The Englewood Public Library has been awarded $',500 from the American Library Association (ALA) and Nextbook for a five-session book discussion program on Jewish literature at the library in the fall. This is the second grant awarded to the library as part of ALA's "Let's Talk about It: Jewish Literature" program.
While — more than a year after a near-fatal car accident — Arthur and Joyce Joseph are still living outside the area, the couple's ties to the local community remain strong.
Longtime leaders in the Bergen County Jewish community, the Josephs, who now live in Maryland, near their daughter, will be honored later this year for their activities on behalf of Jewish Educational Services of UJA Federation of Northern New Jersey.
The Bergen County High School of Jewish Studies, which enrolls nearly 300 students in grades eight through 1' each year, will expand its programs in September to a satellite campus at Temple Emanuel of the Pascack Valley in Woodcliff Lake. In addition to its Sunday morning programs at the Frisch School in Paramus, where it has been for 33 years, the school will begin a Monday night series in Temple Emanuel's Hebrew school classrooms, beginning at 6:45 p.m.
Mimi Lakind donates an old recording to Nathan Tinanoff, director of Judaica Sound Archives.
Wayne resident Mimi Lakind knew about the Judaica Sound Archives (JSA) from an article she read in The Jewish Standard some time ago. But she did not contact them until this past February, when she found herself in possession of eight or nine Yiddish and cantorial records.
Cleaning out the household of her husband's recently deceased 99-year-old aunt, Lakind found the collection of old recordings and, at first, was not sure what to do with them. Then she remembered the piece about the JSA at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton.
Jonathan and Rachel Strauss on their wedding day in '005.
Jonathan Strauss was reached by the woman who would become his wife '4 hours after he posted his picture on the Jewish dating Website http://www.frumster.com — even though he lived in New Jersey and she lived in Switzerland. A week after they first made contact by e-mail, she visited New York and they met. A few weeks later, he traveled to Switzerland, and they began a serious relationship.
Rachel Strauss said, "We were living in different countries and had no friends in common, so if it wasn't for Frumster, it is possible we might never have met."
Frumster calls itself the most successful Jewish dating-for-marriage service worldwide, on the basis of the number of marriages that have taken place (710 and counting) and the average number of members who get engaged or married each month (18).
Adi Israel and Tal Raviv, 15-year-old visitors from Nahariya.
Twelve members of an Israeli high school basketball team have spent the past 10 days visiting Bergen County and talking to other teenagers about what it was like to live through the recent war in a town close to the Lebanese border.
"I was afraid," confessed Tal Raviv, 15, a 10th-grader from Nahariya, UJA Federation of Northern New Jersey's "sister city" in Israel. After the shelling began, Tal was fortunate enough to escape to Eilat, a resort town in the south. His parents stayed behind in their town, which is a few miles from the northern border of Israel and Lebanon. About 900 bombs dropped on the town, doing "a lot of damage," according to Tal, speaking through an interpreter — his host "mom," Lisa Babin of Glen Rock, who is fluent in Hebrew. (Families in northwest Bergen County hosted the 1' visitors.)
Contestants in the ages 7-1' category line up with their latkes before the contest starts.
Sunday's latke-eating contest in Teaneck featured a number of surprises.
"The weather and sudden death," says Stuart Kahan, co-owner of Ma'adan delicatessen on Cedar Lane, which sponsored the contest and provided the freshly cooked latkes. Fortunately "sudden death" in this context doesn't refer to the health problems caused by eating so many latkes in a short time, but to the tie-breaker necessary to choose a winner in two of the three divisions of the contest, which was held for youth, teen, and adult contestants.
The weather was balmy for December, enabling the competition to be held outside for the first time, in the Chestnut Street pedestrian mall in the center of town. The event attracted about 70 people.
Walk into the Council Thrift Shop in Bergenfield, and you're immediately squeezed between racks and racks of jackets, pants, skirts, men's suits, and coats. The effect is both claustrophobic and exhilarating.
Women's hats perch on a stand in the storefront's window. Jeans in all shades of denim spill off a nearby rack. There are shelves of books and a case of Judaica, lots of dishes, linens, pictures, lamps, shoes, handbags, and many items that could only be characterized as bric-a-brac.
Twenty years ago this fall, three men from Teaneck put an ad in the Jewish Standard announcing a class for people who have "ever wondered what the high holiday services are all about."
