Daily Archives: June 8, 2006

Rabbi seeks tools to spread joy of Judaism

Portland, OR – At the beginning of his career in Jewish leadership, Rabbi Chayim Mishulovin said he feels fortunate to be one of the leaders selected to participate in the Portland Jewish Leadership Institute.

Convened and funded by the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland, the PJLI is designed to strengthen the Jewish community’s leadership base for all agencies, congregations and organizations by teaching participants the personal, leadership and analytic skills needed in the 21st century. Over the next few months, the Jewish Review will profile several participants.

Mishulovin said he hopes “to apply the skills that I have acquired from the professionals and my colleagues to do whatever I can to bring the warmth and joy of Judaism to the 25,000 Jews of greater Portland. In turn, they will strengthen our organizations and help build our community.”

Chief Rabbis secretary found murdered

Uzbek Jewish community believes Karina Rivka Laufer and her mother Svetlana, who were found murdered in their apartment, were killed for nationalistic motives.

Tashkent, Uzbekistan – The 20-year-old secretary of the Chief Rabbi of Central Asia, Karina Rivka Laufer, and her mother Svetlana Laufer were found dead Thursday in their Tashkent apartment.

Laufer had studied at the Jewish school Or Avner in the Uzbek capital. Karina was known as active in the Tashkent Jewish community and in recent months began working as regional Chief Rabbi Abe David Gurevich.

In a conversation with Ynet, spokesperson for the Union of Jewish Communities in the Soviet Union Tal Rabina said, “Last Monday, Karina came to Rabbi Gurevich’s class, and that is actually the last time we had contact with her. The next day and the day following Karina didn’t come to work. The Rabbi’s office attempted to call her but there was no answer. They thought maybe she didn’t feel well.”

From A JNet Chavruta Student: The Stranger On The Plane

I have not seen him in a month, and in that time, the cancer that is chasing my son’s body has paralyzed his entire left side and he is rapidly losing mobility. In a mere four weeks, Ryan has gone from dancing at his wedding to being confined to a wheelchair, unable to perform the most basic of functions unassisted. Our phone conversations have grown very short, very terse as he loses the ability to speak in complete sentences. He is despondent, he is angry, he is frightened. I am on my way to be with him.

On the crowded plane I sit, by chance, behind a man wearing a skullcap. I barely register his presence. I am absorbed in my own thoughts and my own sadness, trying to read a book but not seeing very much. An hour into the flight, annoyed I must put my book aside and move into the aisle to let my window seat mate pass. By chance, I glance down and see the man wearing the skullcap is furiously writing on his computer. He is surrounded by several books in Hebrew.

Crown Heights riot fact, fiction, and plenty of blame

We thought we knew what happened in Crown Heights and who did it. Turns out we were wrong.

We had the major players right but we were foggy onaction and motivation, even though we had watched scenes from the riot on the nightly news; heard commentary from religious leaders, politicians, and community leaders; and lived through the aftermath listening to everyone’s take on what happened.

Certain facts are not in dispute: In August 1991, seven-year-old Gavin Cato, an African-American, was run over by a van driven by a hasidic Jew in a section of Brooklyn known as Crown Heights, a neighborhood where blacks and hasidim lived side by side but did not interact. Several hours later, Yankel Rosenbaum, an Orthodox Jew from Australia, was assaulted by a band of young African Americans and stabbed several times by at least one of them, Lemrick Nelson. These names are part of our collective memory. The rest of the story, however, takes different shapes depending upon the teller.

Miami land tracts being sold

Miami, FL – Developer Leviev Boymelgreen, one of the biggest private landowners in Miami, is shedding what amounts to almost half of its South Florida landholdings.

The proposed sale of about 7 acres of downtown Miami land for $89 million was announced by Africa Israel, a publicly traded Tel Aviv conglomerate that owns a majority stake in Leviev Boymelgreen. The release did not name the buyer, but said the transaction should close within the next three months.

The deal raises new questions about the plans of a company that made a splashy entrance into Miami and Miami Beach two years ago, but has struggled to get its projects off the ground since. The company has been beset by construction delays, management turnover and a constant reshuffling of brokerage companies that sell its condo units.

Torah Study Gains Popularity With New Program

With a long days practicing law as a government attorney, Jill Gerstenfield of Rockville, MD, could not envision waking up at six a.m. for the rabbi’s daily Talmud class. But the tractate of Sotah fascinated Gerstenfield, who attended a Georgetown University class on Jewish and American Law. “I started to read about Sotah,” the Temple-era response to a woman suspected of adultery, “and several cases involving U.S. law and establishing paternity and found the area fascinating.”

Simi’s Jews revel in spacious new place

Revamped residence gives Chabad room to continue growing

Simi Valley, CA – When Morris Huberman spotted the vaguely Spanish-style house on Alamo Street in Simi Valley more than a year ago, he knew it would be perfect.

Jokingly, but also in seriousness, Huberman told Rabbi Noson Gurary that the house, with its red-tiled roof, swimming pool and tennis court, would be a fantastic new home for Chabad of Simi Valley.

“The timing wasn’t right,” Huberman’s wife, Janis, said. “Then it went back on the market. It was just meant to be.”

A building campaign was launched to purchase the $1.4 million facility that sits on roughly an acre of land. Members of the congregation spent the winter, working long into the night, preparing the 5,000-square-foot building for its new life as Chabad’s home. They moved in just in time for Passover this year.

Building bonds: Program teams teens with special needs children

Westport, CT – When Shira Burstein befriended 8-year-old Tal four years ago, she wasn’t sure how long the friendship would last.

A volunteer with the Friendship Circle, Burstein had been assigned to be Tal’s buddy. The nonprofit program matches teen mentors with children who have special needs.

Burstein, then a junior at Westhill High School, had worked with children with developmental disabilities at the school. But playing with young Tal, who is autistic, was a greater challenge, she said.

She was intimidated by Tal’s silence and her screams.

“The first day I came home from visiting (with Tal), I thought I wouldn’t be able to do it,” said Burstein, 21, now a senior at Clark University in Massachusetts. “I didn’t think I was cut out for this.”

Chabad still feuds over who’s boss

And the “feuds” continue, for all the world to see!!

Upstate New York – The touchy question of which Chabad family – the Borensteins or the Burstons – is authorized to run Jewish outreach programs in Orange County on behalf of their Hasidic movement seemed to be settled.

Pesach and Chana Burston are the valid representatives, a spokesman for the worldwide organization declared in a story about the Monroe couple in the Sunday Record on May 28.

But that statement has incurred the wrath of the Rabbi Yakov Borenstein and his wife, Hindy – installed as Chabad emissaries in Poughkeepsie 20 years ago – and reopened an ugly internal spat between them and their organization leaders.