Michael Mark is a man of few words who works with his hands.
So when it came time to unburden himself of the memories he had kept to himself, he let his hands start the conversation.
Mark, 83, was born Mischka Margierowicz. He came from the city of Brody in what is now the Ukraine.
His children, Anne Benzachar of Fair Lawn and Benjamin Mark of Long Branch, like many children of survivors, didn’t hear his stories growing up or even later. Not until shortly before their mother’s death in 2008 did they convince her to tell her story to her children and grandchildren.
On a recent Sunday morning, Michael Mark sat at his kitchen table with his daughter Ann Benzachar and a reporter from the Jewish Standard and talked about his life as a teenager after the Nazis had conquered his town from the Soviets. He and his father, Benjamin, a sheet metal worker, lived in the Brody ghetto with special privileges that allowed them to come and go. His older brother was shot by the Ukrainians and his mother and sister had disappeared. As a talented craftsman, Benjamin was in charge of turning railway cars into mobile kitchens for the Germans and Michael was his apprentice.
Monday night in Wayne, Shomrei Torah, a Conservative congregation, celebrated a milestone: the completion of a three-year process to help it meet its goals. It is now applying for a $10,000 matching grant for that purpose. The congregation’s rabbi, Randy Mark, credited the Synagogue Leadership Initiative for helping the congregation “to identify areas in need of improvement. SLI helped us implement changes that made us a stronger congregation,” he said, “to do the things we should have been doing and weren’t. The entire congregation got together to discuss critical issues we were facing. We choose five areas: finance, membership, youth programs, ritual, and leadership development. We weren’t doing things as well as we should have, and what we learned from SLI will make us a healthier congregation.”
Ever wonder how an F-16 lands exactly where it’s supposed to on the deck of an aircraft carrier? Or why a bridge doesn’t collapse from the weight of rush hour traffic? Why doesn’t a boat sink when it’s loaded with cargo?
These were some of the challenges that more than 50 students in the fourth and fifth grades from Yeshivat Noam, Yavneh Academy, and Ben Porat Yosef, all day schools in Paramus, faced when they gathered at the Yeshivat Noam campus for a Science Olympiad. It pitted teams and students against each other, but in a new and unusual way designed to teach teamwork and collaboration as well as science.
More than 300 people filled the auditorium at Ma’ayanot Yeshiva High School for Girls in Teaneck on June 1 (renamed the Sinai Theater for that night) to watch 14 young actors from the Rabbi Mark & Linda Karasick Shalem High School present their version of the musical “Peter Pan,” a perennial childhood favorite. The audience roared with laughter when Peter returned to the Darling family home to search for his shadow and Wendy’s attempt to attach it by using spray-on glue failed — but happily, Velcro worked. Shadow in place, Peter lured the Darling children to Never Never Land, where the “lost boys” cracked wise and insisted that they didn’t want a mother. Captain Hook and his pirates had the audience singing their anthem along with them, and the audience cheered when Peter fought a duel with Hook to rescue Tiger Lily. The play was clearly a resounding success, made more so by the challenges these children faced.
If you find yourself in Manhattan on Sunday, June 5, finish your business, grab a bite, and head over to Symphony Space, on Broadway between 94th and 95th streets, where, at 4:30 p.m., the Jewish People’s Philharmonic Chorus is presenting a concert of Yiddish music that will make you want to sing along and tap your feet.
This year’s concert, “Love, Loss, Laughter: Favorite Yiddish Folk Songs” includes “Oyfn Pripetshik,” “Der Rebbe Elimelech,” “Rozhinkes Mit Mandlen, and “Zuntik Bulbes,” along with lesser-known songs that illustrate what life was like in Eastern Europe a century ago. The concert also includes newer Yiddish numbers, by Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman and the late Avrom Sutzkever, and one written by Josh Waletzky to commemorate 9/11. English translations and explanations are always provided, so the audience enjoys the concert and learns about the backgrounds and meanings of many great Yiddish songs.
As teens get set to head to college, where they’re likely to discover that Israel issues push hot buttons and controversy rages around them, community leaders and teachers have been trying to prepare them for what they will see and hear. During a Sunday bagel brunch at Ma’ayanot, 100 high school juniors and seniors were led through exercises designed to teach them to respond effectively to Israel’s critics and provided with folders packed with information. Joy Kurland, director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of UJA Federation of Northern New Jersey, called the meeting “just the first step in a program that we hope will prepare students” when they are confronted by “anti-Israel protestors on campuses around the country.”
It’s all about rebranding Israel,” Ambassador Ido Aharoni, consul general of Israel in New York, told a gathering at Jill and Seffie Janowski’s home in Cresskill on Saturday night. The event, attended by some 60 guests, was a fundraiser to help restore the thousands of acres of the Carmel forests devastated by fire. Art for a silent auction was donated by artists from Ein Hod, a village damaged in the flames. The event was also a remembrance of those who fell defending the State and a celebration of its independence.
As she introduced the speakers for the evening, Talia Tzour, the Jewish National Fund emissary in Bergen County, said the week sandwiched between Yom HaShoah and Yom Ha’Atzmaut traces the history of Israel’s existence and survival. “This is the week of tears of sorrow for what we lost and tears of joy for what we have achieved.”
As the rain drummed on the roof of the YM-YWHA of North Jersey in Wayne last Tuesday night, more than 95 students and parents of the Gerrard Berman Day School Solomon Schechter presented “How the Fiddler Got On the Roof” to a packed house. The play was written by fifth- through eighth-graders under the direction of their teachers.
Rachel Greenwald, one of the directors of the play and a member of the triumvirate responsible for it, told The Jewish Standard, “Our play is an imaginative history of theater from the time of the caveman to modern Broadway.”
The chants of morning services led by Cantor Ya’akov Cohen filled the new Sephardic sanctuary at Cong. Ahavath Torah in Englewood on Sunday as congregants slowly filled the synagogue and the women’s balcony. They were coming to celebrate the dedication of the Benaroya Sephardic Center, a project that took root in a neighbor’s basement 27 years ago and came to full fruition last weekend.
Rabbi Shmuel Goldin, who presides over one community with four separate congregations under the Ahavath Torah roof, noted in his homily that the completion of the Sephardic Center and sanctuary also completes the vision of a diverse, yet unified, Jewish community.
