A joyous celebration

It was our pleasure hosting over 50 young professionals at our house on Tuesday, Dec. 3, to celebrate Chanukah. A big thank you goes to the Community Kollel of Kansas City for organizing this great event. There were members from almost every synagogue in Kansas City eating, singing, and lighting the candles together. May we all merit to celebrate the festival of lights together as one Jewish nation for many years to come.

Roy and Ariella Ben-Aharon

Overland Park, Kan.

I moved to Israel because I love living here. Some people feel it is courageous, some are confused as to why I would want to leave the United States, and some feel a mixture of both. I do not think it was courageous. I moved to Israel because it is where I want to be; it is where I feel the most free to be myself.

That is not to say that life in Israel is easy. There have definitely been ups and downs. One thing that made my transition easier was that I studied in Beer Sheva for three years, and so I already had a network of friends. I also have family who I became close to during my studies.

When I arrived, I moved in with a former roommate from my time at Ben-Gurion University, who had an extra room in a three-bedroom apartment. Within hours of my arrival three of my friends came to visit. They brought me balloons, assembled my bed, arranged my room, and took me to dinner. I had not previously met the third roommate, but when she came home from work and I went to shake her hand she gave me a hug and kiss and said, “We’re roommates now, roommates hug. Welcome to Israel!” We got along so well that we moved in together when we left the first apartment due to renovations.

Finding a job was difficult, but that seems to be a common concern across the globe. There are plenty of websites to help olim find work, but most of the openings are in marketing, IT and sales. To work in the fields in which I am interested I need a much higher level of Hebrew. I was fortunate in that Nefesh B’Nefesh sent my resume out and a wonderful consulting firm for non-profit organizations contacted me. In February I will be working there for a year. Though finding a job was difficult, one thing that never failed to amaze me was the willingness of Israelis who I met for the first time to, upon hearing about my job search, pull out their phone and call their friends in an attempt to find me a job.

The time I miss home the most is during the holidays. The year before I left Kansas I went on a holiday craze. I drove my family insane insisting that every holiday be spent at home with our traditions and our dishes. I wanted to make sure I fully reveled in the holiday traditions of my childhood before I went off into the unknown.

I have learned to make new traditions. We hosted a Thanksgivukkah dinner complete with turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, latkes and sufganiot. Despite the craziness of the day (the store did not have our pre-ordered turkey, but my roommate found one via Facebook; our stove ran out of gas, but our neighbor let us use hers; our sink developed a leak, but the landlord fixed it; we didn’t have a pan large enough for the turkey but small enough for the oven or a baster, but my boyfriend rigged up some contraptions that did the job) we had an amazing time with great food and great friends.

Thanks to technology, I find that I can also hold on to some old traditions, too. Though I moved to a Jewish country, most of my friends do not light Chanukah candles. I sadly resigned myself to lighting them alone, but then one night I had an epiphany. I was video chatting with my Mom and realized that we could light the candles together! There was a slight sound delay, but we were able to sing the prayers together just like at home. It made Chanukah much more special.

There are things about the United States that I miss. Aside from family and friends, I miss not having to fight my way onto the bus or yell at people to get things done. I miss Target and Costco. I miss decent customer service and general politeness. But there are things about Israel that I would not trade. There is something in the atmosphere and in the people that allows you to be who you are and have no fear of exploring and trying. There is a freedom and confidence here that just cannot be found elsewhere. Israelis live life with a passion and a drive that is amazing and exhausting.

I am American. The United States is my home. But through all my life in Kansas and all my years in New Jersey, I never felt a sense of belonging like I do in Israel. Something just clicks. When I exit Ben-Gurion airport and get to wherever I’m going, be it Beer Sheva or Tel Aviv, I feel right. I feel like this is where I belong. It is hard to explain — it is something that can only be felt.

Life in Israel is non-stop. Things are constantly happening all around. There are struggles, and there are parties. And I am a part of it, every second of every day.

This month Lara M. Portnoy will celebrate the first anniversary of making aliyah. She is the daughter of Ellen and Jay Portnoy, who are members of Kehilath Israel Synagogue.

Tribute to Camp Gan Israel

I am 12 years old and I have attended Camp Gan Israel since I was 5 years old. Actually I can’t remember when I didn’t go to camp CGI.

I love going to camp and prefer camp to vacation. I love that we don’t just stay in one place because we go on trips to arcades or other fun places every other day.

Rabbi Morgenstern and Simmy always make everyone feel welcome, no matter how religious you are. It’s a great way to learn to love Judaism and have fun at the same time. I never miss winter or summer CGI. It’s the best kept secret in Kansas City. I love CGI camp!!!!!!

I just want to publicly say thank you for all you do and thanks to all the other families that help take care of the counselors from out-of-town.

Rochelle Adamous

Overland Park, Kan.

A ‘thank you’ to The Chronicle

On behalf of Beth Shalom Sisterhood, we would like to express our appreciation for the wonderful publicity you gave us for our new fundraiser, “A Nite at the Movies.” The event was held the evening of Dec. 24, and it was a great success.

We raised funds for both our synagogue and community projects. Because of your publicity, we had almost a full house. Everyone who attended had a great time “schmoozing” and seeing an excellent movie, “Saving Mr. Banks.”

Thank you again.

Beverly Newman

President Beth Shalom Sisterhood

Linda Lessner, Chair of “A Nite at the Movies”

And our hardworking movie committee

There’s an expression from Greek philosophy: “The only constant is change.” It is age-old wisdom because of its inherent truth.

In my case, just when I thought things were really settled in my life, an opportunity came up for me to make an impact in the Kansas City Jewish community — the community where I was raised — and I moved my entire life from Chicago back here. Now I find myself part of an incredible evolution, both of the Kansas City Jewish community and of an organization that has long served this community.

There’s a fresh buzz about Kansas City as a place to live for young Jews. Whether graduating from KU or other universities, or moving back from cities like Baltimore, Chicago and Portland, Kansas City is becoming a destination for meeting like-minded individuals, finding meaningful work and building community. Part of this is happening organically, but I also attribute it to the great work of community members and community organizations who have worked diligently to build and maintain a vibrant Jewish life in our city.

I’m excited to be part of Jewish Federation of Greater Kansas City, an organization that at this moment is rethinking everything about itself — the way we plan, the way we program, how we are structured and how we engage people in Jewish life in Kansas City. And I have a number of ideas to help us build community, involve different people, develop leaders and continue to raise more funds to support vital and innovative programs in Kansas City and around the world.

I want to share just one of those ideas, and ask you to join me in this effort:

The idea is to be out front on something.

Be the first to act. Be the first to welcome a stranger. Be the first to sign up for a class or program. Be the first to speak out for a cause. Be the first to fund a campaign.

You don’t have to be the first overall — maybe you can be first in your neighborhood, first in your congregation, first in your school or first in your family. Just take a risk, take the lead, let people know what you are doing, and see who you inspire.

With my new role in fundraising, I wanted to be the first Jewish Federation staffer to donate to our 2014 Community Campaign. On making my commitment, I learned someone else in our organization was already out front on this, but I figured this just gave me a chance to be first in my department.

Now I’m sharing my story with others, and the resulting generosity and philanthropy inspires me to keep going every day. If you’d like to be the first in your group to join me, send me an email at or give me a call at 913-327-8100 — your support is welcome and appreciated.

I also ask you to reach out to tell me about a first of any type. With your permission, we’ll honor these firsts in future Jewish Federation e-newsletters, on Facebook, on Twitter and in our personal storytelling. I can’t wait to see the outstanding things our community will do in rising to this challenge.

Meanwhile, in the Jewish Federation office, we’ll be evaluating opportunities to be first to try all kinds of new things as we recognize the need (now more than ever) to co-create and innovate. If you have an idea for a program, please bring it to us. If you have a lesson we can learn, or a model we can follow, please bring it to us. Our aim is to be nimble and ever-evolving, and that calls for the ideas and talents of the community to help us achieve success.

Lastly, in the spirit of change, please help me recognize some long-serving members of Jewish Federation, and thank them for their passion and dedication to Jewish communal service. Gail Weinberg, the longtime financial resource development director (and for the past few weeks, my mentor) is retiring. Vicky Kulikov, after nearly 10 years of service, is moving on to another exciting opportunity at the Kansas City Chamber of Commerce. Thanks to both of these individuals for their outstanding relationship-building and fundraising work. They will both continue to be part of our own microcosm in Kansas City, which we are thrilled about.

And to Kim Lewis and Carol Pfau, talented Jewish professionals in their own right, our best wishes in your new roles at the Jewish Heritage Foundation and the Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy — both Jewish Federation partner agencies. We know your important and impactful work will continue, and we are fortunate to have you continuing not only in the Jewish community, but at the Jewish Community Campus!

To everyone who makes a difference in our community, in any role or capacity, thank you for all that you have done, thank you for all that you currently do, and thank you in advance for all that you will do as we move forward together.

Derek Gale is the Jewish Federation of Greater Kansas City’s incoming director of financial resource development.

It’s a draw

On behalf of Ohev Sholom’s Great Latke Hamantash Debate committee, I want to express my sincere appreciation for the wonderful press coverage you gave our first ever event over the past five months. The attendance exceeded our expectations as well as the audience’s enjoyment of the program.

Team Latke debaters Hazzan Tahl Ben-Yehuda, Larry Gordon and Izzy Cernea and Team Hamantash debaters Rabbi Beryl Padorr, Mike Kolb and Rabbi Herbert Mandl were very witty and entertaining. Even with the spirited debater rebuttal and audience participation, declaring a winner was not achieved this year. Maybe next year?!

Thank you again,

Melanie Allmayer, event chair

Committee: Mary Birnbaum, Meredith Farnan,

Sally Gordon, Terri Herman,

Maureen Kelts, Kira Lillard,

Jennifer Metcalf and Ruth Roth

(Editor's Note: Katja Edelman is a junior at Columbia University in New York and a graduate of the Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy. Between her first and second year of school, Edelman joined the IDF. She served in a combat role in the IDF’s canine unit, Oketz. Edelman studies political science with a focus in International Relations, is the daughter of Alan and Debbie Sosland-Edelman and a member of Congregation Beth Shalom. This article first appeared on The Times of Israel website on Dec. 12.)

“Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu to skip Mandela memorial, citing cost.” After double-checking to make sure I wasn’t reading a headline from “The Onion,” I held my breath hoping this was some sick joke. Nope, Bibi’s done it again. The same guy who famously spent nearly $3,000 on ice cream last year is trying to convince the world that he skipped Nelson Mandela’s funeral because of a tight budget.

I have a little confession to make: I’ve never been a big fan of Christmas. My wife gets a lot of enjoyment out of listening to the music and looking at the lights, but to me it’s always felt like someone else’s culture being shoved down my throat for a month. And then there’s having to call school musical directors to convince them to include something other than Christmas songs in the “Winter Concert” (hah!). I have basically grimaced and (barely) tolerated the month of December for most of my life.

When I was growing up, most of the Jewish kids I knew had two Jewish parents, and Christmas felt like a threat, like we were being proselytized by the majority culture. It felt like the boundary between us and Christmas had to be kept strong lest the shiny bauble threaten our Jewish identity.

Lately I’ve been rethinking this — a little. Nowadays most of the Jewish kids I know have one Jewish parent, and expecting these families to keep Christmas out doesn’t seem realistic, given that they almost certainly have close family (grandparents, cousins, even mom or dad) that celebrate it. Asking them to keep Christmas out is only going to teach them that “Judaism” asks for something they can’t (and wouldn’t even really want to) give.

I’ve also come to realize that my attitude toward Christmas reflected a rather paranoid view of the standing of Jewish people in this country. Today, I’m very comfortable with America’s acceptance of Jews; with some exceptions, most problems are of misunderstanding rather than malice. The fact that people are aware enough about the issues that they’re willing to say “Happy Holidays” so as not to alienate us is actually pretty awesome. And let’s face it, Christmas has been so thoroughly secularized that if it proselytizes anything, it’s consumer culture rather than Christianity.

Today I think that it isn’t really up to the majority culture to undersell its big holiday — although like I say, I appreciate the realization that not everybody celebrates Christmas. Rather, it’s up to us to make our Jewish life compelling enough so that it satisfies our (and our kids’) needs for meaning and connection. If we do that, than Christmas doesn’t pose any kind of threat, if it ever did. And if we don’t do that, then Christmas isn’t the problem.

We live in a multi-hued, multicultural society, with all kinds of people in it. That’s true in our schools, in our neighborhoods, even in our own homes. Just as we would like our friends and neighbors to respect and even enjoy our holidays and customs, so we should respect and enjoy theirs. A strong sense of Jewish identity, and what that means and what it offers, is the basis from which we explore and enjoy the world. Including Christmas.

And let’s face it, the lights are pretty neat.

According to a recent study by the ADL, anti-Semitism in America is the lowest it has ever been. Of course this is a good thing. Of course we want to eradicate anti-Semitism, and racism and bigotry and sexism and homophobia and every other kind of crazy baseless hate. But the effect of this widespread acceptance of, and even appreciation of, Jews in American life has had a sizeable effect on Jewish Identity: 20 percent of American Jews do not identify as religious. In our bright, glittery world of Woody Allen and Drake and hummus and chutzpah, we are liberated of the terrible stigma that has always marked us as other. This should be beautiful, this should be glorious, this should be the stuff of utopian fantasy! And yet.

Here I am now with this terrible luxury, this magnificent burden, of choice. I have the ability to choose Judaism, or not to choose it. I am not branded, segregated, or shunned by the circumstances of my birth; I am amazingly, terrifyingly free. For many young American Jews, this means religion-lite, religion in small, calorie-free portions. A brisket sandwich, sure. A little Heineken and hamantaschen when Purim rolls around, no problem. A Friday night service? That’s a bit much, now, giving up some of my Friday night to participate in a tradition I have little connection to or interest in maintaining. Why should I, the wicked son, participate in something arcane and musty and confining? I have no incentive. And therein lies the tragedy.

At the 2013 Jewish Federations of North American General Assembly held last month in Israel, I met Jews from Poland, England, France and an array of other places. Places where, I was chagrined to learn, anti-Semitism is not the lowest it has ever been; rather, it is on the rise. Thus the young adults I met from those countries were fighting, still, for the freedom to be Jewish. Fighting! For what so many American Jews give up voluntarily, thoughtlessly, every one an Esau throwing his birthright at a pot of lentils. In an environment of openness and tolerance, where Jews are not held together by the threat of external forces, we must find a concrete way to retain Jewish identity and encourage its continuation.

The greatest accomplishment of the General Assembly of 2013 was the ingathering of so many cognizant, clever, and vibrant young Jews: Jews from all across North America as well as the world over, Jews with brilliant, enterprising minds and fresh ideas and well-thought-out opinions derived from formative experiences. We learned so much just from being in the same room with each other. Sharing our beliefs and passions and ideas enriched our sense of Jewishness and of belongingness, which really boils down to being the same thing. Judaism is a way of life built on community, on togetherness, on belonging to something created by individuals and yet greater than any individual. Together, we hold the future of our people in our young, unlined palms, and it is that spirit of unity, and the strength of that unity, which will eventually draw young, apathetic Jews back to Judaism.

Samantha Oppenheimer is the daughter of Carla and Scott Oppenheimer and a member of Congregation Beth Shalom. She is currently spending the year on Masa’s Israel Service Fellows program, teaching English at a rehabilitation village for troubled youth, planting and maintaining community gardens for older immigrant communities and various other volunteering placements.

“Overweight Sensation: The Life and Comedy of Allan Sherman” by Mark Cohen (Brandeis University Press, 353 pp. Also available in Kindle and Nook editions)

When I told people I was in the middle of reading a book about Allan Sherman, I was surprised how few people even recognized the name, including people from my own generation, who might be expected to remember this comic genius who was at one time one of the most popular entertainers in America, whose comedy albums, beginning with “My Son, the Folk Singer” rivalled the albums of the best-known singers of the era on Billboard’s charts. At best, some may remember “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah,” a song about a homesick boy at summer camp.

The old cliché about the clown crying on the inside was certainly true of Sherman, whose life is described in Mark Cohen’s fascinating study, “Overweight Sensation.” With a narcissistic mother and a neglectful father and two stepfathers, young Allan’s life might have been completely devoid of sustenance had he not been shipped off for long periods of time to live with his maternal grandparents, Esther and Leon Sherman. As Cohen tells it, “The whole Jewish world that Sherman’s mother rejected was now his to discover and enjoy, and he did.” He expressed his devotion to the Shermans by adopting their surname for his stage name. Unfortunately, their nurturing was apparently not enough to overcome the insecurity Allan felt as a child, and much of the narrative of his life concerns his numerous addictions — tobacco, alcohol, gambling, overeating and multiple sex partners — which destroyed both his family life and his health and probably contributed to his early death just short of age 49.

While Sherman had a varied career in the entertainment industry (he was the producer of various game shows, including “I’ve Got a Secret”), he is best remembered for his song parodies, many of which have stood the test of time. Anyone who works in this genre, whether they be professional singers such as Weird Al Yankovic or the Capitol Steps, or simply people writing a Purim spiel for their local synagogue, works in the shadow of Allan Sherman. Moreover, Cohen asserts, Sherman was a pioneer in the development of ethnic humor in general paving the way for Jewish comedians such as Woody Allen and Jerry Seinfeld, as well as comics in other ethnic groups, such as African-Americans.

If “Overweight Sensation” were simply a biography of one man, it would probably be of limited interest to all but a handful of nostalgia buffs. But it is much more than that. Mark Cohen has provided us with a brilliant analysis of Sherman’s work and its place in the development of Jewish humor and ethnic humor in general in American culture.

Whereas it is sometimes fashionable to refer to humor such as Sherman’s as self-deprecating, in Cohen’s view, Sherman’s parodies were meant as affirmation of Jewish ethnicity. When “How are Things in Glocca Morra” was changed to “How are Things With Uncle Morris,” it was an ironic call to Jewish composers to assert their own roots. As Sherman once commented sardonically, “How would it have been if all the great Broadway hits of the great Broadway shows had been written by Jewish people — which they were.”

One of the many strengths of Cohen’s study is his analysis of the way in which Sherman’s humor works. Speaking of the English of Yiddish immigrants, he says “The life it represents is simple, direct and unpretentious. With such qualities, the more serious the original material, the funnier the Jewish parody.” When Sir Greenbaum (in the “Greensleeves” parody) declares that knighthood is “no job for a boy who is Jewish,” he is not ridiculing the Jews so much as he is expressing Jewish skepticism of the whole concept of knighthood, similar to that expressed by Rebecca in Scott’s “Ivanhoe.” Cohen points out that another reason for Sherman’s popularity was his timeliness, as the first Jewish comedian to chronicle the Jews’ migration to the suburbs. When he resigns the knighthood, Sir Greenbaum moves not to Brooklyn but rather to Shaker Heights.

In short, “Overweight Sensation” is much more than the story of one man. It is rather an important analysis of American ethnic culture and our place in it. On this basis I give it my highest recommendation.