THERE’S NO REPLICATING SUELLEN — SuEllen Fried got more love for her work with Kansas prisoners from the national media, this time on CBS. She was featured on CBS evening news on Friday, Nov. 1, and again on CBS Sunday Morning on Nov. 3. You can read the complete story at http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-57610508/kan-prisoners-get-the-granny-treatment/.

PRIME MINISTERS SHOWING — “The Prime Minsters: The Pioneers,” based on the best-selling book by Ambassador Yehuda Avner will be shown at the Screenland Crown Center from Nov. 9-14. It takes audiences inside the office of Israel’s prime ministers through the eyes of an insider, Avner, who served as a chief aide, English language note-taker and speech writer to Levi Eshkol, Golda Meir, Yitzhak Rabin, Menachem Begin and Shimon Peres. For times, call 816-545-8034, and learn more at www.theprimeministers-thefilm.com.

NOT NEW, BUT NOTEWORTHY NEWS — A loyal reader recently reported that she read “Life in a Jar: The Irena Sendler Project” written by Dr. Jack Mayer. Although our community has long been aware of this project since these students first brought it to local synagogues, she believes this book published in 2011 reveals a new side to the story that all members of the Jewish community should know. The emphasis is on students in Uniontown, Kan., a small isolated town with no “people of color,” Jews or other minorities. The purpose of the 1999 project was directed by their classroom motto: “He who changes one person, changes the world entirely.” Due to the efforts of these students, along with mentors from our small middle-America Jewish Community, Sendler’s heroism was exposed and she became an internationally known and respected figure. Named in the book for their generous financial backing that enabled these young people to pursue the project are Howard and Ro Jacobson, John Shuchart and the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education. Because of their combined efforts international attention was given to an unrecognized hero and she became a Nobel Prize nominee in 2007. Without all of their combined efforts, Irena Sendler may well have gone into history unnoticed. The book is available from the Johnson County Library, and very popular, as well as through Amazon.

Earlier this month the Kehilath Israel board of directors unanimously agreed to offer Rabbi Jeffrey Shron the position of senior rabbi. He will also continue serving as the traditional congregation’s hazzan. Contract negotiations to finalize this deal are currently taking place.

“The officers, board and members are very pleased to have Rabbi Shron continue as the senior rabbi,” said K.I. President Steve Osman. “During his 17-year tenure as hazzan we have come to love his warm sense of humor, dedication and intellect. K.I. now can enjoy him as both hazzan and senior rabbi.”

While serving as the hazzan, Rabbi Shron began studying for the rabbinate. He earned his  smicha (rabbinical ordination) from Yeshivat YPS in 2006. He has been serving as interim rabbi as well as hazzan since May, when he was appointed to fill the position by the board after Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz abruptly left the congregation in April.

Rabbi Shron has been a hazzan since he was 15, getting most of his official training from the Jewish Theological Seminary. He said being both hazzan and rabbi is hard work.

“I just have to keep my concentration and I just do it,” he said. “Obviously down the road I’m going to need somebody to assist me, but at the moment I’ll be doing both jobs. I’ll also be calling upon members of the congregation to help out whenever possible.”

He is honored and happy to become K.I.’s next senior rabbi.

“It’s something that I really was looking forward to achieving and thank G-d the congregation decided to honor me in that way.”

“I’m very enthusiastic about the future of the congregation and I’m looking forward to continuing the legacy of K.I. and creating a warm and close-knit community.”

In the congregation’s Focal Point newsletter to members, Osman noted that due to the amount of time Rabbi Shron will need to devote to these dual duties, another individual will be sought to assist in the congregation’s leadership in the future.

“This person could come from a variety of backgrounds and may not necessarily be a second rabbi. Someone with educational experience, religious leadership abilities, social and activity planning or membership promotion may be among the qualifications we pursue,” Osman said.

“The past six months, while serving as interim rabbi, Kehilath Israel has come to embrace Rabbi Shron in his new role and we all look forward to even more wonderful spiritual leadership while he still continues to perform his duties as hazzan,” Osman said.

One hundred years ago Henrietta Szold came to Kansas City, just a scant year after she founded Hadassah, met with friends and helped organize a local chapter. Next month members of the Greater Kansas City Chapter of Hadassah — a volunteer women’s organization founded with the biblical mission of Aruhat Bat Ami: the Healing of the Daughter of my People — will gather at Hallbrook Country Club to celebrate 100 years of helping others throughout the world.

Today it is known as Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, and it has evolved into a volunteer organization that inspires a passion for and commitment to its partnership with the land and people of Israel. It enhances the health of people worldwide through its support of medical care and research at the Hadassah Medical Organization in Jerusalem. Hadassah empowers its members and supporters, as well as youth in Israel and America through opportunities for personal growth, education, advocacy and Jewish continuity.

The four values that motivated Szold to establish Hadassah, according to Marian Kaplan, president of the Greater Kansas City Chapter, still guide the organization today:

• Pikuach Nefesh — We must value life. One life at a time.

• Klal Yisrael — We must embrace that we are one.

• Tikkun Olam —We have a duty to repair the world.

• M’Dor L’Dor — We must teach the next generation to care for each other and the world.

“These four traditional values have been part of our organization from the very start,” said Kaplan, who has been a member for 20 years and will complete her two-and-a-half-year term as president on Dec. 31, 2014.

Szold, according to Rita Shapiro, president of the Great Plains Region, was an activist, a scholar and a feminist. Shapiro explained that while Szold was studying with members of her study group, she told them, “why are we sitting around, let’s do something.”

Kaplan continued Szold’s story, explaining that just before Szold made this declaration, she had visited Palestine with her mother and saw the terrible health conditions there.

“So Hadassah’s first project was to send two nurses to Palestine to help alleviate the situation there,” said Kaplan, noting they helped curb rampant eye disease and taught mothers hygiene practices such as washing their hands.

“Because of World War I they came home and were only there for a couple of years, but during that time they made a tremendous impact. That was really where the Hadassah Health Organization started. I’m very proud of that as a registered nurse,” said Kaplan, who is also the first registered nurse to serve as chapter president here.

The local chapter will stretch its anniversary celebration a bit into next year as it carries on the tradition of health education. It will host a Women’s Health Symposium March 23 at the Jewish Community Campus. While many details are still being worked out, it has already been determined that the symposium will be conducted in a style similar to the Rabbinical Association’s Annual Day of Discovery.

“Hadassah’s main United States initiative right now is women’s heart health,” said Kaplan, noting that the keynote speaker will focus on that topic. Following the keynote a series of small sessions will be taught by a myriad of health professionals including physicians, nurses and allied health professionals.

First things first, the November celebration is simply that, a celebration.

“We’re honoring the fact that we have been in Kansas City for 100 years and we are advancing our agenda. For instance now there is a campaign through national Hadassah where you can choose where you can make your impact, so members of our organization can really choose where they want contributions to go,” Kaplan said.

At the celebration, women who have been members for 50-plus years — Marge Adler, Ede Bratt, Rosie Lerner, Regina Pachter and Beth Smith — will be recognized. Families consisting of three, four and five generations of Hadassah members will also be honored.

Today, the local Kansas City chapter has about 1,000 members. Of those, it’s hard to pinpoint just how many are active.

“At a typical major all-chapter event, we can get anywhere from 60 to 150 people,” noted Shapiro, who has been a Hadassah member since 1985 and will serve as regional president through December of 2014. She presides over a six-state region that includes 9,000 members in Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana and Iowa.

Because Kansas City has several small interest groups, some events draw only seven or eight people. But organizers are hoping 175 people attend the Centennial Celebration.

“Of course we would like to have more of our members attend, but if you check the other organizations, we may be doing very well,” Shapiro continued.

Like most Jewish organizations, Hadassah is losing members. A little more than 10 years ago in 2002, its membership roster listed 1,400 members.

“I think there was a time when most every Jewish woman stayed at home and belonged to Hadassah,” Kaplan said.

“I think everybody joined everything and there weren’t as many organizations and women were not working,” Shapiro added.

Now younger women are busy and have a lot of ways to spend their free time. Older members are passing away.

“The challenge is to get younger women to give a little piece of their busy lives and make Hadassah one of their priorities,” Kaplan said.

At the time Hadassah was founded, Kaplan said, women didn’t have the right to vote. She said one of the organization’s strengths today is how it empowers leaders.

“We have so many opportunities to do that within Hadassah. That is so much more a part of our society today than it was in Henrietta Szold’s day. I think we’ve evolved with the times and definitely I think the advocacy piece is stronger now than it was in the beginning,” Kaplan said.

“We’re constantly evolving and changing.”

Both Hadassah leaders have made lifelong friends through the organization.

“Some of my very best friends are in Hadassah and I met them here and all over the country,” Shapiro said.

Shapiro said it’s hard to predict where Hadassah will be in the next five to 10 years.

“We may be picking up some younger people who are finally thinking Hadassah’s goals make sense and Hadassah’s values make sense. I think Kansas City will still suffer from attrition and people getting older. It’s time for the young people to take over, but I think Hadassah will still be thriving in Kansas City,” Shapiro said.

“We are grateful for all the support our members have shown us during the past 100 years and continue to show us,” Kaplan said. “And that Kansas City has still remained a viable Hadassah town.”

Kati Koves of Budapest, Hungary, was in town last week to visit her first cousin Kate Lebovitz. But while she was in the United States to see friends and family, she was also hoping to drum up support and raise money for her Reform Jewish congregation in Budapest, Sim Shalom.

“The basic issue is this. There is funding for some synagogues, but they have to be Orthodox or Neolog,” explained Karen Berger, Lebovitz’s daughter who hosted Koves during her visit. A Neolog congregation is more liberal than Orthodox or Chabad, but still maintains separate seating.

“We have a very active congregation and I like sitting next to my husband,” said Koves, noting that there are only about 7,000 Jews in Budapest who are observant. But she believes the number of Jews is closer to 80,000.

“If we can’t raise some money, I don’t know what will happen,” she continued.

“I always knew I had a Jewish identity, but only from my family,” she said. “I like to go to synagogue and tried Neologs, but I wasn’t comfortable there. Sim Shalom is my home, my synagogue, a place where I can be who I am.”

According to the World Jewish Congress, Budapest has some 20 synagogues in which prayers are conducted in a variety of styles, including Neolog, Orthodox, Reform and Chabad. Reform congregations such as Sim Shalom are egalitarian and do not have a mechitzah. Sim Shalom is self-supporting and unlike Orthodox or Neolog congregations, it does not receive any direct funding from the Hungarian government and only a little from international Jewish organizations.

According to the Sim Shalom website, www.simshalom.org, it doesn’t receive any share of Holocaust community restitution funding from the government of Hungary, which adds up to $7 million per year. Sim Shalom officials estimate, however, that the two Reform congregations in the country are supported by almost 10 percent of the total affiliated Jews in Hungary (based on 2011 figures), and is the fastest growing Jewish religious denomination in the country. Koves said Reform congregations did receive government funding, through tax donations, until the law changed in 2011.

Koves, who wears both a mezuzah and a Chai around her neck, said there is a resurgence of anti-Semitism in Hungary now. But she emphatically added, “I am not afraid. I can’t speak for others.” Her mother, Koves said, is a Holocaust survivor and still today is afraid to be openly Jewish.

Sim Shalom is a member of the World Union (WUPJ) and European Union (EUPJ) for Progressive Judaism. Now more than 20 years old, it was the first Progressive Jewish congregation in Hungary. Its leader, Rabbi Katalin Kelemen, was ordained at the Leo Baeck College in London.

In the United States, Friends of Sim Shalom, a California Nonprofit Public Benefit Corporation, has formed to help raise funds for the congregation. Contributions to Friends of Sim Shalom are tax deductible under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.

To make a donation to Sim Shalom, send a check to: Friends of Sim Shalom, c/o Lowell Nigoff, president, 148 Cherokee Park, Lexington, KY 40503. Credit card or Pay Pal donations may be made at http://www.friendsofsimshalom.org/#donate.

The Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, led by its president Leonard Zeskind, is reporting that the National Socialist Movement is planning a rally in the Kansas City area Saturday, Nov. 9. Zeskind believes it will take place between 3 and 5 p.m. that day, but he does not know its exact location.

“Most of the chatter about the would-be rally place it in downtown,” he wrote in an article he posted on IREHR’s website, www.IREHR.org, this week. The Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights is a national organization with an international outlook examining racist, anti-Semitic, white nationalist and far-right social movements, analyzing their intersection with civil society and social policy, educating the public, and assisting in the protection and extension of human rights through organization and informed mobilization. It is based in Kansas City.

“It should be noted that Nov. 9, 2013, will be the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht, when Nazi Storm Troopers and others killed an estimated 91 Jews, sent almost 30,000 to the camps, destroyed synagogues, Jewish homes and shops, and began the process that became the Holocaust,” noted Zeskind about the significance of this rally. “The National Socialist Movement is aware of the anniversary.”

In the article Zeskind, who is the author of “Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream,” noted that Kansas City area NSM members already have commitments from members in several other states including Alabama, Iowa and Maryland.

“Matt Heimbach from Maryland is also planning to bring a couple of people,” Zeskind wrote. “Heimbach has created a string of white student groups at Towson University outside Baltimore, and the latest incarnation is called the Traditionalist Youth Network. He has also traveled across the country, speaking at white-ist events, and is a likely candidate to give a speech in the Kansas City area.”

Zeskind has heard that the Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club, which considers itself part of Aryan Nations, might also participate in this rally.

“And the Kansas City-area organizer claims to be seeking out the Traditionalist American Knights of the KKK, led by Frank Ancona (not the car dealer with the same name) in Park Hills, Mo. This group has rallied with the NSM previously, most recently in Memphis. Whether or not all these factions do attend the Nov. 9 event, it will be a significant event in the Kansas City area,” Zeskind said.

In addition a private swastika-lighting is slated to take place at the end of the day, away from the rally site. Zeskind explained it is a ceremony similar to the Klan’s cross burning.

According to Zeskind, the lead organizer appears to be Kansas City-area resident Buddy Rumble. Rumble is a regional organizer for the NSM, and the primary contact person for a number of states, including both Kansas and Missouri. Zeskind said the NSM has been active in these states — off and on — for a number of years.

Zeskind said the NSM has been holding rallies in the region for more than 10 years. Each rally has attracted more participants. The “white unity” rally held in Topeka in 2002 attracted almost two dozen members dressed in Hitler-era brown shirt uniforms. In 2008 a rally in Jefferson City attracted 63 uniformed NSM members. They were escorted by about 200 area police. In protest, 250 people participated in an anti-racist rally in a public park at the same time.

This is not the first time such an event has taken place here. The NSM held its national convention in a Kansas City-area hotel over the Hitler birthday weekend in April 2005. Following a celebration at a now-defunct German restaurant, there was an altercation between NSM organizer Steve Boswell and Rabbi David Fine, then the rabbi at BIAV.

The Missouri legislature has been battling white supremacist groups since at least 2009, when the Springfield NSM unit began an Adopt-a-Highway clean-up program and won an Adopt-a-Highway recognition sign. After several years of controversy, the state legislature, at the initiative of Rep. Sara Lampe, named that same swath of highway in memory of Rabbi Ernest I. Jacob, who was born in Breslau, Germany, and served congregations in Germany before the Nazi onslaught. In 1938, Rabbi Jacob had been arrested and sent to the Dachau camp, but was released in 1939 and ultimately made his way to Springfield.

“Now the NSM members were forced to keep the good rabbi’s highway clean,” Zeskind said.

For more information, follow the IREHR on its website, www.IREHR.org.

SHALOM SHIRTS — While world-renowned artist Mordechai Rosenstein was in town recently, he and Greg Azorsky decided to collaborate on a T-shirt for Azorsky’s Meshugge Shirts line. The Shalom shirts, featuring letters in light blue, orange, red and gold on a black shirt, will be sold at the URJ biennial in December in San Diego. The plan is for both Meshugge Shirts and Rosenstein to sell these shirts in other places as well. Down the road there will be several different versions of the Shalom shirt in various colors as well. Here Azorsky (left) and Rosenstein work on a prototype of the shirt. You can get a closer look at http://www.meshuggeshirts.com.

GOLDEN BLINTZ BRUNCH — Mazel tov to our friends at the Lawrence Jewish Community Congregation who will be celebrating their 50th Blintz Brunch on Sunday, Nov. 3. The event takes place from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and features a bake sale, silent auction and delicious blintzes. Check it out at 917 Highland Drive in Lawrence!

ARTIST OPENING — Artist Gerry Trilling opens her new show, “In Site,” at City Ice Arts, 2015 Campbell Street in Kansas City, Mo., on Friday, Nov. 1. The opening reception takes place from 6 to 9 p.m. and an artist talk will be held Saturday, Nov. 9, at 11 a.m. The show runs through Dec. 7. “In Site” offers a shift in scale. More information about the artist and the exhibition can be found at www.cityicearts.com or by calling 816-820-4105.

SECOND ANNUAL JAZZBEATS — Several Jewish people are involved in the 2nd Annual JazzBEATS for Brunch and Jazz this Sunday, Nov. 3. The event begins at 10:30 a.m. at the American Jazz Museum and will provide a sampling of Kansas City’s top jazz performers and a brunch. Performing this year will be Millie Edwards and Mark Lowrey. Proceeds from this event will benefit research through the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network and support its Vision of Progress goal to double survival rate for pancreatic cancer by 2020. For more information, to purchase tickets or to make a donation visit http://www.pancurekc.org/.

KANSAS CITY BRANDEIS CHAPTER DISBANDS — After 61 years, the Kansas City Chapter of Brandeis National Committee (formerly Brandeis University National Women’s Committee) has disbanded. This chapter was the oldest and the last in the Midwest to do so. The causes cited are changing demographics and dwindling membership and participation.

“We had celebrated our 60th birthday a year ago; it was a big gala. Our chapter was [almost] as old as the state of Israel,” said Linda Lessner, former BNC president.

The biggest chapter fundraiser for Brandeis University used to be the Brandeis Book Sale, which ended in 2005. The next biggest fundraiser became “Movie Nite Out,” which has been held every year on Dec. 24 for the past 20 years. However, unlike the book sale, this is not the end of the annual movie.

“The spirit of the group will live on as Beth Shalom Sisterhood continues the longtime fundraiser, now named ‘A Nite at the Movies.’ ” Lessner said. “Many former Brandeis women, who are also Beth Shalom Sisterhood members, will bring their expertise to this event.”

Proceeds from “A Nite at the Movies” will go to Beth Shalom Sisterhood projects, both within the synagogue and throughout the community at large.

“We’re involved with the soup kitchen, we’re involved in Ronald McDonald’s Family Room, so basically it’s all of our Beth Shalom Sisterhood projects,” Lessner said.

“I can imagine a community of people who know one another by name, who pray together, raise children with similar values together, celebrate life together.”

Rabbi Mark Levin spoke those words in his sermon as the rabbi of Congregation Beth Torah at its very first service, on July 22, 1988. As the congregation plans to celebrate its 25th anniversary with a series of events Nov. 1 through Nov. 4, those words continue to ring true in the congregation’s newest watchword, “We are the community we need.”

Rabbi Levin, who has served as the congregation’s only pulpit rabbi and who plans to retire from that position and assume a scaled back role as founding rabbi this coming summer, was one of the reasons the congregation was born. He was serving as a rabbi at The Temple, Congregation B’nai Jehudah and was in the midst of interviewing for jobs in other cities. According to the book “Voices: Recollections from the Early Days of Congregation Beth Torah” written by Cheryl Hall Harris and Eileen Garry in 1998, “Those who were involved in the creation of Beth Torah felt “an urgent sense that Kansas City could ill afford to lose a rabbi with the magnitude of skills and humanity that Mark Levin exemplifies.”

Less than four months after the group’s initial meeting on March 27, 1988, they had secured Rabbi Levin’s services and held its first erev Shabbat service as Congregation Beth Torah.

Hal Sader, Beth Torah’s first president, noted in the book that this group of people also foresaw the need for a congregation in Johnson County. The Jewish Community Campus was to open in that area that fall. At that time another Reform congregation, Temple Beth El, was also located at 83rd and Lamar.

Tom Cohen, another founding member of the congregation, reiterated last week that there was a casualness to the early services that encouraged him, and others, to become involved with it.

“We all sing and say the whole service. I remember (Rabbi Levin) always asking people to introduce themselves. These were early reasons we were attracted and remained involved,” Cohen said.

The congregation’s current president, Michelle Cole, joined the congregation about six years ago and said the communal aspect of the congregation, and its friendliness, is one of the things that attracted her family to it.

“Even though the people on staff and the clergy met my family only one time, they made it a point to come up to us all the time when they saw us. We felt very welcome,” Cole said.

Early milestones

One of the congregation’s earliest achievements was the success of its religious school. Sader noted in 1998 that “In almost no time, we went from being the smallest congregation to having the largest religious school in the city. That said a lot for us.”

His wife Carol Sader added, “We started immediately attracting young families with children. That is partly due to Jewish geography in Kansas City. The Jewish population was clearly moving out into Johnson County.”

Beth Torah’s building was opened in October 1996, three weeks after Yom Kippur and only eight years after its inception. This year the sanctuary, as it has been for many years, was filled to capacity during the High Holidays.

25 years later

Rabbi Levin said he believes they have indeed been successful in creating the founders’ vision of a congregation dedicated to liberal Judaism in southern Johnson County.

The rabbi is very proud of the social justice programming the congregation has conducted over the years.

“We have fed tens of thousands of people in 25 years. We have involved thousands of people in social justice projects. For almost 25 years, we’ve been underwriting the food budget at the reStart shelter for the month of January and providing hundreds of volunteers to serve meals on weekends. For upwards of 20 years Beth Torah members have served every Sunday night dinner at SAVEhome. Hundreds of volunteers have gone to deliver meals on Thanksgiving and Christmas to impoverished families. Hundreds of tons of food have been donated to food pantries all over the city,” he reported

Many believe that Beth Torah’s worship model, and its religious school model, have been copied by other Reform congregations across the country.

“We read the entire service together. At the time that we started that in 1988, I knew of no other congregation in the country that was reading the entire service together. Now it’s a widespread practice. What role did we have in that? Maybe it just occurred in a lot of places at the same time, I have no idea.

“The gathering on Sunday morning to bring families together to start the day together, to eat together, to pray together … I believe that’s been copied in other places as well,” he said.

Sader is not at all surprised the congregation has flourished and grown to 650 members over the years.

“The original concept was to have a limited size congregation that would really foster intimacy and closeness and a very sharp sense of community,” Sader said. “I’m not surprised at the size now considering the effort and the work that people have done. Of course the attractiveness around Rabbi Levin’s pulpit orations and pastoral work over the last 25 years has contributed to that as well.

“Our emphasis was making the congregation as potent a force in the community as we could and as a result of that, the longevity of the congregation certainly was within my expectations,” he continued. “We’re based upon the principals of Torah, avodah and works of loving kindness and that says it all.”

In addition to Rabbi Levin’s leadership, which Sader characterized as outstanding, he said the hard work of volunteers and staff over the years is what has brought the congregation to what it is today.

“We really have developed an outstanding cadre of leadership on our board and on our staff and I really don’t know of anyone who isn’t committed to the kind of congregation that we’ve become.”

Sader said the other thing that has contributed to Beth Torah’s success is its diversified congregation in terms of membership. It has always embraced interfaith families and others not always welcome elsewhere.

“We have a significant gay portion of our congregation who are welcome and treated like everybody else. That makes you feel very good that this is an open congregation as far as beliefs and as far as how we treat people. I think all of that came together to really foster our success,” Sader said.

The current president believes Beth Torah’s welcoming environment has been the key to the congregation’s success.

“We have that motto ‘we are the community we need,’ and it’s true. I think it starts and ends with the congregants and the staff. There is always somebody there to answer a question, you always meet new friends, the 15-minute Friday night initiative that happened a couple of years ago …. I think people aren’t so intimidated by going to temple, no matter when it is and no matter who you are,” Cole said.

The bridge to the future

Over the years Rabbi Levin believes Beth Torah has touched a lot of lives.

“I believe it’s had an influence in the Kansas City Jewish community and perhaps in the larger community as well. But having said that, the major focus has to be on what kind of a vision do we need for the next 25 years that will keep the local Jewish community a vital and creative place with Jews of every age involved in the same kind of creative fashion we’ve had for the last 25 years and before that. I think that’s a real challenge,” he said.

Many members are mindful that with Rabbi Levin’s retirement, change is coming soon.

“The congregation as a whole is going through a transition now but things will only continue to get better,” Cole said.

As it is with any congregation, the rabbi is the reason some people belong to a congregation. Cole said when Rabbi Levin retires and an interim rabbi, and subsequently a new pulpit rabbi is hired in 2015, membership may fluctuate for a while.

“But Rabbi Levin is not the congregation. We are. He started it, but people have to have faith in the organization as a whole, what we have done for the past 25 years and what we will continue to do to engage people in the next 25 years,” Cole said.

Rabbi Levin’s role with the congregation after he officially retires has not been defined just yet.

“I intend to be involved to the extent that I am asked. I am looking forward to new leadership that will bring a different kind of vision, a vision that is influenced by the digital revolution that we’ve been through, who can say here’s where the community needs to go to be creative and vital for the next 25 years. I hope to be a piece of that, I’m looking forward to who will take the reins and lead in the direction necessary to be as innovative as we’ve been for the last quarter century,” he said.

Rabbi Levin said the congregation’s Torah Writing project, which began earlier this month and will conclude in June, is the beginning of its next 25 years.

“We are very fortunate that we have in our ark a Torah scroll that we are told is between four and five centuries old. It probably came from Northern Italy. Think about a 450-year-old Torah scroll. All the communities that it has seen, all the Jews that have read from it, all that it meant to Judaism for the last 450 or 500 years. That is an appreciable percentage of Jewish history, about 16 percent. That’s amazing.

“And now here’s a scroll that’s going to be written. It’s going to start out in Overland Park, and it’s going to link Jews to all the generations of Jews past who have read the Torah but just like this scroll has a history, so our scroll will have a future to link Jews. Who knows how many communities over what period of time and how many Jews will read from it. We are creating our own Torah scroll with all the traditional teachings that will link our people to the generations yet to come, as well because it’s a traditional scroll, to the generations that have been. I find that extremely exciting. In a sense it’s a piece of immortality.”

Rabbi Danniel Horwitz spent 18 years as Congregation Ohev Sholom’s rabbi. He left the congregation in the summer of 2004 and will be speaking again from the pulpit for the first time this weekend as the Conservative congregation’s Shaw scholar in residence.

The weekend begins tomorrow night, Oct. 25, and concludes on Sunday morning, Oct. 27. He will speak at Kabbalat Shabbat services, followed by Shabbat dinner at the synagogue Friday night. Saturday morning Rabbi Horwitz will present a d’var Torah during the 9:30 a.m. Shabbat morning service. He will give another presentation following the Kiddush luncheon. The day will conclude with a talk at the Seudah Shlishit (third meal) at 5 p.m. that evening. Rabbi Horwitz will also be the featured speaker at Café Ohev Sunday morning. Call the synagogue at 913-642-6460 to see if reservations are still available for any of the meal events.

Ohev was the second congregation Rabbi Horwitz served following rabbinical school. He came to town in 1986 after serving a congregation in Galveston, Texas, for six years.

Rabbi Horwitz decided to leave Ohev nine years ago and move his family to Houston so that his wife, Tobi Cooper, could join her parents’ business, Houston Pecan Company (www.houstonpecan.com).

“That has worked out very well. It has also been good that we are in Houston and able to help out as her parents continue to grow older. It was a difficult decision to leave Kansas and Ohev Sholom and our many friends in the area, but in the long run it has been a good thing,” Rabbi Horwitz said.

After serving a year as an interim rabbi at a Conservative synagogue in Houston, Rabbi Horwitz began working as the chapel rabbi at Congregation Beth Yeshurun.

“I also teach adult classes in the synagogue and in the local Melton Adult Mini-School,” he said.

This past spring the rabbi completed the Doctor of Jewish Studies program that he began many years ago through Spertus Institute of Jewish Learning and Leadership in Chicago.

“Now that I’ve finished the program, I am adding some other work at Beth Yeshurun and also am about to join the faculty at University of Houston,” he said.

Rabbi Horwitz will teach five sessions this weekend at Ohev. The overall message he hopes to convey is the vitality of the mystical tradition in Jewish life, something he said most Jews did not study in their synagogues, religious schools or day schools.

“We were good 20th century rational Jews, we didn’t focus much on any of that nonsense. People who did study it needed to be so much more rooted in the foundation of Judaism before anybody would teach them about the mystical end of things,” the rabbi commented.

He believes it is important today to make available appropriate treatments of Jewish mysticism because that is preferable to people learning about it on the Internet.

“It’s not like you can keep these things a secret, so we have to find ways to explain them to people and to explain why they are important and how they continue to play a role in Jewish life,” he said.

Through the years, Rabbi Horwitz said he has found that a lot of Jewish kids never learned what Jewish mysticism had to teach and couldn’t find a way to satisfy that pull within Jewish life.

“So they went somewhere else to find it. Some of them left Judaism entirely, other people left for most practical purposes and they didn’t learn that we have a lot of that within our tradition,” he said.

Rabbi Scott White, who succeeded Rabbi Horwitz at Ohev, said it will be nice to have his predecessor teach this weekend.

“Danny will always be beloved at Ohev Sholom, and it’s a thrill to welcome him back to the shul he called home for many years. No one is more excited than I about the prospect of spending an entire weekend delving into Jewish mysticism under the guidance of an outstanding teacher who holds a doctorate in that field,” Rabbi White said.

Rabbi Horwitz will be traveling alone for this visit because it’s the busy season for the Cooper family’s nut business. He is looking forward to the weekend.

“I have visited Ohev Sholom on a couple of occasions when in town for various events, but certainly nothing like this. We continue to subscribe to The Chronicle and follow developments at Ohev Sholom through The Chronicle, as well as through their email messages. I’m naturally very pleased and excited to be invited to return to Ohev Sholom and look forward to seeing many old friends and meeting those who have joined the congregation over the past nine years, as well as my friend and colleague Rabbi White,” Rabbi Horwitz said.

Rabbi White reports more than half of Ohev’s current members were members when Rabbi Horwitz was the congregation’s rabbi.

“It will be interesting to see how much it is the same and how much it’s different,” Rabbi Horwitz said.

“We really loved living in Kansas City. It’s a great community. The day school was excellent for our kids. The congregation was excellent for our kids in many ways. There are a lot of things we miss about that of course, but there are a lot of great things for us in Houston as well,” he continued.

The two youngest Horwitz children — Shaye and Eliana were born in Kansas City. Shaye graduated this summer from the University of Houston and has just begun a job as a software developer in Houston.

Eliana graduated from high school in Houston, spent a year in Israel on the NATIV program sponsored by the Conservative movement, and now is enjoying her first semester at Binghamton University in New York.

As previously reported in The Chronicle, Dina is married to Joey Carr, son of Robin and Bill Carr and are the parents of the Horwitzs’ first grandchild, 6-month-old Emmy Hannah Carr. Dina and Joey live and work in Chicago.

Sarit is in her fourth year of the rabbinical school at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. She interned last year at Yale University Hillel, and now is a rabbinic fellow at Congregation B’nai Jeshurun on the Upper West Side in New York City. She is expected to graduate in the spring of 2015.

The most talked about issue in the American Jewish community right now is the Pew Study. This hot topic will be discussed at 7 p.m. next Wednesday night, Oct. 30, at the Jewish Community Campus. The event, “A Portrait of Jewish Americans: Is the Sky Falling?” is sponsored by the Jewish Federation, the Rabbinical Association, and the Jewish Funders Council (Jewish Community Foundation, Jewish Federation, Jewish Heritage Foundation, Menorah Legacy Foundation).

The panel discussion, being tabbed as a community conversation, will be moderated by Andrew Kaplan, the immediate past president of The Temple, Congregation B’nai Jehudah. The panel will consist of three rabbis: Rabbi Doug Alpert (Congregation Kol Ami), Rabbi David Glickman (Congregation Beth Shalom) and Rabbi Daniel Rockoff (BIAV); two agency executives: Jay Lewis, executive director of KU Hillel, and Jacob Schreiber, president and CEO of the Jewish Community Center; and community volunteers Sarah Beren and Victor Wishna.

Alan Edelman, associate executive director of the Jewish Federation, said the panelists are “next gen or new to the world of Jewish communal professional service,” because they are the ones who will deal with how the Jewish community will need to address these issues in the future.

Kaplan will make some introductory remarks before the panelists each speak for approximately five minutes. Following formal remarks, the audience will have a chance to join the discussion. The evening is scheduled to end at 9 p.m.

Edelman said the event was planned because this survey has caused a lot of buzz.

“We’ve been getting lots of calls and the bottom line is people want to talk about the issues and share ideas,” he said.

Even before the survey results became public, Edelman said Jewish professionals and lay leaders were following trends that were telling them they needed to come up with different ways to engage members of the Jewish community.

One such example is the number of people, 97 percent, who say they are proud to be Jewish and want to associate with Jews.

“As Steven Cohen said in a webinar I participated in, more people are attending events like Jewish film festivals than are sitting in synagogue,” Edelman reported.

Another trend Edelman referred to is that the number of children attending Jewish preschools is on the rise, yet the number of children being enrolled in synagogue religious schools — in kindergarten, first and second grades in particular — is declining.

“It’s time to respond to these trends,” he said.

Rabbi Yitz Greenberg, Edelman said, has characterized the situation in which the Jewish community is finding itself in an interesting way.

“He said the first 2,000 years of Jewish history were biblical. The second 2,000 years were rabbinic. We’re now entering the third 2,000 years,” he said.

“We’ll have to see what kind of radical changes we’ll need to make now,” Edelman added.

For more information about the Pew study, the findings can be found at http://www.pewforum.org/2013/10/01/jewish-american-beliefs-attitudes-culture-survey/.

For an artist whose biography would be incomplete without the phrase “world-renowned,” David Moss is strikingly humble.

“I think of myself as a folk artist,” he said from Jerusalem, “but a folk artist of an extremely sophisticated folk.”

Moss is indeed a sophisticated master of many media. He is perhaps best known as the creator of the Haggadah that bears his name. Reflecting more than a year of research in libraries on three continents, the Moss Haggadah is filled with personally rendered Hebrew calligraphy, original prints and detailed paper cuts. The result is a tour de force that Rabbi Irving “Yitz” Greenberg describes as “possibly the most beautiful Haggadah of all times.”

He is also acclaimed as the artist who singlehandedly revived the art of the hand-illuminated ketubah (marriage contract) with a collection that has inspired a generation of artists and a vibrant genre of Jewish expression. His portfolio is testimony to a deep devotion to Judaism and what he describes as “the swarm of new pieces and projects teeming in my feverish little mind.”

With trademark attention to craftsmanship as well as beauty, he has manipulated interior and exterior spaces, created graphic art, poetry and pottery and offered educational programming to audiences of all ages. The British Museum, Getty Museum, Israel Museum, Library of Congress, National Library of Canada, New York Public Library, Harvard and Yale University Libraries and Yeshiva University Museum are only a sampling of the institutions that have exhibited his work or have made it part of their permanent collections.

The Kansas City community will have the chance to experience Moss and his many dimensions during his stay as the Jewish Community Center’s artist in residence, Nov. 4 through 7. Public events will include lectures, workshops and exhibitions that, with one exception, are available to the community at no charge. He will finish with “Journey Through Psalms,” an “interfaith, intercultural, interactive gathering.”

Moss will be joined by the senior minister of Community Christian Church, The Rev. Robert Hill, co-host of the popular radio show “Religion on the Line”; Abbot Gregory J. Polan, O.S.B., of Conception Abbey, who directed the revision of the Psalter now used by English speaking congregations throughout the Catholic world; and Congregation Ohev Sholom’s Rabbi Scott White. In educational and entertaining fashion, they will share graphic, literary, liturgical and musical creations stemming from the Book of Psalms before inviting audience members to create expressions of their own. Book/print signing and sales will follow each event. (See box for complete schedule.)

Beyond the publicized programs, the artist’s visit is occasion for another special guest: the elegant Tree of Life Shtender (prayer stand) co-created by Moss and artist Noah Greenberg will make its way from Dallas to the JCC, where Moss will share it with small groups by appointment. The carved-wood shtender, an integrated “treasure chest” that contains within it 14 Jewish ritual objects, is being loaned to the community by Leslie and Howard Shultz.

The Shultz’s purchased the Tree of Life Shtender for the Dallas community where they currently live. It rotated between synagogues before finding a permanent home at the Yavnah Academy, an Orthodox day school. Accompanying the shtender will be a student from the Academy, who will learn from Moss how to serve as its docent and caretaker. Together they will spend a day at the Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy, sharing this and more of Moss’ works.

Jill Maidhof, JCC director of Jewish Life and Learning, says that it was a visit last spring by artist Andi Arnovitz that revealed the community’s “hunger for an expression of Jewish values that is innovative, honest and exquisitely crafted.” The challenge, then, was to identify the next artist who would offer the same level of excellence.

Maidhof described her dilemma to several people and it was Rabbi White who urged her to extend an invitation to Moss.

“I met him in his Jerusalem studio,” Rabbi White said, “and consider him to be the Shlomo Carlbach of the visual arts. He’s a genius, and he’s got a very charismatic side to him, but he’s also extremely humble.”

Moss was a perfect choice. As it turns out, he lives not far from Arnovitz in Jerusalem and they’re close friends. Because his work, like Arnovitz’s, is steeped in Jewish tradition and crafted to bring new form to traditional Jewish expression, it builds beautifully on the conversations begun during her residency.

“While Andi’s work raises our consciousness about social issues such as politics and gender, David’s elevates the physical and spiritual experience of spaces, ritual objects and texts,” Maidhof said. “We’re fortunate to host two such luminaries within the space of one year.”

A native of Ohio, Moss made aliyah 30 years ago, and works in a studio near the Old City walls in Jerusalem. He came to artistic expression through Hebrew calligraphy.

“I had no art training or background, but when I began copying the letters I was enchanted … it was love at first sight — and I’ve continued to explore the incredible creative power in these letters and the culture they so magically encapsulate,” he said. “At this point, my mission is to transform Jewish texts, values, objects, spaces and souls through creative expression.”

Moss’ residency is made possible by funding from the Jewish Federation.

“David is one of the most respected creators of Jewish expression and many members of our community are collectors and supporters of the arts,” said Jewish Federation Executive Director Todd Stettner. “We’re especially pleased to serve as the title sponsor for his visit.”

The interfaith program on Nov. 7 is additionally supported by the Jewish Art Fund of the Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Kansas City.

Moss, too, is looking forward to his visit. “These artist in residencies are one of the best ways I have of sharing my work,” he said. “The chance to work with kids, professional artists, scholars and the general public of all ages is a wonderful opportunity for me to share and learn and grow.”

For more information, call 913-327-8077 or visit jcckc.org.