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Yossi Abramowitz: Seeing the World Through Jewish Eyes

MARK ARNOLD
Jewish Journal Staff

(Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of occasional articles on innovations in Jewish learning that the Journal intends to produce in 2004.)
NEWTON UPPER FALLS — Imagine putting on a pair of sunglasses — no matter that they’re made of paper — going out into the night, and having every light you see take the form of a Star of David!
That’s seeing the world from a Jewish perspective, and it’s the key to the thinking of Yosef Abramowitz, a 39-year-old journalist, human rights activist, and educator who is transforming Jewish education from a cluttered fourth-floor office in a low-rent district of Newton.

The glasses, to be distributed to all who receive his children’s magazine BabagaNewz, are one of the many ways this whirlwind of energy and ideas — named for the third straight year by the Forward newspaper as one of the 50 most influential Jews in America — is seeking to influence Jewish children, Jewish adults, and Jewish educators.

Abramowitz is CEO of Jewish Family & Life!, an organization that, seven years after its founding, has a budget of $4.5 million, a staff of more than 35, and a mission to “spark and nurture” Jewish identity and build interactive Jewish communities.

With generous funding from leading Jewish foundations, and a board of directors composed of movers and shakers in national Jewry, Abramowitz and his staff of creative, committed 20 and 30 somethings are mobilizing the Internet on behalf of America’s Jewish future. Signs of their influence:

• Now in its third year, BabagaNewz — JFL’s first success and still its flagship publication — today serves more than 30,000 children in North America in almost 900 day schools and congregational Hebrew schools. One of those schools is Marblehead’s Cohen Hillel Academy, where Head of School Robert Tornberg says flatly: “We think BabagaNewz is fabulous. In over 30 years as an educator, it’s the most appealing and the most valuable publication for kids I’ve seen.”

• The array of websites it owns and feeds (see sidebar) makes JFL the leading source of online Jewish content in the world. Among other distinctions, those sites boast the largest collection of Jewish kids’ games in the world. Says Abramowitz: “If we can get kids to spend an extra three hours a week in Jewish learning, it’s all to the good.”

• Its magazine Sh’ma, for Jewish professionals, is among the most important intellectual forums for discussion of Jewish ideas, ethics and values and their application to everyday life.

• JSkyway, a distance learning program in professional development, is offering four courses a term for Jewish educators (two terms a year) with the courses accredited by nearby Hebrew College and eligible for Continuing Education Units. In its first term, it attracted 50 teachers, a total it hopes to double in the next 12 months.

• MyJewishLearning.com, JFL’s most popular website, attracts 100,000 hits per month. It offers a multi-level exploration of Jewish history, life cycle events, ideas and beliefs, and culture; like archeologists, visitors can drill down to find layer upon layer of detailed information.
“What we are doing,” says Abramowitz, a Kosher vegeterian, huddled over a bowl of soup in a neighboring restaurant, “is seeking to reconstitute the best ideas and most important values — the essence of Judaism and Jewish life. We have visions inspired by values and we are using those visions to democratize Jewish knowledge, and make it accessible and relevant to the lives of individual Jews, no matter how old or affiliated or wherever they are in their Jewry.”

Equally important, JFL is creating what Abramowitz calls “the infrastructure for life-long universal membership in the Jewish people.” The array of products for children, adults, teachers, are all part of that infrastructure.

Perhaps the biggest new test of JFL’s instructional approach will be the teenage market. Two years ago, JFL created a website, JVibe.com, targeted at hard-to-reach post-Bar/Bat Mitzvah kids. After extensive market testing, the organization is gearing up to launch JVibe, a glossy magazine for youngsters 15 and up, probably in the third quarter of 2004. The prototype has a cover story on rock guitarist Evan Taubenfeld, who doubles as backup vocalist for the MTV star Avril Lavigne, whose debut album, Let’s Go, has sold more than 4 million copies. Other features of the magazine include a quiz on leadership, discussions on dating, advice on what to do if your girlfriend or boyfriend dumps you, and news on movies, CDs, television, and life in Israel.

Abramowitz and his colleagues are upbeat about the magazine’s prospects, given the fact that the website gets 20,000 hits a month. They hope to get funding to subsidize a three-year-subscription to JVibe for every Bar/Bat Mitzvah child in North America.
Explains Abramowitz: “There are a total of 250,000 Jewish teenagers, 20 percent are Orthodox. That leaves 200,000, who are our target audience. Our goal is to reach 50 percent of them within five years,” which he thinks will cost $3 to $5 million.

To secure funding for this and other projects on the drawing board, JFL recently hired Swampscott’s Stewart L. Bromberg as development director. Bromberg is a veteran fund-raising professional who held a similar position at the Jewish Rehabilitation Center in Swampscott until February 2003.

A somewhat disheveled man who wears a perpetual mischievous grin, Abramowitz appears for an interview dressed in jeans, a shirt with one collar in and one out of an icelandic-type sweater. His sandy hair is topped by a small yarmulke. At his desk, his laptop is open while he works on a desktop computer plastered with Post-it note reminders. On one wall of the cinder block office — the site is a former factory — is a poster of Spiderman and from the ceiling hangs a large balloon in the shape of Spiderman. Why Spiderman? “We both weave webs,” he says, giggling.

Abramowitz grew up in Brighton, Brookline, and Newton. His father, Martin Abramowitz, is the number two executive at Boston’s Combined Jewish Philanthropies, and is a noted collector of Jewish baseball cards. Yossi graduated from Boston University with an emphasis on Jewish public policy and was awarded a fellowship to study journalism at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism. He has authored numerous articles for national publications and won a host of awards, many of them for reportage critical of the Jewish establishment.

A rebel at BU and in the years that followed, he found a natural niche in social activism, organizing human rights demonstrations in more than 20 countries, conducting hunger strikes and, in one case, being banned from a third-world country, pre-democratic South Africa. He served in the Israeli Defense Forces during the first intifada. Long a leader in the movement to free Soviet Jews, he remains volunteer president of the Union of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union. He was co-nominated for a Nobel Prize for his work with that organization. And he is probably the only educator who has appeared in a skit on Saturday Night Live; his sister-in-law, a cast member, arranged it.

The current revolution Abramowitz is sparking still operates, in his words, for the most part “under the radar screen of organized Jewish religion.” But if so, it is working with the tacit support of many elements of that establishment. A $4.3 million grant from the AVI CHAI Foundation launched BabagaNewz; and the Samuel Bronfman Foundation provided seed funding for JBooks.com. Edgar M. Bronfman, one of Abramowitz’ earliest supporters, brought JFL together with Hebrew College and awarded the two organizations $2.4 million to create MyJewish Learning.com. Bronfman has brought other parties to the JFL table, including the Lynn and Charles Schusterman Family Foundation and the Abramson Family Foundation.

Abramowitz is married to Susan Silverman, a Reconstructionist-ordained rabbi. The couple has four children, ages 6 months to 10 years. He is quick to credit his staff with many of the ideas and successful implementations. With input from his business backers, he is now seeking to professionalize the free-flowing JFL organization, applying lessons straight out of business textbooks.

“We identify best practices in the secular world and bring them to Jewish learning and education,” he says. These include strategic planning, organizational development, benchmarking, market research, and product portfolio management.
Through it all, Abramowitz maintains a fresh perspective on the challenges of Jewish education. “Think of how we pressure Jewish kids to learn now. We cram their heads with content for their Bar/Bat Mitzvah when we need to be instilling Jewish values in them. Values are much more important,” he says, “and they stay with you all your life.
“Give children a Jewish outlook, a Jewish way of looking at the world,” says Abramowitz. “That’s the key to the Jewish future.”

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A Jewish Christmas Story

DOV BURT LEVY
Special to The Jewish Journal

SALEM — Jews worked the kitchens and dining rooms of area shelters again this Christmas to give Christian volunteers the day off.
Project Ezra is the annual Christmas Day feeding program established in 1986 by the Synagogue Council in which over 1,500 Jewish volunteers from more than 70 synagogues and organizations work across Massachusetts in shelters and feeding programs.
This year, I worked at the Crombie Street Church in Salem under the direction of Nathan Zoll. Last Christmas, I was at My Brother’s Table in downtown Lynn where Kim and Barry Silverman organize the effort.

I didn’t write about it last year because neither the 60 volunteers nor I deserve, want or expect any applause for this effort. But this year, Nathan Zoll, who has directed the Crombie Street Christmas Jewish effort for the past six years, while he brandished a large chef knife, forced me to promise to tell you about it.

Two stories here: one about the people who come to eat and sleep at the shelter, the other about the people who volunteer and how they get their jobs done. Volunteer Jewish staffs are recruited by synagogues and temple announcements, notices in the Calendar of the Jewish Journal and by word of mouth.

The youngest volunteer was 10 years old, the oldest about 84. Their jobs during the rest of the year: optometrist, comptroller, social worker, department store clerk, security, sales, student and retiree. Chef Fred is the only volunteer professional; he works locally as a chef for a large corporation.

No training is given, few tasks are directly assigned, but somehow the work all gets done well.

You enter, Nathan writes a nametag and shouts a first name introduction. Everyone shouts back: “Hi, Dov” (when it is Dov).
The volunteer looks around, sees what must be done and moves to do it. Start cooking, cleaning and sorting at 8:30 a.m. At 12:30 p.m., serving begins with salad and bread for the more than 200 guests, followed by generous portions of turkey, ham, dressing, potato, string beans, and squash, plus dessert.

The 10-year-old girl carries plates and ladles gravy; her mother does another kitchen job. Three women, all in semi-conductor sales, put the turkey and ham on each plate. An 11th grade boy mashes a trashcan-sized pot of potatoes by hand while being harassed and cheered on by his fellow more elderly workers. The boy’s father (whose parents, I learn while talking Jewish geography with him, attended my wedding 40 years ago) pushed out the salad. A grandmother moves each plate through the opening to the dining room.

Strangers work happily side by side, become friends for the day and keep at it until every guest finishes and every plate, pot, pan and surface is squeaky-clean.

As effectively as the year-round volunteers run the shelter and as happily as the holiday workers like us work, the Crombie Street Church is not a place where a person goes for a free lunch or bed that they don’t desperately need. Few, if any, rip off the system, as some cynics sometimes argue.

Down on luck and very down on money are the reasons people come. Two minimum wage jobs today, working 16 hours a day, is hardly enough money to rent an apartment for a small family. Others are in alcohol or drug recovery or have mental or physical health problems and no other place to go.

On one hand, shameful it is that our wealthy society chooses to rely on the volunteer efforts of churches, synagogues and ordinary working people to provide shelter and a holiday meal for its sick and poorest citizens and surely not reaching all.

On the other hand, heartwarming it is to live in a society where people give time to their human brothers and sisters, not just on Christmas or other holidays, but every day of the year.

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Federation Thanks Community for a Successful 2003

AMY SESSLER POWELL

In a year of continued economic hardship for Jews here and in Israel, the Jewish Federation of the North Shore brought the community together through fund-raising and programming that will have a lasting impact.

Jews on the North Shore showed how important community is by showing up en masse to raise funds. In 2003, nearly 250 volunteers worked diligently to raise more than $2.2 million from more than 3,000 distinct donors.

It was also a year that marked many leadership changes for the Federation. In September, Deborah Ponn assumed the presidency after three years of dedicated leadership from Stephen Baker. Stan Black, Bob Livingston and Phyllis Sagan began a successful term as the Campaign Cabinet. Sheryl Levy became president of Women’s Division, succeeding Ponn, and several new board members were elected. And, a new city, Newburyport, was added to the Federation service area, bringing the total number of cities and towns to 23.
July also saw the hiring of Merritt Mulman, new executive director of the Jewish Federation of the North Shore.

“Our primary goal for next year will be to help our agencies by raising the necessary resources for them to continue to provide top quality programs and services,” said Mulman. “We will build a strong campaign team with compelling reasons for people to give based on the real needs of our community from our youngest children to our most senior citizens.”

Here are some numbers that reflect a successful year for the Jewish Federation of the North Shore:

• $2,203,886 raised by the Community Campaign from 3,012 donors so far
• 251 new donations and 440 from donors who had not given in the previous year for a total of $113,158 in new and recaptured gifts
• $175,000 grant to match new gifts and increased gifts from several generous donors
• $52,365 from 443 donors raised in a few months for the Jewish Community Emergency Fund, helping 23 families with vital needs like food, rent and heating expenses
• $30,209 raised from 255 people for the Israel Emergency Appeal
• 31,683 visits to www.jewishnorthshore.org, with 134 volunteers registering online
• 20 new gifts to the Jewish Community Foundation of the North Shore, including four endowments
• 600 people performed mitzvot at 32 sites on Mitzvah Day
• 249 families participated in Rekindle Shabbat, 65 of them new to the program
• 219 people in Sukkat Shalom, 68 of them new to the program
• 875 school children flew kites on Sukkot
• 140 sets of tefillin donated to students in Jewish schools
• 200 attended the Great Shofar Blowout
• 275 people attended events of the Young Leadership Division
• 406 women attended events of the Women’s Division
• 126 people attended events of the Jewish Business and Professional Association, 79 of them new to the program
• 700 singles participated in events of the North Shore Jewish Singles Connection, 60 people in relationships
• 155 people attended events sponsored by the Interfaith Outreach Committee
• 63 local and 37 Israeli teens traveled with the 2003 Y2I European Adventure. So far, 110 families have attended informational sessions for the 2004 trips
• 19 teen and young adults traveled to Israel on Federation’s Y2I or young adult subsidies
• 38 Hebrew school teachers representing over 1000 students are attending Inspirational Jewish Teaching 101

“To all those who made this a successful year, our community partners, we thank you and look forward to 2004 as we continue to go from strength to strength,” said Mulman.

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Rose Family Thanks Community, Plans Future

GARY BAND
Jewish Journal Staff

Following a letter to the editor he wrote to the Journal (Dec. 5) and our subsequent front-page story about his situation, (Dec. 19), James Rose of Malden thanks those in the community who have responded by writing letters, sending toys and contributing gifts. Donations to the family totaled almost $1,000 as of December 30.

Rose, 33, who suffers from severe lower back pain and sleep apnea, his wife and one-year-old son have been living in a Malden shelter since September. In cooperation with his case worker at Jewish Family and Children’s Services in Newton, Rose is making plans to have an operation to correct his back pain. The family hopes to relocate, possibly to Florida, as soon as they are able.

Readers wanting to help this Jewish family can send a check or clothing to James Rose, c/o The Jewish Journal, 201 Washington St., Suite 14, Salem, MA 01970.

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Outpost Settlers Cite Bible as Fight Over Evacuation Nears

DINA KRAFT

MIGRON, West Bank (JTA) — A battered shipping container was Itai Harel’s first home on this steep, windswept hilltop.

Now he lives in a trailer with running water and electricity, and land has been leveled for more permanent housing in this illegal settlement outpost. He and his fellow young settlers are gearing up to fight for their new hilltop home.

Migron, the largest and most established of the 100 or so illegal Jewish outposts set up across the West Bank, is on the front lines of a looming showdown between the settler movement and the Israeli government. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon recently pledged to dismantle such settlements in accordance with the U.S.-led road map peace plan.

On Dec. 28, Israel ordered the removal of four of the outposts. The settlers can now petition against the action through the courts.

But settler rabbis called upon supporters to physically prevent the settlements’ dismantlement, and called upon army officers not to order their soldiers to dismantle the settlements.

Harel expressed similar sentiments.

“We are staying here. It’s our home,” said Harel, 29, vowing to return if the government somehow manages to remove them.
“It is our right to be here; this is our national home,” he said, sweeping his hand toward the view of Arab villages and Jewish settlements on nearby hillsides.

However, the settlers’ position may have been undercut by the National Religious Party, the main settler political body.

The NRP’s chairman, Housing and Construction Minister Effi Eitam, said Dec. 29 that the NRP would support the removal of four unauthorized outposts if no way could be found to authorize them.

The NRP “is part of the government, part of the rule of law in the State of Israel. If, in the end, after every avenue has been pursued, these outposts cannot be authorized, then we will not be able to support anything that is not legal,” Eitam told Israel’s Army Radio.

Over the past two years, 42 families have moved to Migron. They are young, defiant and fiercely ideological. Casting themselves as part of a continuum of ancient and modern Jewish history, they view their unauthorized building of an outpost about 20 minutes drive north of Jerusalem as key to strengthening the Jewish claim to biblical Israel. They also see it as similar to efforts by early Zionists to create “facts on the ground” in what became Israel proper.

Critics and the U.S. government see the outposts, built hastily and without government approval, as yet another obstacle to peace efforts with the Palestinians.

Harel and his friends at Migron, which is named after a biblical-era settlement in the region, are hesitant to say exactly how they would resist soldiers should they attempt an evacuation.

Pinchas Wallerstein, who heads the local settlement region of the West Bank, called Binyamina, said he hopes the Israeli courts will help prevent an evacuation order.

If that fails, he said he foresees thousands of supporters coming to Migron to help thwart police and army forces.
In a show of solidarity, Israel’s well-organized settler movement has helped facilitate visits by thousands of people to Migron in recent weeks.

Jerry Silverman, one of the wedding party members, said he hoped the issue would be resolved through negotiations.
“The American government is not in charge of Israel,” he said.

Sharon, long a patron of the settler movement, is under intense pressure from the U.S. administration to fulfill Israel’s obligations under the road map, beginning with the dismantling of illegal outposts that have cropped up over the last several years. Many were established in the immediate aftermath of Arab terrorist attacks on local settlers.

In a speech last month, Sharon said some settlements would have to be evacuated if Israel disengages physically from the Palestinians.
The first Israeli presence on the hill where Migron stands today were cell phone towers built by local phone companies four years ago.

Young settlers followed about two years later.

The Israeli government said it expects to begin evacuating settlement outposts in the next few weeks. Officials hope settlers will leave without a fight.

Only one of the outposts — Ginot Aryeh — is inhabited, with about 10 families living there, as well as a few single people.

Unlike most other outposts, Migron is more than a small collection of tents and trailers. There is a paved circular road and two buildings with stone facades, one that serves as a synagogue, the other a nursery school.

Still, amenities are basic.

Next to the community’s row of portable toilets is a large white plastic tent for meetings and celebrations. Trailers are clustered in muddy patches of land. A private security guard in a fleece jacket and armed with an Uzi machine gun mans the entrance. A fence topped with rings of barbed wire surrounds the outpost.

“It’s clear it is worth the price. We are here to live a quality life, to live an ideal,” said Harel.

Peace activists say that ideal is misguided and dangerous. It also does not represent the views of most Israelis, who according to polls, are willing to withdraw from most West Bank and Gaza Strip settlements in the event of an eventual peace deal with the Palestinians.

As long as settlement building continues, “we will be doomed to more and more international condemnation, economic recession and violence,” said Dror Etkes, who coordinates Peace Now’s Settlement Watch Project. “Another settlement is another rock in the occupation and oppression” of the Palestinians. Etkes said he saw Sharon’s recent policy speech as a potential turning point since the Israeli government has yet to dismantle any settlements of significant size.

“If the settlements are uprooted then the first inroads will be made,” he said. “Migron could be the first uprooted and this will be a historic event.”

Shlomo and Hagit Ha’Cohen, both 25, see Migron’s place in history differently.

They say they are living Jewish history in their decision to live and establish a family in Migron. Hagit, who teaches history and civics at a Jerusalem high school, is expecting the couple’s first child this month.

“We see this as our home forever, even if there are problems along the way,” said her husband, a yeshiva student who plans to study civil engineering. “With all due respect to the Americans, at the end of the day we are the ones who decide.” Sitting in their bookshelf-lined three-room trailer, for which they pay $70 a month rent, Shlomo cites the story of Chanukah and the conflict between the ancient Greeks and the Israelites.

“Many imperial powers have told us what to do throughout history. They no longer exist. Israel is still here,” he said. “Our path is clear, we know where we want to go.’’

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People in the News

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Business and Finance
Warning: New IRS Rules Target Your IRA

MARK SINGER
Special to the Jewish Journal

Mark Singer, CFP is a radio talk show host and President of Safe Harbor Retirement Planning, located on the Lynnway in Lynn. He can be reached toll free at (866) 55-RETIRE. Securities offered through Commonwealth Financial Network, member NASD/SIPC..

The IRS has begun its Compliance Research Examinations, better known as the “Audits From Hell.” These are intensive tax audits used to gather compliance statistics. They are like the Nielsen ratings for TV. If you are a Nielsen family, they assume that whatever program you watch represents what millions of others watch. It’s the same thing with these compliance audits. Each audit provides the IRS with an idea of how accurately millions more of us in a similar income category report our income and deductions.

For those with IRAs, particularly retirees, this could potentially be very costly. It appears that the IRS has made Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs) from IRAs a priority item.

IRA owners who reach the age of 70 must take the first RMD by the end of the year they turn 70 or take two distributions by the end of the next year. Each year thereafter, that IRA owner must take out a minimum amount based on specific IRS tables. If the minimum amount is not taken out, the IRA owner could be subject to a 50% penalty of the amount that was supposed to be taken.

For example, if John Smith had an IRA valued at $500,000 on January 1 of this year, and turned 70 this year, he would be obligated to take a distribution of $19,084. If he took out only $10,000, he would be subject to a 50% penalty ($9,084 times 50%) and be forced to take out the balance due. This mistake would cost him $4,541 in penalties, in addition to the taxes owed on the RMD.

Add to this penalty the fact that in 2004 custodians are mandated to provide the IRS with year-end values of all of your IRAs, and now the IRS has the information necessary to understand who should be penalized for improper RMDs.

The IRS rules go on to state that you are not required to take the RMD from each of your IRAs, just from the “pool” of all of your IRAs. Getting back to John, if he had five IRAs with $100,000 in each, he could actually distribute the RMD of $19,084 from one of the IRAs, without touching the four others. So which one should you take your RMD from? One that is generating income or growth? Integrating investment planing with IRA planning has never been more important.

Distributions from IRAs have been a source of great confusion. Valuing the IRAs, taking the correct distribution in the proper year, taking the RMD from the proper IRA are variables that need to be considered to maximize the value of your IRAs and minimize potential penalties.

With the new regulations and oversight, it has become more important than ever to consult a professional who is fully versed in these retirement guidelines, be it your tax advisor or Certified Financial Planner. By doing so, you could avoid thousands of dollars of penalties.
Make it your New Year’s resolution to upgrade the management of your IRA.

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Creating a Plan for Your Old Age

NEAL MANDELBAUM
Special to the Jewish Journal

Neal Mandelbaum, Certified Senior Advisor and specialist in insurance (including annuities, life and disability) is the principal of Fairway Financial in Danvers. For more information, call 978-777-6433, or see www.fairway-financial.com.

Two in five Americans will enter a nursing home, and many others will need community-based services at some time in their lives. Yet 72 per cent of Americans say they are unable to pay for long-term care without outside help. For many, that help will come only after they have exhausted their personal assets and are forced into poverty.

It’s important to begin planning for old age needs at least by age 40. By age 50, you should own private long-term care insurance (premiums rise steeply the later you buy it). The two most important issues in qualifying for coverage are age and health risk.

The key variables in creating a long-term care plan — and the basis on which to evaluate competing plans — include:
1. Determining the kind or kinds of care sought: home care, nursing home, and/or assisted living.
2. Length of coverage desired: lifetime, 2, 3, 4, etc. years.
3. Elimination period: 30, 60, 90, 180 days.
4. Inflation protection: compounded or simple interest.
5. Daily benefit: 100% of care or with co-payment of X amount.

These are the basics for constructing your long-term care plan. Many people want long-term care provided by the government without having to pay for it. The government’s own programs, Medicare and Medicaid, have been heavily taxed over the decades since their creation in 1965. They also have heavy limitations and qualifications on their benefits. Qualifying for Medicaid quickens your admission to a nursing facility. Long-term care insurance gives you more options for where and how care can be received.

We need to take the risk of needing long-term care seriously and investigate private insurance as a means to protect against the risk and cost of long-term care.

As you age, you will want to: have access to quality care, asset protection to pass on to your heirs, avoid becoming a burden to your family, maintain control and independence, and assure peace of mind. For all these reasons, long-term care protection should be a priority in your estate plan.

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Arts & Entertainment

Sholom Aleichem: Capturing the Wit and the Wisdom

MARK ARNOLD
Jewish Journal Staff

Sholom Aleichem: Now You’re Talking, starring Saul Reichlin. Through February 1 at the DR2 Theater, 103 E. 15th St., New York, NY 10003 (Union Square). Performances Tuesday-Saturday at 8 p.m. Sunday at 1 & 5 p.m. Seats $36. Tickets at Telecharge.com: 212-239-6200.

NEW YORK — The first stage production of Sholom Aleichem’s stories, since Fiddler on the Roof almost 40 years ago, opened here December 3 to deafening silence. Not a word in the Jewish press; hardly a word in the secular press.

Maybe that will change now that The New York Times, on December 25, gave a flattering review to the one-man show by master storyteller Saul Reichlin, Sholom Aleichem: Now You’re Talking!

Reichlin, a veteran British actor, weaves nine of the beloved Yiddish writer’s yarns into an evening’s entertainment with the barest of stage props: a desk, a chair, a samovar, and a glass of water, set against an artist’s surreal rendering of a scene depicting life in the shtetl.

But who needs props? In baggy black pants, black tunic, boots, and cap, Reichlin captures the wit and wisdom Aleichem’s timeless stories with true Yiddish feeling, his body language and facial expressions bringing to each vignette just the right note to evoke the desired response.

And the stories do resonate: the poor Russian peasant who knocks on the door of the Rothschilds, offering the secret to eternal life — for a price; Meier and Schneier who fight for the shul seat closest to the eastern wall; the Lithuanian Jew passing through the village whose gift of gelt mysteriously disappears — if it was there to begin with. And of course the most famous of all the characters, Tevya the Dairyman, who dreams of what he could become if he were a rich man.

Reichlin, a native of South Africa, discovered Sholom Aleichem’s stories quite by accident. Half Russian himself and a first-generation Diaspora Jew, he was visiting relatives in Capetown where he spied a collection of the stories on a bookshelf. “Can I borrow it?” he asked. “Keep it,” they answered. And so he did, later adapting for the stage a dozen stories from the body of the writer’s collected works.

Two years ago, Reichlin presented the show for seven weeks at London’s King’s Head (off-West End) Theater, winning nominations for the United Kingdom’s Ethic & Multi-Cultural Media Award (he lost out to Denzel Washington) and as the artist “who contributed most to the Jewish community.” For the American run, he made some dramatic changes based on the advice of U.S. director Derek Goldman, a playwright and artistic director on the faculty in Performance Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. (In the interest of full disclosure, please note that this reviewer is related to Goldman by marriage).

Reichlin hopes to take the show on the road when the New York run ends. He has already presented it at several Jewish institutions — community centers, retirement homes, and schools. Though the world they depict is lost, the stories themselves still have a universal appeal. “How,” asks Reichlin in a post-production interview, “can the next generation understand what it was like if we don’t give them the stories?”

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Romance and Dating: Jewish Advice Sites

MARK MIETKIEWICZ

If you search for the words “Jewish” and “Dating” on the Internet, be prepared to suck down a giant vortex of shadchanim (matchmakers) and know-it-alls who are ready to pair you with your bashert (destined mate). Of course, matchmakers are part of a time-honored Jewish tradition and they can fulfill an important role. Whether or not you’re getting outside assistance, you could benefit from the sage advice on the Internet from people who want help you find romance.

But with so many people trying to sell you something online, free, quality advice is hard to find. I’ll try to point you in the right direction.
The aish.com website has a huge amount of advice for those seeking love and romance – not surprising when you consider that Aish HaTorah are the people who created SpeedDating. The articles are written by rabbis, rebbetzins, psychotherapists, lawyers and social workers in an informative and sometimes blunt tone. “Many (not all) men who are single and in their 30s have become more one-dimensional as they age.” The Dating Advice section has articles on “Why Doesn’t He Call?” “Lying on a Dating Profile” and the always popular “Getting the Guy to Budge.”

Great Dating Wisdom addresses some of the eternal mysteries: “Does love conquer all?” “How do we know when to hang on and when to let go?” and “How to survive getting dumped” (Some tips: learn what you can and move on, and resist the urge to wallow). The SpeedDating article about “Inappropriate Date Topics” (pointedly illustrated with a can brimming with worms) has some words of wisdom: the goal of a date is to create an accurate impression of yourself. Admitting to personal disappointments, failed past relationships and the details of your family’s dynamics may be factual but won’t paint a proper picture of who you really are. [www.aish.com/dating/]

The GenerationJ Relationships Archive holds many other thought-provoking articles. In “My Male Yenta,” Anne Miller shares the following: “ I have my very own personal yenta, and he is a stocky middle-aged married man named Ron.” How successful is Ron? You’ll have to sign on to find out. In “I Wore a Wonderbra to the Matzah Ball,” Caroline Tiger tells of her first foray to a Jewish singles event after having avoiding that kind of gathering for most of her life. And in “The Rabbi,” Allison Kaplan attends a lecture by Rabbi Akiva Tatz who explains that relationships require work especially when they have lost their initial sheen. Kaplan wasn’t convinced. “Actually, I found myself thinking more about an ex-boyfriend than my fiancé. Thinking that if I had sought Rabbi Tatz’s advice way back during those terrible times, I might still be stuck in that dead-end relationship.” [www.GenerationJ.com/archive/relationships/articles.html]

Their Feb. 2001 issue of GenerationJ has more relationship articles including “A Match Made in Henna” and a lovely ode to long-time romance, Ted Roberts’ “A Fifty Year Waltz, and Counting.” [www.GenerationJ.com/archive/02_2001/feb.html]

While you’re in the neighborhood, check out GenerationJ’s sister publications, JVibe [www. jvibe.com], teen-written JewZ.com [jewz.com/] along with MzVibe for Ophira’s advice column, MzGuided. [www.mzvibe.com/mzplaced/mzplaced17.shtml]

Enough with the advice! If you want to take a break from all the tips and guidance and want to practice what you’ve learned, check out whether there are any singles events going on in your town or across the world. [www.jewishnetwork.com/] Or tag along with Sandra Hurtes as she finds out about Jewish spiritual retreats for singles, surveys the hottest books for Jewish singles and checks out what it’s like to register for an online dating service. [www.jwmag. org/articles/07Summer03/p24.asp]

Finally, like any good Jewish website, GenerationJ exhorts us to look to the Torah to learn “The Top 14 Biblical Ways to Get a Wife.” [www. GenerationJ. com/archive/relationships/joke.html]

Mark Mietkiewicz is a Toronto-based Internet producer who writes, lectures and teaches about the Jewish Internet. He can be reached at highway@rogers.com.

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Editorial

2004: Looking Backward, and Ahead

This is the time of the year when editorialists look back and tick off all the things to be thankful for. Since we figure that your list is as good as ours, we prefer to use this space for other purposes.

As 2004 begins, it seems that there are more things than ever to be fearful or concerned about. Like the flu, which is hitting us with with more than its usual winter wallop, and mad cow disease, which managed to vault the Atlantic and land on our shores after an absence in Europe of several years. These on top of our worries about terrorism, AIDS, homelessness (including Jewish homelessness), and continued unemployment; it’s great that our long-awaited economic recovery is gathering steam, but it’s a less joyous recovery if it’s a jobless one.

We’re newly fearful of anti-Semitism: not the old kind, which sought to rid the world of Jews, but the new kind, which seeks to rid the world of the Jewish state. We find it alarming that the infamous forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, is being served up to a new generation of gullible citizens in Egypt and Syria; that Arab television stations spew out a steady stream of vile anti-Jewish propaganda; that Palestinian suicide bombers are still treated as heroes. We find it incomprehensible that Europeans count Israel a greater threat to world peace today than any other country, and that the United Nations — formed to promote world peace — has become a hotbed of anti-Israel sentiment.

We’re glad that for the first time since 1979, we don’t have Saddam Hussein to contend with this year, and that George Bush’s foreign policy has newly humbled Libyan strongman Mohammar Qaddafi. Is it too much to hope that the new year will bring Osama Bin Laden to his knees as well?

Now for some New Year’s resolutions: We want to explore new frontiers in Jewish education, Jewish life and living; we want to get more readers into our pages; explore alternatives to how we do things now — from managing our small workforce to how we’re financed, to how we cover communities and which communities we cover.

If things ain’t broke, that’s no reason not to improve them. Here’s to improvement — in our lives and yours, in 2004.

Supporting the Journal Financially

This newspaper is sent to every Jewish home in 26 communities north of Boston every two weeks free of charge. Someone once said that we are the glue that holds the Jewish community together. But, truth to tell, we have trouble paying our bills.

We’re supported by advertising, a grant from the Jewish Federation of the North Shore — and reader contributions. In 2003 those contributions ranged from $18 to $5,000. As the new year begins, we’re appealing for help once again.

If you value this paper — winner of six national or regional awards in 2003 — please support us with your dollars. We list contributors periodically. And we’ve included an envelope to make giving (slightly) easier. We can’t continue without you. Thanks.

— Mark R. Arnold

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Local Columnists

Don’t Pardon Muammar Qaddafi

“Girls Rule; Boys Drool” is one slogan being used by 7-year-old girls as they begin their ascent into love and war between the sexes. My 7-year-old granddaughter, Emily, gleefully uttered those words again last week.

I wish she hadn’t. Because a few days later, Muammar Qaddafi, president of Libya, proposed giving up all research and development of weapons of mass destruction in exchange for the United States ending the embargo on its oil and other trade.

What entered my mind, thanks to Emily, was “Oil Rules; Politicians Drool.”

Qaddafi masterminded the terrorist downing of Pan Am 103, over Lockerbie, Scotland, with the loss of 270 people, including 35 students from Syracuse University, on December 21, 1988. Finally, in March 2002, a Libyan intelligence operative finished all his appeals to the guilty decision and life sentence he received and entered a Scottish jail. Two months later, Libya paid $2.7 billion to the families of those murdered in a second gesture to end the boycott.

Now comes the Qaddafi final proposal to fully reenter, dare I call it, the family of nations. The father of one victim, interviewed on TV, said last week: “I favor a process of restoring Libya and its people to the world community, but not while Qaddafi is president. Would we have accepted Hitler’s promise to cease and desist in return for his continuation as chancellor and normalization with Germany?”

Dan and Susan Cohen of Cape May, New Jersey, who lost their only child, Theodora, on Pan Am 103, said things still haven’t been put right as far as Lockerbie is concerned. Dan Cohen says history will not be clear until there is a full accounting of who planned the attack and who carried it out.

After Qaddafi’s proposal, President Bush encouraged other recalcitrant national leaders seeking to possess weapons of mass destruction to follow Libya’s example.

Susan Cohen responded: “I don’t want to see my president embracing the murderer of my daughter. He said we have to get terrorists. You can’t just pick and choose which terrorists to go after. Qaddafi is as guilty of terrorism against America as Saddam Hussein ever was.”
President Bush will make the decision to extend or end the embargo. Mr. Bush, as governor of Texas, with the nation’s largest number of people on death row, strongly supported the death penalty, particularly for murderers.

Muammar Qaddafi is clearly responsible for one of the largest killings in an anti-American terrorist attack. However, one difference exists between Texas murderers and Qaddafi: Oil. Libya is the world’s 7th largest oil producer.

You guessed it: I side with the Cohen family.

What is this long war against terrorism all about if the United States removes the embargo on Libya for oil reasons while Qaddafi is still in charge? Qaddafi is a man whose record would not lend credence to any promise about anything, let alone weapons of mass destruction.
Moreover, a dozen years ago, Qaddafi was on the short list of the top five terrorists in the world. He trained, equipped and financially supported terrorism.

To give him a free pass today, in effect a pardon, for any reason, let alone a verbal promise, not too difficult to break himself or by a successor, would be a counterproductive and stupid foreign policy decision of immense consequence.

Terrorists don’t take laughing pictures; they are too busy with death. Should Qaddafi be pardoned, you will see their biggest laugh. Can you imagine bin Laden offering to call off future terrorist attacks in return for his removal from the $25 million reward and wanted lists? If Qaddafi gets it, why not bin Laden?

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Ten Commandments for 2004

STACEY MARCUS

Stacey Marcus runs Grapevine Communications and is also a freelance writer who resides in Marblehead. She invites readers to contact her at grapecom@aol.com.

Is it my imagination, or didn’t we just do the New Year thing back in September? Oh, I forgot: That was when we dug deep in our souls and did the self-reflection thing. Three months later, it’s time for a new set of goals that generally are more focused on losing weight and gaining power — the important stuff.

January bums me out for a host of reasons. Forget the fact that my husband starts in with the “no junk in the house” mantra, the dog has to be trotted through the Arctic and my only goal is to get back into my flannel pjs. It’s the flock of over-zealous folks in the free world that are cramping my style. The ones that push in front of you in the grocery store to get the last fat-free yogurt or cut you off for a parking space because, hey, they really are more important than you and they report to a higher authority …themselves.

I decided that 2004 is the year we really need to fight back before our planet is inhabited by a species that hasn’t discovered that the only muscle that really matters is the one beating on the left side of their chest.

I created a set of ten simple rules that will make our world a little better. Perhaps it’s naïve to think the planet will be enhanced by my ideas, but my neck of the woods will be a heck of a lot better. Here they are:

1. Thou shalt not change the time setting on the fitness machines when you think no one is looking.
2. Thou shalt not study food ingredient labels longer than you study the way your child looks at you.
3. Thou shalt not talk loudly on the cell phone in public places and cast dirty looks when you catch people listening.
4. Thou shalt not let a door swing in the face of an elderly person just because you are in a rush — unless it’s for a one-day sale.
5. Thou shalt not perform random acts of kindness only when other people are looking.
6. Thou shalt not ignore crosswalks, seatbelt laws and red lights.
7. Thou shalt not indulge in public forums on Weight Watchers points and the value of soy, and then retreat to the comfort of home and get cozy with Ben and Jerry.
8. Thou shalt not sneer condescendingly at those “poor” folks that don’t know the difference between a Coach bag and a coach seat.
9. Thou shalt not forget to replace the toilet paper roll.
10. Thou shalt focus less on what’s missing in your life and more on the gifts that unfold each day.

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Slice of Life
‘A Walk and a Half’

PHYLLIS DINERMAN
Jewish Journal North of Boston

@Phyllis Dinerman 2003. Phyllis Dinerman is a resident of Marblehead and Boynton Beach, FL.

According to the Sun Sentinel, a Miami based newspaper, a Buddhist monk completed a seven-year walking journey. The Buddhist priest, dubbed the Marathon Monk, finished a ritual that took seven years and covered a distance that equaled a trip around the world. He wore only a flowing robe and flimsy straw sandals.

He did not take any form of transportation. He walked the entire journey. Ken-a hora!

I cannot imagine taking a trip wearing only a robe and sandals. First of all, I only wear my robe when I’m sick and I’m walking around the house. I would never let people see what I look like in my robe. And, I don’t even own straw sandals. They must irritate the feet terribly. I do have good walking shoes, but they wouldn’t look too great with an evening dress.

This monk carried only candles, a prayer book and a sack of vegetarian food. I would carry a cell phone, money, and my pills and vitamins. Oh, I’d carry water too. His regimen was exhausting. He ran, he prayed 250 times a day (we are lucky when we get a minyan twice a day); and he had to chant mantras for nine days without food, water or sleep. Give me a break! How did he do it? What sheer will and determination. But why did he do it? The article never gave any specific reason other than it is a ritual.

Jewish people go on journeys as well, and I don’t mean pleasure trips. And rituals, we have more than enough rituals. We certainly have one of the most popular religious journeys. It’s called “Let’s Go Israel,” and it is one of the first things our children hear when they start to walk and talk.

How many of our children visited Israel at 16 years of age, when it was considered safe to visit Israel? I know mine did and they still talk about the trip to this day. Of all the trips my husband and I have taken, our visit to Israel remains the most vivid — and beloved.

The monk took quite a journey. AARP would never advertise in the Elderhostel pamphlet for this trip, and not many individuals would have the fortitude to even contemplate it. I couldn’t even consider it. Seven years shlepping around with only the clothes on my back. It’s exhausting enough to go away for a week. I commend this Buddhist Monk.

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Op-Ed

Urban Legends of Vermont

JONATHAN S. TOBIN

Jonathan S.Tobin is executive director of the Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia. He can be reached via e-mail at jtobin@jewishexponent.com

The first time I saw Howard Dean, he was looking very lonely. The occasion was the first presidential candidates debate in 1996, when the dead-in-the-water Bob Dole faced off in Hartford, Conn., with President Clinton.

After the debate, I spent a couple of hours in “Spin Alley,” an open area in the huge press room where luminaries from the major parties, including the then little-known governor of Vermont, gathered to give their impressions about the event we just witnessed. The Democrats had the idea of having each of their celebrity spinners accompanied by an aide, who held a sign with their man’s name so as to alert the media to their presence. But while you had to elbow your way through determined throngs of scribblers to get nose-to-nose with various governors, senators and members of the Cabinet present, the path to the governor of the Green Mountain State was open.

Dean’s aide waved his sign in vain, but few, if any, members of the media cared to talk to him that night, leaving the scrappy physician-turned-politician on the sidelines, looking as forlorn and frustrated as a wallflower at the junior prom.

No one would have predicted that a little more than seven years later, the same guy who was snubbed by the press corps would be on the verge of becoming the Democratic Party’s nominee for president of the United States. Though no votes have yet been cast, right now it appears that the only candidate who can stop the Dean juggernaut is Dean himself.

Foot-in-the-mouth syndrome
That’s because the candidate’s offhand remarks now get the sort of attention he once craved. Dean’s candidacy has famously been built on the effective use of the Internet, but that same medium can also be used against him, as his campaign recently found out. The cause of their concern is a mass e-mail that cites two recent Dean quotes, and concludes that no one who “has any love for America and Israel” could vote for Dean since he has “promised” not to support the Jewish state.

The comments were Dean’s assertion that “the United States needs an evenhanded approach in the [Arab-Israeli] conflict,” and another where he referred to members of Hamas as “soldiers” in a war against Israel. The mass distribution of the e-mail was enough to send Dean’s campaign into action to counter it and, curiously, even got a response from the Anti-Defamation League and various Jewish Community Relations Councils around the country, agencies that don’t normally leap to the defense of political candidates. The e-mail was roundly denounced as an “urban legend.” Dean himself claimed that it must have been the work of Karl Rove, President Bush’s political mastermind.

Why all the fuss about an e-mail?
Most of it is driven by the fear shared by many in the Democratic Party that Bush is heading for a far larger share of the Jewish vote next November than any Republican has received since Ronald Reagan back in 1980. The Democrats will need one of their key core constituencies to stay loyal if they are to have a chance to unseat the incumbent. But was the e-mail merely partisan propaganda?
The answer is mixed. Dean does now say many of the right things about the enduring nature of the U.S.-Israel relationship, Palestinian terrorism and Israel’s right to defend itself. And, for the sake of argument, let’s assume that Dean’s use of the term “evenhanded” was as innocent as he now claims it to be. But even if we stick with Dean’s official policy statements on Israel, some serious questions remain.

Clinton as a role model
Dean claims that on the Israel issue, he will model his presidency on that of Bill Clinton, and thinks Bush has erred at times by allowing the parties to negotiate without U.S. involvement. That would mean a Dean presidency might repeat many of the same mistakes that helped bring about the latest Palestinian terror war and left Israel stranded.

Would Dean, as Clinton did, invite Yasser Arafat to the White House more times than any other foreign leader? Others might ask why he thinks it’s so important to use the power of the presidency to create a Palestinian state when he was so reluctant to use U.S. power against Saddam Hussein? Why did he name as one of his foreign-policy advisers Clyde Prestowitz, an author who advocates ending all U.S. aid to Israel to pressure it to make concessions?

And, most importantly, how will a candidate whose base of support is on the left-wing of the political spectrum — where hostility to Israel is now commonplace — deal with the anti-Israel sentiments expressed by many of his supporters? The truth is that there are a lot of reasons, other than a few stray remarks, to question the direction a Dean presidency might take on the Middle East. And voters who care about Israel — Jews and non-Jews alike — have the responsibility to try to make him answer these questions.

That’s not to say that Bush should have a free ride from Jewish voters. Far from it, since Bush has himself, with his road map peace plan, repeated many of the mistakes Clinton made, mistakes he promised not to imitate. But whether or not you think he has a realistic shot at defeating Bush next November — and I doubt that he does — the focus now must be on pinning down Dean. As he moves toward the nomination, it’s time to stop relying on e-mails and spin, and think seriously about what a President Dean might do.

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The Duty To Question

JONATHAN FRIENDLY

Jonathan Friendly is the national editor of Jewish Renaissance Media

President George W. Bush has told the nations of the world that if they are not for us in the war on terror, they are against us. That’s an oversimplification and one that has already angered a number of our long-time allies, who have profound disagreements with us, not about the need to fight terrorism, but the methods that we employ.

The same problem confronts American Jews who want to be supporters of Israel, but who feel that some of the tactics of the government of Ariel Sharon are not in the best long-term interest of the Jewish state.

Like many Jewish Israelis, significant numbers of American Jews are concerned about the security fence and the endless checkpoints that stifle Palestinian life, about the targeted assassinations that often bring death to innocent bystanders, about the failure to stop the growth of the settlements and most of all about Sharon’s apparent lack of interest in any sort of peace process. They believe that these policies are wrong in both material and symbolic effects.

It’s not that they agree with the description voiced by many Arabs and Moslems: that Israel is a racist, colonialist power in league with the United States to plunder the Mideast. It’s that, as the violence continues, they see too many people in Europe, in Canada and Latin America, and even in the United States beginning to accept that description.

But these Jews — among them some of the leaders of our communities — also worry that if they speak out about their uneasiness they will be giving comfort to Israel’s real enemies who would not hesitate to misinterpret any remarks: “See, even the Jews admit that Sharon’s wrong.” They fret that dissent could undermine the majority of what is right and necessary in Israeli policies aimed at protecting citizens from the suicide bombers and other terrorists who have made this intifada so awful.

Make no mistake: Israel must defend itself from Palestinian terror, but it will take compromise to rouse the stirrings of peace. The tension was apparent during the United Jewish Communities’ General Assembly meeting in Israel in November. Some delegates felt the tours they took and the speakers they heard were giving them only what was right in Israeli life, not what is in dispute. Some would have liked, for example, to hear from the reservists who refuse to serve in the West Bank or to have seen close up the path of the security fence through the West Bank.

We take it as an article of faith that principled dissent is worthy, even in times of war. We do not harm Israel by asking that it explain its positions. We are not being disloyal if we ask for proof that, for example, the continued expansion of settlements will help Israeli security or that the route of the security fence will not become a unilateral permanent boundary.

If Israel cannot convince its supporters of the correctness of its positions, how will it convince the skeptics in the rest of the world? We don’t embrace dissent for the sake of dissent, and we do believe that American Jewish critics of Israel must also show that they really do believe in the Jewish state and aren’t dissenting just to provoke.

But we don’t think that they are being disloyal when they share their heartfelt qualms. We would worry a lot more if they bought into the “you’re for us or you’re against us” rhetoric.

Letters/Commentary

Remark Needs Clarification

In an article entitled, “Interfaith Families Deal with the December Dilemma,” (Jewish Journal, Dec.19) by Susan Jacobs, Rabbi Myron Geller jokes that a Jewish child who has a Christmas tree in the house “could turn out to be a Lubavitcher.”

Clearly, Rabbi Geller meant this in praise of the work of Chabad Lubavitch, a Jewish outreach organization dedicated to bringing Judaism back to every Jew, especially the unaffiliated or alienated. However, the remark was out of context and could easily have been misunderstood as a gratuitous slander of Chabad.

As an editor at the Jewish Journal, Jacobs had an obligation to preserve the integrity of the article and promote religious harmony. Rabbi Geller’s “joke” was confusing, negative, and added nothing to the article.

As we light the last candles on our Menorahs, the message of the Chanukah lights seems more important than ever. A Jewish people, united in faith, win a war against religious persecution and light candles to celebrate G-d’s presence amongst them. At a time when anti-Semitism is on the rise around the globe, we must stand united as a Jewish people. I believe that the Jewish Journal can be a leading force behind a diverse, but unified Jewish community.

This year, Chabad of the North Shore opened a branch in Peabody. By next Chanukah, G-d willing, we hope to open Chabad of Cape Ann. As we continue to serve the educational needs of the Jewish community, we commit ourselves to the message of the Chanukah lights: To create light where there is darkness, to ignite the spark within the soul of every Jew, and to fight intolerance with unity and warmth.

Rabbi Yossi and Layah Lipsker
Chabad of the North Shore

Partnership is Best Answer to Assimilation Crisis

Building a Jewish future on a centrally directed, national foundation of Jewish education, as proposed by Michael Steinhardt (Jewish Journal Dec. 5) is a grand vision with lofty goals, which will take years and hundreds of millions of dollars to implement.

In the meantime, an actual solution to the assimilation crisis facing the American Jewish community is being successfully implemented by 23 communities north of Boston, thanks to a partnership between the Jewish Federation of the North Shore (Massachusetts) and the Robert I. Lappin Foundations. This successful approach can be replicated in every Jewish community.

As called for by Mr. Steinhardt, this partnership has been providing a free Israel experience for its teens for nearly a decade. In addition, it provides a unique model of free Jewish family education that engages the entire family in Jewish living and learning, not just children. This model, which is designed to enhance and instill Jewish pride, lays the groundwork upon which a foundation of Jewish education can be built.

A Federation-funded partnership can enable every Jewish community to give this precious gift of Jewish pride. Successful programs, such as a free teen trip to Israel or Eastern Europe, with potent pre and post trip activities, instill and enhance Jewish pride in our children. As proven by our community, investing in this approach is affordable and replicable, a truly practical solution to our concerns of a generation in crisis.

Prideful Jewish children are more open to Jewish education, and prideful Jewish adults more supportive of it. The Jewish Federation of the North Shore has a formula that is helping to keep our children Jewish. The successful combination of effective Jewish educational components for adults and children, free religious items for authentic Jewish living, free programming, and community connections, results in excellent Jewish programming, which has the capacity to transform passive Jews into caring and proud ones.

In our Federation community of about 20,000 Jewish people, thousands have participated in our programs and countless lives have been Jewishly enhanced, to the extent, we believe, of seriously challenging, if not reversing, the trend of intermarriage and assimilation.

The programs of the Jewish Continuity Committee and the Federation have a clear direction and purpose and are proving to be successful, as children are able to confidently answer the question, Why be Jewish? They understand their connection to their heritage, to their people, and to the Land of Israel, their legacy. The greatest gift a community can give to a newborn is the gift of Jewish pride.

Merritt A. Mulman
Executive Director, Jewish Federation of the North Shore
Deborah L. Coltin
Director, Jewish Continuity Committee
Salem

Chair of Y2I Thanks Community

After two years, I am stepping down as chairperson of the Y2I program but will remain a member of the committee and chaperone on this year’s trip to Israel in late July. To the students and parents who sent me a wonderful gift, and to the community, Bob Lappin and the Federation, I want to thank you for the opportunity you have given me.

What will always stay in my heart is the wonderful year I spent with the students as part of the Jewish Federation of the North Shore’s Y2I program. The time before the 2003 trip to Eastern Europe — getting to know each other and building trust, and the wonderful two weeks we spent together traveling on the Y2I European Adventure last summer — are precious to me.

Each one of the students has a special place in my heart. I feel fortunate that I was able to get to know so many amazing people. I often sit in front of my computer, drifting away and thinking about little special moments we shared.

I will miss sharing Shabbat together in Europe, watching you singing and dancing with so much enthusiasm. I will miss walking hand in hand with you, not saying much, but with expressions on our faces that told all. I will miss the long bus rides, and the deep conversation with many of you. And, of course, I will miss our Israeli friends that contributed so much to our trip. Thank you for allowing me to share this wonderful adventure.

While I am sad our year together is over, I am not going away. We all live here on the North Shore and I comfort myself by knowing I will see you around and we will not lose touch with each other.

Rachel Jacobson
Swampscott

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