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Earlier this month Village Shalom resident Millie Reichelt reached an important milestone in her life when she marked her 100th birthday on Nov. 15. She considers herself blessed, having enjoyed a good and healthy life. When asked how old she is, Millie displayed her wonderful sense of humor by replying, “Sweet Sixteen!”

She has borne her years gracefully, continuing to pursue an active lifestyle. Millie is ready to participate in any activity including Shabbat services, excursions to places like the Overland Park Arboretum, happy hour, movies, cooking and exercise sessions. She especially enjoys Bingo and Pokeno and is an accomplished artist.

Millie was born and raised in the Flatbush area of Brooklyn. She has an older sister who lives in California and had two brothers. Her parents owned and operated a laundry business, which specialized in linens and draperies all done meticulously by hand. At a young age, Millie showed her natural talent for numbers when she served as her parents’ bookkeeper. She also enjoyed helping her father deliver their customers’ laundry.

After graduating from high school, where she was an honor student, Millie attended business school where she learned typing and shorthand.

She loved to dance and went every Saturday and Sunday to Danceland. Her favorite dances were the waltz, foxtrot and Charleston. She also enjoyed going to famous theaters, such as the Roxy and Paramount, where she saw performances by some of the biggest names of the day: Jackie Gleason, Frank Sinatra and Milton Berle.

Millie worked as a cashier in a restaurant where she met and dated her future husband, Ben Zedek. They lived next to Prospect Park where she was a full-time mother to their son Michael, whom she said was a very good boy and easy to raise. Millie was a good cook and loved to read. She learned to drive when she was in her late 40s or early 50s. In 1964, while Michael was in college, Millie’s husband Ben passed away. Afterwards, she was hired as a cashier at National Commercial Bank. She was very conscientious, always making sure that all the numbers were correct. Some years later, Millie married Herman Reichelt, and they lived in Albany, N.Y.

In Albany, Millie was very involved in the sisterhood at her synagogue. She was an active volunteer and an especially proficient fundraiser. She ran Bingo games and was active in the production of the annual sisterhood musical production. She also volunteered at a nursing home in Troy, N.Y., where her mother-in-law lived. One of the residents there was the mother of Kirk Douglas. The well-known movie actor used to visit her there, and he sponsored the addition of a wing onto the nursing home.

Millie’s son, Michael, became a rabbi, and in 1974 was named senior rabbi at The Temple, Congregation B’nai Jehudah in Kansas City. After Herman Reichelt died, Millie moved to Overland Park where she lived for a while at the Atriums. In 2001, she moved to Village Shalom. Millie is especially proud of her family: her son, Michael, and his wife, Karen; her two granddaughters, Betsy (and her husband Jeremy,) and Susan (and husband Joe and their two children, Sam and Julia).

GIVING THE GIFT OF LIFE — The Maccabeats performed to a sold out crowd Sunday at the White Theatre. The a cappella men’s group, which got its start as Yeshiva University’s student vocal group, has partnered with the Gift of Life Bone Marrow Foundation since December 2011. The Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy coordinated a Bone Marrow Registry Drive during the concert, registering 36 concert-goers as prospective donors. If you didn’t get a chance to register, or would like to help in another way, it was announced that it takes $60 to process each swab, and there’s a huge backlog of swabs to be processed due to lack of funds. To donate, or for more information, visit www.giftoflife.org.

CHANUKAH ART CONTEST WINNERS — This is supposed to be the week that the winners of the annual Chanukah Art Contest were announced. However, we needed an extra week to do the judging, so the winning names will be announced in the Dec. 13 edition.

A SPECIAL CHANUKAH — While many of us will be filling our homes with light and joy on the sixth night of Chanukah, Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz of Kehilath Israel Synagogue will be in Washington, D.C. He has been invited to attend a special Chanukah celebration at the White House with President Barack Obama on Thursday, Dec. 13. This is the third time he’s been invited and the second time he will actually celebrate the holiday in the White House. We’re looking forward to seeing a photo and learning more about it in a few weeks.

JCC PARTNERS WITH THEATRE IN THE PARK — Glancing over the announcement of the 2013 Theatre in the Park season I noticed that the outdoor theater and the Jewish Community Center will jointly produce “Hairspray.” The play will be produced at the JCC July 13-28 and then move to Shawnee Mission Park the next two weekends beginning Aug. 2. Krista Blackwood, director of cultural arts at the JCC said, “This partnership kicks off what we hope will be a long-standing collaborative relationship with TTIP. We’re thrilled to be working with the great team out at the Park.” This is the second major announcement the JCC has made regarding its productions in recent weeks. Read more about the JCC obtaining the rights to be the first to locally produce “Les Miserables” on page 23.

STUDENT OF RELATIONSHIPS — BIAV’S Rabbi Dani Rockoff is participating in a comprehensive “Rabbinic Marriage Counseling” course that aims to develop communal rabbis’ skills and techniques in assisting couples through every stage of a relationship — from dating and marriage to crisis, death and divorce. The brand-new program is sponsored by Yeshiva University’s Center for the Jewish Future and the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Rabbinical Theological Seminary.

A lot has changed yet much has stayed the same in the 110 years since Jewish Family Services was established in 1901. JFS has been quietly celebrating this milestone anniversary throughout 2012 by making sure it’s strengthening its core mission of helping families.

“We’re like a department store, we have lots of different services,” explained JFS Executive Director Don Goldman. “So we have a very broad mission of helping individuals and families cope with crises and life’s everyday challenges by providing essential programs and services for them.”

Originally known as United Jewish Charities and founded by William J. Berkowitz, it began when several smaller agencies merged to pool their efforts and their funds to help the wave of immigrants arriving here from Eastern Europe.

“One hundred and ten years ago we were the main Jewish agency in the city. Most of the other agencies have spawned from us. It was really a very different world then,” Goldman said.

“The Jewish community at the time was really all about resettlement and helping those who had recently come to the United States get the services they needed. Today almost everybody is settled and assimilated, so our issues now are much more social-services related and geared for a really different point in time for the Jewish community,” he continued.

Through the years and name changes — first to Jewish Family and Children Services and eventually to Jewish Family Services — the agency has always worked to strengthen and preserve family life.

“What’s interesting to me is how our work today has components that are both very similar and very different from what they were over the last 110 years. I read some case notes from 70 years ago that looked like they could have been written by a social worker this year dealing with a family in crisis over the loss of a job,” Goldman said.

JFS’ top executive is quick to point out that a few years ago the agency was not doing the best job it could to meet the needs of the time. So its staff and board set out to transform the agency, adding programs to specifically meet the needs of today’s Jewish community.

“We decided to increase our focus on older adults. Our community is aging, yet we didn’t have the range of services we needed to handle older adults’ needs,” Goldman said.

JFS launched new, innovative programs such as JET Express, which helps older adults with transportation when they can no longer drive for themselves. In addition Help@Home was established to allow older adults to stay comfortably in their home when they can no longer take care of it themselves.

As it went about this transformation, JFS looked to the other 120 or so Jewish social service agencies around the country to get a sense of what other agencies do.

“They create a model for us of all the things we might be doing. We are doing many things, but we are not doing everything that other people are doing. One of our challenges for the future is to continue to keep doing more and more for our community,” Goldman said.

JFS also handles situations that can’t be completely anticipated, such as the economic crisis that began in 2008.

“When I first arrived at JFS five years ago, we got 30 or 40 calls per month for help with various needs. By 2009, that number had grown to over 200 per month, and stayed at that level for three years. Many of those calls involved a loss of a job,” he said.

Not everyone needs help with a crisis, but Goldman wants JFS to be prepared for those who do.

“Those things have been the case for the whole 110 years. People get into financial crisis because they lost their job, or have a medical emergency or a variety of other reasons. The way we deal with it today is different than 110 years ago, but we are and want to be the place for people to come to deal with those things,” he said.

So in 2010, JFS partnered with Jewish Vocational Service to launch Jewish Employment Services to help people find jobs, particularly in this very tough environment. Since its inception, more than 165 people have found jobs through JES and hundreds more have received help with their resumes, networking tips and interviewing skills. In continued response to the economic crisis, JFS launched its Food Pantry this past year — an idea borrowed from other Jewish social service agencies — serving its first clients last month.

“We did that because we are filling a really important need in the community,” Goldman said.

Focus is families

Stewart Koesten, JFS’ president, points out that whatever the agency does, it will always assist families.

“Family is our middle name,” he said. “Whether it is classes or events or workshops, we work with families.”

He noted that the agency works with parents, married couples and young people just coming into marriage as well as children and seniors.

“Last year we served over 1,200 kids and their parents with a variety of programs and we partner with synagogues in the community with these programs. Family Life Education is a very large part of what we do,” Koesten said.

For many years JFS has also prided itself on the work it does regarding mental health issues. In fact Emilie Levin, the agency’s  executive director from 1939-79, was the first professionally trained social worker to lead a social service agency not only in the Jewish community but the entire Kansas City metro area.

“We do quite a bit in the mental health area with our Mental Health Coalition, through Jewish Family Services partnering with with Catholic Charities and the Rabbinical Association to provide anti-stigma and mental health awareness programs. That’s a huge issue these days that we are involved with,” Koesten said.

Then and now

When the agency was founded Goldman noted that the Jewish community was very separate from the general community and couldn’t access many of its services, such as hospitals.

“That’s not an issue today. What’s also changed is JFS now serves beyond the Jewish community. In the life crisis area half of our clients are not Jewish,” he said.

As a founding member of United Way, JFS has actually served the general community for many years. Most other social service agencies in town — such as Catholic Charities and Lutheran Ministries — serve the whole community as well.

“It’s part of being in social service that while you want to serve your own community, you want to serve the whole community. … Our priority is to serve the Jewish community, but the spirit of tikkun olam enables us to serve everyone,” Goldman said.

Future challenges

As with any social service agency today, funding is one of JFS’ biggest challenges. Since JFS serves both the Jewish and general communities, it continues to look to both communities to find ways to fund its current programs as well as find funding so it can expand its programming. Goldman said the success of many JFS programs, especially in the area of older adults, has helped it raise funds in the general community.

“Because these are some of the most interesting, innovative services out there, we’re finding a lot of general community foundations are interested in funding them,” Goldman said.

As older, generous funders age, Koesten is hoping to find ways to interest younger generations in funding the agency.

“We face a future challenge of how are we going to raise money from a potentially diminishing source, or how do we train that community to recognize the need. I think both of those angles have to be attacked,” Koesten said.

In the future, Goldman sees even more expansion of its services to older adults.

“We’re all aging,” Goldman pointed out. “If you don’t need our programs now, your parents need them or eventually you will need them yourself.”

He also noted that many agencies across the country have more programs for the disabled than JFS currently has. That’s an area of service he would also like to see expanded.

Goldman believes JFS will continue to grow, adapt and change in the future in order to remain successful.

“The good news is that I think while we’re getting closer to the mark in terms of serving more and more of the needs,” he said. “I see us looking to provide more comprehensive services for older adults and I see more comprehensive services for people in crisis and generally for families throughout the life cycle.”

Kehilath Israel Synagogue has come to the aid of Jewish Hurricane Sandy victims in Long Island by donating a Torah scroll to a synagogue that lost four.

Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz said K.I., which has more than 15 Torah scrolls, will donate a Torah scroll to Congregation Ahavas Yisroel, a small Orthodox synagogue in Cedarhurst that had its four Torah scrolls badly damaged by the hurricane. The rabbi and his wife Shoshanna will travel to New York and deliver the Torah next week.

The Long Island synagogue was decimated after 4 feet of water washed away tables, chairs, prayer books and four Torah scrolls, one that was more than 90 years old, the congregation’s rabbi, Yissachar Blinder, told JTA, The Chronicle’s national news agency.

“Our Torahs were soaked with enough damage that it will be months before we are able to use them,” Rabbi Blinder said. “We are really grateful for everyone in Kansas City for making this gesture to help us.”

Rabbi Yanklowitz spearheaded the effort to donate a Torah to a synagogue in need, noting that damage to synagogues could hurt the community as a whole.

“I reached out to the OU (Orthodox Union) to see how I could help congregations that were destroyed. I suggested the possibility of us donating a Torah to a synagogue that lost theirs. The OU made the connection to this synagogue,” Rabbi Yanklowitz said.

K.I. has 15 kosher Torahs and a bunch of others that need repair, the rabbi said.

“Torahs aren’t like necklaces that should just be worn occasionally and then stored away, they should be used and shared with the community,” Rabbi Yanklowitz said. “We obviously weren’t affected by the hurricane here in Kansas City and we were looking for different ways to contribute to those hurt.”

So Rabbi Yanklowitz approached K.I. President Steve Osman about the possibility of donating a Torah.

“He was very supportive of the idea and the board approved it,” the rabbi said.

Rabbi Yanklowitz doesn’t know the exact worth of the Torah K.I. is donating to the New York congregation.

“A Torah scroll generally costs around $20,000 to $60,000. This is a very nice, large, heavy one probably easily worth over $25,000,” he said.

Congregation Ahavas Yisroel did not own any of the Torah scrolls that were destroyed. The four scrolls damaged in the storm were on loan from synagogue members. Rabbi Blinder said a Torah scroll is just what the community needed.

“This is a silver lining for all that we’ve been through with this hurricane,” he said.

Some information for this story was provided by JTA.

Victor Wishna is an award-winning author. Articles he has written have appeared in newspapers and magazines all over the country. Now he’s written a play that will be produced locally by the Barn Players. “To the Dogs,” directed by Lindsay Adams and featuring Josh Brady, Alice Pollock and Jeff Shehan, will be presented on Dec. 7, 8 and 9 at 6219 Martway in Mission, Kan.

Wishna, a member of Congregation Beth Shalom, has not written a lot of plays before, but it’s something he’s always wanted to do.

“I’ve always loved theater and the book I wrote was interviewing 61 top American playwrights,” said the author of “In Their Company: Portraits of American Playwrights,” published in 2006 by Umbrage Editions. It is the winner of the 2007 Independent Publisher Book Awards Silver Medal.

A graduate of Stanford University and the New School’s creative writing MFA program, he has written for the Wall Street Journal, the Baltimore Sun, the Miami Herald, the Kansas City Star, Humanities, and other major magazines and newspapers. Wishna currently contributes a weekly real estate feature to the New York Post and his column “Letter from New York” is syndicated nationally. At one time his column also appeared in The Chronicle. He also served as special aide to Chancellor Arnold Eisen at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, where he assisted with researching, editing and writing of official speeches and publications.

After nearly 12 years living and writing in New York City, Wishna returned to his hometown of Kansas City, where he lives with his wife and their baby daughter. In 2011, he founded The Vital Word and, as chief editorial officer, has helped find the right words for an array of nonprofit, corporate and individual clients. His words can also be seen —and heard — via the local and national media outlets to which he regularly contributes, his efforts as senior editor at KCMetropolis, his language-related posts as a founding contributor to Book Riot, and his regular commentary on NPR affiliate KCUR-FM.

When not writing for publication or pleasure, Wishna is honing his stand-up routine, which he has performed at numerous clubs and special events around New York, the Midwest and elsewhere. In June 2010, he was named New York’s second-funniest amateur Jewish comedian by The Jewish Week.

This is the first play Wishna has written, outside of a school setting, that has been produced. The opportunity energizes him.

“It’s really exciting. It’s a big deal for me,” he said.

He’ll see the play rehearsed for the first time this week. He’s spoken with the director but he has not yet met any of the three actors in the play.

“It’s cool. I do love theater and it is something that has always been part of what I do. When I was a kid in high school and college I was involved in acting, producing and writing. In my professional career I’ve written a lot about theater,” he said.

“One of the things I think is wonderful about theater is it’s a collaborative effort. I was excited to write something that was an acceptable blueprint for a play and I’m excited to see what happens when a director and actors and all the other people that are involved from a technical standpoint take that and make something out of it,” he said.

He explained the play is about three racing greyhound dogs moments before what turns out to be their last race.

“I was trying to write something that could stick within these parameters, specifically a 10-minute parameter and I was inspired by David Ives, (a contemporary American playwright) who writes a lot of short, comical but somewhat meaningful plays,” he said. “I had been reading some of his short plays the night before so I just sat down and wrote this.”

Alex Bigus has entered two playwriting contests in his life. He has won both of them. He wrote the first as a student at Blue Valley North High School and it was presented at the Kansas State Drama Festival. The second is being performed next month as one of the six plays being presented by the Barn Players in the fifth annual “6 x 10 Play Festival.”

His play “Who Am I” will be featured along with five other original plays Dec. 7, 8 and 9 at the Barn Players, 6219 Martway in Mission, Kan. It is the story of a man and a woman who awaken with no knowledge of where they are, who they are, or why they are there. The play will be directed by Sara Crow.

“Who Am I” is the first 10-minute play Bigus has ever written.

“It is very short,” said Bigus, the 23-year-old son of Ruth and Larry Bigus.

He said writing something that short was hard for him.

“I like words. Ten minutes doesn’t lend itself to words in a way that I would usually work them. It is about using what you have to get the most information out without besieging the audience with too much exposition. You just have to set it up in a way where things make sense without needing too much explanation,” he explained.

Vida Bikales, president of the Barn Players board of directors, noted that Bigus is the Barn Players youngest playwright. He’s also appeared on its stage in one of its Barn Jr. productions.

Bigus is a 2007 graduate of BVN and a 2011 graduate of Oklahoma City University. There he earned a degree in music with a specialty in musical theater. He works as a vocal coach and director and has both performed and has been a part of production staffs in several local theaters. He has also served as an assistant director of the Oklahoma City Repertory Theatre and a show director at OCU.

Currently Bigus is an acting apprentice at the Florida Studio Theatre in Sarasota, Fla., where he will be until the end of May. He has been cast as an understudy in FST’s production of “Smokey Joe’s Café” and is teaching musical theater classes for teens.

This month he’ll even get a chance to march in Sarasota’s annual Christmas parade. What he won’t get a chance to do is come to Kansas City to see his play.

“They will be working it without my input, which I think is the way it should be in theater. I think once the writer has written it … the writer should step aside and let the people whose jobs and hearts and souls are in that play to work on it,” Bigus said.

Even after winning two writing contests, he doesn’t like to enter them.

“It’s frightening to put something you’ve poured a lot of your heart into out there for others to say this isn’t quite good enough, or to just sometimes even not say anything which is always worse,” he said.

As an actor Bigus faces criticism as well, but it doesn’t bother him as much.

“Acting is an area I feel more confidence in and is an area I’m more experienced in.”

Bigus was encouraged to enter the contest by his old acting teacher Eric Magnus, who happens to be the artistic director for the Barn Players.

“I couldn’t sleep one night, which usually means my brain is too busy, so I get up and I write. That’s what I did one night and this is one of the things that came out of it. I decided to send it in and see what happens,” he said.

His “end all, be all goal” for the future is to direct.

“I’m hoping in a few years to be able to attend Penn State for my MFA (master of fine arts degree) in directing and to someday teach and direct at a collegiate level,” he said.

He loves writing, acting and directing.

“Because I love all three I can continue to do all three. Even if I’m 45 and teaching at a college somewhere, chances are I can turn around and find a community theater and go do a role in the evenings. Then of course as long as my fingers work I can continue to write. But who knows, in 10 years you might not even need your fingers for that,” he said.

Bigus said theatergoers can look forward to the playfulness of the characters when they come to see “Who Am I.”

“They are very, very lost and it’s quite interesting to read. Hopefully it will be quite interesting to watch as well.”

While he won’t be able to attend the festival, he encourages others to “go see all of the six by 10s and support everybody who writes.”

Ray Zarr has performed in New York on stage at the Metropolitan Opera. Now he’s going to direct one of the six productions in the “6 x 10 Play Festival,” Dec. 7, 8 and 9, at the Barn Players Theatre, 6219 Martway in Mission, Kan. The 10-minute play is “The Captain and Roberts Take on the World,” written by local playwright Brian Gehrlein.

Zarr directed his first play for the Chilean Relief Fund in 1959 when he was only 9 years old.

“I gathered all the Jewish kids in the neighborhood that were learning trumpet, trombone, flute, drums and taking dance lessons and put on a show at Sommerset Elementary. We raised 300 dollars,” he reminisced this week.

His acting career also began in elementary school and he has continued to act throughout his life.

“When I was 13 I did ‘Ring Around the Moon’ by Frederick Molnar at the Jewish Community Center. My twin brother, Ron, and I played twins in the play. One twin would run off stage and the other one would come on dressed in something entirely different in about five seconds and no one could figure out how they did that because in the program it said R period Zarr for Hugo and R period Zarr for Frederick, the two twins,” he explained.

Following graduation from the University of Denver, Zarr was with the Metropolitan Opera in New York City for several years, where he played a supernumerary.

“That is a person who stands in costume holding a spear or engaging in a fight or being in a parade, but doesn’t sing on the stage as an extra,” he explained.

While in New York City, he toured nationally with two Broadway shows, “Cabaret” and “1776.”

After teaching and directing plays in Upstate New York, Zarr returned to Kansas City in 2004 to take care of his father, Ben, who now lives in Village Shalom. He has sung and performed at many local theaters including The Barn Players, Unicorn, Starlight and Theatre in the Park. He also performs in his own cabaret production and sings concerts at The Temple, Congregation B’nai Jehudah, where he is a member, with Cantor Sharon Kohn.

Last year he also directed a play at the “6 x 10 Play Festival.” He estimates he has directed 118 plays over the years and “been in something like 178 plays since the age of 9.”

Today he characterizes himself as “more of an actor,” but also does just about anything in a theater including serving as house manager or as head of all the ushers.

“I keep very busy,” he said.

He says the “The Captain and Roberts Take on the World” is a “very funny two-character play” and notes while the plays are supposed to be 10 minutes long, they often aren’t.

“None of the plays are actually 10 minutes. They are more like 15 to 20,” he said.

Three of the six original plays being presented by the Barn Players in its fifth annual “6 x 10 Play Festival” are written or directed by men who have ties to the local Jewish community. The plays will be presented on Dec. 7, 8 and 9 at 6219 Martway in Mission, Kan. The Friday and Saturday evening performances will take place at 7:30 p.m. while the Sunday matinee is scheduled for 2 p.m.

“The Captain and Roberts Take on the World,” by Brian Gehrlein is being directed by Ray Zarr, a member of The Temple, Congregation B’nai Jehudah. It features Emerson Rapp and Art Bagdasaryan.

“To the Dogs” is written by Congregation Beth Shalom member Victor Wishna. It is being directed by Lindsay Adams and features Josh Brady, Alice Pollock and Jeff Shehan.

Kansas City native Alex Bigus wrote “Who Am I.” Sara Crow is directing it and it features Korey Childs and Stephanie Charleton. (See three related stories.)

The other three plays being presented that weekend are “Back to One;” “The Suitcase,” and “Sunday in the Park with Carla.”

Each of the six plays presented at the festival are approximately 10 minutes in length. All six will be presented at each performance. For ticket information call (913) 432-9100 or visit www.thebarnplayers.org.

Mental health issues, relationships between parents and children, visiting the ill and keeping marriage alive are all topics that Dr. Michelle Friedman will cover during her weekend of learning as part of the Caviar Scholars’ Series at Kehilath Israel Synagogue.  The weekend series, set for Dec. 14-16,  is entitled, “Listening to Each Other and Ourselves: Judaism and Relationships.”

Dr. Friedman is the director of pastoral counseling at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, the open orthodox rabbinical seminary in Riverdale, N.Y., as well as, working in a private practice.  She attended medical school at New York University, completed her residency in psychiatry at Mount Sinai, and has a certificate in psychoanalysis from the Columbia University Institute. Dr. Friedman currently devotes much of her professional time to the interface of psychiatry and religious life.

“Many people struggle with disorders such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, addiction and marital/family distress,” she said, when discussing the most important issues facing Jewish communities. “Our community is hesitant about addressing this openly. People feel uncomfortable and sometimes scared of these issues. This reluctance can extend to reluctance about visiting or providing support for people with mental health problems, especially those who are homebound or in the hospital with psychiatric disorders.”

The relationships between parents and children will be part of the Friday night services. Services begin at 4:55 p.m.; and Dr. Friedman will speak at 5:45 p.m. No dinner will be served.

Shabbat morning, Dr. Friedman will speak about “Challenges with Mental Health (Depression, Anxiety and Dementia),” immediately after services, which begin at 9 a.m. Her program will begin at approximately 11:30 a.m. A Kiddush luncheon will be served.

“The Pastoral Skills on Visiting the Sick,” will be the discussion topic held during seudah shlisheet at about 5 p.m., with services for Mincha beginning at 4:30 pm.

Sunday morning from 10 to 11 a.m. Dr. Friedman will discuss “Keeping Marriage Alive.” A light snack will be served.

As a result of her programs, Dr. Friedman hopes that there will be “more open conversation about how this community experiences challenges with mental health and talk about how members can listen to, support and help each other.” She hopes that people get “a sense of what an important Jewish value it is to extend compassion and support going through hard times. Also, how much Jewish tradition cherishes the importance of and special contribution of each person. We can do a great deal by including challenged person as well as by supporting resilience. Jews going through mental illness are still cherished members of the community. Too often they feel outside the camp, like there is no place for them.”

All events will be held at Kehilath Israel Synagogue. Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz, who was a rabbinical student in Dr. Friedman’s pastoral counseling class, said, “Dr. Friedman will teach us how, not only to reach out to others, but also how to heal others. Through kind actions and empathetic words, we can seriously improve our relationships and transform our communities.  We feel blessed to have Dr. Friedman bring the rare talents combining Jewish wisdom, psychological insight, and refreshing creativity.”

Dr. Friedman has requested that a mechitza be in place during services while she is at the congregation.  As a courtesy to her, there will be a mechitza during all services on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.  However on Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning, her talks will not be during services, so there will be no mechitza during the programs.

Both Jewish Family Services and The Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City are co-sponsoring this event.

SUCCESS ON THE GRIDIRON — Junior Aaron Bigus was the Blue Valley North football team’s leading rusher for the 2012 season. The son of Ruth and Larry Bigus, he carried the ball a total of 47 times for 225 yards. At the year-end football banquet, Mustang Coach John McCall presented Aaron, a three-year letterman, with the Mustang Football Leadership Award.

BLITT PAINTING TO BE FEATURED IN PARIS — Rita Blitt is one of 33 international artists selected to join in the OperArtCode Paris 2012 exhibit at the Grand Palais in Paris, which opened Tuesday and continues through Dec. 2. Blitt’s “Dancing with Beethoven” painting will be on display within the Grand Palais at the Salon des Artistes Indepéndants (Society of Independent Artists), a Salon created in 1884 from a small group of innovative artists that included Cézanne, Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec and Pisarro.

THE BEST LITTLE KLEZMER BAND IN TEXAS — Janet Price recently returned from Houston where she saw “Ketubah” at the Houston Ballet. Music was provided by The Best Little Klezmer Band in Texas. Kansas City native Marcia Plaut Sterling, and Price’s cousin, serves as the band’s director as well as plays violin and sings. When she lived in Kansas City, Sterling was the youth choir master under the auspicious of Rose Levine at Congregation Beth Shalom. She and her husband Dan Sturba founded the non-profit The Best Little Klezmer Band in Texas in 1993, which is dedicated to the presentation, preservation and revitalization of Yiddish culture through live performance. Sterling’s parents were Rudy and Blanch (Planzer) Plaut, of blessed memory, who also lived in K.C. Price said the Klezmer music at the ballet was superb.

FAIR TRADE CHANUKAH GELT — Rabbis for Human Rights–North America is partnering with Fair Trade Judaica to bring slavery-free Chanukah gelt to synagogues around the world. The gelt is kosher (Triangle K), comes in dark and milk chocolate and is child-labor free. The gelt we eat on Chanukah is a sweet reminder of the freedom our people won many years ago. In his book “Holidays, History and Halakhah,” Eliezer Segal argues that the earliest sources that mention gelt on Chanukah are about students in Europe giving gelt to their teachers, inspired by the linguistic similarities between the Hebrew word Chanukah (dedication) and the Hebrew word chinnukh (education). Divine Chocolate is co-owned by Kuapa Kokoo, a fair trade cooperative in Ghana. The organization is democratically run, and their children attend school rather than work in the fields. The gelt can be purchased at http://shop.divinechocolateusa.com.