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Anyone who has traveled by the Pembroke Square area in the last few weeks might have seen exciting developments taking place on the corner by Target. Aviva Pembroke, the premier senior community that is being created in partnership by Beth Sholom Village and Pembroke...
We joined the Tidewater delegation for Jewish Advocacy Day in Richmond on Wednesday, Feb. 8. In the morning, we all met to ride the bus to Richmond at the Simon Family JCC—you could feel the excitement. After six months of working with the community, meeting people,...
NADIV, United Jewish Federation of Tidewater’s young men’s Giving Circle, recently completed this year’s giving process at the Jewish Museum and Cultural Center in Portsmouth. On a Sunday evening in February the members were hosted for a dinner, learned about the...
Luca Calliott proves that one can never begin reading the Jewish News too early.
Almost 50 early morning risers boarded a bus to Richmond for Virginia’s annual Jewish Advocacy Day on Wednesday, Feb. 8. Organized by the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) of the United Jewish Federation of Tidewater, the delegation joined nearly 200 citizen...
International Holocaust Remembrance Day was observed this year by United Jewish Federation of Tidewater’s Holocaust Commission with the publication of To Life: The Past Is Present, Holocaust Stories of Hampton Roads Survivors, Liberators, and Rescuers. This collection...
Dear Readers, Longevity unwittingly turned into the theme for this issue’s Mazel Tov section. Doing so makes perfect sense, and frankly, I wonder why we’ve never done it before. After all, when celebrating at weddings we hope the marriages will be “forever” and when a...
Jewish News: When and where did you meet? Minette and Charles Cooper: In New York on a blind date through Marjorie Quarte, a senior in Minette’s house at Smith College who was dating Charles’s brother Joel. JN: Charles, how did you convince Minette to move to Norfolk?...
Caught on Camera: Dani Weinstein says she wants to read Jewish News to see who she knows in each issue.
Next month, Sandy Goldberg, account executive at Jewish News, turns 80. If he hadn’t shared the news, no one would know. He’s always active…traveling with his wife Anne, busy with his family, entertaining, exercising at the Simon Family JCC, and working the phones and...
Tidewater’s ShinShinim, Aya Sever and Alma Ben Chorin, have been busy this winter spreading Israeli culture and education throughout the community. In addition to leading programs at the Simon Family JCC, they have engaged with students at Strelitz International...
Dear Readers, Last month I listened to an Apple News In Conversation podcast featuring an interview with Steve Lopez, author of Independence Day: What I Learned About Retirement From Some Who’ve Done It and Some Who Never Will. In his mid-60s and considering...
(JTA)—When Ed Shames described his Jewish self, he used the term “tough SOB.” Shames, the oldest surviving member of the legendary Easy Company parachute infantry regiment, could also have added “patient.” Shames, who died Dec. 3 at age 99 at his home in Virginia...
Dear Readers, Business can be very personal, despite the famous phrase from The Godfather. (You know the one…‘it’s not personal, it’s strictly business.’) In fact, business is often very personal. That’s what Lisa Richmon learned when she spoke to Josh Leibowitz and...
‘Playing it safe’ used to be a nice way to say cop out. Today, however, safety is the national trend for young professionals returning to the parental home to invest and save money, work remotely, job hop virtually, spend more time with family—and avoid becoming a CDC...
COVID pulls families apart. Covid brings families together. In May 2020, Avidan Itzhak returned home to Virginia where he continued to work as a corporate recruiter for a healthcare company. At that time, he had no intention to leave New York for the foreseeable...
Like so many immigrants who came to America around 1900, it took a great deal of courage to leave home. They came to escape persecution and hunger. They came not speaking English and often going to a kind relative they’d never met. My four grandparents were part of...
Each year, the United Jewish Federation of Tidewater and Simon Family JCC’s Lee and Bernard Jaffe Family Jewish Book Festival celebrates National Jewish Book Month by inviting prominent and emerging authors to share their latest books and projects with the Tidewater...
On Exhibit now through December 12, 2021 in the Glass Gallery at the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk: If You Thirst for a Homeland: Flame-worked glass by Dafna Kaffeman. Admission to the museum is free and includes this exhibit.
Giving new meaning to the phrase “open tent Judaism,” United Jewish Federation of Tidewater’s Women’s Division held its annual Lion Tikva Chai Lunch outdoors this year, under a big, wide tent in the “backyard” of the Sandler Family Campus. Utilizing new,...
It was a special day on Sunday, October 24 as the members of Nadiv, the Young Men’s Giving Circle through YAD, led the Jewish community in a cleanup of Mikro Kodesh cemetery in Chesapeake. Together with the Norfolk Kollel and community members of all ages, more than...
Seizing the moment Terri and Lonny Sarfan “We’re going to break the norms this year,” says Terri Sarfan. Playing with the calendar a bit, Terri and Lonny plan to begin their family’s Hanukkah celebration just after Thanksgiving dinner. Terri says they want to take...
For Noa Tishby, it has become a mission to educate and engage with the rampant antisemitism and anti-Zionist corners of Twitter and other social media platforms. On Wednesday, October 13, Tishby shared her expertise with Tidewater’s Jewish community as the first...
In sports terms, one might call Ron Koas a rookie. In rabbinic circles, the 60-year-old is just a late bloomer. He came to Congregation Beth El in July as his first senior pulpit. Raised as a secular Jew in Israel, his roundabout path to the rabbinate included IDF...
A few months into her new job as curator at the Chrysler Museum of Art, Carrie Needell was leafing through an auction catalogue to get a feel for glass artists’ names and work. Not just the ones who had been at it for a while, up-and-comings were on her radar, too. A...
Sam & Reba Sandler Annual Foundation Golf Tournament Continuing a tradition begun 25 years ago, the Sandler family of companies, along with their valued sponsors, vendor partners, and employee volunteers, celebrated a quarter century of giving at the Sam &...
Ruby Lions learn what is taking place throughout the Jewish world The roar of the Ruby Lions could be heard throughout Virginia Beach as United Jewish Federation of Tidewater’s women donors giving $10,000 or greater to the Community Campaign gathered to hear from the...
Each year, the Milton “Mickey” Kramer Scholar-in-Residence Fund of the Congregation Beth El Foundation’s Tidewater Together Series shares opportunities for the community to connect Jewishly to a variety of topics. This year, the series impacted the Jewish community,...
A decade ago, Betty Ann Levin, then CEO of Jewish Family Service of Tidewater and David Abraham, CEO of Beth Sholom Village, met together with their organization’s boards of directors to create the Freda H. Gordon Hospice and Palliative Care of Tidewater (HPCT)...
Jason Hoffman leads a Jewish life. When we caught up for this interview—to chat about his experience with United Jewish Federation of Tidewater’s Hineni Fellowship—he was hanging around an airport awaiting the arrival of his teenaged daughter, who was returning from a...
Tidewater’s BBYO chapters have enthusiastically begun this school year. BBG (B’nai Brith Girls), which locally consists of Dr. Abraham Cohen and Kruger chapters, and AZA (Aleph Tzadik Aleph), which locally consists of Dr. Israel Brown and Old Dominion chapters, are...