Forward

Designing Women
February 17, 2010
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TWEBREW SCHOOL AND JEWISH TWEETS TOUTED BY NATIONAL JEWISH OUTREACH PROGRAM

Giving the National Jewish Outreach Program’s February 2 dinner at the New York Hilton a jump-start, Sam Domb — a Holocaust survivor, hotel owner and longtime NJOP benefactor — declared: “I don’t intend to speak. I just brought a $100,000 check,” which he handed to NJOP founder and director Rabbi Ephraim Buchwald, then walked off the stage! Among NJOP’s many successful campaigns to promote the Sabbath, Buchwald cited “Shabbat Across America/Canada,” “The Great American Smokeout: Give Your Lungs a Religious Experience…This Shabbat, Light Candles Not Cigarettes,” and the conversion of Lisa Scharf (nee Lisa Cabrera, a TV reporter for NBC, CBS and UPN, and a Fox News anchor). She and her husband, real estate innovator Joseph Scharf, were the evening’s honorees.

It was noted that the Scharfs’ wedding in Jerusalem was front-page news in Israel. (Lisa Scharf credited NJOP’s Hebrew Reading Alphabet Charts as an invaluable aid in learning Hebrew.) The dinner also honored Chaya Saity and her late husband, David Saity, as “devoted supporters of Israel and the Jewish community. The Saitys owned the Native American jewelry boutiques on Park Avenue and in the Trump Tower.

Buchwald lamented: “There was a time when most American Jews, young and old, had seen candles lit in their homes, were familiar with [a local] kosher butcher or kosher delicatessen, even if their families didn’t observe kashrut at home… went to Hebrew school and, though for many it was a negative experience, it was still a Jewish experience. Today we are facing a generation of Jews who are three, four and five generations removed from tradition. They may know that pork is forbidden in Jewish tradition, but [they] don’t know beans about Judaism…. More than 300,000 North American Jews have learned to read Hebrew,” declared Buchwald, who touted NJOP’s most recent innovative programming: “Jewish Treats,” which is a daily e-mail and blog; “Jewish Tweets,” NJOP’s Twitter presence, and Twebrew School, online courses..