Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By richards on March 16, 2015

As a child, Barbara Greenspan Shaimans mother gave her the mensch test every day after school.

Shaimans mother explained that a mensch is a good person: someone who is kind, shares his or her lunch, listens to friends problems and does other good deeds.

I used to come home and my mother would say, how was school? howd you do? And now, for the real question, were you a mensch? Over the years, I made some stuff up because I really wasnt sure how one does this at 8, 9 and 10.

Shaiman, author of Live Your Legacy Now! was the keynote speaker Sunday at the Palm Beach Synagogues annual Womens Spa for the Soul. One hundred fifty women turned out for the event held at the synagogue.

Palm Beach resident Nancy Brinker, founder and CEO of Susan G. Komen, received the Excellence in Leadership Award, and Rosalind Pomerance received the Woman of Distinction Aishet Chayil Award.

Thirteen-year-old Juliet Perel, an eighth-grade theater student at Bak Middle School of the Arts, provided the entertainment, singing Everybody Say Dont and Somewhere from West Side Story and Woman from The Pirate Queen.

An educator and businesswoman, Shaiman founded Champions of Caring in 1995. The nonprofit has helped more than 10,000 youth in Philadelphia and South Africa serve the community.

Shaimans parents were Holocaust survivors. Her mother was the sole survivor out of 65 members of her family.

While my mother was in the ghetto at 15 years old, she saw the parents were sick and dying and she created a day camp to nurture the little children, Shaiman said.

Shaimans father ended up on one of the death marches. He carried his sickly cousin on his back through the snow, because if he had dropped him, his cousin would have died.

Read the original here:

Brinker, Pomerance honored at synagogues annual Spa for the Soul

Category: Synagogue
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