GO BENNY! — Early this soccer season, just before Jewish Heritage Day, The Chronicle featured Sporting Kansas City’s midfielder Benny Feilhaber. Last weekend, on the coldest day ever recorded for an MLS championship game, the team captured the MLS Cup. Team officials tell us Feilhaber contributed three goals and six assists in MLS competition during his first season with Sporting Kansas City in 2013. He also scored the team’s Goal of the Year in August and during the playoffs he converted a penalty kick in the MLS Cup shootout and provided the series-winning assists in both the Eastern Conference Semifinals and Eastern Conference Championship. Mazel tov to Feilhaber and his Sporting KC teammates on bringing the MLS championship back to Kansas City for the first time since 2000!
COLLOSSAL COMPUTER CRASH — Technology is wonderful but when things don’t work right, it can create havoc. My computer and I came to a parting of the ways last week and I am currently trying to re-create my advanced calendar of events and story ideas. You might call it my Chronicle bible and any help you can give me to build it back up will be greatly appreciated. If you think you sent me a story idea or an event that is happening in the next few months or even any time in 2014, please email me or call me again with all the pertinent details including times, dates and contact information. You can contact me at 913-951-8425 or .
LOOKING FOR Y2I ALUMNI — The Lappin Foundation is planning to engage a professional study to quantify the impact of its Youth to Israel Adventure (Y2I) on Jewish identity. The success of Y2I is of great interest to Jewish communities across the country, and in particular to philanthropists who are interested in funding the teen Israel experience.
The foundation needs to contact at least 75 percent of Y2I, also known as LGI) alumni from 1971-2007. If you know anyone who is a Y2I alum, email the names and email addresses of them to Foundation Director Deborah Coltin at or call 978-740-4410. If you know which year they participated, that would be helpful as well.
The foundation also needs names and emails of alumni of Israel teen trips who received a subsidy from the Foundation (1971-2007) for any teen Israel experience — including USY, NFTY, Young Judaea and others. These individuals will be included in the study as well.
KU CHABAD IN THE NEWS — KU Chabad has been in the news a lot lately. Rabbi Zalman Tiechtel reported that just since the beginning of Chanukah the organization has been in the news five times. The most recent is a story in the University Daily Kansan, where it reports that Mrs. E’s cafeteria is now serving kosher meals to 50 to 100 people every Monday night according to Mark Maranell, general manager of the dining center in the newly constructed “KYou Zone.” Read more at: http://kansan.com/news/2013/12/09/ku-chabad-mrs-es-work-together-to-provide-students-with-kosher-food-options/#sthash.C9kLV8zD.dpuf.
NEW BOOK — I don’t know how we missed it last spring when K.C. area native Robert S. Kaplan published his latest book, “What You’re Really Meant to Do: A Roadmap for Defining and Achieving Your Own Success.” Kaplan is a professor of management practice at Harvard Business School and author of the popular book “What to Ask the Person in the Mirror: Critical Questions for Becoming a More Effective Leader and Reaching Your Potential” (2011). In his new book, Kaplan provides a much-needed road map for redefining success and reaching your own unique potential. Analogous to his guidance on leadership, this quest also requires a process, a high level of motivation, and a lot of hard work. In the book, Kaplan proposes a tough discipline of specific steps and exercises to help you take control of your career, understand yourself far more deeply, and build your capabilities in a way that fits your passions and aspirations. In “Reaching Your Potential,” he draws on hundreds of real-life experiences in helping people achieve their aspirations and rethink their approach to career and life development. Look for it at major bookstores and online.