AGEING WISELY — Marna Dolginoff called me the other day, wanting to share a story with me about her friend and cousin, Leah Cohn. It seems about six months or so ago, Cohn called the marketing office at
Village Shalom and put her name on the list for an apartment in the assisted living building. Cohn was already living in one of the Villas and decided it was time to move. According to Dolginoff, Cohn no longer was driving her car, did not wish to cook and only wanted to take care of herself with little to worry about anything else. “Frankly, she was alone and lonesome. In the apartments she would be with friends, have activities and meals readily available and life would be simpler,” Dolginoff reported.
An apartment did become available and Cohn moved. Dolginoff said now when you converse with her she is happy, meeting new people, busy as a bee and enjoying the decision she made for herself.
“I am so proud of her and only wish more people would do as she did without waiting for their families to ‘put them’ as they say, in a caring home. Everyone wins with that decision.
“Hats off to Cousin Leah,” she continued. “May she live many more healthy years in her new home.”
KANSAS CITIAN TO SPEAK AT HOUSTON EXHIBIT —Tom Lewinsohn, a former resident of Shanghai, was expected to share his story on Sept. 10 about living in Shanghai during World War II when the “Jews of Shanghai” exhibit opens in Houston.
Lewinsohn and his family lived comfortably among their non-Jewish neighbors in Berlin. Throughout the 1930s Lewinsohn experienced early Nazi persecution of the Jews. He was forced to attend an all-Jewish school, his father was only allowed to treat Jewish patients, and in 1938, the family hid through Kristallnacht. Though his parents considered sending their children on a Kindertransport, the family eventually chose to stay together and remain in Germany until January 1941, when a police official informed his father that the family was about to be deported. Boarding a train in the middle of the night, they fled to Shanghai — the only place then open to Jews — where they lived in a ghetto of 17,000. In 1948, Tom immigrated to the United States. He served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War and lives in Kansas City, Mo.
The Houston exhibit runs through Nov. 11. Kansas City native Randy Czarlinsky, who is executive director of the American Jewish Committee office in Houston, is in charge of the exhibit.
The Jewish Community Center is planning two similar programs in October, both under the umbrella heading “Shanghai Ghetto on the Eve of World War II.” The first, “Music and Memoirs,” is scheduled for 7 p.m. Oct. 20 at the White Theatre. It is being presented in partnership with the Confucius Institute and Center for East Asian Studies of the University of Kansas and the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education. The JCC is also presenting best-selling author Nicole Mones, who wrote “Night in Shanghai,” at 7 p.m. Oct. 27 in the Social Hall at the Jewish Community Campus. Stay tuned for more information.
GWYNETH PALTROW REPORTEDLY CONVERTING TO JUDAISM (JTA) — In case you missed this piece of news late last week, actress Gwyneth Paltrow reportedly is converting to Judaism.
The New York Post reported that Paltrow, the daughter of a Jewish father, was converting, citing “sources.”
Paltrow has been following the Kabbalah movement for several years and is friends with Michael Berg, co-director of the Kabbalah Centre in Los Angeles, according to the Post.
Paltrow’s representative did not respond to questions from the newspaper.
Her father is the late film producer Bruce Paltrow and she reportedly is descended from a long line of Eastern European rabbis.
Paltrow told an event in London hosted by the Jewish community’s Community Security Trust that she wants to raise her children, Apple, 10, and Moses, 8, in a “Jewish environment.”
She and her musician husband, Coldplay frontman Chris Martin, were divorced earlier this year.