Jewish Federation next-generation leader profi

“I think the funders got what they were looking for out of me,” said Jeremy Applebaum, in what seems like an understatement about his trip to Israel nearly 10 years ago as part of Birthright 2000. “It completely changed my Jewish way of living, I think for the rest of my life.”

Upon returning from Israel, Jeremy got more involved in Jewish life at KU, where he was an undergraduate. After completing his MBA there in 2003, he moved back to Kansas City to join his family’s business in residential real estate and construction and development.

Applebaum looked for ways to meet Jewish people and make new friends and was asked to join a group of young adults the Jewish Federation of Greater Kansas City was convening to revamp programming for that age group.

Not everything for everyone
Applebaum has served as co-chair of the Federation-sponsored Christmas Eve Bagel Bash for the past four years, studies with the Kollel and was recently accepted as a Helzberg Leadership Fellow. He’s also the marketing co-chair of the Federation’s Business and Professional (B&P) Series. B&P is an initiative of the Federation whose goal is to connect Jewish professionals, ages 25 to 45, to each other and the community around them. Flyers for B&P programs – like the one scheduled for March 4 featuring a panel of mayors including Mark Funkhouser, Peggy Dunn and Carl Gerlach — always remind participants to “bring plenty of business cards!”

“Federation realized that not everything is for everyone,” says Applebaum. “They have to get people interested in different ways, and in a market like Kansas City it’s important to keep young Jewish adults involved in the business community. B&P provides a place for that.”

Breaking it open
As committed as Applebaum was after Birthright 2000 and as excited as he is about subsequent Federation-related activities, he says it was his trip to the Ukraine in October 2008 that “broke everything open” for him.

“I had no idea there were 250,000 Jews still in the Ukraine alone, many living in horrible conditions where something as simple as a warm home visit could elicit tears of joy.”

Applebaum returned inspired to educate people about the needs of Jewish people around the world. He gave presentations about the Ukraine trip at retirement homes. In May, he hosted an educational gathering for more than 50 young adults at his home with guest speakers from the former Joint Distribution Committee director in Moscow and the UJC director of next generation programming in New York. Now, with the Federation’s support, he’s planning and fundraising for a young adult service trip to Romania and Bulgaria, Kansas City’s sister communities in Eastern Europe, later this year.

A family affair
Applebaum’s efforts have not gone unnoticed. Last July, he was one of 40 Americans whose applications were accepted to attend the Return on Investment Conference for young Jewish leaders in Jerusalem, sponsored by the Shusterman Foundation. “It was the most amazing conference I’ve ever been to — it was almost like learning how to run a nonprofit,” he says.

Applebaum comes by his desire to give naturally. In 2006, the Applebaum family built a Habitat for Humanity home in Kansas City, Kan., completing the project in a record-setting five days.

“Growing up we were always donating coats, hats, gloves,” he says. “My parents always taught us that we’ve been given something special — we’ve been lucky — and we need to give back, Jewishly and non-Jewishly.”

Jeremy Applebaum
• Born in Overland Park, Kan., 1978
• Blue Valley Northwest High School, 1997
• MBA University of Kansas, 2003
• Owner/Operator, American Dream Homes and Neighborhoods
• Resides in Overland Park, Kan.
• Just finished reading “What is the What,” by Dave Eggers
• Enjoyed the movie “Everything’s Illuminated”
• Favorite Jewish Food: Anything my mom cooks.
• Trips to Israel: 3

Bond’s book seeks key to ‘Global Peace with Islam’

America must pay greater attention to Southeast Asia, lest the area with the world’s largest concentration of Muslims become even more of a hotbed of terrorism and more hostile to U.S. interests.

That is the thesis of the new book co-authored by the senior U.S. Senator from Missouri, Christopher Bond, and a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Lewis M. Simons.

That much, Simons, a Jewish, liberal Democrat opposed to the U.S. war in Iraq, and Bond, a Christian, conservative Republican who voted to authorize the U.S. overthrow of Saddam Hussein, could agree on. But not much more.

Simons said he initially declined to work with Bond on the book that eventually was published in October by John Wiley & Sons as “The Next Front: Southeast Asia and the Road to Global Peace with Islam.”

“I said no, because we just were so different, coming from such different places politically, that I was very skeptical,” Simons told The Chronicle this week. “I couldn’t imagine that it was going to work. But he is a good politician, and he kept pressing.”

Simons began his career as a foreign correspondent in 1967 during the Vietnam War. Since then, he has reported on war, politics and economics from throughout Southeast Asia as well as India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran. He was a staff correspondent for The Associated Press, the Washington Post, Time and Knight-Ridder Newspapers. Simons won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 1986 for exposing the billions that the Marcos family looted from the Philippines.

‘Work with people’
Bond told The Chronicle he asked a friend at the State Department to recommend a good reporter with whom he could work on his Southeast-Asian book idea, and that person recommended Simons.

“Lew and I worked very well together,” Bond said. “I wanted the book not to be partisan, but to lay out the need for what we call smart power … for more involvement, more attention, and to ramp up military efforts where we need them to build up our security. But military engagement alone won’t work. We have to use economic-development tools, trade and investment, education and personal exchanges; things like the Peace Corps. …

“The best thing we can do is not give a bunch of money to governments where, instead of doing what we want, it winds up in Swiss bank accounts. …”

Bond said, and the book argues, that the people of the region “admire America, but they think we don’t care about them.”

“We need to work with people like Indonesian President (Susilo) Yudhyono, whom I visited and sat with a week ago,” Bond said. “We need to support his government and help him with his challenges in fighting corruption, getting economic development, so the young men and women of Indonesia see a better future.”

Bond said he has talked with Yudhyono, for instance, about replicating the U.S. system of community colleges and the preschool “Parents and Teachers” program in Indonesia.

When asked how the United States could afford another foreign-aid commitment, Bond responded by saying: “These things cost very little compared to what we have to spend in a war. We’re far better off making educational exchanges.”

‘Poisonous Middle East’
“The Next Front” speaks of preventing Southeast Asia from becoming further infected with the Islamist radicalism flowing outward from the “the poisonous Middle East.” The book says that for millions of Muslims, the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948 was “a bitter pill (that) has lodged ever deeper in their throats as successive U.S. presidents have embraced Israel. …”

Further, “America’s quiet acquiescence to Israel’s unacknowledged nuclear weapons program, contrasted with its volatile rejection of Iran’s presumed efforts to develop its own, has further infuriated most Muslims …”

And yet when asked why the United States doesn’t simply abandon Israel to curry favor with the Arab/Muslim world, Bond responded by saying it would never happen. Nonetheless, he argues, progress can be made vis a vis the Muslim world.

“There are challenges throughout the Islamic world,” Bond said. “Al Qaeda and its friends in Indonesia, Jemaah Islamiya, have spread a violent form of Salafism that says you have to fight the infidels by killing them. We can’t respond by trying to kill all Muslims. The moderates in Southeast Asia are ones with whom we can and should work …”

Bond said that from the standpoint of U.S. values, including fighting terrorism, the leaders of Southeast Asian nations today vary from “outstanding” to “not great.”

“We can’t choose their governments,” Bond said wryly. “But if we want them to build security, they have to have an economic base to do it.”

That’s why, Bond said, he has “worked with the Missouri National Guard to send an agricultural-development team to Afghanistan” to spread the word about alternatives to opium-poppy growing. The Taliban and Al Qaeda are thought to profit from the drug trade.
Bond said he thinks some of the same smart-power principles he recommends in Southeast Asia could even be applied to the seemingly intractable Arab-Israeli conflict.

“We want to help them (Israel) work with a form of smart power to have a peaceful, two-state coexistence with the Palestinians,” Bond said. “People can’t choose peace unless they have jobs and food for their families, and the Palestinians are certainly in that category.”

Sandals and sneakers
Sen. Bond said the book came about because after 23 years in the Senate, and one year before he gives up the seat, he wanted to do something different.

“I’ve been giving floor speeches time after time, and nobody listens,” Bond said.

Simons said the time was right for such a tome.

“What we are saying is that as (Islamic) fundamentalism rises, we ought to be paying more attention to Southeast Asia, not necessarily because it will lead to more violence, but because it is a shift from where they have stood for hundreds of years,” Simons said. “It’s almost ironic that as that is happening, they are asking for Americans to come and work alongside them on the ground.

“I did an op-ed for USA Today that ran last Monday, pegged to the Peace Corps going back to Indonesia for the first time in 44 years. That is happening not because we twisted arms in Indonesia, but because they asked for it. They say ‘Send Americans in sandals and sneakers, not army boots.’ ”

Sen. Bond, who is vice chairman of the Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence, has issued several statements in recent weeks criticizing the Obama administration’s handling of terrorism-related issues, including charging the would-be Christmas Day underwear bomber in a civilian court.

But Bond said there is no contradiction between his recommendations for acting tougher at home and more tender abroad.

“It is a war of terror that Al-Qaeda had declared on us, and it will continue,” he said. “The best way to deal with it is smart power. Just killing terrorists doesn’t work.”

Bond said he believes in the latest strategic approach being put forward in Afghanistan and Pakistan by U.S. Army commander General Stanley McChrystal.

“McChrystal says we have to make sure we are killing only terrorists and not civilians,” Bond said. “That’s what we’re doing in Pakistan. … and we have high hopes it will work. We have to keep Afghanistan from reverting to Taliban control, because they have their own form of chaos in which Al-Qaeda flourishes.”

The trick will be to do that without alienating the world’s moderate Muslims.

“Many Muslims think we are at war with them,” Bond said. “We are against the terrorists; we’re for the people.”

Author of report urging opening to Hamas to visit KC area

The co-author of a 2009 U.S. Institute for Peace report that argues for engagement with the Palestinian militant group, Hamas — one Jewish commentator called it “pro-Hamas propaganda” — is to be the featured speaker at a local event Feb. 7.

The Illinois-based group American Muslims for Palestine is organizing the Feb. 7 event at the Overland Park Doubletree Hotel, commemorating the one-year anniversary of Israel’s military campaign known as Operation Cast Lead. It’s one of several events being held across the country under the banner “One Year Later: Besieged Gaza Standing Tall.”

The featured speaker Feb. 7 is Osama Abu Irshaid.

Irshaid is co-author of the June 2009 USIP report, “Hamas: Ideological Rigidity and Political Flexibility,” along with Paul Scham, a visiting professor of Israel studies at the University of Maryland-College Park. The report lists Irshaid as founder and editor of Al-Meezan newspaper, published in Arabic in the United States, and a Ph.D. candidate at a British university.

In an Aug. 6 column published by his Washington-based Investigative Project on Terrorism, Steve Emerson ripped the report as “pro-Hamas propaganda” that “twists reality to argue that Hamas has moderated.” Emerson called the authors’ best-case scenario of a temporary truce with Hamas “(not) a peace agreement in any genuine sense, but a formula for Israel’s destruction.”

Emerson’s column also noted that Irshaid was once editor of Al-Zaytounah, an Arabic-language newspaper published by the Islamic Association for Palestine. The IAP, like Hamas, is a creation of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Egypt-based, worldwide Islamist organization.

Irshaid makes no bones about his anti-Israel animus. In a July 22 article in Foreign Policy magazine (published by Washington Post/Newsweek Interactive), he described himself as “a Palestinian Muslim whose father was expelled from his home at Israel’s creation and who believes the state should not have been established.”

Jewish groups urge crackdown

The Feb. 7 event is being promoted by the local group Citizens for Justice in the Middle East. The Doubletree was where CJME co-sponsored last year’s visit to Overland Park by the controversial British, pro-Arab lawmaker George Galloway.

CJME’s Matt Quinn’s follow-up report on the July 2 event was cited by Emerson’s IPT in a recently issued report on the links between Galloway’s “Viva Palestina” campaign and Hamas. Quinn said Galloway raised more than $100,000 here, which Galloway said at the time would be folded into the effort to “break the siege” of Gaza. Galloway led a group that arrived in Gaza in late July and again in late December, by means of convoy through Egypt.

Two of the other speakers of the Feb. 7 event, Sara Jawhari and Mohammad El-Housiny, are said to be “participants who just returned from Gaza.” According to a report by Quinn posted Jan. 7 at cjme.org, “Kansas City's own Mohamed El-Housiny was unfortunately among approximately 50 Viva Palestina convoy participants injured in attacks by Egyptian police during a standoff at El-Arish port on January 5.”

In recent days, American Jewish groups have stepped up the pressure on the U.S. government to crack down on Galloway’s stateside fundraisers for Hamas, which, even Irshaid’s USIP report admits, has a history filled with anti-Semitism and terrorist acts.

On Jan. 21, after issuing a similar call itself, the Zionist Organization of America praised the larger Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations “for urging the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the solicitation of funds for a group called Viva Palestina at a Muslim Student Union event at the University of California, Irvine on May 21, 2009, and whether those funds were provided to the terrorist group Hamas.”

ZOA’s press release continued:

“In a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr., Alan P. Solow and Malcolm Hoenlein — the Chairman and Executive Vice Chairman, respectively, of the Presidents’ Conference — said, ‘We strongly support an investigation by the Department of Justice into whether funds solicited were provided to Hamas, which has been designated by the Department of State as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. Federal law prohibits furnishing material support or resources to U.S.-designated terrorist groups like Hamas.’ ”

On Jan. 19, ZOA issued a press release praising U.S. Rep Sue Myrick, (R-N.C.) the founder of the bipartisan congressional Anti-Terrorism Caucus, for writing to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, urging that he designate Viva Palestina “a supporter of a Foreign Terrorist Organization,” and thus subject to penalty under federal law.

KC native Cara Fish back in town for ‘Moon River’ revue

One would never imagine that “The Lawrence Welk Show” was one of the first major influences in 27-year-old Cara Michelle Fish’s singing career. Fish’s grandfather would rock her to sleep as she listened to the music.

“He’d say, ‘Cara, you’ve got to watch the “The Lawrence Welk Show”; it will pay off some day. Watch how they do this.’ Every night, I’d get a call from grandpa — ‘Turn on the TV.’ ”

Grandpa was right. Some of those same songs she heard as a child she will soon perform at the Chestnut Theatre in Olathe in a musical revue called “Moon River — Johnny Mercer’s American Songbook,” featuring 50 songs from 50 years. (See below for details.)

Fish will join Jon Daugharthy, Sarah Lamar and Cary Mock as they perform such standards as “One For My Baby,” “Summer Wind,” Autumn Leaves,” “Come Rain or Come Shine,” “Accentuate the Positive,” “You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby,” and many more.

‘I got the bug early’

Fish, the daughter of Annette and Joel Fish, said she was always surrounded by music. Her grandmother taught her to play piano and took her to shows at the Music Hall.

“I saw ‘Peter Pan’ for the first time, and it was magical. That was it for me; that sold me on it,” she said. “I got the bug early on. Once I started, I could not stop. I loved the person I could become when I got on stage.

“I feel like it’s really helped me shape the person I’m becoming and the person I strive to become. And it’s not just the performing, it’s the people you meet. … I’ve never met anyone I haven’t been able to learn something from.”

Fish toured internationally with “Cats” for two years, 2006-2008, playing Jennyanydots. In addition to the United States, the show played in Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and Santiago, Chile.

“I was like, ‘Are you serious; I’m getting paid to do this?’ And (in South America) the performances started later in the day, 9 p.m. So we would have the entire day to be tourists,” she said.

When the tour concluded, she moved to Minneapolis, where she performed in the chorus of “Bernstein Mass” (a musical theater work composed by Leonard Bernstein) with the Minnesota Orchestra.

She just appeared in a 2009 Christmas show called “Junior Claus” at the Burnsville (Minn.) Performing Arts Center, creating the character Pengy the Penguin. She is currently trying to break into voiceover work while keeping her apartment and part-time day job in Minnesota during the run of “Moon River.”

“I haven’t booked anything yet. I’m just waiting for that perfect voiceover spot,” Cara said. “That’s kind of the direction I’m going — trying to find different ways to use my voice.”

What? Not a Broadway musical?

“I’m at a point in my life where I’m trying to figure it out: What is the next step for me? Where do I want to go from here? … Broadway … would be really wonderful. But I’m happy performing. As long as I’m on stage, as long as I’m singing, that’s what makes me happy.

“I just feel life has a way of really working out. If it’s meant to be, it happens. So I live my life by that philosophy, taking things as they come.”

The balanced life

In addition to her singing career, Fish works part time for the Jewish Community Relations Council in Minneapolis as program coordinator for its “Justice Squared” initiative. Her main focus is on a literacy-opportunity program, which matches volunteers with school and after-school programs. She also works in adult-mentoring programs, matching volunteers with new immigrants.

But Fish said what she loves most is the Interfaith Youth Leadership Coalition, a joint endeavor of the JCRC and the St. Paul Area Council of Churches.

“We have about 22 youths from all different faith traditions. It’s about youth voice and youth empowerment and breaking down bridges and stereotypes that divide us. These youth are so inspiring. They’re leaders,” she said.

While in Kansas City, Fish has been able to continue her JCRC work remotely.

“It’s this really wonderful balance I have right now of working for JCRC and also being able to perform on the side,” she said. “I loved ‘Cats’ … but I needed to find a balance … and not be consumed by performing. I just needed a little break from it.”

Fish is in a happy place right now.

“It’s just so exciting because you never know what’s going to happen next,” she said. “The unknown is always exciting; scary, but kind of fun to fly by the seat of your pants.”

Johnny Mercer music on tap

“Moon River — Johnny Mercer’s American Songbook” will be staged at the Chestnut Theatre, 234 N. Chestnut, Olathe, Kan., Feb. 4 through March 7. Performances will be at 8 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays and at 2 p.m. Sundays. There will be one matinee at 3 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 13. Tickets are $21, with discounts for children, seniors and groups. For reservations or more information, call the Chestnut Theatre, (913) 764-2121.

Holocaust survivor welcomes German visitors

Alice and Tom Lewinsohn had two unusual visitors this week — Matthias and Beate Engelbert of Bonn, Germany.

What was unusual about the Engelberts’ visit was how it came about as part of a trend among Germans to seek reconciliation for injustices that occurred during the Holocaust.

Matthias Engelbert, 53, is a software engineer and the son of a German army veteran from World War II, Fritz Engelbert. The

Engelbert family — like the family of Alice Lewinsohn — lived before the war in the small town of Hilchenbach, near Cologne in the western part of Germany.

Matthias’ grandfather, Bernhard Engelbert, and Alice’s grandfather, Seligman Hony, were friends and lived just a few blocks from each other in Hilchenbach.

However, after Kristallnacht in November 1938, the Nazi crackdown on Jews and non-Jews who dealt with them prevented the two men from displaying their friendship in public.

Seligman Hony died of natural causes in Hilchenbach before he was forced into a Nazi concentration camp or otherwise harmed. Seligman’s son, Kurt Hony, who was Alice Lewinsohn’s father, managed to escape to America in 1938.

Fritz Engelbert joined the Hitler Youth and later the German army, surviving the Battle of the Bulge, among other engagements.

‘It was possible to change’
After the war, Matthias and Beate Engelbert said, Fritz was wracked with guilt for having served in the Nazi machine.
“He couldn’t forgive himself,” Matthias Engelbert said.

“At every family occasion, it was not a question of if, but when he would break down crying when he talked about the war,” Beate Engelbert said.

Matthias Engelbert said his father’s overall mood seemed to improve after having friendly encounters in 2004 in Belgium with some American veterans of the Battle of the Bulge.

“I saw it was possible to change his attitude toward things that happened,” Matthias Engelbert said.

Thus, in November 2008, on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, when Fritz Engelbert mused aloud about whether any descendants of his old friend, Seligman Hony, were alive, Matthias decided to try to find out.

After some Internet research, he managed to track down Alice Lewinsohn in Overland Park, Kan., and they began a correspondence. That led to the Engelberts’ three-day visit this week.

Alice Lewinsohn said she was thrilled to meet the Engelberts and to learn from them about life in her hometown and native country today.

“Now I know how people can fall in love over the Internet,” Alice Lewinsohn quipped.

Hebrew-English library set to open Sunday at Campus

Having lived in the United States for many years, Israeli native Michal Dishon-Alon was an avid bilingual reader. So after she died in September, her husband, Dr. Uri Alon, decided that a Hebrew-English library would be a fitting memorial.

Thus, at 4:30 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 31, there will be a reception in the Jewish Community Campus chapel for the new Michal Dishon-Alon Memorial Library.

According to Dr. Alon, it amounts to a shelf full of books and periodicals — most in Hebrew, but some in English by Israeli authors — plus an associated Web site, www.michal-library.com.

“The last time we came back from Israel, in July 2009, we brought back a lot of books,” said Dr. Alon. “And when she had read them, Michal … said we have to find a way to share these books with others.”

After Dishon-Alon died in September, Dr. Alon consulted with, among others, Jewish Federation Israel Emissary Matan Rotman about ways to “continue her spiritual will” in the form of a bilingual library.

“Matan became enthusiastic about the project, and we got financial support from Michal’s mother to buy books and other things,” Dr. Alon explained. Campus authorities designated a space within the chapel, while the Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy donated shelves.

That is fitting because HBHA students will likely be among the most regular users of the library, which will open with about 300 books and 100 more on order.

“In that sense, it can be called an Israeli library, and not just a Hebrew library, because there will be also a section of Israeli authors — Grossman, Oz and Shalev — in English,” Dr. Alon said. “And of course there will be books in Hebrew — fiction and non-fiction — and some DVDs.” In addition, the library will subscribe to some periodicals, including an Israeli newspaper written for beginning Hebrew readers.

Potential patrons will be able to view the available holdings via the library’s Web site and reserve books for pickup at the Campus, Dr. Alon said. A librarian will come in once or twice a week, he said, to restock shelves and otherwise manage the collection.

“It will be an honor system,” said Dr. Alon. People who borrow books will be asked to fill out a simple card indicating what they have done, he said.

The next chapter: ‘Banishing Bullying’

SuEllen Fried was worried about bullying in schools long before the Columbine massacre brought the issue to the fore in 1999. Her first book on the subject, “Bullies and Victims: Helping Your Child Through the Schoolyard Battlefield,” (M. Evans & Co.) co-authored with daughter Paula Fried, was published in 1996.

The Jewish mother-daughter team refined their thinking and terminology in their second book, “Bullies, Targets & Witnesses: Helping Children Break the Pain Chain.” (M. Evans & Co., 2003)

Now SuEllen Fried has turned to a different co-author, Blanche Sosland, for her latest book on the subject, “Banishing Bullying Behavior: Transforming the Culture of Pain, Rage and Revenge” (Rowman and Littlefield Education, 2009). Once again, the authors make use of the latest studies, including the most in-depth post-mortem on the Columbine massacre, which suggests that bullying played little, if any, role in the shooters’ motivation to commit mass murder.

Like Paula Fried, Blanche Sosland holds a doctoral degree. Paula Fried is a clinical psychologist, while Sosland’s Ph.D. is in reading education and psychology. Sosland is a professor emeritus at Park University in Parkville, Mo., where she taught education students for many years.

It was Sosland who suggested to SuEllen Fried that education students like hers at Park could benefit from a book on the subject of bullying directed mainly at them.

And while “Banishing Bullying Behavior” is meant to be used by teachers and prospective teachers, it can also benefit parents and others, Sosland said.

“There is material for school administrators, superintendants, principals, teachers, counselors, school nurses, school secretaries, bus drivers — the whole gamut,” Sosland said. “It’s also written so that book groups can use it. We have a section of questions in there that they can use to discuss the material. It’s for PTAs and PTOs. It’s really directed to the community and to legislators, too.”

The co-authors explained that, as a result of consciousness having been raised on the issue, some 40 states — recently including Kansas —- now have laws that require each school to have a policy on bullying. In the case of Kansas, there was no funding attached to enable or enforce the policy, but it’s a start, SuEllen Fried said.

Level of civility
While consciousness has clearly been raised, Fried said, in some ways the problem has gotten worse in the years since she first became involved. For one thing, with the rise of the Internet came the rise of cyber-bullying — the electronic distribution of threats and “disses.”

“It used to be a child could escape it when he or she came home from school,” Fried said. “Now it follows them into their bedroom.”
In addition, Fried said, social interactions of all sorts have grown even coarser, and that seeps down into the schoolyard.

“I often say that our reality show was ‘Leave it to Beaver,’ ” Fried said. “Today, the kids run home to watch Jerry Springer. The thing I most despair about is the (low) level of civility that has become the norm for our society.”

Fried said she has “cried a lot” over the years after hearing tales of bullying and its aftereffects told to her by students, teachers and others.

But she is also heartened by the progress that has been made, and the tools now available to help adults and children deal with bullying.

Is kindness practical?
“Some kids … are truly in need of psychological counseling to relinquish their (bullying) behavior,” Fried said. “But lots of kids can respond to the concepts of empathy. I tell a lot of stories when I work in the classroom, and kids who have a conscience can really relate to these stories. I am always amazed at how many students will apologize (to a peer he or she has bullied) during a session. It’s very brave. They have come to rethink how much pain they have caused.”

It’s a good thing, too, Fried said, because studies show that bullying behavior is a strong indicator of later criminal behavior and conviction.

Not to mention the scar it leaves upon the one who is targeted.

Sosland said that came home to her again when she served as scholar in residence at Congregation Beth Israel Abraham and Voliner late last year.

“One of the people in the audience at BIAV came up to me, sheepishly, afterward and said ‘After 60 years, I am ashamed to admit I am still wishing ill to the kid who bullied me as a child.’ Another person said publicly ‘The happiest day in my life was the day the guy who bullied me changed schools.’ This was after 40 years. So the impact is lifelong. Don’t brush it off, it’s very serious business.”

Fried put it another way.

“I’m trying to say to the kids ‘Just imagine what kind of world this could be if your generation decided to stop pain whenever and wherever you could and fill that vacuum with kindness,’ ” she said. “I know that sounds idealistic, but it’s really practical.”

Herzl Camp seeks support here for renovations

Leaders of a campaign to raise $8 million to renovate and expand the facilities at Herzl Camp in Webster, Wis., reached out to Kansas City’s Jewish community this week.

With $4 million pledged thus far, it was appropriate, they said, that the first place outside of Minnesota’s Twin Cities to which they would look for support was KC — the camp’s second-largest annual source of campers.

The links between Kansas City and Herzl — which is not affiliated with any Jewish movement or Jewish Community Center — go back to 1954, when Rabbi Zvi Dershowitz, then of Congregation Beth Shalom, began an eight-year stint as summer camp director.
Camp Director Anne Hope estimated that 20 to 25 percent of Herzl’s campers each summer come from greater Kansas City. Half of the campers come from Minneapolis/St. Paul, and the rest from Midwestern cities like Omaha, Neb., and Des Moines, Iowa.

Anne Hope and Herzl Camp Development Director Holly Guncheon spoke to 16 local supporters Tuesday evening at the home of Jim and Fern Badzin. They explained the capital campaign using a drawing of the planned improvements.

Herzl Camp has had some famous alumni, including Bob Dylan and the filmmaking Coen Brothers, during its 63 years.

And now that some of the cabins on the property have reached 80 to 100 years old, leaders have launched a campaign to replace them and to make other improvements such as adding a gymnasium and a new arts and crafts building. More than $1 million will be spent to increase accessibility within the camp by those with physical challenges.

The women cited a raft of statistics about the ability of Jewish summer camp to form lifelong Jewish identity among the children who attend.

“We are looking for financial support, and for you to spread the word about who we are and what we are doing,” Guncheon told the gathering Tuesday evening.

Part of the $8 million will be used, Guncheon said, to increase Herzl’s supporting endowment, which, in turn, will be used to keep tuition down and fund scholarships.

It costs about $800 a week to attend Herzl, and up to 375 teens and pre-teens attend each of the six weeklong summer sessions, Hope said.

For more information about the camp or about the capital campaign, or to make a donation, visit www.herzlcamp.org, or call (952) 927-4002.