Come hear about the recipes and stories of resilience of Holocaust survivors with author June Hersh on Wednesday, April 2 at 7 p.m. at the Jewish Community Center of Middlesex County in Edison. The author of four cookbooks and one Holocaust photography book, Hersh focuses on food history, mainly the connection between Jewish experiences and food memory. She will discuss her book, “Food, Hope & Resilience: Authentic Recipes and Remarkable Stories from Holocaust Survivors,” and be available for book-signing. Hersh has appeared on radio, television and in various print media and donates profits from her books to various charitable Jewish organizations.
The book intertwines stories of daring partisans who fought in the woods, hidden children sheltered by strangers and concentration camp survivors with the food they ate before the Holocaust as a way to connect their lives before the war with the homes they created after. Culinary icons, including Michael Solomonov, Jonathan Waxman and Ina Garten, also contributed their own recipes as a tribute to the remarkable survivor community.
The program, which is being co-sponsored by the Jewish Federation in the Heart of New Jersey and the Jewish Book Council, is free and open to the public but registration is required at (732) 494-3232 or jccmc.org/foodhope. For information contact Donna Oshri, director of community engagement and Jewish Life, (732) 593-5961 or doshri@jcccmc.org.
“Tragic Awakening: A New Look at the Oldest Hatred” will be screened Wednesday, April 2 at 7:30 p.m. at Rutgers University in New Brunswick. Following the viewing there will be a discussion featuring master educator Rabbi Nitzan Bergman, Syrian-Lebanese activist Rawan Osman, and via Zoom, film producer Raphael Shore. The program’s co-sponsors include JFAS-(Rutgers Jewish Faculty, Administrators and Staff), Rutgers Hillel, Rutgers Chabad, Rutgers Jewish Xperience, Israel America Council, Mishelanu and the Academic Engagement Network. The documentary delves into the roots of antisemitism and provides insights into the world’s oldest hatred.
Bergman is a narrator for the film, a rabbi in Baltimore and co-founder and global director of Project Aseret, a collaborative to share realistic and applicable understanding of the Ten Commandments as core values.
Osman is also a narrator, activist for peace with Israel and former member of the executive committee at Peace Comms and is a speaker at Sharaka NGO, which is working to shape a new Middle East, built on dialogue, understanding, cooperation and friendship. Now a refugee living in Germany, she is founder of ArabsAsk.
Besides being an acclaimed filmmaker, Shore is a human rights activist, educator and founder of OpenDor Media and the Clarion Project, a Washington-based non-profit dedicated to exposing extremist threats imperiling the safety and security of America. He is also author of the recent book, “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Jew: Learning to Love the Lessons of Jew-Hatred.”
Location will be provided after required registration by scanning the QR code on the attached poster.
Join the Jewish Heritage Museum of Monmouth County in Freehold on an excursion to Manhattan’s Lower East Side to visit the Kehila Kenosha Janina
Synagogue and Museum and the Eldridge Street Synagogue and Museum on Thursday, May 15. The deadline for registering has been extended to April 8.
The bus will leave from the museum’s parking lot at 8:45 a.m. and return approximately 5:30 p.m.
The group will have a private tour of Kehila Kenosha Janina, the only Romaniote synagogue in the Western Hemisphere. Romaniote Jews trace their history back more than 2,300 years to the time of Alexander the Great in Greece.
The group will then be taken to the Essex Market, originally one of four buildings constructed to house the pushcarts of Lower East Side peddlers.
Afterwards there will be a tour of the historic Eldridge Street Synagogue, the spiritual home for the Eastern European immigrants who flocked to the area in the late 19th and early 20thcenturies. Built in 1887, a century later the synagogue had fallen into extreme disrepair as future generations of Jews left the area. However, a $20 million restoration was completed over the next 20 years and new upgrades continue to be added. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1996.
The cost is $105 per person, which includes the bus, transfers in the city and admission to both museums. For more information or reservations, call the museum at (732) 252-6990 or go to jhmomc.org.
Rabbi Dr. Richard F. Address will be the Temple Emanu-El Diana S. Herman Memorial Scholar-in-Residence on Sunday, April 6 at 10:30 a.m. The program for the Edison-based synagogue will be held at Congregation Neve Shalom in Metuchen. His program, “The Long and Winding Road,” will focus on seeking meaning from sacred texts in life’s third and fourth stages. Address, who has devoted his career to helping transform synagogues into caring communities, believes in order to be a caring community a congregation must be founded on a theology of sacred relationships.
He is founder and director of Jewish Scared Aging, for Jewish baby boomers and their families. Address often speaks and acts as a consultant on healthy aging and spirituality. A former congregational rabbi for 25 years, he served for 33 years at the Union for Reform Judaism where he founded and directed the Department of Jewish Family Concerns and served as adjunct faculty at Hebrew Union College. Address hosts a weekly podcast, Seekers of Meaning.
The first program session, Four Values that Shape our Future, will examine values from Jewish tradition that can provide the foundation for faith, meaning and purpose as people age. That will be followed by lunch and then the second session at 1 p.m. will be New Rituals for New Life Stages, exploring new rituals and prayers that speak to new life situations such as signing an advance directive, removal of a wedding ring after a loss or a difficult medical diagnosis.
There is no charge for Lifelong Learning members and $10 for others. To register go to edisontemple.org/event/scholar-in-residence-2.html.
