It’s a rite of passage for Yavneh Academy’s eighth-graders that is now in its 30th year: creating and performing an original Holocaust-themed play before hundreds of people.
More than 1,400 people attended two performances of “Hiding the Hellers” last week presented by Yavneh’s 80 graduating middle-school students. Based on the book “Clara’s Story,” by Holocaust survivor Clara Heller Isaacman as told to Joan Adess Grossman, the play told of the Heller family and their trials and tribulations as they faced almost certain death from betrayers and Nazis in Antwerp, Belgium. By the end of the play, the head of the family had been murdered by a trusted colleague in the diamond business and Heshie, the oldest son, had died in a forced labor camp very near the end of the war.
Surrounded by maps and wielding a laser pointer to illustrate the complicated geography of Afghanistan, its volatile neighbors, and the hunt for Osama bin Laden, Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-8) held a press conference in his Paterson office last Friday on his March 30 fact-finding visit to the region and the American northern Africa command in Italy. He discussed the budding revolutions in the Arab countries and their causes and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and suggested ways to hasten the departure of American troops from Afghanistan and bring peace to the regions in turmoil.
He also strongly condemned the murders of members of the Fogel family in Itamar last month. “This family,” he said, “their throats were slashed…. There is nothing in the Koran that justifies such a barbarous act. The trouble comes from those — the true infidels — who pull lines out of context from the Koran.”
The New Jersey-Israel Commission was created in 1988, when New Jersey and the State of Israel forged a relationship, via executive order, to implement the goals of a Sister State Agreement “to promote the development of trade, culture, and educational exchanges; encourage the development of capital investment and joint business ventures; and foster a spirit of cooperation between the citizens of [in this case] the State of Israel and the State of New Jersey.”
On Monday, at a meeting in Trenton attended by some 75 people, the commission was officially reactivated by Gov. Chris Christie’s administration under the chairmanship of Mark Levenson, who was appointed in December. Levenson, president-elect of the State Association of New Jersey Jewish Federations and a veteran eight-year president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Clifton-Passaic, is a real estate attorney who chairs the Israel Business Practice Group at his law firm, Sills Cummis Gross PC of Newark.
Newark – A dialogue on Black-Jewish relations by the leaders of The Foundation for Ethnic Understanding — Rabbi Marc Schneier of the Hamptons Synagogue and hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons — expanded its focus with the unplanned arrival of Imam Feisal Rauf of the controversial Cordoba House planned for Lower Manhattan.
The event, which also featured Newark Mayor Cory Booker, was held at the Newark Art Museum and was attended by members of the Newark Municipal Council, local activists, and a handful of concerned Jews.
The Rosenbaum Yeshiva of North Jersey celebrated another milestone in its 73-year history on Sunday night with the dedication of its new wing on Kinderkamack Road in River Edge. The yeshiva dates to 1937, when Yeshiva of Jersey City and its eight students were housed in the Five Corners Shul. Today the school has almost 1,000 students.
Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and the event’s keynote speaker, quipped that his best title is saba (grandfather). Hoenlein’s grandchildren attend the school, and his family was present in the crowd of 150.
Hoenlein began with a survey of the role of education in Jewish history, but soon segued into politics. He cited examples of Palestinian attempts to delegitimize the State of Israel — from historical revisionism and Holocaust denial to the denial of Jewish connections to the Temple Mount, the Tomb of Rachel, and other Jewish heritage sites.
Naomi Graetz, the biblical scholar and author of groundbreaking books on the sources for coping with discomfiting Jewish topics like wife-beating, will talk about slavery and trafficking at the Rabbis for Human Rights North America Conference from Dec. 5 to 7 in New York. Graetz, who lives in Omer, a Beersheva suburb, was in Teaneck this week, preparing her presentation, scheduled for Monday afternoon.
Graetz explains that slavery and trafficking resonate from biblical times. Poverty and circumstance have always forced some women into the trade — where they are dehumanized. And while there are those who say prostitution is the world’s oldest profession, Graetz notes that pimps came first, and it is a very lucrative trade, indeed.
The mayor of Sderot, David Bouskila, and the award-winning journalist Linda Scherzer were guest speakers at a Jewish National Fund event held last week at the Englewood home of Doryne and Milton Davis. More than 40 people gathered there to learn about the current “matzav” (the situation) in the border town, a target of 8,600 Hamas rockets since 2001 — with 28 deaths reported by 2009, hundreds injured, millions in property damage, and thousands of people, including 3,000 children, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
The Fair Lawn Borough Council passed a non-binding, non-partisan resolution Tuesday night supporting Israel’s right to defend itself.
Sponsored by Fair Lawn resident Sam Heller, a member of Shomrei Torah Orthodox Congregation, the resolution had been moved to the top of the council’s agenda at its working session last Tuesday.
According to Heller, the idea came to him when he was driving home from Daughters of Miriam in Clifton, where he is a volunteer. The resolution — which includes a concise history of the State of Israel and describes in detail acts of terrorism by Hamas — states that Israel and Egypt imposed a blockade on Gaza to prevent Hamas from getting materials to use against Israel and other parties. It further states that only after cargoes are inspected may humanitarian aid supplies pass through to Gaza.
The e-mail came from a news source in Europe, who got it from a guy in New York, who got it from a couple in Los Angeles, who got it from a guy who “just received this from my friend in Israel, who moves in high circles, who heard it from a consultant to the United States who meets once a month with the president in the White House. He is in the know. This is what actually has happened with the relationship with Israel and the U.S.A. and it is not pretty.”
What followed was a litany of “crimes” by the U.S. administration against Israel. Some of them were based on kernels of truth that had been convoluted into “reports” designed to galvanize people into action by injecting them with the fear factor. One accusation was exaggerated truth. Others were patently ridiculous, some were oversimplifications of complicated diplomatic matters that are not controlled by anyone in the United States, and some were outright lies.
Charles and Rabbi Moshe Rosenbaum traveled from Geneva and Jerusalem to Paramus last Thursday to watch the Yavneh middle school graduating class perform “The Unlikely Hero,” a play honoring their father, Pinchas Rosenbaum, who saved Jews in Hungary during the Holocaust. In this production, Pinchas the younger was played by Leora Hyman and the older by Philip Meyer. The script was written and the scenery was designed and painted by members of the graduating class.
The script was adapted from interviews commissioned by the two brothers and their sister Leah, lifelong friends of Yavneh’s Rabbi Shmuel Burstein. Though he knew the family, the teacher first heard the story 25 years ago at dinner honoring the memory of Pinchas Rosenbaum, who died in 1980. According to Charles Rosenbaum, his father rarely spoke about his rescue efforts. But as his children traveled the world, they were approached by those he rescued who told them their stories.
