for 40 years. Colin, was born in 1948 and was given the name Israel Shalom from his grandfather, and for as long as he can remember he has felt a strong personal connection to Israel and has been a fervent Zionist. Colin has three married children and seven grandchildren in the States: a daughter living outside Philadelphia, a daughter in west Connecticut and a son in Chevy Chase, Maryland. He says it is his “hidden agenda” that his children will move here.

Colin is a software entrepreneur, and worked for many years for the New York Stock Exchange. He says he’s “essentially retired”—but he has in mind a project or two, which he’s hoping to develop. Meanwhile he’s committed to three days a week Ulpan classes and is soon to be volunteering for the Leket Foundation. Colin, a young at heart widower living on his own, has taken on the challenge of exploring Netanya, and further afield in Tel Aviv, because he enjoys going out, and he enjoys meeting people.

Hans and Flora Vuijsje

(Faushe) made Aliya on June 13th 2021 from Amsterdam, the Netherlands, where Hans’s family has lived since the seventeenth century. Holland took in Jews at the time of the Spanish Inquisition, as well as Ashkenazi Jews, such as Hans’s family who came from Germany and Poland, in the 1600s. Flora’s family has also lived in Holland for generations. Her maternal grandparents survived the war, but her father, who had survived Auschwitz, was alone after the Shoah. He met Flora’s mother, who had survived Bergen Belsen, and they married after the war in Amsterdam, where Flora, the fourth of five children, was born.

Hans’s parents married in 1943, the last Jewish wedding performed in Amsterdam during the war. The couple knew they would have to go into hiding and wanted to be together. While in hiding Hans’s mother joined the Resistance. She passed on stolen food-coupons, which kept alive the starving hiding Jews in the winter of 1944. According to Hans Vuijsje, who worked in Jewish Social Services for thirty-six years, the past twenty as the Director, there were 140,000 Jews living in Holland before the Shoah. 104,000 perished, leaving 36,000 survivors.

The Jewish Social Services worked mainly with Shoah survivors who stayed in Holland, providing social work, home care and ongoing volunteering. There are now 52,000 Jews in Holland. Over the years refugees have come to the Netherlands from Iraq and Iran, from Hungary in 1956 and from Russia in the 1980s. Jewish Social Services helped Jews who wanted to settle in Israel or the States as well as those who remained in Holland.

Flora was a teacher in the Montessori school, where children ranged from Kindergarten to twelve years old. She also worked in a variety of positions

such as teaching, observing and guiding students (Montessori) to become teachers. She then coached beginner, and experienced, teachers and assessed student teachers for their examinations. Flora was a longtime board member for the Jewish Educational Center in Holland.

Despite a full and varied life in Amsterdam, the Vuijses made Aliya to fulfill a dream to live in Israel, and to be with their two sons and families. One son made Aliya eighteen years ago, and lives in Kfar Yona. The other son made Aliya twelve years ago, and lives in Yaffa. While they miss family and friends overseas, they found a warm welcome in McDonald’s and they enjoy participating in the IOH, a Dutch group in Israel. Flora has volunteered for AACI and is on the McDonald kiddush rota, and Hans recently spoke to the IOH group about his hobby—finding and discussing novels written mainly, but not exclusively, by Jewish writers, all of which feature a Jewish detective. While Hans has been working as the Director of Community Development, a department he initiated, to help survivors and their children who were fearful of being Jewish, he became conscious of the importance of Jewish identity, and his hobby—discovering Jewish detectives—emerged from his work with them.

Eileen and Ken Goldblatt arrived in Israel on Aliya on May 10th 2020 from Cleveland, Ohio, where they had been living since 2015. “It was part of our five-year plan” they said, outlining a story in which Fate and Self Determination played alternating roles.

Eileen’s parents and Ken’s father had lived near each other, in Long Beach, California. They went to the same school, and Ken’s father and Eileen’s mother even went out on a date together to their Prom. Both grandparents were part of the same circle and played cards together. But Ken was born in Silver Spring, Maryland, because during the Korean War, Ken’s father enlisted in the Navy and stayed back East for a while, where he met Ken’s mother and in Washington DC. When Ken’s father was accepted into Optometry School, the family returned to California. Meanwhile Eileen’s family were living in Huntington Beach, Orange County, and while the families lived nearby and stayed in touch over the years, Eileen and Ken only met for the first time in their early twenties. They dated, and when Ken’s father was diagnosed with Colon cancer, a small wedding was arranged, for eighteen people, so Ken’s

father could be present. He died ten days later.

Eileen graduated in California as a registered nurse and worked for a while in neonatal intensive care obstetrics in West Virginia where she took care of high-risk babies born in the Appalachian Mountains area. She also assisted those infants who needed transportation by ambulance and helicopter down the mountains to facilities in larger cities. After they married and Ken graduated in California as a licensed Healthcare Administrator, the Goldblatts lived in Huntington Beach where Ken managed Nursing Homes till 1994, the year of the earthquake.

Prior to the earthquake, Eileen remembers feeling very uneasy. Even though Ken phoned through to the Home and was told everything was fine, Eileen felt it necessary that Ken drive that night to the Nursing Home. He only just crossed the concrete bridge before it collapsed behind him. He continued along unlit roads till he got to the Nursing Home. The entire facade had broken away to reveal several stories of the building in which patients could be seen lying in their beds. Ken spent the night, aided by ten nurses, taking one elderly patient at a time, wrapped in sheets, down the back stairs to safety. No ambulance or police came to their aid in that frantic night, but some city buses arrived and transported the elderly to whichever facility would accept them. Incidentally, a month before the earthquake, Eileen suddenly felt it was imperative to sell their home. The sale went through and soon after the earthquake they were able to move to Colorado, where Ken managed another Nursing Home. The company sold the building three years later in 1977 and the Goldblattts moved to the San Fernando Valley, a city with a high Jewish population, where they lived till 2015, before moving to

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Cleveland.

Eileen and Ken grew up in very assimilated environments with almost no contact with Jews. During her teens, Eileen turned to her grandmother wanting to know more about what it meant to be a Jew. Eileen’s grandmother had been born in Lodz, Poland, and her parents and siblings all died in the Holocaust. Eileen joined B’nai B’rith girls, she met Shlomo Carlebach, and she decided over time to make it her mission to save Judaism in her family. There were difficulties not working on Shabbat as a nurse, so she went into Clinical Research in neonatal intensive care treatments, meds and procedures. She worked with Pharma companies in vaccine studies, such as the ‘shingles’ vaccine. Later she became Director of a Nursing Home, and Director of a Hospice. The Goldblatts made the decision to join and attend shul, they sent their children to Jewish day schools and the family became Shomer Shabbat. All three children are living orthodox Jewish lives. Their older son and his wife from Cleveland have four children. They live in Tel Mond. Their daughter married an Israeli, and lives in Ramat Gan. Their younger son is married with two children and lives in LA.

In addition to her immediate family, Eileen persuaded her brother and sister to become committed Jews, and both sent their children to Jewish day schools and are now all Orthodox.

Her brother and his wife live in Nahariya. Her sister’s family are actively involved in a Jewish community in Dallas. Eileen and Ken’s daughter-in-law’s parents—their machatonim—made Aliya last year. Their daughter-in-law’s