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Jewish woman leads Greater Kansas City Interfaith Council |
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Written by Barbara Bayer, Editor
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Thursday, June 13 2013 11:00 |
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 Before 9/11, Sheila Sonnenschein lived comfortably among mostly Jewish people. A meeting with a Muslim woman following that tragic event not quite 12 years ago grew into a strong friendship and eventually opened a variety of new doors for Sonnenschein. One has been the Greater Kansas City Interfaith Council, an organization she has been leading since the beginning of this year.
Sonnenschein is officially GKCIC’s convener and will serve in that position until the last day of 2014. She explained that as its convener, she acts as a facilitator who tries to bring people together in some kind of consensus.
“But in essence, it is like being president,” Sonnenschein said.
GKCIC bills itself as “Building the most welcoming community for all people.” Its website says the organization is “growing a sustainable, pervasive culture of knowledge, respect, appreciation and trust amongst people of all faiths and religious traditions in the greater Kansas City community.”
Sonnenschein said GKCIC tries to educate people around the Kansas City community about different religions. It does so through a variety of programs “where everyone is invited to come and learn.”
“Educating people about different faiths and cultures helps break down stereotypes. It also prevents stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination,” Sonnenschein said.
GKCIC programs include its annual Tables of Faiths luncheon, Food and Thought Dinners, two book clubs, a monthly discussion group called Vital Conversations, a speakers bureau and its upcoming Midsummer’s Light (for more information, see box). Details regarding GKCIC programs are on its website, kcinterfaith.org.
GKCIC was established in 1989 as the Kansas City Interfaith Council (KCIFC) by the Rev. Vern Barnet. The council became its own non-profit organization in 2005. The following 15 faiths are officially a part of the organization: American Indian Spirituality, Baha’i Faith, Buddhism, Christian-Protestant, Christian-Orthodox, Christian-Roman Catholicism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Paganism, Sikhism, Sufism, Unitarian Universalism, Vedanta and Zoroastrianism.
Sonnenschein, a member of Congregation Beth Shalom, is the first Jewish person to be the group’s convener. Other Jewish people who serve as an adviser or director include Gayle Krigel and Susan Choucroun.
Advisers or directors either officially represent one of the 15 religions or are members at large. In 2005, Sonnenschein’s friend Mahnaz Shabbir, who was an at-large member, invited Sonnenschein to serve GKCIC as her alternate.
“At-large members are people who are a friend to interfaith and they don’t necessarily represent a religion. So even though Mahnaz is Muslim, she asked me to be her alternate because she and I have a lot of the same kind of thinking toward being open to others and working with people of different faiths,” Sonnenschein explained.
Sonnenschein immediately enjoyed her association with GKCIC.
“It just spoke to me. I really enjoyed meeting all these new people of all these different backgrounds and it really inspired me to understand others. I grew up in a Conservative Jewish home. I went to the Hebrew Academy through seventh grade. I was very involved in my Jewish heritage. I really didn’t have that many non-Jewish friends. That has now changed,” said Sonnenschein.
She eventually became active in the organization, serving as an at-large member, co-convener and planning programs such as the Tables of Faith luncheon and the predecessor of Midsummer’s Light, Winter’s Light. She said the upcoming Midsummer’s Light will feature stories, music and dance of different faiths and cultures, including the Tikvah Dancers.
“This is a way to educate people about different faiths and cultures that they may not have heard about or know much about,” she said.
Getting together with members of the GKCIC is always a learning experience, Sonnenschein said, even at business meetings. Those are held at 6 p.m. on the second Monday of the month at All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church and are open to the public.
“For example as we talked about Midsummer’s Light we learned that the dancers needed to be dressed modestly,” Sonnenschein said, noting that some types of costumes are offensive to some religious groups.
Over the years Sonnenschein said members of GKCIC have learned to better understand what is acceptable, and sometimes not acceptable, to members of certain religions and have tried hard to balance those things. One of those is when to schedule programs.
“The other directors have learned over the years that the Jewish community would prefer not to have programs on the Jewish Sabbath. So we try not to schedule things from Friday night to Saturday night if at all possible. That is one thing people of other religions have learned about Judaism,” she said.
“Until there was a Jewish presence on the council the directors didn’t really understand that and now they do, and it’s wonderful,” she added.
But, holding programs on Sundays isn’t ideal for some other religions, she pointed out.
“Programs held on a Sunday might preclude people who are Christian who go to church on a Sunday afternoon from attending. We are trying to balance it out,” Sonnenschein said.
Other than its advisers and members at large, GKCIC doesn’t have any official membership roster, although it has 2,300 people on its mailing list. But that’s about to change, Sonnenschein said, as the organization is preparing to launch a membership program where they can have official members.
In the meantime, one thing she wants people to be sure to understand about GKCIC is that members don’t try to convert one another to their particular religions and the group isn’t about interfaith marriage.
“In this context when we say interfaith, to me it means multi-faith in a sense of getting to know others because they are our neighbors. In the Interfaith Council there is no attempt at converting people to another religion. In actuality we are there to appreciate and respect other’s religions and just learn.
“What I have found, and what many others have found, is that when we learn about other religions we actually become more committed and more understanding of our own religion,” she said.
Midsummer’s Light
The Greater Kansas City Interfaith Council presents Midsummer’s Light: an afternoon of interfaith music, dance and storytelling, from 2 to 4:30 p.m. Sunday, June 23, at the Kansas City Library, Plaza Branch. A reception follows the program, which is free and open to the public.
Syed Shabbir, 41 Action News reporter, will again emcee. In addition, he and his uncle, Shadman Shabbir, will perform traditional Middle Eastern music on the harmonium and violin.
The program also features crystal singing bowls and Sanskrit chants by Jeri Birdsall, Chinese Lion dancers and drummers, Gospel songs by Bryan Austin, Tikvah Israeli Dancers, “A Story of ‘Abdu’l-Baha,” by dramatist Joyce Stohr, a scene from the play “Harriet Tubman” by Shirley Johnson, a tribute to Swami Vivekananda by Hindu youth, and African drumming by Bird Fleming and youth members of the Traditional Music Society.
The event is co-sponsored by the Kansas City Public Library and Cultural Crossroads.
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Last Updated on Wednesday, June 12 2013 11:02 |
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Patricia Uhlmann to be installed as Jewish Federation board chair |
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Thursday, June 13 2013 11:00 |
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 If you ask Patricia Werthan Uhlmann why she chose to take on the responsibility of leading the Jewish Federation as the incoming board of directors’ chair, it quickly becomes clear that it is about linking her own history as a Jewish woman to the future of Jewish life.
“I’m honored to take on this tremendous responsibility. I’m paying it forward — for the future of my family, and of this community. I want to see the Federation engage and grow and strengthen,” said Uhlmann.
Uhlmann is well qualified to take on the role with her long history of serving the Jewish community. She is currently wrapping up her position as chair of the Jewish Federation’s Allocations Committee. Previous Federation roles include Campaign co-chair and Women’s Division (now Women’s Philanthropy) president. Uhlmann also currently serves on the executive committee of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), where she is vice chair of the 100th Anniversary JDC “Shabbat Around the World.” She has also been chair of JDC’s Europe Committee, as well as chair of JDC’s International Development Program.
“For many years, Tricia has been a great friend to the Jewish Federation and the Jewish community. She truly embodies our mission — to sustain and enhance Jewish life at home and around the world — dedicating her time to garner resources and improve the lives of those in Kansas City and around the world through her JDC work,” said Miriam Scharf, who will complete her term as Jewish Federation board chair in September.
Said Todd Stettner, executive vice president and CEO of Jewish Federation, “From the moment I met Tricia over a decade ago, I was impressed with her warmth, energy and passion. These qualities have enabled Tricia to make a positive impact. Because of her local, national and international relationships she has developed, I think Tricia is perfectly positioned to lead the Jewish Federation, bringing innovative ideas from around the globe to our own community. I look forward to working with her.”
As for what to expect when Uhlmann takes the helm:
“I feel it’s important to turn to our younger leaders, engaging them to help reinvigorate and re-imagine the future of Kansas City’s Jewish community. It’s their time to develop innovative and creative ideas to imagine, plan, and invest in our future, but it’s up to all of us — whatever our age — to continue to work together to achieve this goal,” said Uhlmann.
“There are so many exciting opportunities available, and I want everyone to know that their gift — of time, talent or treasure — truly means something. It is so much more meaningful to give when you are part of something and enjoy seeing the benefits of the work you do and the things you care about. My family taught me by example: It’s better, and more fun, to give with warm hands.”
Uhlmann will officially become board chair on Sept. 10, at the Jewish Federation’s Annual Meeting. More information about the event will be available soon at jewishkansascity.org.
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Barstow Jewish student earns Congressional Gold Medal |
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Written by Kris Baker, Contributing Writer
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Thursday, June 13 2013 11:00 |
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 Many teens begin their summer vacation by hanging out at the pool or seeing a movie. But not Lissa Leibson. She will be traveling to Washington, D.C., next week to receive a special award from the United States Congress.
Lissa, who will be a senior at The Barstow school when school begins in August, decided to take part in the Congressional Award Program, a program open to American students ages 14 to 23, because she likes to be challenged.
“I wanted to stretch myself by setting a long term goal, working toward it, and then achieve it. I’d also been doing a lot of community service before starting the award program, but after signing up for the award, I finally had a goal in mind for my community service.”
Lissa has earned a gold award and will travel to Washington, D.C., with her mother Andrea Poisner-Corchine and her grandfather, Eugene Leibson, to receive it. The ceremony will be held Wednesday, June 19, at the Cannon House Building on Capitol Hill. The ceremonies are divided by state, and each will include a color guard presentation, invocation, speakers, and a brief introduction of each medalist as they receive their medals. Congressmen from each state present the medals to their state’s award recipients.
Participants can earn recognition in the Bronze, Silver and Gold categories. The average number of Bronze Medals awarded per year is roughly 2,500, Silver Medals average 1,200 and Gold Medals average 250 to 275. For the local area, Kansas has eight gold medalists, six silver medalists and eight bronze medalists.
The Congressional Award Program consists of four parts: Volunteer Public Service, Personal Development, Physical Fitness, and Expedition/Exploration. Participants are required to set goals in each of the four areas.
Lissa believes she had a truly rewarding experience in each area.
Lissa’s goal in the Volunteer Public Service category was to improve the lives of children in the Kansas City area. In order to complete this goal, she volunteered with Cancer Action, with gym classes in Barstow’s lower school, The Ronald McDonald House, Operation Breakthrough and Summer at Barstow.
“Volunteering at Summer at Barstow Camp was where I first discovered my passion for working with younger kids,” Lissa said. “Being an only child and not knowing any kids in my old neighborhood, I have grown up mostly around adults. So, working with kids was out of my comfort zone. However, I learned to love working with younger kids and I have subsequently volunteered there each summer. I helped out in a variety of classes including sports, art and math programs. While volunteering, I also learned a lot from the campers, such as how to play the Pokémon card game and the alluring qualities of Silly Bandz.”
For Personal Development, she chose playing the piano and gardening with her parternal grandfather, Eugene Leibson.
“When I was in lower school, my grandpa and I started having a garden,” Lissa said. “However, I only helped out when it was time to pick our crops. As I got older, I wanted to have the satisfaction of knowing that I could grow my own food. I began researching the best kinds of crops to grow, planted, weeded and watered throughout the summer. The most rewarding part was after so many hours of watering and weeding, I finally got to eat the food that I grew.”
In the area of physical fitness, Lissa set her goal to learn to play tennis. She accomplished this goal with two different activities, practicing and conditioning. A secondary goal was to be selected her school’s junior varsity tennis team as a junior.
“To achieve this goal, I began taking tennis lessons during the off-season and even did a bit of conditioning to stay in shape,” Lissa said. “Unfortunately, toward the beginning of the season during my sophomore year, I pulled a muscle in my hip and was out for most of the season. However, I continued to take year-round lessons off-season. During the tennis season of my junior year, I played in the top four positions at each match. I also participated in the Sixth Annual JV Northtown Invitational in 2012 and our team placed first. I plan to make the Varsity team my senior year.”
For her exploration trip, Lissa decided to go to Israel with NCSY’s TJJ program.
“One of my favorite experiences was when we went to volunteer at an organization called Chazon Yish’aya,” she said. “This organization helps feed homeless people in Israel and also helps them find work. The day we were volunteering we were with another group of regular volunteers. I helped by washing and cutting onions to be put in the soup and by carrying watermelons to the room where other people cut them. The regular volunteers could barely speak English, and most of the teens on my trip could barely speak Hebrew. However, it was amazing how even though both groups of volunteers came from different cultures and spoke different languages, we could still come together and work toward the same goal: providing a positive impact on the local community.”
As she was able to relate a personal experience in every category, Lissa earned the highest honor, the Congressional Gold Award.
Getting involved is nothing new for Lissa. As a member of Congregation Beth Shalom and part of the Confirmation Class of 2012, she has taken part in several local Jewish group activities.
She is in BBG’s Saadia chapter as well as a part of Kansas City’s NCSY youth group. She enjoys NCSY for the social aspects and the sense of Jewish heritage it brings to her life.
“I love NCSY because I used to go to HBHA when I was in lower school, and since leaving I’d felt as though I was losing my connection to Judaism,” she said. “But NCSY has helped me connect with Judaism again. I love hanging out with and learning from other kids who are so passionate about Judaism.”
Lissa said she would not have been able to complete all the requirements and be recognized as a congressional gold medalist without the support of her family — her mom and step-dad (Andrea Poisner-Corchine and Robert Corchine), her dad and step-mom (David Leibson and Barbara Kovacs), her maternal grandparents (Lorraine Chadwick and Rita and Larry Poisner) and her paternal grandfather (Eugene Leibson).
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Former HBHA student travels to Israel to follow his father’s medical footsteps |
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Written by Anna Harwood, Special to The Chronicle
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Thursday, June 13 2013 11:00 |
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 Sagee Tal strolls along the beachfront to meet me at a little seaside café next to his apartment in Haifa, Israel. Having left his suits and ties back in the States, he has embraced the Israeli workplace uniform of jeans and T-shirts. It is a windy weekday and despite being in the midst of exams, Tal takes some time out from revision to reflect on the past year and a half as an American medical student studying at the Technion in Israel.
The son of Alex and Orna Tal, Sagee Tal was born in Houston and at an early age moved to Kansas City, growing up in the Jewish community and attending Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy.
“My Mom taught Hebrew at HBHA and I have fond memories of the JCC. It felt like my second home.” recalled Tal.
Tal’s father is an endocrinologist and it was his career that brought the family to the heart of America. Dr. Alex Tal worked at the Truman Medical center and UMKC for many years prior to moving to Pittsburgh, Pa., where they currently reside.
“My Dad grew up on one of the first kibbutzim in Israel, Degania Bet on the banks of the Sea of Galilee,” Tal explained. “He was the son of Russian immigrants and he was raised on the kibbutz by his aunt while his mother chose to live in a larger city.”
Eventually Tal’s father, too, left the kibbutz for the city, this time to Tel Aviv to study medicine. Here he qualified as a doctor, met Sagee’s mother and, following his army service during the Yom Kippur war, they moved to America in pursuit of the American dream.
“My dad always wanted me to be a doctor,” explained Tal. “My sister had succumbed to parental persuasion to follow his lead in medicine but I was more resistant.”
Tal moved to George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and studied economics.
“Medicine was always at the back of my mind so I took the medical pre-req courses, just in case.”
Tal graduated, began a career in economics but again, medicine beckoned, and he studied for the MCAT (medical entrance) exams, just in case.
Realizing that he was not cut out for the business world, medicine yet again beckoned, and this time Tal realized that indeed medicine was the career for him. Concurrently, as Tal confirmed to his father that he would be following the family tradition and pursuing a career in medicine, his paternal grandmother took ill in Israel. Tal’s father rushed to her bedside in Rambam hospital in Haifa and during his visit happened to hear a gaggle of eager medical students speaking English with their mentor.
So impressed with the depth of their knowledge and positive approach to their medical education, Dr. Alex Tal made enquiries as to where these medical students were training. Upon discovering that they were studying at an American medical school program based in the Technion, and with his son’s future medical career at the forefront of his mind, he researched the program before returning to America.
“My Dad was really enthusiastic about the Technion American Medical School program (TeAMS). I had the required grades and while I had planned to apply for medical school the following year, on a whim I decided to send in an application. The TeAMS program has a rolling application scheme so I applied on the off chance that I would be able to interview in the summer vacation,” said Tal. “Almost immediately I received a reply informing me that I could be considered for entry that year [2011], if I flew out to Israel straightaway to interview as there would be no more U.S.-based interviews.”
Tal took a week to weigh his options; he consulted his parents, friends and other medical school students.
“I had always wanted to spend time in Israel and I knew of the Technion’s excellent reputation. Upon hearing such positive feedback from TeAMS students, I decided to take the chance and fly (to Israel) the following week for interviews.”
At the end of June 2011 Tal arrived in Haifa, impressed the Technion’s admissions team, and was accepted to the program.
On Oct. 4, 2011, Tal arrived in Israel to begin his medical studies, two days after leaving his job in economics, and he hasn’t looked back since.
“I don’t think I could be having a better experience. The studies are interesting, it is taught well, and being in Israel on the beach is wonderful,” Tal exudes. “I love Bat Galim [in Haifa], it’s extremely relaxed and I live close to other students, in a beachfront apartment, just a few minutes’ walk from the medical school.”
While first-year classes were more ‘science-y,’ Tal says that this year, his second year, is directly related to the clinical medicine that he is beginning to practice.
“Some of my classes take place in Rambam hospital, with real patients, practicing the clinical skills previously learnt theoretically.”
Israel’s informal culture allows medical school students to access top doctors from day one.
“We see what residents see in the states. Everything is much more relaxed here so you can go up to any doctor and ask to shadow them. Not only that, but when you are shadowing them they often involve you in their medical procedures.”
While medical school is undoubtedly an incredibly demanding experience, Tal says that he manages to find time to socialize with local students, spend Shabbat meals with the local community and enjoy the best of what Israel has to offer.
“The Israeli lifestyle is great, people are friendly, more family orientated, less competitive and I even find the Israeli chutzpah endearing!”
Tal’s classmates come from across the United States and Canada. From Quebec to New York, from Ohio to California, all with one goal in common: to be the next generation of American doctors (with a little bit of Israeli chutzpah picked up along the way.)
Anna Harwood writes about Israeli innovation, science and culture. She moved to Israel from London two years ago.
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A local Jewish student was denied entry into the United Kingdom late last month. After being detained for more than nine hours, he was put back on a plane to the United States by customs officials. During that time he was never told why he was being denied entry. He was told his photo and fingerprints have now been placed in a database that will make it difficult for him to obtain entry into the U.K. or any other E.U. country.