Israel 70 Maimonides

April 2018 ~ Nissan - Iyar 5778 Page 1 of 9 Kol Bogrei Rambam is the Alumni Committee’s monthly e-newsletter for and about Maimonides School graduates. Each month we share infor- mation on individual graduates’ ventures and accomplishments, as well as general news notes, all reflecting the school’s mission of preparing educated, observant Jews to be contributing members of society. Your ideas and accomplishments will help sustain and strengthen this key com- munications tool; please forward to [email protected]. MAIMONIDEScelebrates ISRAEL at 70 is represented in Israel. When you add the multi- was established The State of Israel generational family members, retired teachers, current on 5 Iyar 5708 (May 15, 1948), about 16 months before donors, former students, parents and directors, Maimonides School began its high school program. So Maimonides School’s Israel family literally numbers in beginning with the Class of 1953, Israel grew, matured the thousands. and flourished virtually step by step with Grades 9-12 at called the establishment of ,זצ”ל ,Maimonides. Rabbi Soloveitchik the State of Israel “the most important event in modern קול ,This month, in celebration of Israel’s 70th birthday Jewish history.” As we celebrate this milestone anniver- -profiles seven Maimonides School gradu בגרי רמב”ם sary, we take pride in Maimonides School’s continuing ates living in Israel -- one for each decade. commitment to instilling a visceral connection with They represent more than 300 alumni who have Israel in all of its students. made aliyah. Every one of the 65 graduating classes Visit Maimonides on Facebook Follow our Twitter feed, KolRambam Subscribe to our YouTube channel, MaimoTube April 2018 ~ Nissan - Iyar 5778 Page 2 of 9 1950-59: Looking at Israel through Different Lenses, Literally and Figuratively ”Melvin Fisher, Bobby game. Now I do mostly nature pictures ,ז”ל Michael Goldberg ’54, one of Bobby Berren Maimonides School’s earliest alumni olim, Marcus, Maier Sadwin and Haym with a five-year-old Nikon. Cellphones has seen Israel through different lenses, Soloveitchik. “There’s a black-and-white make everyone a photographer, he literally and figuratively. A photojournalist, photo somewhere of the six of us,” he said. continued. “But if you use a good single- he also had a career in social work that Michael earned a master’s degree in lens-reflex or mirrorless camera and put included videotaping testimonies by audio-visual education from Boston the two images side by side, there is a survivors of the Shoah. University, “but I couldn’t really go difference.” anywhere with it, For 14 years Michael served as a social because I didn’t want worker for AMCHA, which today is the to teach.” He ultimately largest provider of mental health and received a master of social support services for Holocaust survi- social work degree vors in Israel. “I would go into the homes from the University of of elderly survivors and gain their trust, Maryland. and do some light home repairs,” he said. “As a teenager I was in He was part of a network of 18-20 part- B’nei Akiva, and that time therapists, many of whom had their is probably where own clinics. “After a fall from a ladder, I had the focus on Israel to quit home repairs.” started,” Michael said. Michael’s social work and technical His first visit to Israel background led to his video recording of was in 1961. He made testimony, inspired by producer Steven aliyah in 1970, part of a Spielberg’s 1994 Survivors of Shoah Visual group that established History project. “The director of AMCHA a community in the at the time had a video camera, and I Judean hills. He lived taped testimony from more than several there for eight years dozen survivors. I would just let them talk before returning to the and not interrupt the stream of memory,” U.S., then relocated he said. The tapes are housed in the orga- Michael Goldberg ’54 to Jerusalem in 1983. nization’s archive. Michael and his wife “One of the most harrowing stories I heard Nitza were married in 1988. “My mother had a strong soprano voice. was from a woman who at age 12 was She sang at Maimonides functions,” Michael’s photography got more serious part of a forced march from Transylvania Michael recalled, reaching back some 70 in the 1970s, after meeting the acclaimed to the east. She was the only survivor in years. “We lived a few blocks from the photojournalist David Rubinger. “He her family. Today she is the matriarch of an school (housed in a mansion at the corner was an amazing man, a photographer extended family of more than 70 souls.” of Washington Street and Columbia for Time-Life and was also picture editor Michael lives in Jerusalem, and his two Road) and Maimonides provided us with at The Jerusalem Post. I published a few sons and grandchildren are in Israel community.” photos in the Post – that’s how I got as well. His older son B.Z. Goldberg, a started.” Michael’s photographs were documentary filmmaker, produced and He added, “Rabbi (Isaiah) Wohlgemuth featured in Jewish publications in Israel prepared me for my bar mitzvah, which narrated the award-winning 2002 docu- and the U.S., and he also did some work mentary Promises. His younger son Dani was at Camp Yavneh in 1949.” Later for the Weizmann Institute. Michael worked at Yavneh as a camp has a recreation and healing retreat near driver and in maintenance. In the mid-1990s, “as the technology Jerusalem. changed, I came to the conclusion that Michael is a member of the second press photography was a young person’s Maimonides high school class – with April 2018 ~ Nissan - Iyar 5778 Page 3 of 9 1960-1969: “Nowhere Else Can You Have Such an Experience Except in Israel” The resume of Rabbi Asher Reichert ’67 When he lived in Jerusalem’s Har Nof met Rashie, three of their children, and is a smorgasbord of rich and rewarding section, Asher bused to the Kotel before his mother at the gate. They brought a experiences. But probably the most work every day. “Around that time, the stepladder. inspiring was affixing a mezuzah to one city was reopening a gate that had been “We put silicon around the edge of the of the gates in the Old City of Jerusalem. blocked during the Muslim period. It’s plexiglass, put the klaf in the tube, put the “Who is lucky enough to put up a mezuzah called Sha’ar Haburskaim – Tanners’ Gate.” tube in the slot, and said the brachah,” on the doorpost of a Jerusalem city gate? According to the Jerusalem Founda- Asher recounted. “Then This opportunity might happen once in tion, the gate is on the we all pressed the plexi- hundreds of years,” Asher exclaimed. southern wall, “the glass against the wall to Asher received an undergraduate major second oldest entrance fix the mezuzah in place. in Jewish studies, a master’s in Jewish into the Old City, a To make sure it would education, and semicha, all from Yeshiva pedestrian gate prob- be solid, we mixed the University schools. Next came a Vietnam- ably built in the 12th cement and put a little era assignment as an Army chaplain and century.” on the edges of the plexi- battalion race relations officer at Fort “I noticed after it had glass to make it strong. Hood, TX, with training in counseling, been open for two We were all very moved. clinical pastoral education and organiza- years that there was no Nowhere else can you tional psychology. “And I got a dirt bike so mezuzah there,” Asher have such an experience I could visit troops in the field.” related. He contacted Rashie and Rabbi Asher Reichert ’67 except in Israel.” (They He then taught for a year in Dallas, worked the Ministry of Religious actually got to do it again as a dorm director at Stern College for Affairs and “I asked if I could put it up.” a few weeks later, as the first mezuzah was another year, served as a shul rabbi in While waiting for the official answer, “I damaged, apparently by vandals.) Portland, Maine, then moved back to started learning the halachot of mezuzah The Reicherts live in Beit Shemesh, along- Boston, where he worked as a life insur- with my family so we could properly side his mother. There are five generations ance agent, financial advisor, mashgiach, appreciate this mitzvah if we got to do it.” of their family in Israel, as Asher’s daughter and nursing home chaplain. “I learned that minhag Yerushalayim is Nechama Vazana ’93 and her husband Asher, his wife Rashie, and their five to put them up vertically. I learned the David have two grandchildren. children made aliyah in 1993. “I always halachah is that a mezuzah must be put “I learned from the Rav that the mitzvah wanted to move to Israel, and the atmo- up on the top third of the doorway. But of limud Torah requires you to do the sphere in Maimonides School had long there is an exception for a city gate. There best you can each day,” Asher reflected. been supportive,” he said. “When my it is put up at shoulder height. Also the “I enjoyed being able to learn as much in-laws passed away, we felt there was mezuzah must be in the first handbreadth as I did and be involved in mitzvot all day no reason to stay in America. My parents of the entrance. I was also told that I had when I was the rabbi of a shul, but my independently had decided to move to to put it in the cracks of the stones to not choices leading us to Israel didn’t enable Israel around the same time.” damage the walls.” me to devote myself to learning as much In Israel “I took stock of my abilities and, Waiting for the bureaucratic process to as I would have liked.

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