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Two young men from Connecticut recently celebrated their b’nai mitzvah in a special way – dedicated to Righteous Gentiles who saved Jews during the Holocaust.

Joshua Genn of Greenwich, and Adam Ehrman-Shapiro of Litchfield, chose to participate in the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous’ (JFR) Bar/Bat Mitzvah Twinning Program.

When Joshua was preparing for his Oct. 9, 2006, bar mitzvah during Sukkot at Congregation Agudath Sholom in Stamford, he began investigating ways to make his bar mitzvah more meaningful.

Joshua, a seventh-grade student at the Westchester/Fairfield Hebrew Academy, read through descriptions of many Righteous Gentiles on the JFR Web site and found them to be fascinating.

“I liked Irena Sendler,” he said. “Even though she was not Jewish, she got people out of the Warsaw Ghetto and smuggled weapons to people.”

The entry for Sendler on the JFR Web site notes that she was a health worker who had access to the Warsaw Ghetto and led hundreds of Jewish children out of the ghetto to safe hiding places. Sendler, a member of the Polish underground, helped smuggle children (sometimes sedated) in potato sacks and coffins. She was eventually arrested, imprisoned and sentenced to death in October 1943 – but she was saved when members of the Polish underground bribed one of the Germans to stop the execution. She is currently in her 90s, lives in Warsaw, Poland, and reportedly doesn’t think of herself as a hero: “I want the Jewish community to know that there was a resistance and a spirit among the Jews in the ghetto.” 
Joshua reported that friends came up to him to say, “We think we’ll do a twinning bar mitzvah as well!”

Joshua’s parents, Ireland-born Alan and England-born Michelle, were pleased with Joshua’s decision to support JFR.

“Even ‘Schindler’s List’ didn’t highlight how many Righteous Gentiles saved Jews. It is a bit of a forgotten cause, and the organization [which supports people who, by definition, are in their 80s and 90s] has a limited time frame and needs immediate help,” said Alan Genn.

Saving One Life
One month after Joshua’s bar mitzvah, Adam Ehrman-Shapiro shared the story of another Righteous Gentile, Vladimir Chernovol, at his Nov. 11, 2006 bar mitzvah at the Chabad of Northwest Connecticut-LitchfieldJewish Community Center. Adam’s mother, Judith, began searching online for organizations so that Adam could “do some type of community service and give back to the community.”

“I was deeply touched by the work and mission of JFR. It is a very Jewish idea – to save one life is to save the whole world,” she said.

This phrase appears on the cover of the personalized invitations that many families participating in the twinning program, including the Ehrman-Shapiro family, choose for their children’s b’nai mitzvah.

The Ehrman-Shapiros have celebrated the b’nai mitzvah of two sons in two years, and both have participated in the JFR twinning program.

“These Righteous Gentiles risked life and limb to save our people in Europe with full knowledge that they were risking their lives and the lives of their families,” Judith said.

Chernovol was a Ukrainian teacher out for a walk in 1942 when he encountered Gregory Lantsman, a Jewish pilot in the Soviet Army whose plane was shot down over the Ukraine. Chernovol learned that Lantsman was Jewish and that the Germans had already killed his family. Chernovol quickly realized that Lantsman would surely be caught and killed. He immediately offered to take him in. Chernovol worked hard to obtain Ukrainian identity papers for Lantsman, but the Germans soon began forcibly taking young Ukrainian men for hard labor. Though Lantsman was selected, he managed to escape and return to Chernovol’s home, where he hid until liberation in May 1944. Chernovol is in his 80s and still lives in the Ukraine.

Adam was pleased with his bar mitzvah and with the twinning program.

Said Adam, an eighth-grader who is home-schooled, “I thought it was a nice thing to do, and my friends came up to me and told me they thought it was cool.”

Following a dinner party and an evening of sports, Adam was back at shul early the next morning to put on his tefillin.

“Adam participates in the Tefilin Bank, where you received a free set of tefillin if you agree to put them on daily,” said his mother.

Both young men and their families agree that participating in the Bar/Bat Mitzvah Program of the JFR enhanced and gave meaning to their b’nai mitzvah.

JFR was created in 1986 to provide financial assistance to non-Jews who risked their lives and often the lives of family members to save Jewish lives during the Holocaust. Today, the JFR supports more than 1,600 aged and needy rescuers in 28 countries, and they run a Holocaust teacher education program for middle and high school teachers and Holocaust center personnel.

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You need a beautiful, up-scale kosher gift basket. What are your options? You can do-it-yourself, purchase a standard gift basket and hope there are enough kosher items to satisfy the recipient, or you can call or e-mail Sharon Salem, the New Haven entrepreneur, who is the founder and owner of The Kosher Gift Box. 

Salem, who has a background in engineering and manufacturing, started her Web-based koshergiftbox.com business in 2002.

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“During the summer, the entire Tikvah Program at Camp Ramah in New England learned about Israel in our Jewish Studies class, we wrote and performed a play about “The Case of the Missing Water,” and we enjoyed getting to know 40 plus members of the mishlochot (Israeli delegation). We were also sad to learn of deaths of Israeli soldiers during the War in Lebanon. We were a little worried that the trip wouldnt take place, but we had faith. Some parents even handed me deposit checks DURING the war! The trip was a dream come true. This was my third Tikvah Ramah Israel Trip, and the 10th trip to Israel in the history of the Tikvah Program. We enjoyed seeing places of historical significance, davening in so many different placesthe Kotel, outside of our guest houses in the Negev and Galil, and at Reform and Orthodox synagogues, purchasing souvenirs for ourselves and friends, and supporting the Israeli economy. But, most of all, we enjoyed seeing our many Israeli friends. Our group was like a magnet, and the Israelis were like iron filingsdrawn to us everywhere we went. I am pleased that our campers and program alumni (age range: 17-31) felt comfortable in Israel and will return to their homes, schools and communities as great shlichim and hasbara members for Israel.

Who

Members of the Tikvah Program of Camp Ramah in New England

When

Dec. 20, 2006 – January 3, 2007

Highlights

  • Working in the toy factory, with therapeutic dogs and in the gardens at Kishorit Village (near Karmiel) for adults with special needs.
  • Meals in homes of Ramah Israeli Staff Members: Lunch in Haifa with Tomer Nachshon and dinners in the Beit Shemesh home of the Benstein family and in the Moshav Emunim home of the Tzivoni Family.
  • Making spice sachets, writing with a reed and special ink, meeting a sofer, and making zatar spice at Neot Kedumim.
  • Seeing the Chagall Windows, then giving presents to Israeli Jewish and Arab children in the Pediatrics Unit at Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital
  • Seeing every possible weather pattern from sun in the Galilee, to rain and fog in the Golan Heights, to rain while on Masada and swimming in the Dead Sea.
  • Buying fruit, nuts and rugelach in the bustling Machane Yehudah market on a Friday afternoon (for a Camp Ramah oneg Shabbat)
  • Seeing ibex, deer, and hyrax at Ein Gedi, a fox in the Negev on the way to camel riding at Beertoyim, and two wolves in the Negev near Kibbutz Mashabe Sadeh.
  • Petting and feeding llamas and alpacas at Mitzpeh Ramon.
  • Sitting in actual Israeli planes at the Israel Air Force Museum in Beersheva.

Participants

Jason Belkin
Howard Blas (Group Leader)
Elisheva and Hannah Blas
Adam Brand
David Dalnekoff
Max Davidson (Chaperone)
Benji Garbowit
Jeremy Jacobson
Eric Levine
Gideon Pianko
Aaron Rudolph
Emily Sowalsky (Chaperone)
Marie Strazulla
Ortal Winterstein
Jacob Yellin

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NEW HAVEN — Rabbi Wesley Kalmar recently participated in a whirlwind rabbinic mission to Israel, designed to show U.S. rabbis the status of Israeli towns in the North and South which were ravaged by rockets earlier this year.

Rabbi Kalmar, of the Westville Synagogue in New Haven, was the only rabbi from Connecticut to participate in the Oct. 22-27 United Jewish Communities-sponsored Rabbinic Cabinet Solidarity Mission, which included 22 other rabbis from across the country and from various denominations.

“I have been to Israel many times and lived in Israel for three years-I have never experienced anything like this,” reports Rabbi Kalmar, who learned of the trip via an email sent to all New Haven rabbis, of all denominations, by Sydney Perry, executive director of the Jewish Federation of New Haven.

“The mission had two goals,” says Rabbi Kalmar. “To see the results of the war in the North, and to see the continuing situation in the south in such places as Sderot and Ashkelon.”

Each day of the trip was action-packed, with the rabbis witnessing damage from Katyusha rockets, hearing briefings from military experts, and interacting with Israelis of all ages in many towns. Rabbi Kalmar felt the mission was a chance to “show support for Israel” and to “show we care.”

’Severe damage’
Rabbi Kalmar observed severe damage the Katyushas caused when they ignited forest fires, and major damage caused to the ophthalmology department of a Nahariyah hospital, but added that “most of the damage to buildings had been fixed up already.”

In Nahariya, Rabbi Kalmar and his rabbinic colleagues sat on the floor and interacted with a group of first graders in a special program who were working through symptoms of trauma suffered during the war.

“The girl I interacted with was coloring the feelings she had felt and experienced during the war,” Rabbi Kalmar said. “Her grandmother had been killed, and she recalled how her mother started crying when her father had gone out of the house-minutes before a ‘boom.’”

The child described her picture to Rabbi Kalmar -a red square in the middle with blue on the outside – saying, “I was mostly afraid and angry at Hezbollah [the red part of her picture] but also happy that the whole family was together.”

The rabbis visited Sderot, the city near Gaza which has been consistently bombed for the past six years.

“We saw piles of Kassam rockets in Sderot, and we were very aware that a missile could fall at anytime-they get three hits a day,” he said.

Rabbi Kalmar contrasted the organized relief effort and rebuilding seen in Karmiel, Nahariya and other points in the north, with the “depression” and less organized assistance effort seen in Sderot.

’A learning experience’
The mission was also a rare opportunity for rabbis from various movements to interact and get to know each other on many levels. “I was one of only two Orthodox rabbis on the group-which was a challenge, a duty, and a learning experience.” Rabbi Kalmar said he appreciated the opportunity to “learn a lot from Reform and Conservative rabbis-my age and older. It was a chance to hear what they are doing in their congregations, and how things work in their communities. We had a lot of interesting conversations. I have respect for a lot of the work they are doing.”

The rabbis ended their mission with dinner at the Anna Ticho House in Jerusalem.

“It was one of the most poignant moments of the trip,” reports Kalmar, describing the dinner with Israeli Modern Orthodox rabbis in Israel, from the Rabbenu Tzohar organization, whose presentation on various efforts at reform, such as in how marriages are performed in Israel, led to some frank discussion among the North American rabbis.

“It was a chance to really put things on the table,” he said.

The rabbis who went on the mission are now charged with informing their congregants about what is going on now in Israel. Rabbi Kalmar said he will continue to share observations from his trip in upcoming sermons and public forums.

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