Esserman wins Syracuse Press Club Award Federation to show

Transcription

Published by the Jewish Federation of Greater Binghamton
May 13-19, 2016
Volume XLV, Number 20
BINGHAMTON, NEW YORK
Save the date
Federation to show “Run Boy Run” on June 22
By Reporter staff
The Jewish Federation of Greater
Binghamton will show the film “Run
Boy Run” on Wednesday, June 22, at 7
pm, at the Jewish Community Center, 500
Clubhouse Rd., Vestal. The award-winning film tells the true story of a Polish
boy who seeks the kindness of others in
his solitary struggle to outlast the Nazi
occupation and keep alive his Jewish
faith. The film was directed by Oscar
winner Pepe Danquart and is based on
the best-selling Holocaust novel by Israeli
author Uri Orlev.
“We had hoped to show ‘Run Boy
Run’ during our film fest last fall, so we
are pleased to be able to share it with
the community this June,” said Sima
Auerbach, executive director of the
Federation. “Join us for this wonderful
film, which has been called a ‘superlative saga of courage and compassion.’
All those who bought subscriptions to
last fall’s film fest can join us as the
Federation’s guests.”
More information about the showing
will appear in future issues of The Reporter.
At right: Jurek, played by twin brothers
Andrzej and Kamil Tkacz, in “Run Boy
Run.” (Photo courtesy of Menemsha Films)
“Talmud: Process and Performance” at Cornell U.
The Cornell Jewish Studies Program
has announced an upcoming conference,
“Talmud: Process and Performance,” on
Tuesday, May 17, and Wednesday, May
18, at Cornell University in Ithaca. The
conference will be open to the public and
there will be no registration fee.
The keynote speaker, Christine Hayes, of
Yale University, will speak on “‘The Play’s
the Thing’: Performance and Performativity
in Rabbinic Literature” on May 17, at 5:30
pm, in 165 McGraw Hall.
A series of speakers and respondents will
appear throughout the day on May 18, in 258
Goldwin Smith Hall, starting at 9:30 am with
Moulie Vidas, of Princeton University, on
“A Pompidou Center of Torah: The Genre
of Talmud and the Performance of Process”;
followed by Charlotte Fonrobert, of Stanford University, with her lecture, “Taking
Talmud to Town: On Public Performance
of Intimacy.” After a short lunch break,
the conference will reconvene at 1:45 pm
with Talya Fishman, of the University of
Pennsylvania, on “‘HaTalmud Shelanu’: On
the Riddle of the Bavli’s Role in Medieval
Sepharad,” followed by Zvi Septimus, of
Harvard Law School, with his lecture, “The
Talmud as Musical Score.”
Respondents to these talks will include
Cornell University faculty: Eric Rebillard,
classics; Kim Haines-Eitzen, Near Eastern
studies; Ross Brann, Near Eastern studies;
and Tracy McNulty, romance studies.
The conference will conclude at 5:30 pm
with a final response from Ishay Rosen-Zvi,
of Princeton University, on “Current Trends
in Talmud: A Look from Ithaca.”
Co-sponsors for the conference
include Cornell Departments of Near
Eastern Studies, Anthropology and
Classics, the Mediterranean Studies Ini-
tiative, Society for the Humanities and
the Second Avenue Kosher Delicatessen
in New York City.
For more information, visit http://
jewishstudies.cornell.edu/news-events/
events.cfm.
Federation board meeting
open to community
The Jewish Federation will hold a full board meeting on Wednesday, May 18,
at 7:30 pm. The community is invited to attend. Those interested in attending
should make a reservation by calling the Federation at 724-2332 so that enough
materials will be available.
Esserman wins Syracuse Press Club Award
By Reporter staff
Rabbi Rachel Esserman, executive editor
of The Reporter, received first place in the
all print critique category of the Syracuse
Press Club Awards for her book review “The
difficult parts of life.” The review appeared
in the November 13 issue of The Reporter
and can be found online at www.thereportergroup.org/Article.aspx?aID=4120. The
two books reviewed were “Stir: My Broken
Brain and the Meals that Brought Me Home”
by Jessica Fechtor and “Bobby Wonderful:
An Imperfect Son Buries His
Parents” by Bob Morris.
“I’m grateful to win another
Syracuse Press Club Award,”
said Esserman. “Most of the
awards I’ve won in the critique
category were for fiction, so it’s
a pleasure to be recognized for a
review focusing on nonfiction.”
Esserman noted that writing
book reviews has made her a
better reader. “Writing a review
Rabbi Rachel
Esserman
forces me to analyze my feelings
in a different way than I did as a
casual reader,” she said. “I now
look to see why I like or dislike
something and what that says
either about the book or me. One
frequent word that appears in
e-mails from publishers is that
my reviews are ‘thoughtful.’ I
take that as a great compliment
because I try to be fair to the
author. Just because I disagree
with an author or have a different approach
to life doesn’t mean the work won’t make
an impact on readers.”
Educating readers also plays a major
role in her reviews. “I don’t think of myself
as a critic,” Esserman added. “What I do
is let readers know what is available – and
there are now so many Jewish-themed
books available, fiction and nonfiction.
People have told me they like learning
about a book, even if they aren’t interested
in reading it.”
Spotlight
Israel geeks out: science, art, and tech event
embodies Jewish state’s “DNA”
By Maayan Jaffe-Hoffman
JNS.org
The entrance to Jerusalem’s Sacher Park
was transformed from April 25-27 by a
fire-breathing robotic dragon, which flailed
its arms and attempted to take flight. The
robot, a signature feature at Jerusalem’s
first-ever “Geek Picnic,” was one of more
than 150 scientific amusements available
for the public to experience.
This particular dragon was designed by
students from Moscow’s Art Industrial Institute in conjunction with the Flacon design
factory, said Anatasia Shaminer, a student
who helped facilitate the display. Children
attending the Geek Picnic – modeled after
Eastern Europe’s open-air festival dedicated
to popular science, modern technology,
science and art – were able to board the
robot dragon, stand beside a Russian Air
Force pilot and learn to control the machine,
whose pilot’s chair was made from a former
Russian fighter jet.
This year marked the first time that the
Geek Picnic took place outside of the former
Soviet Union.
Carmi Wurtman – owner of 2BVibes
Productions, the company that licensed
At left: The robotic dragon at Jerusalem’s
Geek Picnic. (Photo by Maayan JaffeHoffman)
the rights for the festival and leveraged the
talents of 30 staff members over the course
of two years to bring the Geek Picnic to the
Holy Land – said that for five years, he had
been eyeing the event as one that would
“work well with Israel’s DNA.
“It’s a smart event,” Wurtman told JNS.
org. “It’s for adults and children – it’s rare
that kids and parents can be happy going
somewhere together.”
At Sacher Park, attendees were able to
engage in science workshops and explore
new technologies with their own hands.
Science, technology and art tents (with narration mostly in English) took participants
See “Geeks” on page 9
INSIDE THIS ISSUE
Israel in space
Israel’s accomplishments in space
exploration were highlighted at a
gala in Canada.
........................................ Page 7
Torah on Twitter
Torah discussions through the
lens of the disability experience
are held weekly on Twitter.
........................................ Page 8
News in brief...
U.S. to give Gaza aid; Women of
the Wall perform priestly blessing;
a mikvah in Nigeria; and more.
.............................. Pages 9,11,12
Special Sections
Legal Notices.................................... 4
Book Review..................................... 4
Small Business Profiles................. 6-8
Classifieds...................................... 12
May 13-19, 2016
Page 2 - The Reporter
Opinion
Jewish teenagers want to engage – Just ask them
By David Bryfman
(JTA) – Welcoming teens into Jewish life is both one of
the most important and seemingly challenging endeavors of
the Jewish community. The rapid decline in teen engagement
in Jewish life post-b’nai mitzvah is well-documented and
depressing. It’s also an entirely reversible trend, but only
if the Jewish community approaches teen engagement in a
new way – one that recognizes the whole teen and values
her or him as an equal partner in creating experiences that
add meaning to her or his life.
In general, Jewish teens (like non-Jewish peers) today
are deeply thoughtful, inquisitive and ambitious. Also like
their peers, they can be narcissistic and attached to technology. Most of today’s teens are vastly different than a
generation ago, and in many ways different than a decade
ago. These changes are due in large part to the changing
world in which we live, the central role of technology and
the nearly endless opportunities for personal customization
a click away.
We know this because over the last two and a half years,
The Jewish Education Project led major research to learn
about Jewish teens from Jewish teens. We heard directly
from them about their lives, their views on spirituality,
their ambitions, their fears, their feelings toward friends
and family, how they form their identities and more. We’ve
compiled and analyzed the findings into a new report,
“Generation Now: Understanding and Engaging Jewish
Teens Today.”
The report’s insights are a wake-up call to organizations
or individuals who want to engage Jewish teens. Our community needs to work with teens to create experiences that
address all aspects of their lives.
Just a few insights from Generation Now show the depth
of Jewish teens today:
Jewish teens want programs of substance that add value
to some facet of their life. Teens are most likely to find
Jewish knowledge meaningful when they see the connections and relevance to the rest of their lives. Programs that
blend this value with opportunities to have fun, socialize
and be with friends are especially attractive.
While many teens still see Judaism as a religion, many
more relate to being Jewish in language commonly associated with ethnicity, culture, heritage or tribal affiliation.
Being a minority group in the U.S. is something that
many Jewish teens highly value and feel pride in, but they
do not view themselves as being special for this reason.
In fact, many Jewish teens enjoy involving non-Jewish
friends in “Jewish activities.”
Jewish teens often are both universalists and particularists. Their orientation is fluid and depends on their
environment. As an example, “doing good” is an important
value, but seldom seen as a Jewish value.
During major holidays, teens appreciate time to bond
with immediate family, visit extended family and enjoy
family traditions, particularly around “traditional” foods.
Most of today’s teens enjoy spending time with their parents.
The challenge now is to take the report’s insights and
have them inform our community’s approach to Jewish
teen education and engagement. We must move beyond
thinking about teens as passive recipients of Jewish learning
experiences. Instead, we must begin designing initiatives
and programs with Jewish teens, for Jewish teens.
Many teens are ready to lead now and want to have skin
in the game. They are the most effective people to engage
their peers. At the recent Summit on Jewish Teens, held
during the BBYO International Convention in February,
teens welcomed the invitation to take a place on the stage
and at the table with philanthropists, lay leaders, profesSee “Ask” on page 11
Holocaust survivors’ welfare is a public, private
and community responsibility
By Mark Wilf and Todd Morgan
JTA – They survived unimaginable horrors, yet went on
to live productive lives, despite the haunting memories, the
profound loss and physical scars from years of deprivation.
Now many Holocaust survivors need our assistance so they
may live their twilight years with dignity in their homes
and communities.
Most Holocaust survivors are in their 80s and 90s, and
an astounding 25 percent of them in the United States live
in poverty, struggling to meet basic needs for food, housing,
health care and transportation. Many live alone and have
no extended family who survived the Holocaust. Spouses
who used to provide support are no longer living. Each year,
just as we lose many survivors, we also see others coming
forward, identifying themselves as Holocaust survivors in
desperate need of assistance.
As survivors age, they face challenges different from
other older adults. Some suffer from delayed-onset
post-traumatic stress disorder, making it more difficult to
live in assisted living or nursing homes, where institutional
life, with its uniformed staff, regimented schedules and
rules can lead to flashbacks of concentration camps or
other periods of confinement. Unfamiliar showers can be
a frightening reminder of gas chambers.
Multiple studies have found that survivors are more
likely than others to experience anxiety and nightmares.
We cannot let this happen.
For many survivors, social services are their lifeline.
Home care, the most expensive of these vital services, costs
an average of $20 per hour per survivor. With approximately
125,000 Holocaust survivors in the U.S., it will take extensive resources to serve even the neediest of survivors. The
German government, through the Conference on Jewish
Material Claims Against Germany, provides the majority
of the funding for social services, but survivor needs are
exceeding available funding.
Local communities have taken note, and we’re inspired
by the philanthropic campaigns that are working to educate
the community. Together, we’ve raised more than $30
million throughout the past couple years.
Additionally, companies have stepped up to help. We’re
grateful for the partnership between the Alpha Omega
dental fraternity and Henry Schein Cares to offer Holocaust
survivors pro bono dental care, and the generosity of the
See “Survivors” on page 11
In My Own Words
Shaming in the contemporary world
RABBI RACHEL ESSERMAN, EXECUTIVE EDITOR
I have a friend who regularly razzes me about the difference in our schedules. She’s a teacher and not only does
she get the summer months off, but has far more three-day
weekends than I do. The razz for those is, “Do you have
to work this Monday?” Me: Yes, but I don’t have to work
on [fill on the name of Jewish holiday].” We both laugh at
these exchanges, including teasing that usually goes something like, “Gee, I forgot you have to work in the summer.”
However, I learned to be very careful where we do this.
She once mentioned something about summer vacation or
teaching on her Facebook page. I answered her comment
in our usual bantering tone. I don’t remember what either
of us said, but I do remember the other comments that
were posted. My friend didn’t take my remark seriously,
but her teacher friends did. I had to explain that we were
just teasing, but it taught me a lesson: Be very careful what
you say on Facebook.
I remembered this incident while reading “So You’ve
Been Publically Shamed” by Jon Ronson. If I wanted to
be facetious, I could say the lessons of his book are: 1)
Don’t post anything on Twitter, 2) Be very wary of the
photos you post on Facebook and 3) Don’t let a stranger
take your picture because you have no control over where
it may appear. While these are good things to remember,
what Ronson most wants us to understand is the role we –
Dr. Arieh Ullmann, President
Sima Auerbach, Executive Director
www.jfgb.org
The Reporter Editorial Board
Robert Neuberger, chairman
Aaron Alweis, Rachel Coker,
Rebecca Goldstein Kahn, Ben Kasper,
Richard Lewis, Dora Polachek
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and he means everyone who posts or comments on social
media – play in publically shaming someone.
What struck me most is the anger and nastiness that
occurs when people disagree with something posted on
the Internet. Members of both sexes were threatened with
murder or torture; threats of rape were added when the
person being shamed was a woman. What is interesting is
that these threats were far worse than the original offense.
None of the people interviewed in Ronson’s book were
murderers. None were pedophiles. None of them assaulted anyone or embezzled money. Yes, some were caught
cheating, for example, making up quotes in newspaper
articles or books. Others made inappropriate jokes in a
public setting or were goofing around in a serious spot
(for example, a military cemetery) and posted a photo of
it on Facebook. In each case, the level of shaming was far
worse than the original action.
I understand the importance of accurate information.
I’ve written before about how it bothers me when someone
posts a meme – a photo of a person that includes a statement they’ve said – when the person shown never made
that statement. This is even more important for information that appears on TV news websites or in books and
newspapers. However, we can question whether or not a
fact is true without attacking or shaming the writer. If we
BINGHAMTON, NY
OPINIONS
The views expressed in editorials and opinion pieces are those of each author and
not necessarily the views of the Jewish Federation of Greater Binghamton.
LETTERS
The Reporter welcomes letters on subjects of interest to the Jewish community.
All letters must be signed and include a phone number;
names may be withheld upon request.
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DEADLINE
Regular weekly deadline is noon, Wednesday, for the following week’s newspaper.
learn someone is untrustworthy, then we can discount or
fact-check their future writings. This can – and should – be
done in a professional, impersonal manner.
The Talmud compares the act of embarrassing someone
in public to murder. Spilled blood is red, as is the blush
that people experience when they are embarrassed. I’ve
disagreed in the past that the two are equal, but the public
shaming Ronson talks about is so harmful – from people
losing their jobs to some who take their own lives – that
I’m rethinking the issue. Yes, we want to hold people
responsible for their actions, but the Internet seems to
release the worst in us. One horrific statement leads to
another, as if each person is trying to top the punishment
offered by the previous person commenting. We need
to rethink our actions; we need to pause before we hit
enter or send.
When we shame people on the Internet, we forget that
the person being shamed also has feelings. We see them
as an object – as something other and different from ourselves. This behavior is unacceptable because it leads to
punishments that far exceed the crime. We need to recognize
everyone’s humanity, even when they do something that
offends us. There are far better ways to create dialogue – to
make people understand why an action might be offensive
– than by threatening them with torture or death.
Executive Editor Rabbi Rachel Esserman
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May 13-19, 2016
Beth David to pay tribute to Adamits at annual dinner
By Paula Rubin
Beth David Synagogue will hold its
annual dinner on Sunday, May 22, beginning with cocktails at 3 pm, and followed
by dinner at 3:30 pm, at the synagogue,
39 Riverside Dr., Binghamton. The cost to
attend will be $50 per person. Sponsorship
opportunities are available: gold at $375,
which includes two dinners; silver at $275,
which includes two dinners; and bronze at
$175, which includes one dinner. This year,
the synagogue will pay tribute to longtime
members Rabbi Aminadav and Sarah Lynn
Adamit, who will be returning to Israel at
the end of July.
Aminadav and Sarah Lynn have been
members of Beth David since they arrived in Binghamton from Canada 18
years ago when their youngest son was
5-years-old. They have been active in
many areas of the synagogue, as well
as the general community.
For the past 10 years, he has been the
co-rabbi at Beth David Synagogue. He
began his teaching career in Binghamton
at Hillel Academy. In addition, he was the
principal at Temple Israel Hebrew School
for 10 years. Aminadav has also been visible
in the community, serving as the mashgiach
at the Jewish Community Center and occasionally at Hillel at Binghamton University.
He oversaw the local NCSY chapter from
the day he arrived to the present, and has
planned holiday and educational events at
the synagogue for the entire community. He
also taught adult education classes at the shul
for all levels of interest in Jewish learning,
and coordinated the weekly Shalosh seudas.
By career, Sarah Lynn is a registered
nurse and still practices at one of the local
hospitals. She, along with her husband,
open their home to members of the community and out-of-town guests who might
be looking for a Shabbat meal. Working
with her husband, she has worked on
holiday hospitality and hosted NCSY
Shabbatons, along with the numerous
Friday night dinners.
A self-proclaimed artist, her hobbies fill
her home with original artwork, including
many with a Judaica theme. Through
painting, drawing or mosaic pieces, she
expresses her creative side as well as her
observant lifestyle.
Their sons, daughters and grandchildren,
as well as members of the community, will
pay tribute to the Adamits before they leave.
Temple Concord to participate in
Sacred Sites Open House Weekend
Jewish organization in the area. The original
Jewish settlers in Binghamton organized
the Hebrew Benevolent Society, founded in
1862. Subsequently, they created a number of
Jewish organizations and religious societies.
Temple Concord was incorporated in
November 1950, and in February 1951
regular services were instituted in the
Jonas M. Kilmer Mansion, a Romanesque
Revival mansion designed in 1898 by
Binghamton architect C. Edward Vosbury,
noted for his mansion design, including the
Roberson mansion on Front Street and the
McKinnon House in Utica, which are all
listed on the National Register of Historic
Places. The three-story brick building
contains turrets, terra-cotta roofing tile
and an arcaded open porch.
Dr. Jonas Kilmer was a member of
Binghamton’s business community, whose
patent medicine industry included the
cure-all called “Swamp Root.” The historic
mansion now houses Temple Concord’s
Hebrew and Judaic schools, as well as a
library. In 1964, a modern office, sanctuary and social hall were added to meet
the growing needs of the congregation.
The architects of the “new” wing were
Benjamin Bloch and Walter Hesse, New
York City architects active in synagogue
design from the 1920s through the early
1960s, with Herbert Shalat as associate
architect. The modern stained-glass artist
Jean-Jaques Duval designed the stained
glass windows in the sanctuary.
For more information and a complete
list of sites participating in the Landmarks
Conservancy’s Open House Weekend, visit
www.nylandmarks.org.
The New York Landmarks Conservancy
has led the effort to preserve and protect
New York’s architectural legacy for more
40 years. The Conservancy’s work has saved
more than 1,000 buildings across the city and
state, protecting New York’s architectural
heritage for residents and visitors, as well
as for future generations.
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Temple Concord in Binghamton will
be one of several of Central New York
State’s historic churches and synagogues
participating in the New York Landmarks
Conservancy’s sixth annual Sacred Sites
Open House Weekend on Saturday, May
21, and Sunday, May 22. Numerous organizations will open their doors to visitors
who wish to explore their religious art
and architecture.
More than 40 sites in New York City
and 120 statewide will participate in the
weekend. Congregations will also showcase
the cultural and social service programs
they provide for the wider community,
with special tours, concerts, food fairs and
other events.
“Many of New York’s magnificent houses of worship have served generations and
continue to anchor communities, and all too
often they are seen only by their members,”
said Peg Breen, president of the New York
Landmarks Conservancy. “The Sacred Sites
Open House Weekend allows everyone to
enjoy the architecture, art and history of
these remarkable structures.”
This year’s open house weekend celebrates the 30th anniversary of the Landmarks
Conservancy’s Sacred Sites program, the
only statewide program in the country
providing financial and technical assistance
for the restoration of culturally significant
religious properties. Since 1986, the program has awarded 1,350 grants totaling
more than $9.3 million to more than 750
congregations, regardless of denomination,
throughout New York state.
Temple Concord, located at 9 Riverside
Dr., Binghamton, will be open on May 22
from noon-3 pm. Temple Concord’s roots
reach back more than 100 years, to the first
To recognize Glass’ activities in the
general community and to welcome the
community’s participation in the celebration, Temple Beth-El will host two events
with Rabbi Jack Moline, the president of
the Interfaith Alliance in Washington, DC.
Moline is the rabbi emeritus of Congregation Agudas Achim in Northern Virginia,
and former director of the National Jewish
Democratic Council, as well as an advisor to
many in politics. Moline’s topic on Monday,
May 16, at 7:30 pm, will be “Adventures
in the First Amendment,” an address about
interfaith relations. His topic on Tuesday,
May 17, at 7:30 pm, will be “A Guide to
Political Values – from the Mishnah!” and
will be about the 2016 presidential election.
This will be Moline’s second visit to Ithaca. He came in May 2011 at the invitation
of Temple Beth-El and First Congregational
Church, in dialogue with Reverend Greg
Mobley, as part of the church’s Foote lecture,
“From Tolerance to Relationship.”
“It is a bitter-sweet moment for Beth David,” organizers noted. “We will be saying
good-bye to two Beth David members and
their family, while wishing them well on
the next stage of their lives.”
For more information or to RSVP, call
the synagogue at 722-1793.
The Jewish Community wishes to express its sympathy to
Marilyn Aigen on the death of
her son, and Michael Aigen on
the death of his brother,
Rabbi Ron Aigen
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Temple Beth-El marking
rabbi’s 40 years of service
Beginning last October and running
through next year, Temple Beth-El of Ithaca
is marking the 40th anniversary of its rabbi’s
service to the community with a series of
lectures and classes in his honor. Rabbi Scott
Glass arrived in Ithaca in August 1976 to
serve a congregation of approximately 100
families. In the earliest years, he focused
his attention on the religious school and the
youth of the congregation. The “support
and encouragement of an active laity” are
credited with helping the congregation grow
to almost 300 families and expanding the
activities of the congregation.
To celebrate Glass’ 40th year, local scholars have presented lectures on topics of
Jewish interest, and the congregation hosted
a scholar-in-residence weekend in March
with rabbinic leader Rabbi Bradley Shavit
Artson, the dean of the Ziegler Rabbinical
School at American Jewish University
in Los Angeles. The series will continue
through 2017.
Rabbi Aminadav and Sarah Lynn Adamit
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May 13-19, 2016
Off the Shelf
God intoxication and God manipulation
RABBI RACHEL ESSERMAN
The headlines read “Religious children are meaner than
their secular counterparts, study finds” (The Guardian) and
“Study finds that children raised without religion show
more empathy and kindness” (www.patheos.com/blogs/
danthropology). The results of this 2015 study would not
have surprised Rabbi Donniel Hartman, the president of
the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. Although his
new work “Putting God Second: How to Save Religion
From Itself” (Beacon Press) doesn’t discuss this research,
Hartman notes that religious individuals don’t always live
up to the moral and spiritual aspirations of their faith. His
powerful exploration of the reasons behind this makes for
fascinating and challenging reading.
Hartman carefully notes that he is not anti-religion,
nor does he think that faith is a bad thing: “Rather it is my
contention that a life of faith, while obligating moral sensitivity, also often activates a critical flaw that supports and
encourages immoral impulses. These impulses, given free
reign to flourish under the cloak of religious piety, undermine the ultimate moral agendas of religions and the types
of communities and societies they aspire to build.” He sees
the source of this moral failure coming from what he calls
religion’s autoimmune disease, whose symptoms include
“God intoxication” (or God-induced indifference) and “God
manipulation” (or God-sanctioned indifference). Although he
feels all monotheistic religions are subject to these problems,
he focuses on Judaism because it’s his religious tradition.
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Articles of Organization filed with
Secretary of State of New York
(SSNY) on 3/28/16. Office location:
Broome County. SSNY designated
LLC agent upon whom process
against it may be served. SSNY
shall mail copy of process to: LLC,
Attn: John G. Dowd, PO Box 1905,
Binghamton, NY 13902. Purpose:
Any Lawful Pur pose. Date of
dissolution: None.
______________________
NOTICE OF FORMATION OF LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY:
The name of the limited liability
company is: ERNIE FARMS, LLC
(the “Company”). The date of filing
of the Articles of Organization of
the Company with the Secretary
of State was March 30, 2016. The
county in which the principal place
of business of the Company shall
be located is Broome County.
The Secretary of State has been
designated as agent of the Company
upon whom process against it may
be served. The Secretary of State
shall mail a copy of any process
against the Company, to Hinman,
Howard & Kattell, LLP, Attn: Ronald
L. Greene, 80 Exchange Street,
Suite 700, Binghamton, NY 13901.
The purpose of the business of the
Company is any lawful business
purpose.
______________________
Notice of Formation of 5F3D86, LLC.
Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State
of NY (SSNY) on 03/29/16. Office
location: Broome County. SSNY
designated as agent of LLC upon
whom process against it may be
served. SSNY shall mail process to:
99 Hawley St., Ste. 200, Binghamton,
NY 13901. Purpose: any lawful
activities.
______________________
NOTICE OF FORMATION OF
LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY
UNDER NEW YORK LIMITED
LIABILITY COMPANY LAW
1. The name of the limited liability
company (“LLC”) is 402
AIRPORT RD HOLDINGS LLC.
2. The date of filing of the Articles
of Organization with the
Secretary of State is April 5,
2016.
3.
4.
The County within the State
of New York in which the
principal office of the LLC is
located is Broome.
The Secretary of State of
the State of New York is hereby
designated as agent of the LLC
upon whom process against
it may be served. The post office
address to which the Secretary
of State shall mail a copy of any
process against the LLC served
upon him or her is: 501 Meeker
Road, Vestal, NY 13850.
Both symptoms affect how religious individuals
treat others. For example, a person suffering from God
intoxication is so obsessed with God that he loses “the
ability to see the needs of other human beings.” The
prime biblical example of this is the binding of Isaac:
“The moment Abraham hears the voice of God, it is
as if his capacity for critical thought shuts down. He
does not consider his moral responsibility toward his
son, nor does he debate whether to adhere to the divine
commandment not to commit murder.... His intoxication
with the divine eclipses all human concerns.” Hartman
would rather we model our behavior on a different
incident in Abraham’s life: when he argued with God
about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. There,
Abraham demanded justice from God so that innocent
humans would not be destroyed. What matters is not
an abstract principle, but the assurance that God and
humans live up to their moral responsibilities.
God manipulation occurs when someone convinces
themselves that their self-interest is a God-given right,
what Hartman calls “using God in the service of our own
interests, while simultaneously waving the banner of divine
approval.” He notes that “self-interest under the pretense
of piety” is difficult for the affected individual to detect.
One example given focuses on holy wars – wars that
people assume have been fully approved by God because
God has chosen them and any decision they make must
therefore be correct. Yet, Hartman believes that morality
requires us to treat everyone as fully human – as if they
are also created in the image of the divine – even if they
practice a different religious tradition. Otherwise, “God is
drafted into the service of a particular worldview, leaving
all others devoid of access to God’s grace.”
Is it possible to counter God intoxication and God manipulation? Hartman’s answer is yes, if people are willing
to look at their religious practice objectively to see whether
or not it’s based on self-interest. He sees self-interest as
that which makes religion “a perpetual catalyst for moral
mediocrity, corruption and, at times, downright evil.” Of
course, Hartman doesn’t think this is inevitable, particularly if we’re willing to view morality as an independent
good. That means going beyond the letter of the law; for
example, placing morality above strict adherence when
following it negatively affects others.
Hartman also notes that our idea of morality has
changed over time, making it “our responsibility to live in
accordance with the best moral dictates to which we have
access in our cultural and historical context.” The act of
revelation serves only as a beginning when determining
a code of appropriate behavior. Hartman gives examples
from the Talmud that show how acting morally sanctifies
God, while immoral behavior decreases God’s worth in
the eyes of the world.
See “God” on page 9
LEGAL NOTICE
5. The character or purpose of the
business of the LLC is any
purpose allowed by law.
______________________
Notice of Formation of All Phase
Construction of the Southern Tier,
LLC. Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of
State of NY (SSNY) on 04/04/16.
Office location: Broome County.
SSNY designated as agent of LLC
be served. SSNY shall mail process
to: 33 Moeller St., Binghamton,
activities.
______________________
Notice of Formation of CAN AM
WEST, LLC. Arts. of Org. filed with
Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on
04/04/16. Office location: Broome
County. SSNY designated as agent
of LLC upon whom process against
it may be served. SSNY shall mail
process to: 320 N. Jensen Rd.,
Vestal, NY 13850. Purpose: any
lawful activities.
______________________
Notice of Formation of Green Tree
- Vestal, LLC. Arts. of Org. filed with
Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on
County. SSNY designated as agent
of LLC upon whom process against
it may be served. SSNY shall mail
process to: 1550 Vestal Parkway
East, Vestal, NY 13850. Purpose:
any lawful activities.
______________________
Notice of Formation of Newman
Development Group of Front Street,
LLC. Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of
SSNY designated as agent of LLC
be served. SSNY shall mail process
to: 300 Plaza Dr., Vestal, NY 13850.
Purpose: any lawful activities.
______________________
Notice of Formation of 50 Front
Street Associates, LLC. Arts. of
Org. filed with Secy. of State of
NY (SSNY) on 04/06/16. Office
served. SSNY shall mail process
to: 300 Plaza Dr., Vestal, NY 13850.
Purpose: any lawful activities.
______________________
South West of Lititz 6.1, LLC, Articles
of Organization filed with Secretary
of State of New York (SSNY) on
County. SSNY designated LLC agent
be served. SSNY shall mail copy
of process to: LLC, Attn: John G.
Dowd, PO Box 1905, Binghamton,
NY 13902. Purpose: Any Lawful
Purpose. Date of dissolution: None.
______________________
CoreLife trademarks, LLC, Articles
of Organization filed with Secretary
of State of New York (SSNY) on
County. SSNY designated LLC agent
be served. SSNY shall mail copy of
process to: LLC, Attn: John G. Dowd,
PO Box 1905, Binghamton, NY
13902. Purpose: Any Lawful Purpose.
Date of dissolution: None.
______________________
NOTICE OF FORMATION
OF A DOMESTICE LIMITED
LIABILITY COMPANY
Name of LLC: T2R Group, LLC
Date of Formation: 03/01/2016
Office of T2R Group LLC: Broome
County
The NY Secretary of State has been
designated as the agent upon whom
process may be served. NYSS may
mail a copy of any process to T2R
Group, LLC at:
T2R Group LLC
2520 Vestal Parkway East PMB#244
Vestal, NY 13850
Registered Agent:
UNITED STATES CORPORATION
AGENTS INC
7014 13TH AVENUE STE 202
BROOKLYN, NY 11228
Purpose: Any lawful act or activity
______________________
Advocates For Autism, LLC,
Articles of Organization filed with
the Secretary of State of New York
(SSNY) on 03/18/2016.
Office
has been designated as agent
of the LLC upon whom process
against it may be served. SSNY
shall mail a copy of process to: c/o
ADVOCATES FOR AUTISM, LLC,
333 Birch Street, Vestal, 13850.
Purpose:
Any lawful purpose.
Latest date upon which LLC is to
dissolve: No specific date.
______________________
Notice of Formation of DG
Technologies LLC. Arts. Of Org.
filed with Secy. of State of NY
(SSNY) on 4/19/16. Office Location:
Broome Co. SSNY designated as
agent of LLC upon whom service
of process against it may be served.
SSNY shall mail process to: Daniel
J. Gregoris, 44 Schiller Street,
Binghamton, NY 13905. Purpose:
any lawful activities.
______________________
To place a
legal notice,
please contact
Bonnie Rozen at
724-2360, ext. 244
or bonnie@
thereportergroup.org
LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY:
The name of the limited liability
company is: JBK Holdings, LLC
(the “Company”). The date of filing
of the Articles of Organization of
the Company with the Secretary
of State was April 21, 2016. The
county in which the principal place
of business of the Company shall
be located is Broome County.
designated as agent of the Company
be served. The Secretary of State
shall mail a copy of any process
against the Company, to Hinman,
Howard & Kattell, LLP, Attn: Ryan
M. Mead, 80 Exchange Street,
Suite 700, Binghamton, NY 13901.
The purpose of the business of the
Company is any lawful business
purpose.
______________________
TMZK Interprise LLC
Articles of Organization filed
with the New York State Dept of
State (NYSDS) on feb 16 2016.
designated as agent upon whom
process against it may be served.
The Post Office address to which
the NYSDS shall mail a copy of any
upon him/her is: c/o United States
Corporation Agents, Inc., 7014
13th Avenue, Suite 202, Brooklyn,
NY 11228 The principal business
address of the LLC is: PO BOX
3107, Binghamton, NY 13902
Purpose: any lawful act or activity
______________________
Notice is hereby given that a
license, number “Pending” for Beer,
Wine and Liquor has been applied
for by Joey’s Italian Ice Co Inc.
(DBA De Gennaro’s at En-Joie) to
sell Beer, Wine and Liquor at retail
in a restaurant under the Alcoholic
Beverage Control Law at 722 West
Main Street, Endicott NY 13760 for
on premises consumption.
Joseph De Gennaro
Joey’s Italian Ice Co Inc. (DBA De
Gennaro’s at En-Joie)
______________________
company (“LLC”) is Wagner
Farm & Forest, LLC.
Secretary of State is April 28,
2016.
3. The County within the State of
New York in which the principal
office of the LLC is located is
Broome.
4.
The Secretary of State of
it may be served. The post office
address to which the Secretary
of State shall mail a copy of any
upon him or her is: 4250 East
Tremont Avenue, Bronx, New
York 10465
______________________
Notice of Formation of At Your
Service Transportation LLC. Arts. of
Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY
(SSNY) on 04/08/16. Office location:
Broome County. SSNY designated
as agent of LLC upon whom process
against it may be served. SSNY shall
mail process to: Shawn P Connelly,
22 Livingston St Apt 1L, Binghamton,
activities.
______________________
company (“LLC”) is V&H
Handling Systems, LLC.
Secretary of State is May 3,
2016.
3.
The County within the State
of New York in which the
principal office of the LLC is
located is Broome.
4. The Secretary of State of
it may be served. The post
office address to which the
Secretary of State shall mail
a copy of any process against
the LLC served upon him or
her is: 4410 Linglestown Road,
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
17112.
______________________
Notice of Formation of
Jablon Studios LLC
Arts. Of Org. filed with Secy. of
Princ. Office of LLC: 10 Alice Street
Binghamton, NY 13904. SSNY
served. SSNY shall mail process
to the LLC at the addr. of its princ.
office. Purpose: any lawful activity.
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May 13-19, 2016
Johnny Only family dance party fund-raiser at the
JCC for Camper Scholarship fund
By Lynette Errante
Camp JCC will hold a fund-raiser for its Camper
Scholarship fund featuring Binghamton DJ Johnny Only
on Sunday, May 22, from 1:30-3 pm, on the outdoor patio
at the Jewish Community Center, 500 Clubhouse Rd.,
Vestal. The event will be for children of all ages and their
families, and will be open to the entire community. In case
of rain, all activities will be held in the JCC auditorium.
Families will have the opportunity to participate in
outdoor games, dance with Johnny Only, face painting
and having a dessert. The cost for the event will be $5 per
child or $1 per adult. Child admission includes a dessert
and adults can purchase one for $2.
Proceeds from the fund-raiser will directly benefit those
in need of financial assistance to attend camp. A portion of
the funds will go directly to the JCC Honor Campership
Award, which was started in 2015.
“At Camp JCC, we’re committed to making camp
affordable to as many families as possible. Each summer
we award approximately $30,000 in financial assistance
to families who qualify. The need for aid, however, continues to increase at an exponential pace. In response, we
have initiated an Honor Campership Fund, which will be
geared toward helping campers in fifth-ninth grades,”
explained Marcia Brownlow, JCC assistant director. “As
the children continue to move through the Camp JCC
experience, they are exposed to more external programs
and leadership opportunities that increases the expense
incurred. Ironically, as they age, they lose their eligibility
to receive support from organizations such as the Department of Social Services, so we created the campership
fund to fill that void. By having assistance available, we
are not only enabling the campers to continue to take
part in the program, it ensures they will have the chance
to fulfill the goal of the program, which is to help them
realize their full potential as future leaders.”
RSVPs have been encouraged. To make a reservation,
contact Lynette Errante, JCC youth and camp director, at
724-2417, ext. 421, or at LynetteE@binghamtonjcc.org.
To make a donation to the Camp JCC Scholarship Fund
or Honor Campership Award, contact the JCC main office
at 724-2417, ext. 110.
TC Sisterhood to hold donor event
Temple Concord Sisterhood’s 2016 donor event will
be a Victorian Tea Party on Sunday, May 15, at noon, at
the temple, 9 Riverside Dr., Binghamton. Ailsa Donnelly,
guest speaker, will share traditions for an English Tea.
A traditional tea menu and additional lunch fare will be
served. Recipes will come from United Kingdom cookbooks, which Donnelly will share with Donor Co-chairwomen Deb Daniels and Danielle Pratt.
Reservations can be made by calling the temple office at
723-7355 by Thursday, May 12. Organizers have reminded
the community that it is “never too late” to become a donor.
Checks for $25, or $36 for those who wish to bring a guest,
can be mailed to Terri Bennett, Sisterhood treasurer and
financial secretary, at 253 Vivian Ln., Vestal, NY 13850,
or they may be given at the door on May 15.
Donnelly, who is Scottish, was raised in India until the
age of 12. Her family moved back to Scotland, where she
attended boarding school and went on to a finishing school
near London. She emigrated to California in her early 20s,
when she was sponsored by a cousin who was a professor
at Cal Tech. There she met her husband, who was a graduate student at Cal Tech. They moved to Rice University
in Texas and then to SUNY Binghamton. Since he retired,
they have traveled throughout the world, including Ecuador, Venezuela, West Indies, Brazil, Argentina, Australia,
Solomon Islands, Thailand and Vietnam.
Donnelly said she enjoys discussing the many traditions of an afternoon tea, including the different types of
“tea time.” For example, the English tea is served in late
afternoon, as compared with “high tea,” which is served
later as a supper meal. Donnelly will describe the many
traditional foods served at tea. “She is a delightful story-teller,” said Daniels.
Smuggled out of ghetto, newly discovered photo
trove turns out to be family of American scholars
By Uriel Heilman
NEW YORK (JTA) – When documentary photographer
Richard Schofield stumbled upon a trove of unidentified
prewar photographs in September 2013 in the storage room
of the Sugihara House museum in Kaunas, Lithuania, he
knew he had found something special. The photos, dating
from about 1910 through 1940, were from a Lithuanian
Jewish family’s album that had been smuggled out of the
city’s wartime Jewish ghetto and entrusted to a non-Jewish
Lithuanian family for safekeeping. But nobody knew what
had happened to the people in the pictures. Presumably they
had not survived the war to reclaim their photos.
Touched by the images and intrigued to learn what had
happened to their subjects, Schofield set about trying to
identify them. He scanned the 112 photos, set up a Facebook page to showcase them and commissioned a piece of
music to accompany an exhibition of the photographs that
would mark the 75th anniversary of the ghetto in Kaunas,
then known as Kovno.
“People started helping us with the translations of the
writings on the photographs and some things started to become clear,” said Schofield, the founder of the International
Centre of Litvak Photography. “We worked out that the
woman in many of the photographs was called Anna (or
Anushka). There were some strong musical connections
in the family. We could see other things, too. I was really
falling in love with these pictures.”
Then, in late March, by a twist of serendipity, a
non-Jewish archivist who worked at the Jewish museum
in the Lithuanian capital city of Vilnius noticed something:
After clicking through the photographs and doing a bit of
sleuthing, Saule Valiunaite realized that one of the photos
appeared in a Holocaust documentary film made in 1999.
It turns out the photos weren’t of some obscure Jewish
family, but that of two of America’s best-known Yiddish
scholars: Ruth Wisse of Harvard and her brother David
Roskies of the Jewish Theological Seminary. Roskies had
written a memoir about his family, “Yiddishlands,” in 2008.
A third sibling, Eva Roskies Raby, is a former director of
the Montreal Jewish Public Library. The album Schofield
had found belonged to Anushka Warshawski, the siblings’
aunt, who had perished during World War II, in October
1943, along with the rest of her family.
“Saule got in touch with us and sure enough there is our
aunt’s album,” said Wisse, who appears in one of the photos. “Many of these pictures are not only familiar to us, but
are the same ones as those in our mother’s album that she
brought over in 1940. We grew up with these photographs.”
Of Anushka’s 10 siblings, only two survived the war. One
had immigrated to America decades before the Holocaust.
The other was Wisse and Roskies’ mother, Masha, who fled
Czernowitz (then part of Romania) for Montreal in 1940.
For her children, who grew up on their mother’s stories
of life before the war, the album’s discovery offered some
tantalizing new details about family members they had been
hearing about their whole lives. “When I saw these pictures,
it felt like a huge piece of the puzzle had fallen into place,”
Roskies told JTA in an interview from Jerusalem, where
he is spending a semester teaching at Hebrew University.
Anushka Warshawski, center, smuggled her photo album
out of the Kovno ghetto shortly before its liquidation and
her death in 1943. (Photo courtesy of Richard Schofield)
“It was a huge family and they all died,” Roskies said.
“My mother dedicated the rest of her life to keeping the
memory of that family alive. She told stories about them
three times a day, at breakfast, lunch and dinner. My mother
believed that history ended in 1940, that everything important ended the moment she left Europe. These stories
were like her Bible, they were the reference point for her
whole subsequent life. We were constantly reminded of
these people we never met and would never meet. They
became our surrogate family.”
The newly discovered album confirms the special bond
between his mother andAnushka, Roskies said. The two sisters
(half-sisters, actually, since Masha was born to her mother’s
second husband) corresponded and sent photos back and forth
during the years after they married and lived apart – Anushka
After a documentary
photographer stumbled
upon Anushka Warshawski’s
photo album, it took some
sleuthing to figure out who
she was. (Photo courtesy of
Richard Schofield)
Nyonya, who died in the 1918
influenza epidemic, was a
favorite brother of Anushka
and her surviving sister,
Masha. (Photo courtesy of
Richard Schofield)
in Kovno and Masha in Vilna and then Czernowitz. They
reunited only once during those years, in Czernowitz in 1938.
After that, they never saw each other again.
“Just as my mother was religiously saving these pictures of
Anushka and her other sisters and their children, Anushka was
doing the exact same thing in Kovno,” said Roskies, the Sol and
Evelyn Henkind Chair in Yiddish literature and culture at JTS.
In one picture, there’s a young Ruth Wisse (then Roskies),
probably age 4, bundled up against the snow and venturing
forth on ice skates. Ruth was one of two children Masha
See “Trove” on page 6
May 13-19, 2016
Trove
had in Czernowitz before the war; she had
two more in Montreal. David Roskies, now
68, is the youngest. Wisse, recently retired
from Harvard as its Martin Peretz professor
of Yiddish literature and professor of comparative literature, now lives in New York.
In another photograph is Nyonya, Masha’s favorite brother, in his Red Army
uniform from World War I. He died in the
influenza epidemic of 1918. Some photographs feature Anushka with her second
husband at a lumberyard, suggesting that
may have been the source of his considerable
Podcast on Jewish
women
Jewish Women’s Archives
offers a monthly podcast called “Can We
Talk?” It can be found at http://jwa.org/
podcasts/canwetalk. It offers stories and
conversations about Jewish women and the
issues that shape their public and private
lives. Alternating between a documentary
style and a roundtable format, it includes
profiles of historical and contemporary Jewish women, discussions of culture, politics
and current events, and little-known stories
from the past and present.
wealth, according to Roskies. There are
also quite a few photos of Anushka’s first
husband, with whom she had a child who
later disappeared into the Soviet gulag, and
shots of Anushka at an orphanage where
she may have worked.
Still fresh in the discovery stage, Masha’s three surviving children – Roskies in
Jerusalem, Wisse in New York and Raby in
Montreal – are trying to piece together many
essential details about the photographs.
Schofield, who is still recovering from
the shock of the discovery, is raising money for a piece of music he’s calling the
“Kaunas Requiem” that he hopes to stage
at an installation in September to mark the
75th anniversary of the establishment of the
Kaunas/Kovno ghetto. He’s not yet sure
how he’ll incorporate the new information
about the photographs.
“When I found the photographs, I thought
it would be nice to put names to faces. I never
really thought about what I would do if that
happened,” said Schofield, a non-Jewish
native of Britain who has been living in
Lithuania for the past 15 years and says he
is “endlessly fascinated” by the vanished
Jewish past of his adopted city. “It’s all
pretty incredible, really. It’s been a bit of a
roller coaster.”
He credits Valiunaite, who works as a
historian in the Department of Righteous
Gentiles at the Vilna Gaon Jewish State
Museum, with putting the pieces together.
Valiunaite says she figured out the
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American Yiddish scholar Ruth Wisse,
here probably age 4, appeared in her aunt
Anushka’s photo album. (Photo courtesy of
Richard Schofield)
connection to Roskies by finding a match
between a sanitorium resort that appeared
in the photographs and Lithuanian records
showing the resort was owned by the
Warshawski family. She later discovered
that Anushka had something of a musical
career – a detail mentioned in Roskies’
book and in a 45-minute documentary film
Continued from page 5
from 1999 called “Daughter of Vilna: The
Life in Song of Masha Roskies.” The final
proof was a photo in the film that matched
one found in the trove.
Valiunaite contacted Wisse and Roskies
immediately, about four weeks ago.
“They’re quite famous, so it’s easy to find
them,” Valiunaite said.
The fact that Anushka went to the trouble
of smuggling the album out of the Kovno
ghetto speaks volumes, Roskies said. By the
time of the ghetto’s liquidation, in 1943, it
must have been clear to the Jews who remained that they, too, soon would be headed
to their deaths, Roskies surmises. “Why
would Anushka care about a photo album
if she was going to die?” Roskies asked.
“She knew Masha had escaped to Canada
and survived. What must have been going
through Anushka’s head was: ‘We reached
the end of the line. The ghettos are being
depleted. I want Masha to have this album,
so I have to find a way of getting it to her.’”
Though Masha died in 1999 at 93,
Roskies says the photos’ discovery is still a
homecoming. “If we hadn’t been raised from
childhood morning, noon and night on these
stories, they would just be photographs,
fading pictures,” Roskies said. “But it’s not
like looking at artifacts. We know who these
people were, their disappointments, their
lives, their aspirations and the extremely
complicated lives they all lived. And now
this album is being reunited with the family
Anushka wanted to have it.”
Celebrations with DeRue
Danel Bridal Salon
Consumer
protection
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Ernest H. Parsons Funeral Home
Specialty: Disc jockey entertainment services
Location: 317 Marion St.
Vestal, NY 13850
Name: DeRue O’Loughlin
Phone: 607-343-6269
E-mail: DeRue@celebrationswithderue.com
Website: www.CelebrationswithDeRue.com
Facebook: Celebrations with DeRue
Hours: By appointment
Celebrations with DeRue DJ Entertainment offers a
unique, personal DJ experience.
“We will travel anywhere and have served upstate New
York and northern Pennsylvania for over 20 years,” says
DeRue. “The Celebration Nation respects your wants and
needs. We work hard for you and with you to help create
a perfect wedding reception day or corporate event. Any
event that needs music and entertainment will be a positive,
collaborative experience. We can also provide high quality
lighting, gobo lighting and video service options. If you
want a passionate, professional master of ceremonies, fun
music entertainment and great customer service, then join
the DeRue Crew! We can make your event, start to finish,
an awesome experience for you and all your guests!”
Recommendations and more information are on
Facebook, Celebrations with DeRue, and www.celebrationswithderue.com. For a no-pressure consultation, call
607-343-6269.
Specialty: Wedding wear, tuxedos, DJ services,
wedding officiant services Location: 16 Washington Ave.
Endicott, NY 13760
Owners: Rose and Mike Pinco
Phone: 607-754-0023
E-mail: DanelBridal@aol.com
Website: www.DanelBridal.com
Hours: Sun.-Mon. closed for pvt. appts.;
Tues.-Wed. 12-6 pm; Thurs. 12-7:30
pm; Fri. 12-5 pm; Sat. 10 am-4 pm
Danel Bridal Salon has been in existence since 1959 and
is quickly becoming a leader in bridal wear not only serving
the Binghamton area, but the Binghamton region and beyond.
All Occasion Music Inc., Danel Bridal Salon, and New
York Prom and Formal Wear core products and services
serving the Binghamton region include bridal gowns, bridal
jewelry, bridal veils and accessories, bridal shoes, mother
dresses/gowns, bridesmaid dresses/gowns, flower girl
dresses/gowns, wedding gown preservation, tuxedo rentals,
wedding officiant services, wedding and event planning, DJ/
MC services, special effects club lighting, up lighting and
monogrammed lighting.
All Occasion Music Inc. has “A Long Wedding History
with a New Beginning” and continues to grow in the Binghamton area to serve the community with the highest level
of quality customer service!
Specialty: Funeral
Location: 71 Main St.
Binghamton, NY 13905
Name: Joseph Fritsch
Phone: 607-724-1336
Fax: 607-724-1337
E-mail: parsonsfuneral@yahoo.com
Website: www.parsonsfuneral.com
Hours: 24/7/365
Happy Chanukah from The Ernest H. Parsons Funeral Home, located at 71 Main
St., Binghamton, has been a landmark since 1928 and is
located in the J. Stewart Wells Mansion, built by renowned
architect Isaac Perry, who completed construction in 1867.
Ernest H. Parsons owned and operated the funeral home
from
1928 until his death in 1976. Charles Mills purchased
“A new family tradition”the funeral
home after Ernest’s death and continued the
Personal Service
tradition until his retirement in 2012. The current owners
– J. Fritsch, R. Fynboe, S. Pitkorchemny and K. Vakiener
Professionalism
to uphold the original motto of the founder: “Let
Experience You Can Trust –Usstrive
Serve You with Understanding.” Parsons Funeral Home
COMPARE OUR PRICES offers distinctive service with respectful attentiveness to the
We charge far less than other area funeral
homes rites and the utmost consideration of families’
ceremonial
desires to accord a last tribute of affection and esteem to
Kurt M. Eschbach, Funeral Director
their departed loved ones.
(NA PSA) – Deciding what’s important to you before
you buy online can help you avoid buyer’s remorse.
That’s the word from the Federal Trade Commission,
the nation’s consumer protection agency. To learn
more, visit w w w.ftc.gov or call 877-FTC-HELP (1-877382-4357) toll-free.
Hopler & Eschbach
Funeral Home
483 Chenango Street Binghamton
607-722-4023
Happy Chanukah from
www.HEfuneralhome.com
Suzanne
Krause
Licensed Associate
May 13-19, 2016
Canadian institute places Israel’s space program
at the center of its universe
By Bradley Martin
JNS.org
“Do you remember when Leonard Nimoy said, ‘Live
long and prosper’?” Dr. Frederick Krantz asked an audience at the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue of Montreal. Listeners chuckled in approval of his “Star Trek”
reference, indicating that a large percentage were familiar
with the iconic TV series and had fond memories of the
late Canadian-Jewish actor. Krantz continued, “Well, that
is very true. Israel is not only a power in the Middle East,
but will be a power in space.”
The Canadian Institute for Jewish Research on April
14 held its 28th anniversary gala, an event titled “Israel
in Space.” It was North America’s largest-ever gathering
dedicated to Israel’s space exploration achievements, with
an estimated 200 attendees, according to Krantz. “My hope
is that knowledge of Israel’s space program will show what
a benefit the Jewish state is for mankind,” said Krantz, the
director of CIJR.
The conference not only showcased Israel’s growing
contributions to space exploration, but it was also a night
dedicated in memory of the late Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon, who died in 2003 on the fatal mission of the Columbia
by its neighbors,” said Inbar, outlining
space shuttle. “I can’t quite see it right
the barriers to Israeli space ventures. “So,
now, but there is a relationship between
we are the only nation in the world that
human space flight and peace in the Middle
launches its satellites in the wrong direcEast,” Ramon once told his friend, former
Canadian Space Agency President Steve
tion! While everyone else launches their
MacLean. “When I get back, I am going
rockets eastwards, with the Earth’s rotation,
to focus on that.”
we have to launch west in order to avoid
The keynote address was given by Tal
our rockets being shot down. So, we lose
Inbar, head of Space and UAV Studies at the
about one-third of the lifting capability of
Fisher Institute for Air and Space Strategic
our launched vehicles.
Studies, which was founded by the Israel
“Israel is home to the only launch
Air Force Association. Inbar recounted
facility that is next to an active nuclear
how Israel embarked on a national space
research center, two major cities and a port
program in order to monitor Egyptian mili- The late Israeli astronaut Ilan with large deposits of oil. It is also within
range of rockets from Gaza,” Inbar added
tary movements via satellite. This was done Ramon. (Photo by NASA)
in reference to Palmachim, an Israeli milafter the Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai
Peninsula, in order to ensure that Egypt was honoring its itary base and spaceport located near the Mediterranean.
commitments as outlined in the 1979 Israel-Egypt peace
Despite these geopolitical obstacles, Israel’s contributreaty. Inbar said that this technological edge is even more tions to space exploration technology have been noted
important now, in order to monitor the activity of Iran, throughout the world. It was announced in February that
and that Israel needs to maintain its superiority in ballistic the Israel Space Agency would become an official member
missile technology.
of the United Nations Committee on Space Affairs. In
“Israel is, to put it politely, geographically challenged See “Space” on page 11
Hopler & Eschbach Funeral Home Photo Images
Specialty: Funeral services, burials and cremation
Location: 483 Chenango St.
Binghamton, NY 13901
Name: Kurt M. Eschbach
Phone: 607-722-4023
E-mail: hoplereschbachfh@aol.com
Website: www.hefuneralhome.com
Hours: 4-hour service, 365 days a year
Offering a professional and affordable alternative to other
funeral homes, the Hopler & Eschbach Funeral Home, located at 483 Chenango St., Binghamton, provides respectful
and knowledgeable service to those families experiencing
the loss of a loved one. The newly renovated facility seats
more than 125 people and provides off street parking for
65 cars. Staff also provide services at temple or graveside.
“We are mindful of the challenging economic climate
and work hard to provide our services at the lowest possible
cost,” says funeral home owner Kurt Eschbach. “Compare
our prices with other area funeral homes and you will find
our prices are 10-30 percent lower. We hope you will make
Hopler & Eschbach Funeral Home your new family tradition.”
Specialty: Photography
Location: 1124 Frost Rd.
Endicott, NY 13760
Name: Ann Ozark
Phone: 607-754-8397
E-mail: aozark@stny.rr.com
Website: www.PhotoImagesByAnnOzark.com
Ann Ozark is passionate about photography. She has
enjoyed photographing people, places and events for businesses and families in the Greater Binghamton area for
more than 25 years. Whether you need a portrait for social
media/advertising purposes, or your company needs event
coverage, Ann has the expertise to get the job done. She has
worked with interior decorators and realtors to showcase
homes and buildings. If your family is celebrating a special
occasion, she can capture the fun and candid moments
for lasting memories. Do you have a family member with
mobility issues? She does on-location portrait sessions.
Visit www.photoimagesbyannnozark.com for more
information and to see the photo gallery.
2x2
Money-saving tips for small businesses
(NAPSI) – Find ways to save and turn problems into profits
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1. Shine a light on savings by making sure to turn out the
lights in areas of the office that are not being used. Another
option is to install motion sensor lights that will automatically
turn lights on and off when people enter or leave a room.
2. Save on mailings by cleaning up your mailing list. Get rid
of bad addresses, inactive customers and undeliverable mail.
3. Print it yourself. One way some businesses maintain
control over printing costs – and their brand – is to do their
printing in-house whenever possible to maintain more control over the look of their stationery and business materials.
4. When it comes to communicating what your brand is and
what your business is about, keep your statements, both verbal
and written, simple and consistent, and make sure they reflect
your key messages. Make sure your name, logo and graphics
– including signage – communicate your brand. That means
you need a logo and color scheme that complement your verbal
message and create a cohesive presentation for all your materials
and website. This can help to create savings by cutting back on
printing excess materials that don’t reflect the brand.
5. Savvy small businesses know how to save by knowing where and when to spend. Many small businesses see
money spent on marketing and promotions for the holidays
as an investment, whether it’s to attract new customers or to
reward existing customers for their loyalty.
ERNEST H. PARSONS
FUNERAL HOME
To advertise, contact Bonnie Rozen at 724-2360, ext. 244 or
bonnie@ thereportergroup.org
2x3
RealtyUSA – Suzanne (Sue)
Krause
Specialty: Residential real estate and investment
properties
Location: 4747 Vestal Parkway East
Vestal, NY 13850
Name: Suzanne (Sue) Krause, Licensed
Associate Real Estate Broker
Phones: 607-772-1177
607-760-3366 (cell)
LLC
TLINTERIORSLLC@STNY.RR.COM
Website: www.RealtyUSA.com
Sue Krause is a WWW.TLINTERIORS.COM
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She is a consistent multi-million dollar producer and President’s Council member. Sue serves on the Board of the
Binghamton Youth Symphony.
“Call Sue Krause to buy or sell your house.”
TL INTERIORS,
TL INTERIORS, LLC
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• Custom designs for kitchens – baths – additions – etc…
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TERRY LUDWIG
607.761.0601
TLINTERIORSLLC@STNY.RR.COM
WWW.TLINTERIORS.COM
Faithfully Serving Broome County Since 1928
Family-Type Homes for Adults
Assisted Living Alternative
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Joseph Fritsch
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71 Main St., Binghamton, NY 13905
Phone 607-724-1336
Fax 800-948-5844
For information
on advertising,
contact
Bonnie Rozen at
724-2360, ext. 244
or bonnie@
thereportergroup.org
parsonsfuneral@yahoo.com
www.ParsonsFuneral.com
HANDI CAP PE D A C C ES SIB L E
The Homesteads
INFO: www.theHomesteadsllc.com
Apalachin, N.Y. • 607-625-3658
New York State certified and County regulated.
We are small, lovely homes, (not facilities) where the managers of the homes
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who have years of experience, first aid training, in home training, and CPR.
Our homes provide attentive care with loving hearts.
We have beds available! Welcome!
May 13-19, 2016
Torah talk and the disability experience merge
on Twitter
I wonder how Moses understood so quickly
the advent of the Internet. Regan lives in New
By Gabe Friedman
York and Bartmess in San Francisco. Online
NEW YORK (JTA) – Last year, when a medical issue at the burning bush. I think that was very undiscussions can also be easier for people with
prevented her from going to synagogue on Tisha B’Av, the usual. #parshachat – Ruti Regan (@RutiRegan)
disabilities to access than in-person ones.
Jewish day of mourning for the destruction of the ancient December 31, 2015
Bartmess explains that Twitter can also be an
A5 It’s often easier to raise concerns that aptemples, Ruti Regan turned to Twitter and began posting
especially useful discussion tool for people with
about the fast day using the hashtag “parshachat.” Today, ply to everyone than ones that only exist because
disabilities because the open-ended nature of
#parshachat has morphed into a weekly Twitter conversation you’re disabled. #parshachat – Ruti Regan (@
the chats – people chime in whenever they like
about the week’s Torah portion conducted through the lens RutiRegan) December 31, 2015
with comments marked with a hashtag – erases
A5 I think that maybe God didn’t know if it
of what it’s like to live with a disability.
Since last May, Regan, a rabbinical student at the Jewish would be good or not. God had no experience Ruti Regan is an some of the stress of real-time conversation for
Theological Seminary, and her friend Elizabeth Bartmess, with intentional creation before. #parshachat autistic rabbinic people like her with auditory processing issues. “It
a fiction writer, have led the open Twitter discussion. Both – Ruti Regan (@RutiRegan) October 4, 2015 s t u d e n t a t t h e gives you time to think because you don’t have to
“Some people might be having struggles Jewish Theological respond immediately,” Bartmess said. “You can
women have forms of the neurodevelopmental disorder autism.
Here’s how the “disability-informed Torah” discussion and might not be able to go to shul, but we can Seminary. (Photo really think the question over, you’re not on the
works: Regan and Bartmess generate four or five questions talk about things and it can make a difference,” courtesy of Ruti spot and don’t have to say something right away.”
Regan added that the platform’s character
related to the weekly Torah portion, or parasha, and tweet Regan said. “[It’s about] having space outside Regan)
www.CelebrationsWithDeRue.com
limit – 140 for now – prevents people from
each one throughout the hour-long discussion.
Participants the pressure to be positive.”
Regan says there is a “rich tradition” of Twitter discus- unleashing wordy and unwieldy “monologues” like they
607-343-6269
respond to the questions with the same Parshachat hashtag
and
a marker to indicate which question they are With
commenting on. sions, including some about Jewish liturgy, but #parshachat do on other platforms such as Facebook. Further, while
The result is a loose mix of personal testimony and appears to be the first ongoing one at the intersection of people often become friends on Facebook based on geophilosophical thoughts on lessons to be taken from the Torah study and disability.
graphical proximity or after an in-person meeting, those
current Torah portion or holiday – #Parshachat generates
Social media brings the geographically dispersed #par- who chat on Twitter often cluster around shared interests.
dozens of tweets per discussion.
shachat community together in ways unavailable before See “Twitter” on page 9
Celebrations
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Connie Barton, Lynette VanDriesen
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E-mail: thehomesteadsllc@aol.com
Website: www.thehomesteadsllc.com
607-343-6269
Hours: 27/7
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The Homesteads are owned and operated by a family of
professional women. Connie Barton and daughters Lynette
VanDriesen and Michelle Bell have worked together for
25 years to provide loving, quality long-term care for their
clients in an assisted living alternative. The Homesteads
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The Reporter
Specialty: Location: Name: Phone: Fax: E-mail: Website: Hours: Advertising
500 Clubhouse Rd.
Vestal, NY 13850
Bonnie Rozen
607-724-2360, ext. 244
607-724-2311
bonnie@thereportergroup.org
Mon.-Thurs., 10:30 am-5 pm, Fri.
10:30 am-4 pm
With 48 years’ experience in sales, and celebrating 20
years at The Reporter this past October, Bonnie truly enjoys working with people to get the word out about their
businesses, and helping them to create the look they want
for their print ads. “Satisfaction guaranteed” is her mantra.
“I feel a great sense of responsibility to my clients and
to our community,” says Bonnie.
Bonnie is the current president and the past treasurer of
Success Network, a business association in the Twin Tiers
of New York since 1998.
Call her today to discuss options for advertising in The
Reporter,and in its sister papers: The New Jewish Voice
in Stamford, New Canaan and Darien, CT; Connections
in Western CT; The Reporter in Scranton, PA; and Jewish
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Owner/Interior Designer/Event Planner: Terry Ludwig
Location: PO Box 863
Vestal, NY 13850
Phone: 607-761-0601
Fax: 607-785-2872
E-mail: TLInteriorsLLC@stny.rr.com
Website: www.TLInteriors.com
“I love creating environments that inspire my clients,”
says Terry Ludwig, owner of TL Interiors. “Understanding
their individual desires and aspirations, and creating the
ideal space or individual piece to help manifest and sustain
their dreams and objectives is my motivation.”
Terry has been serving residential and commercial interior
design needs for 30 years. She provides comprehensive design and project supervision for homes and businesses. She
provides floor plans, designs and elevations for construction
and fabrication requirements, reflected ceiling plans, specifications and procurement of materials, fixtures, appliances
and accessories needed to complete your project. She also
creates beautiful custom window treatments.
In addition to design, Terry is also an inspirational speaker
and columnist, and volunteers her design expertise to create
healing environments for A Room to Heal and Make a Wish
Foundation.
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(NAPSA) – Recent changes to the Rehabilitation Act
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May 13-19, 2016
NEWS IN BRIEF
From JTA
Israeli soldier who shot downed Palestinian should get plea
deal, judges say at trial start
The panel of judges in the military trial of the Israeli soldier captured on video shooting
an already downed Palestinian assailant in the head urged the two sides to reach a plea
agreement, saying the evidence was weak. The manslaughter charges against Sgt. Elor
Azaria, 19, of Ramle, were read on May 9 as the trial got under way in Jaffa Military
Court. Azaria also is accused of violating the rules of conduct and inappropriate conduct.
The three-judge panel denied the soldier’s request to be furloughed for Independence Day.
Azaria was granted a release for Passover in April. Azaria is being held in open detention
God
While this may make it sound as if Hartman sees religion only as a force for evil,
the opposite is true. For him, belief in God
can also function “as the ultimate antidote
to human arrogance.” Much of the evil in
the 20th century occurred because of human
self-interest that placed itself above religion
or morality; for example, political theories
that belittled individual human worth. Hartman sees a need to strive for holiness – with
an emphasis on striving – since he recognizes
that humans will never be perfect. We must
Geeks
into innovators’ worlds, exploring topics
ranging from bionics to performing arts to
quantum physics.
Tamar Greenberg of Rishon LeZion, a
central Israeli city, displayed her work using sewable electronic pieces in traditional
women’s handcrafts. The sewable electronic
modules – including a small programmable
computer called a Lilypad Arduino – can be
stitched together with conductive thread to
create interactive garments and accessories.
“My mission in life is to promote science
and technology for girls, combined with
traditional women’s handcrafts,” Greenberg
said. “Girls like to make something useful.
Through sewing and handcrafts, they can
learn math, science, chemistry and even
how to code.” Greenberg’s colorful snake
squirmed across the table for children to
touch and feel. It was made through a simple
computer code and from colorful, recycled
plastic grocery bags as well as Lilypad
computer pieces.
The Israeli Google Lunar X Prize team
had a tent at the Geek Picnic to display
their work toward landing the first Israeli
spacecraft on the moon. At another booth,
Mor Yahav explained the art of 3D printing.
“You pour the mixture into a cup that is
positioned above the printer,” he said while
an edible printed pancake slowly appeared.
“An internal pump flows the mixture down
from the cup into the syringe and the syringe
draws the design. It is being made in a pan.
The pan is hot, so the pancake cooks while it
is being made.” Does it work for anything?
Anything that can be made out of batter,
Yahav responded with a sheepish grin.
Nearby, a similar booth manned by
distributors from 3D Printing Center Israel
had staffers creating 3D-printed plastic
prototypes. Keter, a market leader in plastic
home and outdoor storage solutions, purchased one of the machines, according to
booth personnel. Keter uses the machine to
create prototypes before mass production.
Whereas in the past it would take days or
months and significant funds to make a
prototype, with plastic printing materials
cost around 100 NIS ($26.75) per kilogram
therefore be wary of seeing either our ideas
or behavior as examples of perfection.
Hartman believes it is God who “give[s]
us the strength to build a life of meaning
in the midst of the valley of the shadow of
death. God can inspire us to embark on an
unending journey of spiritual and moral improvement. A life with God can enhance and
deepen the time we are allotted on earth.”
Want to achieve this type of life? Reading
Hartman’s thought-provoking work is an
excellent way to start.
on his military base until the end of the case. He has freedom of movement on the base, but
cannot carry a firearm or be in contact with witnesses. In March, Azaria shot Abdel Fattah
al-Sharif in Hebron, a West Bank city that was a focal point in a seven-month wave of Palestinian violence against Israelis. He arrived on the scene after al-Sharif and an accomplice
had stabbed Israeli soldiers and the accomplice had been killed. The soldier has said that
when he shot al-Sharif, who was lying on his back unarmed, he feared the Palestinian man
might be about to detonate an explosive. Al-Sharif was wearing a bulky coat. The autopsy
showed that the soldier’s shot to the head was what killed the assailant. According to the
indictment, Azaria did not believe the assailant was an immediate danger to those around
him when he shot the Palestinian. The case marks the first time in more than 10 years that
an Israeli soldier has been charged with manslaughter for a killing that took place during
field operations. The case has generated “considerable controversy” among Israelis, with
some outraged that Azaria violated the military’s rules of engagement by shooting someone
who was supine and unarmed, and others that he is being disciplined at all.
Women of the Wall perform priestly blessing at Kotel
Women of the Wall held a priestly blessing as part of its monthly service at the Western Wall, despite a ruling by Israel’s attorney general forbidding the practice. The group
also brought a Torah scroll to the May 9 morning Rosh Chodesh prayer service, which
also has been prohibited. Some 120 women participated in the service. Both actions
violate traditional customs of the site and thus are not allowed. Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit in April said he would prohibit a women’s priestly blessing ceremony
during the intermediate days of Passover. In announcing the ceremony, to be held at
the Western Wall’s women’s section, Women of the Wall had declared it “the first of its
kind.” Tens of thousands of Jews flock to the Western Wall to receive the blessing from
kohanim, or descendants of ancient Israel’s priestly caste, during the intermediate days
of Passover. After threatening to hold the ceremony on Passover despite the ruling, the
women eschewed the blessing during their holiday service at the Western Wall. On May
9 during prayers for the new month of Iyar, the women brought a 250-year-old Torah
scroll brought from Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto to be used for a Torah reading at
the holy site. Police officers attempted to confiscate the scroll, but retreated when the
women closed ranks, according to the Women of the Wall.
State Dept.: P.A. envoy likening Israeli soldiers to Nazis
“deeply concerning”
Tamar Greenberg displayed her mechanical
snake at Jerusalem’s Geek Picnic. (Photo
by Maayan Jaffe-Hoffman)
and the machine costs about 60 NIS ($13.40)
per hour to work. It takes only about five
hours from the time the design is inputted
until the prototype is complete.
For Rivky Braun and her children, who
were visiting Israel from Brooklyn, the
highlight exhibit was the “Hand of Man”
machine, which allowed selected onlookers
to crush cars like soda cans. The Hand of
Man is an interactive sculpture comprised
of a 26-foot-long hydraulically actuated human hand and forearm, which is capable of
picking up and crushing cars, and a “glove”
device that controls it. Any movement by the
person controlling the glove is reproduced
by the large robotic hand.
Other child attendees of the Geek Picnic
found favor in the non-Newtonian fluid
display, where they could walk across a
shallow pond made of corn starch and water.
The mixture became more viscous (thicker)
when force was applied – meaning that
when children ran, their feet stayed on top
of the mixture. When they simply put their
hands inside the fluid, they could slide them
through as easily as if it were pure water.
The Geek Picnic also included drone
racing, a gaming zone with some unavailable-to-the-public activities, science
experiments and car-style missiles.
“The whole idea is to do and touch and
feel and participate,” said 2BVibes Productions’s Wurtman, whose spokesman
noted that about 40,000 people attended
the three-day event. “We took the licensing
for 10 years. I am hoping this will become
a landmark event in Israel.”
The Palestinian Authority U.N. envoy’s likening of Israeli soldiers confronting stone
throwers to Nazis putting down the Warsaw uprising was “deeply concerning,” the State
Department spokesman said. Mark Toner responded on May 5 to a JTA query about an April
27 news conference by Riyadh Mansour. “Obviously we would condemn any antisemitic
remarks very forcefully,” Toner said, noting that he had not yet examined Mansour’s comments and was basing his assessment on remarks read to him by a JTA reporter. “It’s deeply
concerning.” Mansour, who called the news conference to discuss U.N. actions on Israel and
the Palestinians, attacked Israeli diplomats for their terming stone throwers “terrorists.” “All
colonizers, all occupiers, including those who suppressed the Warsaw uprising, labeled those
who were resisting them as terrorists,” he said.
Twitter
For Regan, finding people on Twitter
with similar interests reminds her of the
days when she used AOL’s Instant Messenger service, which offered countless
chat rooms for people based on specific
topics. “I had so much trouble finding
people who wanted to talk to me and who
weren’t annoyed by my intense interests,”
Regan said. “As an autistic kid, that was
totally game-changing for me.”
Savannah Breakstone, 28, who lives
in rural Pennsylvania more than an hour
away from the nearest synagogue, has
regularly participated in the #parshachat
since it started. Most of her family does
not identify as Jewish, but she discovered
that she is descended from Jews forced to
convert to Catholicism during the Spanish
Inquisition and she now identifies as an
anusah, or a returner to the Jewish faith.
Since Breakstone also is autistic and has
other chronic health issues, she calls
#parshachat a “huge relief.”
“Beyond just learning about other people’s thoughts on different parashas, I’ve
more importantly learned some confidence
as a Jew and [developed] more confidence in
participating in Jewish life,” Breakstone said.
Regan and Bartmess met online early
last year through the Twitter discussion
#autchat – which Bartmess founded and still
runs – and became friends quickly. “There
are a lot of autistic Jews and a lot of them
participate in [#autchat],” Regan said. “We
were like, ‘Let’s talk Torah, too.’”
Regan now balances co-running #parshachat with the other initiatives of her
independent Jewish disability inclusion
organization, Anachnu, such as an online
class on “Disability as a Jewish feminist
issue” and a new haggadah “informed by
disability perspectives.”
Breakstone, who works as a social media
contractor for disability rights organizations, including the Autistic Self Advocacy
Network, says Twitter can be a great help,
but isn’t necessarily the optimal platform
for everyone living with a disability. “I
find that it’s important to take a multiple
platforms approach,” Breakstone said. “I’ve
actually had requests to maintain content on
Pinterest because someone found that most
accessible for them. Twitter can be easy for
some people and nearly impossible to use
for others. Some people love Facebook, but
don’t get Tumblr or vice versa. In order to
bring disability rights and acceptance to as
many people as possible, it’s so important to
be building our communities and learning
opportunities across all these platforms.”
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At Jerusalem’s Geek Picnic, children
experienced the closest thing to walking on
water – walking across this shallow pond
made of corn starch and water. (Photo by
Maayan Jaffe-Hoffman)
At Jerusalem’s Geek Picnic, 3D printing
was on display.(Photo by Maayan JaffeHoffman)
Thank you,
Bonnie Rozen
ive
Advertising Execut
Weekly Parasha
May 13-19, 2016
Leading a sanctified life
Kedoshim, Leviticus 19:1-20:27
We all want to be good, do what’s right, pursue justice
and generally leave this world a better place than we found
it. If this were not enough, the Torah demands that we be
holy. Parashat Kedoshim begins with God’s message to
the Jewish nation: “You shall be holy, for I, God, your
God, am holy.” (19:2) A daunting charge indeed. How
does man respond? Where do we begin? What does it
really mean to be holy?
The Torah does not leave us to second guess God’s
intention. In a veritable digest of commandments criss-
RABBI AARON SLONIM, CHABAD CENTER
crossing every area of life, there is instruction on how to
achieve sanctity. The parasha includes every “type” of
mitzvah: bein adam l’makom, those that effect our relationship with God, and bein adam l’chaveiro, those that
impact our human relationships; mishpatim, torts and other
logical rules for a civil society; aidot, those rituals that pay
specific testimony to important tenets of Jewish belief and/
or pivotal junctions in our national history; and, finally, the
chukim, the transcendent, wholly incomprehensible tenets.
Included in the parasha are “heavy weights,” a number of
injunctions featured in the Ten Commandments, as well as
what appear to be unremarkable, simple details. Featured
prominently are commandments that seek to protect the
weaker, more vulnerable segments of society, as well as
a comprehensive list of prohibited sexual relationships
designed to protect us from our baser selves.
By way of example, this parasha includes laws concerning sacrifices and the commandment to keep Shabbat, as
well as prohibitions against theft and deceit. An example of a
See “Life” on page 11
Congregational Notes
Temple Concord
Union for Reform Judaism
Rabbi: Barbara Goldman-Wartell
Address: 9 Riverside Dr., Binghamton, NY 13905
Office hours: Tues.-Thurs., 10 am-5 pm; Fri., 10 am-1 pm.
Phone: 723-7355, Fax: 723-0785
Office e-mail: TempleConcord@stny.rr.com
Website: www.templeconcord.com
Regular service times: Friday, 8:15 pm; Saturday, 10:35 am,
when religious school is in session.
On Friday, May 13, at 8:15 pm, there will be Shabbat
evening services led by Daniel Bubnis and Max Rydqvist.
On Saturday, May 14, at 9:15 am, there will be Torah study.
On Sunday, May 15, at noon, there will be the Temple
Concord Sisterhood donor event.
On Wednesday, May 18, at 7 pm, there will be an
adult b’nai mitzvah class.
On Thursday, May 19, from 5-7 pm, there will be
CHOW. At 7 pm, there will be a Ritual Committee meeting.
On Friday, May 20, at 6 pm, there will be a potluck
Shabbat dinner. At 7:30 pm, there will be Shabbat evening services led by Rabbi Barbara Goldman-Wartell
and Max Rydqvist.
On Saturday, May 21, at 9:15 am, there will be Torah study.
On Sunday, May 22, from noon-3 pm, there will be a
Sacred Sites Open House. (See article on page 3.)
Temple Brith Sholom
Affiliation: Unaffiliated
Address: P.O. Box 572, 117 Madison St., Cortland, NY 13045
Phone: 607-756-7181
President: Glen Goldwyn, ggoldwyn@twcny.rr.com
Service leaders: Lay leadership
Shabbat services: Either Friday evening at 7:30 pm or
Saturday at 10 am from Rosh Hashanah to Shavuot. Holiday
services are also held. Check the weekly e-mail for upcoming
services. Contact the president to get on the e-mail list.
Religious School: Students are educated on an individual basis.
Temple Brith Sholom is a small equalitarian congregation
serving the greater Cortland community. Congregants span
the gamut of observance and services are largely dependent
on the service leader. The Friday night siddur is “Likrat
Shabbat,” while the Saturday morning siddur is “Gates of
Prayer.” The community extends a warm welcome to the
Jewish student population of SUNY Cortland, as well as the
residents of local adult residences.
Congregation Tikkun v’Or
Affiliation: Union for Reform Judaism
Address: PO Box 3981, Ithaca, NY 14852; 2550 Triphammer
Rd. (corner of Triphammer and Burdick Hill), Lansing, NY
Phone: 607-256-1471
Website: www.tikkunvor.org
E-mail: info@tikkunvor.org
Presidents: Dorothy Debbie and Nina Cummings
Rabbi: Brian Walt
Religious School Director/Admin. Coordinator: Naomi Wilensky
Services: Fridays at 7:30 pm unless otherwise noted. Family
services and Tot Shabbat once a month at 6:30 pm. Call for
weekly schedules.
Religious School: Preschool through seventh grade classes
meet on Sunday mornings. Sixth grade Hebrew and seventh
grade b’nai mitzvah classes meet on Wednesday afternoons.
Adult Ed.: Special classes and discussion groups held
regularly. Essential Judaism classes offered in the fall and
spring. Call the office for details.
Kol Haverim
Affiliation: Society for Humanistic Judaism
Address: P.O. Box 4972, Ithaca, NY 14852-4972
Phone: 607-277-3345
E-mail: info@kolhaverim.net
Website: www.kolhaverim.net
Chairman: Jonathan Joseph
Kol Haverim: The Finger Lakes Community for Humanistic
Judaism, is an Ithaca-based organization that brings people
together to explore and celebrate Jewish identity, history,
culture and ethics within a secular, humanistic framework.
KH is part of an international movement for Secular
Humanistic Judaism and is affiliated with the Society for
Humanistic Judaism, a national association with over 30
member communities and congregations around the country.
Established in the spring of 1999, it offers celebrations of
Jewish holidays, monthly Shabbat pot-lucks, adult education,
a twice-monthly Cultural School for children, and a bar and
bat mitzvah program.
KH welcomes all individuals and families, including those
from mixed religious backgrounds, who wish to strengthen
the Jewish experience in their lives and provide their children
with a Jewish identity and experience.
Beth David Synagogue
Affiliation: Orthodox Union
Rabbis: Aminadav Adamit and Zev Silber
Address: 39 Riverside Dr., Binghamton, NY 13905
Phone: 607-722-1793
Rabbi’s Office: 607-722-7514
Fax: 607-722-7121
Office hours: Mon. closed; Tues. 9 am-3 pm; Wed. 9:30 am-noon;
Thurs. 9 am-1 pm; Fri. 9:30 am-noon
Beth David e-mail address: bethdavid@stny.rr.com
Rabbis’ e-mail: rabbiadamit@stny.rr.com; rabbisilber@stny.rr.com
Website: www.bethdavid.org
Shabbat Services:
Friday, May 13........................................................... 7:15 pm
Shabbat, May 14............................................................ 9 am
..........................................................Mincha/Maariv 7:45 pm
Weekday Services:
Mornings:
Sun., May 15............................................................. 8:30 am
Mon.-Fri., May 16-20................................................. 6:40 am
Evenings:
Sun.-Thurs., May 15-19............................................. 8:05 pm
Classes: Rabbi Aminadav Adamit will teach “Tractate Kiddushin”
on Shabbat afternoons 45 minutes before Mincha. Rabbi Zev
Silber will hold his weekly Talmud class every Tuesday evening
after services.
On Sunday, May 22, there will be this year’s Beth David annual dinner. The event will begin with cocktails at 3
pm, followed by the dinner at 3:30 pm. The cost to attend
will be $50 per person. The event will pay tribute to Rabbi
Aminadav and Sara Lynn Adamit, who will be returning to
Israel at the end of July. (See article on page 3.)
A rummage sale previously planned for May has been
postponed. It is now tentatively planned for Sunday-Tuesday, June 26-28. More information about the sale will be
announced in the future.
Temple Beth-El of Ithaca
Affiliation: United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism
Rabbi: Scott L. Glass
Address: 402 North Tioga St. (the corner of Court and Tioga
streets), Ithaca, NY 14850-4292
Phone: 273-5775
E-mail: rabbi@tbeithaca.org and secretary@tbeithaca.org
Website: www.tbeithaca.org
Co-presidents: Jerry Dietz and Richard Wallace
Sisterhood Co-presidents: Elizabeth Hess and Esther Racoosin
Director of Education: Rabbi Suzanne Brody
Administrative Assistant: Jane Griffith
Services: Fri. 8 pm; Sat. 10 am, unless otherwise announced.
Religious School/Education: September-May: Classes meet on
Sunday, 9 am-12:30 pm and Wednesday afternoons, 3:45-5:45
pm. The Midrashah (eighth grade and high school) classes will
meet at times designated by their respective teachers.
Adult Ed.: Numerous weekly courses, several semester-long
courses and a variety of mini-courses and lectures are offered
throughout the year. Call the temple office for more details.
On Monday-Tuesday, May 16-17, Rabbi Jack Moline,
executive director of Interfaith Alliance formerly director
of the National Jewish Democratic Council and director of
Public Policy for the Rabbinical Assembly, will speak at
Temple Beth-El as part of the 2016 Adult Education Series
honoring Rabbi Scott Glass for his 40 years of service to
Temple Beth-El. On May 16, he will discuss “Adventures
in the First Amendment” on interfaith relations. On May
17, he will present “A Guide to Political Values – from the
Mishnah!” on the 2016 presidential election.
Temple Beth El of Oneonta
Affiliation: United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism
Rabbi: Molly Karp
Address: 83 Chestnut St., Oneonta, NY 13820
Mailing address: P.O. Box 383, Oneonta, NY 13820
Phone: 607-432-5522
Website: www.templebetheloneonta.org
E-mail: TBEOneonta@gmail.com
Regular service times: visit the temple website for days of
services and times
Religious School/Education: Religious School, for grades
kindergarten through bar/bat mitzvah, meets Sunday mornings.
Rabbi Karp conducts services and holds classes in Torah,
beginning Hebrew and Maimonides.
For a schedule of services, classes and events, see the website.
Friday, May 13, light candles.............................. 7:58 pm
Shabbat ends Saturday, May 14.......................... 8:59 pm
Friday, May 20, light candles.............................. 8:05 pm
Shabbat ends Saturday, May 21.......................... 9:06 pm
Temple Israel
Rabbi: TBA
Address: 4737 Deerfield Pl., Vestal, NY 13850
Phone: 723-7461 and 231-3746
Office hours: Mon.-Thurs. 8:30 am-4 pm; Fri. 8 am-3:30 pm.
E-mail: TItammy@stny.rr.com or TILouise@stny.rr.com
Website: www.templeisraelvestal.org
Service Schedule: Friday, 5:30 pm; Saturday, 9:30 am.
Regular Tuesday services and Friday Kabbalat Shabbat services will be held at 5:30 pm in the library of the
Jewish Community Center, 500 Clubhouse Rd., Vestal.
On Saturday, May 14, at 9:30 am, there will be Shabbat
services in the meeting room at the Jewish Community
Center, 500 Clubhouse Rd., Vestal. Services will be led
by Howard Schwartz and Steve Gilbert. The Torah portion
will be Leviticus 19:1-20:27. The haftarah will be Amos
9:7-15. Bima guest will be Phyllis Heller.
On Friday, May 20, at 7 pm, at Vestal Park Nursing
and Rehab on Sheedy Road, there will be May’s Shabbat
on the Road. This will replace the 5:30 pm service at the
Jewish Community Center. For any questions, contact
Barbara Gilbert at barbarag66@aol.com.
On Saturday, May 28, at 9:30 am, at the JCC, there
will be the bar mitzvah of Isaac Green.
On Monday, May 30, the temple office will be closed
for Memorial Day.
Those who wish to recite Mourner’s Kaddish during
a weekday service can contact Howard Schwartz at
schwerz@stny.rr.com or call the temple office. Those
interested in having a Mourner’s Kaddish are asked to
contact Schwartz or the office one-and-a-half weeks or
more before the date to provide enough time to send out
a notice. Temple Israel holds weekday minyan services on
Tuesdays and Fridays at 5:30 pm in the JCC library. For
those who prefer a different day to coincide with a Yahrzeit
date, contact the temple to work on making arrangements.
Penn-York Jewish Community
President and Treasurer-Secretary: Harvey Chernosky,
570-265-3869
B’nai B’rith: William H. Seigel Lodge
Purpose: To promote Jewish identity through religious,
cultural, educational and social activities in the Southern
Tier of New York and the Northern Tier of Pennsylvania,
including Waverly, NY; Sayre, Athens and Towanda, PA, and
surrounding communities.
Norwich Jewish Center
Orientation: Inclusive
Rabbi: Rafael Goldstein
Address: 72 South Broad St., Norwich, NY 13815
Contact: Linda Horovitz, 336-7236
Contact: Guilia Greenberg, 373-5087
Purpose: To maintain a Jewish identity and meet the needs
of the Jewish community in the area.
Services: Held twice each month on certain Fridays at 7 pm
except in December, January and February. Call for dates
or more information.
Adult Ed.: Saturday morning study is held at 10 am. Call for
more information and to confirm.
On Friday, May 13, at 7 pm, Shabbat services will be held.
On Saturday, May 14, at 10 am, there will be a study class.
Rohr Chabad Center
Affiliation: Chabad-Lubavitch
Rabbi: Aaron Slonim, E-mail: aslonim@binghamton.edu
Address: 420 Murray Hill Rd., Vestal, NY 13850
Phone: 797-0015, Fax: 797-0095
Website: www.Chabadofbinghamton.com
Chabad on the West Side
Rabbi: Zalman Chein, E-mail: zchein@JewishBU.com
Address: 27 Bennet Ave., Binghamton, NY 13905
Phone: 722-3252
Regular service times: Daily 7:30 am, Friday evening 6 pm,
Shabbat morning 9:30 am, Maariv and Havdalah one hour
after candle-lighting time, Sundays 9:30 am.
Linking Hearts for youngsters with special needs: This
program connects Jewish special-needs children and
teenagers, ages 5-14, who have mental, physical and/or
functional disabilities, with student volunteers who will visit
participating youngsters weekly in their homes.
To join the mailing list, for up-to-date information on adult
education offerings or to arrange for a private tutorial, for
details concerning the Judaica shop and resource center, or
for assistance through the Piaker Free Loan Society or Raff
Maasim Tovim Foundation, call Chabad’s office at 797-0015.
May 13-19, 2016
NEWS IN BRIEF
Jewish Community Center
From JNS.org
JCC Friendship Club
The United States has announced a $50 million humanitarian aid program for the Gaza Strip. According to
U.S. officials, the aid – which will be distributed by the
U.S. Agency for International Development in conjunction
with Catholic Relief Services – will be dispersed over five
years to provide basic humanitarian assistance and create
jobs. U.S. Consul General in Jerusalem Donald A. Blume
said the effort is meant to address “the dire needs that are
obvious in Gaza,” the Associated Press reported. The
announcement of U.S. aid comes as a recent World Bank
report said that many leading Arab and Muslim states – such
as Qatar, Turkey and Saudi Arabia – have fallen well short
of their promised aid to help reconstruct Gaza following the
2014 summer war there between Israel and the Palestinian
terror group Hamas. According to the report, Qatar, which
promised $1 billion in aid, has so far only donated $152
million, while Saudi Arabia has only delivered 10 percent
of its $500 million pledge and Turkey has only delivered
one-third of the $200 million it promised.
The JCC Friendship Club met on May 4. The program
presented by Morty Hofstein, coordinator of the JCC
Friendship Club, was in memory of those lost in the Holocaust. He introduced the observance of Holocaust Day
by reading from a book written by Rabbi Lance Sussman
and Mary Rose. “In Our Midst” is about survivors of the
Holocaust living in this area. Sussman was the spiritual
leader of Temple Concord in Binghamton at the time.
Morty selected to read about a past member of the JCC
Friendship Club, Doris Zolty, who was born in Poland.
She was an elegant senior citizen who lived in Binghamton
near MacArthur Elementary School. She was a marvelous
baker and baked cakes for local restaurants and others. She
U.S. announces $50 million in aid to
the Gaza Strip
Israel’s population tops 8.5 million at
68th anniversary
Israel’s population has reached 8,522,000 people on the
eve of the country’s 68th anniversary, the Israeli Central
Bureau of Statistics reported on May 9. According to the
CBS, there are 6,377,000 Jews living in Israel (74.8 percent
of the population), 1,771,000 Arabs (20.8 percent) and
374,000 people describing themselves as “other” – including
non-Arab Christians and members of other religions – who
comprise 4.4 percent of the population. During the past
year, 195,000 people were born in Israel and 47,000 died,
while 36,000 immigrated to the Jewish state. Today there
are 13 cities in Israel with more than 100,000 people, with
eight of them having more than 200,000 residents, including
Jerusalem, Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Haifa, Rishon Lezion, Petach
Tikvah, Ashdod, Netanya and Be’er Sheva. When Israel was
founded in 1948, the country only had 806,000 residents;
the CBS estimates that by 2035 there will be 11.3 million
people living in Israel. Additionally, the CBS said that
among the roughly 14.3 million Jews worldwide, about 43
percent now reside in Israel. When Israel was founded in
1948, there were 11.5 million Jews in the world and only
6 percent lived in Israel.
Canada’s Fort McMurray fire victims
aided by Jewish and Israeli groups
Jewish groups in Canada are helping evacuate as many as
90,000 people from the Fort McMurray fire area in Alberta,
Canada, where the large blaze has ravaged an area of about
400,000 acres – half the size of Rhode Island – and destroyed
at least 1,600 homes and buildings, according to the latest
reports. The Calgary Jewish Federation is donating $25,000
from its emergency relief fund to help those who have been
evacuated from their homes, while the Jewish Federation of
Edmonton has set up a PayPal account to collect donations
to help those who are displaced. Ve’ahavta, a Toronto-based
social service organization, has also launched a fire relief
fund. “It seemed pretty clear to us that there should be a
Jewish communal response to this crisis,” Ve’ahavta CEO
Avrum Rosensweig told the Canadian Jewish News. The
Israeli humanitarian organization IsraAID, meanwhile,
on May 9 had one relief volunteer in the affected area and
planned to send additional volunteers to Canada.
Islamic State reportedly planning to
attack Israel from Sinai
The Israeli military is concerned that the Islamic State
terror group is planning a large-scale attack against Israel
from Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, Germany’s Bild newspaper
reported on May 8, citing an Israel Defense Forces officer.
The Sinai has become an Islamic State stronghold in recent
years. According to the Bild report, there could be hundreds
of Islamic State operatives currently training in the Sinai
and awaiting an order to strike Israel. The IDF officer
quoted by Bild said that while it is not clear what a future
Islamic State attack against Israel would look like, it could
include the use of tanks and artillery by the terrorist group.
China’s Hainan Airlines begins
operating Beijing to Tel Aviv route
China’s Hainan Airlines started operating a direct Beijing-Tel Aviv route the week of May 8, joining the Israeli
airline El Al as one of the only two airlines operating an
Israel-China route. “We want to be ready with the best
aircrews for our flights to Israel, said Li Liang, the general
manager of the Hainan offices in Israel, Yediot Achronot
reported. “Today Israel is a very important destination for
us.” Currently, Hainan will only operate the route three
times per week, but eventually the airline expects to include
a flight route from Shanghai and Hong Kong through its
sister airline Hong Kong Airlines. During the ceremony
celebrating the first flight, Israeli Tourism Minister Yariv
Levin said his office will increase Israel’s annual marketing
budget for China from 1 million to 15 million shekels.
Survivors
Starkey Hearing Foundation to provide hearing aids free
of charge to survivors in need.
Finally, government leaders are recognizing the specialized assistance that aging Holocaust survivors require.
Vice President Joe Biden announced the White House’s
initiative to help Holocaust survivors in 2013. This resulted
in numerous avenues for assistance.
On International Holocaust Remembrance Day earlier
this year, President Barack Obama declared, “Governments
have an obligation to care for the survivors of the Shoah
because no one who endured that horror should have to
scrape by in their golden years.”
In March, Jewish Federations distributed $2.8 million in
federal grants to assist programs for Holocaust survivors.
Coupled with the required matching funds, the disbursement results in $4.5 million for survivor services. For the
first time, the federal government will soon issue guidance
to states on serving Holocaust survivors, as required by
the Older Americans Act Reauthorization that cleared
Congress in April.
A few states and local governments are providing
Life
mishpat is the prohibition against withholding a day laborers
wages; an example of an aid is the commandment to keep
the Sabbath holy. One of the best known chukim appears
here as well: shatnez, the prohibition against wearing a
garment made of wool and linen. The parasha includes the
prohibition against idol worship, but it also concerns itself
with rising in the presence of the elderly. We are taught of
an elaborate social welfare system in which land owners
had to designate a portion of their fields available to the
needy for gleaning. And we have the prohibition against
incest in its many permutations.
We can, after reading this portion, no longer claim
ignorance about what it means to lead a sanctified life.
We cannot but be impressed by the all pervasiveness of
a code that demands sanctity in our personal lives, our
relationships, our business dealings and our interaction
with the environment and animals.
The overarching message of this Torah portion is that
there is no need to divorce and divest ourselves of the material world to find sanctity, no need to climb mountains and
seclude ourselves to find holiness. On the contrary, Torah
is about synergy; about unlocking the holiness inherent
in every facet of creation, in every aspect of our physical
lives, in each one of our relationships. The world entire
awaits elevation; it is poised in readiness for the sanctity
only we can confer upon it by acting on God’s call and
challenge to humankind: Don’t just be; be holy!
Space
October 2015, the U.N. accepted Israel into its Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, an accord that
is expected to allow Israeli experts to influence global
projects, such as using satellites in real-time to aid rescue
teams during disasters.
Israel currently has 15 civilian satellites orbiting the
Earth, two-thirds of which are communication devices,
with the remainder being communication platforms. Israel
is reportedly the smallest country in the world to launch its
own satellites. It is also one of only 11 nations with the ability
to independently launch unmanned missions into space.
Israeli advancements in space technology have also
played a role in the ongoing exploration of Mars. Developed
by Siemens in Israel, the Product Lifestyle Management
software that enabled NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratories
to accurately model the performance of the Curiosity rover
has been considered integral in determining whether life
ever arose on Mars, as well as preparing the “red planet”
for future human exploration.
Bradley Martin is a fellow at the Haym Salomon Center
for American Jewish Thought and a research assistant for
the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research.
survived Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen and other concentration
camps. She was 19 in 1939, and lost her parents and sister
while in the camps. Doris met her future husband during
this time. She said he was beaten in the camps. When they
were separated, she thought he had been killed. After she
was liberated, she was told that he was looking for her.
They were married on October 6, 1945, in Poland.
Come join us on Wednesdays at the JCC at 1:30 pm.
There will be a birthday party on May 25 to celebrate
the birthdays of Ruth Soltanoff, who will be 94, and Ada
Brummer, who will be 95.
Sylvia Diamond
President
assistance as well. In Florida, for example, local Jewish
Federations worked together to obtain a special state
appropriation for Holocaust survivor services, while in
New York City last year, Mayor Bill de Blasio and City
Council approved a budget including $1.5 million to assist
Holocaust survivors living in poverty. More states and
local governments should follow these leads in pursuing
special appropriations.
Perhaps more impactful is that we encourage Germany
to continue to fulfill its moral responsibility by providing additional financial resources for social services for
Holocaust survivors, as recently called for in bipartisan
resolutions in the U.S. House and Senate.
Both of our families managed to overcome great odds and
survive the Holocaust, fortunate to be able to re-establish
their lives in America and prosper. Not every Holocaust
survivor was so lucky. They are the survivors who need
our help. We must volunteer our time, visit Holocaust
survivors and engage them in their Jewish communities.
These survivors are our heroes, our teachers and our
mentors. One day they will no longer be with us. Until that
day comes, we are obligated to ensure that they live their
remaining days and years in dignity.
When future generations ask if the Jewish community
took care of its Holocaust survivors, let that answer be a
resounding “yes.”
Mark Wilf is president and co-owner of the Minnesota
Vikings and a board member of JTA’s parent organization,
70 Faces Media. Todd Morgan is the founder and chairman
of Bel Air Investment Advisors. Together, they co-chair the
Jewish Federations’ Fund for Holocaust Survivors.
Ask
sionals and others – to network with these individuals, to
learn from one another, and to share and hear about the
latest developments in Jewish teen engagement.
Every community is different, with differences within
each community itself. A “cookie cutter” approach to programming would inevitably fail. Yet “Generation Now”
offers recommendations for all communities to bear in mind.
Effective initiatives will engage teens intellectually, physically and socially; will offer something that teens want to
share with friends; will be demonstrably applicable to teens’
lives; will help to develop skills; will help teens feel proud
of being Jewish; will help teens be better citizens of the
world; and/or will help teens make the world a better place.
Changes in teen engagement will come from existing
organizations that can adapt and do things differently, and
from the creation of new organizations ready to engage
21st century Jewish teens.
Together with teens, we can make Jewish experiences
a meaningful and central part of their lives.
David Bryfman, Ph.D., is the chief innovation officer at
The Jewish Education Project, which is a beneficiary agency
of UJA Federation of New York. Generation Now was commissioned by the Jim Joseph Foundation, Lippman Kanfer
Foundation for Living Torah, the Charles and Lynn Schus-
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May 13-19, 2016
NEWS IN BRIEF
From JTA
Iran’s defense minister denies reports of testing missile
that could hit Israel
Iran’s defense minister denied reports that the country successfully test-fired a high-precision ballistic missile that can reach Israel. “We haven’t test-fired a missile with the
range the media is reporting,” Hossein Dehghan was quoted as saying by the state news
agency IRNA, Reuters reported on May 9. He reportedly also said that Iran is continuing
to increase its defensive capabilities, including its ballistic missile program. Earlier on
May 9, the state-run Tasnim News Agency reported that the deputy chief of staff of Iran’s
military, Brig. Gen. Ali Abdollahi, announced the test at a scientific conference in Tehran
of a missile with a range of 2,000 kilometers, or more than 1,200 miles, and a high degree
of accuracy. He said the test took place two weeks ago, but provided no further details. The
White House press secretary, Josh Earnest, said on May 9 that the administration is aware
of statements by Iranian officials indicating the missile test did not take place. “We’re still
trying to get to the bottom of what exactly transpired,” Earnest said, according to The Wall
Street Journal. The United States has criticized recent missiles tests by Iran. In March, its
Revolutionary Guard conducted tests of short- and medium-range ballistic missiles, which
it said were not capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. In October, Iran tested a new guided
long-range ballistic missile, which may have violated the nuclear deal agreed upon in July
with the world powers, as well as a United Nations Security Council resolution that bars
Iran from developing missiles “designed to carry nuclear warheads.”
Moroccan Jews reportedly protest U.N. view on “occupied”
Sahara
Several hundred Moroccan Jews protested against U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s
characterization of Western Sahara as occupied by the North African kingdom. The April
30 protest in Mazagan, 120 mile southwest of Rabat, was part of Mimouna, a traditional
North African Jewish celebration held the day after Passover, and it featured group singing
of “Laayouna Ainiya,” a Moroccan patriotic song from the 1970s about the contested area,
the Assabah daily reported the week of May 6. In April, Ban angered Moroccan authorities
when he said they were “occupying” the Western Sahara after they ordered the expulsion of
80 staffers from the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara. The U.N.
General Assembly endorsed that view in 1979, declaring Morocco an occupying force in the
former Spanish colony and affirming the “inalienable right of the people of Western Sahara”
to independence. But Morocco, which in recent years has come under increasing pressure to
allow self-rule in the area, claims it as part of its territory. Sam Ben Chetrit, president of the
World Federation of Moroccan Jewry, told JTA on May 6 that while he is not familiar with
the details of the gathering at Mazagan, “it is true that Moroccan Jewry in the kingdom and
outside stand united in defense of Morocco’s claim on Sahara, and against those who try to
portray Morocco as a foreign occupier in its own land.” Ben Chetrit, who lives in Israel but
travels to Morocco frequently, said this support is part “of the Jewish people’s gratitude to
Morocco’s royal house, government and people, who have done more than any other nation
in the Middle East and many nations elsewhere to preserve Jewish heritage and protect Jewish citizens.” He said he recently penned a letter to Ban to express “the utter indignation”
of Moroccan Jews at the U.N.’s approach to Western Sahara. Morocco is one of the Arab
world’s friendliest nations toward Israel, and its government has spent millions of dollars
on restoring and preserving Jewish heritage sites. The Jewish state’s establishment triggered
the departure of 250,000 Moroccan Jews – the vast majority of Moroccan Jewry – amid at
least three deadly pogroms perpetrated against them between 1938 and 1954, according to
Shmuel Trigano, a lecturer of political sociology at Paris X University Nanterre. Zionism
was outlawed in Morocco in 1959 and defined a “serious crime,” but the country ended that
official animosity in the late 1980s.
London’s Muslim mayor reaffirms plan for Israel trip
Sadiq Khan, who was sworn in as London’s first Muslim mayor on May 7, reiterated plans
to lead a trade delegation to Israel. In an interview with London’s Jewish News published on
May 9, Khan, the first Muslim mayor of any Western capital city and London’s first Labour
Party mayor in eight years, also said he believes it is important to improve Jewish-Muslim
relations in the U.K. capital. During his campaign, Khan criticized Labour for not doing
enough to confront antisemitism among some of its members. Accusations of antisemitism
have roiled his party in recent months, with dozens of members suspended in the past few
weeks allegedly for making antisemitic remarks. London’s former Labour mayor, Ken Livingstone, was suspended for antisemitic remarks in late April following a series of interviews
in which he claimed that Adolf Hitler had supported Zionism. A self-described moderate
Muslim, Khan took office on May 7. He attended a Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony
with British Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis the following day in his first official appearance as
mayor. “We’ve got to accept there are some people who say they’re Muslim, some people
of the Jewish faith who don’t like the fact I’m here, that I’m sitting next to the chief rabbi,”
he told the Jewish News. “My message to those people is we live in the greatest city in the
world and have to go get along. I’m the mayor of London, the most diverse city in the world,
and I’ll be everyone’s mayor. No preferential treatment, but I have a role to build bridges.
My signing-in ceremony was deliberately designed to show the sort of a mayor I’ll be and
I started as I mean to go on.” Asked when he will fulfill a campaign promise to visit Israel,
Khan said, “I’ve not even had my first Monday at work to be fair, I’ve had six hours sleep
since Wednesday. But I’m keen to make sure I’m the most pro-business mayor we’ve ever
had and that means going on trade missions, including to Tel Aviv.”
Chabad rabbi building “first mikvah in West Africa” in Nigeria
An Israeli firm and a Chabad rabbi working in Nigeria are preparing to open the first
known Jewish ritual bath, or mikvah, in West Africa. Yisroel Ozen, an Chabad emissary based
in Nigeria, is supervising the construction of a mikvah for women in the Nigerian capital of
Abuja on land purchased for him by an Israeli firm operating in the country, the Israeli daily
Maariv reported recently. Ozen said the mikvah is the only known one in West Africa, a claim
that is also stated on a Hebrew- and English-language sign announcing the project in front of
the construction site. Ozen said Nigeria has “a thriving Israeli community that nonetheless
lacks basic amenities.” Some 1,200 Israelis live in Nigeria, according to the Maariv article.
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Esserman wins Syracuse Press Club Award Federation to show

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