As Shirah, the Community Chorus at the Kaplen JCC on the Palisades, prepares to celebrate its 18th year with a gala concert on June 10, founding director and conductor Matthew Lazar says he is proud of what the group represents.
“Shirah is a community,” said Lazar, known to his friends as Mati.
“It’s a group of people who care about each other, making music together, and expressing their Jewish identity together. Whatever differences there might be, when we make music together, we are one entity and one people.”
Matthew “Mati” Lazar’s passion for Jewish music will be showcased June 1-2 when he visits Teaneck’s Congregaton Beth Sholom as scholar-in-residence.
Adina Avery-Grossman, a member of the congregation who sits on the board of the Zamir Choral Foundation, knows Lazar well.
“My high school-age daughter sang for three years with HaZamir,” she explained, talking about the teenager’s participation in the international Jewish high school choir founded by Lazar.
The Bergen County chapter meets at Beth Sholom.
“It was a spectacular experience for my daughter, choral music of the highest standards.”
There are several reasons 24-year-old Jaime Kaminer is planning to participate in the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee’s (JDC) Inside Jewish Moscow trip in July.
Kaminer — raised in Paramus and now in her third-year as a neuroscience graduate student at Stony Brook University — agrees with her school’s Hillel rabbi that there is “not much sense of community” among the Jewish students on campus.
“There are tons of graduate students, but we’re sort of a commuter school,” she said. “I’d be happy to come back [from the trip] and spread the word,” galvanizing other students to become more involved in Jewish life.
Some success noted at reaching the ‘previously unknown’
Linda Ripps, local coordinator of the PJ library, is bullish on the book project.
“We currently have 2,100 kids getting books every month,” she said. “That’s from 1,800 families. More than 3,500 children have received books so far.”
Run by the Kehillah Partnership, based at the Bergen County YJCC in Washington Township, the library initiative began as a three-year pilot program with funding from the Russell Berrie Foundation, the Kaplen JCC on the Palisades, the Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey, the Bergen County YJCC, and support from a Park Ridge couple, Howard and Eva Jakob.
Englewood resident Dr. David Arbit has spent much of his adult life hearing about the Shoah.
“My father-in-law is a survivor,” says the physician, who practices in Fair Lawn. “At every bar- or bat mitzvah, he would get up and speak about his experiences.”
Now, however, Arbit can add many more firsthand accounts to those he already knows. As the physician designated by the March of the Living program to accompany this year’s honorees — some 16 former U.S. servicemen who were among the first to arrive at Europe’s many concentration camps during World War II — the doctor says he now has both new information and detailed verification of his father-in-law’s stories.
In the late 1800s, seeking funds to build Alabama’s Tuskegee University — then Tuskegee Normal School — the author and educator Booker T. Washington went up north to solicit help from known philanthropists. Among them was Chicago resident Julius Rosenwald, president of Sears, Roebuck, and Co.
“A lot of northern philanthropists were looking to help out with education in the South,” said Tracy Hayes, field officer and project manager for the Rosenwald Schools Initiative of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
In the end, she said, Rosenwald’s contribution would help not just Tuskegee, but the cause of public education throughout the south — and the nation as a whole. Through his efforts, some 5,000 schools were opened for African American children, some of which still function today.
In the late 1800s, seeking funds to build Alabama’s Tuskegee University — then Tuskegee Normal School — the author and educator Booker T. Washington went up north to solicit help from known philanthropists. Among them was Chicago resident Julius Rosenwald, president of Sears, Roebuck, and Co.
“A lot of northern philanthropists were looking to help out with education in the South,” said Tracy Hayes, field officer and project manager for the Rosenwald Schools Initiative of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
In the end, she said, Rosenwald’s contribution would help not just Tuskegee, but the cause of public education throughout the south — and the nation as a whole. Through his efforts, some 5,000 schools were opened for African American children, some of which still function today.
On April 29, 22-year-old Stephanie Prezant of Haworth lost her life in a rock-climbing accident in upstate New York. While the community, however, is mourning the loss of this beloved young woman — whose safety equipment failed while climbing the Trapps Cliff area of the Mohonk Preserve — they also are remembering the joy she brought to others.
“She was very funny, always trying to make people laugh,” said longtime friend Anna Kaminsky, from Englewood Cliffs. “I’m glad that at the funeral, people were able to capture that.”
Conducted by Rabbi Mordecai Shain, executive director of Lubavitch on the Palisades, the funeral was held on May 1 at the Kaplen JCC on the Palisades.
Exploring the Jewish perspective on ethical behavior is always important, says Teaneck resident Harman Grossman. Today, however, when the ongoing presidential campaign throws some of those ethical concerns into sharp focus, that study is more relevant than ever.
“It’s important to teach [Jewish ethics] anytime,” said Grossman, who has addressed that topic for four years as an instructor for the community’s Florence Melton Adult Mini-School. “But today’s headlines make it top of mind.”
On May 16, Grossman — an attorney for Johnson & Johnson — will look more closely at “The Jewish Perspective on Campaign Ethics” as guest speaker for the Melton Alumni Association Evening of Learning.
Although she has been reading talmudic stories since she was in the 11th grade, it was not until she came to the United States that Israeli-born artist Ofri Cnaani was able to incorporate Jewish content into her art. In Israel, Cnaani said, she grew up in a secular household on a secular kibbutz. While she studied the rabbinic texts, it was “from a secular perspective.”
Her solo exhibition is now on view at the Andrea Meislin Gallery in New York City. It is a 20-minute video installation entitled “The Sota Project.”
“For many years, I was fascinated by those kinds of texts,” she said, likening talmudic stories to a kind of mythology.
