Jewish Campus to mothball kosher kitchen

The economic recession can soon be said to have claimed yet another victim — most kosher food service at the Jewish Community Campus.
Executive Director Alan Bram said this week the Campus plans to close its main kosher kitchen when summer camp is over Aug. 20 and to dismiss the two staff cooks because there will no longer be any call for their services.

To the dismay of the kosher community, that was the immediate aftereffect of a vote last week by the board of directors of the Jewish Community Center to cease using the Campus kitchen to provide hot lunches to the 200 or so Child Development Center preschoolers.

Next school year, rather than provide a hot, kosher meal to every tot, the CDC will offer two options:

1.    Bring your own lunch (kosher or kosher-style, i.e., no pork, shellfish, etc.) and get a reduction in fees

2.    Order a hot, vegetarian or fish, dairy lunch provided by Hy-Vee catering and pay a surcharge

JCC Executive Director Jacob Schreiber said he was not happy about the end of kosher lunch service for the preschoolers, nor about the effect it will have on the community as a whole. But he has to make the budget come out right, and he will save about $200,000 a year by dropping kosher hot lunches. Most of that savings will be returned to CDC parents in the form of reduced tuition next year.

“It’s an economic necessity,” Schreiber said. He said that while the JCC ended its most recent fiscal year “in the black,” that followed “two years of six-figure operating losses.” The Center had enforced austerity measures long before Schreiber arrived to run it six months ago.

Why do this?
“Why do this? Eighteen months ago we reduced pensions,” Schreiber noted. “We took away our retirement contribution, which amounts to a 7 percent reduction in staff pay. We eliminated five or six positions through layoffs in the last couple of years. And we lost $170,000 a year in funding from our major funders, who are mainly United Way and Jewish Federation. And I don’t blame them. They are focused on safety-net programs. The economy sucks. This year the JCC has no Israel programs. That’s ridiculous. But we couldn’t afford it. There have been no raises for three years. Scholarship requests have spiked in every category — camp, child care and membership. And we don’t turn people away.”

In light of all that, Schreiber said, he could no longer justify the cost of subsidizing the Campus’s kosher kitchen, especially as there was no longer anyone else to share that burden with. As it embarked on a tuition-reduction program, the Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy stopped using the Campus kitchen to offer hot lunches at the conclusion of last school year. The Campus Café closed a few years before that. (Now it’s run by HBHA PTO members on a limited-menu, volunteer basis.)

Saving certification?
While the JCC had a meeting and distributed a letter, informing CDC parents and other interested community leaders of the proposed change, there was still disappointment in the kosher community.

“In general, people were very upset,” said Rabbi Daniel Rockoff of the Orthodox Congregation Beth Israel Abraham and Voliner. “And the theme that I heard most often from people was that this is the Jewish Community Center; what’s the point of having a JCC that brings in non-kosher food? They were asking it rhetorically, and I agree.”

Rabbi Rockoff wears a second hat as supervising rabbi of the Vaad HaKashrut, the group responsible for certifying kashrut locally. Both he and Schreiber, plus Bram, noted that the parties were still in discussions about how to maintain the kashrut certification for the Campus building as a whole, and for the secondary kitchen that serves lunch to 20 to 45 seniors each weekday as part of the JCC’s Heritage Center.

“It was a very unfortunate decision by the board of directors of the JCC,” said Rabbi Rockoff, “although clearly there was a series of events that led to this decision. Still, my hope is that, in the future, we’ll be able to find mutually satisfying opportunities to bring kosher back to the JCC.”
If the Campus kitchen maintains its kosher certification, then one-off kosher dinners and other events can be held in the social hall.

Schreiber and Bram said it might be possible to permanently reopen the kosher kitchen, if and when economic conditions improve for the JCC and Campus.

“It’s the responsibility of the community as a whole to make sure … that the community center is welcoming to the whole community and that the value of kashrut is upheld,” Rabbi Rockoff said.

Disappointed parents
Speaking again in his role as BIAV’s spiritual leader, Rabbi Rockoff said the CDC dropping hot, kosher lunches makes the Kansas City area somewhat less attractive to young, Orthodox parents who might consider relocating here.

One such parent, Dara Granoff, who moved from New Jersey to Overland Park in November, expressed her disappointment in the move. Granoff’s family has a kosher home, and both her 5-year-old daughter, Gabriella, and 2-year-old son, Zachary, are attending the CDC this semester.

“Zachary was going to be continuing in the 3-year-old program, but now we are not so sure about that,” Granoff said. “It is upsetting. … It doesn’t really encourage people who are Jewish and who care to support the JCC. … At Beth Shalom’s preschool, everyone brings their own lunch; Chabad has a preschool where they serve lunch, so we are looking at that one, too.”

Gadfly makes film decrying power of eminent domain

As proprietor of the magic shop inside his family’s U.S. Toy Co. outlet store near 103rd Street and State Line Road, Philip Klein is hardly the most obvious leader of a crusade against eminent domain — the government’s power to take private property in order to create a higher and better use for it.

And yet the Jewish Kansas Citian worked for four years making a documentary film about the issue — “Begging for Billionaires” — that will soon be out on DVD after premiering in 2008 and showing at a number of film festivals and special screenings. (See www.beggingforbillionaires.com for details.)  Klein was the film’s director and executive producer.

Klein, age 50, has a history as a gadfly, opposing a number of controversial property-development plans through the years. He said he was motivated to begin the film project after he became interested in saving historic downtown properties.

He traces that back to his work as a helper on the KC-lensed motion picture “Mr. and Mrs. Bridge.” Klein helped to clean up the then-otherwise-abandoned President Hotel’s Aztec Room for a dinner scene featuring Paul Newman in the 1990 film.

After that, Klein got the idea to turn the hotel into a local version of Hollywood’s Magic Castle entertainment emporium. But that ran afoul of AMC movie theaters mogul Stan Durwood’s burgeoning plans to create a multi-block downtown entertainment district, including the President.

Durwood’s dream — at one time known as Centertainment — morphed over the years into today’s Power & Light District, which this weekend gets a big workout during the Big 12 college basketball tournament.

‘Our tragedy’
But during the 30-year downtown redevelopment process, the city and its chosen developer forced out many local, and in many cases also Jewish-owned, businesses.

“Begging for Billionaires” highlights one such person, Darryl Penner of American Formalwear.

The Penner family owned the building and tuxedo-rental business at 1331 Main, where today the shiny, oval headquarters of H&R Block stands. Klein’s film traces how it happened and the toll it took on the Penners, and to others who have lost their property to eminent-domain actions, including some local homeowners.

The film is subtitled “The Attack on Private Property Rights in America.”

“I thought it was really a tremendous effort,” Penner said of Klein’s film. “It highlighted an important issue for everybody. It’s too late, in one sense. But hopefully, our tragedy will help educate the public as the issues and prevent it from happening to other small business and home owners.”

In its 2005 decision in the case of  Kelo vs. City of New London (Conn.), the Supreme Court held that the governmental taking of property from one private owner to give to another in furtherance of economic development constitutes a permissible “public use” under the Fifth Amendment.

This, of course, was a blow to people like Klein and Penner, who believe it’s an injustice. Klein and Penner said they worked with the Institute for Justice, the Virginia-based, libertarian-oriented, public-interest law firm that represented property owner and lead Supreme Court plaintiff Suzette Kelo, during the making of “Begging for Billionaires.”

Development as filmmaker
After some good response to his film on the festival circuit and elsewhere, Klein plans to start selling DVD copies through his Web site later this month for $29.95 each. And he’s moving on to his next project, which will represent a further step his development as a filmmaker.

Klein formed Limelight Cinema Group back in the late 1980s, when he was inspired by a meeting with Stan Laurel’s widow to do a pastiche of early Mack Sennett/Laurel and Hardy films titled “Easy Business.” It premiered in 1990.

Klein said he recently bought the rights to the book “Fly Like a Bumblebee: A Blind Magician Shares His Most Powerful Secrets,” by R.W. Klamm.

“I am working on a script now with a partner,” Klein said. “Bob Klamm didn’t know he was blind till he was age 8, and he grew up to be a great magician. … It’s like ‘Forrest Gump’ meets ‘A Christmas Story.’

“Next after that will probably be a horror film. I want to change up and do different things.”

Acclaimed cellist here for benefit show

When The Jewish Chronicle last caught up to cellist Matt Haimovitz, the enfant terrible of the classical music world was extending his tour of rock bars to downtown KCMO’s The Brick in the summer of 2008.

“It was a great venue,” Haimovitz recalled this week. “I enjoyed it. Very intimate; good vibes.”

Haimovitz — who has over 10 classical records out under his own name, performances with the world’s top orchestras on his resume and a passel of awards (Grand Prix Du Disque, etc.) on his mantel — will be back in Kansas City, Mo., this Sunday, March 14, for a benefit concert. (See below for details)

Haimovitz will join a couple of local musicians — one of whom he has worked with closely over the years — in a performance to benefit the Kansas City String Quartet Program, a summer-education program.

In addition to everything else, the former child prodigy Haimovitz, now 39, has established a record label, Oxingale, which has released recordings by him and others.

In a phone interview this week, he said his multifarious activities are all part of “living and breathing music.”

Music with friends
“Making music with friends — that’s the greatest privilege we can have,” Haimovitz said. “And chamber music — a Beethoven string quartet is not something I normally get to do. So it should be great fun and very rewarding to play it with great friends, both artistically and personally.”

Haimovitz is a native of Bat Yam, Israel, and now lives in Montreal, where he teaches at McGill University’s Schulich School of Music. He laughed when he was compared to visiting jazz instrumentalist who picks up a local trio and rehearses some standard tunes the day before the show.

“(Violinist) Andy (Simionescu) and I know each other very, very well,” Haimovitz said. “So you can’t really say it’s a pickup group, because every year for several years we’ve done a few things together. We’re kindred spirits. He’s Romanian, and my family comes from Romania. As for Thula (Ngwenyama), the violist, the last few years we’ve gotten together with Andy and done some string trios. Elizabeth (Suh Lane) I have never worked with before, so that should throw some new and exciting blood into the mix.

“Andy and I have been thinking about this program — reading and rehearsing with others — for a while. It’s true; we only get a few days to put it together. But I also enjoy that. Usually, a piece is played by a fixed quartet, so it’s a challenge to find a homogenous sound. At the same time, we do it as individuals, so there is a freshness and a spontaneity in coming together.”

‘String Thing’ Sunday
“It’s A String Thing,” a benefit concert for the Kansas City String Quartet Program, will be held at 3 p.m. Sunday, March 14, at the Pembroke Hill School’s Centennial Hall, 5121 State Line Road.

Haimovitz will be accompanied by two members of the KCSQP faculty, his longtime duet partner, violinist Andy Simionescu, and violinist Elizabeth Suh Lane, the program’s artistic director and head of faculty for the last decade.

They will be joined by Thula Ngwenyama, an internationally acclaimed and award-winning violist who will be making her Kansas City debut.
The musicians are tentatively scheduled to perform Beethoven’s String Trio in D Major and Quartet Op. 95, and Haydn’s Quartet Op. 76, No. 5 in D.

Tickets are available through the UMKC Central Ticket Office, (816) 235-2770. Reserved seats are $50. Select seating for middle and high school students is $25.

The concert celebrates the Kansas City String Quartet Program, which, for 17 years, has nurtured young musicians through the cooperative study and performance of chamber music. Each summer, KCSQP brings faculty from orchestras and universities throughout the nation to the Pembroke Hill campus to teach local teenage violinists, violists and cellists.

Jewish Federation next-generation leader profile

The last person in Kristin Schultz’s family before her who was Jewish was her grandfather. Schultz was raised without religion, yet always sensed she belonged in the Jewish community. She began to seriously explore her Jewish identity in college at the University of Iowa, not far from Waterloo where she was born and raised. Later in Sioux City, she was embraced by a small but warm Conservative congregation.

In 1997, her husband, Joe Markley, took a job in Kansas City. When the couple moved here, Schultz was pregnant with their first child, intimidated by the size of the congregations and didn’t know a soul. At the same time, she knew that one of the best ways to feel at home was to get involved.

Drawn in through Women’s Division
Schultz and Markley participated in the Genesis program for interfaith families and found their way to Congregation Beth Shalom through a program to encourage affiliation sponsored at the time by the Jewish Federation of Greater Kansas City. At the synagogue, Schultz began to meet other moms involved with Federation. She signed up for the Women’s Division B’not Kehillah program to learn more about what the Federation does and to explore how she might fit in.

The next year, she served on the B’not Kehillah planning committee, the next year as co-chair and the next year as Women’s Division co-vice president of leadership with Lisa Schifman.

“Women’s Division, to me, is the arm of the Federation that really addresses the way in which women at all stages of life like to get involved in doing good things in the community,” says Schultz.

Through Women’s Division, Schultz was drawn to other activities in the Jewish community. At tovkc, the Federation program for socially conscious adults in their 30s and 40s, she found an outlet for her interest in community service as chair of an arts-themed series. At the Florence Melton Adult Education Program, she expanded her social connections as well as her knowledge. “Oh, did I love Melton!” she says, and learning Hebrew from Sari Havis “was amazing.”

Deepening connections
In 2007, Schultz and Fay Balk were co-recipients of the Federation’s Dan Fingersh Young Leadership Award, presented to them at the General Assembly in Nashville, Tenn., as well as here at the Federation’s annual meeting that year. That came after the Tel Aviv One Young Leadership Conference, followed by serving with Roberta Weingarten as co-chairs of an Israeli Artists Exchange for Partnership 2000. Four artists from Kansas City’s sister region in Ramla/Gezer spent a week in Kansas City meeting with Jewish students and artists here and building connections. More than two years later, Schultz still stays in touch with the Israeli artists.

At the moment, Schultz is working with her co-chair, Cindy Singer, to plan a unique Women’s Division annual meeting, which is set for 9:30 a.m. Thursday, April 29, at the Jewish Community Campus. The annual meeting will take a hands-on approach to solving the problem of hunger in Kansas City. That’s yet another role Schultz has taken on to mobilize the Jewish community to help others.

Through the Federation, Schultz has had fun, made friends, learned a lot and always felt room to have an impact. “It’s sort of a portal for making happen what you want to happen,” she says.

But her feelings go deeper than that. “The Jewish community has been a source of support, and the Federation has been my grounding experience,” she says, referring to several difficult years coping with illness in her family. “I gain a connection to community that I think is important to preserve.”

Kristin Schultz
• Born in Waterloo, Iowa, 1965
• West Waterloo High School
• University of Iowa, Iowa City
• National marketing and sales background
• Lives in Overland Park
• Children: Phoebe, 12, and Oliver, 9
• Recent Reading: “The Rehearsal” by Eleanor Catton
• Favorite Movie: “Gaslight”
• Favorite Jewish Food: Gefilte fish and horseradish
• Trips to Israel: 1

Exhibit explains Nazis’ use of ‘Deadly Medicine’

The shower stall that’s actually a gas chamber is perhaps the ultimate symbol of the Holocaust. And while most people undoubtedly associate it with Auschwitz, the first time this tool of hygiene was perverted into a mass-murder weapon was as part of the Nazi campaign to clear Germans with mental and physical defects out of state institutions by any means necessary.

As many as 200,000 men, women and children deemed undesirable were killed in this program between 1939 and 1945, and many of the doctors who carried it out moved smoothly into concentration-camp employment.

That is just one revelation in “Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race,” a traveling exhibition of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum that opens March 16 for a three-month run at the new home of the National Archives at Kansas City, 400 W. Pershing Road.
A related speaker series will further expound on the topics of eugenics, medicine in the Third Reich and more. (See below for details)
The Midwest Center for Holocaust Education and the Center for Practical Bioethics have partnered with the National Archives to present the exhibit.

Their leaders believe “Deadly Medicine” has much to say to viewers today, particularly as the national political discourse is being dominated by issues of medical care, its cost and the morality of its distribution.

“It speaks to issues of individual responsibility, professional responsibility and medical ethics,” said Jean Zeldin, executive director of MCHE.
Zeldin first saw the exhibition when it premiered at the USHMM in Washington five years ago. “I felt it was a significant exhibit, and we should bring it here,” she said.

MCHE had worked with the National Archives (it was formerly part of the Bannister Federal Complex, Bannister Road and Troost Avenue) for over a decade, Zeldin said. It serves as the repository for the master tapes MCHE recorded with local Holocaust survivors in 1994, Zeldin said.
So when the National Archives got a brand new space in a rehabilitated building near Union Station, officials there jumped at the chance to house “Deadly Medicine” in its new gallery. It’s just the second exhibition in the new space.

A blood-based state

“Deadly Medicine” brings together photographs, video testimonies and artifacts from international collections. It shows how the Nazis took a commonly held, if now rejected, early-20th century belief in eugenics — i.e., the perfection of the human race through science — and warped it even further with their twisted theories about the purity of German blood.

“In February 1920, three years before the Beer Hall Putsch, Hitler defines citizenship in terms of biology and birth,” said Fran Sternberg, MCHE’s director of university programs and adult education. “So the whole state is a blood-based state. And then you define who is hostile to the health of the blood and who is beneficial.”

That is how, Sternberg said, a doctor who has taken the Hippocratic Oath to “do no harm” can allow himself to operate a gas chamber/shower: In his mind, he’s not killing a person; he’s eradicating a germ and protecting the health of the body politic. The Nazi term for it was “racial hygiene.”

“Nazis are not out-of-this-world demons,” Sternberg said, “These are highly educated scientists from renowned research institutes and universities. … For whatever reason — for personal advancement or because they were real Nazis — they were comfortable spinning their ethics to comply with the regime.

“Nobody forced them to do anything. People got involved in committees … and saw it as a valuable and valid exercise.”

What began with the forced sterilization of undesirables ended with the industrial-scale murder of millions we now call the Holocaust.

For interested adults, some of the visiting speakers will take on the sub-topic of Nazi doctors in greater detail. Nearly 1,000 high school students are also scheduled to tour the exhibit during the day.

The exhibit also shows how the corruption of leading institutions by the Nazis made it easier for average Germans to go along with Hitler.
“When every institution is telling you this is OK — the army, education, the arts, media, judiciary — it’s got to be OK,” said Sternberg. “Your teacher is telling you this, not some weird Nazi guy.”

“It helps explain how it could have happened,” Zeldin said. “You have to go back to the concept of the racial state, as opposed to looking at the opening of Auschwitz as the beginning of the Holocaust.”

Viewing the exhibit

The public is invited to attend a ceremonial ribbon-cutting for “Deadly Medicine” at 10 a.m. Tuesday, March 16, at the National Archives, 400 W. Pershing Road. It will include a tour led by the curator of the exhibit, Susan Bachrach of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

“Deadly Medicine” is a free exhibition and will be open March 16 through June 10. Viewer discretion advised, as it contains material that may be disturbing to some viewers.

The National Archives at Kansas City is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday for exhibit viewing; 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. those same days for research. Free parking is available for visitors, with additional free parking available in the Union Station Parking Garage on the west side of Union Station.

The National Archives at Kansas City is one of 13 facilities nationwide where the public has access to federal archival records. It is home to more than 50,000 cubic feet of historical records dating from the 1820s to the 1990s created or received by nearly 100 federal agencies. Serving the Central Plains Region, the archives holds records from the states of Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota.

For more information, call (816) 268-8000 or visit www.archives.gov/central-plains.

“Deadly Medicine” is organized and circulated by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. It is sponsored in part by the Samberg Family Foundation, the Dorot Foundation, the Viterbi Family Foundation of the Jewish Community Foundation of San Diego and the Rosenbluth Family — Al, Sylvia, Bill, and Jerry. Additional support was provided by the Takiff Family Foundation and the David Berg Foundation. The Kansas City presentation of “Deadly Medicine” is made possible with the support of Saint Luke’s Health System, the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, the Missouri Humanities Council, the Kansas Humanities Council, Sprint Foundation and Oppenstein Brothers Foundation. Bus subsidies have been provided by the Earl J. and Leona K. Tranin Special Fund and the Flo Harris Supporting Foundation of the Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Kansas City.

Wednesday speaker series

There is no charge for the following programs, but seating is limited and reservations are required two days prior to the event. Visitors may see the exhibit and have light refreshments from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. at the National Archives gallery, followed by the program at 7 p.m. in the venues indicated. For reservations, contact the National Archives at (816) 268-8010 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

• March 24 at the Arthur Stillwell Room at Union Station – “German Physicians and Nazi Crimes: the Medical Profession and its Role in Nazi Germany” -- Patricia Heberer, Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

• April 7 at National Archives at Kansas City -- “Nazi Culture: Daily Life in Germany, 1933-1939” --  Panel presented by the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education’s Holocaust Education Academic Roundtable, moderated by Carla Klausner of UMKC’s Department of History

• April 14 at National Archives – Film screening of “Selling Murder: The Killing Films of the Third Reich” -- introduction and discussion led by Cheryl Lester, Department of American Studies, University of Kansas, and Milton Katz, Department of Liberal Arts, Kansas City Art Institute

• April 21 at National Archives – “Confronting Complicity: Professionals in the Third Reich” -- Panel presented by the MCHE’s Holocaust Education Academic Roundtable, moderated by Jeffrey W. Myers, Department of History, Avila University
Panelists

• April 28 at National Archives – “Racial Science in the United States Today” --
Leonard Zeskind, president, Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights and author of “Blood and Politics”

• May 12 at Arthur Stillwell Room, Union Station – “Medical Ethics and Nazi Ideology” -- William F. Meinecke Jr., Education Department, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

• May 26 at National Archives – “The Perfect Baby: Eugenics, Race and Bioethics” -- Glenn McGee, John B. Francis Chair in Bioethics, Center for Practical Bioethics

• June 2 at Arthur Stillwell Room, Union Station – “The Doctors’ Trial” -- Professor Harry Reicher, University of Pennsylvania Law School

Film shows simple heroism of Nazi-era rescuers

The Talmud says: Whoever saves a single life, saves an entire universe.” One of the principal missions of Yad Vashem in Jerusalem is to convey the gratitude of the state of Israel and the Jewish people to those non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. While attitudes toward Jews during this dark chapter in history ranged from indifference to hostility, there was a small minority who mustered extraordinary courage to uphold human values. The highest honor these heroic martyrs can be accorded is to be granted the title of Righteous Among the Nations. We are all familiar through books, plays, films and television of the exploits of Oskar Schindler (“Schindler’s List”) and Irena Sendler (“Life in a Jar” and “The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler”). The names of Heinrich Aschoff, Hubert Pentrop, Heinrich Silkenboehmer, Bernhard Suedfeld and Bernhard Sickmann have been added to the list as a result of the memories brought to light in the 1965 book “Among Farmers: Saviors in the Night” written by Marga Spiegel. The dramatic movie adaptation, “Saviors in the Night,” is the opening night film of the 12th annual Kansas City Jewish Film Festival. (See box for details) The director is Ludi Boeken, who himself is the child of Holocaust survivors saved by peasants and factory workers.

The main character, Siegmund “Menne” Spiegel (Armin Rohde), like tens of thousands of other German Jews, is a veteran of World War I; winner of the Iron Cross for bravery. When the film opens in 1943, he lives in the small village of Ahlen in southern Munsterland with his beautiful, blonde-haired wife Marga (Veronica Ferres) and their little red-headed daughter Karin (Luisa Mix). He makes his living as a horse trader and is well known to the neighboring farmers. He wears the yellow Star of David on his outer garments, and his beloved fatherland wants to kill him and his family because they are Jewish. He seeks help from his former war buddies who are now simple Westphalian farmers. Even though Heinrich Aschoff (Martin Horn) is a patriotic German, a loyal member of the Nazi Party since 1930 and the father of a Wermacht soldier fighting on the Russian front, he never hesitates when agreeing to provide shelter and security for Marga and Karin. This Catholic rescuer views the Spiegels as fellow Germans. The main stumbling block is Anni Aschoff (Lia Hoensbroech), the farmer’s daughter. She is a member of the German Girls’ League and proudly wears her uniform. She is on the lookout for liars and traitors. She has a crush on Erich, a group leader in the Hitler Youth movement. She isn’t made aware that Marga and Karin are Jewish until a local pub owner in need of eggs recognizes Marga. One of the pleasures derived from watching the movie is witnessing Anni’s transformative arc from ardent Nazi to sympathizing emotionally with Marga’s plight. While his family stays at the Aschoffs’ farm, Menne is forced to move from farm to farm and live in darkness for nearly two years. Finally, in 1945, the Allies finally reach Westphalia, liberating the family and enabling them to reunite. Even so, high tension remains as the Allies are unable to differentiate between Nazis and ordinary German civilians.

The movie was filmed in the region where the actual events depicted took place. Superior camera work brings the viewer close to the key characters, and one senses the constant danger and fear of being caught. Everyone in the movie is aware that Jews are being deported to the east, and that none can expect to return. The movie shows what Good Samaritans, acting right under the noses of the Gestapo, achieved. While the Pope in Rome was silent, these salt-of-the earth Catholic families felt a closer kinship to the teachings of the Bishop of Munster than the angry rants of Adolf Hitler.

At the conclusion of the movie, we are privileged to see the real Marga Spiegel and Anni Aschoff. Marga, now 97 years old, is still in touch with third-generation descendants of the brave farm families who risked their lives to save fellow human beings.

This emotionally moving film is suitable for family viewing and offers an educational introduction to the Holocaust. It holds your interest throughout a running time of 97 minutes. The dialogue is in German with easy-to-read English subtitles. It gets my vote as the best film of this year’s festival and deserves my GOOD rating of 3 stars.

Opening night

“Saviors in the Night” opens the two-day Kansas City Jewish Film Festival at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 6, at the Lewis and Shirley White Theatre at the Jewish Community Campus. Tickets to the opening film and the dessert reception that follows are $16. To buy tickets or for more information, visit www.jcckc.org or call (913) 327-8000.
“Circumcise Me,” at 9:45 p.m. Saturday, March 6, is non-stop laughter as a standup comedian (Yisrael Campbell) tells of his conversion from Catholicism to Judaism.
“Children of the Sun,” 2 p.m. Sunday, March 7, is about children who were raised apart from their parents in an early Israeli kibbutzim.
“Max Minsky and Me,” 7 p.m. Sunday, March 7, tells the story of a 13-year-old girl who is more interested in astronomy, and fellow astronomy fan and heartthrob Prince Edouard of Luxembourg, than in her Bat Mitzvah.

‘Postcards from Yo Momma’ author here for Yad b’Yad

Girlfriends have been dishing about the conversations they’ve had with their mothers forever. Now with the Internet and text messaging, it’s even easier to share these communications with others. So two Jewish women decided to make these often-funny messages the object of a blog, “Postcards From Yo Momma.” From there came the book “Love, Mom: Poignant, Goofy Brilliant Messages from Home.” One of the authors, Doree Shafrir, will discuss the book and blog at a Women’s Division Yad B’Yad event at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 9, at the Jewish Community Campus.

Hyperion published the book last April and describes it as “a collection of laugh-out-loud e-mails, text messages and instant messages from technologically inept mothers to their adult children. … ‘Love, Mom’ reminds us all that our mothers are the ones who know us best — and, of course, nag us the most.”

Shafrir said this whole thing got started when her friend and co-author Jessica Grose decided to share with her a funny e-mail from her mother. Shafrir then reciprocated, sending her friend a message from her mother. A short time later Shafrir suggested that they post these funny e-mails on a Web site, asking their friends to contribute to it. Thus the blog was born.

“It just snowballed. People send us stuff and we post it and people comment on them,” said Shafrir about the blog, www.postcardsfromyomomma.com, which was launched in March 2008.

Almost immediately the women were contacted by publishers wanting a book.

“It surprised us because this is just something we put up for fun. We were shocked at how quickly it took off and how many people it resonated with,” Shafrir said.

It took Shafrir a couple of weeks to raise the nerve to call her mother and tell her about the book. Once she did, her mother fell in love with it.
“She went to the site and started laughing hysterically,” Shafrir said.

As Shafrir’s mother searched for her own e-mails, she often thought other mothers’ e-mails were hers.

“It just proves my point that there are so many universal truths out there about moms and how they relate to their adult children. They are all relating to them in very similar ways. Some are more extreme than others, but it’s very similar themes,” Shafrir said.

When the women started the blog, Shafrir said, they naively assumed that most of their submissions would come from Jewish moms.

“We do get a lot of e-mails (originally sent by) Jewish moms. But we also get a lot of e-mails from non-Jewish moms. It’s been very eye-opening to see that it’s very universal; it’s not just Jewish moms who are giving their kids guilt trips,” she explained.

This is the first book for the 32-year-old Shafrir, who lives in New York and who has contributed to The New Yorker, New York magazine, thedailybeast.com, Details magazine and slate.com, among others.

Since the book was published, Shafrir has given speeches all around the country, usually to a combination of mothers and daughters.

“The question and answer period often gets really fun,” she said.

Tickets for the Yad B’Yad event are $8 a person. The event is free of charge for students and Yad B’Yad series subscribers. Reservations can be taken up to the day of the event. For more information, visit www.jewishkansascity.org or call Nicole Feldman, (913) 327-8111.

Artist makes ancient instruments

The Kansas City Jewish Museum presents the exhibit “Moshe Frumin — Ancient Instruments” March 14 through May 2 at the Epsten Gallery at Village Shalom.

The show features 21 musical instruments created by Israeli professor Moshe Frumin, who has constructed authentic recreations of ancient biblical instruments based on depictions discovered in archaeological discoveries from Israel.

This exhibition, organized by the Sherwin Miller Museum of Jewish Art in Tulsa, Okla., marks the first time Frumin has exhibited in the United States, and KCJMCA is the second and only additional venue to host this exhibition in the country.

The exhibition opens from 2-4 p.m. Sunday, March 14, at the Epsten Gallery at Village Shalom with a public reception; a gallery conversation with Karen York, curator of the Sherwin Miller Museum of Jewish Art, begins at 3 p.m. Sunday.

The Moshe Frumin exhibition has its roots in a project conceived in the late 1970s by the Haifa Museum in Israel. Frumin was chosen by the museum to participate in a project to reproduce musical instruments from the ancient world. Frumin found his life’s work in that project. He was “lured by the possibilities,” and, over the ensuing 30 years, he has searched for examples of instruments in ancient sculpture, paintings, coinage and biblical texts.

In his workshop in Kiriat Bialik, Israel, Frumin has sculpted numerous instruments; from lyres to harps to drums and shofarot. Frumin’s instruments are playable, hand-created, accurate recreations of instruments from biblical times that — perhaps — when played, sound the way they might have sounded during the time of King David.

Moshe Frumin was born in 1940 in Poland. He immigrated to Israel in 1948, and graduated from the Youth Village “Hadassim” and the Arts & Crafts College of Tel Aviv. He has a degree in education and creative art from Haifa University and a master’s degree in arts.
Frumin is a former member of the education faculty of the University of Haifa, where he founded the technology-in-education department. He also taught at WIZO Arts College in Haifa, qualifying teachers in technical arts, and for the Oranim Seminar at the Art and Design Institute, where he taught art and product design courses as well as headed the studio for wood, metal and plastic. He currently lectures at Western Galilee College and teaches several private sculpture courses.

Frumin’s numerous prizes include the Haifa Cherished Artist Award in 1996, The Spirit of Creation Award in 1997 and the Haifa City Medal in 2000. An active sculptor and photographer, Frumin is a member of the Israeli sculptors and Painters Association. His exhibitions include The Jewish Museum in Melbourne, Australia, The Bible Lands Museum in Tel Aviv, the Bnei-Zion Medical Center in Haifa, ISCAR and many private collections.