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Up at Dawn, It's a Long Day for Commuting Kids

Susan Jacobs
Jewish Journal Staff

Unlike many of today’s teens who roll out of bed 20 minutes before the first bell rings at their local high schools, Sophie Satloff of Salem awakens each weekday at 5:30 a.m. She nibbles some breakfast and climbs into a van that transports her and nearly a dozen other North Shore children to Maimonides School, a private Jewish institution in Brookline. At the end of each day, the 10-year-old once again boards the van for the hour-long commute home.

Sophie is one of a growing number of youngsters who travel significant distances in order to attend Jewish day schools in Brookline, Newton and Waltham. Despite the hardship of getting up at dawn and coming home at dusk, these students (and their parents) are dedicated to their education.

As Rabbi Yossi Lipsker of Chabad Lubavitch of the North Shore points out, “It’s literally going the extra mile in Jewish education. But everyone who has made the commitment has been very pleased.”

Dean and Gayle Solomon of Swampscott, who are members of Chabad, send their son Josh, 8, to Maimonides (or Maimo, as it is nicknamed). “We are an observant family, and his peers there are, too,” explains Dean. “He has a lot of role models in teachers who are Orthodox.” The Solomons, who have two older daughters attending Swampscott Public Schools, admit that sending Josh to Maimo is a pledge of both time and money, but they are delighted with the results.

Robert and Debra Finkel feel similarly. The Finkels send all three of their children (Max, 10, Hannah, 8, and Aliyah, 6) to Maimonides. “Last year our children were at Cohen Hillel Academy in Marblehead. It gave them a love of yiddishkeit and an interest in learning more. Although we liked Cohen Hillel a lot, we were looking for a more rigorous Jewish studies curriculum in Hebrew, says Robert, who adds “they wouldn’t have been able to go to Maimo if they hadn’t gone to Hillel first.”

Finkel, a tax attorney whose office is in Waltham, appreciates the convenience of the van for his commuting kids. “Although it’s not out-of-my-way to drop my kids off in Brookline, it made sense for us North Shore families to pool our resources together and get a van to transport the children,” he says.

The families pay approximately $270 per month for the van service. “It’s a big burden on the families, who also have to pay for the education,” admits Dean Solomon, who runs a human service agency in Woburn. He wishes they could find a sponsor to help ease the financial burden.

Although the financial concerns of sending a child to private school are very real, Sophie Satloff’s mother, Wendy Levites, is more concerned that her commuting daughter doesn’t get a lot of sleep and has no time for extracurricular activities. “She gets up at 5:30 a.m., and often doesn’t get home until 5:30 p.m. She has to eat dinner and then do up to two hours of homework,” says Levites, who laments that she “rarely gets to see the sunlight on her daughter’s face.”

Sophie used to take gymnastics and art classes, but now all she can squeeze in is guitar lessons on Sundays. “It’s a tradeoff of yiddishkeit versus social-keit,” remarks Levites, who wants to instill a love of Torah in her daughter.

“It’s a real hardship, but I’m hoping there will be a payback. I took a gamble, and I’m praying the gamble pays off with the wealth of knowledge she is getting at Maimo, knowledge that I personally wish I had gotten,” says Levites, who attended public school in Lynn.

“Sophie is being raised frum,” she continues. “She’s around people who are more like my husband and me. If she gets invited to a birthday party (of a Maimo friend), she can eat the food in the goodie bag. If she decides she doesn’t like it when she’s 19, at least I’ve done my job. I gave her the absolute best of the Jewish world,” she says.
Although the daily commute to Brookline can be a grind, the Ted Williams Tunnel has helped ease the congestion somewhat. “Baruch Ha’shem for the Big Dig, which saves us 25 minutes,” exclaims Levites.

The children on the Maimo van usually pass the time by singing, reading and doing homework. “I eat snacks such as candy and fruit roll-ups, and I talk with my friends, especially Rabbi Lipsker’s son, who is two years older than me,” says Josh Solomon, a second-grader. “When I’m bored, the ride seems long, but when I’m talking, it feels shorter.”

On the Van to Gann

Benny Summers of Swampscott is a freshman at Gann Academy in Waltham. Every weekday, a North Shore Shuttle van transports him and seven other North Shore students back and forth to Gann, formerly called The New Jewish High School. Shuttle driver Steve Wilson makes two stops on his route, one in Marblehead at Cohen Hillel Academy, and one at Temple Ner Tamid in Peabody. The Gann commute takes 45 minutes to an hour each way. In the winter, it can take even longer due to inclement weather and traffic congestion near the malls. Summers, who will turn 15 in May, doesn’t mind the commute at all.

“Like me, most of the kids on the bus are Hillel grads. We are like one, big family. Mostly we talk, hang out, and do homework together. Sometimes, especially in the morning, I’ll sleep. Some kids listen to music or play Gameboys, and one girl brought a laptop with DVDs. But all in all, the bus ride is cool. Steve, the bus driver, is great. If you’re two minutes late, he waits for you.”

Although Summers doesn’t particularly relish getting up at 5:30 a.m., he feels the tradeoff is well worth it. “I’m totally willing to sacrifice whatever sleep time I might lose in order to go to Gann,” he says. “The teachers are awesome and the material is so challenging. I honestly wouldn’t mind getting up at 3 a.m. to go to that school if I had to. I would just go to bed earlier,” he adds.

Mikhaela Mahony of Marblehead commutes on the bus with Summers. The 14-year-old Cohen Hillel grad had considered going to Marblehead High School, but changed her mind after visiting the Gann campus and talking with some of the students. Because they get home so late, Summers and Mahony find that most of their extracurricular activities take place at Gann. Mahony takes a film class, Summers plays soccer on a Gann team, and they are both involved in a school play.
North Shore parents who want their children bused to Gann must cough up $2,000 per year for the service. Most are happy to pay, since the only other options are to drive the students themselves, or have the kids take public transportation.

In the past, local parents didn’t have a choice. Amy and Mark Farber of Swampscott faced this dilemma when their oldest daughter Shira, now 21 and a junior at Barnard, attended Gann/New Jewish High School. “She used to have to take two trains, one from Swampscott to Boston, and then another from Boston to Waltham. It made her feel very confident and comfortable about using public transportation, which was a good benefit when she decided to go to school in New York,” says Amy. She adds that Shira, who is currently studying abroad in London, rides the tube all over town.

Moving On

Some parents who find the commute too taxing simply move. Rachel and Bryan Koplow used to live in Swampscott with their son Micah, now 17, and daughters Rebecca, 15, Abigail, 13, and Jona, 12. Although they loved living by the ocean, they decided four years ago to move to Newton to be closer to Maimonides.

“Several years ago, we were one of the few Orthodox families on the North Shore,” explains Rachel, who belonged to Ahabat Sholom in Lynn and sent her children to Cohen Hillel. “We felt that Cohen Hillel wasn’t observant enough for us, and we wanted to try Maimonides. For five years, I drove my children back and forth each day.
“It was very difficult,” she continues. “I had gotten a retail job two days per week, but it became too hard to maintain it and I had to quit. It was a lot for me, but I was still willing to do it even though it seemed like I spent all my time in the car. Ultimately, however, I began to realize that it wasn’t fair to the children because their hours were different, and each got out at different times.”

Now the Koplow family commute takes a matter of minutes, and there are many families in the neighborhood to carpool. Rachel contrasts this with a lonely daily commute that once took her as long as 3 1/2 hours in a snowstorm.

Ever the optimist, Koplow admits that there was a bright side to the commute. “I listened to books on tape, made cell phone calls, and did a lot of thinking. The kids wound up spending so much time together that they really bonded, which was good,” she says.

A Reverse Commute to Cohen Hillel

Cohen Hillel Academy is located in Marblehead. According to Amy Farber, director of admission, quite a few children from Rockport, Boxford, Ipswich, Malden, Chelsea and Wakefield commute each day to the private Jewish day school, serving children in grades K-8.

“For more than 20 years, we have contracted out to offer a bus service from Peabody. We currently have 30 kids on that bus, which makes several stops. We recently started a service from Beverly, and there are 14 children on that bus,” says Farber.

The bus has encouraged many families from outlying areas to consider Cohen Hillel for their children. “Our goal was to increase the enrollment by five children by adding the Beverly bus. We’ve far surpassed that,” says Farber, who notes that there are no plans in the immediate future to add more runs.

According to Farber, the families pay for the bus, but the school subsidizes the cost by more than half. She says the children love taking the bus.

“Some people are concerned about putting a kindergartner on the bus,” admits Farber, “but the bus is part of the fun. There is a family-feeling on the bus, and the commuting kids actually enjoy it. Their community becomes this community,” she adds.

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Fire at Ledgewood Condominiums Raises Questions of Owners Rights

Gary Band
Jewish Journal Staff

PEABODY — What happens when you live in a condominium development and a fire starts in the building through no fault of your own? You’re told to move out for an indefinite period of time. Where do you go?

How do you pay for it? What recourse do you have?

These were the questions facing the 24 residents of the nearly 30 percent Jewish-owned Ledgewood Condominiums in Peabody following a December 19 fire at building No. 6. They have been told that it could be up to 24 months before they can return to their homes.

According to the report from the Peabody Fire Marshal, the blaze started due to loose wiring in a “wall space void” between units 5 and 6 at 2 a.m. While some were not damaged by the smoke or fire at all, every 50-, 60-, 70- and 80-something resident in building No. 6 was required to find another place to live — some on the morning of December 20 — others within three weeks. And all residents were required to move their belongings into storage by March 22 — with no definite date given for when they could move back to their homes.

Some residents were fortunate enough to have family or friends nearby who could take them in. But at least 12 residents, including three Jewish women — Josephine Zimmerman, Dawn Berman and Charlotte Brand — are staying at the Homewood Suites in Peabody. Although they are paying a reduced rate of $55 a night, it still costs them nearly $2000 a month.

Like most condo owners, these women each have personal homeowners insurance plans that pay for alternate living arrangements in the event of a tragedy for up to seven or eight months. But in addition to those who have mortgage payments, everyone is still paying taxes on their property, and $278 a month in condo fees. In most cases, the insurance money won’t last beyond the one-year mark. Everything thereafter is an out-of-pocket expense for people with fixed incomes and limited savings.

While most of the debris from the building has been cleared and some structural work begun, the 24 displaced residents feel they’ve not been given enough information in a timely manner, and those in charge are proceeding without the necessary urgency.

They have all been asking the same things of the five-member Ledgewood Condo-minium Board for the last four months: When exactly can they move back in? If it is 18-24 months, why should it take so long to repair the building? Why, if their unit wasn’t damaged, did they have to move all their things out? And who — in a condo development — is responsible for a fire that begins in a “common” space as opposed to inside one of the units?

“The board is running the show,” says Zimmerman, who has lived at Ledgewood for two and a half years. Hers was one of the units not damaged in the fire, but she still had to move out and put her belongings into storage. “Everything is a big secret. We hired a lawyer and we are trying to get to the bottom of this. A lot of us have limited insurance, so when that runs out we’re in big trouble.”

The residents put in a request to the city for a tax abatement but were turned down.

“From every angle we’re not getting a crumb,” says Zimmerman. “The board insisted, whether our unit was damaged or not, we all had to move out. We were fighting at first, and then they gave us three weeks to get out.”

All told, it cost Zimmerman $6,000 to move out of the condo, into the hotel, and store all of her belongings.

Ralph DeSimone, a marketing executive from North Andover, did not live at Ledgewood, but his father did, and died from a stroke caused by smoke inhalation a few weeks after the fire.

DeSimone was the one who initiated hiring the lawyer, William Hudak, Jr., who now represents the 24 displaced Ledgewood residents.

“The main reason we brought a lawyer in was the lack of response to our questions,” DeSimone said. “He’s gotten a lot more information than we got on our own.”

DeSimone says the Condominium Board held a meeting with the residents a couple of weeks after the fire, during which they said the time frame for residents to move back in was four to six months. Then a few weeks later, they said eight to 12 months. Now the estimate is 18 to 24 months.

He says the management company, Crowninshield, has “nothing to do with the process.” Rather, the board and insurance company’s lawyer, William Kennedy, are the ones taking the lead role in resolving the situation.

An April 12 meeting at Homewood Suites with Attorney Hudak was attended by 18 of the 24 displaced residents. Hudak opened by stating that Peabody Building Inspector Kevin Goggin says he doesn’t understand why it is taking so long to come up with a damage estimate for the insurance company to pay out the claim and begin rebuilding.
Ledgewood Board President John Yoh says that this is a process, working with the building inspector, the city of Peabody, the architects and engineers, to get the final report on the extent of the damage and the cost of rebuilding. It is estimated between $1.2 and $2 million.

“Once we know that number we can go ahead with the design,” Yoh said.

Asked who is taking the lead in these affairs, Yoh said, “The board really runs the affairs,” and is the “ultimate arbiter.”

Though he allows that the board is “the last to tell you that we’re the experts in managing a project of this size,” Yoh says there has been a misunderstanding with regard to sharing information with the condo owners.

“We feel we’ve been forthcoming. We met with the 24 residents on three separate occasions, and probably have to meet again. We understand their frustration, but we have done the best we could within our ability.”

With regard to the time it’s going to take to rebuild and the need for the residents to remove all their possessions, Yoh says the units all had to be brought up to modern fire safety standards and the residents’ belongings were an “impediment.”

In terms of the Condomin-ium Association reimbursing displaced residents, Yoh says there are no provisions in Massachusetts condominium law for “hardship conditions” and the Association is “limited to what we legally can do to help these folks. We don’t have any power.”

Dawn Berman says she has spent nearly $7,000 on moving, storage and living expenses since the fire but has only received $2500 from her insurance company. “The Board is on one side and we’re on the other,” she said. “It’s very frustrating to the say the least.”

Jack Renshaw and his wife moved into Ledgewood only six weeks before the fire. While not Jewish, he has been a contractor his whole life and has done a fair amount of work for the North Shore Jewish community, including building the mikvah behind Congregation Ahabat Sholom in Lynn. In his expert opinion in matters of construction, Renshaw says he understands that a job like this takes time but feels the two-year estimate is double what the project should take.

“We’re all essentially out on the street,” he said. “The insurance company has already paid out the cost for gutting the building. The architects and engineers need to get on the ball, submit the report so the rebuilding can begin and we can all get back to our homes.”

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Intro to Judaism Group Visits NYC

Amy Sessler Powell
Special to The Jewish Journal

NEW YORK — Wanda Visnick of Rockport listened as Milton Kaufmann described the horrific anti-Semitism he suffered as a child in a small German village school in the 1930s.

Kaufmann, a Holocaust survivor, spoke informally to visitors at the Museum of Jewish Heritage: A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in New York on Yom HaShoah, April 18. He sat near the artifacts of his childhood such as a small notebook with a child’s writing and sketches of cows. As Kaufmann spoke of having his face rubbed in cow dung or being held down and showered in the spit of his classmates, or of the punishments bestowed on the children who did not beat him up, he essentially told the story of how life for the German Jews, once pleasant and wonderful, degraded to unimaginable horror as Hitler came to power.

A recent graduate of Cape Ann class of Introduction to Judaism 101, offered by the Interfaith Outreach Committee of the Jewish Federation of the North Shore and the North Shore Rabbinic Council, Visnick visited the museum with a group of 25, all either graduates or teachers in the Introduction to Judaism class. The class, offered three times in the last two years, fulfills the requirements for conversion. Many of those who took Introduction to Judaism were interested in learning more about Judaism, raising Jewish children in interfaith relationships, or converting to Judaism.

“This was a really fine way to end the class,” said Rabbi Myron Geller of Temple Ahavat Achim in Gloucester and the teacher for the Cape Ann Introduction to Judaism class. “The people who came here today got a tangible sense of the things they learned about.”

Jake Goldstein, one of the trip’s chaperones and educators, said, “It was a wonderful opportunity to go on Yom Hashoah. What the participants of this trip most appreciated were the personal accounts, the stories of survival.”

For those who went on the trip, it added a very real element to the classroom learning. “To be here is to understand the timeline of how fast it happened and how much was accomplished by the Germans,” said Visnick. “I am amazed that they have the strength and stamina to sit and tell stories that should never have occurred. It amazes me that Judaism has continued to thrive.”

Suzanne London of Gloucester said that when you walk through the museum and hear the process of the systemic discrimination that led to the extermination of the six million, it seems “otherworldly.” Yet the horror stories of someone like Eva Lewin, who described her experience on the kindertransport at age 12, a train that took Jewish children to England, and never hearing another word about her parents who perished in Auschwitz, reminded the group of the horrific choices German parents were forced to make.

“It is amazing they survived at all to come back and talk to us,” said London, who took Introduction to Judaism to learn more about her own heritage. “This is an important place for all Jews and non-Jews to come. It is such an important part of my heritage. It gives you a better connection to who you are and leaves you hopeful for the future.”

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Author Seeks to Break Down Jewish Steroetypes

Mark Arnold
Jewish Journal Staff

Loolwa Khazzoom is a young Jewish woman from California whose life is propelled by a burning mission: to change the popular image of the Jewish people.

Daughter of an Iraqi Jewish father and an American Christian mother who converted to Judaism, she is out to shatter the stereotype that Jews are white people of European descent. “I grew up in California in a house that was a little Baghdad. We did everything the Iraqi Jewish way: our foods, our music, our prayers. Even our language, which was Judeo-Arabic, a mixture of Arab and Hebrew. I want to help people appreciate, and celebrate, the diversity of the Jewish people.”

Khazzoom is a 1992 graduate of Barnard College, a former campus activist, now a journalist and author of the recently published book, The Flying Camel, a collection of essays about their Jewish identity by women of North African and Middle Eastern heritage. She will be speaking on “Jewish Women in Moslem Lands” on Friday evening, April 23, at Temple Beth El, Swampscott, following the 8 p.m. service. Two days later at the same temple, she will speak at a Sunday brunch on “Jews of North Africa and the Middle East.”

“The way most Jews think about being Jewish is, ‘if you’re Ashkenazi, you’re Jewish, if you’re not, you can’t be.’ What they don’t realize is that klol yisrael (the voice of Israel) comes in many colors and flavors. We don’t know about those traditions: how Iranian Jews celebrate Purim, the festival that came from Persia, how Egyptians celebrate Passover.”

Speaking to the Journal by phone from New York in the course of a cross-country book-promotion tour, Khazzoom says that the events of 9/11 were a breakthrough in American Jews’ thinking about the Jewish people. “I tried to get this book published for more than three years and nine publishers refused to touch it. Nine of them! They couldn’t accept the fact that there might be interest in how non-Ashkenazi Jews express their Jewishness. After 9/11, they all wanted it. Now people want to know more.”
The Flying Camel, published by Seal Press (www.seal press.com, soft cover $16.95) describes the lives of Jewish women from a variety of diverse cultures — Mizrahi (descended from Jews who lived in North Africa and the Middle East for thousands of years ) and Sephardi (descended from Jews from Spain and Portugal, many of whom later emigrated to North Africa and the Middle East ). Khazzoom’s own Iraqi grandmother wore the abayah, the covering Muslim women traditionally wore in Iraq to hide their bodies and most of their face.

“What I want people to take home from my book and my talks,” she says, “Is an awareness that Jews have really different perspectives, and histories, and cultures, and they are all valid. I’ve interviewed a handful in the book. But this is only a sampling. There are so many stories to tell. There are Mexican Jews, Turkish, Indian, Chinese Jews. Their voices deserve to be heard too. I hope people will say, ‘Hey this is really cool. I want to know more.’”

The Flying Camel, published by Seal Press (www.seal press.com, soft cover $16.95) describes the lives of Jewish women from a variety of diverse cultures — Mizrahi (descended from Jews who lived in North Africa and the Middle East for thousands of years ) and Sephardi (descended from Jews from Spain and Portugal, many of whom later emigrated to North Africa and the Middle East ). Khazzoom’s own Iraqi grandmother wore the abayah, the covering Muslim women traditionally wore in Iraq to hide their bodies and most of their face.

“What I want people to take home from my book and my talks,” she says, “Is an awareness that Jews have really different perspectives, and histories, and cultures, and they are all valid. I’ve interviewed a handful in the book. But this is only a sampling. There are so many stories to tell. There are Mexican Jews, Turkish, Indian, Chinese Jews. Their voices deserve to be heard too. I hope people will say, ‘Hey this is really cool. I want to know more.’"

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Friends of the Earth/Champions of Public Health Receive Awards

Lynn Nadeau
Special to The Jewish Journal

Some Earth Day events feature bands, balloons and beer. But four years ago, when HealthLink volunteers and the Salem State community teamed up to create an Earth Day on campus, they decided to invite the entire North Shore community to become better informed and more inspired about caretaking the Earth.

On April 12, Earth Day was celebrated by student activists, teachers and citizens. Youngsters from Salem public schools, as well as students from Salem State College, presented their research on the links between the destruction of the environment and its impact on public health. Panel discussions were held on a variety of topics pertaining to the environment.

In the evening, a dessert reception honored all participants. HealthLink and Salem State College awarded the 2004 Earth Day Friend of the Earth/Champion of Public Health awards to Drs. Jill Stein and Paul Robert Epstein in recognition of their commitment to inform the public about the environmental causes of illness, and for their work to decrease and remove these causes.

Stein, former President of the Massachusetts Coalition for Healthy Communities, is a nationally-known advocate for public health and the environment. As former co-chair of Greater Boston Physicians for Social Responsibility, Stein helped lead the fight to protect public health and the environment in Massachusetts. She was instrumental in updating the Massachusetts fish advisories to better protect women and children from mercury contamination, which can contribute to learning disabilities and attention deficits in children. She was also a spokesperson for the successful campaign to clean up the “Filthy Five” coal plants in Massachusetts, a campaign that resulted in getting the nation’s most stringent coal plant regulations signed into law. In addition, she helped preserve the state moratorium on construction of new incinerators, a major source of mercury and other toxic emissions that threaten food and water supplies.

Stein is co-author of In Harm’s Way: Toxic Threats to Child Development, which discusses the impact of toxic exposures on children’s learning and behavior. A staff physician at Simmons College Health Center and a board-certified internist, she has been an Instructor in Medicine at the Harvard Medical School for the past 20 years. She is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Medical School, and is a member of the Board of Directors for National Physicians for Social Responsibility. She has appeared as an environmental health expert on the Today Show, 20/20, Fox News and other programs.

In 2002, Stein unsuccessfully ran for Governor of Massachusetts as a candidate of the Green-Rainbow Party (formerly Massachusetts Green Party). In 2003, she founded the Massachusetts Coalition for Healthy Communities, a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to empowering citizens to strengthen the social, economic, educational, environmental and democratic foundations of healthy communities. She is currently a candidate for the Massachusetts House of Representatives in the Waltham/Lexington district.

Epstein, Associate Director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School, is a widely published public health physician and medical educator with expertise in the areas of infectious diseases and global climate change. He has taught and done research in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Epstein holds a B.A. from Cornell University, an M.D. from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, NY, and a Masters of Public Health specializing in tropical medicine from Harvard’s School of Public Health. He has served as Associate in Medicine and Instructor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and has held hospital appointments at Boston City Hospital, Boston University School of Medicine, and Cambridge Hospital. Dr. Epstein’s current appointment is as Associate Director of HMS’ Center for Health and the Global Environment.

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Sharon Deal Poses Risks for Bush

Ron Kampeas
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

WASHINGTON — Ariel Sharon already is reaping political dividends from the April 14 historic exchange of letters with President Bush, but the U.S. president’s payoff depends a great deal on what Israel does next.

The Bush administration wants to see clear signs in coming weeks that Israel will live up to the prime minister’s commitment to pull out of the Gaza Strip and a small portion of the West Bank in exchange for Bush’s recognition of Israel’s claim to part of the West Bank.
Bush’s historic endorsement of Israel’s claims — and his rejection of any “right of return” to Israel for Palestinian refugees — have boosted Sharon’s political fortunes, allowing him to win over opponents in his Cabinet who had been skeptical of the withdrawal plan.

By contrast, the deal poses clear political risks for Bush, battered by increasing U.S. casualties in Iraq and seeking international support for a transition to civilian rule there.

The fallout in the Arab world was almost immediate. Jordan’s King Abdullah II postponed until May a scheduled meeting with President Bush, and it was clear from his embassy’s statement that the Bush-Sharon agreement had caught him off-guard.

Jordan wanted to “clarify the U.S. position regarding final status issues, especially in light of recent statements by U.S. officials,” the statement said. It said the king “underlined the importance of ensuring that Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza will be part of the ‘road map,’ and not an alternative to it.”

The “road map” is an internationally-backed peace plan that envisions a Palestinian state.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell played down the significance of Abdullah’s sudden change of plans.

“He has postponed his visit, but we look forward to welcoming him back in early May, and the date’s being worked out now,” Powell said after meeting with Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher. “The concerns that he has, I’m sure we can address.”

The Sharon-Bush summit won’t help the transfer of power in Iraq, said Feisel Istrabadi, a constitutional adviser to the U.S.-supported governing council.

“From the perspective of American policy and helping us in Iraq, I think it was the wrong thing to do at the wrong time,” Istrabadi told PBS’ One-on-One show. Israeli-Palestinian tensions dog the United States’ good intentions in Iraq and elsewhere, Istrabadi said.

“It is the major bone of contention between the broad masses — I’m not talking about the radicals, but the broad masses of the Arab and Islamic world and the United States,” he said.

Administration officials said matters were worsened by Israel’s recent assassination of Hamas’ new leader, and the predictable conspiracy theories in the Arab world accusing the United States of approving the hit.

“Certainly, given that we had just talked about trying to get the ‘road map’ under way in the Middle East, trying to get the Gaza disengagement plan under way, then the timing is not helpful,” Condoleezza Rice, Bush’s national security adviser, told ABC’s This Week over the weekend.

The State Department went further, suggesting that the killing of Abdel Aziz Rantissi showed a lack of sophistication.

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The Paradox of American Judaism: Assimilation and Revitalization

David B. Starr
Special to The Jewish Journal

American Judaism: A History, by Jonathan D. Sarna, Yale University Press, New Haven, Conn., 2004, 490 pp., $35.00.

I approach reviewing Professor Sarna’s book with some trepidation. I happily confess that the author is a friend of mine, and like so many in Jewish studies, my own scholarship benefited from his interest, assistance, and erudition. In that sense, I personally celebrate his accomplishment: he has managed to read and synthesize virtually everything by way of primary and secondary sources, at least of a published sort, and produce a first-rate narrative of the history of Judaism in America, one that is likely to stand preeminent for some time.

American Jewish history is the story of how Jews time and again have creatively responded to their fear of that happening.

Instead of a linear story of immigration, acculturation, and religious deterioration, Sarna sees “a history replete with cyclical patterns and unpredictable ones, periods of religious decline and periods of religious revitalization, eras when Judaism was far weaker than before and eras when, by all measures, it was stronger.” In the process of becoming the nation’s largest, most visible, non-Christian faith, Judaism, in Sarna’s view, broadened the parameters of American pluralism, making America more socially and culturally inclusive. From the perspective of Jewish history, the American dynamics of democracy, freedom of conscience, church-state separation, and voluntarism set the stage for the distinctive varieties of Jewishness one finds on these shores.

Part of the importance of this book lies in its subtle but powerful challenge to the notion that American Judaism stems mainly from the demographic onslaught of some two million Eastern European Jews between 1881 and 1924. To the contrary, Sarna argues, from the time of the American Revolution, one can see the evolution of a distinctive American Judaism, one “heavily influenced by democratization and American Protestantism.” Imitating their Protestant neighbors, Jews gradually threw off religious hierarchies of various sorts. The shortage of rabbis made the ascendance of the laity that much easier, but it also reflected the overwhelmingly Congregationalist proclivities of Protestantism.

American voluntarism — the freedom of individuals to worship as they pleased — made it that much easier to create a context in which top-down Judaism gave way to a market driven, consumer-oriented Jewishness.

All of us recognize this phenomenon from our own times: If we dislike a synagogue, we drop out or launch a new synagogue of our own, expressing our own Jewish outlook. With the advent of central European immigration in the 1840s and 1850s, congregations sprang up along ethnic lines, further dividing antebellum Jewry. American Judaism came to resemble “the federalist pattern of the nation as a whole, balanced precariously between unity and diversity.”

After the Civil War, American Jews finally achieved some degree of critical mass, by 1877 numbering 250,000. But missionizing and intermarriage threatened Jewish survival, and the market revolution posed problems as well, since itinerant Jews embraced new commercial opportunities, which in turn made their commitment to traditional mores that much more difficult in the rural small towns of the Midwest, South, and West.

Sarna documents three types of Jewish responses to such dynamics: the drive to “regenerate” Jewish life through education and observance, the emphasis on modernizing Judaism itself, and the substitution of community and ethnicity for religion. To some degree, these various strategies exist to this day as schema for negotiating Jewisness and American life.

By the 1870s, social anti-Semitism seemed to be on the upsurge, and Protestant calls for Christianizing America in the wake of Darwinism, biblical criticism, urbanization and industrialization further awakened Jews to their continuing need to rally around one another, and some sort of Jewish belief.

By World War I, American Jews possessed cultural critical mass, replete with newspapers, presses, books and authors of international renown, great libraries and scholars, and a host of institutions that educated and acculturated Jews in various ways of Jewishness. Jewish survival seemed assured; whether Jews could agree on what constituted Judaism remained an open question.

The interwar period fragmented Jewry ideologically, with the bipolar division of Reform and traditionalists giving way to a third-party, Orthodoxy, which built its own institutions. Yet Sarna paints this as a time of unification too, maintaining that Zionism and anti-Semitism and the experience of the Depression and the Holocaust reinvigorated peoplehood. Sarna dubs the last chapter “Renewal,” suggesting his sense of optimism about what post-war Jewry wrought. The suburbs witnessed a decline of the Jewish neighborhood and street, yet it also paved the way for a tremendous wave of synagogue building and new congregations. The waning of Yiddish culture gave way to the television, with The Goldbergs replaced by Leave It to Beaver, yet Judaism managed to survive. The Cold War emphasis on religion as an antidote to godless Soviet-style Communism buttressed Jewish newfound interest in the Bible and Jewish theology, and a greater commitment to Jewish education as a profession.

The Conservative Movement blossomed most dramatically, capturing the children of immigrants who wanted the cultural residue and ritual seriousness of a traditionalist synagogue even as their personal observance often came close to that of their Reform neighbors. In the decentralization and privatization of the suburban space, religion increasingly fell into the province of individual choice, as each one pursued his or her own distinctive spiritual meaning.

By way of criticism I offer a few musings. I would have liked to see more attention paid to religion as lived experience. Some of the richest recent work in religious studies tries to use anthropology to get inside of, to reconstruct, the actual events that make up religion as a cultural system. Sarna’s approach — so rich in vignettes and suggestive in its own way — describes yet somehow doesn’t quite give us that deeper texture of religion as life. At the same time, his commitment to synthesizing vast quantities of materials prevents him from spending more time on close reading of the various intellectual thinkers and trends themselves. This may have the unfortunate effect of reinforcing prejudices among Jewish studies practitioners who believe that ours has been a community of unlettered community-builders, rather than one of Jews struggling to create their own dialogue with the vastness and richness of Jewish culture and civilization.
Sarna concludes by noting that the renaissance of Judaism crazily coexists with unprecedented assimilation, at least as measured by the intermarriage statistics. Decline and revitalization now exist side by side. Part of what makes Sarna so important as a scholar is his willingness to venture out onto the thin ice where only prognosticators dare to tread. He mentions four significant issues that will likely affect significantly the future direction of the great Jewish middle: toward greater commitment or toward ignorance, apathy, and disengagement.

Boundaries, authority and leadership, stances regarding contemporary culture, and a relentlessly individualistic culture — all these issues challenge a religious culture that presumes some degree of tribalism, some sort of agreed upon norms, some sense of being a chosen and thereby different people, and a very different line demarcating corporate obligations and individual rights. I agree wholeheartedly: These issues will engage the historians lucky to have Professor Sarna’s book upon which to rely.

David B. Starr, PhD, is assistant professor of Jewish history and dean of Me'ah at Hebrew College. Specializing in the life and writing of Solomon Schechter, Dr. Starr earned his doctorate in American history and modern Jewish history from Columbia University with a dissertation entitled Catholic Israel: Solomon Schechter, a Study of Unity and Fragmentation in Modern Jewish History. He received rabbinic ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.

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Reinvention: The Key to the Future of American Jews
An Interview with Jonathan Sarna

Mark Arnold
Jewish Journal Staff

In this wide-ranging interview, Dr. Jonathan D. Sarna talks about the uniqueness of American Judaism, major challenges, the rise of the Chabad movement, intermarriage, secular Jews, educating children, and Judaism’s future.

Why did you write this book?

I was astonished to find as a historian that there are lots of books on American Jews but not on American Judaism. My religious colleagues had books on Protestant denominations, Catholicism, Mormons, but no book that talked about Judaism, the religion — nothing that told us where Reform, Conservative, and Orthodoxy came from, how they evolved on U.S. soil or how they were shaped by, and help shape, the American environment. As someone who had the good fortune to be an insider in all three major religious movements, I felt I could sympathetically understand and write about the evolution of Judaism in America.

So what did you find is unique about the American Jewish experience?

In America, there was no history of legal discrimination as there was in Europe, where Jews were for a long time not entitled to full citizenship rights. In France, England, and Russia, Jews were emancipated much later than other people. Here, we received our rights along with everyone else. There’s no state religion here that might define everyone else as a dissenter. Also, we’re a uniquely pluralistic country, with some 1,600 denominations. This all makes America very different than countries where minority religions have to “know their place.”

Looking back at 350 years of American Judaism, what do you see as the most important themes?
Freedom and competition, assimilation and revitalization. Freedom means I don’t have to follow the lead of the central synagogue authorities. I can start my own synagogue if I don’t like what’s there. It also means I can marry non-Jewish or otherwise blend into the dominant culture, so it’s also a challenge. As for competition, we’re competing among ourselves — synagogues competing, religious movements competing, and all of us competing with other faiths. Because of open-market competition, we see a Judaism that is constantly evolving — gaining or losing market share — as it strives to meet the changing needs of the times, and that has kept it perpetually new. This revitalization has often come from young Jews concerned that Judaism wouldn’t survive unless it changes. Paradoxically, continuity has been thus achieved through discontinuity of one kind or another.

The movements within American Judaism: Who’s gaining? Who’s losing?
If you look at the numbers, you see that at the moment the right (Orthodox) and left (Reform) are gaining and those in the middle (Conservative) are losing. Reform is benefiting from intermarriage and its welcome approach toward gays. Its open stance has won them members even though it has transformed the character of their movement. Many Reform synagogues include large numbers of members who are not at all Jewish and others who were not born Jewish. The Orthodox are gaining because of a particularly high birthrate and because some members of the traditional wing of the Conservative movement find that movement no longer traditional enough for them. Reconstructionists are also gaining, by the way. But the real gainers are “none of the above.”

What do you mean by “none of the above?”
The fastest growing movement is a non-movement: those who don’t chose to associate with a particular movement. They are trans-denominational, post-denominational, members of a havurah, or secular Jews. And so we have a new Jewish High School in the Boston area that is trans-demonational and a trans-denominational rabbinical school at Hebrew College. Today one in five Jews fits the “none of the above” description in some communities, including the Boston area. That’s a huge number who are defying conventional labels and practices.

We have a very active Chabad Lubavitch in our community. How important is the Chabad movement in America?
Chabad is in some ways the most successful and significant Jewish religious movement of the post-war period. Prior to the Lubavitcher rabbi coming to America in 1940, most American Jews had never heard of Chabad Lubavitch. Fifty years later, there is no significant Jewish community without a Chabad presence, no college or university, either. And many congerations that found they cannot afford a rabbi from a major movement are today led by a Chabad rabbi, because he will take a far smaller salary and do it as an act of chesed (charity), and in the hope he can build community. And because they usually stay with a pulpit for life, in many communities they are the senior rabbis in years of service.

How seriously should we treat warnings that the end of Judaism is coming?
Jews have been worried that Judaism couldn’t survive in the U.S. almost since the beginning. Warnings were sounded from pulpits of the death of Judaism throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. And we’re still here. But that doesn’t mean we should ignore such warnings.

It is precisely because Jews took these warnings seriously that Judaism is still around. These are self-negating prophecies. We worked hard to make sure it didn’t happen. And so today we have an astonishing array of Jewish institutions that no one could have predicted: Jewish day schools in hundreds of communities. Fears have strengthened the Jewish community time and again. And so I believe that the best way to ensure Judaism will survive is to predict that it will not.

What’s the greatest threat to American Judaism today?
We are most in danger of being loved to death rather than hated to death. Anti-Semitism has strengthened the Jewish community. Attacks on being Jewish forced Jews to learn about themselves. It’s happening in Europe now. Intermarriage is a very significant problem for the Jews as it is for all minority faiths. Basically, the pressure in a pluralistic community is for small groups to be swallowed up by larger groups. Inevitably, there is a regression to the norm and the norm in America is Christianity. You can see it in Kohn becoming Kerry, Nemerofsky to Kanne to Wesley Clark. There’s a danger that Judaism will become part of a heritage but not part of a living, breathing religious community. Look at the Huguenots: they were more plentiful than Jews in the Colonial period but they intermarried out of existence. The Armenians, the Greeks worry about it. If we want to preserve what is an endangered religious species, we have to take steps to preserve ourselves or we’ll be swallowed up by the majority. That’s what happens in countries where there are such close relations among different groups and no barriers to interaction.

What advice do you have for how to educate our children Jewishly?
Children need to know about the history of their people, including — and this is often neglected — in America. Many children don’t realize how important a role Jews have played in our nation’s history. We need them to recognize that earlier generations faced similar challenges to those of today and to learn how we worked to meet the challenges. We also need to educate young Jews to recognize there are many ways to be Jewish in America. If a youngster discovers the way he or she celebrates isn’t appealing, they should know there are alternatives within the Jewish fold. Too often we have misled youngsters into believing, if you don’t like this, you’ll have to find another religion, without knowing anything about spiritual dimensions within Judaism itself.

How will the face of Judaism be different a generation from now?
It is enormously important for American Jews to recognize that the future doesn’t just happen. People shape the future. This current generation of American Jews will create our future. Your newspaper — you report of swastikas being smeared on buildings one week and a new exciting synagogue program the next. Assimilation and renewal? No one knows which will win. But the question will be decided day by day, community by community, and Jew by Jew. Reading my book, you realize how individual Jews shaped the American Jewish experience thus far and will do so for the next generation.

How hopeful are you?
I oscillate between optimism and pessimism. I’m aware of the signs pointing both ways. Personally, I want to be hopeful. Contrary to expectations, American Judaism made it to 350, but it’s important to be vigilant and to remember that there have been Jewish communities that assimilated out of existence: the Carribean Jewish community, for example. And it will happen here unless we continue to be active and committed to the survival of a vibrant, diaspora Jewish community in the United States.

Young Jewish Entrepreneurs

Susan Jacobs
Jewish Journal Staff

Editor’s Note: This is a part of an ongoing series of profiles about young Jewish entrepreneurs on the North Shore.

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Common Myths About Osteoporosis

An estimed 44 million American women and men 50 years of age and older have osteoporosis or low bone mass, according to the Natoinal Osteoporosis Foundation (NOF), which expects the number to increase dramatically — to more than 61 million by 2020 as the Baby Boom generation ages.
What follows is a list of common misconceptions and facts about osteoporosis, developed by the NOF, which works to raise public awareness about the disease.

1. Osteoporosis is an inevitable part of aging.
• Osteoporosis, for the most part, is preventable. Prevention of osteoporosis should begin in early childhood and continue throughout the stages of life. Building a strong skeleton during childhood, adolescence and young adulthood may help individuals avoid osteoporosis later in life.
• There are four steps that can optimize bone health and help prevent osteoporosis. They are: a balanced diet rich in calcium and vitamin D, weight-bearing exercise, a healthy lifestyle with no smoking or excessive alcohol intake, and bone density testing and medication when appropriate.
• Continuing or starting preventive measures even after fractures have occurred is important; this will minimize further bone loss and help prevent additional fractures and more severe disability.

2. Only older women get osteoporosis
• Women and men can develop osteoporosis at any age, especially if they have a chronic condition such as asthma or arthritis that requires treatment with medications such as glucocorticoids (e.g. prednisone) that can lead to bone loss.
• Twenty percent of those affected by osteoporosis are men. Men with osteoporosis and low bone mass total over 14 million. This figure is expected to increase to over 17 million by 2010 and to over 20 million by 2020.
• Men over the age of 50 have a greater risk of suffering an osteoporosis-related fracture than developing prostate cancer.
• Each year, 80,000 men suffer a hip fracture and are nearly twice as likely as women the same age to die the in first year after breaking a hip.

3. Only Caucasian women get osteoporosis.
• 52 percent of Asian women age 50 and older are estimated to have low bone mass.
• 49 percent of Hispanic women age 50 and older are estimated to have low bone mass.
• 35 percent of non-Hispanic African American women age 50 and older are estimated to have low bone mass.
• 10 percent of Hispanic women age 50 and older are estimated to have osteoporosis.

4. Osteoporosis is not very common.
• Osteoporosis and low bone mass affect 44 million women and men aged 50 and older in the United States. The 10 million people with osteoporosis and 34 million with low bone mass represent 55 percent of the people aged 50 and older. By the year 2010, it is estimated that over 52 million women and men in this same age category will either have osteoporosis or be at increased risk due to low bone mass. By the year 2020, NOF expects this number to increase to over 61 million.
• In the U.S. alone, osteoporosis causes 1.5 million fractures annually. These include 300,000 hip fractures, 250,000 wrist fractures, 700,000 vertebral fractures and 300,000 fractures at other sites.
• A woman’s risk of hip fracture is equivalent to her combined risk of developing breast, uterine and ovarian cancer.
• Half of women over the age of 50 will have an osteoporotic fracture before they die.

5. Osteoporosis isn’t a serious or deadly condition.
• The consequences of osteoporosis are devastating and painful. Hip fractures, which occur about twice as often in women as in men, are more serious than people realize: approximately 20 percent of hip fracture patients will die in the year after fracture, usually from complications such as pneumonia or blood clots in the lung, which are related to the fracture or to the surgery to repair the fracture.
• Vertebral fractures are difficult to quantify because only one-third of these fractures come to clinical attention. Up to half of patients with a prior vertebral fracture will experience additional fractures within three years, with many occurring within the first year. The survival rate following clinically diagnosed vertebral fracture is comparable to that following hip fracture.
• More than half of those who survive a hip fracture will not be able to walk or move about easily, and a quarter will need long-term nursing home care.
• Frail, elderly women and men who have suffered multiple fractures in the upper spine may develop stooped posture, or “kyphosis”. They often have chronic lower back and side pain and difficulty walking. In extreme cases, people have trouble breathing and eating.

6. Medical costs from osteoporosis aren’t high.
• In 2003, the inpatient, nursing home, and outpatient medical treatment costs of osteoporotic fractures in the U.S. is estimated to be almost $17 billion, of which nearly 40 percent is due to fractures other than hip fractures.
• Each hip fracture represents an estimated $40,000 in total medical costs.
• This cost to the healthcare system associated with osteoporotic fractures is expected to exceed $60 billion by the year 2030.

7. If I had osteoporosis, I would know it.
• No, not usually. Osteoporosis is often called “the silent disease” because it progresses slowly over time, without symptoms, until a fracture occurs. For example, many people continue to assume height loss is a normal part of aging. However, it may be due to a collapse in the bones of the spine, called vertebrae, weakened by osteoporosis. NOF advises everyone to routinely monitor their height and talk to their healthcare provider if they notice a loss of more than an inch. Patients often don’t realize they have osteoporosis or are even at risk until they suffer a fracture — most commonly of the hip, spine or wrist — after a fall or from doing ordinary activities. At this point, they have already suffered the consequences of osteoporosis.
• Certain people are more likely to develop osteoporosis than others. Factors that increase the likelihood of developing osteoporosis include being female, having a personal history of fracture as an adult, current smoking, current low bone mass, being thin and/or having a small frame, advanced age, or a family history of osteoporosis. For a complete listing of osteoporosis risk factors, please contact NOF (information listed below).
• Many people are not having appropriate testing to determine if they have osteoporosis before, or even after they fracture. As many as 95 percent of adults who break a bone are being treated without being evaluated for osteoporosis. Bone mineral density tests can measure the amount of bone in different parts of the skeleton and can predict the risk of future fractures.

8. Once I have osteoporosis, there is nothing I can do about it.
• Even if you have been diagnosed with osteoporosis, it’s not too late to take steps to protect your bone health. Consuming the recommended amounts of calcium and vitamin D, performing weight-bearing exercises and quitting smoking can help slow bone loss.
• There are also several treatment options available to slow bone loss and even build new bone. Talk to your doctor to decide if one is right for you.
For more information on osteoporosis, contact the National Osteoporosis Foundation, 800-223-9994, www.nof.org or write to them at 1232 22nd Street NW, Washington, DC 20037. The National Osteoporosis Foundation is the leading voluntary health organization solely dedicated to promoting lifelong bone health in order to reduce the widespread prevalence of osteoporosis and associated fractures, while working to find a cure for the disease through programs of research, education and advocacy.

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Bearing a Jewish Name Carries Certain Risks

Jacob Friedman
Special to The Jewish Journal

Editor’s Note: We are carrying this essay, by a high school student with a Jewish name, because we think it speaks to the changing nature of anti-Semitism in the United States.

I was in line to sharpen my pencil at the beginning of 8th grade and the person in front of me finished sharpening his. When he pulled his pencil out of the sharpener, the lead tip had broken off inside. After growling at the pencil, he said to me, “What a Jew sharpener!” and walked off, leaving me confused and perplexed. “A Jew sharpener? What does that mean?”

This was the first time that I heard the word “Jew” used in a negative context. While this experience with racial prejudice was unfortunately not my last, their occurrences throughout high school have played an important role in shaping me into the person who I am today.

I lived in many places before moving to Virginia. My early school years took place in North Carolina and Kentucky. When we moved to these states, my parents were concerned that I might be exposed to racism against African-Americans. These concerns were based on the stereotypes of these southern states. The truth is, I never really encountered prejudice in either state.

When we moved to McLean, Virginia, however, one of the most culturally diverse communities on the East Coast, I was totally unprepared for what I did find to be true.

I arrived at Cooper Middle School in McLean, excited about school and eager to make friends. Instead a type of prejudice that I had not expected confronted me — anti-Semitism. Before my first year at Cooper, I had never heard of the word “Jew” used as an insult. But there, instead of saying that something was stupid (or any other negative word, for that matter), it was considered “Jewish.” I had never heard this before and I especially did not expect the racism to be directed towards me.

While there were no physical attacks, I was subjected to terrible verbal assaults. Sometimes the remarks were simple. “What’d Jew say?” was commonly heard. If anyone received a low grade on a test or quiz, the teacher was said to have “been in a Jewish mood” when she was grading. When someone was low on money, or did not have any to buy lunch, they would turn to me and say, “Hey, lend me some money, ‘cause that’s what you people are here for.”

Once, when the classroom’s air conditioner was not functioning, someone said to me, “Damn, Jacob, it’s hot as an oven in here!” and then proceeded to say “Auschwitz” and cover it with a sneeze, sending the whole classroom into fits of laughter.

These expressions of anti-Semitism have continued into my years at Langley High School. The students in my freshman English class referred to me as “Hebe” or “Yahweh.” The word “Jew” has become so ingrained in the slang of Langley that it is now used as both verbs (“You Jewed that up pretty bad”) and adjectives (“That’s Jewerific” or “Jewtastic”).

The prejudice that I experienced dumbfounded me. Most of the students come from well-educated, upper and upper-middle class families from every nook and cranny of the world. It also surprised me that while there were many students of Arabic or Persian descent, they were rarely the ones to harass Jews. The harassment that I received primarily came from Caucasians.

The irony of this is that I am not actually Jewish. The sole reason for my harassment was the sound of my name — Jacob Friedman. Coincidently, if I had lived in Europe during World War II, my name could also have been the sole reason for me being sent to a concentration camp. It is sad that even in such culturally diverse schools as Langley High, ignorance still abounds and racism still blooms. Unfortunately, the prejudice and racism that have fueled hate and war for centuries still exists throughout the world, even in my own high school.

I believe that there is still hope for understanding and tolerance. We must begin by adding classes or lessons about the differences between nationalities, religions, and cultures to our educational curriculum.

Organizations such as the Human Rights Watch, museums like the Holocaust Museum, and foundations like the Anti-Defamation League have already made an effort to clarify different beliefs, traditions, and ways of life, therefore breaking the barriers between religions, and changing people’s attitudes towards other races and cultures. Hopefully these efforts will allow society to understand each other and eventually live in harmony together. That would be a message worth delivering.

Jacob Friedman, 18, is a senior at Langley, VA, High School. He’ll be going to Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond in the fall, where he hopes to study mechanical engineering. His father is Jewish and his mother is Greek Orthodox, as is he.

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Arts & Entertainment

Judith Murray Trio: ‘Singing from the Soul’

Mark Arnold
Jewish Journal Staff

MELROSE — The walls sport posters of Chet Baker, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Charlie Parker and Herbie Hancock, interspersed with giant eighth notes in bas relief. The atmosphere is low key, relatively quiet. There are tables, a bar, good, inexpensive food, and at the center of it all a baby grand piano, behind which Judith Murray is standing, counting off the beat for her partners in the Judith Murray Trio.

This is the Blues Diner on Main Street, an unlikely spot to find cool jazz, but when Murray begins to sing and her fellow musicians fall in around her musically, you realize it doesn’t get any cooler than this.

Murray is a consummate professional, in the Billie Holiday tradition, who gets inside the lyrics of a song and projects them to an audience as if she is experiencing the emotions she sings about for the first time.

The trio, which includes pianist Leon “Chuck” Moutsoulas of Danvers and bassist Dave Landoni of Somerville, is different from most jazz trios. They don’t back up the singer; they complement her. That is, all three use their instruments to interpret the tunes, weaving in and out of each other’s lines effortlessly. “It’s something you can only do when you’ve played together as long as we have,” says Moutsoulas. It’s a partnership that dates back to the late nineties.

Murray, whose day job is assistant development director of the Jewish Rehabilitation Center in Swampscott, has been singing professionally virtually all her life. A native of Philadelphia, she began studying voice at age 7. The accompanist of her voice teacher went on to become known as Nina Simone, she recalls with a smile.

The Judith Murray Trio will wind up their year-long engagement at the Blues Diner on April 24. The owner is going to a straight blues format. The trio doesn’t know where its next steady gig will be. But Murray is intent on finding one.

“This is my instrument,” she says, pointing to her throat. “I sing from the soul. If I can touch people by doing so, that’s what it’s all about.”
Judith Murray Trio, at the Blues Diner, 454 Main Street, Melrose, Saturday, April 24, 7-11 p.m. Tel: 781-662-0038.

For future engagements of the group, contact jazzsinger1@comcast.net.

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Local Writer Pens Second Murder Mystery

Mark Arnold
Jewish Journal Staff

He always wanted to be a writer, but it was not until he retired in the late nineties that Peabody native Don E. Finegold found the time to do so. His new novel, The Pact, is a tale of bigotry, murder and coverup that takes place on the North Shore. Finegold will lead a discussion and book signing on Wednesday, May 12, at the Peabody Institute Library on Main Street in Peabody, at 7 p.m.

The book, which follows an earlier murder mystery, Interlude, published in 2002, describes a secret pact three boys from working-class homes made to kill blacks and Jews when they got older and how they sought to make good on it, explains the writer, who sprinkles his work with mentions of local landmarks from the 40s and 50s. The book is an easy read, with large type and short sentences to enhance its appeal.

“I show places and attitudes as they were then,” says Finegold, himself the target of discrimination as a youth. “I want people who grew up when I did to remember what it was like,” he told the Journal recently. So I talk about places like Stanley’s Cafeteria, Ordman’s Pharmacy, Moe’s Skeller, and Valle’s in Lynn.”

Explains the 74-year-old Finegold, who spent his life in the leather industry before his retirement: “Some people retire and don’t do much; I write books. I’ve got 10 more of them in me.

The Pact is published by 1stbooks.com and is available there, at Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com.

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Editorial

Bush Throws US Weight Behind Sharon Plan

sraeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon came to Washington in mid-April seeking to tilt the balance of U.S. support even more heavily in Israel’s, and his own, favor. He was successful beyond his expectations. In one fell swoop, President Bush gave U.S. approval to a Sharon plan that does three things:
It commits Israel to withdrawal from all settlements in Gaza — by the end of 2005, as Sharon proposed. Rather than support a negotiated Israeli withdrawal to pre-1967 boundaries, it accepts a continued Israeli presence in the West Bank to reflect long-established on the ground realities. This includes a “temporary rather than permanent” security fence, which the Palestinians — and much of the world — want dismantled. And, most significantly, it repudiates the right of Palestinian refugees to return to homes in Israel, offering to resettle them in a Palestinian state instead.
Bush’s agreement is meant to bring closer the day when Israel and a new Palestinian state can live side by side in peace and with secure borders. Judging from the expressions of outrage emanating from Arab capitals, it’s doubtful it will have that effect.
It will, however, greatly help Sharon win support from his own party in a referendum on the plan May 2 — and thus remain in power while strengthening his hand domestically. And it arguably should help Bush politically in swing states where the Jewish vote could make a difference in November’s presidential election.
Beyond any political calculations on his part, Bush’s bold move reflects his view of the post-9/11 world. Sharon has clearly convinced the president that there is no difference between the war on international terrorism waged by the U.S. and that waged against Palestinian terrorism by Israel, except for the fact that Israel is more gravely threatened.
The Palestinian Authority, Hamas, and the other groups who influence the future of the Palestinians have a clear choice now: They can charge betrayal by Washington and send more suicide bombers to attack Israel. Or they can take the Bush challenge as an opportunity to clean up their act and begin the political reforms necessary to become a responsible sovereign power. We aren’t placing bets on their willingness to rise to the challenge.

— Mark R. Arnold

From Victimization to Celebration
Yom HaShoah is a day to remember those who perished in the Holocaust. In Israel a moment of silence is observed, and in cities across America solemn, dignified ceremonies are held to recognize local residents who miraculously survived the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis.

In Peabody, we are fortunate enough to have an annual interfaith commemoration organized by Harriet Wacks and Sonia Weitz of The Holocaust Center. It was attended this year by over 500 community members and local survivors.

Dr. Chris Mauriello, a history professor at Salem State College and a member of the Yom HaShoah committ