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2019-2020 dues for Sisterhood Members and Friends of Sisterhood will increase to $50 on July 1st. But if you renew on or before June 30, 2019 you can take advantage of last year's price.
Select one of the two easy options below to join or renew your membership today. Option 1: Click here to view the Membership Form. Then print, complete and send it with your check payable to TAS Sisterhood, 18200 Rinaldi Pl., Northridge, CA 91326. Option 2: Click on this link for easy on line registration: https://tassisterhood.org/join-us.html; complete the form and either hit “NEXT” to pay by credit card or Paypal; or send your membership dues to TAS Sisterhood and we will match your payment to your application.
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The LOVE brunch Sunday was just "LOVE-er-ly"! The speaker was a lot of fun, Tracey, our Area Rep, did an awesome job installing the board, the waffles were VERY yummy, and the look on Carol Bizar-Morton's face when she found out she was this year's Woman of the Year was priceless!
Except for our MahJongg Tournament on June 23, our LOVE lunch was the last Sisterhood event for the 2018-2019 year. However, the 2019-2020 year is getting off to a fabulous start with the WRJ Pacific District event called Area Day on July 14. Area Day is a day of growth and development with workshops on leadership, spirituality and fun. The keynote speaker will be Ariella Loewenstein, Deputy Regional Director, ADL Los Angeles, who will be speaking on “Anti-semitism in our Contemporary Society” - what a timely topic! Workshops include an art project, a book discussion, martial arts, event planning, social justice, torah study, tech tools, and much, much more. Go to the Area Day website (https://www.wrjpacific.org/southern-california-area-day.html), click on the Individual Online Registration Form button, and see which workshops sound most interesting to you. TAS Sisterhood knows that Area Day is an amazing day, and supports our members attending by reimbursing the registration fee. Contact Erika Barnathan for more information about Area Day. Are you familiar with the ADL, the Anti-Defamation League? ADL is a leading anti-hate organization. Founded in 1913 in response to an escalating climate of anti-Semitism and bigotry, its timeless mission is to protect the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment for all. Today, ADL continues to fight all forms of hate with the same vigor and passion. ADL is a global leader in exposing extremism and delivering anti-bias education, and is a leading organization in training law enforcement. ADL is the first call when acts of anti-Semitism occur. ADL’s ultimate goal is a world in which no group or individual suffers from bias, discrimination or hate. Not only does the ADL fight anti-semitism both here and abroad, they promote immigrant & refugee rights, LGBTQ rights, women's equity, race and racial justice, Israel, and much more. In 2008, the ADL helped prevent an assassination attempt on President-elect Barak Obama. Ariella Loewenstein's keynote speech and follow-up workshop at Area Day are sure to provide an enlightening look at the current state of anti-semitism in today's society. We hope you can be there! Upcoming Sisterhood Event Sunday, June 9 – Annual Sisterhood LOVE Brunch and Board Installation Click here for details It's been two weeks full of Sisterhood activities:
Then, on the weekend between the two Sisterhood events, Cheryl Frumes, Mel Birken, Bobbi Ross and I attended the WRJ Social Justice Conference in Washington D.C. What an empowering experience that was! There were workshops on current social justice topics, building advocacy skills, and the history of WRJ's involvement and support of social justice causes. And then, there was a dynamite concert, "Together as One", on Saturday evening featuring Julie Silver, Stacy Beyer and Marci Geller performing songs of social justice. Note: if you're an Amazon Prime member the album, "Together as One", is included with Prime membership. I'll leave you with a link to this song by Julie Silver I'll be a Light for Justice. Sisterhood Celebration of Israel 7pm Thursday, May 16 The members of the food committee for Thursday's Celebration of Israel are preparing plenty of delicious Israeli food - savory and sweet - for the event. So please come to the celebration with an appetite!
Upcoming Events
Thursday, May 16 - Sisterhood General Meeting A Celebration of Israel Thursday, May 23 – Alzheimer’s Educational Program Sunday, June 9 – Annual Sisterhood LOVE Luncheon Wow! Sisterhood Shabbat was so wonderful! The bios were inspirational, the songs were great, and it was fun to see everyone decked out in purple. A big Todah Rabah to the Shabbat Shalom committee, to all the readers, to MoTAS and to the well over 100 people who showed up to celebrate Sisterhood (and Ashlan Gee, the Bat Mitzvah girl) that night. Thursday's general meeting (May 16) is going to be a lot of fun too. What are you making for the Israeli food competition? Hummus? Falafel? Shakshouka? Labneh? Couscous? Israeli salad? Schniztzle? The possibilities are endless. Come check out the celebration and see who wins the competition! The Alzheimer's presentation the following Thursday May 23) will be a bit more somber, but still definitely worth the trip to the Temple. We hope to see you there! And last, but definitely not least, put Sunday June 9 on your calendar for the annual Sisterhood LOVE luncheon, celebrating our "Leaders, Organizers, Volunteers, and Empowerers". The entertainment will be fabulous and lunch will be a waffle bar - YUM! For flyers/more information, go to our Sisterhood website - TASSisterhood.org. In honor of Israeli Independence Day, we bring you the story of Ada E. Yonath, an Israeli crystallographer best known for her pioneering work on the structure of the ribosome. In 2009, she received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (along with Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Thomas A. Steitz) for her studies on the structure and function of the ribosome. She is the first Israeli woman to win the Nobel Prize (there have been ten Israeli Nobel laureates,) the first woman from the Middle East to win a Nobel prize in the sciences, and the first woman in 45 years to win the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Ribosomes translate RNA into protein and, because they have slightly different structures in microbes, when compared to eukaryotes, such as human cells, they are often a target for antibiotics. Yonath did pioneering work determining the structure of ribosomes, elucidated the modes of action of over twenty different antibiotics targeting the ribosome, illuminated mechanisms of drug resistance and synergism, deciphered the structural basis for antibiotic selectivity and showed how it plays a key role in clinical usefulness and therapeutic effectiveness. She also introduced a novel technique, cryo bio-crystallography, which became routine in structural biology and allowed intricate projects otherwise considered formidable. A most amazing woman! Highlight these dates on your calendar
Friday, May 10, Thursday, May 16 and Thursday, May 23 We hope to see you Friday (May 10) at services when we will be celebrating Sisterhood! If you have purple, we encourage you to wear purple. If you don't have purple, we encourage you to wear white. If neither purple nor white is your thing, then we encourage you to wear something else! Services start at 7:30, and we hope you can make it. The theme of this year's Sisterhood Shabbat is "A Woman of Valor." An easy theme, because we have lots of them in Sisterhood! You've already marked the two Thursdays after Sisterhood Shabbat on your calendar, right? May 16 is our Yom Ha'atzmaut (Israeli Independence Day) celebration and May 23 is our presentation on Alzheimer's. Both events are going to be great! Our Sisterhood will be leading services this Friday. One trailblazer in women being accepted as service leaders was Ray Frank. Ray Frank's position in American Jewry was truly a novel one. In 1890, she became the first Jewish woman to preach formally from a pulpit in the United States, inaugurating a career as "the Girl Rabbi of the Golden West" that would help to blaze new paths for women in Judaism. Virtually overnight, Frank became a sensation in the Jewish world, and she would remain so for nearly a decade. Coinciding with a broader emergence of public roles for Jewish women, Frank's career reinvigorated and redirected an ongoing conversation about the proper boundaries of the female sphere. Earlier in the 19th century, the expansion of American Jewish women's social and cultural opportunities had not been matched by expansion of their religious roles. Despite the fact that Frank claimed to have no interest in becoming a rabbi, her actions forced American Jewry to consider the possibility of the ordination of women seriously for the first time. Frank spoke passionately about the abilities and spirituality of Jewish women and had no doubt about the necessity of their becoming a greater presence in the synagogue. The content of her speeches and her presence as a female religious leader not only served as an inspiration to the women who heard her, but also demonstrated to the Jewish world that Jewish women were ready for widespread change. Please read to the end of this email to hear about a very special opportunity!
May is just around the corner and it has lots of fun opportunities to celebrate and socialize and learn interesting things. NEW! Sisterhood is bringing in a speaker on Alzheimer's on Thursday, May 23, 7pm, to talk about this devastating disease. If you are dealing with a loved one with Alzheimer's now, or are concerned that you might be in the future, this presentation is a must see! The $5 fee is waived for Sisterhood members and Friends of Sisterhood. Contact Phyllis Bigelson (Phyllis@bigelsoncpa.com) for more information. Friday, May 10 (7:30pm), is our annual Sisterhood Shabbat. Come get spiritual with us as we celebrate Women of Valor at this special service. Many of us will be wearing purple in honor of Sisterhood. And on Thursday, May 16 (7pm) we will celebrate Israeli Independence Day. Put your chef's hat on because we are having an Israeli food contest! Bring a homemade Israeli dish - we will sample all the entries and vote on the best one. There will also be presentations about Israel, and, of course, lots of time to schmooze with friends. Flyers are available on the Sisterhood website (https://www.tassisterhood.org/) from the scrolling box and on the Upcoming Events page. Speaking of Women of Valor, the theme of this year's Sisterhood Shabbat (on May 10), no list of Women of Valor could be complete without the name Carrie O. Simon. Carrie Simon was the first President of the National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods (NFTS), the organization that was renamed the Women of Reform Judaism (WRJ) in 1993, and is our Sisterhood's parent organization. Simon founded NFTS in 1913. Two years later, it had become the largest Jewish women's religious organization in the United States. As president of the federation (from 1913 to 1919), Simon established the National Committee on Religion, which organized religious schools, increased synagogue attendance, and collected and displayed Jewish ceremonial objects. The Committee on Hebrew Union College Scholarships enabled young men of limited economic means to attend rabbinical school and raised funds for religious educational work by UAHC laypeople. Simon also used her position to encourage the UAHC to include more women on synagogue boards and to welcome intermarried couples into the temple and its sisterhood. During her lifetime, Simon watched as the National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods grew from five thousand women in forty-nine American chapters to a hundred thousand women in 585 chapters throughout nine countries. Nice Job, Carrie! From Carol Stern You are invited to join your TAS family at the Hollywood Bowl on Wednesday Night, July 3rd. We have reserved a limited amount of tickets and reserved picnic area for the Firework Spectacular with Nile Rodgers & CHIC. The seats are in Section M-1 and our picnic area is next to the main parking area (and bus drop-off). Tickets (including service charges, picnic area, individual seat cushions and service charges) will be $37 each per person. As always, it's first come-first serve so please send your checks made payable to Carol Stern by May 9th to hold your seats. Feel fee to invite your family and friends to join us. Call or email if you have any questions. At the seder, we announced the slate for the 2019-2020 Sisterhood board. We will be voting at our May meeting. This year's nominating committee was Jackie Zev, chair, Sally Lax, Jo Schwartz, Sandy Robinson, Sonia Smith, and Mel Birken. A heartfelt Thank You! to the nominating committee for their hard work recruiting candidates.
Here is the slate: Position.................................2019-2020 Slate.. Co-President. .......................... Kathy Barker Co-President............................ Cheryl Frumes Administrative Co-VP..............Judy Stehr Administrative Co-VP..............Karen Pelmont Ways&Means.......................... Open Programming Co-VP................Efrat Yakobi Programming Co-VP................Karen Jaye Membership Co-VP................ .Joanne Averill Membership Co-VP................. Tammy Singer Education VP.......................... .Jan Rapoport Religious Observance Co-VP...Andy Mann Religious Observance Co-VP...Bobbi Ross Treasurer................................ Robyn Blachman Recording Secretary............... Tove Aichenson Financial Secretary................. Diane Levine Come to the May meeting and help elect next year's board! It's baseball season! In honor of baseball season, we bring you the story of Thelma "Tiby" Eisen. Tiby Eisen (1922-2014) was an outstanding center-fielder in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) of the 1940s and 1950s, starring for nine years in the only professional women’s league in the game’s history. In 1944, Eisen was one of six Los Angeles athletes chosen to try out for the All-American baseball league, and she won a spot on the Milwaukee team. In her first season, her team won the league championship. Eisen’s best season was in 1946, when she made the all-star team, leading the league in triples and stealing 128 bases for Peoria. In 1949, she was picked for an all-star team that toured Latin America. In 1995, the authoritative Total Baseball encyclopedia named her one of the league’s twenty greatest players. Eisen said she did not encounter antisemitism in the AAGPBL, and there were other Jewish players: Anita Foss, Blanche Schachter, and Margaret Wigiser. After Eisen left the AAGPBL in 1952, she settled in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles and starred on softball’s world champion Orange Lionettes until 1957. Last Wednesday's Sisterhood seder was another impressive seder in a long string of wonderful Sisterhood seders. Led by Rabbi Kalfus, Rabbi Samansky, Cantor Ken, and our amazing Jennifer Bennett to a sold out crowd, it featured stories, songs, and Jewish history from Mexico, Central and South America. You can find pictures on our Sisterhood website (www.tassisterhood.org). The Haggadah (with the sephardic charoset recipe on the last page) is on our website too. Click on "Events & Programs", then "Past meetings and Events", and then click on the seder flyer. Or go to our Facebook page, where a direct link to the Haggadah is posted. Mucho thanks to the seder committee (Committee Chair Arlene Stone, Mel Birken, Becky Breuer, Sue Issler, Diane Levine, Sherry Lucks, Rhonda Mayer, Laraine Miller, Alyce Schultz-Rozsa, Laurie Scher, Sonia Smith, Judy Stehr, Tammy Singer) for all their excellent work making it happen. And thanks also to Rabbi Kalfus, Rabbi Samansky, Cantor Ken, and Jennifer Bennett for leading the service. A special shout out to Jennifer and Cantor Ken for their humorous rewriting of "What's New Buenos Aires" and "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina". Jennifer's a capella rendition of these songs was just perfect! On an unrelated note, on April 5, the Google graphic celebrated Hedwig Kohn's 132nd birthday. Despite being born in an era when being a woman and being Jewish made accomplishing anything extremely problematic, Kohn perserved, educated herself and made significant contributions in the fields of flame spectroscopy and radiometry. Time.com has the following description of her accomplishments along with Google's interesting graphic at http://time.com/5564908/google-doodle-hedwig-kohn/.  Born in Breslau Poland on April 5, 1887, Kohn became one of only three women certified to teach physics at a German university before World War II. As a Jewish woman, Kohn was barred from her teaching position in 1933 when Germany’s Nazi regime started to remove Jews from government positions. But she did not give up. She continued her work by taking up research contracts in industrial physics.
In 1940, when it was clear she could no longer safely stay in Germany, she fled to the United States, where she was able to pursue her dream of teaching at the Woman’s College of the University of North Carolina and Wellesley College in Massachusetts. In her basement lab, she mentored Ph.D. students in their research and developed her work in flame spectroscopy, a project she had started in 1912, a year before she received her doctorate. After retiring from teaching in 1952, Kohn took on a research associate position at Duke University in North Carolina. Kohn’s work was published in 20 journals and a textbook that was used to introduce students to radiometry (the science of measuring electromagnetic radiation, including light) well into the 1960s. She died in 1964 at the age of 77. Her work continues to be cited and her legacy as a resilient pioneer, who found opportunities at a time when they were scarce, will surely be remembered. What a great turnout for last Thursday's meeting on Marijuana, and the speaker did not disappoint - she was excellent! Photos are up on the Sisterhood website (tassisterhood.org - click on "Photos" on the menu). Check out all the smiling faces! Note that if you are unhappy with any picture on our website, just let us know and we will remove it.
One of the reasons we brought in a speaker on Marijuana is that politicians have changed the legal status of Marijuana recently. This made us think of Jewish women in politics. In 2018, women in high political leadership positions is thankfully nothing new. But in 1947, they were a rarity. In 1947, Ana Pauker became the first ever female foreign minister when she was appointed to the job in Romania. Pauker was born in 1893 into a poor Orthodox family in Bucharest. She became a teacher in a Jewish school and active in the country’s socialist movement. She and her husband were repeatedly arrested for their activities and spent years in exile in the 1920s. In 1934, she was arrested in Romania and imprisoned for seven years, until she was sent to the Soviet Union in a prisoner swap deal in 1941. There she became an unofficial leader in the Communist Party and volunteered with the Red Army. In 1944, she returned to Romania and in 1947 she was appointed foreign minister, a position she held for five years. But Pauker was then criticized – and some say scapegoated – for the party’s harsh activities and subservience to Moscow. But later discoveries revealed that she tried to be a moderating force within the government, not always successfully. Pauker also worked to facilitate Romanian Jewish immigration to Israel. In 1952, she was forced out of the party, and in 1953, was arrested on charges of “international Zionism.” She was later released and died of cancer in 1960. To this day, she is considered a controversial figure in Romanian history. |
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June 2019
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