Archived News

After 38 years as a rabbi — all of that time serving congregations in the Kansas City area — Rabbi Mark H. Levin is ready to relax a little. He’s been the pulpit rabbi for 25 of those years at Congregation Beth Torah, the congregation he helped found in 1988 with a handful of others committed to creating a modern American Jewish community in southern Johnson County. He has been a rabbi in this city longer than any other currently serving a local congregation full-time. Of those rabbis, he also has the longest tenure at one congregation of any “senior” rabbi here. 

In 1990, when Roman Polonsky left the former Soviet Union with $150 and a piano and made aliyah to Israel, he said, “We had nothing to lose. We didn’t own much.” Many Russian Jews were underemployed or had no prospects for future advancement in their fields. While it’s easy to compare the situation today in Ukraine to the mass emigration of Jews from the FSU, Polonsky insists it’s totally different.

If you haven’t yet heard about the concerted effort by some fundamentalist Christian cults to convert Jews to Christianity, you’re in for a rude awakening at the all-night Shavuot program on Tuesday, June 3 (see box for more details).

Last fall during the High Holidays the Jewish Community Mental Health Coalition launched an Anti-Stigma Campaign. Its key message: “Mental Illness: It’s real. It’s common. It’s treatable. And it’s OK to talk about it.”

For those who have followed Rabbi Dr. Akiva Tatz’s teachings, his books, podcasts from earlier tape recordings and lectures, his visit here May 30-June 1 is a welcome one. At last, the great Torah scholar, author, physician and medical ethicist will reveal what seems so difficult to laymen — “the inner reality” — the hidden meaning in the Torah. 

Courageous, strong, determined as well as incredibly warm and genuine are words that describe this year’s Amy Thompson Run for Brain Injury honoree Katie Zemel. A native of Overland Park, Zemel suffered a traumatic brain injury in 1998 when struck by lightning during a soccer game in her freshman year of high school at Shawnee Mission South.

GO CHIEFS! — Last month we told you Gary Friedman was the highest bidder in an auction to attend the NFL Draft in New York City as a guest of the Chiefs. He and his wife Patti flew to New York for the draft, held May 8-10. As the Chiefs’ representative, Friedman carried the draft pick’s hat on the red carpet and was to hand NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell the team jersey the commissioner traditionally gives to each of the first-round draft picks. But the Chiefs’ first-round draft pick, Dee Ford, a defensive end from Auburn, wasn’t in New York so Friedman didn’t get to meet him. He did, however, have a first-class

How does a man who has been a rabbi in Tel Aviv and Kobe, Japan, end up as a chaplain at Fort Riley, Kan.?

For 28-year-old Rabbi David Gingold, the road has not been an easy one — and he still faces challenges.

The rabbi is in his first stint as an Army chaplain, and was stationed at Fort Riley in December 2013. His yellow brick road to Kansas included stops in Israel and Japan.

Jewish communal leaders are continuing to take measures to upgrade security procedures in the community following the April 13 shootings that killed two people in the parking lot of the Jewish Community Campus and one woman in the parking lot of Village Shalom.

Dr. David Rudman became actively involved in the Jewish Community Relations Bureau|American Jewish Committee more than 10 years ago because he was interested in building bridges and is passionate about Israel, two of the things JCRB|AJC stands for.