We sometimes fall into the understandable error of thinking that tradition is the opposite of having a history. We think that history is about change, whereas tradition is about resistance to change. That’s true some of the time, but not always. A deeper understanding...
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Donors commit $21.5-million to Tidewater Jewish community’s future
In September 2016, Tidewater Jewish Foundation partnered with the Harold Grinspoon Foundation to launch the Life & Legacy program in Tidewater. After four successful years, 332 donors have made 571 legacy commitments worth $21.5 million in current and future gifts...
A bright future ahead for Jewish Family Service
As Jewish Family Service nears its 75th year as a Jewish Service Agency, the non-profit organization is charting its future by focusing on the increasing needs of the community. JFS sees an opportunity to expand and re-energize the agency’s big impact mission-based...
Spirit Week and Day of Giving inspires extraordinary level of parent donations at SIASpirit Week and Day of Giving inspires extraordinary level of parent donations at SIA
Strelitz International Academy returned from Winter Break to Spirit Week, January 5–8, culminating in the Day of Giving, hoping to inspire parents to participate in the school’s annual donor fund (ADF) reflecting the power of community. Spirit Week was the brainchild...
Food Love. For Life.
A tribe of Jewish restaurateurs and food entrepreneurs have been hunting and gathering meals on behalf of the local community and to address food insecurity for most of their adult lives. These individuals and their food businesses have especially made a variety of...
Tidewater families light up the night with PJ Library
Hanukkah is celebrated each year when the days are short and the nights are long and dark. For eight whimsical nights, family and friends gather to enjoy precious time together. Delicious meals are prepared, prayers are said, and children play games while the menorah...
Avi Liberman, stand-up comedian at the J
Saturday, Feb. 15, 8 pm Laugh the winter blues away at the Simon Family JCC during a comedic evening with Avi Liberman. This is the first of two Performing Arts at the J, presented by Leah Wohl* events this winter. A favorite in comedy clubs from Los Angeles to New...
Men’s Club Shabbat at OST explores art confiscated by the Nazis
Friday, February 21, 7:30 pm Ohef Sholom Temple will celebrate its annual Men’s Club Shabbat with members of the Men’s Club leading the service. Jefferson C. Harrison, chief curator of the Chrysler Museum of Art, whose topic is “Nazi-Era Provenance Research and the...
Free film documents the Israel Philharmonic’s dramatic beginning
Orchestra of Exiles, documentary Tuesday, Feb. 25, 7 pm • Sandler Family Campus, Free and open to the community In anticipation of the Virginia Arts Festival performance by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra on April 2 in Virginia Beach, the Community Relations Council...
Calling all bakers and cookie makers Third annual baking event for the troops
Sunday, March 2, 11 am–3 pm For the third time, Operation Hamantashen, a joint venture of the UJFT Young Adult Division and the JCC Children and Family Department, will take place at the Sandler Family Campus. In 2012, more than 100 bakers and helpers of all ages...
Israeli soldiers to speak to Tidewater teens
Thursday, Feb. 20, 6:30 pm at Bite Restaurant, Norfolk One of the more striking sights in Israel: teenagers, the blush of youth evident in their unlined faces and in their energetic gait, dressed not in jeans and t-shirts but in head-to-toe standard issue Israel...
Gil Troy, Zionism in Israel Today
Wednesday, Jan. 29, 7 pm The Community Relations Council of the United Jewish Federation of Tidewater had astute foresight in inviting Gil Troy to be the second speaker in this year’s Israel Today Forum. While the organization had no way of knowing that Troy would...
Getting to know you: Advocating for Jewish community in Richmond
Virginia Jewish Advocacy Day at the Richmond General Assembly Wednesday, Feb. 5, 8:45 am–6 pm The Tidewater area has new General Assembly leaders representing it in Richmond this year, in addition to a new Virginia Governor, Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General....
ChavuRAH!
A group of Ohef Sholom parents and children came together on Sunday, Jan. 12 to celebrate the holiday of Tu B’shevat, the New Year for the Trees. While not planting trees, planting was the theme of the day. Master Carpenter Jim Douglass made a beautiful planter for...
Tallwood High School students reflect on Israel experience
To take 10 students overseas alone for any length of time seems like a task for someone who has a screw loose. To compound that craziness by making it a three week trip to Washington D.C., New York City, Jerusalem, Modi’in, Jaffa, Haifa, Masada, and Tel Aviv is the...
Community gets its most wanted crime information at FBI program
Walking away from the FBI’s Community Relations Executive Seminar Training, attendees of the event, which took place at the Simon Family JCC on Sunday, Jan. 12, held in their hands a nicely printed certificate confirming their attendance, and tried to grasp in their...
Team goes beyond care
Not all cases are the same, and so, not all needs are the same. The recent case of a 38-year-old male palliative care patient of Freda H. Gordon Hospice and Palliative Care of Tidewater is a perfect example. Diagnosed with stomach cancer in October, this relatively...
Hebrew Academy parents bond over baking
Jewish education is not just for kids. Marissa Kempner, Patti Seeman and Ashley Lemke, active parents of Hebrew Academy’s parent organization (Hakesher) recently spearheaded a special challah baking class for HAT and Strelitz preschool room parents. The results proved...
Heart and “soles”
It was rainy and cold on Thursday, Jan. 2 as Ohef Sholom Temple began its second night of hosting the weeklong Norfolk Emergency Shelter Program (NEST) with the help of its neighbor, Ghent United Methodist Church. Sadly, one homeless man arrived in the rain and cold...
Elli’s love for Israel extends to area teens
Elli Friedman spent her childhood and early teen years thinking she loved Israel. But that love, the 17-year-old now realizes, came about because that was what she was always taught she should feel. It didn’t come from the tangible connection that’s held her in its...
Tidewater Jewish Women come together for a Sunday afternoon “Chick Flick” and more
Nearly 60 women attended the recent joint United Jewish Federation of Tidewater’s Women’s Outreach and Jewish Women’s Salon event held at the Sandler Family Campus. The third annual “Girls’ Afternoon at the Movies” featured the 2013 award-winning film, Dorfman in...
The Virginia Festival of Jewish Film, presented by Alma* and Howard Laderberg
Turning 21 was a celebration at the Sandler Center for the Performing Arts when the Simon Family JCC’s Virginia Festival of Jewish Film, presented by Howard and Alma* Laderberg, held its Opening Night on Saturday, Jan. 18. More than 350 people attended to see The...
Israeli celebrity chef injects hummus, ‘balagan’ into Jewish heart of Paris
PARIS (JTA)—In the elegant silence of a narrow street near the River Seine, David Moyal takes a breath of fresh winter air and enters a noisy restaurant in the French capital. Inside Miznon, he is transported to another world, filled with the cacophony of Hebrew...
Ariel Sharon, one of Israel’s last warrior statesmen, dies at 85
(JTA)—Ariel Sharon, one of Israel’s last warrior statesmen, whose military and political careers were woven into his nation’s triumphs and failures, has died. Sharon, 85, died Saturday, January 11 at the Sheba Medical Center near Tel Aviv after eight years in a coma....
Israel: Jewish and Democratic
This is one of five op-eds that appeared in The Times of Israel (and now, Jewish News). It is reprinted with permission. Gil Troy is part of the Community Relations Council’s Israel Today Forum. Even nations need recognition, right? We exist in the world as...
At Tu b’Shvat, digging for spiritual growth — January 16
LOS ANGELES (JTA)—While my neighbors were putting their Christmas trees to the curb, in what seems like a ritual of replacement, I was preparing to plant for Tu b’Shvat. My friend Freda recently presented me a cutting from an Angel’s trumpet—a small tree with...