Valued Above Rubies: Women and Men of Valor Win MOMENT'S Community Service Awards PART ll
Valued Above Rubies Women and Men of Valor Win MOMENT'S Community Service Awards PART 2 MOMENT'S first Community Service Awards brought an outpouring from our readers of diverse,...
...Educational films and guest speakers who address topics relevant to the youth fill out the schedule...
...Peli grew up in an Orthodox home with parents who believed that their daughters should learn as much as possible about their Jewish heritage...
...says one congregant...
...For the first lime, JRT actors were paid...
...Now graduated and working in computer programming, she is currently a member of the Halevi Chorus in Chicago, a professional Jcuish singing group...
...Richard Scheuer, Chair, Board of Governors, Hebrew Union College...
...He went through painful realizations, but when be saw that his own self as a male was not diminished by accepting these truths, he grew...
...I had enough learning to know not to swallow the injustices of the tradition...
...For the past three years Kempner has traveled with the film in th...
...In the background is the haunting sound of partisan voices singing the songs of the Jewish guerrilla fighters...
...In addition, they voted a special award to a group and its founder for doing valuable work to preserve Yiddish literature and arts...
...People with handicaps help run errands, the children and teens prepare food and run messages back and forth while groups of senior citizens are specially recruited to make telephone calls...
...He has been past president and general campaign chairman of the UJA...
...gam/en love to tell stories of rescuing books from paper shredders, or climbing into dust\ attics to discover treasures of Yiddish literature...
...Social service organizations take the opportunity to hand out information about their work, while other special groups such as homeless shelters ask volunteers to bring contributions of clothing to the Super Sunday headquarters...
...For many Israeli women it was the first time that women with Jewish feminist concerns and women with simply Jewish concerns got together to talk and learn from one another...
...Peli organized and chaired the International Conference on Halachah and the Jewish Woman in Jerusalem in December 1986...
...fi' The judges for this category u ere Robert Loup, Chair, Board of the United Jewish Appeal...
...another has mobilized a volunteer work force around the country to rescue Yiddish books...
...The judges chose an individual who had the creativity and management skills necessary to develop and implement one of the Jewish community's most effective national fundraising programs and who also showed a sensitivity to the contributions that can be made to such a program by the elderly and the handicapped...
...Assimilation is the rule on a small college campus," especially in Iowa, says Allcnder...
...The judges decided to select only one individual for the Charitable Fundraising award this year...
...Peli's husband offered his support for her work by researching halachic sources, and he agreed that women should have more rights in Judaism...
...It was Dick who took a local event and turned it into the national gala that reaches into the homes—and the bank accounts—of mosl of America's Jews...
...He also wrote Messiah-Man: Tales ofa Planetaiy Peison (New Paradigm Press, 1984), a collection of short stories...
...Super Sunday has also become a major social event...
...Shapiro creates poetic liturgy from traditional piayeis and has written new, interpretive translations of the Sabbath and High Holiday praycrbooks and the haggadah...
...With space donated by the Emanu-El Midtown YM-YWHA, Avni turned JRT into a community fixture...
...In its first 18 months, the NYBC collected 75,000 volumes...
...8,000 Yiddish volumes were pulled from a rain-soaked garbage dumpster...
...author and e\ecuth e board member oj the Commission on Synagogue Relations...
...He created the parent, corporate entity JYM, and found significant funding to assure JPSY a future...
...His works address such issues as conversion, the role of the synagogue-and the rabbi, Jewish humanism, Jewish naturalism, Jewish feminism and alternative lifestyles...
...And she wrote the script for a life of Shimon Peres, currently being produced...
...There is nothing halachically wrong with it, but those rabbis tried to say it was against everything Judaism stands Tor...
...On that day, scores of volunteers would assemble under one roof to make thousands of telephone calls aimed at reaching every American Jewish household in their community—an effort complete with refreshments and entertainment...
...He is a lecturer in Jewish studies at the University of Miami, and was director of the Earlhrisc Institute for Personal and Social Transformation and editor of Humanistic Judaism Qttaiterly...
...Between 5 and 10 percent of the students involved in the Hebrew culture clubs arc not Jewish...
...Two private sponsors—Jeffrey Glick of New York and the Mark and Chanlal Belzberg family from Canada—as well as the Fund for Jewish Education, provide JYM with a S350,000 yearly budget...
...Each year new givers are reached, expanding fundraising possibilities for subsequent years, says Dick...
...That's a provocative question and one that has haunted Jewish history," says Avni...
...Even the anti-religious feminist groups in Israel have invited her to speak...
...and on the American and world scene...
...D...
...The women-organized, state-sponsored conference was not without controversy...
...It Is Up to Us by Rami Shapiro (based on the prayer "Aleinu") // is up to us to hallow Creation to respond to Life with the fullness of out lives...
...It says in the Talmud that redemption is our highest goal...
...What began as a volunteer, part-time effort turned into Avni's career...
...Some Orthodox leaders publicly disassociated themselves from it...
...The paid adviser of the school's Jewish group called Chalulzim (Pioneers) had quit over the summer and a replacement had not been found...
...We were encouraged and enlivened in the process, grateful and more hopeful than ever about Judaism's present and future, and that was a wonderful gift...
...holocaust Memorial Museum...
...The monumental task of processing these books—sorting, alphabetizing and indexing these volumes—lies ahead...
...I didn't like asking people for money, but they were glad to be included, glad to be asked, glad to be counted in the community...
...One thing that small theaters can never have enough of is publicity," says Avni, whose 15-year-old theater has mounted more than 70 productions and is in the middle of a S2.2 million building project to make itself a home...
...Since winning the MOMENT award, Lansky was awarded a 1989 MacArthur Fellow-ship or 5225,000 for his work...
...A few teachers got together and formed non-religious, cultural clubs called "Akiva Clubs...
...It has become a major pan of m\ life and I'm sorry I didn't join sooner...
...Thf judges for this mlegtirj uere Michael Bccenbawn, acting project manager of the U.S...
...Shapiro was ordained at Hebrew Union College, has a master's degree in Hebrew and another in icligious studies and a Ph.D...
...The idea for Super Sunday was born in Washington, D.C., where attorney Dick together with local UJA executive chairperson Elton Kerness and his staff thought up the idea of a marathon fundraising effort that would take place during one day of the year...
...JRT's recent production Chit Chem is billed as "The first Chinese-Jewish musical," about a group of Jews who travel to China to seaich for a lost tribe...
...Other recent productions include Kuni Leml, a musical based on an old Yiddish play, which had a long run off-Broadway (performed by the JRT company) and later toured the country...
...JRT also produced Harold Pinter's Homecoming, Arthur Miller's Incident at Vichy...
...The small Jcuish communities on isolated college campuses must be heard and helped...
...forimi director...
...It became apparent to him that thousands of priceless Yiddish books were being junked when their elderly owncts died and the children and grandchildren, unable to read Yiddish, threw the books away...
...Avni's group is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts as well as by private contributors, but more than 70 percent of the theater's income derives from box office sales...
...Celebrities make appearances at Super Sunday in major cities, and Jewish musicians donate their time to perform for the volunteers...
...There arc an estimated 90,000 Jewish high school age students attending public and private schools throughout New York City and Long Island, and JYM estimates that 75 peiccnt arc unaffiliated with the organized Jewish community...
...At the time he was working as the cultural art director for the Staten Island Jewish Community Center...
...In the mid-1970s, when the Jewish feminist movement in the United States brought American women together to explore their participation in Judaism, American-born Peli was in Jerusalem— one of the few outspoken religious feminists in Israel at the lime, establishing the first all-women minyan, and the most visible...
...In Las Vegas, teens were calling teens, Vhile in Louisville, Kentucky, the mayor and representative in Congress made appearances, as did cheerleaders from the local high school's basketball team...
...The second group of winners,* recipients of awards in Religion, Literature and the Arts, and Charitable Fundraising, have made innovations in Jewish culture, created new interpretations of Jewish spirituality, and pioneered in new forms of fundraising...
...A sense of community was the most important thing for us to hold onto when our adviser left...
...AVIVA KEMPNER Filming Jewish Resistance The daughter of a Holocaust survivor and a World War II American soldier, Aviva Kempner grew up asking herself, "'Would I have fought the Nazis...
...Shapiro blends chassidic music, meditation, davening, dialogue and storytelling during services at his Miami synagogue...
...In his book, Tangents (ENR Woidsmiths, 1988...
...Thete are even a few that meet in two sessions because of the number of students who want to participate...
...videos and discussion about the Holocaust and assimilation...
...It has instituted a Yiddish Library Development Program, an initiative to establish or augment collections of Yiddish literature at universities and research libraries around the world...
...The Israeli-born Harvard graduate founded JRT in 1974, after noticing that New York had plenty of ethnic theaters including Yiddish ones, but no Jewish theater in English...
...Exhibits of work by Jewish artists decorate the rented halls, offices and synagogues that host Super Sunday...
...she now acknowledges...
...and group discussions on dating and sexual ethics...
...and Bin Grcenberg...
...In his two booklets on dying and bereavement...
...The men were seated behind a mechilza...
...The women were invited to participate in the service and were called up for aliyot as her daughter read the haflotah...
...Peli is a member of the Special Commission on Women's Status of the Jerusalem Municipality...
...She continued to provide leadership to meet the cultural and spiritual needs of the Jewish students...
...The center itself is in Amherst, Massachusetts, in a three-story former schoolhouse, where visitors may browse the stacks...
...The onI\ way to attract those students who would othenvise give up Judaism is to have strong Jewish leadership and organization, she says...
...He envisioned a theater that would not just have Jews performing plays written by Jews or plays with Jewish characters, but they would perform plays concerned with Jewish identity, roots, and conflicts over Jewish values...
...They consider themselves against male chauvinistic Judaism but they still feel that their Jewish identity is important," says Peli...
...JPSY was established by the Association of Orthodox Jewish Teachers some 20 \ears ago...
...and some clubs meet during school hours, while some meet after school...
...Faiga h-eine...
...The center receives about 1,000 books each week...
...Her concern with this question led to her making the highly acclaimed, award-winning film, Partisans of Vilna, released in 1986, the first movie about Jewish resistance to the Nazis...
...Peli continues to work with groups of Jews from all over the world who have come to study with her in this program, which provides a pluralistic, friendly atmosphere for discussing controversial Jewish topics...
...He then founded the NYBC and activated an ingenious rescue operation...
...He also sends a weekly commentary on a selection fiom I'ukci Aval, and he has begun a similar program to teach the Talmud...
...JEWISH PUBLIC/PRIVATE SCHOOL YOUTH Helping Alienated Teenagers Build a Jewish Identity The Jewish Public/Private School Youth project (JPSY) is attacking the problems of assimilation, intermarriage and disaffection by reaching out to unaffiliated or alienated Jewish youth through a network of professionally supervised, after-school Jewish identity clubs...
...The Literature and the Arts category was one of the hardest to judge because the judges received nominations for visual artists, performing artists, musicians and poets...
...By 1978 JRT's production of I Am A Camera by John Van Druten had been reviewed in the .\rew Toik Times— signifying an "arrival" of sorts—and the company had become a professional nonprofit theater...
...The enthusiasm is contagious as Jews gather to encourage one another and to network with other Jews to meet the needs of Jews locally, in Israel and around the world...
...By 1991...
...The immigrants call their books the 'portable homeland,' " says Lansky...
...Making Liturgy Meaningful UTf a think-tank is for experiment-JL ing with ideas, I suppose our synagogue is for experimenting with spirituality," says Rami Shapiro of his synagogue, Temple Beth Or, in Miami, Florida...
...Site served as assistant mechanic on a tank base near Ashkclon, Israel as part of the Volunteers for Israel program in 1987...
...The woik we do here goes beyond the 135 families in the congregation...
...College students organize pho-nathons on their campuses for Super Sunday, which helps unite Jewish students for a Jewish purpose...
...NYBC sponsors summer classes in Jewish history and Yiddish literature that are attended by hundreds of visitors...
...The center is also turning to preserving and revitalizing Yiddish culture...
...Allcnder was secrctaiy and treasurer of her synagogue youth group before college...
...The judges finally agreed on winners whose talents had shone both in the Jewish community * In the August 1989 issue of MOMENT we introduced the MOMENT Community Scrvici Auaid winners for Volunteer Service, Social Service, Scholarship and Education...
...a 15,000-volume Yiddish library was rescued at the last minute from a demolition site in the Bronx...
...VVc didn't cat much but we always bought a book," says Clara Krugman, a contributor to NYBC...
...became aware of the scarcity of available Yiddish books while doing graduate work in East European Jewish studies at McGill University...
...The fudges in this category were Robert Alter, professor oj I/chieu and coinpaiatke tilemltire at the I 'nieenity oj (.alijornia, Berkeley...
...Dick is chair of the Committee on Economic Development of the Virginia-Israel Commission, national honorary vice-chair of the UJA, a member of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's executive committee, and a member of the boards of the Joint Distribution Committee, HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society)and JESNA (Jewish Education Service of North America...
...A better question would be "How did Jews manage to resist at all the power and cruelty of the Nazi regime...
...Our praycrbooks are having an impact on other congregations...
...The film has also had theatrical releases in the United States and Israel...
...When I started JRT I said it would be courageous for young Jewish writers to write about being Jewish in America, particularly about the difficulties in reconciling Jewish traditions with modem life...
...theater eritic, U'TOl1 radio, Washington...
...Dick traveled around the country and offered intensive one-day training seminars to help local Federations plan their own Super Sundays, but he has found that local communities often improvise...
...He founded Temple Beth Or in 1981 to be a center for Jewish learning and spiritual growth, and his congregants enthusiastically agree that he has succeeded...
...He intends to use the money to distribute Yiddish books in the Soviet Union where he hopes to establish Yiddish libraries...
...and Joy I'nizerleider-.MayeTwn...
...Lansky estimates that there are about 400,000 books in South America and Eastern Europe that could be collected as well...
...With the 1934 pennant at stake and during a period of rampant anti-Semitism, Greenberg evoked the cheers of Jewish fans with his refusal to play-on Yom Kippur, perhaps another form of Jewish resistance...
...The film won the Anthropos Film Festival Award, the CINE (Council on International Non-Theatrical Events) Golden Eagle—the winners are entered by CINE into 200 international film festivals—and an honorable mention from the American Film Festival...
...It brings together members of each town's Jewish community for an annual phonathon, utilizing talents that, in some cases, people didn't know they had...
...It contained maps of the town, its history and biographies of residents...
...Thanks to Jerome Dick, National Chair of the United Jewish Appeal's (UJA) Super Sunday, the fundraiser breaks records year after year, now raising nationally about S40 million annually...
...The event ended 13 years of anger and hostility toward the religious aspects of Judaism that began when, as a female, she was not permitted to participate in the Orthodox burial of her father...
...There arc 40 JPSY chapters in New York City and Long Island public and private schools, involving about 1,300 students a week during the school year...
...She lifted up a Yiddish book written by survivors of her hometown in Poland that had been destroyed by the Nazis...
...in philosophy...
...We go even deeper to feeling what is left after death and whether we can leave our egos behind...
...These clubs are opening up a Jewish world to young Jcwrs who have little or no formal Jewish education or background...
...Kempner learned in writing, producing and directing the film that the issue of Jewish resistance was more complex than her childhood question suggests...
...But emotionally he was progiammed as a male chauvinist so it was a hard struggle for him," says Peli...
...JPSY students are in grades 9 through 12...
...Oxford, Cambridge, at the University of Amsterdam, the Royal Library of Copenhagen and at the Jewish National Library in Jerusalem...
...When I decided to go to rabbinical school in 1971, I wanted to synthesize Eastern and Western traditions," says Shapiro...
...Shapiro rewrites traditional liturgy in contemporary poetic forms...
...Allender, ptesidcnt of Chalutzim, quickly took on the task of oiganizing High Holiday services on campus and arranged for some students to attend services at a synagogue in Des Moines, 52 miles away...
...It is up to us to tepaii the U'oild and to bind our lives to Truth, Theitfore we bend the knee and shake off the stiffness that keeps us from the subtle graces of Life and the supple gestures of Love...
...The charitable fundraising nominees were both professionals and volunteers...
...Public school administrators gave their support for the program on the condition that the sponsot ing faculty member attended all meeting and functions...
...and Rita Segennan, former professional fundraiser, Federation of Jewish Philanthropies, Mew York...
...the center should have a comprehensive catalog and assured access to virtually the whole of modern Yiddish literature...
...THE NATIONAL YIDDISH BOOK CENTER Salvaging Books to Preserve a Heritage Priceless 18th-century Yiddish editions have been found in the basement of an abandoned synagogue...
...My aim from the beginning was to legitimize Jewish theater," says Avni...
...Jewish .\htsenni of Self York Charitable Fundraising Mixing Fundraising with Fun on a National Scale There arc many extraordinary Saturdays on the Jewish calendar, but there is only one Super Sunday...
...Literature & the Arts Directing a New Kind of Jewish Theater The 1988 box office hit, Crossing Delancey, was originally produced as a play in 1985 by the Jewish Repertory Theater in New York, but JRT founder and artistic director Ran Avni lamented that JRT wasn't given enough credit in the movie version...
...A strange thing happens when you call someone on the phone and ask them for money," says one volunteer who participated in Super Sunday in Har-risburg, Pennsylvania...
...So he went knocking on doors in Jewish neighborhoods in Montreal in search of Yiddish books...
...Valued Above Rubies Women and Men of Valor Win MOMENT'S Community Service Awards PART 2 MOMENT'S first Community Service Awards brought an outpouring from our readers of diverse, high-caliber nominations...
...Yiddish books and music are also distributed to 67 major libraries worldwide including those at Harvard, Yale...
...Later, in 1980, students from Ycshiva University, Columbia and Bamard were reci uitcd to be club advisors and trained in interpersonal dynamics ahd adolescent psychology...
...Kids are usually the impetus...
...The conference turned out to be an impressive display of women's scholarship, and a publication of the proceedings, edited by Peli, is forthcoming...
...Peli is the founder and past president of "Mitzvah" (now called the Family Mediation Services), an organization advocating women's rights in rabbinical courts in the case of divorce...
...yet another founded a Jewish theater company, creating in the process a new concept of Jewish theater production in English...
...Often Hands and Willow Baskets, he makes Jewish tradition accessible to his congregants, helping them to deal with their grief...
...And through a college internship program, Noting adults have been drawn back to their origins by their wot k at tile center...
...One winner has written a workbook for spiritual growth...
...A special feature of JRT is iis playwrights-in-rcsidence program, begun in 1982...
...playwright-in-rcsidcnce Donald Margu-lics's Bitter Friends, Ira Levin's Canlorial, Clifford Odets's Awake and Sing and Jerry Herman's The Grand Tom...
...While Chalutzim was without an adviser, Allender and her group organized a Jewish cultural weekend, held weekly Friday night Shabbai dinners and planned Chanukah and Passover celebrations...
...There are also organized Shabbaton trips, outings to places of Jewish interest, concerts of Jewish music, model seders, Chanukah patties and Purim celebrations...
...We are a group of women from all Jewish denominations who want to establish a precedent for praying together," explains Peli...
...In 1979, 23-year-old Aaron Lansky, founder and executive director of the NYBC...
...games that teach Jewish history...
...The film combines interviews with three dozen former Jewish partisans and rare footage of Jewish resistance fighters in the forests near Vilna in 1943...
...In addition to choosing a woman and a man, the Religion judges have made two special awards—one to a student and one to an organization...
...His congregants receive a weekly study letter that discusses the weekly Torali portion and asks open-ended, personally challenging questions that keep ihcm thinking of the parsha throughout the week...
...Her husband told her that after experiencing what it felt like to sit behind ihcmcchiUa, he could better understand women who felt left out during services...
...Rabbi Amy Eilbcrg...
...NYBC also organizes speakers programs, Yiddish music projects and week-long residential piograms for adults interested in Yiddish literature...
...Quality productions were assured because, with no rent to pay, all of JRT's money went into production costs...
...You've done such a great job with JPSY that 1 want to become an advisor soon— you've inspired me...
...Their intent was not to offer religious education, which would have been impossible in the public school system anyway, but to help Jewish kids understand Judaism and work out for themselves how their cultural identity could be important to them...
...Krugman inscribed in 'the front, "Those who read this book should know that our American children still belong to the world of Yiddish books...
...Ethnic theater grew through the 1960s and 1970s, a time of theatrical experimentation...
...assistant rabbi at Har ?ion Temple in Philadelfiliia...
...Afterwards we discuss the experience...
...It is you, our readers, who have made Community Service Awards a success by taking the time to write to us about those you admire and those who have changed for the better your way of understanding and living Judaism...
...It was a necessity of life...
...After the first year, Avni secured an Actors Equity Showcase contract and lined up a board of directors that included such celebrities as Waller Matthau, Dustin Hoffman and Tony Randall...
...Super Sunday has broken records almost every year since Dick instituted it on a national scale in 1981...
...You get people who may know nothing about Judaism interested enough to stick around and learn something," writes one JPSY participant...
...She found a way to "turn around the cxclusivencss and mystery of the religion" through "studying it head on and accepting only those concepts that work for me...
...In the coming years JYM hopes to train advisors in other cities and help organizers set up similar JPSY groups around the country...
...After reading the 26 nominations, one judge said, "In the judging process we entered the lives of some wonderful Jewish leaders...
...She is now working on a documentary film on the life of Hank Grecnbcrg, who inspired American Jews in the 1930s and early 1940s with his prowess as a player for the Detroit Tigers baseball team...
...Last spring, at the age of 43, Kempner decided to become a bat mitzvah, a climax of the trip back to her roots that began with childhood questioning...
...United States, Israel and Europe to speak to audiences about the issues it raises...
...JPSY has an educational coordinator who creates programs such as setting up a mock Knesset where the students act as if they represent the different Israeli political parties...
...Kempner also wrote the script for a documentary on the homeless, Promises to Keep, which was nominated for an Oscar and won an Emmy...
...11 ilh reverence and thanksgiving we accept our destiny and set foi ourselves the task of redemption...
...We learned how much of tremendous value is going on out there...
...Three years ago there was a terrible condemnation of women praying together, issued by modern Orthodox rabbis...
...This is the work of the National Yiddish Book Center, a nine-year-old organization that oversees the recovery, collection and cataloguing of Yiddish books around the world that would otherwise be lost...
...The judges in the category of Literature and the Arts gave a special award to both Aaron Lansky and his organization, The National Yiddish Book Center...
...On Yom Kippur, for example, after a traditional yizkor service, "I lead a meditation on our own dying," says Shapiro, "where we contemplate our mortality...
...I can remember the anguish of burying my father and not "being able to throw in any dirt or say a prayer," she recalled...
...A copy of each book is kept by the NYBC for its collection and the rest arc offered to the public through its catalogs (it is the world's first and only comprehensive supplier of used and out-of-print Yiddish books...
...It is up to us to meet the I Vorld to embrace the I Vhole even as we iviestle with its parts...
...I was drawn to aspects of Judaism that have been largely neglected, such as using music and meditation as vehicles for encountering the transpersonal reality...
...My past tears of sorrow over forbidden practices turned into tears of joy as I was empowered by the feelings of participating in the religion...
...I thought, 'Why not do plays about Jewish life today?' " remembers Avni...
...Honest, upfront and informal, Shapiro defies rabbinical stereotypes...
...As the clubs grew, so did the organization, and Rabbi Michael Winiarz, former director, took it one step further...
...We were encouraged to learn as much as we could, but then we were not able to participate," remembers Peli...
...The judges of the Religion category decided to make a special award to Allcnder because she tj pilics the commitment to Jewish life of mam American Jewish students...
...JPSY chapters spread because students want them, says Michael Kranzler, executive director of JPSY's parent organization, the Jewish Yoth Movement (JYM...
...The conference was electrifying," says one participant...
...Women and inen relating as free and equal people will bring about the redemption we are all waiting for...
...The judges of the Religion category chose to give a special award to JPSY for giving Jewish youth an emotional and spiritual link to their roots...
...She has given weekly Torah commentaries on Israeli radio, taught courses on women in Judaism, and lectured on opportunities for renewing Jewish women's roles in religious life...
...We will continue giving Community Service Awards and invite you to keep telling us about the extraordinary individuals whose accomplishments shine for you and other Jews...
...The John and Catherine MacArthur Foundation makes large cash awards each year lo outstanding individuals...
...Talented Jewish playwrights arc aided in developing their plays and eventually see their work performed at JRT...
...In Orthodoxy,justicc'is ap important word and an important goal," says Peli...
...These days Peli is involved with the Women at the Wall movement—a group of women who meet at the Western Wall to pray together...
...Some communities encourage singles to sign up for the last three-hour shift so that they will be there for the victory celebration at the end of the day and can meet other Jewish singles...
...A Yiddish Books on Tape program offers a series of sound recordings of major works of modern Yiddish literature...
...We imagine ourselves dying, picture the funeral, the eulogy, feel our response to the words describing us, then actually imagine ourselves being buried...
...She was the first observant woman in Israel to argue that the court's rulings on divorce cases were unjust and to prove it according lo halachah...
...Often zamleu are asked to take the books from the owners who, growing old, are glad lo have a place to leave their family collections that were lovingly transported from the old country to America...
...It is successful because every individual can contribute something," says Dick...
...Because of its location—far from a major city—Grinncll is isolated from the latger Jewish community, and the result is that Jewish students who want to be actively Jewish must work hard at it without any outside support...
...American Jews struggle with what it means to be Jewish in this society . . . Can gentiles and Jews really live together...
...This implies, among other things, no Yiddish accents, no Yiddish comics, no Jewish stereotypes like the Jewish mama...
...Leading Fellow Students in Jewish Commitment When Laura Allender returned from summer break to begin Iter senior year at Grinncll College—a small, secular liberal arts college in Iowa—she laced an unexpected problem...
...During the same period...
...Members of this group taught secular subjects in public high schools in the New York area and recognized a need to educate students about their Jewish identity...
...Kempner is writing the script, raising funds for production and hoping to direct as well as produce the film...
...We never leave the synagogue untouched, unmoved...
...For example, in Detroit the B'nai B'rith youth groups are mobilized to help make calls, while in Washington, D.C., last year a group of Soviet emigres called other Soviet emigres in the area to solicit donations and to network...
...They find out from friends or relatives at other schools that JPSY isn't religious or like dreaded Sunday Hebrew school, so they want to give it a try," says Kranzler...
...Peli went full speed ahead despite opposition...
...We were enriched by the creativity and the gifts of a stunning array of beloved leaders, teachers and pastors...
...Our childien even ask to go...
...Grinncll College has an estimated Jewish population of neatly one-third of the student body, but with only 1,270 students, the college is loo small to support a Hillcl house...
...He created a network of zamlers (collectors) all over the world who save Yiddish books from destruction...
...As of today, the center has rescued close to one million volumes...
...The judges in the Religion category said they were sorry they couldn't give an award to everyone who had been nominated...
...It has been shown in film festivals throughout the world and on TV in England, Germany, and, last summer, on PBS in the United States...
...Religion Working for Women's Equality Under Jewish Law Wife of the renowned (Orthodox rabbi, the late Pinchas Peli, Pnina Peli saw to ii that her daughter had a full bat mitzvah in 1977...
...Allcnder says the situation at her college is not unique...
...Peli and her husband established Shabbat Yachad, a program devoted to teaching Jewish and Zionist values by bringing Israelis and Diaspora Jews together to learn, pray and discuss issues together over Shabbat...
...The One Minute Mensch (New Paradigm Press, 1985) is a workbook for spiritual growth including meditations, drawings and an easy-to-follow method for exploring one's inner being...
Vol. 14 • October 1989 • No. 6
