January-February 2012 - The Jewish Georgian

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Page 6 THE JEWISH GEORGIAN January-February 2012 Happening From page 5 Dulcy Rosenberg (photo: Chuck Robertson Photography) Jerry Horowitz (photo: Chuck Robertson Photography) droves to see, thank, and recognize Dulcy and her husband, Jerry, and Jerry Horowitz and his wife, Pearlann, four of our community’s leading citizens. Many volunteers and staff worked very hard to put the fabulous event together, especially gala Co-chairs Billie Greenberg, and Ellen Goldstein. Because of the many hours of commitment and dedication, and the widespread support of the community, The Home will be able to continue to fulfill its mission of caring for our senior citizens in the final years of their lives, just as individuals cared for us in our early years. STEP UP FOR ISRAEL. Radio talk show host and author Dennis Prager was in town as keynote speaker for the Step Up for Israel Atlanta Kick-Off rally, held at the Ahavath Achim Synagogue, where he discussed the growing anti-Israel movement, especially on the nation’s college campuses. This theme is powerfully explored in the highly acclaimed new film, Crossing the Line, produced by Raphael Shore. View the trailer at youtu.be/S9kBaICb3so. The Atlanta event was co-chaired by Hadara Ishak and Steve Oppenheimer. Step Up for Israel is chaired nationally by Professor Alan Dershowitz and former Ambassador Dore Gold. The project is designed to educate the public, motivate the Jewish community to defend Israel, and expose and counter what Shore calls “anti- Israel propaganda, pressure, and intimidation that are becoming increasingly common on college campuses across North America.” According to Amy Holtz, president of JerusalemOnlineU.com, “Many parents don’t realize that their children could be confronted by a one-sided, anti-Israel perspective when they get to college....Responsible Jewish parents must prepare their kids for what they might see and hear about Israel, just as they prepare them for other challenges they might face on campus.” Publicist, commentator on Fox Five’s Sunday morning show “The Georgia Gang,” and JerusaelmOnlineU.com Managing Director Orit Sklar helped organize the event. She called it “an incredible success in bringing the Atlanta community together for Israel.... If every adult and child attains a basic knowledge of Israel through the Step Up for Israel mini-course, we are going to see a marked difference in how Israel is perceived in all of these arenas.... The community can learn how we can all ‘step up’ for Israel by getting involved and supporting organizations doing great work day in and day out for Israel right here in Atlanta.” For more information, visit www.stepupforisrael.com. Step Up for Israel Atlanta Kick-Off: (from left) Orit Sklar, Hadara Ishak, Dennis Prager, and Steve Oppenheimer SUPPORTING ISRAEL’S MOST HERO- IC ATHLETES. Sheila and Michael Schwarz had a wonderful reception at their lovely home for the Israel Sports Center for the Disabled, which does wonderful work helping injured and handicapped kids in Israel. The event featured some of the group’s star athletes from the Israeli children’s team participating in the Miami World Championship for Disabled Children. Among the guests was fourteen-yearold Asael Shabbo who, seven years ago, lost his mother, three siblings, and one of his legs in a terrorist attack. He came to the center, not surprisingly, in a traumatized, grief-stricken, and psychologically disturbed state. But now, Asael is a strong, high-spirited, successful athlete who counsels and inspires other disabled victims of terrorism, “uplifting the spirits of newly disabled youngsters who share his fate, and helping them in their long journey to rehabilitation,” as the center puts it. Today, more than 3,000 kids, many of them victims of terrorism, are being rehabilitated by the ISCD through some 20 sports activities. The center trains the kids in the use of wheelchairs to enable them “to take part in wheelchair sports that help turn them from a state of helplessness toward Marcia and Michael Schwarz with star Athlete Asael Shabbo active lives.” The center’s wheelchairs cost anywhere from $1,500 to $2,500 apiece, so ISCD definitely needs a helping hand in fulfilling its vital mission. To learn more about the center and how you can be part of its invaluable work, visit www.afiscd.org. PEOPLE OF THE BOOK FESTIVAL. One of the highlights of the recent Book Festival of the Marcus Jewish Community Center of Atlanta, formerly called The Atlanta Jewish Book Festival, was the Esther G. Levine Community Read program. This year, the recommended book was Senator Joe Lieberman’s The Gift of Rest: Rediscovering the Beauty of the Sabbath. Everyone loved seeing the senator, and Esther said she was “thrilled to have such a distinguished guest speak. He was warm and friendly, and his stories about observing and sharing Shabbat with well-known national political figures were heartwarming and inspiring.” The program is named, of course, in honor of Sandy Springs’ renowned book maven, who was instrumental in first bringing the Jewish book festival to Atlanta twenty years ago. For 25 years, Esther has escorted authors around town for media appearances and book signings. But when she first got started, as she told Dunwoody Crier’s Fran Memberg, “Atlanta wasn’t on [publicists’] radar screen. It wasn’t that authors didn’t want to come to Atlanta. Publicists didn’t know enough about the city to put it on the schedule. Atlanta had to build credibility.... We’ve now established ourselves and have such a wonderful reputation in the Jewish book...world, and authors really want to come here.” Senator Joe Lieberman and Esther Levine (photo: Dan Regenstein) SERVING THOSE IN MEDICAL NEED. For the last decade, Community Advanced Practice Nurses has been in the forefront of working to serve and strengthen the lives of homeless Atlantans and others who do not have proper access to medical care, providing free physical, mental, and preventive health care to mothers, children and others in need. CAPN’s main clinic is located in Genesis’ shelter for newborn babies and mothers in Atlanta. It also sends nurse practitioners to the Atlanta Day Shelter for Women and Children to provide specialized pediatric health care. Additionally, physical and/or mental health care services are rendered at other outreach sites (Atlanta Children’s Shelter, both locations of Nicholas House, Mary Hall Freedom House, Grace United Methodist Church, and Stand Up For Kids). Our friend and CAPN board member Sheila Cohen tells us that the dismal economy is causing increasingly large numbers of people to seek help: “We are seeing more and more middle-class patients who are suffering during these hard economic times. Our clinic is able to provide essential care for families, children, and young people needing help with health care, education, and employment. But especially this season, we need the public’s help so we can continue helping others.” For information on how to contribute and help out, visit www.CAPN.org. ON THE ROAD TO STARDOM. Sixteenyear-old Native Atlantan Rachel Filsoof is a singer/songwriter/actress living in New York City and about to become a superstar. You have probably seen her in lots of TV commercials, PSAs, and print ads. Her recent movie roles include Nikki in Flying By, a Lifetime film starring Heather Locklear and Billy Ray Cyrus, and a student in Paramount’s Mean Girls 2. Current projects include a reality show that will be airing on the Oxygen Network; lead roles in two films under production; and being the lead singer in a four-girl group recording songs for a record label. Her original music can be heard at Myspace.com/rachellorin, which is averaging 50,000 hits a month. In July alone, she had 400,000 hits on the new song she cowrote. Most important, Rachel received rave reviews from Martha Jo and Jerry Katz (“really spectacular...amazing talent”), who attended a private performance at the home of Rachel’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Fred Filsoof, to promote her upcoming TV series on Oxygen, “The Next Big Thing.” The show follows music coach Trapper Felides, as he trains a group of performers hoping for their big break. Stay tuned as this Atlanta “Star is Born.”
January-February 2012 THE JEWISH GEORGIAN Page 7 I am a citizen of the United States I have an envelope in my desk in which I keep a few documents that are very special to me. I keep them in my desk rather than locked away so that periodically I can take them out, look at them, and bask in the warmth of the good fortune that has befallen me because of the actions that are represented by these pieces of paper. Included in these papers are: a copy of the manifest of the S.S. Haverford, which sailed from the port of Liverpool on May 16, 1906, on which my mother, who was five years old, came to this country (unfortunately, I have yet to locate the manifest for the ship that brought my father to the U.S.); the papers evidencing the naturalization of my parents as citizens of the U.S.; a copy of my father’s Registration Card showing his registration for the U.S. armed-forces draft during World War I; and the AJFF BY From page 1 Marvin Botnick entrée Louder Than a Bomb. In this documentary, a deaf Israeli immigrant in Queens attends American Sign Language poetry improv workshops. She ends up partnering with a Palestinian slam poet, embarking on a hearing-deaf performance collaboration that will swell even the most snobbish of hearts. An Israeli romcom, 2 Night, will unspool in the middle of the festival, and I wish it were screening sooner. Award-winning music video director Roi Werner follows two Israeli strangers who meet at a singles bar and slip into a car for a joint ride home. The problem? They can’t seem to find a parking spot in all of Tel Aviv. It seems like a ridiculous premise, but it’s handled with skill and powerful performances from the two leads and serves as an apt metaphor for Israel’s younger generation who cannot seem to find their identity. 2 Night Let My People Go! comes by way of France and Finland. This delightful little film explodes homosexual stereotypes in its depiction of a Nordic gay couple who suffer a romantic quarrel. Nebbishy Ruben returns to his home in Paris and is forced to endure Passover with his devout, and dysfunctional, “...the Government of the United States...gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance...May the children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.” – George Washington marriage certificate of my parents. True, these are just pieces of paper, but to me they represent much more: They are the tangible reminders of the unbelievable set of events that gave rise to my very existence and the incredible good fortune that has enabled me to be a citizen of the greatest of all countries. On my desk, I also have in a frame a United States of America flag that was flown over the United States Capitol on November 26, 1991, for Temple B’nai Israel, the congregation in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, in which I grew up. This flag is a reminder to me of the famous words contained in a letter written in 1790 to the members of Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, by George Washington, in which he said: “...the Government of the United family. It’s madcap in its pacing and hilarious in its tone, and you couldn’t ask for a better comedy, at a film festival or just a weekend date night. Let My People Go! In truth, the best films of the festival are not Jewish in the early-career Woody Allen way, which is to say stereotypically Jewish. Nor are they oppressive and unrelenting depictions of the worst moments of Jewish history (see Holocaust documentary number 138,401). Rather, they take the odd angle on Jewish life. More than that, they use the Jewish experience to discuss some universal truth, and in the process they help connect our own community with those around us. In David, a lonely young Muslim boy, the son of a devout imam, is mistaken for an Orthodox Jewish child. He plays along, if David States...gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance...May the children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.” Living in this country, sometimes we forget that, of all the nations of the world, the United States has done as much or more than any other country to protect and defend liberty and justice for all people. My passport, like that of most of the people that will read this article, says that I am a citizen of the United States, and this is not a privilege that I take lightly. As an American, I am taught that I am subject to the laws of this country. As a Jew, I am taught that I am subject to the laws of the only to enjoy the new playmates and combat his isolation. Of course, the act cannot be sustained. His secret will slip out, and the results are a dramatic reminder of how much we share even amidst our distinct differences. Meanwhile, fans of dance will find My Dad Baryshnikov to be an irresistible draw. We’re taken to Russia in the age of perestroika to see a clumsy, skinny, 14-year-old Jewish boy. His obsessive study of a VHS tape of the banned dissident Mikhail Baryshnikov helps him improve his dancing, but the situational comedy takes a new turn when he begins to claim he’s Baryshnikov’s illegitimate son. It may seem an interesting premise for an ultimate niche film, but the question of why a young boy, neglected by his mother, would try to perpetrate such a fraud at such a time opens up a host of questions about how we relate to one another, and the human need for attention and community. My Dad Baryshnikov This is Sodom, the box office smash in its native Israel, comes to Atlanta and manages to lampoon every vestige of our modern mediascape: reality TV, game shows, vapid land in which I live, dina d’malchuta dina. Thoughtless action is no justification to violate these principles, and irresponsible bantering, regardless of motivation, can be devastating in its results. Inherent in this precious status is the duty and responsibility to insure that we continue to function as a nation of laws, and that we are both morally and legally obligated to adhere to the laws and concepts that are embodied in this nation. Unlike so many nations of the world, redress has been and must continue to be through the legal mechanisms provided by our system and not by anarchism, subversion, armed actions, or the support or solicitation of such activities. While we may disagree with a position or with certain actions, we owe it to ourselves and to one another to honor the humanity that is ensconced in the very soul of this country and our religious heritage. So long as actions are proper and legal, we have the right to speak out against something and try to sway public opinion. But we do not have the right, either legally or religiously, to seek to effect or encourage change through force, and we denounce any activity. celebrities, overly pious leaders. The comedic masterpiece skewers modern Israeli culture in a way that would make fans of South Park or classic Monty Python proud. This is Sodom The films of AJFF’s 2012 lineup trot the globe in this way. From Israel to Australia, from the 1930s turmoil of Europe to the 1960s New Left to Brooklyn, circa today, AJFF takes you on a journey that is anything but stereotypical. There is a slasher film, Israel’s first entry into the genre, in Rabies for crying out loud! How could you not expect a surprise, delightful ones I promise, at every turn? Yes, there are Israeli films. Yes, there are Holocaust narratives. Opening night will kick off the festival with My Best Enemy, a tragicomedy set amidst the Nazi genocide. Yet it evokes Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds much more than Schindler’s List, which is to say that it takes a fresh take on an old subject. So it would be only the most cynical film fans who would think of AJFF as just a Jewish film festival, and it would be their loss. It may be the most universally accessible film festival anywhere in America.
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January-February 2012 - The Jewish Georgian

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