Music In Leonia

Thanks to Richard Alicchio for sharing this photograph, taken from the Jewish Standard, publicizing our hosting of the encore performance of Eugene Marlow's Heritage Ensemble this Saturday evening, December 1st, at 7 PM. The performance will be preceded by a brief Havdallah service, and followed by coffee and dessert downstairs in our social hall.

Tickets will be available at the door. And remember that you don't have to be Jewish to love jazz! Or just good music! For more information, see our previous posts, The Heritage Ensemble Returns December 1st, and Testimonials.

Remembering Meir Ribalow

I wanted to include a post here on the congregational blog of Adas Emuno about my friend and colleague, Meir Ribalow, who recently passed away.  Although he was not a member of our congregation, he did make the trip out to Leonia once, back on April 14, 2007, as our first ever Havadallah Talk speaker. This was long before I set up our congregational blog, in fact, I was only in the second month of my own blog, and I included a post about the event entitled  Sports Spiel. And if you want to read it in its entirety, just click on the title and head on over, but I'll provide some relevant protions here.

The following is an excerpt from my 2007 post:


So, this past Saturday we held our first Havdallah-Talk. It featured my colleague at Fordham University (where he's an Artist-in-Residence), Meir Ribalow. And the topic of his talk was "Jews in Sports." Here's the write-up as it appeared in our temple newsletter: 

Renowned Author to Speak on “Jews in Sports”

Author and scholar Meir Z. Ribalow will give a talk on “Jews in Sports” at Adas Emuno on Saturday, April 14 at 7 PM., in the first “Havdallah-Talk”, presented by the Adult Education Committee. 

Mr. Ribalow is co-author (with the late Harold U. Ribalow) of The Jew in American Sports, Jewish Baseball Stars, and The Great Jewish Chess Champions. He is Director of Jewsinsports.org, a prize-winning web site, and has written about Jewish athletes in the book Take Me Out to the Ballgame, as well as for various periodicals, including Princeton Alumni Weekly. The award-winning author also has extensive writing credits in fiction, poetry, musical lyrics, children’s literature, film and travel. Perhaps best known as a playwright, Mr. Ribalow has had 22 plays receive some 160 productions worldwide, and has extensive directing credits to his name.  

Currently, Mr. Ribalow is Artistic Director of New River Dramatists in North Carolina and full-time Artist-in-Residence at Fordham University, where he has taught screenwriting, film and writing courses for the last decade.  

“Havdallah-Talk”, a new program for adult members of the Congregation, will be held at Adas Emuno on selected Saturday evenings at 7 PM. (Mr. Ribalow’s talk on April 14 is also appropriate and open to pre-teens and teens interested in sports). A short Havdallah service will be followed by guest speakers on a variety of topics. 

The program is open to non-members as well. Admission is free and light refreshments will be served. 

Virginia Gitter, a past president of the congregation and all around dynamo, not to mention the person who puts out the newsletter, wrote this up based on information I provided, and helped to publicize the event, for which I am very grateful. And as the first event of its kind, being a complete unknown, and ours being a small congregation, I had figured that it would be a success if a dozen people showed up. We had twenty in attendance, so it exceeded expectations. Meir normally gets paid a great deal to do these kinds of gigs elsewhere, so I am very grateful to him for donating his time and energy. I should add that he could have spoken on a number of different topics, including film, and literature, but we chose to start things off with sports because of the broad appeal of the topic. 

As mentioned in the newsletter article, Meir has a chapter in the anthology Take Me Out to the Ballgame (edited by Gary Gumpert and Susan Drucker), and so do I. His was on Jewish baseball stars in relation to the Jewish experience in America...  

Anyway, much of Meir's talk and the ensuing Q&A revolved around specific sports stars, one of the most interesting being Mo Berg, who played Major League Baseball for 16 years, but also was an undeniable genius, speaking something on the order of 16 languages, and serving as a spy for the US during WWII, even in Japan. One story has it that he spoke German so well he was sent into Germany to check on how Heisenberg was making out with the Nazi effort to develop the A-bomb. While there were regular spies who could pass as German just as well as Berg, none of them were smart enough to make a good assessment of the state of Nazi nuclear physics. Meir says that a documentary about Mo Berg is due out soon, in which he is one of the scholars interviewed. 

But I digress. What I find blogworthy in all this is the point Meir made at the beginning of his talk, that sports served to counter prejudice and antisemitism, especially among those people who were unimpressed with intellectual achievement. Simply put, there is no way to argue with Benny Leonard's boxing championships, with Hank Greenberg's home runs, Sandy Koufax's strikeouts, etc. Sports provide an objective standard of excellence that is unavailable even to an Einstein.


Some of the books mentioned above are out of print, but can be purchased through independent booksellers:

Meir also published a baseball novel last year:

And another novel just a few months ago:

And in the past two years, he also published two books of poetry:

The second one is a collection of sonnets.  And in conjunction with his work with the New River Dramatists, he edited two collections of plays, each one containing one of his own along with two by other authors:

It's not possible to list all of his publications here, but here are a few more items available via Amazon (and just a reminder that when you order through our links, a portion of the profits goes to our congregation):

Meir's father, Harold Ribalow, was an editor who dealt with just about every major Jewish-American fiction writer of the mid-20th century, and every year, Hadassah Magazine gives out a prize in his name, as they explain:

Hadassah Magazine's annual literary award for outstanding Jewish fiction was established in 1983 by the friends and family of the late Harold U. Ribalow, an editor and writer known for his passion for Jewish literature and his interest in promoting the work of many now-famous writers. Ribalow was inducted posthumously into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 2009 for his contributions to society through Jewish sports writing.

Meir was very much his father's son, very much dedicated to helping others, in addition to being very talented in his own right.  His enthusiasm and encyclopedic knowledge of movies, sports, and literature made him a delightful conversationalist, and his good humor and generosity of spirit was a blessing and an inspiration.  I think his New York Times obituary is worth sharing here as well:

RIBALOW--Meir Zvi, Internationally renowned playwright, poet, novelist, critic, and activist, died on August 23rd after battling prostate cancer. He was 63. Mr. Ribalow had 24 of his plays receive some 180 productions worldwide, winning awards in London, New York, and regionally. He won national awards for fiction, his widely published poetry, and musical lyrics; co-wrote ten children's books; and published articles on sports, music, theatre, literature, film, travel and chess. 

He was co-author, with his father, Harold Ribalow, of three books on sports, and was Director of an award-winning sports website. Mr. Ribalow's poems have recently been collected in two volumes, "Chasing Ghosts" and "The Time We Have Misspent" and two novels, "Peanuts and Crackerjacks" and "Redheaded Blues" -- along with a new play, "Masterpiece" -- have all been published in the past eighteen months during a typically furious burst of creativity that his illness did little to slow. 

He wrote articles for publications as diverse as The New York Times, The Sciences, Hadassah, and the program for the 1990 Kasparov-Karpov World Chess Championship, commented on films for the Discovery Channel, and hosted the online radio program "New River Radio" on ARTonAIR.org. His scholarly film commentary appears on a number of special edition classic DVD's, including High Noon and Sergeant York. A popular and widely respected educator, he served for almost three decades as Artist-in-Residence in the Department of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University. 

Mr. Ribalow was born into a family of writers and scholars -- his grandfather, Menachem Ribalow, edited the only weekly newspaper published in Hebrew in the United States, and his father, Harold, was an internationally renowned author and anthologist of Anglo-American Jewish literature--and was supported and encouraged by his passionately engaged music educator mother, Shoshana, and sister, Reena Ribalow Ben Ephraim (also an award-winning poet and fiction writer). 

Mr. Ribalow graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1966 and was a University Scholar and Class Poet at Princeton, class of 1970. He was a co-founder and Vice President of the Creative Coalition, a group of entertainment professionals devoted to social and environmental advocacy, working alongside fellow board-members Alec Baldwin, Christopher Reeve, Ron Silver, and Stephen Collins. He was also International Arts Coordinator of The Global Forum, where he worked with the Dalai Lama, Robert Redford and Mikhail Gorbachev. 

Mr. Ribalow was the Founding Artistic Director of New River Dramatists, the dream child of indefatigable producer Mark Woods, which offers playwrights week-long residencies in the mountains of North Carolina and has developed some 400 new plays and screenplays, almost half of which have already been produced or optioned worldwide. Mr. Ribalow attracted and mixed established, high profile playwrights such as the late James McLure, Wendy Hammond, Richard Dresser and Lee Blessing, with lesser-known, often young, but always deserving writing talents such as inaugural McLure Fellowship and 2012 O'Neill Residency winner Hilary Bettis. 

Mr. Ribalow directed numerous plays in London and New York, was Joseph Papp's Production Associate at the New York Shakespeare Festival for several years, and founded the American Repertory Company of London. A Broadway Gala Theater Benefit reading of his play Nature of the Universe with Blythe Danner and Brian Dennehy raised funds for The ALS Association of New York. 

Mr. Ribalow is survived by his mother, sister, nephew Shaiel Ben Ephraim and niece Riora Kerr, and by a grateful and still-expanding community of artists, writers, actors, performers, and philanthropists who learned much of craft and even more of care through his vision and by his example.

Meir never bragged about all of his connections, he was a modest and down-to-earth individual who always had a twinkle in his eye, a smile on his face, a good word for everyone he came into contact with, and a helping hand for those who needed one. It was a privilege to know him, and a pleasure to be able to share him with Congregation Adas Emuno.

Connecting to Leonia Life

Congregation Adas Emuno has been getting some nice attention from our local community newspaper, Leonia Life.  Maybe you saw our recent post, Life in Leonia, which covered the coverage of our August ice cream social for our religious school?

Last week, the paper ran two items.  One was Adas Emuno in Leonia Announces High Holy Day Services, and it went like this:

Congregation Adas Emuno of Leonia will hold High Holy Day Services beginning with Rosh Hashanah on Sunday, Sept. 16 at 8 p.m.

Rabbi Barry L. Schwartz and Student Cantor Alison Lopatin will officiate. Pianist Beth Robin will accompany. A children's service for Rosh Hashanah, geared for younger children and their families, will be offered from 8:45-9:30 a.m. on Monday, Sept. 17.

Tickets are not required for the children's service. The regular Rosh Hashanah morning service will begin at 10:30 a.m.

The second day of Rosh Hashanah will be celebrated at 11 a.m. on Sept. 18 with tashlich and a picnic lunch at the Englewood Boat Basin, Englewood Cliffs, weather permitting.

Kol Nidre Services will be held on Tuesday, Sept. 25 at 8 p.m., featuring pianist Beth Robin and cellist Fran Rowell.

Yom Kippur services will be held on Wednesday, Sept. 26 beginning with a children's service from 8:45-9:30 a.m., followed by morning services at 10:30 a.m., and then afternoon, Yiskor and concluding services at 4:30 p.m.

A Congregational breakfast will follow. High Holy Day tickets for non-members are $250 each and may be purchased by calling the temple office at 201-592-1712. Congregation Adas Emuno is a reform synagogue founded in 1871, located at 254 Broad Ave., Leonia. www.adasemuno.org.

The same issue included a piece on our newest clergy member:  Leonia Congregation Welcomes New Student Cantor.  Along the same lines as our recent post, Introducing Our New Student Cantor, it went like this:

Congregation Adas Emuno of Leonia welcomed its new student cantor, Alison Lopatin, who is currently in her fourth year of Cantorial school at Hebrew Union College/The Jewish Institute for Religion, in the Debbie Friedman School of Sacred Music in New York City.

Lopatin graduated from Wesleyan University and attended the San Francisco Conservatory.

She sang opera in various venues around the San Francisco Bay Area before beginning her Cantorial studies at HUC-JIR.

Lopatin also served as a student cantor at Temple Emanuel in Roanoke, Va., for the last two years.

At Adas Emuno, she will join Rabbi Barry Schwartz in leading holiday and Friday evening shabbat services throughout the year, as well as providing musical programming for the temple's religious school.

And today's issue of Leonia Life features another front page report by Raeshelle Middleton on our recent screening of the documentary film Connected (see our previous post, Get Connected at Adas Emuno).  It's entitled Leonia Gets ‘Connected’ with Film, and here is what Raeshelle had to say about the event:

Community members gathered to watch Tiffany Shlain's documentary "Connected," which discusses the interconnectedness of human society, at Congregation Adas Emuno Aug. 25.

Before continuing with Middleton's report, we just want to thank Tiffany Shlain for her generosity in giving us permission to hold this exclusive screening of a film that is still making the rounds of film festivals, and was recently screened at the Democratic Party's national convention. It was a privilege as well as a treat.

Focusing on the mind, the filmmaker referred to present topics such as the advancement and use of technology, the issue of pollution, health and some of the advances in modern science and how this has affected the evolution of human communication.

The film focused on multiple subjects as the documentarian went into detail about what was going on in her personal life at the time as well as the relationship that she had with her family.

Members of the community from all age groups came out to watch the movie. There were refreshments served and almost every seat was filled. Afterwards there was a discussion about how the audience viewed the film.

Just to interrupt again, we were quite pleased that about a third of our audience were new to Adas Emuno, having heard about the film through local publicity in various parts of Bergen County.

The movie studied how during different eras people have used different parts of their brains such as the right side and the left side during certain circumstances. One of the subjects that were introduced in discussion was the way that friendship is viewed in modern day with the increase in dependence on social media and technology for communication and how that affects face-to-face interaction.

"What's happening to those brains when they get overloaded, when if you're like me and you check your cell phone for e-mail 100 times a day?" said Rabbi Barry Schwartz.

"Young people and old people my age talk about friending, and then I recognize that this is a person that they've never spoken to or seen face to face, and they think that this is a friend. To me the internet has separated people. It has brought more information into my life but is hasn't brought more friends into my life." said Muriel Haber. "A friend in my definition is somebody that I can call up and say, 'Hey meet me for coffee,' and speak on a very intimate and depend on."

The movie also spoke about Technology Shabbats, which is encouraging people to unplug technological devices on a particular day in order to become more mindful of the world. The movie discussed subjects such as the overuse of the Internet and the cellular phone which may be responsible for changing the way of thinking for many people.

"Unplugging and taking a break is how we can become mindful of what we are doing, rather than doing it unconsciously," said Lance Strate, president of the congregation.

And what better place to unplug than at Adas Emuno during Shabbat services and the upcoming holidays or Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur?  And who better to unplug with than Rabbi Schwartz, Cantor Lopatin, and our wonderful, warm and intimate Reform Jewish congregation?  If you're looking for a spiritual and stimulating High Holy Days experience in Bergen County, New Jersey, try connecting with us. You won't be disappointed!

Get Connected at Adas Emuno

Join us this Saturday evening, August 25th, for a special Havadallah event featuring a screening of the film documentary Connected:





We'll begin with a Havdallah service in the sanctuary at 7:00 PM, then hold the screening downstairs in the social hall at 7:30, followed by a discussion.  Light refreshments will be served.

This event is free and open to the public.  See our previous post:  Connected Screening — Save the Date!

Congregation Adas Emuno

254 Broad Avenue

Leonia, NJ 07605

For more information, call 201.592.1712 

or email us at adasemuno@gmail.com

Connected Screening — Save the Date!

Save the date for a special event in our Havdallah Talk series, a screening of the film Connected, followed by a discussion.  Free and open to the public, this visually stunning film appeals to kids as well as adults, and indeed to all who value family and tikkun olam.

Come Light the Menorah!

Tonight is the official public Menorah lighting, taking place outside of Congregation Adas Emuno, set to begin at 5:30 PM, starting with a Havadalah ceremony, and followed afterwards by a Chanukah party!  And when we light the Menorah tonight, it'll be the fourth night, and fourth light being turned on. 

As you know, Chanukah lasts for eight days, and we commemorate the holiday by lighting candles, one on the first day, two on the second, and so on until all eight candles on the Chanukah Menorah are lit. The Chanukah Menorah, or Chanukiah, actually uses nine candles typically, one being the shamash or helper, which is used to light the other eight (interestingly, Shamash is the name of the Sumerian sun god). Oh, and just in case it's not obvious, a Menorah is a candelabrum, but when I hear the word candelabrum I can't help but think of Liberace (if this confuses you, never mind, you're probably just too young to get the reference). 


 So why is this week different from all other weeks? On all other weeks, the Menorahs that are used only have six lights, plus the seventh shamash. The six lights of the standard Menorah correspond to the six points of the Star of David, the symbol of Judaism, but the Menorah itself is said to symbolize the burning bush, and it is said that the design of the Menorah was part of God's revelation to Moses. It was a feature of the Temple in Jerusalem, and remains one of the symbols of our faith, and the Jewish people as a nation. Here's one image of a Menorah, patterned after the one that existed in the ancient Temple:







And here is the Coat of Arms of the State of Israel, where the Menorah is used as a national symbol:









And now, here is a traditional image of a Chanukah Menorah:







And here's the national Menorah of the United States, on the Mall in Washington, DC, courtesy of National Geographic:







And now, these images below look pretty sad after the professional National Geographic photographer's work, but I took them with my camera phone back in 2008 at our community Menorah lighting:









With snow on the ground even, but I can't see Irving Berlin singing, I'm dreaming of a White Chanukah, oy!  Pass the latkes, please!

Havdallah Talk: The History of Jews in Brazil

At Congregation Adas Emuno, we launched a series of Havdallah Talks a couple of years ago, in conjunction with our Adult Education program.  As the name implies, our Havdallah Talks are held on Saturday evening, and include a brief Havdallah service, a beautiful ceremony celebrating the end of Shabbat, and the beginning of the new week.  And there's also a little nosh, natch!

So, our next Havdallah Talk will take place this coming Saturday, March 20th, and will feature two of the many talented members of our congregation, authors Beti Rozen and Peter Hays.  Beti and Peter  will be celebrating their latest work for young adults: Two Continents, Four Generations:  One Hundred Years, Two Stories, with a presentation:  The History of Jews in Brazil:  From 1500 to the Present.

The authors' novella is set in two time periods, the present and in 1939, and is the true story of a Jewish-American boy who learns about his Brazilian Jewish grandfather and how their lives compare with one another. It is based on the journey of Beti Rozen's father who left Poland for Brazil during the Second World War. A book signing will be held following the presentation. 

The program will begin at 7:00 p.m. with Cantor Kerith Spencer-Shapiro leading the brief havdallah service, and light refreshments will be served. The program is free and open to the public. Congregation Adas Emuno is located at 254 Broad Avenue, Leonia. For more information, call 201-592-1712 or visit the website at www.adasemuno.org.