The Jewish Community Center of Middlesex County, the Jewish Federation in the Heart of New Jersey and the Metuchen-Edison Area Interfaith Clergy Association will hold its annual Yom HaShoah-Holocaust Remembrance Program on Monday, May 6 at 7 p.m. at the JCC in Edison. It will feature Brendan Murphy speaking on “Understanding Antisemitism: Remembering the Past, Changing the Future.”
Murphy is a history teacher at the Marist School in Atlanta, where he founded its Bearing Witness Program, an annual student trip to key Holocaust sites in Europe, and has taught a popular elective, History and the Holocaust for almost 30 years. He is also a Teacher Fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Lerner Fellow at the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous in New York.
Murphy has won many awards for his work promoting Holocaust education as a means to fight antisemitism. They include the Outstanding Educator Award from the Anne Frank Center, the Abe Goldstein Human Relations Award, the Unsung Hero Award from the Anti-Defamation League and was named Outstanding Educator of the Year in 2009 and 2016 by the Georgia Commission on the Holocaust and was named Educator of the Year by the University of Notre Dame.
The program at the JCC will also include special readings, prayers and songs and a candle-lighting service.
For information, contact Donna Oshri at (732) 494-3232 or doshri@jccmc.org.
Naomi Miller, a singer, actor, recording artist, educator and daughter of Holocaust survivors, will perform “You Are the Future,” a blend of storytelling, music and historical context to commemorate Yom HaShoah on Monday, May 6, at 7 p.m. at Congregation Agudath Achim-Freehold Jewish Center. The program is being jointly co-sponsored with Congregation Kol Am of Freehold.
Miller, who was born in a displaced persons camp in Germany and came to the U.S. at age two, has performed You Are the Future at Terezin concentration camp as well as at synagogues, churches, elementary and high schools, colleges and community centers, promoting a message to the next generation to “never forget.” Her songs include those sung in the ghettos and those of the partisans and others and are interspersed with narration and storytelling and a power-point presentation accompanying each song. At one point during the program she portrays her mother encouraging the audience not to forget the Yiddish songs she and her siblings loved that were almost lost in the Holocaust. At another point she portrays the father of Anne Frank.
Miller will be accompanied by local award-winning pianist, accompanist, recording artist and composer David Schlossberg.
Dairy refreshments will be served. There will also be a candle-lighting service. To participate in the candle-lighting, contact the Freehold Jewish Center office at (732) 462-0254 or office@freeholdjc.org.
For information contact Christine Mahler at (732) 462-0254 or fjcdirector@freeholdjc.org or freeholdjc.org.
The director of the Orthodox Union’s Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus (JLIC) at Brandeis University’s Hillel, who served four months in Gaza earlier this year, will share his experiences on Sunday, May 12, at 8:30 p.m. at Congregation Ohav Emeth in Highland Park to commemorate Yom Hazikaron, Israeli Memorial Day.
Rabbi Ariel Cohen is a Jerusalem native who studied in Hesder Yeshiva in Eli and served in the IDF as a commander and sniper in an elite unit. He left his wife and co-JLIC director Dorit—a West Orange native—and three children to serve in Israel.
In the U.S. Cohen organizes prayer groups, tutors adolescent immigrants, works as an accountant as well as serves about 150 Orthodox students at Brandeis Hillel.
For more information, contact Yeshivat Netivot in East Brunswick, which is co-sponsoring the program, at (732) 985-4626 ext. 1 or office@mynetivot.com.
The Jewish National Fund will present “A Night of Unity: From Generation to Generation” on Wednesday, May 15, at 7:30 p.m. in North Brunswick featuring Alon Ben-Gurion, grandson of David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister.
The younger Ben-Gurion, who served as a paratrooper and was wounded in the Yom Kippur War in 1973, will speak about the pivotal work of JNF as it stands in solidarity with the people of Israel and fellow Zionists.
The program will also feature Dahlia Wolkoff, a student at Rae Kushner Yeshiva High School in Livingston, who was on the campus of Alexander Muss High School in Israel on Oct. 7 and will share her experience and talk about what impact current events will have on the next generation.
Also addressing the program will be her father, Rabbi Robert Wolkoff, an ardent Zionist and spiritual leader of Congregation B’nai Tikvah in North Brunswick.
Alon Ben-Gurion is a hospitality consultant who has managed hotels worldwide, including New York’s Waldorf-Astoria, and has used his extensive network and hospitality expertise to actively promote development in the Negev and realize his grandfather’s dream of making the desert bloom.
The program is free but donations are welcome and sponsorship opportunities are available. A pre-reception will be held at 7 p.m. for those making donations of $1,000 or more to the current campaign. A dessert reception will follow at 8:30 p.m.
Registration at www.jnf.org/cnjunity is required at which time theevent address will be provided. For information contact Anna Millstein, central New Jersey JNF director, at (973) 593-0095, ext. 826 or amillstein@jnf.org.
