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20 communiTy news JTnews . www.JTnews.neT . friday, January 13, 2012
Their little miracle: 2012’s first Jewish baby arrives
Joel Magalnick editor, JTNews
A couple minutes into our conversation,
Jennifer Muscatel McLeod had to
turn away from the phone.
“She’s smiling at us,” she said.
Given that little Joeli Beth McLeod was
all of five days old when her mom and
I spoke, it may have been a little something
burbling in that tiny tummy, but that
doesn’t mean the new mom thinks any less
of her brand new daughter.
“She was our little miracle,” McLeod
said. “We’re totally smitten and absolutely
in love.”
Joeli, born at 9:39 a.m. on January
1, 2012 to Jennifer and Jim McLeod of
Mercer Island, is the first Jewish baby in
Washington State this year. She weighed
a very healthy seven pounds, nine ounces
and measured 19-3/4 inches.
Joeli is the newest member of a family
that spans several years between kids
— her brother Eli is 11 and her two half
W m.o.T. pAGe 10
Shelters are most commonly activated
during severe winter weather — we’ve had
none so far this year — and for fire and
flood. Volunteers were ready, for instance,
to deal with massive flooding from the
breaching of the Howard Hanson Dam,
but that never happened.
Bert is always supplementing his training.
His current local emphasis is on preparing
for “the big one,” a probable major
regional earthquake. Despite feeling the
recent financial pinch, Bert says the Red
Cross continues to train and deploy volun-
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Paul C. Lin, MD
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Angela C. Thyer, MD
Amy R. Criniti, MD
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brothers, Jacob and Aaron, are in their
early 20s. She’s also part of a family that
spans generations of local Jewish history.
On Jennifer’s side, Joeli’s great-grandmother,
Esther Muscatel, is a native who
now has five great-grandchildren. Esther’s
sister, incidentally, was another first: Fortuna
Calvo was the first Sephardic Jewish
baby born in Seattle. That’s one branch
of that side of the family. The other is
descended from the Thals, a multi-generation
Ashkenazi family from around the
state. The Jewish ancestry on Jim’s side
is considerably different: He and several
members of his family converted to Judaism
many years ago.
The family belongs to Temple De
Hirsch Sinai, and Jennifer said that with
Joeli they are “very proud to carry on and
teach her lots of important Jewish traditions.
She’ll go to Sunday school like her
brother, and we look forward to the next
teers to deal with disasters.
Bert had an eye-opening cross-cultural
experience running a South Seattle shelter
recently. An apartment fire “displaced
about 60 families, mostly Somalis,” and
mostly Muslim. Noticing the group would
pray facing north, he learned that the closest
distance from Seattle to Mecca is over
the North Pole, so local Muslims pray that
way.
Bert and Libby raised three children
here. They, and their three grandkids,
remain “within 10 minutes” of Bert, he
says. The family belonged to Temple B’nai
Torah when their kids were young, but “we
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Gerald S. Letterie, DO
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LeSLie rubeNSTeiN
Joeli, the first Jewish baby of 2012, with her mom
Jennifer, dad Jim, and brother eli.
milestone of her Bat Mitzvah.”
There is, of course, one Bar Mitzvah to
became [more] secular” when they grew
up. The couple helped start a chavurah
in Port Ludlow and had also formed one
when they lived in Houston.
“Now that I’ve become a widower
I’ve…reconnected with the Jewish community,”
he says, through the Seattle
Jewish Seniors club, administered by
come before that, not even two years down
the road. One would hope that the little
sister, who at that point will be a toddler
still getting her sea legs, doesn’t upstage
the star of the show.
But as far as Eli is concerned, he’s very
excited to be a big brother.
“He really, really, really, really wanted a
sibling in the house,” Jennifer said.
And now that he’s got his wish?
“He is such a good brother… he’s very
helpful,” Jennifer said. “Even during the
pregnancy there was so much that he
helped with.”
That included a move into a new house
while his mom was pregnant, and making
sure the sleeping configuration was just
right.
“He chose the bedrooms,” Jennifer
said, “and he wanted to make sure [Joeli’s]
room was always between our room and
his room so that she was always protected.”
Temple Beth Am (but open to all). He used
to climb to Mt. Rainier’s Camp Muir every
summer, but gave that up as the receding
glacier has made it more about scrambling
over rock than walking on snow. He still
walks three miles daily on the hills in his
neighborhood.
CourTeSy LeNNy kaShNer
Jamie Schwartz, an Honors graduate of Northwest Yeshiva High School, met Hermina Des
from the Lauder Yavne School in Budapest, Hungary when the Schwartz family hosted Hermina
for six weeks last summer in the Jewish Summer in Seattle program. Their friendship was
renewed last month when the two teens met in Jerusalem.
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