The Centre Call. G E r m A n t o W n J E W i S h C E n t r E

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The Centre Call

G E r m A n t o W n J E W i S h C E n t r E

Volume 22, Issue No. 1 Elul 5773 SEPTEMBER 2013 www.GermantownJewishCentre.org

By Rabbi Adam Zeff

T

his time of year we are between two fast days. On the fast of Tish’ah b’Av, we mourn the destruction of the Temples in Jerusalem as well as many other tragedies in Jewish history. On the fast of Yom Kippur, by contrast, we turn inward and do an accounting of the soul, examining how we have acted during the past year and pointing ourselves in a different direction in the New Year. Because of this contrast, I have often assumed that the fast of Tish’ah b’Av focuses on the Jewish people as a whole, while Yom Kippur focuses on the individual. But this year, I am rethinking that assumption.

On Yom Kippur, nearly all of our prayers are in the plural. We confess our sins together, we ask for mercy together, and we acknowledge our frailty together. Communally, we ask how we can all do things differently in the coming year. Jewish tradition seems to acknowledge that only in community do we have the courage to face up to the way we have come and the deter- mination to turn together toward a new path.

We embark together on that path in this New Year strengthened as a community. New members have been joining us, bringing their gifts and new perspectives to enrich us all. We are welcoming a familiar face, Rabbi Alanna Sklover, as our Rabbi Educator, enlivening our Religious School and kick-starting new teen programs to engage our children with Judaism and with each other. We have an exciting

schedule of adult education classes planned, including some new times – like the “Davening (Prayer) 101” class that I will be teaching on Tuesday nights in the winter – and some new formats – like our “Telephone Torah” class that of- fers the chance to learn a little Torah during the day, wherever you are. Take advantage of all of the opportunities we have to learn from and with each other.

One of the greatest gifts we can give each other is ourselves. The unique thoughts and views of each of us have the power to transform others only when they are shared, and so I urge you to give us – and yourself – that gift.

The High Holidays are a valuable time to come together with a large cross- section of our community to pray and sing and think and talk about how we want to live our lives in the upcoming year. Sign up for the Erev Rosh ha- Shanah dinner at 6:30, including a Tot Rosh ha-Shanah service at 6:00 and/or our special Kol T’ru’ah singing service at 7:30. Bring your children to one of the range of services for young people on both days of Rosh ha-Shanah and on Yom Kippur. Check out the Kol D’mamah contemplative service or Torah-centered Yoga. Study texts with Rabbi Lewis on Rosh ha-Shanah and Yom Kippur after- noons. Or come to our teen activity groups, childcare for our youngest members, services in the Charry Sanctuary, Minyan Masorti, and Dorshei Derekh, an exciting Bregman program on Jews and urban politics, and more! Please come and explore it all, and bring along those who are interested in GJC to see all that we offer!

As we enter the New Year, I encour-

age you to try something new, to open yourself up to ideas and activities that you may not have encountered before, to stretch and grow in new ways that you may not have previously imag- ined. The year stretches out before us like a blank canvas, waiting for us to fill it with learning, growing, and en- gaging with Jewish tradition and with each other, enhancing the meaning of our lives together in new and exciting ways.

My wife Cheryl and our sons, Zeke, Avi, & Mati, join me in wishing you a new year full of the blessings of health, happiness, joy, and peace. L’shanah tovah!

Turning Together

Program Highlights

Complete High Holiday Schedule See Page 7

Erev Rosh ha-Shanah Community Dinner

September 4

Yom Kippur Community Break-the-Fast September 14

Bar Mitzvah of Mati Zeff September 21

GJC Celebrates! Sukkot September 22

GJC Celebrates! Simhat Torah September 26

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A Year of Growth and Accomplishment at GJC

By Mitch Marcus, GJC President

President’s Message

R

osh ha-Shanah and the pe- riod leading up to it, the month of Elul, is a time for taking stock. It’s the traditional time to look at what we have accomplished over the past year, what remains unaccom- plished, and where we have fallen short. And it’s a time to plan for the coming year, to ask what needs to be accomplished and what needs to be revised.

Here, I want to primarily look back, and to review a few of our major ac- complishments this past year:

• Rabbi Annie Lewis has now been with us at GJC for a full year as assis- tant rabbi; teaching us, leading us in prayer, adding her voice to our wonderful Kol Zimrah service, and meeting with us in times of sickness, grief and difficulty. Her presence here has been a wonderful addition to our community.

• Our 75th anniversary endowment campaign has been completed, under the remarkable leadership of Curt Pontz, aided by a team of solicitors co- ordinated by Mitchell Berk. Remark- ably for a congregation of our size and generally modest means, the campaign raised over $1.4 million dollars.

And even more remarkably, 360 of our 500+ membership units made gifts and pledges, 50 more than to the 60th anniversary campaign. As gifts come in, the substantial addition to our endowment will make a noticeable difference in the GJC budget.

• With the resignation of Chana Dickter as our half-time education director, we hired Rabbi Alanna Sklover into a newly integrated position as our

full-time Rabbi Educator. Her primary responsibilities include serving as the director of GJC's Religious School, over- seeing our youth activities, leading our youth groups and working with our b'nai mitzvah students. Many of you already know Rabbi Sklover well from her time here as Student Rabbi, her work with the Bar and Bat Mitzvah Mechina (preparation) program, and as the author of the last two Religious School Purim shpiels. In addition to her infectious en- thusiasm for Jewish learning, Alanna brings a background in curriculum de- velopment and informal, experiential Jewish education. As she discussed in our summer on-line Centre Call, Rabbi Sklover has been hard at work planning a number of innovations in our religious school curriculum, including a much more experiential approach to electives.

She will also be unveiling this fall the new parent-initiated curriculum developed over the past two years by our school committee, co-chaired this past year by Stefanie Seldin and Alex Avelin, working this past year with Chana Dickter.

• The diversity in prayer styles within our community continues to flourish, with the Kol Zimrah musical service for Kabbalat Shabbat, the Kol D’mamah contemplative service on Shabbat morning both going strong once a month.

Our Tuesday evening monthly Refuat HaNefesh healing service and our Tot Shabbat also continue strong.

• This past year, we began offering rides to and from GJC for Shabbat services and for other GJC events to our sen- ior congregants who can no longer drive themselves. A number of long-time members have been able to attend Shab-

bat services as a result of this program.

• Major initiatives completed for physical plant this past year include the replacement of the sanctuary building roof last summer, the comple- tion of converting our heating system to utilize both natural gas and oil, and a major upgrade of our security sys- tems, as we placed a large number of cameras around our building and in- troduced a modern fob system that al- lows us to control who has access to the building and at what times.

One coming attraction I can’t help but share already – our Women’s Club has committed to work on what has turned out to be a several year effort to provide accessibility for those who cannot climb stairs, including those in wheel chairs and power chairs, to the school building upper floor, and per- haps the lower floor as well. Plans are shaping up now for implementation and for the extended fund raising needed to accomplish this aggressive plan.

As for short-comings, please don’t hesitate to call me if GJC or I myself have fallen short of your expectations.

I have been very blessed to be able to serve as president of GJC for one year now, to get to know so many more members of our community in just the past year. It has been a joy to serve with our executive committee and board, and to take function on a day-to-day basis in a close partnership with our extraordinary religious and professional staff.

Susie and I wish you and your families Shanah Tovah! May this coming year be a healthy, happy year and a year filled with peace for all of us.

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In CeleBrATIon…

Shulamit Izen, GJC’s teen Rosh Hodesh group leader, on her graduation from RRC

Albert & Peninah Berdugo, on the marriage of their daughter, Michal Berdugo, to Arash Sanieoff.

Ned & Karen Kripke, on the graduation of their son, Ben Kripke from the University of Pennsylvania

Albert & Peninah Berdugo, on the graduation of their son, Daniel Berdugo, from the University of Maryland

Dena & Ed Lake, on their 45th wedding anniversary

Dveera Segal and Brad Bridge, on the aufruf of their son, Rami Bridge to Tessa Orbach

Cecile & Sam Merion, on their 70th wedding anniversary Bradley Bridge & Dveera Segal, on the graduation of their son

Aviv Bridge

David Stern & Kathryn Hellerstein, on the college graduation of their son Jonah

Ned & Karen Kripke, on the college graduation of their son Ben Shai Gluskin & Sarah Braun, on the high school graduation of their

daughter, Sophia

Juha & Elana Hollo, on the high school graduation of their son, Matti David Hahn & Barbara Weiss, on the middle school graduation of

their son, Zachary Hahn

Amy Cohen & Mark Spiller, on the high school graduation of their daughter, Lucy Spiller

Jake & Linda Kriger, on the marriage of their daughter, Rachel Kriger Geof & Kate Margo, on the birth of their grandchild

Charles & Lyndall Miller, on their daughter, Kelilah's graduation from RRC

David & Marilyn Kraut, on the birth of their grandson Aaron Kraut Cooke

Rebecca Kraut & Brian Cooke, on the birth of their son Aaron Kraut Cooke

Carol & Marty Kaplan, on their 58th wedding anniversary

Stephen & Patty Segal, on the birth of their grandson Levi Jet Shapiro

(June 2013 – July 2013)

shabbat Chai-lites

T h e C e n t r e C a l l G E r m A n t o W n J E W i S h C E n t r E

In MeMorIAM

Leonard Gold, father of Richard Gold

Rebecca Nissenbaum, a long time member of Germantown Jewish Centre

neW MeMBers

• Sandi Cohen

• Eliza Ruder

• Pesha Leichter

• Ann Trail

• Justin Stuhltrager & Alison Stumacher & Family

• Sue Sussman

• Debra Schumann

• Latifa diPaolo-Mcleary & Family

• Barbara Grossman

• Leah Lande & Marc Singer & Family

September 6 & 7

• See Pg 7 for Rosh ha-Shanah Day 2 schedule

• Erev Shabbat Service – 7 PM

• NEW! Torah Yoga for Kids and other Children’s Programs begin – 10 AM

September 13 & 14

• See Pg 7 for Complete Yom Kippur schedule September 20 & 21

• See Pg 7 for Sukkot schedule

• Combined Shabbat Morning Service – 9:30 AM Mazal tov to Mati Zeff on becoming Bar Mitzvah

September 27 & 28

• See Pg 7 for Simhat Torah schedule

• Torah Yoga for Kids – 10 AM October 4 & 5

• Carlebach Shabbat

• Kol D’mamah October 11 & 12

• Tot Shabbat

• Charry Service – Mazal tov to Scott Rochman on becoming Bar Mitzvah

• Parshat ha-Shavua b’Ivrit – 11 AM October 18 & 19

• Kol Zimrah

• Torah Yoga for Kids – 10 AM October 25 & 26

• Rabbi Elias Charry Memorial Shabbat

• Shabbat Potluck Dinner

• Combined Shabbat Morning Service – 9:30 AM

• Program following Kiddush

• Evening Program

Kabbalat Shabbat/Carlebach Shabbat/Kol Zimrah Fridays at 6 PM (unless otherwise noted above)

Shabbat Morning

Services at 10 AM (unless otherwise noted above) Kol D’mamah at 10 AM

Sundays at 10 AM

$5 per session

For more info call Tamar Magdovitz at 215-247-9614

IsrAelI

dAnCInG

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T h e C e n t r e C a l l G E r m A n t o W n J E W i S h C E n t r E

college in Baltimore. There were five kids to support. If he had lived, I might have known a different childhood.”

When Mindy was 12, a disgruntled ex-employee murdered her father. One of the two men convicted is still in jail 40 years later. He comes up for parole peri- odically, but Mindy’s siblings show up to protest and Mindy believes some of the political connections her father made when alive have been influential in keep- ing the murderer in jail.

Mindy says “completely related” to this catastrophic event was her decision to join the youth group at their modern orthodox synagogue. “It was pretty com- mon in Baltimore to go to an Orthodox shul and not be Orthodox,” Mindy says.

“We did not keep kosher. (Mindy became a vegetarian at age 16 to deal with that and remains so.) My father was sec- ular. He didn’t go to shul, not even on holidays.” The youngest of five siblings, Mindy developed an early attachment to Jewish practice by going to her maternal grandmother’s every Friday night.

Mindy’s mother was married at 17.

After the murder, money was tight.

“There wasn’t an excess of anything,” she says. “There wasn’t privilege. There was bread on the table.” On the other hand,

“I went to camp, so I wasn’t poor.” But the family subsisted on money brought in by Mindy’s older brother, Ricky, who ran the one parking lot left of her father’s holdings. Mindy proudly states that her brother invented valet parking back in the 1970s.

Two months after the murder, Mindy’s mother was diagnosed with a basal cell carcinoma on her nose, something “people don’t die from, except my mother,”

Mindy says sardonically. There was loss piled on loss. “My Zayde died in March.

My Dad died in May. My mother was diagnosed in July and my maternal grandmother died the following March.”

Mindy’s mother died when Mindy was 20. Her beloved sister, Sharon, died four years ago at age 56. She also has an older sister, Donna, and her oldest brother Alan, who live in Baltimore.

These losses were “never processed,”

M

indy Shapiro, 52, and Alan Mendelsohn, 51, took their time before meeting and marrying, but theirs is a perfect match – a commit- ment to observant Judaism, love of family, a keen sense of obligation to the community and a shared experi- ence of early loss.

Mindy is a longtime member of GJC. She has a curious spirit and an artistic and spiritual imagination. At GJC, she teaches classes in paper cut- ting and classes in the Jewish mindfulness practice called Mussar. For many years, she could be found davening with Dorshei Derekh originally unaf- filiated with any denomination. When the minyan affiliated, she stayed, lov- ing the spirit in the singing and hang- ing out with her friends. Mindy now davens in Masorti.

She was born in Baltimore city and attended public schools. Her father, not college educated, was a jack-of- all-trades and even dabbled in politics.

“He worked in a cemetery, then owned a gas station, then opened an insurance agency, then an office sup- ply company where he sold a device that helped take smoke out of bars and then he sold the earliest telephone an- swering machines.

“He ran for Mayor and for Congress as a Republican, a rarity in the 1960‘s and never wanted to win,” Mindy says.

“He just had opinions, and did it to get a forum.

“He owned real estate and kind of knew what to buy because he figured out the areas that would later boom.

He owned parking lots, apartment buildings and Laundromats. Eventu- ally, he went to college and even got a law degree from Morgan State, a black

Mendelsohn-Shapiro Family

continued on page 6

Member spotlight

by Linda Kriger

Mindy says. “Whatever my survival mechanisms were, they were working.

Who can take all that in and function?

Once my mother got sick, I kind of raised myself. She was sick a lot. Bring- ing in religion was really helpful. Hav- ing Shabbat and some kind of order in the world of chaos, having some laws, some rituals” got her through.

“I’m very good at loss and it doesn’t define me,” is the way Mindy describes herself, saying it almost like a mantra.

Mindy was an indifferent student until college, when her intellect jumped into gear. She graduated from the University of Maryland and went to graduate school on a fellowship at Case Western Reserve in Museum Studies and Archival Administration. As an un- dergraduate, she studied Women’s His- tory and British History and wanted to be a Women’s History curator. “In fact, I had this idea in 1982 that I wanted to create a women’s history guide of the US, but I had no funding,” she says.

“Other people have done it since.”

Mindy’s life changed when she decided the graduate program wasn’t working for her and she was accepted at George Washington University’s Women’s Studies program. At the age of 23, in the early 1980’s, Mindy got in- volved with the National Womens Studies Association and founded the Jewish Women’s Caucus, the only home base for Jewish female academ- ics who engage in Jewish studies.

Moving back to Washington was a turning point for Mindy, although it wasn’t the academic work that shifted her direction. What did it was the part- time job she took working in Hillel, while in graduate school “I actually fell in love with Hillel work,” she says. She worked at several local colleges while in graduate school and after a short stint with Reading is Fundamental, after graduating, a position opened up in the national Hillel office. Mindy directed national student programs for two years. Then Rabbi Howard Alpert, executive director of Hillel of Greater

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Member Spotlight

Continued from page 5

Philadelphia recruited Mindy to run Hillel programs at Bryn Mawr, Haver- ford, Swarthmore and 11 smaller cam- puses.

Mindy moved here 24 years ago, su- pervised the programs and provided di- rect service, along with supervising rabbinic interns. “I felt it was an exten- sion of my work in Women’s Studies, empowering people to be themselves, to feel legitimate. There is this way in which different minorities can feel really undermined by society. I saw this as a way to make Jewish students feel great about being Jewish.”

Mindy loved working at Hillel but left in 1995, “burnt out after 10 years of working days, nights and weekends.

She traveled to Central Asia, taught English through the American Jewish World Service and “met all the Jews I could find.” She put together a slide show on Jewish and cultural life in Central Asia which she marketed and showed for two years. “I wouldn’t say I made a living,” she notes, “but from my childhood, I know how to live very frugally.”

Mindy worked briefly at the Gersh- man Y in Center City where she put together the Jewish Book Festival, which still runs. She traveled to Israel in early 2000 and studied Hebrew calligraphy with Izzy Pludwinski. When she re- turned, she was offered a job at Kolot, (now Moving Traditions) directing

‘Rosh Hodesh It’s a Girl Thing!’, which she named. After seven years, she left the organization, leaving a legacy of 3,000 Rosh Hodesh groups throughout the U.S.

At the end of 2001, after two brief marriages, Mindy met Alan on J-Date.

Alan is an Orthodox, yeshiva-day- school educated physician working in the pharmaceutical industry, who had recently moved to the Philadelphia area. Alan is a Brooklyn boy whose first foray out of Brooklyn was as a medical resident…in the Bronx. Then he made a real move, to the University of Michi- gan, Ann Arbor, to complete his train- ing as a pediatric cardiologist.

Alan, too, experienced loss at an early age. His father, 42, died suddenly when Alan was 7 and his brother, David, was 5, presumably of cardiac arrest. Alan’s father and Mindy’s sister died on the same day (the second day of Pesach), years apart. Both Alan’s mother and Mindy’s father died on the 7th of Iyar. “Now that’s bashert (fated),” Alan says.

His father’s death was a turning point in Alan’s life. “My mom (who is recently deceased) was a great influence in my life. I don’t wish child orphanage on any- body, but there is something to be said about character building. It builds a cer- tain degree of self-reliance.”

It also builds compassion for the sur- viving parent. “My mother would have to get up at 4 a.m. to catch a train from Brooklyn to Hoboken, New Jersey for her job, and my grandparents and my aunt moved in to take care of my brother and me,” he says. “You learn hard work, you learn about charity, about giving back.

My brother and I were able to go to He- brew day school because of scholarship money, because people were generous and supported us to go to school. In re- turn, Mindy and I have established the Stanley and Elaine Mendelsohn fund at Perelman Jewish Day School to support children of single parent families, so they can buy school lunches or a suitcase to go on class trips.” Mindy endowed the Sharon Shapiro World Music Fund at Perelman to enable children to be ex- posed to different musical cultures”

In the fall of 2003, Mindy got a call from her friend Beulah Trey who said,

“I’m taking this class. Come take it with me.” And that is how Mindy began to study the Jewish practice of Mussar with Rabbi Ira Stone of Beth Zion-Beth Israel in Center City. “I was really into yoga. I was into having a spiritual life, but there was a breach between mindfulness stuff and Judaism. With Mussar, I found that it’s all here, all together.”

Mussar is a Jewish mindfulness practice that combines traditional text study with meditation and the integration of positive character virtues. Mussar embodies what Jewish seekers often as- cribe to the Eastern and Quaker traditions.

Caleb was born the next year and Mindy found herself challenged with work-life balance. “At some point I realized I wanted to study Mussar more deeply, spend more time with my family.”

Today, Mindy teaches five classes of Mussar: one at GJC that started in Jan- uary 2011 and another group that is forming from a six week “Taste of Mus- sar” in which all 10 students decided to study weekly. She teaches a class on the Main line, and one at Or hadash in Fort Washington and to a group of Conservative Rabbis by Skype.

Mindy is active in the Hospitality Network, has done artwork for the program book and the cover of the Yizkor book. She is also a member of a committee working on a plan to bring mussar into more parts of the shul, thanks to a private donor.

She notes, “We really are in sync spiritually,” she says of her marriage to Alan. “People assume I became more religious after meeting Alan, but this is who I am.”

Alan is a regular at morning minyan, to serve people saying Kaddish.

“We’ve known our own sorrows, and we know what it’s like not to have a minyan to say Kaddish and what it’s like TO have a minyan to say kaddish,”

he says. “I give back in that little way.”

Alan attends Chabad services twice a month and Masorti the other two Shab- batot. He serves on the Pereleman Board and Caleb is a rising 4th grader at Perelman.

Mindy and Alan try to model the idea of paying it forward to their 9 year- old-son Caleb, teaching him what it means to be global citizens. “We committed to send three girls half-scholar- ships through high school in the Kibera school in Nairobi, Kenya from a sug- gestion from Betsy Teutsch. To us it’s a real Jewish value to be active partici- pants in the global community,” he says.

“I’m grateful and thankful for my life. I’ve had a lot of travails in my life, but I’m finally at a very grateful place in my life,” Alan says.

That could be said for both of them.