Alpha Epsilon Pi opens Israel’s first-ever college fraternity.

by Sharon Udasin
Staff Writer

In what has become perhaps the most Americanized region in all of Israel, the sunny seaside city of Herzliya just landed a classic American import that it probably never expected: the Jewish state’s first-ever college fraternity.

The international executive board of Alpha Epsilon Pi initiated 15 young men from the Interdisciplinary Center of Herzliya into the “Aleph” chapter of AEPi, at a ceremony last week at the Sheraton Jerusalem Plaza Hotel. Among the initiates were six Israelis, six North Americans, one Australian, one Colombian and one South African.

“AEPi was founded as a refuge for Jewish males who couldn’t get into other fraternities,” said one of the 15 founding fathers, 20-year-old American student Ron Bronstein, who hopes that his chapter will become an “international outpost” for the fraternity’s future growth all over the world.

After visiting universities throughout Israel, the board determined that IDC Herzliya was the ideal location, according to Steven Kaplan, expansion director of AEPi. Located just 10 minutes north of Tel Aviv, IDC is Israel’s first private university, and it boasts a popular school for English speakers in addition to its Israeli program. Replete with North Americans who crave a more cohesive campus experience, IDC was the perfect venue for fraternity life and could benefit from AEPi’s capacity to unify the school’s perpetually separate international and Israeli populations, Kaplan decided.

“IDC has been trying for such a long time to bridge the gap between the international school and the Israeli school,” agreed Chapter President Ofri Ben Porat, a 25-year-old native Israeli. Continue reading…

Writing the following article was of particular interest to me because I really enjoy riding my bike down in this area — specific path: down either Riverside or East River Park, over the Brooklyn Bridge, south on Adams or Jay Street, west on Dean Street, through/around the western bend of Prospect Park, out the southwest exit and down Ocean Parkway till I hit the Coney Island boardwalk. And the best part of the boardwalk is, of course, Ralph’s Italian Ices.

Turning back to this story, I’d like to thank Marty Markowitz for giving me a half hour of his time on the phone.

Song And Dance Over Brighton Beach Concert Band Shell

An artist’s rendering of the proposed band shell at Asher Levy Park. At issue in the controversy is a city law that prohibits amplified sound within 500 feet of religious institutions.Courtesy Brooklyn Borough President’s Office

by Sharon Udasin
Staff Writer

Members of two Brighton Beach shuls just want to be able to hear themselves pray. 

And they say the Brooklyn borough president’s plan to erect a 5,000-seat amphitheater in their neighborhood’s 22-acre green refuge — Asser Levy-Seaside Park — will soon impinge on their right to daven in peace and quiet.

The two synagogues, Temple Beth Abraham and Sea Breeze Jewish Center, are each within a few hundred feet of the proposed band shell, and their leaders are urging thousands of Brighton Beach-Coney Island residents to protest the project.

In January, Borough President Marty Markowitz launched a $64 million campaign to overhaul the current playground with handicap-friendly equipment, build a new irrigation system with flood-free walkways and most controversially, replace the veteran concert venue with a state-of-the-art covered band shell. 

A neighborhood legacy that dates back to 1875, Asser Levy park was named for the first Jewish policeman in North America — a Portuguese man who had fled from Brazil to New Amsterdam back in the mid-1600s. Markowitz hopes that the renovated music space and playground will revitalize the park, which in his opinion has become under-utilized in recent years. 

“Asser Levy will remain a park,” Markowitz told The Jewish Week. “First and foremost it is a park. There has always been a band shell there, what we’re doing is bringing the band shell up to date.” Continue reading…

See here:

http://content.usatoday.com/topics/article/Places,+Geography/Countries/Israel/0ajt0y32q69wP/1

The Sotomayor Effect

     

Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s up-by-your-bootstraps story speaks to both the Hispanic and Jewish communities, observers say.

by Sharon Udasin
Staff Writer

Ever since President Barack Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor for a seat on the Supreme Court, Jewish leaders have been speculating about how the appointment of this Bronx-raised Hispanic woman will affect the relationship between the Jewish and Hispanic communities.

In recent years, Latino and Jewish communities around the county have made strides to connect with and learn from each other, in part due to their shared immigrant histories. Sotomayor herself has been on two trips to Israel — in 1986 and 1996 — through the American Jewish Committee’s Project Interchange. That program has brought over 4,500 American leaders and politicians to Israel since 1982, to partake in seminars involving politics, security and health care, according to Ann Schaffer, director of AJC’s Belfer Center for American Pluralism.

By her second trip, Sotomayor was already a federal judge and she was eager to return to the country she found so beautiful.

“This is a woman who was raised by a widowed mother in a Bronx housing project — that is a quintessential immigration success story,” said Josh Norek, cofounder of the Latino-Jewish band called Hip Hop Hoodios and founder of Vota Latino, an organization that encourages young Latino Americans to become politically active. 

“[Sotomayor’s story] is very remindful of the people from a few generations before when the Jewish people rose in the Lower East Side,” agreed Gabriel Cwilich, professor of physics and director of Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein Honors Program at Yeshiva College, who is Jewish and Hispanic himself.

To both Cwilich and Norek, Sotomayor’s story speaks to the two communities’ shared immigrant pasts, and they say that the two groups have much to learn from each other. Continue reading…

**ALSO see this story featured on the front page of news site, “New American Media: Expanding the News Lens through Ethnic Media.” Much appreciation and many thanks to them for posting!!**

Tel Aviv Beach

In The Park

  

Surf and turf: Faux Tel Aviv beachfront will appear at Central Park bandshell.

by Sharon Udasin

In the throes of economic recession, New Yorkers might find it difficult to get to the beaches of Tel Aviv this summer — so Israel has decided to bring its sunny seaside to New York.

The Mediterranean beachfront will spring up in Central Park on June 19 in a celebration marking Tel Aviv-Jaffa’s centennial anniversary, one of 40 such events occurring in Israel and worldwide between April and December. Transplanted in the mid-park Naumburg Bandshell will be a 1,300-square-foot sandy beach, complete with a life-size panoramic Tel Aviv skyline, colorful parasols and complimentary lounge chairs — and unlike in Tel Aviv, sitting on these chairs will require no six-shekel ($1.50) fee. Beachgoers will be able to compete in shesh besh (backgammon), visit tattoo artists and play matkot — a popular sort of beach tennis — while enjoying live Israeli performances from reggae group Hatkvah Six, rock band FLOW and DJ Hadar Marks.

“Tel Aviv is very similar to New York, but one component that New York doesn’t have is the beach,” said David Saranga, the media consul for the Israel Consulate in New York. “We are bringing Tel Aviv to you.”

Still struggling to boost Israel’s image months after the Gaza war, the Consulate is striving to project Israel as a place of vivid culture, cosmopolitan people and travel opportunity. 

“The anniversary is a great opportunity for us to reflect this image,” Saranga said. “Tel Aviv is one of the strongest engines of Israel’s brand.”

The beach party will take place on Sunday, June 21, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the Naumburg Bandshell in Central Park. Enter at 69th Street and 5th Avenue or at 72nd Street and Central Park West. For more information, visit www.tlv100.co.il.

A Loss And A Gain For Tribeca Jews

Tribeca Hebrew: Merging with the Jewish Community Project. Michael Datikash

by Sharon Udasin

In yet another sign of the toll the economic downturn has exacted on the Jewish community, the trendy Tribeca Hebrew school — which helped re-energize Jewish life downtown after Sept. 11 — has closed its doors and merged with its neighbor, the Jewish Community Project.

“It’s sort of a perfect storm,” said Tribeca Hebrew board chair, Karie Parker Davidson, who pointed to the financial crisis and real estate struggle as two motivating factors behind the decision. “We had a terrific strategic plan, but it was really hard to build momentum in this economic climate.” Continue reading…

Jun 9, 2009 3:43 PM (19 hrs ago) By JOSEPH MARKS, AP

RAMLA, Israel (AP) 

Christians have been flocking to this dusty Israeli town to see what locals are calling a miracle: streaks of what looks like oil mysteriously dripping down an icon of St. George at a Greek Orthodox church named for the legendary third century dragon slayer.

Worshippers said Tuesday that the more than two dozen streaks might represent God’s tears or the Christian rite of baptism. The church priest, Father Nifon, first saw the streaks while preparing for Sunday morning services, they said.

“He kissed all the icons, and when he reached that one, he took down the picture and he cleaned it,” said Aida Abu el-Edam, an English teacher and longtime church member. “After 20 or 25 minutes, he looked again and he saw the oil again and said, ‘This is a miracle.’” Continue reading…

Sderot In The City

  

Students from a leadership institute in Sderot march in the Salute to Israel parade.

by Sharon Udasin

They were coming to get away from the bombs. But the ninth graders from Sderot got here shortly after four Muslim men tried to blow up two synagogues in Riverdale.

Turns out it was probably quieter in the southern Israeli city near the Gaza border — which has been calmer since the end of the Gaza war — than it was here, with Jews on edge in the wake of the foiled bomb plot.  

The group of 33 ninth graders, along with five staff members, came to Long Island from the Mashatzim for Sderot leadership program based at their local Amit School, to spend two weeks  relaxing and socializing with students of the Hebrew Academy of the Five Towns and Rockaway. Continue reading…

I was instructed “to cover” this past Sunday’s Israel Parade, which was the usual six hours of sun, filled sweaty swarms of yeshiva students — excited to support the Jewish State (either that, or forced to attend by their parents and teachers). But all sarcasm aside, I, as usual, enjoyed the parade and loved hearing (and sometimes understanding!) Hebrew conversation all over Fifth Avenue. Almost made me think — just for a second — that I was in Tel Aviv.

My favorite part of the parade, however, without a doubt was when one of my best friends, a good Catholic girl named Kristin, ended up posing as a cover girl for a Jewish matchmaking service. Solicitors from Shoshanna’s Matches — for “non observant, Reform, Conservative & Conservadox, Modern Orthodox — were all over the place at this parade, distributing flyers and purse-friendly mint packs with Shoshanna (Rikon)’s picture stamped on them. Eyeing Kristin and myself, one of the men (though I think he was gay) apparently decided that he found us pleasing to the eye and asked if we would pose for photos with Shoshann’s ads, so they’d have something to ad to their PR repertoire.

Being a Jewish journalist who could potentially write/blog about them one day, I declined, but Kristin accepted the offer. And there she stood, modeling the mint packages and smiling for the camera, and instantly becoming the new poster child of the Jewish dating world.

by Stewart Ain And Sharon Udasin
Staff Writers

Stung by the delays that plagued last year’s Salute to Israel Parade — many groups were more than two hours late in marching — organizers this year hired a professional production company that kept the parade in proper step.

“It made a difference — there were a lot more happy people and the weather was idyllic,” said Rabbi Susie Moskowitz, associate rabbi of Temple Beth Torah in Melville, L.I., as she marched under sunny skies up Fifth Avenue from 57th Street to 79th Street. 

“We were told we would start marching between 12:15 and 1 o’clock and we started promptly at 12:15,” she said. “There were some congregants who didn’t come this year because of what happened last year.”

She was among 320 marchers from 10 Long Island synagogues organized by SAJES, the area’s central agency for Jewish education. Sherry Gutas, a SAJES spokesperson, said there had been twice as many marchers last year, blaming the difference largely on the economy.

“Some synagogues could not budget for the cost of the bus and the parade fee,” she said. “But about one-third of the group never marched before and we had more families marching than ever.”

Mardi Gras Productions, which handles many of the large parades in the city, helped run this year’s Salute to Israel parade.

Michal Brickman, executive producer of the parade, said there were 31 floats instead of the 40 that participated last year, in part because of the economy. But she said there were a “similar number of groups and participants” as last year, which numbered 100,000.

But many marchers were caught up in the excitement of the day.

“It’s exploding — there are so many more people marching,” said Etana Staiman, 15, of Ma’ayanot Yeshiva High School for Girls in Teaneck, N.J. Continue reading…