Elliot Prager, principal of the Moriah School in Englewood, is a firm believer in “multiple intelligences.”
“Some children are outstanding in math and sports,” he said, “while others have a real talent in the arts.”
With that in mind, two years ago Prager sought out Matt Okin, director of the Englewood-based Black Box Studios, which provides collaborative theater workshops in local schools.
Some 30 students now participate in Moriah’s middle-school theater program, which is run as an afterschool club.
“They love it,” said Prager. “The proof of their receptiveness is that kids who participated in the first half [of the year] in both years have all come back for the second half.”
I’ve been doing shadow training for years through my practice,” says psychologist Tamar Kahane, Teaneck resident and founder of Englewood’s Kahane Center for Developmental and Psychological Well-being.
Shadows — teachers’ aides who help facilitate the functioning of students in the classroom — are essential for many children, she said, yet “anyone can call themselves a shadow, regardless of their skill-set or educational background.”
To address this, and “concerned about the difficulties that children with autism spectrum disorder and ADD/ADHD face every day in the classroom,” in September Kahane and her associate Chassia Boczko created the Shadow Training Institute.
Rabbi Shmuel Goldin, religious leader of Englewood’s Ahavath Torah for some 26 years, attributes the synagogue’s growth and longevity to “good fortune, proximity to New York, a lovely area, and a sense of openness” toward people striving to lead Orthodox lives.
“A good deal of our character was set by the way it started,” said Goldin.
The rabbi, together with his wife, Barbara, will be honored on March 5 and 6 for their years of service to the congregation.
Describing the synagogue’s founders as “a group of people committed to Orthodox Judaism,” Goldin noted that they also were open to recognizing that they themselves were not always themselves ‘there.’”
Clifton resident Gail Yamner — who will be sworn in as president of the Joint Action Committee for Political Affairs on March 3 — attended her first JACPAC meeting in 2006 at the urging of a friend.
A former English teacher and the co-founder of Argyle Press, Yamner was intrigued by the friend’s description of the group as “an amazing Jewish organization that really knows how to get things done through the political process.”
Seeing for herself that not only was the group effective in its core mission of strengthening Israel-U.S. relations but that it had a progressive domestic agenda as well, Yamner told this newspaper that she was sold.
The last time Rabbi André Ungar was in South Africa — some 54 years ago — he was, he says, “persona non grata.”
Ungar, rabbi emeritus of Temple Emanuel of the Pascack Valley in Woodcliff Lake, left South Africa in 1956 under government orders “because of saying unkind things about apartheid.”
In mid-December, he went back not only to visit the country he left under duress but to speak from the same pulpit he had held for two years.
“People are really struggling,” said Lisa Fedder, director of Jewish Family Service of Bergen County and North Hudson. There are “80-year-olds looking for jobs as receptionists. It’s awful.”
That’s why, when UJA Federation of Northern New Jersey convened its economic crisis meeting in October 2008, organization leaders realized that not only must an economic action plan help increasingly strapped community agencies, but that help must filter down directly to individuals.
“We knew that agencies, schools, and synagogues were seriously affected by the economic downturn,” said Alice Blass, volunteer coordinator for the Jewish Community Relations Council. But there was also a clear need for emergency financial assistance and pro bono services.
The call for a pro bono network obviously struck a chord.
The Hackensack facility — which provides free medical care to low-income working people without health insurance — was only a dream some five years ago, when retired physician Dr. Sam Cassell of Franklin Lakes began to recruit volunteers to organize, staff, and administer the project.
Cassell, who retired in 2001 after 36 years with a medical practice in Fair Lawn, “was very persuasive,” said Janet Finke, who serves on the group’s board of trustees and was one of its founding members. “He spoke to everyone he knew.”
A former president and current board member of Jewish Family Service of North Jersey, Finke said Cassell “collected a lot of talented people to build the organization. People came out of the woodwork” to volunteer.
Lt. Amit Shuker served for six years as a company commander in the Israel Defense Forces.
Visiting the United States during the second intifida, he saw “a huge gap of understanding and knowledge” between what was going on in the field and what the media were reporting.
In response, Shuker — who will speak to the men’s club of Temple Emanuel of the Pascack Valley on Sunday, Feb. 7 — created a multimedia presentation setting the record straight.
“I try not to get into politics,” said Shuker, who now lives in the United States. “The main reason for the presentation is to explain to people the different threats Israel faces.”
People have always been fascinated by twins, asking questions such as, “Do you feel each other’s pain?” and “Can your parents tell you apart?” But, says Abigail Pogrebin — author of “One And The Same: My Life As An Identical Twin And What I’ve Learned About Everyone’s Struggle To Be Singular” — books about twins have tended to miss the “nuances” of twinhood.
“The issue is more complicated than most existing books suggest,” said Pogrebin, who will speak at the Kaplan JCC on the Palisades on Feb. 11.
Focusing on twins’ individual identities, Pogrebin — twin sister of New York Times culture writer Robin Pogrebin — interviewed more than 50 sets of twins, “asking them to tell the truth about what this experience was like, about having a partner from the very beginning” of their lifetime.
Visit the Jamaican Jewish Heritage Centre at Kingston’s Cong. Sha’are Shalom and you will feel right at home, surrounded by glass-enclosed displays of kiddush cups, candle-holders, and havdalah sets.
But chat with members of the synagogue for five minutes and you will enter a different world, where multiracial Jews speak in the lilting cadence of their Caribbean neighbors and are as likely to hug you as shake your hand.
I was in Jamaica to attend a conference on the Caribbean diaspora (see related story), and it was a cultural wake-up call.
It is not easy for North American Ashkenazic Jews to suspend their usual frame of reference, but one must certainly do so to appreciate, and embrace, the Caribbean Jewish community.
