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Dear Readers, While the holidays feel a bit tardy this year (you know how they’re never on time…), it is still hard to believe that it’s the season again for apples and honey and shofar calls and sermons and holiday meals. And, for reflections. We asked some folks for...

This past Wednesday, September 11, marked 79 years since a rejected refugee ship arrived on Tidewater’s shores, sparking a battle of wills that reached all the way to the White House, and the narrow rescue of 81 refugees fleeing the horrors of Nazi-occupied Europe....

Prior to coming to Old Dominion University, I taught at Elizabethtown College in central Pennsylvania. It was there that I met one of my dearest friends, also named Amy, who is one of the college chaplains. When she told me that she was taking her students on an...

Last September, a room filled with members of our community joined together to kick off our 2019 Community Campaign and Arts + Ideas season. The results? An accelerated campaign with a significantly increased level of community support and our ability to meet...

On Sunday, August 18, United Jewish Federation of Tidewater took the first step in creating a coordinated community book burial. This came in response to Rabbi Michael Panitz, who contacted UJFT with a need to bury Temple Israel’s unused Holy books. The act of burying...

Is the suffering of others our own? How do we make emotions explicit and use them positively to teach? Why is it so difficult to accept certain facts? How can history be controversial? These were just a few of an abundance of framing questions that educators...

“My life is a journey of blessings. I am always growing through open-minded, whole-hearted living and am grateful to have the freedom to express love without fear.” —Elyse Tapper Cardon Elyse and David Cardon’s home life is a visual reflection of their love of each...

In some homes, art sits center stage, which is why we’ve made it the focus of this section. Elyse and David Cardon’s Virginia Beach home, for example, is all about expression—art, fun, function, music, entertainment, and love. Artists Jodie Frieden, Abbie Korman, Ivor...

Ask anyone to describe Robert G. “Bob” Liverman, and it’s not long before you’ll hear the word “mensch.” “He’s always doing good things for the Jewish people. He’s always been a mensch, a wonderful human being and Jew,” says his great-nephew Kirk Levy. Liverman, who...

Having the best week of their lives, the members of Team Virginia Beach represented the Simon Family JCC very well at the 2019 JCC Maccabi Games & ArtsFest in Detroit, Michigan, August 4-9. Beyond making many new friends from around the U.S. and the world, the...

If you ever asked my husband Kenny or me if his daughter Mallory would go on a Birthright Israel program—without her family – we would have just laughed and shrugged it off. We wouldn’t even dare to dream such a thing. Mallory has Fragile X syndrome which affects her...

Jewish Holidays 5780 All holidays begin at sundown on the evening before the date listed. Religious Holidays 5780 Rosh Hashanah September 30–October 1, 2019, Jewish New Year Yom Kippur October 9, 2019, Day of Atonement Sukkot October 14–20, 2019, Feast of Tabernacles...

Love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. (Deuteronomy 10:19) In May of 1939, the S.S. St. Louis reached the shore of Miami, Fla. On board the ship were 937 Jewish European refugees, including two-year-old Joachim Hirsch. All of them had applied...

When most people think about celebrating a big occasion, they think parties and trips. But when Brad Bangel and his sister, Nancy Bangel, were considering how to mark their parents’ 70th anniversary, they went into a totally different direction. They thought Torah....

Laderberg Lane, honoring Alma and Howard Laderberg (of blessed memory) was formally dedicated on Monday, July 22. The walking trail that surrounds the pond basin at the Sandler Family Campus, was made possible by the couple’s generosity and their after-lifetime gift...

Food sustains us while stories about food and family delight and save us. On June 24, United Jewish Federation of Tidewater held its third annual One Night, where Culinary Institute of Virginia College of Culinary Arts of ECPI University, James Beard award winning...

Beth Sholom Village has a new president. On June 19 at BSV’s annual meeting, Matthew Weinstein, president of Managed Networks of America, assumed the presidency, as attorney Stuart Nachman became the immediate past president. Lawrence Siegel, first vice-president;...

With a theme of “Honoring Our Past, Envisioning Our Future,” Jewish Family Service of Tidewater (JFS) held its 64th Biennial Meeting on June 17. At the meeting, JFS installed Ellen Rosenblum as the president for 2019–2021, thanked Jeff Cooper for serving as president...

Richmond, Va.—On behalf of the Virginia House of Delegates, Speaker Kirk Cox has named Bill Nusbaum to the Virginia Israel Advisory Board (VIAB). Nusbaum is an attorney with Williams Mullen. VIAB is a government agency that helps Israeli companies locate and grow...

Ruth Bader Ginsburg donates $9,000 to Israeli schools teaching Arabic and Hebrew Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg says she is donating $9,000 to a network of bilingual Hebrew and Arabic schools in Israel. The grant to schools operated by Hand in Hand comes...