Regina Mansdorf came to Jersey City in 1947 after surviving World War II. She married, moved to Brooklyn, and then moved to Jerusalem 24 years ago, to an apartment near the official president’s residence. When President George Bush visited his Israeli counterpart last spring, Mansdorf had something to tell him: “I’m still American. Israel is my country, but America is a part of us. We survived the Holocaust and came to America. We got our jobs in America. We made our money in America. We bought a house in America. I get Social Security from America. If not for America, I wouldn’t be able to live here.”
JERUSALEM – Former Teaneck resident Rabbi Aaron Tirschwell, director of Israel Operations for the National Council of Young Israel, recently returned from a fund-raising trip for one of his projects, Eye Squad, which offers services to North American teens in Israel during the year after high school.
Hannah Schein, investigations specialist for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, has been a key figure in PETA’s ongoing undercover work at AgriProcessors, the Iowa kosher slaughterhouse where violations of laws protecting both animals and humans have become international news.
My grandfather’s grandfather clock stands against a column in our new apartment, the proud survivor of an 80-year journey from Pennsylvania to New York to New Jersey to Israel.
JERUSALEM – Watching her youngest son and his family descending the steps of a jumbo jet emblazoned with the Nefesh B’Nefesh logo, June Glazer was reminded of the day he was born 28 years ago.
Paul Tyras had worked in the motion-picture industry in his native Czechoslovakia, but he waited tables after arriving in the newborn state of Israel in 1949. Less than five years later, however, he was back in the saddle, serving as production manager for the first feature-length English movie made entirely in Israel.
The medical catastrophe that started the chain of events leading to Shalva’s founding by Malki and Kalman Samuels was not the only time the center has been touched by disaster.
Yossi Samuels, 31, envelops a visitor’s hand in his own. Into his left palm, a translator rapidly spells the visitor’s name — A-V-I-G-A-Y-I-L, in Hebrew. A smile spreading across his face, Yossi dances his fingers in response. “He wants you to ask him questions,” his companion interprets.
These family camp photos were taken over several years. Photos courtesy of Avi Picard
You might call it an extreme family reunion — an event far beyond a Sunday afternoon of picnics and Frisbee.
Every other summer, Aliza and Avi Picard — among other relatives from France, Switzerland, Israel, the United States, Britain, and Belgium — send their children to a two-week family camp ("familiienlagger") in the Alps.
Avi Picard explained that the camp was an outgrowth of a foundation started in 1901 by his ancestor, Samuel Bollag, a Swiss Jew. Bollag, then 80 years old and the father of 1' children, intended the foundation ("Stiftung") as a vehicle for aiding family members and maintaining contact between them as they started moving to distant places.
See the terrace on the top left, with the Israeli flag blowing from it? That's the Leichmans' temporary apartment.
I have just celebrated my first birthday in Israel.
Last year, the date was marked with a combined birthday/goodbye bash at my niece's house less than 10 days before we left Teaneck forever.
And that means we just marked our first anniversary as Israelis.
It was last Aug. 7 that we arrived to much fanfare at Ben-Gurion Airport. Among the well-wishers who came to greet us was Shelley Brinn, the immigrant absorption coordinator in our new hometown of Ma'aleh Adumim.
