atlanta jewish times, no. 44, november 20, 2015
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VOL. XC NO. 44 NOVEMBER 20, 2015 | 8 KISLEV 5776
Calendar 2Candle Lighting 3Remember When 6Health & Wellness 8Israel 9Opinion 10
Education 20Book Festival 24Cartoon 26Business 27Obituaries 28Crossword 30
By Michael [email protected]
Hundreds of people — some French, many not — crowded into the lobby of Buckhead Tow-
er at Lenox Square on Sunday morning, Nov. 15, to show solidarity with France af-ter the coordinated Islamic State terror-ist attacks that killed at least 129 people two nights earlier in Paris.
Many members of the Jewish com-munity, including leaders from the American Jewish Committee’s Atlanta Chapter and Israeli Deputy Consul Gen-eral Ron Brummer, attended the somber event, organized by the French Consul-ate General and held in the building that houses it.
“We know how attentive the French community is to the needs of the Jewish community and Israel,” said AJC Atlanta Regional Director Dov Wilker, who noted that an AJC delegation met with French Consul General Denis Barbet earlier in the week of the terrorist attacks.
“We appreciate them standing with us, and we stand with them,” AJC Atlanta President Greg Averbuch said.
Barbet, who insisted that he spoke not as a government official but only as a French citizen, referred in his remarks to the January terrorist killings at the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket in Paris. He said
Atlanta Stands With Paris
he had hoped that the march through Midtown Atlanta on Jan. 11 in response to those attacks would be the last time such a gathering would be necessary.
“We are all journalists. We are all policemen. We are all Jews,” Barbet said. “We are simply French.”
Barbet spoke in French and English. The rally’s other two speakers, French Foreign Trade Adviser Dominique Lem-oine and Michèle Olivères, stuck with French, with one exception: Lemoine closed his remarks by declaring, “We are not afraid.”
A sign in the crowd reading “Pas peur” (not afraid) echoed that thought. Other signs supported France and criti-cized the terrorists, and artist Florence Beauredon displayed a painting created in response to the slaughter Friday night, Nov. 13.
Most of the carnage occurred at the Bataclan theater, which had been owned by Jewish brothers until two months ago and had long faced protests for hosting many pro-Israel events. The American band performing that night, the Eagles of Death Metal, had played in Tel Aviv in July.
“We know all too well that attacks don’t end with the Jewish community, and here we were able to see that they were attacking a democratic way of life,” Wilker said.
“France is one of our closest allies in the world,” Brummer said, and, like Isra-el, is facing the “radical Islamic cancer.”
“We hope Europe’s leaders realize it’s time to fight this cancer by all means pos-sible,” he said.
Barbet said France recognizes it must wage a war to preserve a society de-voted to diversity, liberty and openness. It will be a long fight, he said, “and we won’t give up.” ■
French Consul General Denis Barbet (right) and French Foreign Trade Adviser
Dominique Lemoine join in the singing of “La Marseillaise” at the end of the rally.
Photos by Michael JacobsThe full emotional impact hits home after the singing of the French national anthem at the French Consulate rally in the lobby of Buckhead Tower on Sunday morning, Nov. 15.
Jewish support for France at the rally includes AJC Atlanta First Vice
President Melanie Nelkin.
GIFT GUIDEWe help you get seri-ous about the fun task of making Chanukah special for all on your list. Page 16
OPENING DOORSAfter the Reform move-ment’s vote to welcome transgender congregants, SOJOURN’s Robbie Med-wed offers guidance on en-acting that vision. Page 13
FINAL CHAPTEROn the closing weekend of the Book Festival, Atlanta marketing whiz Joey Rei-man plans to open eyes to the power of an open hand. Page 26
BRIGHT SPOTSBeth Shalom cherishes a Daffodil Project plant-ing and the restoration of a Holocaust Torah scroll. Page 18
TORAH TIMETorah Day School prepares to complete and dedicate its second Torah in a community celebration. Page 23
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THURSDAY, NOV. 19Book Festival. Robert Weintraub (“No Better Friend”) and Harry Lembeck (“Taking on Theodore Roosevelt”) ap-pear at the Marcus JCC, 5342 Tilly Mill Road, Dunwoody, at 10:30 a.m. Free; atlantajcc.org/bookfestival or 678-812-4005.
Book Festival. Stephen Silverman (“The Catskills”) appears at the Marcus JCC, 5342 Tilly Mill Road, Dunwoody, at 12:30 p.m. Admission is $9 for mem-bers, $14 for nonmembers; atlantajcc.org/bookfestival or 678-812-4005.
Ecumenical Thanksgiving service. “Teach Your Children Well About Other Religions” is the theme of the annual interfaith service at Temple Kol Emeth, 1415 Old Canton Road, East Cobb, at 7 p.m. Nonperishable food is being col-lected for MUST Ministries. Free; www.kolemeth.net or 770-973-3533.
Sipping and shopping. Jewish Moms of Atlanta holds its first night of kosher food, drink and Chanukah gift buying at 7 p.m. at the Weber School, 6751 Ro-swell Road, Sandy Springs. Admission is $5; bit.ly/20G5XBC.
Leo Frank musical. Kennesaw State University presents a concert-style
staging of Alfred Uhry’s musical about the Leo Frank case, “Parade,” at 7:30 p.m. at the Earl Smith Strand Theatre, 117 North Park Square, Marietta. Tick-ets are $20; arts.kennesaw.edu/theatre/currentseason.php.
Book Festival. Jennifer Teege (“My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me”) appears at the Marcus JCC, 5342 Tilly Mill Road, Dunwoody, at 7:30 p.m. Tickets include the 5 p.m. screening of the documentary “Inheritance” about Teege’s mother. Admission is $13 for members, $18 for nonmembers; atlan-tajcc.org/bookfestival or 678-812-4005.
FRIDAY, NOV. 20Book Festival. Jami Attenberg (“St. Mazie”) and Jillian Cantor (“The Hours Count”) appear at the Marcus JCC, 5342 Tilly Mill Road, Dunwoody, at noon. Admission is $9 for members, $14 for nonmembers; atlantajcc.org/bookfesti-val or 678-812-4005.
Hollywood in the camps. “Filming the Camps — John Ford, Samuel Fuller, George Stevens: From Hollywood to Nuremberg” closes at the Atlanta His-tory Center, 130 W. Paces Ferry Road, Buckhead. Admission to the museum is $16.50 for adults, $13 for students and seniors, $11 for children 4 to 12, and
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Send items for the calendar to [email protected]. Find more events at atlantajewishtimes.com/events-calendar.
free for members and younger chil-dren; www.atlantahistorycenter.com or 404-814-4000.
SATURDAY, NOV. 21Book Festival. Alan Dershowitz (“Abra-ham”) appears at the Marcus JCC, 5342 Tilly Mill Road, Dunwoody, with former Court TV host Vinnie Politan at 8 p.m. Admission (including a copy of the book) is $26 for members, $31 for nonmembers; atlantajcc.org/bookfesti-val or 678-812-4005.
Dead Sea Scrolls discussion. Professor Lawrence Schiffman addresses “Schol-ars, Scrolls and Scandals: Judaism, Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls” over a kosher candlelight dinner at 8 p.m. at Intown Jewish Academy, 928 Ponce de Leon Ave., Atlanta. Dinner is $18; intownjewishacademy.org.
SUNDAY, NOV. 22Book Festival. Josh Levs (“All In”) talks at the Marcus JCC, 5342 Tilly Mill Road, Dunwoody, at 10:30 a.m. Free; atlanta-jcc.org/bookfestival or 678-812-4005.
Holocaust screening. In a collection of clips from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s “Curator’s Corner” series, six diaries and the lives of those who wrote them are highlighted at 1 p.m. at the “Anne Frank in the World” exhibit, 5920 Roswell Road, Suite A-209, Sandy Springs. Free; holocaust.georgia.gov.
Chanukah candle making. The Sixth Point makes rolled beeswax candles at 2 p.m. at the Keswick Park Community Building, 3496 Keswick Drive, Cham-blee. Adults only. Each set of candles is $10; thesixthpoint.org.
Book Festival. Laurie Ann Levin (“Life in Life”) and Joey Reiman (“Thumbs Up!”) appear at the Marcus JCC, 5342 Tilly Mill Road, Dunwoody, at 2:30 p.m. Admission is $9 for members, $14 for
nonmembers; atlantajcc.org/bookfesti-val or 678-812-4005.
Leo Frank musical. Kennesaw State University presents Alfred Uhry’s mu-sical about the Leo Frank case, “Pa-rade,” at 4 p.m. at The Temple, 1589 Peachtree St., Midtown. Free; RSVP to paradetemple.eventbrite.com.
Thanksgiving service. Ahavath Achim Synagogue, 600 Peachtree Battle Ave., Buckhead, hosts a community service with New Hope AME Church, North-side Drive Baptist Church, Northside Drive United Methodist Church, St. Anne’s Episcopal Church and Trinity Presbyterian Church at 7 p.m. Free; aas-ynagogue.org.
Book Festival. Ted Koppel (“Lights Out!”) appears at the Marcus JCC, 5342 Tilly Mill Road, Dunwoody, at 7:30 p.m. Admission is $18 for members, $24 for nonmembers; atlantajcc.org/bookfesti-val or 678-812-4005.
FRIDAY, DEC. 4Rabbi installation. Congregation B’nai Israel, 1633 Ga. 54 East, Fayetteville, in-stalls Rabbi Rick Harkavy at 7:30 p.m. with a service followed by a reception. Free; RSVP to 678-817-7162.
SUNDAY, DEC. 6Chanukah bazaar. Congregation Or VeShalom, 1681 N. Druid Hills Road, Brookhaven, holds its 40th annual ba-zaar, featuring member-made Mediter-ranean cuisine, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.; orveshalom.org or 404-633-1737.
Chanukah family festival. Chabad Intown and the PJ Library present a party, a magic show, crafts, and mu-sic by Sammy Rosenbaum and Rabbi Jake from 2 to 4 p.m. at Inman Middle School, 774 Virginia Ave., Atlanta. Free; chabadintown.org or 404-898-0434.
CANDLE-LIGHTING TIMESParshah Vayetze
Friday, Nov. 20, light candles at 5:14 p.m.Saturday, Nov. 21, Shabbat ends at 6:11 p.m.
Parshah VayishlachFriday, Nov. 27, light candles at 5:11 p.m.
Saturday, Nov. 28, Shabbat ends at 6:09 p.m.
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Corrections & Clarifications• The name of Bunzl Family Cantorial Chair Beth Schafer of Temple Sinai was misspelled in a front-page caption and in an article about music at the Union for Reform Judaism Biennial in the Nov. 13 issue.• David Fisher’s title with the Birthright Israel Foundation was incorrect in a Nov. 13 article. He is the foundation president. Also, the amount of money the foun-dation raised in the Atlanta area last year was incorrect; the actual amount was about $2.5 million.
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WE’LL TAKE CARE OF YOUR PARENTSEVEN IF THEY’RE A HANDFUL.
LET’S TALK HOME CARE.Jeffrey Taratoot & Lester Czuper
By Michael [email protected]
The Metro Atlanta Community Mikvah aims to provide a ritual place for all in the Jewish com-
munity, but its first challenge at its opening ceremony Sunday, Nov. 15, was finding a place for everyone who want-ed to join the celebration.
By the time event hosts Sherry Frank and Ronnie van Gelder wel-comed the crowd, it was standing room only in the beit midrash of Congrega-tion B’nai Torah, which is providing space and support for the independent mikvah.
The participants in the ceremony and those who came to watch repre-sented a broad cross section of the
Mikvah Makes Big Community Splash
community, matching the diversity in the more than 20 Jewish organizations that are partners in the facility, known as MACoM, an acronym that forms the Hebrew word for place.
Conservative, Reform, Reconstruc-tionist and Sephardic congregations have joined to build and maintain MA-CoM, which began as the shared vision of Rabbi Alvin Sugarman of The Tem-ple and Rabbi Joshua Heller of B’nai Torah.
Native Atlantan Frank called the opening “another historic milestone in our community.”
While Rabbi Sugarman couldn’t make the ceremony, the rabbis who joined Rabbi Heller on Nov. 15 includ-
ed Michael Bernstein of Congregation Gesher L’Torah, Analia Bortz of Con-gregation Or Hadash, Elana Perry and Brad Levenberg of Temple Sinai, Peter Berg and Loren Filson Lapidus of The Temple, Harvey Winokur of Temple Ke-hillat Chaim, Neil Sandler of Ahavath Achim Synagogue, Shalom Lewis of Congregation Etz Chaim, Malka Packer of InterfaithFamily Atlanta, and Ruth Abusch-Magder of Be’chol Lashon.
But the stories told at the ceremo-ny emphasized that MACoM exists to serve all Jewish people:
• Cookie Aftergut said she didn’t know about the mikvah while growing up at AA, but after surviving Stage 2 breast cancer in 2002, she felt broken and in need of a cleansing of body and soul. When she immersed for the first time, she said, she felt G-d’s presence.
• Teenager Aliza Abusch-Magder, the daughter of Rabbi Abusch-Magder and Epstein Head of School David Abusch-Magder, said she learned about the mikvah before a wedding when she was in fifth grade, and although her friends have considered it strange, she has embraced the spirituality of immersion before her bat mitzvah cel-
ebration and after her move to Atlanta this year.
• Arlene Lester, a member of The Temple, said the mikvah helped her answer a personalized letter from G-d to join the Jewish people. One of the prescribed uses of a mikvah is for con-version.
• Alice Wertheim, the president of the MACoM board, said she knew noth-ing about the mikvah while growing up in a Reform congregation in Montgom-ery, Ala., and despite her excitement about and active role in the commu-nity mikvah, she has yet to immerse. She plans to take her first dip into MACoM’s waters when her yearlong mourning period for her mother ends.
MACoM got its start last year with two lead gifts totaling $300,000 and has since raised an additional $425,000 from more than 100 donors. Wertheim said the organization needs $200,000 in additional donations to be on secure financial footing.
In explaining how B’nai Torah chose to give up its own aging mikvah during its renovations the past two years and instead to become the facili-tator of a group effort, Rabbi Heller said the congregation wondered, “Would the community step up? And it did.” ■
Photos by Michael JacobsCantor Deborah Hartman of The
Temple sings “Healing Waters” after the ribbon cutting.
Rabbis Loren Filson Lapidus, Joshua Heller, Analia Bortz and Michael Bernstein bless the opening of the
mikvah by singing the Shehecheyanu.Mike, Rob and Michelle Leven cut the ribbon to open MACoM. The Levens’ major gift helped launch
the mikvah’s fundraising.
Above: MACoM board President Alice Wertheim tells her story of
commitment to the vision of the mikvah despite never having used one.
Below: Rabbi Joshua Heller places the mezuzah on the MACoM doorway.
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Remember When10 Years Ago Nov. 18, 2005
■ Actor-author Alan Alda drew a sellout crowd of more than 1,300 people to the opening night of the 14th annual Atlanta Jewish Book Festival at the Marcus Jew-ish Community Center on Saturday night, Nov. 12. Alda, the husband and father of Jewish women but not Jewish himself, was promoting his autobiography, “Never Have Your Dog Stuffed.”
■ The b’not mitzvah of Stephanie Falcon of Marietta and her grandmother Viv-ian Bernstein Nash of Las Vegas was held Saturday, Oct. 22, at Congregation Etz Chaim.
25 Years Ago Nov. 23, 1990
■ Temple Kol Emeth and Cobb County police reacted cautiously this week to the defacement of a sign marking the site of the Reform congregation’s future home. “PLO Lives” was spray-painted on the sign between 8 p.m. Saturday and 6 a.m. Sunday. Kol Emeth’s first vice president, David Schwartz, speculated that the culprits were kids “who were just fooling around.”
■ Joanne and Michael Kooden of Savannah announce the birth of their second son, Ross Alex Kooden, on Friday, Nov. 16.
50 Years Ago Nov. 19, 1965
■ The dedication of the Atlanta Hebrew Academy featured a prediction from speaker Isaac Toubin, the executive director of the American Jewish Education Association, that American Jewry soon will prioritize Jewish education over such problems as rescue, homes for the aged and even philanthropic support for Israel.
■ The engagement of Miss Harriet Ann Abrams to Gary Stephen Barnett, son of Mr. and Mrs. Herman Barnett of Savannah, is announced by her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Sam Abrams of Atlanta.
SOJOURN, the Southern Jewish Re-source Network for Gender and Sexual Diversity, kicked off the
countdown to its 10th annual Purim off Ponce celebration with a party at the home of past Michael Jay Kinsler Rainmaker Award winners Dan Bloom and Barry Golivesky in honor of the 2016 honoree, Jeff Graham.
Graham, the executive director of Georgia Equality, will receive the Rain-maker Award at Purim off Ponce on March 5. He is the first non-Jewish win-ner of the award, although he long has been involved with the Jewish commu-nity and SOJOURN. Congregation Bet Haverim Rabbi Joshua Lesser officiated at his wedding.
“Jeff has been a strong supporter of SOJOURN for many years,” SO-JOURN Executive Director Rebecca Stapel-Wax said. “He was instrumental
Purim in the Fall
Only the baby doesn’t seem
to get the joke during the
Purim off Ponce kickoff party.
in our transition into a fully indepen-dent 501(c)(3) organization, and he has been a strong partner in our advocacy and education work across the South. We couldn’t think of a better honoree as we celebrate 10 years of Purim off Ponce and 15 years of hard work across the region.”
Purim off Ponce celebrates SO-JOURN’s work in advocacy, educa-tion, outreach and suicide prevention throughout the Southeast and is the nonprofit organization’s biggest fund-raiser.
The theme of the 2016 party is “Wild.” For the second year in a row, Purim off Ponce will be held at Le Fais do-do, 1161 Ellsworth Industrial Ave.
Tickets at sojourngsd.org/purim, are $75 in advance or $100 at the door. Sponsorships start at $300. ■
Photos by Eli GraySOJOURN’s executive director, Rebecca Stapel-Wax, and assistant director,
Robbie Medwed, flank the 2016 Michael Jay Kinsler Rainmaker Award honoree, Jeff Graham, during the Purim off Ponce kickoff party Sunday, Nov. 8.
SOJOURN supporters gather at the home of previous Rainmaker Award honorees Dan Bloom and Barry Golivesky.
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By Michael Jacobsand Marcia Caller [email protected]
Birthright Israel showed signs of a changing of the guard while cel-ebrating 15 years of free trips to
Israel at a gala dinner Monday night, Nov. 16, at the St. Regis in Buckhead.
Charles Bronfman, who founded the organization with Michael Stein-hardt, said he realized that Birthright Israel had survived to make a transi-tion to new leadership about two years ago at a reception to honor Joshua Nash as chair and Laurie Blitzer as vice chair of the Birthright Israel Foundation.
About 100 people were in the room, Bronfman said, and he knew six. He thought to himself, “This is the hap-piest day of my Birthright life because the next generation has taken over.”
The leadership transition has in-cluded Georgia Aquarium CEO Mike Leven taking over the organization’s planning committee from Bronfman.
Bronfman reflected on Birthright Israel’s triumphs and tribulations for 400 people who had gathered for two events in one: the third gala of Birth-right’s Atlanta Leadership Council and the end of the fourth annual national gathering of big Birthright donors.
“I’m impressed with all the young-er-generation faces we see here tonight, but nothing is free,” said Gary Simon, husband of event co-chair Michelle Si-mon. “We have to keep up the financial momentum.”
The gathering moved from Las Ve-gas to Atlanta to provide a change of scenery and to be closer to East Coast donors and in process came to the new home of the president of the Birthright Israel Foundation, David Fisher.
“I’m thrilled about tonight,” Fish-er said during the cocktail hour. His mother-in-law, Linda Selig, was one of the event co-chairs.
“Three years ago there was no way Atlanta could fill a room like this of over 400 for a Birthright event,” Fisher said. “Doug Ross has built success upon success outside of New York.”
Ross, who chairs the Atlanta Lead-ership Council and recently joined the foundation board, said he was over-whelmed by the evening, but the orga-nization deserved it. “Birthright Israel is changing the arc of Jewish history.”
Ross received praise from Bronf-man and from keynote speaker Bernie Marcus, who has supported Birthright since it had only 17 donors.
Birthright Comes Home For Atlanta Celebration
Marcus delivered a brief history of anti-Semitism. He said that from age 12 he wanted to be a doctor, and he spent his free time as a young teen read-ing medical books. But every medical school had a quota allowing no more than 10 percent of its class to be Jewish, sending Marcus down a different path.
He said Jews also were excluded from big law firms and major corpora-tions, but the founding of Israel in 1948 changed American attitudes.
That change secured one gen-eration’s devotion to the Jewish state, Marcus said, and the next generation remained supportive. But the third gen-eration was losing that connection.
“Without Birthright,” he said, “this generation would be lost.”
Instead, more than 6,000 Atlan-tans are among the half-million Jews ages 18 to 26 who have made the trip.
One of them is David Koonin, son of Atlanta Hawks CEO Steve Koonin and event co-chair Eydie Koonin.
He said his parents did everything right to cement his connection to the Jewish people, leading him from syna-gogue to day schools to summer camps to membership in AEPi at the Univer-sity of Georgia, but until he went on Birthright in 2012, all of that Jewish education and experience could have been for nothing. The 10-day trip made all the difference, he said. Now in addi-tion to the Atlanta Leadership Council, he is involved with such organizations as Friends of the Israel Defense Forces.
Similar stories were shared on and off the stage.
“Our son Scott went on the first special needs Birthright trip, and we were worried a bit,” East Cobb resi-dent Lyons Heyman said before the program. “Then he came back with the best experiences and learned to do one-armed push-ups with the IDF.”
Ex-IDF officer Omer Granot said Birthright is similarly life-changing for the Israelis who participate in the Mif-gash (encounter) program.
He said that touring with the Birth-right visitors inspired him to become a deputy submarine commander, then to pursue a master’s at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, where he orga-nized an Israel trip of 80 students, most of whom weren’t Jewish but became de-voted Israel supporters.
“The Jewish people connect through Torah, land and the nation of Israel,” Chabad Intown Rabbi Eliyahu Schuster-man said. “Birthright gives young Jews the connection to all three.” ■
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VOL. XC NO. 5WWW.ATLANTAJEWISHTIMES.COM
Diamant To Help LaunchCommunity MikvahBy Suzi Brozman
Anita Diamant, best known as the
author of “The Red Tent,” is com-
ing to Atlanta to make two public
appearances this month.
Her latest book, “The Boston Girl,”
will be the focus of her visit Feb. 23 to the
Marcus Jewish Community Center. But
the night before she will help local orga-
nizers plunge into a new project, an all-
denominations mikvah at Congregation
B’nai Torah in Sandy Springs.
Diamant’s discussion of reimagin-
ing ritual for the modern age will be free
and open to the public at The Temple in
Midtown to launch the Metro Atlanta
Community Mikvah (MACoM) into the
consciousness of Jewish Atlanta.
MACoM is an independent nonprofit
that plans to start construction of the
community mikvah in May and finish
before the High Holidays. The project will
involve a renovation of the existing facili-
ties at B’nai Torah and has the support of
more than a dozen synagogues and other
organizations.
MACoM’s board reflects diverse sup-
port, including three rabbis and repre-
sentatives of Reform, Conservative and
Orthodox streams of Judaism.
Diamant helped establish the model
for a nondenominational community
mikvah the past 10 years at Boston’s
Mayyim Hayyim (Living Waters).
“People responded to the idea of a
place that was welcoming and beautiful,
for happy occasions and sad, a way to
mark life’s changes,” Diamant said.
See more about her thoughts on the
modern mikvah on Page 6. ■
SPECIAL ABILITYNonverbal autism won’t
stop Dalia Cheskes from
becoming a bat mitzvah
at Beth Shalom.
Page 4
Local News 2
Israel 10
Opinion 12
Arts 15
Calendar 16
Travel 26
POWER OF ONEFederation honors the
many individuals who
make the community
more inclusive.
Page 8
DIGGING INTrees Atlanta gets a
lot of help to
celebrate Tu B’Shevat
in Poncey-Highland.
Page 32
INSIDEEducation 27
Obituaries 28
Simchas 29
Sports 29
Crossword 30
Marketplace 31
Welcome To The Future
Nearly 3,500 leading Jewish teens come to Atlanta to
chart personal and communal paths forward.
Page 18-25
BEST POLICYHonest Tea CEO Seth Gold-
man brings a message of
corporations as change
agents to Emory business
students.Page 3
SCARY WORLDAnti-Semitism isn’t sim-
ple, which means there
are no simple solutions to
the problems facing Euro-
pean Jews.
Page 7
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The worry of not getting enough sleep at night is keeping me awake.
We’ve all been there. That 6:30 a.m. flight for an important business meeting, or the early carpool to school, or worrying whether your son will pass his chemistry test. The mind is just racing, keeping you from falling asleep.
The Centers for Dis-ease Control and Preven-tion says adults should sleep between seven and nine hours a night.
The same report states that 35 percent of adults get less than seven hours.
Excessive sleep loss can lead to weight gain, higher blood pressure, anxiety, depression and even diabetes, according to a recent study from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.
Sleep deprivation was a factor in some of the biggest disasters in recent history, including the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island in 1979, the nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl in 1986 and the massive Exxon Valdez oil
Relax and Get Some Sleep
Enrichment for LifeBy Jeff [email protected]
spill in 1989. The National Highway Traffic
Safety Administration estimates that fatigue is a cause in 100,000 U.S. auto crashes a year.
Studies also show that sleep loss leads to accidents and injuries on the job and produces more sick days per accident.
Many doctors report that sleep is-sues are most chronic with the senior population.
In a National Institute on Aging study of over 9,000 people 65 and older, over half reported sleep com-plaints, including difficulty falling asleep, difficulty maintaining sleep and excessive daytime sleepiness.
We can do many things to try to get a better night’s sleep:
• Cut out the drinks that contain
caffeine, such as coffee, tea and soft drinks, by midafternoon.
• Skip that late-night martini. Alcohol may help you doze off initially, but once it wears off, you’re likely to wake up and have a hard time getting back to sleep, according to the Mayo Clinic.
• Do not eat a heavy meal before bed, such as beef, which takes excess energy to digest and causes indiges-tion for many.
• Turn off the electronics, especial-ly the smartphones and tablets. These stimulate our brains, and it is difficult to shut down immediately after read-ing email or answering a text.
• Exercise more. Any form of movement (running, swimming, those early morning classes at the Marcus Jewish Community Center) helps you feel refreshed and sleep better at night. Plus, exercise is vital to lowering blood pressure; high blood pressure causes heart attacks and respiratory diseases.
Yale University recently released research findings regarding high school kids. When asked how they feel during the school day, the students consistently invoked two key feelings:
“tired” and “stressed.” The head researcher, Marc
Brackett of the psychology department at Yale, said, “Parents and educators should be alarmed by the finding, as we need to be attending to the feelings of the nation’s youth.”
Many parts of the country are starting school at a later hour because they were tired of having students who were falling asleep first thing in the morning.
Many of these schools have shown an increase in national stan-dardized testing and have happier students who participate more in class as well as in extracurricular activities.
Getting the recommended amount of sleep will help create happy people, as well as a healthier society. So don’t let that unanswered email or conference call or your child’s upcom-ing championship soccer game keep you up.
Let your brain relax. Take a break. You will thank yourself the next day. ■
Jeff Taratoot is the owner of A Car-ing Approach Home Care.
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ISRAEL NEWS
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Alfred Uhry’s Tony-award winning musical, “Parade,” recounts the events that culminated in the 1915 lynching of Leo Frank, the Jewish manager of a pencil factory who was accused of murdering Mary Phagan, a 13-year-old employee. One hundred years later, we commemorate these tragic events with performances at Marietta’s historic Strand Theatre and at The Temple in Atlanta. Uhry (Driving Miss Daisy) and composer Jason Robert Brown (Bridges of Madison County) bring this painful chapter in Southern history to life.
Co-sponsored by Kennesaw State University Office of the President, Kennesaw State University College of Humanities and Social Sciences, the Paul and Beverly Radow Lecture Series, the Kennesaw State University Department of Museums, Archives & Rare Books as well as The Temple–Atlanta.
Department of Theatre and Performance Studies Presents
paradeconcert production
Book by Alfred Urhy. Music and Lyrics by Jason Robert Brown. Directed by Harrison Long. Music direction by Judith Cole.
Druze promote Israel. A delegation of Druze leaders from medicine, law enforcement and the Israel Defense Forces is visiting the United States to spread awareness of their commu-nity’s place in Israel’s multicultural so-ciety. Israel has 104,000 Druze citizens; 86 percent serve in the IDF.
IED solutions. In an interview published in The Atlantic on Nov. 4, U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter praised the Israeli approach to improvised explosive devices. “The Israelis were really quite ingenious in this area, and we got a lot from them. There’s no question that lives were saved as a consequence.”
The best veggie food in the world. Tel Aviv has the world’s best vegetar-ian restaurants, according to Conde Nast Traveler. The magazine’s recom-mendations include a Georgian vegan restaurant and an Ethiopian vegan cafe. Israel has some 300,000 vegans, the most per capita in the world.
Success in leukemia trials. BiolineRx in Jerusalem has reported positive re-sults from Phase 2 trials of its BL-8040 treatment in relapsed or refractory acute myeloid leukemia (r/r AML). The treatment had a triple positive effect on the leukemic cells only two days after a single cycle of therapy.
Genetic role in ovary development. Researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have uncovered a key gene responsible for ovary develop-ment. Four members of a family had mutations of the Nup107 gene, causing infertility. The discovery has wide-spread implications for cell biology.
U.S. approval for dialysis device. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved the Chameleon from Tel Aviv-based AV Medical Technologies. The Chameleon is the first angio-plasty balloon catheter that allows for simultaneous balloon inflation and intravascular injection of fluids while maintaining guidewire access. Over 2 million angioplasty balloon catheters are used annually worldwide to main-tain dialysis access.
Revolutionizing the delivery busi-ness. Israeli startup Wave is bringing the digital revolution to merchan-dise shipping. It is using innovative technology to share the bill of lading securely among all interested parties. The idea has many applications, and
Israel Pride: Good News From Our Jewish Home
even the United Nations is interested.
A disposable smartphone charger. Shtulim-based startup mobeego is launching a disposable charger that can provide up to four hours of power to any smartphone battery. The charg-ing unit will sell for $2.50.
Israeli eyes for London trucks. London Mayor Boris Johnson revealed during a visit to Israel that London is purchasing 200 multivision smart sen-sors from Jerusalem-based Mobileye. They will give drivers of London’s garbage trucks a “third eye” to help them avoid collisions with cyclists, motorcycle riders and pedestrians.
Ryanair flying from Eilat. Low-cost airline Ryanair has begun service from Ovda Airport, near Eilat, to Hungary, Poland and Lithuania for as little as 10 euros ($11) each way. Passengers re-ceive a gift basket that includes Ahava hand cream and chocolate.
Compiled courtesy of verygoodnewsis-rael.blogspot.com and other news sources.
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www.atlantajewishtimes.comOPINION
Editor’s NotebookBy Michael [email protected]
Our ViewThe Enemy
Yet again the terror has struck. Yet again the hor-ror has hit home. Yet again we’re desperate to strike back. Yet again we’re frustrated by an ephemeral en-emy that seems to worship nothing but death.
The slaughter across Paris on Friday the 13th was not the first or worst terrorist attack we have seen in this century that began in intifada and bus bombings and quickly brought us 9/11 and the falling Twin Tow-ers. The attacks have been remarkable in their relent-lessness and variety — from the spur-of-the-moment nihilism of the random knifings, shootings and vehi-cle rammings that are torturing Israel to the compli-cated logistics and heavy firepower of the bombing of the Russian airliner in the Sinai and the coordination of the eight-person, multisite assault on Paris.
The roll call of victimized cities — where anyone could have been transformed from civilian to casual-ty in the blink of an eye — includes London, Madrid, Nairobi, Beirut, Mumbai, Ottawa and Copenhagen, each with an unwanted sister city in terror in Israel.
The attacks have been irregular and unpredict-able in their individual details but relentless and un-mistakable in the big picture they form. As French of-ficials have acknowledged at least 10 months too late, we are at war. But with what? With whom?
The three Democratic presidential candidates made a spectacle of themselves at their debate Sat-urday night, Nov. 14, when they couldn’t bring them-selves to acknowledge any connection between the terrorists and Islam, although Hillary Clinton’s “radi-cal jihadists” doesn’t provide much separation from the only religion that embraces jihad.
By the same token, the word games over what to call the group that took credit for the Paris attack are nonsensical. It could be Islamic State, Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or Islamic State in Iraq and the Le-vant, and thus IS, ISIS or ISIL. Some urge that we use the Arabic acronym Daesh, which means the same thing as the English acronyms but also forms a pejo-rative word that the group supposedly hates.
So if they try to kill us, we’ll call them names.It’s true that words have power, but when we
play semantic games, we abuse that power. To under-stand this enemy, we need to understand its goals and motivations, reflected in its name: It wants a state governed by its particular form of virulent Islam. Pretending otherwise doesn’t change that reality. Nor does it help the overwhelming majority of Muslims, who are prime targets of Islamic State killers for fail-ing to adhere to a vision of Islam as a death cult.
Our refusal to see Islamic State’s vision also blinds us to the bigger picture. Islamic State is just one of many groups twisting Islam into a violent ide-ology. It may be ascendant among them now, but if we pretend it is a unique evil, fighting it will be no more meaningful than our war against Al-Qaeda.
Even if we succeed in crushing Islamic State, we’ll just open the way for others to take its place.
We must acknowledge that while we are not at war with Islam or with Muslims, we — the civilized world with our respect for life and liberty — are bat-tling those who would use extreme violence and a radicalized version of Islam to control people. Other-wise, more cities will share Paris’ pain. ■
Much of the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America this month was exactly what you would expect in a
gathering of communal organizations that together collect and disburse almost $1 billion a year for the good of the global Jewish community.
We heard about threats to our future, whether here or in Israel, and programs that are working against those threats. We heard about new ideas and venerable efforts. We heard young people explain why they were drawn to the Federation system and older people explain how much Federa-tion has meant to them.
We heard ideas to raise more money and better ways to spend it on community needs.
But one presentation stood out as a potentially game-changing idea for Federations and other Jew-ish communal agencies.
Dan Pallotta, who created the AIDS Ride and the three-day breast cancer walks and thus has helped raise more than half a billion dollars, asked a simple, powerful question: What if everything we believe about charitable fundraising is wrong?
It was not a new topic for Pallotta, whose ideas are captured in his book, “Uncharitable: How Re-straints on Nonprofits Undermine Their Potential.” But it was new to me, and to judge from the reac-tions around the ballroom at the Washington Hilton, it was new to most of the 2,500-plus in the crowd.
When we evaluate charities, we focus on their efficiency. We want almost none of our donations to be spent on overhead and administration so that al-most all can go to the cause. For example, the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta gets a four-star rating from Charity Navigator because 89.9 percent of its total spending goes to programs and services rather than administration and fundraising.
Turning Philanthropy on Its HeadIt’s worth noting that, if anything, the insis-
tence on efficiency and transparency in charities is stronger in millennials as they enter the donor pool. David Koonin, 28, said during a Birthright Israel gala Monday night, Nov. 16, that his generation is skepti-cal of Jewish philanthropy and wants to know where every dollar is going so that nothing is wasted.
Pallotta, however, would argue that we’re mak-ing a false division between spend-ing on the cause and spending on administration and fundraising. He drew a contrast with the for-profit busi-ness world.
Apple, for instance, spends billions on market-ing and research and development to improve prod-ucts, increase demand and drive more sales.
Big companies dare to make mistakes, recogniz-ing that one success more than makes up for several failures. But charities aren’t allowed to take risks, and a single failure is enough to cause an uproar.
The top executives at philanthropic organiza-tions are paid well compared with, say, the welders and philosophers Marco Rubio talked about at the last Republican presidential debate. But they’re paid a pittance compared with executives with the same abilities and responsibilities in the corporate world. And those corporate executives are rewarded for bringing in new sales and profits, while their non-profit friends don’t have a profit-sharing motivation.
Under Pallotta’s vision of applying the ap-proaches of innovative for-profit companies to the nonprofit world, a charity would spend a smaller percentage of its money on programs and services, but that smaller slice would come out of a much big-ger pie. And 60 percent of $10 million ($6 million) is a lot more than 90 percent of $1 million ($900,000). ■
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www.atlantajewishtimes.comOPINION
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As Thanksgiving nears, colum-nists are wont to put aside weightier topics and give
thanks for this or that.So, Jewishly speaking, I am thank-
ful for:My wife, our three children and
our extended families.The memory of my father and the
health of my mother.Conversations with my
favorite rabbi, my brother in New Jersey.
The multigenerational family celebration this summer as my nephew married a rabbinical student, a woman who will serve with distinction at whatever pulpit she ascends.
My “new” cousins from the Cuban branch on the family tree (descended from my great-grandfather’s twin brother, who settled in Palestine in the late 1800s), whose families spent decades building lives on the island but left everything behind when the Communists took over.
My great-aunt Amy, whose life as an American Communist I have
Giving Thanks at Thanksgivingresearched for 16 years, work that has put me in touch with a fascinating range of people.
Our congregation’s first perma-nent home, 28 years in the making.
The manner in which our rabbi challenges the congregation to meld Jewish values and social action, recog-nizing that there may not be unanim-
ity on every issue. Our Shabbat Shirah and choir
concert, which rock the house.The Atlanta Men’s Synagogue
Softball League, which provides the opportunity to remember what it was like to run, hit and throw with the abandon of youth and where you can count on sympathy and maybe an ice pack when you pull up lame trying to stretch a single into a double.
The Marcus JCC staff and volun-
teers who coordinate the participation of Atlanta in the JCC Maccabi Games.
Jews, Muslims and Christians who gather, talk and break bread together not because it is fashionable, but be-cause by doing so future generations will have healthier relationships than what their elders inherited.
The Jews who turned out to sup-port an Atlanta mosque when bigots vowed to threaten the tranquility of worship inside (but failed to show).
The Jews from numerous congre-gations who marched in the Pride Pa-rade and support SOJOURN: Southern Jewish Resource Network for Gender and Sexual Diversity.
Jewish Family & Career Services for counseling that encouraged me to embark on a different path when the one I trod for years came to an end.
The privilege of time spent with Holocaust survivors and hearing the tales told by their children.
Those who shine light into its his-tory’s dark corners, such as efforts to remember the Leo Frank lynching.
The Atlanta Jewish film, music and book festivals.
American Jews of any political
stripe who avoid absolutist positions and acknowledge shades of gray rather than seeing everything related to Israel in black-and-white terms.
American Jews who overcome a communal tendency toward self-cen-sorship because expressing a diversity of opinions should strengthen, not weaken, ties with Israel.
American Jews who can discuss, debate and write about Jewish affairs and Israel without resorting to recrim-ination, name-calling and debasing those with whom they disagree.
The Arava Institute for Environ-mental Studies, where Israelis and Arabs study, work and live together because “nature has no borders.”
The wealth of Jewish news, cul-tural reporting and opinion online.
The opportunity this newspaper provides me to research and write on substantive subjects — ranging from Holocaust survivors to the Frank lynching to Jewish relations with the Catholic Church — and all of those in the community who have shared their time and knowledge with me.
The opportunity to write this column every other week. ■
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www.atlantajewishtimes.comOPINION
Guest ColumnBy R.M. Grossblatt
Contact Martin
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For several weeks, every time I drove by Congregation Beth Jacob on LaVista Road, I saw
the large white banner with colorful confetti jumping off the words: “Shab-bat BLOCK PARTY Kiddush Luncheon, October 24, 11:30 AM, Open to the Community.”
In all the years that I’ve been a member of BJ (about 40), I never recall stepping out on LaVista for Kiddush, and certainly not for a sit-down luncheon. But after ser-vices on Shabbat morning, that’s exactly what I, along with other members and guests, did to celebrate the Worldwide Shabbat Project.
Around 10 that morning as I was walking the three blocks to shul, I felt a cool breeze and saw a clear blue sky — a perfect day for an outdoor luncheon. At Beth Jacob’s front park-ing lot, I spotted Lydia Schloss of the Spicy Peach, directing those setting up tables.
“Do you need help?” I asked, hop-ing she would say no so I could hear the rabbi’s speech. To my relief, she replied that she had plenty of help.
As soon as I opened the door to the lobby of the shul, I smelled the spicy scent of cholent, a stewlike dish of meat, beans and potatoes that cooks in a huge Crock-Pot overnight. The smell was so strong because lots of Crock-Pots were needed for the crowd they expected.
Although there was a flurry of activity in the foyer of the shul, all was quiet inside the sanctuary as Rabbi Ilan Feldman began his sermon. He spoke about the parshah of the week, Lech Lecha, joking that it had some-thing to do with our block party on the parking lot (the name of Abraham’s nephew is Lot).
Block Party Brings Shabbat Into Parking LotThen he was serious. “We’re
very good at surviving … overcoming persecution,” he said, “but we’re not familiar with what to do if we are not being held back.”
Rabbi Ilan said Abraham, our ancestor, taught the world about the glory of G-d and serving Him. He said that by observing Shabbos publicly
as a community, we were sharing the beauty of Shabbos with the world and inviting others to join us not only that week, but every week forever.
After services, I and hundreds of others left the sanctuary, and, instead of turning left toward Heritage Hall, we turned right and walked out the front door. Here the sun was shining brightly on about 30 round tables clothed in bright blue with challah rolls and covered trays of fish, condi-ments and desserts. Candies sprinkled generously on every table were grabbed up by children with wide eyes.
The trays were assembled on Thursday by BJ’s Kiddush commit-tee (like others at many synagogues across Atlanta), a group of women who volunteer weekly to prepare for the usual Kiddushes. But this was no usual Kiddush.
For the Shabbat Block Party Kid-dush Luncheon, the women prepared around 10 times as many trays.
Outside, Rabbi Ilan recited Kid-dush, and I joined others in saying, “Amen.” Then I sat down with my young grandsons and a family I hardly knew. From buffet tables, people piled
their plates with sushi, fried chicken wings, kugel and the warm cholent. Sponsors such as the Spicy Peach, Kosher Emporium, Chai Peking, Pita Palace and Fuego Mundo, as well as individuals and families, made the free luncheon possible.
After my children picked up their children, I moved around to other areas. A group of college students led by Rabbi Yaakov Fleshel of Meor at Emory sat at tables and enjoyed the food and camaraderie. Members of other synagogues on LaVista Road, including Ner Hamizrach, Netzach Yisrael, the New Toco Shul and Young Israel came by. I saw Rabbi Adam Starr from Young Israel conversing with Rabbi Ilan.
Ronda Robinson, a writer for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who attends several synagogues, sat among some friends she hadn’t seen in a while. “It’s nice to be part of a celebration worldwide, especially in the face of what’s going on in Israel,” she said, “and feel like we’re supporting each other.”
Off to the side, Rabbi Emanuel Feldman, Beth Jacob’s rabbi emeritus, who was visiting from Israel, passed a football to some young boys. A few minutes later, Rabbi Ilan led a train of
men singing zemiros (Shabbat songs) as they wove their way from one end of the parking lot to the other, picking up more singers along the way.
“I think that everyone was pleas-antly surprised at how so many factors came together to make the event so enjoyable,” said Rabbi Yitzhak Tendler, who with Rabbi Binyamin Sloviter recently joined the staff of Beth Jacob to create new programming. Rabbi Tendler credited Sybil Goldstein, BJ’s event coordinator, and the other mem-bers of the staff with overseeing the outdoor Shabbat party.
The event was inspired by an ar-ticle Rabbi Tendler read that described a block party in Los Angeles at which a large part of the Pico Robertson neigh-borhood was blocked off for 3,000 people who paid to celebrate Shabbat dinner together.
Rabbi Tendler estimated that 500 people attended the Toco Hills event. He saw the open celebration of Shabbat as a way to unify the different Orthodox groups in the area. “Shabbos is unique,” he said, “because it’s a cen-tral value that many different types of Jews can unify around.”
He added, “We share a lot more in common than we sometimes think.” ■
Women working with Congregation Beth Jacob’s Kiddush committee put together trays of food for the block-party Shabbat celebration held Oct. 24.
Letter to the EditorHope Against Pancreatic Cancer
Pancreatic cancer is one of the nation’s deadliest cancers, with a five-year survival rate of just 7 percent. It is time to wage hope against this disease.
To improve these statistics and to celebrate Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month in November, volunteers for the Atlanta Affiliate of the Pancreatic Can-cer Action Network are calling on the community to join them in the movement to rewrite the future for pancreatic cancer and double survival by 2020.
Our community can participate in several activities this November (World Pancreatic Cancer Day was Nov. 13). To learn more, visit www.wagehope.org.
Never before has there been a more urgent need to join the Pancreatic Can-cer Action Network, which offers the best hope to change the course for this disease. By uniting we can improve survival rates and patient outcomes.
— Julie Parmenter, Atlanta
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OPINION
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At its biennial convention this month in Orlando, the Union for Reform Judaism unani-
mously passed a resolution on the rights of transgender and gender nonconforming people. Witnesses reported the startling sound of silence when the presiding officer asked for “nay” votes. (Seri-ously, when has a group of thousands of Jews ever been silent?)
The resolution signals a massive shift in transgen-der acceptance in main-stream Judaism. While the Reconstructionist movement has welcomed transgender Jews for some time, the Reform movement is the largest Jewish movement in the United States, and in many ways, its actions set the tone for American Jewry at large.
Still, questions remain. The reso-lution, while specific in many ways, leaves its implementation to individu-al synagogues, camps and schools.
My organization, SOJOURN, the Southern Jewish Resource Network for Gender and Sexual Diversity, works with Jewish institutions across the Southeast to promote inclusion and acceptance of people across the entire spectrum of gender and sexual orientation.
Here are some of our best prac-tices when it comes to ensuring that your synagogue is a safe place for transgender Jews:
• Accept people as they are. Encourage your members to present themselves to you as they wish to be seen. That includes using their proper pronouns and names as they intro-duce themselves to you. Legal names may be necessary for certain internal paperwork, but allowing people to control their own identities is a must.
• Designate a gender-neutral bathroom. While many transgender people feel comfortable and safe using public restrooms, many do not. Desig-nating one restroom as gender-neutral ensures their safety and dignity. My own synagogue, Shearith Israel, desig-nated two of our smallest restrooms as “family restroom (with urinals)” and “family restroom (without urinals)” over the High Holidays. Not only did this allow any gender nonconforming or transgender individuals the safety to use the restroom, but it allowed some of our older members to be es-
Tips to Make Shul Transgender Safe Space
corted to the restroom by a different-gender caretaker and allowed parents to easily take children to the restroom.
• Stop segregating children by body parts for school activities. Too often teachers assume that all of the boys will want to play sports while all
of the girls will want to make crafts. Children can be separated into small groups by counting off by numbers, by the colors of the T-shirts they’re wearing, by their birthday months, and by so many other ways that don’t involve their genitalia. Recent stud-ies have shown that children begin to understand their true gender as early as 3 years old. Insisting on separating children by genitalia tells them that their genitalia is the only characteris-tic that matters about them.
• Stop saying things like “both genders,” “boys and girls,” and other binary phrases. Men and women are just two possibilities for gender in our world. Even the Talmud speaks at length of six genders. There are many people who don’t identify with what it means to be male or what it means to be female but instead are considered to be “nonbinary.” Many variations on nonbinary identities exist, but the underlying theme of them all is the understanding that phrases like “boys and girls” exclude them. Try simple words like “children,” “students” and “siblings” instead.
To be sure, there are many, many more ways to change policies and philosophies to be more inclusive and welcoming of transgender and gender nonconforming Jews. These are just the tip of the iceberg.
Most of all, though, the intention of being welcoming matters a great deal. The simple desire to become more welcoming is a great first step. And, of course, for any synagogue, camp or school that wants to become certified as a “Welcoming Commu-nity,” SOJOURN offers a yearlong program to evaluate and implement welcoming policies for individual institutions. Visit sojourngsd.org for more information. ■
Guest ColumnBy Robbie Medwed
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By David R. [email protected]
The Union for Reform Judaism Biennial in Orlando from Nov. 4 to 8 featured several noteworthy
moments for the more than 5,000 Jews who attended, including dozens from the Atlanta area.
At the morning plenary session Nov. 5, the URJ unanimously passed a resolution that calls on synagogues to take a welcoming stance toward trans-gender people. The resolution suggests that congregations create gender-neu-tral bathrooms, increase training for staff on LGBT issues and eliminate gen-der-specific pronouns on name tags.
A few hours after the resolution was passed, the URJ president, Rabbi Rick Jacobs, delivered his presidential address at an evening plenary session. Jacobs covered a range of topics but spent most of his address talking about the growing rift between Israeli policy-makers and Reform Jews in America.
“The current Israeli government is unlikely to permit advances in reli-gious freedom such as civil marriage,
Georgians Shape URJ Biennial Rabbis, lay leaders share insights, bring home engaging ideas
equal funding of n o n - O r t h o d o x institutions and reducing the power of the ultra-Orthodox Chief Rabbinate,” Rabbi Jacobs said. “Our movement, with its alternative to the rigid and in-sular Judaism that permeates Israeli public life, must remind the Israeli state about the power and wis-dom of a plural-istic approach to Jewish life.”
Rabbi Jacobs, however, was mostly positive in his support of the Jewish state and added that the safety and security of Israel should be a primary goal of the Reform movement.
The engagement of a new genera-tion of Reform Jews was also a topic of note for the URJ president. He called for a renewed push to bring in young
Jews through tikkun olam (repairing the world).
“Millennials more than anything want to make a difference,” he told the crowd. “Tikkun olam should be the gateway into a life of Jewish commit-ment.”
Throughout the biennial, Jews from Georgia took part in Torah study, learning sessions and workshops.
Rabbi Rachael Bregman of Tem-ple Beth Tefilloh in Brunswick trav-eled to Orlando with a delegation of five from her congregation, including her 6-month-old daughter, one of the youngest attendees.
“There are an endless amount of sessions going on here with great re-sources for us,” she said. “Particularly as a small congregation. We only have 75 families, so to access resources for the entire Union for Reform Judaism is amazing and special.”
Rabbi Peter Berg of The Temple was one of many Atlanta clergy mem-bers who made the trip. He arrived Nov. 3 with a 15-member delegation from his Midtown congregation, including Pres-ident Jonathan Amsler and Executive
Director Mark Jacobson. On Nov. 5, Rabbi Berg led a ses-
sion to discuss the next steps in racial justice after 200 rabbis marched with the NAACP from Selma, Ala., to Wash-ington, D.C., Aug. 1 to Sept. 15. Amsler sat on a panel later that day discussing efficient governance models for large congregations, and Jacobson partici-pated in a panel focusing on the URJ’s policy of audacious hospitality.
The next day, Rabbi Berg sat on a panel hosted by Atlanta Rabbi Dan Medwin on “Sacred Upgrading: New Techs for Ancient Texts.”
Rabbi Medwin, who is the pub-lishing technology manager for the Central Conference of American Rab-
Rabbi Dan Medwin, husband of The Temple’s Rabbi Lydia Medwin,
attends the biennial on behalf of the
Central Conference of American Rabbis.
He presented advances in visual
tefillah Friday morning, Nov. 6.
Rabbi Rachael Bregman and her 6-month-old daughter attend the biennial on behalf
of Temple Beth Tefilloh in Brunswick.
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bis, was on hand to explain the latest advances in visual tefillah, prayer book apps and e-books.
“Upgrading our sacred text con-tainers is something that we’ve been doing since the beginning of Jewish history,” Rabbi Medwin said. “Each time we do it, there are new features that are available which give us better access to the texts. The biggest thing we want congregations to do is be willing to experiment.”
Temple Kol Emeth Rabbi Erin Boxt made the trip from East Cobb to Orlando with his wife, Batya, and their daughters, Carlie and Danika. Boxt es-chewed many of the sessions and work-shops in favor of one-on-one meetings and networking opportunities.
“It’s been amazing here,” Rabbi Boxt said. “We’ve run into so many of my colleagues and friends. Unfortu-nately I haven’t had time to go to many sessions so far because I’m constantly talking to people and bouncing ideas off each other.”
The Kol Emeth delegation also got to see member Blair Marks installed for her second year as the president of Women of Reform Judaism.
Rabbi Ron Segal of Temple Sinai, who traveled to Orlando with a delega-tion that included congregant Jan Ep-
stein and Youth Director Molly Okun, said the biennial gave him a chance to explore ways his congregation can tackle social justice.
“I have found the experience here to be profoundly engaging,” Rabbi Se-gal said. “I’ve spent a lot of time here focusing on the movement towards racial justice, and I am inspired to help bring our congregation into that battle for racial equality.”
During the biennial, Temple Sinai and The Temple were named exemplar congregations for the URJ’s Disabili-ties Inclusion Learning Center. To be awarded the distinction, a congrega-tion must excel in one or more areas of inclusion.
Epstein received the recognition for Temple Sinai, and Amsler accepted on behalf of The Temple. ■
Rabbi Erin Boxt of Temple Kol Emeth schmoozes near the Jewish Rock Radio Stage with wife Batya and their younger daughter, Danika.
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Calling all gift givers: It’s Robyn to your rescue. If you’re looking for fabulous gifts for Chanukah,
start here.Let the shopping begin. Check out
these creative and color-ful gift-giving resources. There’s something for ev-eryone on your gift list, and be sure to order early — Chanukah is right around the corner, starting Sunday night, Dec. 6.
The countdown has begun; now make your gifts meaning-ful and memorable.
Customized creativity comes with the tasteful, quality, personalized gifts from Thirty Seven West (www.thirty-sevenwest.com), an Atlanta-based gift source offering tech accessories, home décor from pillows to platters, tote bags of every sort, robes and wraps, jewelry, and even kid naptime mats. With its personalization service, you can give gifts that are truly one of a kind.
Order the fabulous custom ribbon personalized with your family name or company logo. I’m a huge fan of this clever site.
Just name that perfect gift at Frecklebox.com (www.frecklebox.com). Check out my favorite kid-friendly personalized gift source, filled with reasonable and adorable gifts with the name of your child or grand-child on everything. You’ll love giving personalized, customized books for children of all ages, such as “A Hug for (child’s name) From Grandma.” You are included in the book.
Check out my latest coloring book, “(child’s name) Counting Book,” as well as personalized gifts from lunch boxes to stickers to placemats.
Modern Mix for an Ancient CelebrationChanukah giving goes beyond dreidels and gelt
Gift GuideBy Robyn Spizman Gersonwww.robynspizman.com
Frecklebox.com will make every child smile with guaranteed hugs for the gifted giver.
Tower Beer, Wine & Spirits (www.towerwinespirits.com) presents old-
fashioned, time-tested gifts. Stick with kosher classics this holiday season, like Rashi or Barkan from Israel, or, if you want to try something new, share a special bottle of Keter Zahav Medoc with your nearest and dearest. This kosher Bordeaux is delicious and available only at Tower. It makes the perfect gift for your Chanukah host or hostess.
Tower also carries such kosher vodkas as Absolut and Chopin. Check with a salesman for wonderful kosher selections. Call or email ahead to take advantage of Tower’s curbside service: Someone will bring your order out while you are paying inside. Sign up for the free Tower Card list at the website for monthly savings on select items. Locations are at 2161 Piedmont Road in Buckhead and 5877 Buford Highway in Doraville.
Just Jen (www.justjen.com) creates spark-tacular one-of-a-kind gifts per-fect for the holidays or special events in your life. The company special-izes in sparkling rhinestone designs personalized on apparel, including T-shirts, sweat suits and robes, for kids and adults. Just Jen has been featured on television and in print media including “Today,” “Access Hollywood,”
“The Bachelor Wedding,” “Good Morn-ing America” and “The View.”
Visit Chuck Wolf’s Photo Design Bar (www.photodesignbar.com) at 3763 Roswell Road in Buckhead for the picture-perfect gift. The Photo Design Bar is the go-to store for photo imaging, personalized photo gifts and prints of cellphone shots. Talented designers are ready to assist you with memorable gifts, ranging from holiday cards to photo keepsakes books and works of art. They will print your photo free if you purchase the frame from the store’s fabulous selection.
As a proud grandparent and mom, I find it’s easy to love the lasting keepsake created at Chuck Wolf’s new-est concept. It’s the image-conscious gift-giving central.
You’ll love Learning Express (www.learningexpress.com), one of Atlanta’s favorite toy stores, with locations at 2953 N. Druid Hills Road in Toco Hills, 4407 Roswell Road in Buckhead, 1401 Johnson Ferry Road in East Cobb, 7300 North Point Parkway in Alpharetta and 2295 Towne Lake Parkway in Woodstock. The store is ready to assist you with selections for ages from birth through teens with the hottest toys on the planet. You’ll find a fantastic selection, including Melissa & Doug, Lego, PlushCraft, Barbie, Elmo, Beanie Boos and Emoji Pillows.
Learning Express offers compli-mentary gift wrap, provides a toy con-cierge service in person or by phone, and ships. This dedicated learning toy store will help you match the ideal gift for your little one from its aisles of smiles.
Ugly Snuglies (www.UglySnuglies.com) — plush sen-sations that are super fun, super soft, oversized stuffed animals —
prove that you don’t have to be perfect to be loved. It’s what is on the inside that counts. The As-Seen-On-TV Ugly Snuglies have long fur that makes them fun to snuggle with. Far more than ordinary stuffed animals, they are pets with personalities, and every Ugly Snuglie has a hidden gift.
The hidden gifts are geared to teach children lessons. Krazy Kitty has a hidden light in his tail to help kids feel safe. Bizarre Bear includes five secret zipper pockets to help kids clean up after themselves. Unusual Uni-corn’s alarm clock helps kids learn the value of time. Pouty Pig hides a bank
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inside to help kids learn to save money. Rowdy Rabbit’s radio helps kids learn to relax, while Porky Panda provides a hidden blanket to keep kids warm.
Ugly Snuglies ship in three to five business days. Get a 25 percent discount off your Ugly Snuglies when you use the promo code “SAVE.”
ModernTribe (www.moderntribe.com), a thriving online store with a brick-and-mortar presence in Atlanta’s Sweet Auburn district at 171 Auburn Ave., Suite G, is a creatively curated gift site with a mission of celebrat-ing design-forward, fun and fabulous Jewish gifts for one and all. Modern-Tribe.com shoppers can have Judaica gifts sent anywhere in the world. At the Sweet Auburn shop, browse the eclectic selection, get gift advice and customize gifts.
Top gift picks include themed menorahs and a popular Hebrew & English Name Puzzle. This handmade wooden puzzle connects the child’s English name to the Hebrew name and Jewish legacy. Allow up to 10 business days, so place your Chanukah orders before Nov. 27 to be sure of arrival before the festival ends.
Also look for “Soy Vey” Chanukah candles and Chanukah baby pajamas — adorable footed pajamas in patterns of dreidels and menorahs, available in sizes up to 24 months. Matching adult pajama pants also are available.
Lucy’s Market (www.lucysmar-ket.com) is a fabulous, eclectic farmers market in the heart of Buckhead at 102 W. Paces Ferry Road. Previously a se-cret in the area but rapidly becoming the hottest spot to shop, Lucy’s Market sells fresh produce, locally prepared foods (casseroles, soups, cakes, brown-ies, pies and much more), pretty flower arrangements, orchids, and a variety of seasonal gift items.
Lucy’s specializes in beautiful, customized gift baskets designed just for you. The market is a must-see dur-ing the holiday season.
CaJa Popcorn (www.cajapopcorn.com) makes its chef-inspired flavors in small batches every day, using only high-quality ingredients and never
A1 & A2. Chuck Wolf’s Photo Design Bar offers many options for turning digital snapshots into Chanukah cards.
B. One of the gifts from Frecklebox.com is a personalized counting coloring book created by Robyn Spizman Gerson.
C. Photo courtesy of GeltsiendModernTribe’s Chanukah collection includes pajamas for babies up to 24 months old.
D. ModernTribe’s Hebrew & English Name Puzzle helps a child connect his or her name in both languages.
E. Buckhead children’s shop Mitylene offers personalized pajamas.F. This gunmetal and chocolate wrap bracelet is an attractive
eSBe Designs option for the right woman in your life.G. The Ugly Snuglies are stuffed animals with a purpose.
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nuts or preservatives. CaJa Popcorn of-fers a variety of tin sizes to meet your gifting needs. You can place an order at the website or visit the store in the Peachtree Battle Shopping Center at 2333 Peachtree Road in Buckhead.
“Don’t Give Up … Don’t Ever Give Up” is a book that captures the his-tory North Carolina State basketball coach Jim Valvano made on March 4, 1993. Honored with the inaugural Arthur Ashe Courage and Humanitar-ian Award at the first ESPY Awards presentation, 10 years after he won an NCAA championship, Valvano delivered a speech that left an indel-ible mark.
Just a year before, he was diag-nosed with a rare form of cancer; his memory has become a lasting legacy. His inspirational message survived the test of time. The V Foundation, found-ed by ESPN and inspired by Valvano, has raised more than $130 million to find a cure for cancer. Says Justin Spiz-man (Robyn’s son and co-author on this book): “Jim Valvano gives us hope, and his speech continues to remind us of how one person’s thoughts and desires can truly make a difference. Jimmy V taught us that each day is a blessing and each moment a gift.”
Kids will love “Dr. Fuddle and the Gold Baton” (www.drfuddle.com). This fabulous book introduces classi-cal music in a fantasy story written by musicologist, pianist and piano teacher Warren Woodruff, an Atlanta resident. It’s the ideal book to give chil-dren who love a great read and is soon to be a movie. Woodruff has delivered a book that promises to have a lasting legacy by introducing children to the love of classical music.
Take time out for the Michele watch (www.michele.com) as the online store brings loyalists an unfor-gettable holiday collection. Michele’s watches are infused with intricate craftsmanship; dazzling, hand-set diamonds; deep jewel tones; and the signature femininity of Michele. The watches and interchangeable straps continue to be the perfect gift for holi-days or for any day.
Get Minted (www.minted.com),
a national website meant for stylish, fabulous gifting. Minted is imprinted with creativity and style, and its gifts always make a statement. Minted is a marketplace for independent artists from Atlanta and around the globe and their art prints, silhouette art, personalized papers and much more.
Tell her she’s a gem with gorgeous jewelry, from cultured pearls to stun-ning long necklaces to earrings and bracelets, from eSBe Designs (www.es-bedesigns.com). If you are looking for the perfect gift for each of the women in your life, eSBe has the answer. Wrap her wrist in a gorgeous Swarovski crystal bracelet and you are sure to see her smile from ear to ear.
Inspired by local but nationally known jewelry designer Sara Blaine, the online store can help you find something for everyone on your list from tweens and up. Fashionable, stylish, affordable jewelry that is hand-made and stunning, these lasting treasures are the ideal gift. You can also contact eSBe for an introduction to a stylist who can help you find the ideal gift.
Mitylene (www.shop-mitylene.com), Buckhead’s newest top shop for kids, is presented by Laura Graber and Betsy Pomerantz. This adorable boutique is super-high-fashion but playful, European yet sweet. Fashion and retail have always been parts of Laura and Betsy’s lives. With Mitylene (named for Betsy’s grandmother) these stylish moms who have five children between them have dedicated them-
selves to creating a fabulous store for kids.
Mitylene presents special pieces that are irresistible, including Europe-an collections, favorite U.S. brands and hand-knits from the Andes. Lines also include Oscar de la Renta, Rachel Ri-ley, johnnie-O, Anaïs & I, and Sundek. The store’s private labels — mitt boys and mitylenegirls — launch next year. Mitylene is located at Simply Home at 4209 Roswell Road in Buckhead. ■
Robyn Spizman Gerson is a nation-ally known media personality and communications expert whose clients include several of the businesses in this column. The New York Times best-selling author of “Make It Memorable” appears often on NBC’s “Today” show and is seen regularly on “Atlanta and Company” on WXIA-TV (Channel 11).
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Serving Jewish education since 2007birthday parties from oytoys and thou shalt read
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Mitzvah Magician Party►Magic show with Debbie Leifer, renowned magician Cake and
refreshments Story time Gift book for each child
Everything Noah’s Ark Party►Children enjoy a live petting zoo Cake and refreshments
Story time Gift book for each child
Craft PartyChildren create provided wooden craft Cake and refreshments
Story time Gift book for each child
Sammy Spider PartySammy Spider arts and crafts, activities, and games Cake and
refreshments Story time Gift book for each child
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By Tova Norman
Although Sunday, Nov. 8, was cold, wet and windy, adults and students at Congregation Beth
Shalom were outside planting daffo-dils as a memorial for the children who perished in the Holocaust.
“It’s a project of action, and it’s a way of actually making a difference to the next generation,” said Andrea Videlefsky, the founder of the Daffodil Project, a worldwide project designed to promote Holocaust education by planting 1.5 million daffodils to memo-rialize the 1.5 million children killed in the Holocaust. The Daffodil Project is a program of Atlanta-based Holocaust education nonprofit Am Yisrael Chai.
The shape and color of the daffo-dils are reminders of the yellow star Jews wore during the Holocaust. Yellow is also the color of remembrance, and the daffodils’ resilience as perennials represents the people who survived the Holocaust and built new lives and hope for a future without genocide.
The Daffodil Project has planted 180,000 daffodils at sites around the world so far. Beth Shalom added 540 bulbs at the recent planting.
Dr. Nadine Becker, who serves on the board of Am Yisrael Chai and is a member of Beth Shalom, helped coor-dinate the Nov. 8 event, which included a brunch and a presentation by Holo-caust survivor Ilse Eichner Reiner.
“I’m thrilled that Beth Shalom has embraced this program and become a partner with Am Yisrael Chai and the Daffodil Project because I feel strongly that the project sends a good message
On a Gray Day, Yellow Bulbs ShineDaffodil Project moves 540 flowers closer to Holocaust remembrance goal
to the community,” Becker said. It is a message of hope and remem-
brance.“Seeing the daffodils is a reminder
of the children who perished and the innocent lives that were lost,” Becker said. “We all need to do everything that we can to prevent genocide in the world, to prevent hate and to never let this happen again.”
The message has resonated with many groups as daffodils have been planted from north Georgia to the Czech Republic.
Beth Shalom decided to partici-pate in the Daffodil Project because the synagogue has designated this year as “The Year of the Torah.” The commu-nity is restoring a Sefer Torah from Czechoslovakia that survived being burned during the Holocaust.
The restoration of the Torah scroll, once thought to be too badly burned to be restored, will be completed by a sofer (scribe) Sunday, Dec. 6, and placed in the Beth Shalom aron kodesh (ark) during a ceremony Dec. 13.
“By restoring this Torah scroll, we are not just preserving a relic of the Shoah, but we are ensuring that the beautiful heritage of the Jewish com-munity who loved and honored this scroll will never be forgotten and that Jews right here in Atlanta, Georgia, will keep the flame of their memory alive for future generations,” Beth Shalom Rabbi Mark Zimmerman said.
He said that the Daffodil Project has the same purpose.
“The daffodils which we are plant-ing on the grounds of our shul will serve as a lasting memory of those chil-
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dren whose lives were cut short, and each year as they return with a burst of color in the springtime, they will sig-nify the hope and resilience of the Jew-ish people.”
More information about the Daf-fodil Project, including the possibility of twinning a bar or bat mitzvah with a child killed in the Holocaust, is avail-able by visiting www.daffodilproject.net, calling 855-665-4234 or emailing [email protected].
“I’m looking forward to the spring when I drive up to Beth Shalom and I see the daffodils.” Becker said. “I think that it will be a powerful statement.”
Terrie Bryan, a member of Beth Shalom who attended the event, re-flected on how the daffodils work as a living memorial. “I wanted the memo-ry to keep going,” she said.
“It was important to me that my
kids do this and that we remember,” said Ilene Heller, who participated along with her two children in the re-ligious school.
“The daffodils will remind onlook-ers of the children who perished, but participants in the planting also will remember the story of Reiner, a child who survived against all odds.
Reiner, who is from Czechoslova-kia, explained how “everything started to change” once the Nazis seized con-trol in 1938. First she was banned from piano lessons, then school, and then her parents were taken away. From her town of Vsetin, 150,000 were deported, and 150 survived.
Alex Wittlin, a junior at Norcross High School who works at the religious school, said Reiner’s story was “aston-ishing. It made me think about how good my life is.”
Photos by Tova Norman Holocaust survivor Ilse Eichner Reiner tells the Beth Shalom
audience about her experiences during the war.
What: Chanukah celebration and Holocaust Torah dedication
Where: Congregation Beth Shalom, 5303 Winters Chapel Road, Dunwoody
When: Sunday, Dec. 13, 5 to 6:30 p.m. for Chanukah celebration, 6:30 to 7 for Torah dedication
Cost: $10 per adult, $7 per child
Information and RSVP: www.bethshalomatlanta.org or 770-399-5300
Wittlin recognized the special na-ture of the Daffodil Project — taking a message and doing something about it.
“I think it is a very creative idea,” he said. “It gets people working togeth-er to memorialize all of the horrible events that happened.”
So despite the weather, the daffo-dils made it into the ground, waiting to bloom in the spring and, along with the Torah scroll, serve as living memorials.
“When I look at this old Torah scroll, I do not simply see the tragically successful attempt to eradicate Jew-
ish life in the community from which it came. I also see all the simchas that were once celebrated around this To-rah, the holiday services, the b’nai mitzvah, the aufrufs and the baby nam-ings,” Rabbi Zimmerman said. “We will be privileged to bring this rare Sefer Torah back to life, enabling it to once again be used and read from in a syna-gogue.”
Becker agreed. “This Torah that could have seen
its end is really seeing a new begin-ning,” she said. ■
Sixth-grader Shira Funk plants daffodils with her class at Congregation
Beth Shalom on Sunday, Nov. 8.
Beth Shalom members Terrie (left), Lori and David Bryan plant daffodil bulbs.
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The Davis Academy is expanding its pre-kindergarten program.
The Reform day school an-nounced Wednesday, Nov. 11, that its full-day Mechina: Kindergarten Prep academic program will accommodate multiple classrooms for 4-year-olds and young 5-year-olds in the 2016-17 school year.
Davis also will provide a one-time Little Learners grant of $3,500 to each child accepted into Mechina next school year.
“Integrating these young students into the dynamic learning culture and environment of our vibrant elemen-tary school delivers a qualitatively dif-ferent experience than can be provided in other settings,” said Drew Frank, the Davis associate head of school and principal. “The training of our teach-ers combined with the structure of our teaming enables an age-appropriate and inquiry-based curriculum to be de-velopmentally adjusted for learners.”
The Mechina program aims to provide a nurturing environment that challenges and supports the intellec-tual, social, emotional and physical de-velopment of each child heading into elementary school, whether the child is going through pre-K or taking a tran-sitional year.
Davis Adds Incentive As Pre-K Program Grows
Full-time, certified teachers run the classrooms and have the support of counselors, a school psychologist, spe-cialized instructors (world language, science, art, PE) and clergy. The curric-ulum includes innovative instructional technology, student mentors, divergent learning spaces, field trips, hands-on learning and purposeful playtime.
“The Mechina program was an amazing introduction into the larger Davis experience,” said Stacy Wolff, who sent a son through the program and has a second child enrolled this year.
The small group instruction was important for parent Sari Block, whose Mechina alum is now in kin-dergarten at Davis. “Not only was it a warm environment where our child felt the support and encouragement from the teachers and their friends, but the learning that took place in the classroom prepared our daughter for a seamless transition into kindergarten.”
Davis will host a Mechina parent information session Tuesday, Jan. 26, from 11:45 a.m. to 1:15 p.m. with a tour of the school and current Mechina par-ents available to discuss the program. Contact Lisa Mirsky at 678-527-3300 or [email protected] for more information. ■
Mechina pupils engage in independent learning activities using tablet technology.
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5 Named To Holocaust Panel
Gov. Nathan Deal has appointed or reappointed five members of the Jew-ish community to four-year terms on the Georgia Commission on the Holo-caust, his office announced Oct. 23:
• Chuck Berk of Atlanta, the presi-dent and CEO of BCR Properties. He previously owned R.S. Andrews of Tidewater and was vice president of Sears Home Improvement. He is the chairman of Israel Bonds’ Atlanta board and co-chair of the Republican Jewish Coalition of Atlanta and is a Temple Sinai member. He earned a bachelor’s in business administration from Bucknell University.
• Claire D’Agostino of Sandy Springs, a past president and current board member of Temple Sinai. She sits on the board of Birthright Israel and is active in the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta. She is a Leadership Atlanta graduate and holds master’s and doctoral degrees in clinical psy-chology from Georgia State University.
• Evan Jacobs of Brookhaven, a speech language pathologist at Lake-side High School in DeKalb County. She is a member of Congregation B’nai Torah. She earned a bachelor’s degree from George Washington University and a master’s degree in education from the University of Georgia.
• Sara Kogon of Sandy Springs, the founder of West 44. She sits on the national council of AIPAC and the ex-ecutive council of the Atlanta chapter of AIPAC. She is involved with Fed-eration, the Jewish Women’s Fund of Atlanta, the William Breman Jewish Home and the Epstein School. She earned a bachelor’s in psychology and a master’s in business administration from Emory University.
• Lisa Olens of Marietta, who works in economic development for Georgia Power. She sits on the boards of Safe-Path Children’s Advocacy Center, the Cobb Chamber of Commerce and Con-gregation Etz Chaim. She previously was on the boards of the Cobb County Community Foundation and Jewish Family & Career Services. She is a grad-uate of Leadership Cobb and recipient of the W. Wyman Pilcher Jr. Award for community service. She also was awarded SafePath’s Hearing Children’s Voice Award for Service. She earned a bachelor’s in mechanical engineering from Duke University and a master’s in finance from Georgia State. ■
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The Mechina: Kindergarten Prep program is a full-day academic experience that serves four and young five-year-olds in a nurturing and encouraging environment.
Simply put, Mechina delivers more:• More subjects and learning• More field trips and enrichment• More individualized education• More time for your family to be a part of the Davis family.
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Come Jan. 1, the Free Applica-tion for Federal Student Aid becomes available. For high
school seniors in Georgia, the FAFSA is important for the HOPE Scholarship and usually is a requirement for any financial aid from colleges.
Don’t panic: You don’t have to complete the FAFSA in a week. Refer to a college’s website for its due date, but if you do not complete the FAFSA, your dream of need-based finan-cial help might disappear.
The most common mistakes in completing the FAFSA (www.fafsa.ed.gov):
• Thinking you will not qualify for any financial aid (scholarships, grants, loans, work study). Some fairly wealthy families qualify for aid. Just because you may not qualify for fed-eral aid doesn’t mean that the college will not offer you some of its own aid.
Some colleges also require the CSS/Financial Aid Profile. A list of those colleges is on the College Board website (www.collegeboard.com). The profile is not free, but if the college re-quires it, you can find it on the College
The FAFSA Is Coming Your WayBoard site and the college’s website.
Completing these financial aid documents is not as difficult as it may appear, but not completing them means no need-based money will come your way.
• Using the wrong tax year. For this year’s seniors, the base year is 2015. If a family completes its tax returns early, the FAFSA will be easier to fill out. However, you can estimate figures on the FAFSA and have an op-portunity later to make adjustments if your tax figures vary from your estimates.
Next year’s FAFSA will be com-pletely different for this year’s juniors; more on that in a future article.
• Missing deadlines. The colleges are serious about deadlines because they do not have a lot of time to review your FAFSA results. Thus, in many in-
stances, the early bird gets the worm. • Being too specific. The FAFSA
wants only whole dollar amounts, no cents. Believe it or not, thousands of applicants temporarily lost eligibility because they entered cents. Review what you have entered because an er-ror can cost you heavily in the end.
Start gathering information that you will need to complete the FAFSA so you are prepared Jan. 1. A future ar-ticle will focus on additional common errors that spoil FAFSA applications. Here is some of the information you will need:
• Social Security numbers. • Driver’s license (if any). • W-2 forms for 2015 and other
records of money earned. • Your federal income tax return if
available. • Current bank statements. • Current business and invest-
ment mortgage information, business records, and stock, bond and other investment records.
Need help? Check the Help section of the FAFSA website or call the Fed-eral Student Aid Information Center.
A handy telephone number is 800-433-3243, the U.S. Department of
Education. Free help is available. Also, the FAFSA has a help section where you can find information for each question.
The FAFSA site at www.fafsa.ed.gov is well-designed.
Be careful, though, because some outfits use websites that look like the federal website with a little change in the address. That could cost you money. FAFSA is free. The best way, by far, is to complete the FAFSA online.
Keep a record of everything you submit. You might be subject to a veri-fication process and have to submit tax documents. The year 2015 becomes your base year for these FAFSA calcu-lations.
What is the FAFSA4caster? This is an aid in preparing you for the actual FAFSA. You will obtain a preliminary estimated expected family contribu-tion (EFC), which will let you know how much the methodology used thinks you can afford. You may not agree, but that figure is what the colleges will use in their financial aid decisions.
Your electronic passport to fed-eral student aid online is the FSA ID. It is very important. It will be used to confirm your identity when accessing your financial aid information and serves as your electronic signature on federal student aid documents.
When you go to the FAFSA web-site, you should see the button for the FSA ID and how to create it. If you had to file the FAFSA in the past, you had a PIN. No more: It has gone away. Now there is only the FSA ID.
Both the student and a parent need a FSA ID. The parent can’t use the student’s ID because both have to sign their signatures separately. ■
Mark L. Fisher is a college and career consultant at Fisher Educational Consultants (www.fishereducationalcon-sultants.com).
The College GameBy Dr. Mark L. [email protected]
$36K to Help Change WorldDec. 13 is the deadline for nomina-
tions for the 2016 Diller Teen Tikkun Olam Awards, offering $36,000 to each of as many as 15 Jewish teenagers who embody the value of tikkun olam (re-pairing the world).
The awards from the Helen Diller Family Foundation are open to any Jew in the United States who is age 13 to 19. You can submit a nomination at www.DillerTeenAwards.org.
The teens should be working on community service or social change projects, demonstrate leadership, and show a commitment to effecting mean-ingful change in the world. ■
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By R.M. Grossblatt
Seth Bernstein never attend-ed Torah Day School, nor did his children. But he, his
wife, Abby, and his parents, Joan and William Bernstein, are dedi-cating a Sefer Torah to the Toco Hills day school Sunday, Nov. 22.
The community is invited to the ceremony at the school from 10 a.m. to noon.
What attracted the Bern-steins is the school’s loyalty to its original mission. Seth Bernstein called Torah Day “the bedrock of the commu-nity” and said he admires its ability to withstand the test of time.
“My family feels like the shinier, newer things shouldn’t take away the attention from what has served for hundreds of years,” said Bernstein, a graduate of the Greenfield Hebrew Academy when it was on North Druid Hills Road.
He said GHA was his first intro-duction to Judaism, and “religious edu-cation should be made available to as many children as possible.”
The Torah celebration will begin with Rabbi Moshe Hiller, a sofer (scribe) and rebbe at the school, completing the final letters in the scroll. The Torah will be carried under a chuppah in a festive procession like welcoming a bride and groom.
When the procession reaches the Danny Miller Beis Midrash (chapel) inside the school, a ceremony with joyous dancing similar to Simchat To-rah will begin. Then the Torah will be placed in its new home, the aron kodesh (ark). Special activities for children, including music by Rabbi Jake Czuper, are planned.
For several years the Bernsteins contributed to a fund at Torah Day to bring over a Torah from Israel. After many discussions with the Bernsteins, Rabbi Ariel Asa, a sofer, found them a Torah through a friend who is a sofer in Jerusalem. The Torah scroll was wrapped carefully and sent to Atlanta, which could be done only if the scroll wasn’t attached to the atzei chayim, the wooden rods that hold the Torah.
David Feldman took care of that special woodwork in Atlanta.
To prepare the students for the To-rah dedication, Rabbi Asa taught them the laws of writing a Torah, including how the scroll is fastened to the atzei chayim. “There were a lot of good ques-
Torah Day to Dedicate Torah Scroll Sunday
tions,” Rabbi Asa said. “They were fas-cinated.”
For the children in kindergarten through second grade, Rabbi Asa start-ed off by saying, “In a few days we’re going to welcome a new friend to Torah Day School.” Then he showed them the pointed turkey feather he uses to write letters in the Torah.
For the older students, he dipped the feather into ink to help them write Hebrew letters and passed out samples of material that a Torah can be made from.
A sofer in Dunwoody, Rabbi Mor-dechai Danneman, was also invited to the school. He intends to show the stu-dents the turkey feather whose point he carved himself and share the care a sofer must use to write a scroll. The process includes saying the word aloud as he writes it.
Rabbi Danneman plans to ask lots of questions, such as “Where do we find out how to write a Torah?” and “Why in 2015 do we still write with a quill?”
Rabbi Joshua Einzig, the principal at Torah Day, said, “This is a great learn-ing opportunity for the children.” He added that the boys who read from the Torah will understand how it’s made.
He pointed out that although the school has one Torah, it needs two for holidays that coincide, such as Rosh Chodesh (the celebration of the new month) and Chanukah, Rabbi Einzig said.
Two weeks before Chanukah, the Bernsteins are dedicating the new To-rah in honor of klal Yisrael (the Jewish people); that’s what will appear on the Torah’s mantle.
“In a tenuous time, what a beauti-ful celebration of the Jewish people,” said Marcy Kalnitz, the executive direc-tor at Torah Day. She invited everyone to “dance and sing with us” because “there’s no greater joy than handing down our holy Torah to our precious future.” ■
Torah Day School pupils study with sofer Rabbi Ariel Asa.
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Never have I seen the Tilly Mill Road traffic outside the Mar-cus Jewish Community Center
more affected than Tuesday evening, Nov. 10, before Dr. Ruth Westheimer’s “The Doctor Is In” conversation with CNN’s Holly Firfer in conjunction with the Book Festival’s annual Esther Levine Community Read.
Diminutive and practical in clogs, Dr. Ruth had a strong and steady gait as she hopped up the stairs to address the full house.
Dr. Ruth delivered her pearls of wisdom through comedy. Some things you may have never known about her:
• Star decorator Nate Berkus went to New York City to redesign her living space. She lives modestly in the same “before fame” Washington Heights apartment.
• She served on the Y (New York’s equivalent to a JCC) board for 10 years and never missed a meeting. “That’s because I called the director and had him change meetings around my schedule.”
• When she dropped a coin in his cup, a blind beggar said, “Thanks, Dr. Ruth,” which either meant she was tremendously well known or he was faking his blindness.
• The Jewish sages gave good ad-vice about how to arouse a woman of valor. “Speak to her softly. Telling her she is wonderful, the loveliest of them all, is the best Viagra of all.”
• Be prepared to take a risk in meeting new people and cultivating relationships. In olden days, ladies dropped a handkerchief, and some-times no one picked it up. Dr. Ruth, who had little money at the time, bought her future husband a guitar to prevent him from going back to his old girlfriend’s house to claim his old one.
Two Middle East experts, Emory scholar Ken Stein and Ambassador Dennis Ross, took the stage together at The Temple for an off-site session of the Book Festival of the Marcus Jewish Community Center on Monday, Nov. 9.
Ross, who has served under four presidents, ranging from Ronald Rea-gan to Barack Obama, talked about his new book on the U.S.-Israel rela-tionship, “Doomed to Succeed.” Ross provided his decades of wisdom on the front lines of high-level negotiations.
Temple Rabbi Peter Berg wel-comed the audience to Atlanta’s oldest and largest Jewish house of worship and segued into introducing surprise guest Dr. Ruth Westheimer, who sat on the front row.
“Ross is one of the most important thinkers of our time,” Rabbi Berg said after the talk. “Every time I hear him, I learn new information and how to best convey it in a way that is clever and nu-anced.”
Some of Ross’ most memorable points:
• Israel’s peace with Arab neigh-bors is like a marriage between a Cath-olic and Jew — “fighting, love, estrange-ment, resulting in no divorce.”
• Some lessons are never learned. Politicians try distancing themselves from Israel but get no satisfaction from Arab nations as a result.
• Relations with Israel cannot be taken for granted. Over the next 25 years the U.S. population growth will come from Hispanics, Asians and Afri-can-Americans who don’t have strong feelings for Israel.
• On the Iran deal, Ross was unde-cided in public. He now says the United States should have been much stronger in bolstering the terms with the threat of force instead of sanctions, leaving
Ross, Stein Double Mideast Education
the Iranians a “smaller gap.”The bottom line for Israel and the
Palestinians, Ross said, is a two-state solution in which both sides feel strong enough to compromise.
Ross complimented Bill Clinton for taking responsibility for peace even at the end of his second presidential term. With five days to go, he was still hounding Yasser Arafat.
“If we are doomed to succeed, what should Americans be doing?” Stein asked.
“We must defuse tension,” Ross said. “Israel needs to stop settlements in Area C (which might be part of a Pal-estinian state), and Arab leaders need to take bold steps like labeling Israel on their maps and in honest recognition. We must not give up hope. If we keep one state, we will keep the status quo that you see today.”
Ross said a friend told his wife that it was inspiring that he was so com-mitted to peace, to which she replied, “Sometimes I think he should be com-mitted.” Ross said, “If leaders like me give up, that will create more hopeless-ness.”
During the post-talk book signing, Judge Ezra Cohen said, “Ross gave us a clear and balanced presentation.”
“Ross is one of the most gifted dip-lomats who served the Middle East in the last 30 years,” Stein said. “I hope we have not seen the end of Dennis in a public position.”
During an interview with the AJT in October, Ross was noncommittal about serving another president.
Lawyer Brian Wertheim said, “We are lucky to live in Atlanta to hear two of the most brilliant people on the plan-et talk about the Middle East and prod us to never give up.” ■
— Marcia Caller Jaffe
Dr. Ruth Charms, Inspires
Jaffe’s Jewish JiveBy Marcia Caller [email protected]
• She loved doing the talk show circuit with Carson and Letterman. Her husband’s favorite star was Diane Sawyer, who asked him how his sex life was. His response: “The shoemak-er’s children don’t have shoes.”
• She used to believe that parents should give their children privacy, but she feels that has changed. “Parents have an obligation to monitor web use. Furthermore, iPhones are leading chil-dren away from conversation skills.”
“We left her talk in peace. She is the embodiment of her own motto about living a life of joie de vivre,” Mona Sorkin Shuman said.
Jackie Wolfe said, “We admire her for coming from a turbulent back-ground (losing both parents in the Holocaust) to waking up and making the most of each day.”
Two favorite Dr. Ruth quotes: “Give me patience immediately” and “A lesson taught with humor is a les-son retained.”
We laughed and learned that Tuesday night, but some of her talk was too risqué to print here. ■
Photo by Heidi MortonEsther Levine shares the spotlight
with Dr. Ruth Westheimer.
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By Michael [email protected]
Alan Dershowitz takes on a topic at the core of his own identity, Jewish lawyers, in the book he’ll
be discussing Saturday night, Nov. 21, at the Book Festival of the Jewish Com-munity Center.
Dershowitz, known as a defender of the accused in court cases and of Israel in the court of public opinion, plays prosecutor, defense attorney and judge in writing “Abraham: The World’s First (But Certainly Not Last) Jewish Lawyer.”
This entry in the invaluable Jewish Encounters book series is a biography in the sense that Dershowitz recounts several key moments when Abraham acts as a lawyer, from his childhood destruction of most of the idols for sale in his father’s shop to his insistence on paying for the real estate and covering all other contractual details in obtain-ing a burial cave for Sarah. But the point is how Abraham sets the example for future Jewish lawyers as numerous as the stars in the sky.
Some of those examples are posi-tive. Dershowitz praises the idealism, negotiating skills and fearlessness of the Abraham who challenges G-d’s plans at Sodom and Gomorrah, just as Dershowitz appreciates the thorough-ness of Abraham the real estate lawyer.
But “Abraham” is warts-and-all le-gal analysis. Dershowitz criticizes the attorney Abraham who twice justifies pretending that Sarah is his sister and all but pimps her out to royalty, and he finds the worst example of a lawyer who goes along with corrupt author-ity in the Abraham who agrees without complaint to sacrifice Isaac.
Our Founding PartnerDershowitz’s ‘Abraham’ finds signs of every Jewish lawyer in the patriarch
Dershowitz doesn’t offer any new insight into the Akedah or Abraham’s inconsistent behavior through the years, and he spends only 55 pages re-counting the patriarch’s life. The first section of “Abraham” is merely prelude for the stronger second part, in which Dershowitz surveys some dramatic tri-als of Jews through history, from Jesus to Alfred Dreyfus to Leo Frank to Ana-toly Sharansky, and grapples with the issue of why Jews are so often the vic-tims of the justice system and so often drawn to the legal profession.
Again, Dershowitz isn’t breaking new ground, and his reliance on sec-ondary sources for historical examples leads to the repetition of some minor errors (the Anti-Defamation League did not form in response to the Frank trial, although it gained prominence and permanence through its fight for the doomed factory superintendent).
But the Harvard professor is a skill-ful writer who entertains and informs when he weaves together the threads of legal history. Some of the most interest-ing tidbits are in the endnotes, which take up a third of the book.
He is most effective in his closing argument when he discusses specific Jews who have followed the various lawyerly examples set by Abraham.
“Abraham” shows Dershowitz’s courtroom-learned appreciation for making arguments that are concise to avoid losing his readers. You won’t need to spend much time deliberating to reach a verdict in his favor. ■
Abraham
By Alan M. Dershowitz
Schocken Books, 204 pages, $26
At the festival Nov. 21
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By Michael [email protected]
Joey Reiman is a man who bubbles with optimism, but he looks at the 2016 presidential field with less
than the usual enthusiasm he applies to his life.
The world needs a JFK-type ideal-ist, but “how can we have a candidate like this when we have options instead of elections?” Reiman said. “We need to start looking at candidates as people who are heroes, not generals.”
Reiman sees the same problem in his natural environment, the business world, where too many CEOs approach their jobs as generals, focused on finan-cial victory.
Reiman promotes a different ap-proach in his new book, “Thumbs Up! 5 Steps to Create the Life of Your Dreams.” The Atlanta resident will talk about the book Sunday, Nov. 22, in the
Thumbing Your Way to a Better Lifepenultimate ses-sion of this year’s Book Festival of the Marcus JCC.
As the title suggests, Reiman’s five-step approach is based on the hand, an inspira-tion he gained from his battle against paralysis in one of
his hands after a horrible car accident in Italy four decades ago: the positive sign of a thumbs-up; the pointer finger pointing to your purpose; giving the middle finger to fear; the fourth finger marching forth (Reiman’s businesses always give employees March 4 off); and little is the big new.
In his rapid-fire style, he can talk you through the steps in a matter of minutes, and his book doesn’t take more than a few hours to read. The goal
is for the inspiration from the book to last a lifetime.
“You can just look at your hand to be reminded,” he said in a phone inter-view.
The world is suffering from two predominant negative effects, he said: anesthesia and amnesia. Especially in the West, society provides countless options for people to numb themselves, from drugs and alcohol to television and sex. People go along with that anes-thetized life, he said, because they’ve forgotten that the world wasn’t always like this and that for most of history we lived in villages and were part of com-munities that cared about one another.
He cited the example of waking up in the morning. Once, we were filled with surprise and excitement to wake up each morning and see that there was still a fireball in the sky. “When you lose the idea of surprise, wonder and imagination, which I would ar-
gue is the most important organ in the body, it doesn’t make for the kind of day we ought to be having.”
So Reiman is trying to refocus people — from his readers to his stu-dents at Emory’s Goizueta Business School, who “unlearn what you learn in all the other classes” — on the things that matter. He talks of aligning aspira-tions to dreams and pursuing a life of purpose, and he reminds businesses that their employees are interested in the currency of kindness and apprecia-tion, not just money.
Even politics can’t slow down Rei-man’s optimism. “We don’t have a can-didate like that yet,” he said about a political idealist. “One will evolve even-tually.” ■
Thumbs Up!
By Joey Reiman
BenBella Books, 222 page, $19.95
At the festival Nov. 22
Joey Reiman
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By Logan C. [email protected]
Michael Krohngold and Scott Strumlauf, the owners of Buckhead hotspot Tongue &
Groove, believe the key to success is to stay humble.
The Jewish business partners were set to celebrate Tongue & Groove on Thursday, Nov. 19, at the club’s 21st birthday party.
During the day, both men can be found in the office working on insur-ance and financials — the less sexy re-sponsibilities of club ownership. Work-ing during nonclub hours and leaning on staff and management are vital for long-term success.
“We treat it as a real business, not like a candy store,” Strumlauf said. “It’s not a playground, but if you treat it like one, you’ll be out of business.”
But to Atlantans ages 21 to 35, Tongue & Groove is a premier play-ground for entertainment. Staying on top of trends, they stressed, keeps the 8,600-square-foot space crowded.
At 21, Tongue & Groove Is Old Enough to Party
“It’s a constant invention — stay-ing relevant in musical format. When we started, hip-hop was in its infancy, and now it’s a dominant force.” Krohn-gold said. “When we opened, men were required to wear sports coats. Women have always looked good in a little black dress and heels.”
If loud music and sweaty singles are not your thing, Tongue & Groove can change like a chameleon. Wednes-day nights are salsa lessons with great music and an international crowd. On Saturdays before 10 p.m., you might catch a bar mitzvah kid dressed as Bat-man riding a zip line into his party.
Finishing each other’s sentences, Krohngold and Strumlauf acknowl-edge that they were not always friends outside work.
“He’s black and white; I’m gray. He’s numbers; I’m blue sky,” Krohngold said. “We respect each other’s opinions and space.”
Strumlauf agreed. “We’ve been to-gether longer than any other relation-ship in our lives. We respect one anoth-er’s viewpoints. And I’ve chilled out.” ■
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SOUTHEASTERN NEWS
OBITUARIES
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The overall U.S. Jewish population, now about 6.8 million, and the Jewish population in the South
have grown, although much of that Southern growth has occurred in Flori-da and the Washington-Baltimore area.
Those are among the findings Ira Sheskin, the director of the Jewish De-mography Project at the University of Miami and co-editor of the American Jewish Year Book, presented during his keynote address at the 39th annual Southern Jewish Historical Society conference, titled “Jews and the Urban South,” in Nashville Oct. 29 to Nov. 3.
During the conference on the Vanderbilt University campus and at the Gordon Jewish Community Center, the 150 attendees heard from research-ers on topics including synagogue ar-chive preservation (including the Bre-man’s Jeremy Katz), student refugees before World War II, Southern rabbis and Jewish women’s organizations dur-ing the civil rights era, Southern Jewish community leaders, and images of Jews in mid-19th-century New Orleans.
Gary Zola, the executive director of the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives, spoke about “Lincoln and the Jews of the South.” In the year of the centennial of Leo Frank’s lynching, the Forward’s Paul Berger discussed the likely first Jewish lynching victim in the South in his talk: “Samuel A. Bierfield: Innocent Victim or Radical Republican in Recon-struction Franklin, Tennessee.”
Two women addressed the role of Jewish Atlanta women in social justice movements. Emily Katz of Duke Uni-versity spoke about “Council Women and Social Welfare Work in 1960s At-lanta,” and Ellen Rafshoon of Georgia Gwinnett College discussed “Esther Taylor: Hadassah Lady Turned Birth Control Advocate.”
Attendees also toured the Julius Rosenwald School in Cairo and the Ros-enwald Collection at Fisk University.
Sheskin said three recent scien-tific studies have established the size of the national Jewish population. The
Jewish South Growing In Florida and D.C. Area
estimates show an increase of about 400,000 Jews from 2008 to 2015.
The Northeast continues to have the largest portion of the nation’s Jews at 44 percent, but that figure has diminished from 66 percent in 1955. Meanwhile, the Jewish population in the South has increased from 8 percent in 1955 to 21 percent in 2015.
Most of the South’s Jews, how-ever, live in two areas that are on the region’s periphery and often are seen as un-Southern elsewhere in the South: Florida (652,000 Jews) and the Wash-ington-Baltimore area (265,000).
The four states with the highest percentage of Jewish residents are New York, 9 percent; New Jersey, 5.9 percent; Massachusetts, 4.1 percent; and Mary-land, 4 percent. In addition, the District of Columbia is 4.3 percent Jewish.
Sheskin said that of 31 Jewish com-munities of 50,000 or more people, six are in the South: Broward County, South Palm Beach, West Palm Beach, Miami, Atlanta and Baltimore.
Five of the 20 states with the larg-est Jewish populations are in the South: Florida, 652,000; Maryland, 238,000; Texas, 159,000; Georgia, 128,000; and Virginia, 96,000.
Sheskin’s research also follows the trend of declining small-town commu-nities. About 11 percent of the South’s Jews live in towns with 1,000 to 10,000 residents, down from 36 percent in 1960. His research shows that in the same 55-year period, the portion of the region’s Jews living in communities of 25,000 or more residents increased from 50 percent to 81 percent.
The Southern Jewish Historical So-ciety also elected locals Perry Brickman and Ron Bayor to its board, along with Michael Cohen of New Orleans, Bonnie Eisenman of Richmond, Sol Kimerling of Birmingham, Ala., Peggy Pearlstein of Rockville, Md., Jim Pfeifer of Little Rock, Ark., Jay Silverberg of Petaluma, Calif., Jarrod Tanny of Wilmington, N.C., and Teri Tillman of Natchez, Miss.
The society’s 2016 conference will be held Nov. 4 to 6 in Natchez. ■
Death NoticesBarbara Auerbach, 81, of Roswell, mother of Kevin, Jill, Todd and Glenn, on Nov. 12.Sylvia Hoffman, 85, of Atlanta, a Congregation Or VeShalom member, mother of Terry Stolow, Keith Franco and Lenny Franco, and sister of Betty Lichtenstein, on Nov. 12.Dolores Schneider, 69, of Fort Worth, Texas, wife of Barry Schneider and mother of Temple Sinai member Myla Lind and Eric Schneider, on Nov. 12.
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OBITUARIES
Sylvia S. Berkowitz82, Atlanta
Sylvia S. Berkowitz, 82, passed away Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2015. A native Atlantan and Grady High School graduate, she retired as office man-
ager for the Atlanta Section, National Council of Jewish Women, after more than 35 years of service. She was preceded in death by her parents, Bessie and Sidney Sturman, and her loving husband of 57 years, Sam H. Berkowitz. She is survived by daughters Susan Berkowitz and Tzivia (Helen) Silverstein; son Steve and his wife, Michele; and grandchildren Shaina and Adina Silverstein and Jeffrey, Hava and Max Berkowitz, all of Atlanta, and Avraham Chaim Silverstein of Israel. Other survivors include brothers Robert and Milton Sturman; sister Natalie Ellis; many nieces and nephews; and a dear family friend, Dell Asher.
The family would like to thank the nursing staff of Hospice Atlanta at Emory University Hospital for extraordinary care and compassion.
An online guestbook is available at www.edressler.com. In lieu of flowers, the family appreciates donations to the National Council of Jewish Women, P.O. Box 76162, Sandy Springs, GA 30328, or Visiting Nurse Health System/Hospice Atlan-ta, 5775 Glenridge Drive, Suite E200, Atlanta, GA 30328. Graveside services were held Thursday, Nov. 12, at Greenwood Cemetery with Rabbi Laurence Rosenthal officiating. Arrangements by Dressler’s Jewish Funeral Care, 770-451-4999.
Leon Cohen73, Atlanta
Leon Cohen, 73, of Atlanta passed away suddenly but peacefully Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2015. A gentle and kind soul, Leon was loved and respected by everyone he touched. He was born in Cairo, Egypt, to Stella and Sion Cohen, both of blessed memory. Leon moved to Atlanta in 1963. He served in the United States Army and attended Georgia State University.
He is survived by his wife, Georgette; daughters Laurie Ben Mor (Daniel), Mira Liniado (David) and Natalie Cohen; grandchildren Ralph, Emmy and Lauren Lin-iado; sister Laurette Hanein; brother Maurice Cohen (Annie); sister-in-law Phyllis Cohen; brother-in-law Arthur Geduldig; and many nieces, nephews and cousins.
Sign the online guestbook at www.edressler.com. Graveside services were held Thursday, Nov. 12, at Arlington Memorial Park in Sandy Springs with Rabbi Hayyim Kassorla officiating. In lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be made to Congregation Or VeShalom or the charity of one’s choice. Arrangements by Dressler’s Jewish Funeral Care, 770-451-4999.
Frances Hardman Kaplan88, Atlanta
Frances Hardman Kaplan died at the age of 88 on Friday, Nov. 13, 2015, at Hospice Atlanta after a long illness. A native of Atlanta, she was the daughter of Solon James Hardman and Helen Weintraub (nee Schwamm) Hardman and was married to Judge Arthur Kaplan of blessed memory for 64 years. Born Sept. 30, 1927, Mrs. Kaplan attended Girls’ High School and the University of Georgia.
After working as bookkeeper for her husband’s jewelry business for several years early in their marriage and raising their three children, she began a career as executive secretary at Lord & Taylor, where she worked until retirement. Fran-ces enjoyed traveling and playing cards and mahjong with her friends, some of whom played together for more than 60 years. She enthusiastically visited many places on her travels with her friends. Mrs. Kaplan was active in Hadassah and the Ahavath Achim Synagogue Sisterhood for many years and was a volunteer for the City of Hope, assisting in its fundraising efforts. In more recent years, she was a member of Congregation Or Hadash.
Mrs. Kaplan is survived by her children, Dr. Ronald Kaplan (Angelia), Judge Debra Turner (Nelson) and Shelley Wiseley (Lee); grandchildren Natalie, Stephen and Mark Kaplan, Allison and Evan Turner, and Michael, Rachel and Abigail Wiseley; many nieces, nephews and cousins; and other family and friends.
Please sign the online guestbook at www.edressler.com. In lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be made to the charity of one’s choice. A graveside fu-neral was held Sunday, Nov. 15, at Arlington Memorial Park in Sandy Springs with Rabbi Analia Bortz officiating. Arrangements by Dressler’s Jewish Funeral Care, 770-451-4999.
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www.atlantajewishtimes.comOBITUARIES – MAY THEIR MEMORIES BE A BLESSINGCLOSING THOUGHTS
CROSSWORDBy Yoni Glatt, [email protected] Difficulty Level: Medium
“Accommodations”
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ACROSS1. Two tablets, maybe5. Not like Samson9. Prayer sites14. Life lines?15. Idolatrous queen16. It (still) has more kosher restaurants than any city in Europe17. Places to stay during Tishrei?20. Daughter of Tzelafchad21. Big bird where they light Chanukah candles in summer22. Shabbat item, for some23. Where to talk trash in Vegas?27. Eglon had a big one28. Actress Brenneman29. Jordan preceder?30. Locale for Julianna Margulies on “ER”31. Belonging to the one who reared Samuel34. Robbie Krieger’s band, with “The”38. Where Adam and Eve stay in Miami?42. “___ to recall”43. Yonah but not Daniel44. Hank who coached Larry Brown45. Famous orbiter or a biblical sister, for short47. Genre of Joe Trohman’s Fall Out Boy49. One’s longer than 5,77650. Where to stay on Yom Kippur?55. Sammy Davis Jr. book, “Yes, ___”56. Start of Roth’s band57. El Al info: Abbr.58. Where to stay near the Kotel?64. ___stellar, sci-fi hit produced by Lynda Obst65. She played Simka on TV
66. El Al info: Abbr.67. Like many a bar68. Hurried to get home for Shabbat dinner69. Sondheim’s “___ in the Clowns”
DOWN1. Word from the father of Krusty’s biggest fan2. ___-Wan, character Kasdan wrote as a ghost (sort of)3. One’s on a 100-shekel note4. (Jewish) values5. P!nk’s “___ Knew”6. Eilat reef denizen7. Rabbi Kaplan8. Pashta’s partner9. Make like Mossad, at times10. Hod ___, Israel11. Husband of Bathsheba12. Fibers brushed off a tallit13. Some could start with 18018. “Good shtick!”19. Angelic light23. Creator of Ford’s Indiana Jones24. Sign from a 43-Across25. “The ___ Curtain” (1982 Billy Joel album)26. 1997 Soulfarm album, with “The”27. Best picture of 1958 produced by Arthur Freed32. “___ man die,” Job 14:1433. Baby name suggested by George on “Seinfeld”35. Get set (at
Bar Ilan)36. Follower of “I” in a notable Asimov work37. Ben Gurion action for bags39. Meshuggah40. Arab chieftain41. Cost of a call, when Wilder was making films46. Virtually every “Schindler’s List” review48. Rabin was the last prime minister to visit this country50. Bit of work for Spielberg51. What the Hebrews made when leaving Egypt?52. Moses had several53. Where Goldstar might be found54. Reiner’s hero in “The Princess Bride”55. Nile bird59. Like Larry Miller’s humor60. Netanya to Tiberias dir.61. Notable sea62. Option for getting to South America from Israel63. Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi wrote about experimenting with it in the ’60s
On my latest trip to New York, I enjoyed days in Manhattan and returned to a friend’s
Bronx apartment each night. On the particular evening I am
about to describe, I had spent too much time in Chinatown and missed the express bus. I hurried to the regular bus, but it had just pulled away.
It was late; it was the subway or nothing.
The subway is fine. It runs with great frequency and is much faster than a bus.
In early evening, however, it’s miserably crowded.
Several trains heading in different directions can share one track, so you won’t be surprised to learn that I got on the wrong train. It was headed to the Bronx all right, but with a south-east destination, worlds away from the one I wanted.
The train was packed, and I grabbed onto a pole, which I held for dear life. I had erred big time, and, worse, I was obviously a wimpy, victim-ready outsider among the other passengers, who all looked like hood-lums, gangsters and every other kind of miscreant.
There were surely some fine, hardworking, law-abiding citizens on that train, but the subway car in which I was stuffed appeared to hold nary a one.
I knew I was in trouble, and as we sped deeper into unknown territory, I slowly edged away from the pole to grab a bar above seated passengers. I needed help.
I found myself face to face and knee to knee with two young men, and they were scary. If you’ve seen any horror movies lately, these fellows resembled humans who do really bad things to other humans.
I imagined that whenever I got off the train, these two, and maybe a cadre of other like-minded individuals, would accompany me to relieve me of my purse, backpack, watch, ring and shoes.
I hoped that was all I’d lose.I wanted to live, so I decided to
immediately dedicate myself to that end.
“Excuse me, sir,” I said, directing my words to a fellow sporting a do-rag and neck tattoo that read, “Kill or be killed.” It was in Gothic script.
Chana’s CornerBy Chana [email protected]
A Little New York Subway Adventure
Not only did Gothic look up, but I had also piqued the interest of a dozen or so others, including his companion, who had one center gold tooth with a diamond in the middle. (It may not have been a real diamond, but it surely did shine.)
His neck tattoo read, “War, not peace.”
What’s with that ironic quote? I thought, but I had to focus.
“I’m lost,” I said in a fake firm voice. “You look like someone who can get me to Pelham Parkway.”
There were snickers from people around me, but Gothic put a stop to that. He rose and bullied his way to the subway map, then called out above the crowd.
“Look here!” he commanded me. “This is where you gotta change trains, next stop.”
He continued with further direc-tions, and I nodded, committing his words to memory. If he wasn’t tricking me, and if I made it safely, it would be a miracle. Fortunately, I believe in miracles.
Then Gothic pushed his way back to Gold Tooth. No one had taken his seat, and I realized that there is a peck-ing order everywhere. Alpha males rule. I was also aware that this could backfire.
“I see that there are still gentle-men in the world,” I said. “Thank you for helping me.”
Neither Gothic nor Gold Tooth responded, and other riders eyed me in guarded silence. Would one of them follow me and render me shoeless? Would I be accosted by others on the next platform?
The subway slowed into the next stop. I headed to the door, offering another thank-you to Gothic, my benefactor.
Gold Tooth, who had not yet ut-tered a single word, mumbled back, “You gotta be some kinda teacher!”
“What makes you think that?” I asked.
“You act like one,” he said, flash-ing that diamond. ■
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