12 Feb 2012 | 19 Shevat 5772
Jeanette Friedman
LocalPublished: 27 September 2006
Boys in the first grade at Rosenbaum Yeshiva of North Jersey are proud of the mitzvot they and their schoolmates have done to help "tip the scale."
RIVER EDGE – Students at the Rosenbaum Yeshiva of North Jersey were thrilled
on Monday morning when they headed back to classes after the Rosh HaShanah break. The mitzvah scale in the main concourse, the centerpiece of a "Tip the Scale" program that teaches the children from grades one through eight about good deeds, repentance, and prayer, was weighed down by so many good deeds. For weeks, beginning in Elul, students had been loading the good deeds they'd done unto the scale, and the scale was tipped in their favor. The scale is the symbol of Tishrei, the month where God decides who is inscribed in the book of life, and people are urged to do a "din ve cheshbon" — an examination of their lives during the previous year, a balancing of the accounts, so to speak.
On Monday, just one day after Rosh HaShanah, the scale could have been tilted in the wrong direction! Jealousy, disrespect, arguing, and improper speech had appeared in big bold letters on the opposite side of the scale. Students did more mitzvot — good deeds — to bring things into balance.
LocalPublished: 20 September 2006
Dr. Eva Fogelman, a pioneer in the Second Generation of Children of Holocaust Survivors movement in the United States (often called the 'Gs), came to the Living Room in Teaneck last week to initiate discussions about what it means to be a member of the second generation in '006. The meeting was co-sponsored by Jewish Family Services of Bergen County and the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants. This movement began in the mid-'70s, when thousands of young adults whose parents survived the Holocaust became aware of their common family histories.
LocalPublished: 20 September 2006
Sept. 6 to 9 were busy days for Rabbi Jack Bemporad, director of the Center for Interreligious Understanding in Carlstadt and senior rabbinic scholar at Chavurah Beth Shalom in Alpine. In his capacity as CIU director, the rabbi was one of many instrumental in bringing "A Blessing to One Another, Pope John Paul II and the Jewish People" to the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York and was there for the opening on the sixth. Then, on the evening of the ninth, Bemporad and William Cardinal Keeler were honored for their work in interfaith relations by the Friends of the Pope John Paul II Foundation at an annual event known as "Wadowice on the Potomac," held at Georgetown University's Leavey Center in Washington, D.C.
LocalPublished: 13 September 2006
Eric Weis of Wayne, left, and Rabbi Shmuel Szteinhendler of Kehilat Beit Emunah in Santiago, Chile, sign documentation enabling the Chilean Masorti congregation to take a sefer Torah on loan from the former Temple Emanuel in Passaic.
On Sept. 6, a Torah scroll from a decades old and now "retired" Conservative Passaic congregation, Temple Emanuel, was carried to three-year-old Kehillat Emunah in Santiago, Chile. The backstory for that event is about how one idea led to another, eventually leading people in the New Jersey to make a difference on the other side of the planet.
The story begins with Arthur Weis, 8' years old, past president of Temple Emanuel in Passaic, a third-generation American Jew who grew up in Passaic during the Depression and joined the Conservative congregation '5 years ago. Until last year, when the synagogue officially transferred its sanctuary to the Orthodox congregation Beis Medrash La Torah/Zichron Moshe, Weis was the person who read the Yom Kippur haftarah, Yona, to the congregation. It was a tradition that lasted for 18 years, and Eric Weis, his son, would bring the entire family to shul to hear him. They were, for years, the only people under 65 in the sanctuary. Eric Weis, who lives in Wayne, is the executive vice president of the Northern New Jersey region of the Federation of Jewish Men's Clubs, a national organization with about '5,000 members.
On Tuesday night, at the bandshell decked with bunting over at the American Legion Post in Rochelle Park, Gen. Wesley Clark stood quietly as his bio was read to a crowd of about 100 veterans of many wars, including the war in Iraq, and some of their family members. Clark the only general in history ever to win an air war, and he told The Jewish Standard that that was a war — in Serbia and Kosovo — he almost lost.
The former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO — and former presidential candidate — came to the American Legion as the guest of Paul Aronsohn, the Democratic congressional candidate in the fifth district. But the upcoming election was not the topic. Instead, Clark spoke about how the war in Iraq was being prosecuted and charged that the Bush administration was failing to address the needs of the soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq — as well as those of veterans of all America's wars.
