Science Correspondent

Most American parents take it for granted that their children will be able to avoid serious infectious diseases, but recent outbreaks of measles in New York City and in other parts of the country have brought the issue of infectious disease prevention via vaccination to the forefront. Because of misinformation and unfounded suggestions of a link between vaccination and autism, some parents have decided to forgo vaccinating their children. The unvaccinated children are at risk of developing diseases that are now rarely seen in the United States, and they put other individuals at risk as well.

At a recent program sponsored by the Parenting Center at the YM-YWHA of North Jersey in Wayne, pediatrician Dr. Vera Bennett spoke about childhood vaccines, addressing some of the controversies related to the topic.

"We can now vaccinate against 16 preventable diseases," reported Bennett, whose practice, Pediatric Multicare, is in Pompton Lakes. As an example of an effective vaccine program, Bennett said, "We don’t vaccinate against smallpox because we’ve gotten rid of it [through worldwide vaccination programs]. Before the vaccine there were 13,000 to 20,000 cases of smallpox in the United States each year."

One aspect of Israeli society that has been neglected on the Israeli screen these past 60 years is any kind of study of Orthodoxy. The first to try to tackle the subject in a feature narrative was Benjamin Hayeem in his raucous 1976 "The Black Banana," followed more than two decades later by Amos Gitai’s "Kadosh." Both films showed a great deal of anger toward traditional Judaism and disdain for religious practice. While Hayeem’s portrait was unsympathetic, Gitai did provide some insight into the intricacies of Jewish practice with his study of a rabbi’s son who is forced to divorce his wife of over a decade because she is unable to bear him a child. Over the last dozen years, there have been more than 100 short features on Jewish and specifically religious issues produced by students in Israel’s myriad film schools, most notably the Maale School in Jerusalem. This, it is hoped, will help bring more films on Jewish issues to the Israeli screen. Joseph Cedar, a traditional Jew, struggled with important issues like the incendiary power of the yeshiva rabbi as well as the difficult position of the widow in the religious community in his films "Time of Favor" (2000) and "Campfire" (2004). Then there was Giddi Dar’s popular "Ushpizin" (2004), written by Shuli Rand, that literally brought us into the homes and sukkot of a religious community in Jerusalem. There have since been a few less notable examples. Now comes David Volach’s "My Father My Lord," which opens today at New York’s Lincoln Plaza and Cinema Village and which won the Best Film prize at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival.

TRENTON – "Happy birthday!"

The crowd at the statehouse on Monday applauding Gov. Jon Corzine’s greeting for Israel’s 60th anniversary included legislators, members of the New Jersey-Israel Commission, and 65 representatives from nine of the state’s Jewish federations. Signing a proclamation honoring the milestone, the governor extolled the benefits of the relationship between the Jewish state and the Garden State.

The day also marked the opening of a temporary exhibit in the Capitol Building on Israel, assembled by the N.J.-Israel Commission. The exhibit and the proclamation are signs of "the deep roots" of the New Jersey-Israel relationship, Corzine said.

"My ticket’s purchased," he added, referring to his twice-delayed trip to Israel, now scheduled for July, to boost economic relations.

For Col. Shimon "Katcha" Cahaner, fighting for Jerusalem was an experience like no other.

Cahaner, who spoke at Cong. Beth Haverim Shir Shalom in Mahwah on Monday, served as deputy battalion commander of the paratrooper unit that participated in the battle of Ammunition Hill in the 1967 Six Day War, considered one of the bloodiest battles in Israel’s history.

The site, whose name dates from World War I, was a maze of bunkers and trenches where some 120 Jordanian soldiers defended the eastern part of Jerusalem.

The battle started on June 6 of that year about 1:25 a.m. when the paratroopers brigade, about 150 soldiers under the command of Col. Mordechai "Motta" Gur, moved in to capture the hill. When it ended at about 5 a.m., 71 Jordanian soldiers and 37 Israelis lay dead.

The Jewish community seems to be taking a wait-and-see attitude toward Agriprocessors, the world’s largest producer of kosher meat, whose plant in Postville, Iowa, was raided by federal agents on Monday.

Authorities charged that the factory employed hundreds of illegal workers and cited claims that illegal narcotics production took place at the plant. Agents arrested 390 workers Monday in what Immigration and Customs Enforcement called the largest raid of its kind in U.S. history.

Bergenites take part in mass mission to Israel

It’s not unusual for synagogues and Jewish organizations to sponsor trips to Israel. But the recent mission of Chabad of Fort Lee was out of the ordinary in that it was part of a national mission encompassing travelers from 30 American communities.

Rabbi Meir Konikov, who founded Chabad of Fort Lee in 1996 and now presides over a flourishing synagogue, preschool, Hebrew school, and programs for Russian Jews, explained that the Israel mission grew out of a course offered by the Lubavitch movement’s Jewish Learning Institute at nearly 400 Chabad houses all over the world.

"Instead of every Chabad rabbi preparing his own courses, JLI provides the curriculum for three courses each year, so that, in unison, 400 rabbis are teaching the same course at the same time. The beauty of this is that if you are traveling, you can pick up that week’s course wherever you are," said Konikov. "In Bergen County, about 250 people are signed up. Last fall, the course was ‘Land and Spirit,’ about Israel, and that led to the idea for a trip."

Novelist Debra Borden has participated in scores of book groups, "four in the past 10 days," she said. But, added Borden, who lives in Upper Saddle River, she is usually invited as a guest speaker.

Now, however, Borden has taken on the role of moderator, leading a book club that embraces women "on both sides of the ocean."

Women B’Yachad — with parallel groups in Bergen County and Nahariya — is a project of UJA Federation of Northern New Jersey’s Partnership 2000, which "builds living bridges" among global communities, according to its coordinator, Machla Shaffer.

She pointed out that the book club’s name is a deliberate mix of Hebrew and English, reflecting the intercommunal, bilingual flavor of the enterprise.

Rabbi Stephen Wylen makes a mean challah. So good, in fact, that he has been called upon to teach challah-making at his synagogue, Temple Beth Tikvah in Wayne, as well as at the YM-YWHA of North Jersey.

"I started making challah when I was in seminary," said the rabbi. "But for the first couple of years, it was inedible."

It wasn’t until his stint in the 1980s as religious leader at B’nai Sholom in Huntington, W.Va., that his bread-making life changed forever. There he met Lil Fetter, a woman, then in her 80s, "who made challah for every bar mitzvah. She was famous for her challah."

Authors like Anita Diamant, Marek Halter, and Orson Scott Card have created a new genre using sparse biblical stories as the basis for full-bodied popular fictional works.

Within this niche, Eva Etzioni-Halevy holds the distinction of being the only Israeli biblical novelist writing in English. A sociology professor born in Vienna during World War II, Etzioni-Halevy became fluent in English while living in Australia during a time when she was alienated from things Jewish.

"As a child, I was very religious; I spent three years in a youth aliyah village in Israel," said the author, who will be making two Bergen County stops on a book tour of the United States next week. "When I grew up, I left Israel and religion, and I lived in other countries and other cultures."

In time, she said, she realized that fleeing her roots "didn’t work."

When the Barnert Temple preschool class of 1989 is invited back to the June 2009 Preschool graduation next year, the members are apt to see many changes. Thanks to longtime congregant Susan Sauer, the Franklin Lakes synagogue now features the Nana Cele Outdoor Classroom, which will have a butterfly garden, hummingbird garden, pizza garden, and greenhouse.

"Nearing our 20th anniversary, we looked into what we offered and how we could change.... There is so much talk about going green. We decided to translate this into ‘Going Green at 20,’" explained Sara Losch, who founded the Barnert Temple preschool 20 years ago and who has also been religious school principal for 13 years.

WASHINGTON – President Bush is about to preside over a series of events that mark the unraveling of the core principles of his Middle East peace policy.

His trip this week to the Middle East — what was to have been Bush’s triumphal coronation as Israel’s best friend ever in the White House — is becoming, at least in policy terms, a repudiation of his three nos: no to negotiating with terrorists, no to negotiating with their state sponsors, and no to getting ahead of the Israelis and Palestinians in peace talks.

Egypt is negotiating with Hamas at Israel’s behest, Israel is itching to negotiate with Syria, and U.S. allies in the Middle East are pressing for Bush to impose a solution to breaking through the current Israeli-Palestinian impasse.