MIDDLE EAST
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Shorts: Mideast

 I have written a memoir, but am having a little trouble getting any press from my fellow Jews, and wondered if you might help me.  I would appreciate a book review or/and an article.

     Prison Guards, Yellow Stars, Ovens and Gestapo are the words of my youth.         

    In my Memoir Broken Birds, The Story of my Momila, I describe the story of my mother, a Partisan fighter in World War II, and my father, a survivor of Dachau death camp, and their five children. When Mom dies, she doesn't leave the family home to Dad, or distribute it evenly among the five children, but instead leaves it to a single child. What was once a close-knit family is now led down the road to emotional destruction.

          My memoir begins with both my mother’s and father’s harrowing Holocaust stories, as their childhood experiences provide the crucial framework for everything that follows. It then goes on to describe how my parents met and started a family in the United States. It covers our move to Los Angeles and my own childhood, as well as those of my four siblings. The turning point in the story comes when my beloved mother dies. The final section of my story reveals how the choices she made in her will contributed to the fracturing of my family. The message is clear: the Holocaust casts a long shadow, and its destructive influence continues to ravage even the younger generations, who must cope with parents scarred by the horrors they endured as children and whose own ability to nurture and produce emotionally healthy children has been stunted. I feel strongly that this story will resonate with children of other survivors, of whom there are thousands across the United States and beyond.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Washington Holocaust Museum’s both have copies in their archival libraries.

Michael Berenbaum, Director of American Jewish University says:

“Jeanette Katzir’s memoir describes, as few works have, the enduring legacy of the Holocaust to those who survived and those whom they brought into the world, raised and reared. In the last decades we overly optimistic Americans have preferred a narrative of triumph, of survivors overcoming the evil, enduring and making a compensating contribution that made us marvel; thus, showing us that any evil can be overcome, that suffering leaves no lasting impact. Would that were so. Katzir faithfully retells the story of her parents during the Shoah and then of life in Los Angeles when it was beginning to grow and blossom in the 1950s and 60s. But she traverses the dynamic of a family that was both drawn together by the residue of suffering and ultimately split apart. The book if alternately brave and bold, depressing, saddening and enraging but always engaging.”

Jeannette Katzir www.BrokenBirds.com

• Legacy Heritage Emergency Fund for Jewish Education will enable schools to assist families committed to Jewish education to keep their children in schools despite significant financial difficulties due to the current economic environment.  Targeted to schools located in small or medium sized Jewish communities; day schools and community/Hebrew schools are eligible to apply.  Funds are intended to support families who have experienced a significant change in employment status and who have expressed the need to withdraw from the school due to inability to pay tuition for the coming school year. Funds will be provided to schools, not families. For further information and an application, please go to www.legacyheritage.org
  
  
• Legacy Heritage Fund Smart Board Project Round 2 will enable Jewish schools to bring the power of a new dynamic educational tool to the classroom. Legacy Heritage Fund will make SMART Boards available to selected schools, whether or not they received a grant in the first round. Participating schools will receive one or more SMART Boards and staff training to achieve proficiency in the use of the equipment. Participating schools will also have access to the Smart Board Jewish Educational Database which enables knowledge sharing throughout the world of Jewish education with ready-made SMART Board lessons in a variety of topic areas and grades. For further information and an application, please go to www.legacyheritage.org.

Legacy Heritage Programming LLC announces two new exciting non-denominational funding opportunities for synagogues in North America seeking to (1) strengthen congregants' engagement with the State of Israel or (2) integrate music throughout congregational life:

Legacy Heritage Innovation Project: Israel Engagement supports synagogues using an integrated approach to deepening adults' and/or children's connection to the State of Israel.  While Israel advocacy may be an aspect of the approach, the primary purpose to support connection with the people, culture, and history of Israel. 

Legacy Heritage Innovation Project: Music supports synagogues strengthening Jewish identity through the creative use of music in multiple aspects of congregational life and in programming for different age groups.

Grants:  For the next funding cycle (8/09-7/10), the Legacy Heritage Synagogue Innovation Project will award grants of up to $25,000 to selected synagogues. Grantees may be eligible to apply for additional funding of up to $25,000 per year for up to two additional years.  In any given year, congregations may apply for funding only from one Legacy Heritage Innovation Project track (Congregational Education, Israel Engagement, or Music). 
 
Proposals will be evaluated on the basis of the following criteria, among others:

• Extent to which the proposal integrates Israel or music into programming for different age groups and across multiple aspects of congregational life, e.g. Torah, avodah, gemilut hasadim.  For example, preference will be given to proposals which incorporate Israel awareness or music frequently and regularly into congregational prayer, study and action.  Grants are not intended to support one-time or "stand-alone" programs.

• Degree to which the proposal is sustainable (maximally uses funds to develop capacity within congregation, training existing staff and lay leaders, targeting reusable resources, integrating approach within existing structure of congregation, etc.).

• Extent to which "best practices" are exemplified in the proposed initiative (the possibility of the proposed program being adapted by other congregations, organizations, etc.).

Online grant applications and more detailed information may be obtained at www.legacyheritage.org, or by contacting Rabbi Marc Margolius, Project Director, at 212-578-8190 (ext. 106) or marcm@lhfl.net.  The deadline for completing the online application is Monday, May 11, 2009. 
 
The project is sponsored by Legacy Heritage Programming LLC, an affiliate of the Legacy Heritage Fund Limited.