Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on December 26, 2021

In his lifetime, Hagopian recorded nearly 400 eyewitness testimonies of Armenian Genocide survivors and witnesses on 16mm film from 1972 to 2005 for a series of documentaries. Dr. Hagopian, who passed away in December 2010 at age 97, ultimately produced 17 films about Armenians and the Armenian Genocide. In partnership with USC Shoah Foundation Institutes Visual History Archive (VHA), Dr. Hagopian agreed to turn over raw footage of the nearly 400 interviews so they could be integrated into the VHA. These testimonies (https://sfi.usc.edu/collections/armenian) are available to scholars, students and researchers online. The VHA allows users to search through and view over 54,000 video testimonies of survivors and witnesses of genocide, including the Armenian Genocide, making it one of the most comprehensive online archives in the world (https://vhaonline.usc.edu/login).

Interviews were conducted and recorded throughout the world in 13 countries, primarily in English and Armenian some in rare Armenian dialects, though other interview languages include Arabic, Greek, Spanish, French, Kurdish, Turkish, German, and Russian. About half a dozen interviews were conducted by Carla Garapedian after 2011 ( https://sfi.usc.edu/vha/access).

In addition, the Armenian Film Foundation and the UCLA Promise Armenian Institute have recently announced they will collaborate on a range of projects that support Armenian film and photography at UCLA (https://www.international.ucla.edu/armenia/article/248208).

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The Witness Trilogy (http://armenianfilm.org/drupal/the-witnesses-trilogy) is a series of three documentary films written, directed and produced by Dr. Hagopian and based on his filmed interviews of 400 survivors of and eyewitnesses to the Armenian Genocide of 1915. Dr. Hagopian chronicles the near extinction of the Armenian people against the sweeping canvas of the lack of human rights and the absence of democratic traditions and principles in the Turkish Ottoman Empire. The films document the Turkish leaders actions as a unified and systematic program of annihilation of the Armenian homeland in the Turkish Ottoman Empire, with transportation of Armenian deportees by rail to the far reaches of the Der Zor desert, and massacres and ethnic cleansing operations along the Euphrates River. Amazon Prime is showing these three documentary films that help answer the question: Who are the Armenians? Watch Voices from the Lake, The River Ran Red, and Germany and the Secret Genocide on Amazon Prime. Go to: https://prime.armenianfilm.org/river-ran-red/.

All films (on DVD format) cost $19.95 except Supplement to The Forgotten Genocide, which costs $14.95. To purchase, go to: http://armenianfilm.org/drupal/affstore.

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The Armenian Film Foundation Survivor Testimonies Available on USC Shoah Visual History Archive - The Armenian Mirror-Spectator

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Posted By admin on December 26, 2021

I haven't seen Steven Spielberg's remake of "West Side Story," but it is the subject of my favorite movie hot take of the year. "A rich and famous artist spends $100 million to revive a corpse with the blood of young people," Richard Brody wrote in his online review for The New Yorker. "The creature is still alive, but barely, and the infusion leaves it deader than when it started."

Brody has scant affection for the 1961 film, and likes Spielberg's version even less. While I suspect I might enjoy Spielberg's movie, I probably enjoyed Brody's review more, and it didn't take two hours and 36 minutes to consume. You should Google it, especially if you catch yourself humming, "I like to be in America/OK by me in America ... "

I like Stephen Sondheim's lyrics, but the man himself didn't care for them.

"Most of the lyrics were sort of ... they were very self-conscious," Sondheim said in a 2010 interview with ABC News. "[Composer] Leonard Bernstein wanted the songs to be ... heavy, what he called 'poetic,' and my idea of poetry and his idea of poetry are polar opposites. I don't mean that they are terrible, I just mean they're so self-conscious."

So Sondheim was embarrassed every time he heard "I Feel Pretty."

As inelegant and incongruous as Sondheim felt his lyrics were, audiences love the number. Spielberg and Tony Kushner have, I'm told, reframed it as a bittersweet goof on American consumerism, as the poor girl Maria and her friends part of the late-night cleaning crew at Gimbel's department store fantasize about the unreachable finery by which they find themselves surrounded.

Everything free in America. For a small fee in America.

Brody is one of a dozen or so film writers I regularly read. The Washington Post's Ann Hornaday made a solid case for "West Side Story." Most critics liked it Metacritic is listing no negative reviews for the film, against six mixed (they include Brody's in this category) and 56 positive. By its algorithm, "West Side Story" is the fifth-best reviewed movie of 2021.

I didn't count how many movies I saw this year, but it was close to 200 which is way down from some past years. Keith Garlington, who began contributing reviews to our newspaper this year, said a couple of weeks ago he thought he'd reviewed 215. Our other contributors, Piers Marchant and Dan Lybarger, racked up similar numbers. I'm reminded of a SXSW panel discussion I witnessed a couple of decades ago when Ain't It Cool News founder Harry Knowles claimed to watch at least 500 movies a year.

"That's not a lifestyle, that's a science experiment," his fellow panelist, horror impresario Eli Roth, cracked.

I keep that in mind when stressing about the movies I haven't seen. In addition to "West Side Story," this year they include "The Tragedy of Macbeth," Joanna Hogg's "The Souvenir: Part II" and Pedro Almodovar's "Parallel Mothers." The rest of the Metacritic Top 30 I have covered.

My Top 10 list is a convenient way to talk about the movies. And though it can be productive to talk about why we like what we like, arguing about taste is pretty pointless. I'd be fairly susceptible to Spielberg's "West Side Story" given my regard for traditional forms and craft, but I'm a pretty bad predictor of what I end up liking.

I like Ridley Scott's "The Last Duel" better than David Lowery's "The Green Knight." I feel warmly toward Paul Thomas Anderson's "Licorice Pizza," and appreciated Alana Haim's starmaking performance in it, but it's not a Top 20 movie for me.

What is? Here's how I voted in the Southeastern Film Critics Association's annual poll:

TOP 10 MOVIES OF 2021

1. "The Power of the Dog" It surprises me that this slow-burning revisionist Western, set in 1920s Montana (shot in the fantastical shire of New Zealand) and that could pass as a feminist critique of toxic masculinity, is receiving almost universal critical acclaim.

And at least some of the civilian pushback against it may be more due to the way the movie is being consumed than the content; I've heard people complain that "nothing happens" in the movie's first half and that they turned it off. That's something we can do in this streaming and bingeing age.

When we're watching something on Netflix at home (which is the way the overwhelming majority of people will see it I don't believe it played in any Arkansas theaters except for the single critics screening I attended) we have little invested in a given movie, and something more instantly gratifying is available at the press of a button.

But we're held captive in a theater setting there's the price of the ticket and the time to travel to the theater; we're less willing to give up on a film as quickly. Because plenty happens in the movie, it just takes time to unfold and the pace of the first 50 minutes is a necessary build-up to the release of the last half-hour.

Jane Campion is such a masterful director that she seems to be able to control not only what is happening in every frame, but in the mind of the watcher. You think what she wants you to think when she wants you to think it.

Benedict Cumberbatch, who has had quite a year with roles in "The Mauritanian" and "The Electrical Life of Louis Wain" as well as his ongoing portrayal of Dr. Strange in the Marvel Comic Universe, has never been better as deeply conflicted and churlish rancher Phil Burbank.

Writer-director-star Talia Lugacy stars in This Is Not a War Story.2. "This Is Not a War Story" A movie that few Arkansans had a chance to see, but one to watch for as it surfaces, as all movies invariably will, on various streaming and video on demand platforms, Talia Lugacy's narrative feature (she wrote, directed and stars in the movie) about a group of post traumatic stress disorder-suffering veterans who have banded together to try to heal through art, feels like a documentary, or at least like one of Robert Greene's (who gave us the excellent "Procession" this year) hybrid experiments. Many of the people on the screen are playing themselves, or slightly altered versions of themselves, and the pain the movie touches on is similarly authentic.

While an argument might be made that the film might have been even more compelling had Lugacy elided the fictional elements, her goal is more to tell a specific kind of love story rather than make a point about the toll war takes on heroes; she was right to make that choice. Made for less than $500,000 "This Is Not a War Story" is a startling and honest work that can be forgiven its occasional awkwardness.

Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, John Lennon and George Harrison appear in The Beatles: Get Back.3. "The Beatles: Get Back" Continuing the theme of slow cinema, this "Shoah"-length documentary assembled by Peter Jackson is a remarkable drift for those of us susceptible to the myth and legend of these four blokes from Liverpool who changed the world in the '60s.

It's basically a hang with the band as they laugh and bicker and gingerly step around each others' toes as they work toward a kind of vague goal, a return to playing live music for people rather than continuing to use the studio as their primary instrument. There are some flashes of genius but more moments when they seem heartbreakingly ordinary and oh so young.

If you've ever been in a band you'll recognize the dynamic and relate to the various pressures and the goofy ways they find to release the tension. It's not the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and it doesn't really negate Michael Lindsay-Hogg's 1970 documentary, but it's a direct cinema drop-in on a signal moment of pop history. And while relatively few will be interested enough to stick around for the whole show, some of us could watch it on a loop.

Hidetoshi Nishijima and Toko Miura star in Drive My Car.4. "Drive My Car" Ryusuke Hamaguchi finds a way to make a three-hour epic intimate in this drama (based on a Haruki Murakami novella) about a middle-aged theater director/actor (Hidetoshi Nishijima) who, after his wife dies from a brain hemorrhage, casts an erratic, mercurial young actor with whom she was having an affair as the lead in an experimental multi-lingual adaptation of Chekhov's play "Uncle Vanya," rather than playing the role himself as everyone expected.

During the rehearsals for the production, the director becomes close with his chauffeur, a young woman with a tragic past, and during their long daily drives to and from the theater, another sort of layered effortless drama unfolds.

Brandy and Nicolas Cage appear in Pig.5. "Pig" This Nicolas Cage comeback project the feature debut of Michael Sarnoski, who wrote the script with first-time screenwriter Vanessa Block could have easily devolved into a revenge thriller or an offbeat comedy. But it is more than that, a beautifully shot and tempered movie filigreed with specific details about a man who has rejected the shallowness of modern life to try to learn how to live with himself.

I'm making it sound pretentious, which is a word people often use when confronted with something that makes them think about things they'd rather not think about, but it's anything but that. "Pig" is an indelible character study, one of Cage's finest performances, and the most surprising film I've seen this year.

Noomi Rapace appears in Lamb.6. "Lamb" Valdimar Johannsson's off-kilter folktale "Lamb" strange and magical, a second cousin to Robert Eggers' 2015 debut "The Witch" is set on an Icelandic sheep farm amid photogenic mountains, in a place that feels both timeless and firmly rooted in the banalities of workaday life. Hard-working Ingvar (Hilmir Snaer Gudnason) and his wife Maria (Noomi Rapace) are well aware of the limitations, realities and minor-key pleasures of the rustic life. But when something fantastic maybe miraculous happens, they take that in stride too.

Josephine and Gabrielle Sanz in Petite Maman.7. "Petite Maman" In terms of double features, "Pig" and "Lamb" could be profitably paired, and this film, which shares with "Lamb" a certain fairy-tale quality, would go well with Maggie Gyllenhaal's directorial debut "The Last Daughter."

Here, Celine Sciamma ("Portrait of a Lady on Fire") explores the mysteries of memory as she magically transports 8-year-old Nelly (Josephine Sanz) back in time to become the playmate of the 8-year-old iteration of her own mother Marion (played by Josephine's apparent twin Gabrielle Sanz).

It's a simple and effective idea that feels remarkably uncontrived, landing sweetly and delicately as the two girls work out what's happened and how everything is going to be OK.

New York Police Officer Ahmed Ellis is featured in The First Wave.8. "The First Wave" A heart-pounding and graphic verite snapshot of the early days of the covid-19 crisis, focused through the lens of the Long Island Jewish Medical Center in Queens, N.Y., between March and June 2020.

Somehow director Matthew Heineman acquired miraculous access to the doctors, nurses, patients and spaces of LIJMC, so much that I worried the film crews might impede the health-care workers they were filming.

While one might question a few of Heineman's choices we watch at least two patients die on camera despite the frantic work of the hospital staff, and there's one instance where we might be led to believe that a doctor is discussing a different patient than she in fact is the overall sense is of a rapidly filled notebook, history drafted from immediate experience.

This is an absolutely devastating film. It hurts. It will make you grieve. It will exhaust you. It will flat tear you up.

9. "The Velvet Underground" Todd Haynes is one of my favorite directors and the author of two of my favorite films about rock 'n' roll, "Velvet Goldmine" (1998) and "I'm Not There" (2007). His documentary about the seminal New York underground art scene outfit is a wonderful sound and vision collage that evokes the spirit of the times and the band.

Bill Murray in The French Dispatch.10. "The French Dispatch" A portmanteau film modeled on an issue of a magazine very much like The New Yorker in sensibility and typography which is based in a fictional French city called Ennui-sur-Blase, the latest from Wes Anderson is a restorative tonic, an inspiring movie that gave me reason to rejoice. Watching it was the best time I've had in a theater in a couple of years, and reminds me that there are reasons to see these things we still call movies in these special places where we don't have charge of the remote control and might not know our fellow congregants. It's fun.

While "The French Dispatch" might succeed as a movie if the viewer has no inkling of the connection between these characters and their analogs, Anderson is working off the assumption that we likely will make these connections, and that our experience will be the richer for it.

Imagine that, a movie director who thinks the audience is smart.

10 MORE FILMS THAT COULD BE ON THIS LIST

1. "The Lost Daughter" 2. "Belfast" 3. "The Killing of Two Lovers" 4. "Mass" 5. "The Card Counter" 6. "Titane" 7. "Bergman Island" 8. "The Hand of God" 9. "C'Mon C'Mon" 10. "Memoria"

20 MORE HONORABLE MENTIONS

1. "Licorice Pizza" 2. "The Worst Person in the World" 3. "The Mitchells vs. the Machines" 4. "The Suicide Squad" 5. "Days" 6. "The Last Duel" 7. "CODA" 8. "Annette" 9. "Red Rocket" 10. "The Humans" 11. "I Care a Lot" 12. "The Columnist" 13. "Moffie" 14. "No Sudden Move" 15. "Old Henry" 16. "Two of Us" 17. "Quo Vadis, Aida?" 18. "King Richard" 19. "Gaia" 20. "Summer of 85"

10 MORE GREAT DOCUMENTARIES

1. "Flee" 2. "Summer of Soul (Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)" 3. "Procession" 4. "All Light, Everywhere" 5. "The Sparks Brothers" 6. "Dorktown: The History of the Atlanta Falcons" 7. "The Rescue" 8. "Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain" 9. "Framing Britney Spears" 10. "The Truffle Hunters"

BEST ANIMATED FILMS

1. "The Mitchells vs. the Machines" 2. "Cryptozoo" 3. "Flora & Ulysses" 4. "Encanto" 5. "South Park: Post COVID"

ACTING CLASS

Benedict Cumberbatch and Kirsten Dunst, "The Power of the Dog"; Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley, "The Lost Daughter"; Woody Norman, "C'Mon C'Mon"; Hidetoshi Nishijima, "Drive My Car"; Alana Haim, "Licorice Pizza"; Nicolas Cage, "Pig"; Clayne Crawford, "The Killing of Two Lovers"; Renate Reinsve, "The Worst Person in the World"

ONES I DIDN'T GET

1. "Passing" 2. "Spencer" 3. "The Green Knight" 4. "tick, tick...BOOM!" 5. "Spider-Man: No Way Home" 6. "Godzilla vs. Kong" 7. "Dune" 8. "The Harder They Fall" 9. "In the Heights"

SOME I DIDN'T SEE

1. "West Side Story" 2. "The Tragedy of Macbeth" 3. "Parallel Mothers" 4. "Azor" 5. "The Souvenir: Part II" 6. "The Disciple" 7. "Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn"

Email: pmartin@adgnewsroom.com

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OPINION | CRITICAL MASS: Movie masterpieces the best films of '21 - Arkansas Online

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Posted By admin on December 26, 2021

In his new graphic nonfiction narrative book When I Grow Up, the Lost Autobiographies of Six Yiddish Teenagers, author and New Yorker cartoonist Ken Krimstein deftly gives life to the never-told stories of six Jewish teenagers in the lost world of Yiddishuania, formerly Poland/Lithuania.

In the 1930s, the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, then based in Vilna, invited Yiddish-speaking 13 to 21 year olds to enter an autobiography contest; the grand prize would be 150 zlotys, roughly $1000 in todays dollars. More than 700 entries were submitted, then read and judged by YIVO staff in Vilna. The Grand Prize was to be awarded on Sept. 1, 1939, the very same day the Nazis invaded Poland.

On June 24, 1941, when the Nazis conquered Vilna, they also stormed the YIVO library and tried to seize as much as they could including the autobiographies to create the Institute for Study of the Jewish Question. 40 people, who, Krimstein writes, came to be known as the Paper Brigade, smuggled away what they could rescue.

Courtesy of Bloomsbury

Page From an Autobiography: Krimstein does not reproduce his subjects autobiographies verbatim; they were lengthy and often included multiple digressions.

On July 13, 1944, the Soviets conquered Vilna; survivors from the Paper Brigade took the buried papers, which included hundreds of these autobiographies, and created the Vilna Jewish Museum. In 1949, Stalin ordered the destruction of the museum. A non-Jewish librarian risked his life and hid the autobiographies and hundreds of thousands of other Yiddish documents from the KGB, burying them in St. Georges church in Vilna.

Here, writes Krimstein, these notebooks slept, lost, forgotten, invisible for more than seventy years, until the fall of 2017, when, while doing a final clean out of the church, workers stumbled across them, including the pages Id flown to Vilnius to see and would be holding in my hands less than a year later.

Krimstein does not reproduce these autobiographies verbatim; they were lengthy and often included multiple digressions.

I had to find the essence of the arc of the story, Krimstein says. I was turning them into little biographies. I had to figure out who the person was and what the dramatic arc was.

Knowing the fates of Krimsteins characters makes reading about their yearnings and their grit poignant. His deceptively simple drawings black on cream except for a soft apricot color are fluid and convey emotion and movement. He used a similar visual approach in The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt, in which the only color was forest green.

With just a few dashes and lines of his pencil he draws the roofs of the shtetl of 11-year-old Beba Epstein, who broke the contest rules by entering too young. Her head rises above the shtetl rooftops while she simultaneously bikes away, suggesting her eventual escape, a rarity, as shes likely the only one of these six who survived.

Krimstein is adept at showing with only a few etched lines the young gifted mind at work. He shows how one young boy unceasingly writes letters, trying to emigrate to Palestine and the U.S. after Jews were no longer allowed to attend school. One can feel his fervor as he writes letters, Herzog-like. He even wrote to Abraham Cahan, editor-in-chief of the Forverts who ran his letter on the cover of the newspaper, along with an appeal (unanswered) for someone to sponsor him and his family in the U.S.

So far my hopes have not been fulfilled, the boy writes. But I keep hoping.

Courtesy of Bloomsbury

A Story Reclaimed: Ken Krimstein revivifies the stories of six teenagers whose autobiographies had been lost for decades.

The murder of 6 million Jews does not appear anywhere in Anne Franks diary, which has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide, and is the only Holocaust literature many young people read. Reading Frank, Dara Horn writes in her new book, People Love Dead Jews, makes us feel forgiven for those lapses of our civilization that allow for piles of murdered girls.

Unlike Anne Franks diary, Krimsteins book does not absolve readers of guilt. Krimsteins very aim is to restore Yiddishuania within the pages of his book. Krimstein starts the book with a simple map of Yiddishuania, which may be unfamiliar to many readers since the Holocaust effectively wiped out Yiddish language and culture. As Krimstein writes in his preface, these Yiddishuanian teens wrote their essays looking ahead to their future, a future we now know nobody could have imagined, and nobody can still quite comprehend: the complete and utter annihilation of Yiddishuania, its towns, its cities, its stories, its treasures, its language, its people. A hole in history.

Courtesy of Bloomsbury

Lost Stories Brought Back to Life: In When I Grow Up, as in his previous book about Hannah Arendt, Ken Krimstein is adept at showing with only a few etched lines the young gifted mind at work.

Steeping each page in Yiddishkeit. Krimstein writes and draws with love for the dead Jewish souls who populate his pages, and his writing and images make Yiddishuania come alive. Every page is steeped in rich detail and allusions to Yiddish; Yiddish words dance across the pages; we learn of the flowering of Yiddish literature, newspapers, plays; Krimsteins young people join Yiddish socialist youth groups and Zionist youth movements. In one beautiful abstract image he depicts floating young singing faces to illustrate the caption, And for the first time, the woods around Rogow resounded with Zionist hymns.

As in his Arendt book, Krimstein sneaks into his footnotes a wealth of information, here conveying the richness of Yiddish language pre-Holocaust. In a beautiful page showing a father reading a Yiddish newspaper with his young son, teaching him Yiddish words, thought bubbles are filled with Yiddish text, translated and untranslated. On another page Krimstein mentions Der Moment and Haynt, two Yiddish daily newspapers and their circulation pre-WWII, and the Yiddish writers Peretz and Mendel Mocher Storm.

The footnotes effect, along with Krimsteins lively, warm drawings, is to convey living Yiddishuania at its height, to imbue the pages with its vim and vigor, so that we, Jews and hopefully non-Jewish readers as well, can feel in our kishkes what was lost, stripped from us, in the Shoah by the loss of Yiddishuania.

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The Holocaust robbed them of their stories; this artist is bringing them back to life - Forward

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Posted By admin on December 26, 2021

CNN Business has namedPfizer(PFE)CEO Albert Bourla as the CEO of the year.

Business considered several other influential CEOs for this years honour, including Lisa Su ofAMD, FordsJim Farley, Marvin Ellison ofLowes, David Solomon ofGoldman Sachs,AlphabetsSundar Pichai.

Bourla was chosen for the award as theCovid-19 pandemicis far from over. But life in many ways has returned to something resembling normal for many due to too large part because there are nowmultiple coronavirus vaccines, including one from Pfizer.

And thats one of the main reasons CNN Business has namedPfizer(PFE)CEO Albert Bourla as the CEO of the year stated CNN.

Dr Bourla was born in Thessaloniki, Greece to a family with deep roots in the citys Sephardic Jewish community. His parents were among the few to survive the Holocaust in the Greek port city. Although Dr Bourla now lives in New York, he is deeply connected to his Greek Jewish roots.

In this Legacies program, Dr Bourla is interviewed byRobert Krulwich, science and technology journalist and longtime host of the double Peabody Award-winning showRadiolab. They discuss Dr Bourlas experience as the son of Holocaust survivors and how his family and upbringing have informed his accomplished career.

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Albert Bourla Of Pfizer Is The CNN Business CEO Of The Year Greek City Times - GreekCityTimes.com

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Posted By admin on December 26, 2021

Ben Steelman| StarNews Correspondent

Beverly Tetterton spent 31 years heading the local history section of the New Hanover County Public Library, and she's written a shelf of books on county history, including "Wilmington: Lost But Not Forgotten," "MaritimeWilmington" and (with Dan Camacho) "A Brief History of Wilmington."

Currently, Tetterton is board president of the Temple of Israel, and as part of its current "Restoration 150" fundraising campaign, she's written a history of the 146-year-old congregation.

"A History of the Temple of Israel" is a little pricey at $100, but proceeds go toward the $500,000 the Temple needs to repair damagefrom Hurricanes Florence and Dorian.

More: Historic Wilmington synagogue needs 'urgent' repairs, estimate cost at $500,000

"The History of the Temple of Israel" may be ordered by check by writing to the Temple of Israel,922 Market St., Wilmington28401(attention: Restoration 150 Fund).Purchase online atTemple-of-israel.org.

Instead of an academic history.Tetterton'sbook is laid out like a family album, black-and-white, with blocks of textand plenty of photos. There's a lot about the Port City here, of interest to Jews and Gentiles alike.

Although circumstantial evidence suggests a Jewish presence on the Lower Cape Fear as early as 1740, nothing was organized until 1852, when a group of German immigrants organized a Jewish burial society. This led to the "Hebrew Cemetery" section of Oakdale.

More: See inside The Temple of Israel

The 1840s and 1850s brought a wave of Jewish migration from Germany to Wilmington, Tetterton notes. The Civil War brought even more, as Jewish merchants flocked to the city as part of the blockade-running trade or as purchasing agents for the Confederate government.

In 1872, about 40 families banded together to begin organizing a synagogue. A cornerstone waslaidon July 15, 1875, at the corner of Fourth and Market streets. Samuel Sloan, the Philadelphia-based architectwho worked widely through the South, produced a "Moorish Revival" design for the new building. James Walker was the local architect and supervising contractor. (Older Wilmingtonians will remember James Walker Memorial Hospital, built at his bequest.) When the Temple was dedicated on May 12, 1876, it was the first Jewish house of worship in North Carolina.

Although the congregation hasalways been on the small side(around 200 families today), the Temple has had an outsized role in Wilmington life. In 1886, when Front Street Methodist Episcopal Church burned to the ground, the Temple allowed the Methodiststo hold Sunday services in their building for two years. In 1939, when vandals painted swastikas on the Temple doors, Mayor Thomas E. Cooper led police to the scene and personally aided in scrubbing the Nazi symbols off.

Tetterton highlights some of Temple's notable rabbis, including Rabbi Samuel Mendelsohn, who served from 1876 to 1922. A scholar of ancient Hebrew laws and courts, he was respected throughout the community. When Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany, died, Rabbi Mendelsohn delivered the eulogy at a memorial service at St. Paul's Lutheran Church in fluent, academic German.

Rabbi Mordecai Thurman, who saw the Temple through World War II, spoke regularly at African American churches throughout the region and delivered a memorable lecture on Hitler's "Mein Kampf" in 1940 in the auditorium at New Hanover High School.

In 2018, the Temple installed Emily Losben-Ostrovas its first female rabbi.

The book includes a full list of the Templerabbis and congregation presidents. A separate chapter covers the historyof the Concordia Society, the Temple's active women's auxiliary.

Contact StarNews arts and culture at 910-343-2343.

'THE HISTORY OF THE TEMPLE OF ISRAEL'

By Beverly Tetterton

privately published;special edition, $100

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Book on Wilmington's Jewish history helps raise money for Temple of Israel renovations - StarNewsOnline.com

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Posted By admin on December 26, 2021

Police are investigating and elected officials have condemned the drawing of three swastikas outside a 90-year-old synagogue in West Orange on Saturday.

The symbol was scrawled in chalk on the sidewalk in three places surrounding the Bnai Shalom Temple on the corner of Pleasant Valley Way and Woodland Avenue, said Rabbi Robert Tobin. Tobin said it appeared based on security camera footage that the incident took place at about 9 a.m. on Saturday, about 15 minutes before the start of services.

A statement from West Orange Township said the swastikas were discovered by a jogger at 1:45 p.m. on Saturday, then removed by a township public works crew after investigators combed the scene. The incident remained under investigation by the West Orange Police Department on Monday.

Tobin said it was the first such attack on Bnai Shalom in his 11 years as rabbi. He added that the use of a symbol evoking the slaughter of six million Jews in Europe leading up to and during World War II was especially painful for a congregation that includes three living survivors of the Holocaust and dozens of survivors children.

I have Holocaust survivors walking across those sidewalks every Saturday when they leave my synagogue, Tobin said in an interview Monday. We dont need to inflict that experience on our survivors or anybody in the Jewish community.

Tobin was heartened by the support the congregation had received from West Orange Mayor Robert Parisi and the Township Council, who in the statement condemned the act, in the strongest possible terms.

Such heinous and despicable actions against any one group or individual is considered an attack against us all and our deeply rooted community values, town officials said in the statement. Neighborly love, unwavering unity, and mutual respect will rule the day as West Orange will continue to set the standard in always recognizing cultural diversity as our impregnable strength.

The rabbi said he was touched by a call he received from the synagogues congresswoman, U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill, D-11th District.

And he said services would go on as usual this coming Saturday.

I would never let something like this stop us from living our Jewish lives, he said.

Anyone with information is asked to call the West Orange Police Department at 973-325-4000.

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Steve Strunsky may be reached at sstrunsky@njadvancemedia.com

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Police investigating swastikas scrawled on sidewalks around N.J. synagogue - NJ.com

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Posted By admin on December 26, 2021

CLEVELAND The Temple-Tifereth Israel, a Reform Jewish synagogue in Beachwood, announced Thursday that due to the rising number of COVID-19 cases in Northeast Ohio and the omicron variant surging, it will be ending all of its in-person programs and switch to online worship and learning for the next three weeks.

Beginning Thursday until Jan. 13, the synagogue will only offer online worship and learning opportunities, with Shabbat Services being livestreamed on it's website.

The Temple-Tifereth Israel cited the need to ease the burden on healthcare workers and overwhelmed hospital systems by doing their part to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.

In their announcement. The Temple-Tifereth Israel urged its members to wear face masks and socially distance strictly, and also urged the community to get vaccinated and boosted if their have not already done so.

"Vaccination would enhance your personal immunity, diminish the severity of the disease should you contract this virus, and reduce the public health risks for our entire community. We call upon all to recognize the sanctity of every life, the Jewish obligation to maintain our health and well-being, the urgent need for solidarity, and act accordingly. Together, we can combat this pandemic and reduce its impact upon our lives. We must," the synagogue said in a statement.

The Temple-Tifereth Israel said that it will continue to re-evaluate the situation on an ongoing basis.

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Posted By admin on December 26, 2021

This is one of seven profiles of American Jews who fascinated us in 2021. Click here to see all seven and read an explanation of our Forward Shortlist.

Congregation Beth Israel in downtown Charlottesville, Virginia, was a magnet for journalists who covered the aftermath of Unite the Right, the white supremacist rally in 2017 that included chants of Jews will not replace us. I and others returned to the synagogue this fall, during the civil trial in which 24 far-right groups and individuals were found liable for $25 million in damages to nine plaintiffs who were injured or suffered emotionally during the violent two-day event.

The Reform communitys leader is Rabbi Tom Gutherz, who was eager to refute a story that circulated widely four years ago about congregants fleeing out the back door of the synagogue carrying Torah scrolls.

Theres a trope there, said Gutherz, who took the helm at Beth Israel a year before Unite the Right. Theres something about the way people like to think about Jews.

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Rabbi Tom Gutherz of Congregation Beth Israel in Charlottesville

Gutherz, 64, wants you to know that Charlottesvilles Jews were not afraid they did not cower as white supremacists marched outside the sanctuary, nor did they flee.

They showed up to pray knowing full well what was in store, and many left the synagogue that morning to join the counter-demonstrations. They left through a side door because it was more convenient.

But Gutherz, who sports a shock of gray hair, plays the guitar and milked cows on an Israeli kibbutz before becoming a rabbi, said that Unite the Right was a wake-up call in a different respect.

Our community all of America was woefully undereducated about how well organized this movement was, Gutherz said. Now we know.

The rally gave Gutherz and Beth Israel a head start in learning about the connections between discrimination against Blacks and Jews, and deepened the congregations commitment to racial justice work years before the murder of George Floyd made it a priority across the Jewish community. Still, despite the plaintiffs success in holding the organizers of the rally accountable, Gutherz has no illusions that hate is being driven out of the country.

If anything its percolated, Gutherz said.

We asked the seven fascinating people on our Forward Shortlist to answer a few questions unrelated to the work they do.

What do you eat for breakfast?Granola with oat milk and whatever fruit is in season.

What app on your Smartphone can you not live without?The swim-lane reservation at my gym.

Whats your earliest Jewish memory?My parents turned our modest outdoor back porch into a faux sukkah I think construction was not their thing and the whole neighborhood would drop in to join us.

Whats your favorite holiday?Passover so much good singing! And there are always leftovers!

Who is your hero?The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.: A person who embodied a deep spiritual life, a passion for justice, effective and daring resistance to oppressive power structures, a vision of the beloved community, and an unyielding commitment to the truth-power of non-violence.

Tell us about a book you read, movie you watched, TV show you streamed or podcast you listened to in 2021 or one of each!Ive been listening to NPRs Invisibilia podcast this season, about friendship and its many variations. Always find something interesting there and I like the way they tell a story. And I am loving Call My Agent even though I dont speak a word of French.

Whats one thing you always do (or try to) on Friday night or Saturday?Always in shul or on Zoom or home with a nice glass of red wine for Shabbes.

Whats your New Years Resolution?Read more novels!

To view the full Forward Shortlist, click here.

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Tom Gutherz: Rabbi Fighting the Far Right - Forward

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Posted By admin on December 26, 2021

A

philanthropic charity based in London which has helped fund projects in the capital ranging from cancer research to the restoration of the countrys oldest synagogue is celebrating this month after hit 1 billion of giving.

The Wolfson Foundation, which was set up in 1955, has also supported the restoration of the library at St Pauls Cathedral, the provision of musical instruments at the Royal College of Music, and equipment for a cafe and sewing project for Afghans in Hounslow.

Other grants intended to improve civil society have gone to education, science and culture, including money for what the charity describes as exceptional students, researchers and healthcare professionals.

The funding has been spread nationwide but significant sums have been invested in London where beneficiaries include the Bevis Marks Synagogue in east London - the oldest synagogue in Britain - and the Royal Marsdens Oak Cancer Centre.

Paul Ramsbottom, the chief executive of the Wolfson Foundation, said the charity was pleased to have topped 1 billion of donations but wanted to increase its giving at a time when philanthropy elsewhere appeared to have been falling.

He added: The need for funding for research and education is more important now than ever, and so as well as taking stock and congratulating our many partners who have done remarkable things with our funding we also pledge to continue and expand our work.

We have always sought to make wise decisions, based on expert, rigorous peer review; and ... it is thrilling to know that, from rural village churches to mighty research institutes, Wolfson funding has touched virtually every community in the UK and enriched countless lives.

The Wolfson Foundation was founded by Sir Isaac Wolfson.

He described himself as a Jewish boy from the Gorbals after being brought up as the child of a Russian immigrant living in Glasgow, but went to create the vast General Universal Stores mail order business. He died in 1991. Colleges at both Oxford and Cambridge universities are named after him.

Other projects funded by the foundation he set up include one of the earliest centres for climate research at the University of East Anglia in the 1970s and equipment for research into electric flight propulsion.

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Posted By admin on December 26, 2021

(RNS) It happens without fail.

Every year, precisely at this season, I think of Katie.

When Katie walked into my synagogue in 1993 to apply for the position of rabbis administrative assistant, I could not have known that: a.) despite a resume that hardly indicated any potential, she would be vastly qualified; and b.) how important she would become in my life.

Neither could I have known our relationship would come to embody the most profound truths of Jewish history.

Katie was a young woman from a tough, working-class background. She had no high school diploma.

But, after a few minutes of conversation, it became clear that although she had never graduated from high school, she had a masters degree from Life University. Not only had she studied at Life University, she could have become a teachers assistant there and could even have taught a few graduate classes of her own invention.

That is why I hired her as my administrative assistant at the synagogue. Her career decision did not go over very well with her friends and at least some of her relatives.

Rabbi, she said, I take a lot of _________ from my friends for working with the Jews. But hey, a jobs a job, and God is still God.

So, heres what happened.

This tough young woman started off working for Judaism.

And, within a short period of time, Judaism started working for her.

The mother of an upcoming bat mitzvah girl was giving Katie a rough time about scheduling bat mitzvah lessons. The girl, of course, had many other things to do in her life: schoolwork, soccer, cheerleading, hanging out with friends and watching television.

Rabbi, Katie said to me, I dont get it. These people are dissing you big time. They dont realize what an amazing thing they got here with this Judaism stuff. And, you know something? I aint afraid to tell them that which, by the way, I do.

How had she learned about the amazing thing Jews had with this Judaism stuff?

I had asked her to type a list of questions for each Torah portion that would help the kids think about the meaning of their portion and then to write their divrei Torah (sermonettes).

You know, Rabbi, these questions that Ive been typing for you? she said to me. I hope you dont mind that I been thinking about them, too. I gotta tell you: These questions that I been typing these are the only questions that really matter.

We in the Jewish community talk, and we should talk, about the many gentile and Jewish adjacent spouses, partners and family members who have thrown their lot in with the Jewish community. I refer to them as Jews by Velcro.

So, too, we have wonderful relationships with many religious leaders who bless us in our work and in our mission.

But we dont talk about the Katies in our midst enough.

We do not talk enough about the non-Jews who work behind the scenes, and in front of the scenes, to enable Jewish life in our institutions the administrative assistants, bookkeepers, custodians, soloists, musicians, sometimes early childhood teachers, sometimes executive directors.

They serve us with love and, lets face it, sometimes that takes a lot of patience. As Moses was to learn, we are not an easygoing people.

But the way we treat them reflects on us, on our entire tradition and ultimately on God. As my late teacher Eugene Borowitz once said: God cares more about how we treat the janitor than about the precise order in which we light the Hanukkah candles.

Over the years in which we worked together, I came to see Katie as representing something larger and something deeper.

Think of all the villains there are in the Hebrew Bible: Laban, Pharaoh, Amalek, Goliath, Haman the list is rather long.

Now, think about the un-villains. Think about the non-Israelites who arent villains or Jew-haters, but who, in fact, are righteous people who have redemptive relationships with the Jews, and who learned something from us, and who taught something to us. (I tell their stories in my book Righteous Gentiles in the Hebrew Bible.)

Can you name them?

In particular, in this weeks Torah portion: Shifrah and Puah, the midwives who saved the lives of Jewish children. They refused to comply with Pharaohs genocidal plan. They were the first to practice civil disobedience. They were the moral grandmothers of Thoreau and Gandhi and King. Their ethnicity is unclear, but the majority of commentators agree they were Egyptians thus making their moral heroism even more powerful.

Also, in this weeks Torah portion: the daughter of Pharaoh, who rescued and raised Moses. The Torah does not tell us her name, but later sources call her Bityah, the daughter of God.

Also, again, in this weeks Torah portion: Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses, who sheltered him, taught him, and a few weeks from now, gives his name to the Torah portion in which God reveals the Ten Commandments to the Jewish people.

In post-biblical times, there were entire synagogues in the Diaspora that were filled with yirei elohim, God-fearers, who came to learn Torah and to observe some Jewish customs. During the Protestant Reformation, there were various groups who observed some Jewish customs.

Unless we see these people, our vision will be incomplete and our story will be broken.

Back to Katie. She was not only my colleague. She became part of my family.

Several years later, she became quite ill with lupus. She became so ill she could no longer work for me.

And yet, a few years later, she was better and she came to work for me once again this time, in a different synagogue. During her illness, she had gotten her GED and had formally graduated from high school. During her illness, she learned how to design websites. During her illness, she became a very good writer.

This is what she would say to me: I just know that when I die, Ill get the answers to all my questions.

What do you believe about this stuff, Rabbi? she would ask me.

I said to her: Theres a beautiful teaching that says that in the world to come, God gathers the righteous together in a huge circle and they all spend the day together studying Torah.

To which she said: That sounds very cool.

Katies lupus eventually and ultimately claimed her. She was only 44 years old. They buried her in the old Irish Catholic church of her rebellious and tough childhood.

I remember how she told me, during one of her bouts with lupus: Im not afraid of dying. Its when I will get the answers to all my questions answered.

I pray God answered her questions.

And, those answers had better be good ones.

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