Yitzhak Zahavy is not the only one participating in the Nautica NYC Triathlon for a charitable purpose. Sharsheret, a national organization supporting young Jewish women and their families facing breast cancer, is fielding its own team.
A number of local New Jersey residents are part of Team Sharsheret, including Jonathan Blinken, Judah Greenblatt, and Talya Spitzer, all of Englewood; Dr. Mark Levie of Teaneck; and Rebecca Schwartz of Bergenfield. To date, Team Sharsheret athletes have raised more than $50,000 for Sharsheret’s programs.
Team Sharsheret is also recruiting runners to participate in the ING New York City Marathon on Nov. 6. E-mail .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Yitzhak Zahavy is competing this Sunday in a grueling sports event because he can. He can, he says, because three of his comrades gave their lives to save his. He is competing to honor them.
Zahavy, who was born in Rhode Island, moved to Israel and joined the Israel Defense Forces. In October 2002, he and three friends confronted a suicide bomber as they were waiting for a bus near a gas station outside the west bank town of Ariel. Matan Zagron, Tamir Masad, and Amihud Hasid lost their lives in an attempt to prevent the bomber from detonating his device. In giving their lives, Zahavy says, they saved his.
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.
If leadership means to see a problem where no one else does, and then take the initiative to solve it, Ben Sagerman is definitely a leader.
The 17-year-old high school junior loved the experience of outdoor prayer he experienced at the Union for Reform Judaism’s Camp Eisner — and wanted to make that experience possible for his fellow congregants at Temple Avodat Shalom in River Edge.
So he built an outdoor sanctuary, a small ampitheater, in an empty space on Avodat Shalom’s property.
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.
A firebomb attack on a synagogue in Rutherford is being investigated as an attempted homicide and a hate crime, Bergen County Prosecutor John Molinelli announced on Wednesday.
“You’re looking at 40 to 50 years in prison,” said Molinelli, addressing the “person or persons who are doing this act” at a Wednesday afternoon press conference.
“Turn yourself in and end this now,” he said. “We will ultimately solve this crime and make arrests.”
Around 4:30 a.m. Wednesday morning, several Molotov cocktails were thrown at Congregation Beth El, an Orthodox synagogue on a quiet residential street in Rutherford. One entered the second floor bedroom of the congregation’s rabbi, Nosson Schuman, and ignited his bedspread.
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Senate unanimously approved a resolution calling on the United Nations to rescind the Goldstone report.
Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and James Risch (R-Idaho) initiated the resolution last week after Richard Goldstone, a South African judge, retracted a key conclusion of the U.N. report he helped author on the 2009 Gaza war -- that Israel had targeted civilians as a policy.
Senate President Extends Invitation to Ido Aharoni, Consul General of Israel in NY
Union, N.J. (March 18, 2011) – In a gesture of friendship and cooperation, Senate President Stephen Sweeney has invited Ido Aharoni, Consul General of Israel in NY to appear before the upper body of the legislature at the Senate Chamber on Monday March 21, 2011 at 2 p.m. Aharoni will make a formal presentation to the State Senate prior to the voting session.
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