Poland’s University of Wroclaw (formerly Breslau) honored Valley resident Alex Lauterbach on Aug. 13 for single-handedly collecting and sending more than 5,000 books to restore the city’s once-thriving Judaica library. Making the presentation was Polish Consul General Paulina Kapuscinska.
The bimah is only a few feet above the floor, yet for any mom looking out across the synagogue at the gathered sea of mostly familiar faces, she might as well be Moses addressing the crowd from atop Mount Sinai. While the audience is friendly and the content of her speech concerns matters far less urgent than those of life and death — or the very future of a nation — she is nonetheless anxious and tense. The occasion is her son’s bar mitzvah and she wants her speech to strike just the right chord — a blend of poignant, interesting, relevant, terse and funny.
Deborah Siegel Baker is mother to identical twins Max and Sam, who will celebrate their b’nai mitzvah in 2011. She already experienced the joys and pressures of planning a simcha with her daughter’s bat mitzvah four years ago at Hillcrest Jewish Center in Flushing, N.Y. And given that experience, the prospect of planning for two has her on edge, even though it’s still two years away.
When Jessica Zutz was training with the U.S. women’s open field hockey team, she hadn’t given much thought to participating in Team USA’s b’nai mitzvah, an event scheduled before the start of the 18th Maccabiah Games in July.
The renowned Oxford professor Benjamin Jowett, the great 19th century translator of Plato, was the ultimate paradigm of the ivory-tower scholar. Once, as he was walking across the commons at Oxford, he stopped a student and asked, “Please can you tell me, am I walking toward or away from the cafeteria?”
Anti-Defamation League (ADL) Regional Board Chair Nicole Mutchnik and her husband Allan opened their home on Aug. 13 to the region’s top ADL donors in a gesture of gratitude for their philanthropic leadership. The evening featured a gourmet dinner by “Top Chef” contestant Brian Hill and special greetings from ADL Major Gifts Chair Steven Nichols and Regional Director Amanda Susskind. More than 35 of the region’s major donors attended.
Nearly 400 young professionals joined the Iranian American Jewish organization 30 Years After at a private residence in Bel Air for its annual “Stars and Stripes” summer soiree on Aug. 15.
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