Metro Briefs September 11
Chabad House on Campus will hold its 26th anniversary celebration on Sunday, Sept. 14 at 6:30 p.m. at the Eddy Theatre, Chatham University, 1 Woodland Road.
Bari Weiss, associate books editor at The Wall Street Journal, will speak.
Reservations can be made at chabadpgh.org.
Parkway Jewish Center
A reception will follow the service. All are welcome; there is no charge.
More information and directions are at parkwayjewishcenter.org.
The fourth annual Apple and Honey Festival will be held Sunday, Sept. 14, from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Anderson Playground in Schenley Park.
This free family-friendly event is open to all ages and will include apple sack races, an apple tasting with Giant Eagle experts, beeswax candle making, honey tasting, snacks, crafts and more. Giant Eagle will provide the apples.
Contact Meryl Franzos at 412-992-5204 or mfranzos@jfedpgh.org for more information.
Community leader Louis B. Plung will be honored with the Emanuel Spector Memorial Award and Daniel J. Kraut will receive the Doris and Leonard H. Rudolph Jewish Communal Professional Award when the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh holds its annual meeting on Wednesday, Sept. 17, at 7 p.m. at the Jewish Community Center in Squirrel Hill.
With its theme “A Passion for Community,” the event will highlight the passion brought to building the community by leaders and volunteers, agencies, organizations and synagogues. The theme will be highlighted in two videos portraying community members and a third video devoted to the community’s Volunteers of the Year, selected by their respective agencies, organizations and synagogues.
The Emanuel Spector Memorial Award, the most prestigious community leadership award given by the Federation, will recognize Louis B. Plung for years of service to the Federation and other agencies and organizations.
Immediate past chair of the Federation board, Plung remains involved with Federation as chair of the Jewish Community Foundation and its grant-making committee, a member of the Federation’s executive committee and chair of the compensation committee and the Riverview task force. He also serves on the Agency for Jewish Learning task force.
A founder of the Centennial Fund for a Jewish Future, he is a past recipient of the William & Olga Stark Young Leadership Award and the Gerald S. Ostrow Volunteer of the Year Award. He was a participant in the Wexner Heritage Program.
The Doris and Leonard H. Rudolph Jewish Communal Professional Award will be presented to Daniel J. Kraut, chief executive officer of Hillel Academy of Pittsburgh since 2008 and the first CEO in the school’s more than 60-year history.
Under Kraut’s leadership at Hillel, the school created and implemented a new mission statement and strategic plan, underwent a major restructuring of the school leadership and grew enrollment from 164 to 320 students. He continues to lead a major fundraising initiative, which has enabled the school to construct the Campus for the Jewish Future, including a Keystone Stars 4-rated Isadore Joshowitz Early Childhood Center, a new library and girl’s high school and new enlarged elementary classrooms, in order to implement Hillel’s new co-curricular co-teacher classroom model.
A dessert reception will follow the program. Couvert is $7 per person by mail or at the door, $5 with advance registration at jfedpgh.org or by calling 412-992-5251.
The program is underwritten by a grant from the Lillian and Dr. Henry J. Goldstein Annual Meeting Endowment Fund of the Federation’s Jewish Community Foundation.
Congregation Dor Hadash invites the community to worship with them during the High Holidays; no tickets or advance registration is required.
Highlights this year include a new service for children ages 2 to 6 at 10:30 a.m. on Rosh Hashanah Day 1 and, on Day 2, a lively and engaging Torah study focused on the Akedah, the story of the binding of Isaac.
Visit the calendar at dorhadash.net for a complete listing or contact admin@dorhadash.net or 412-422-5158 with any questions. All services will take place at 5898 Wilkins Ave. in Squirrel Hill.
The Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh, Temple Sinai and Tree of Life*Or L’Simcha have joined together to provide communitywide High Holiday programs for children up to age 6 and their families in the JCC’s Levinson Hall in the Irene Kaufmann Building, 5738 Forbes Ave., Squirrel Hill.
The services are free, structured to an audience with young children, and open to the community. Rabbi Donni Aaron, JCC Jewish educator; Rabbi Ron Symons, Temple Sinai director of Lifelong Learning and Tikkun Olam Center for Jewish Social Justice; and Mickie Diamond of Tree of Life*Or L’Simcha will be leading the programs.
The programs will include music, storytelling, prayer, Torah-themed lessons and an appearance by Sheli the Puppet. Theme-based activity centers will be available for younger children.
The Rosh Hashanah program will be held from 11:15 a.m. to noon on Thursday, Sept. 25.
Yom Kippur service will be held from 11 to 11:45 a.m. on Saturday, Oct. 4.
Contact Rabbi Donni Aaron, 412-339-5400, or daaron@jccpgh.org for more information.
The Jewish Healthcare Foundation has received a $75,000 Mobilization for Health: National Prevention Partnership Award from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health to support its HPV Vaccination Initiative. The Initiative brings together myriad individuals and organizations across the region in an effort to increase the rate of HPV vaccination, which remains low even as the rate of HPV-associated cancers increases.
JHF kicked off the HPV Vaccination Initiative in February, convening an advisory committee to focus on increasing vaccination rates among pre-teens, teens and young adults in the greater Pittsburgh area; data measurement and policy change.
About 20 million people in the United States are infected with HPV. Another 6.2 million are infected each year. Certain types of HPV cause approximately 91 percent of all cervical cancer cases, as well as a variety of other types of cancer.
There are, however, approved vaccines that prevent the most common types of HPV infections that cause these cancers and warts, yet the rate of vaccination is very low.
“Our goal,” said JHF president and CEO Karen Wolk Feinstein, “is to help get our community to the CDC’s national goal of an 80 percent HPV vaccination rate.”
“We’re building partnerships and collaborating with individuals and organizations representing all community populations because we want to ensure that we improve the HPV vaccination rates for pre-teens, teens, and young adults throughout the Greater Pittsburgh area — across all social, economic, race, and ethnic boundaries,” she said.
Studies have shown that the HPV vaccine is very safe. It has been administered in the U.S. and around the world since 2006. The vaccination is recommended for all girls and boys between ages 11 and 12. Teens and young adults ages 13 to 26 who were not vaccinated when they were younger should also get the vaccine.
In addition to the NPPA grant, JHF has received a $25,000 grant from the Grable Foundation, a $10,000 grant from the Eye & Ear Foundation of Pittsburgh and a $150,000 grant from the JHF board of trustees.
For more information on HPV and the HPV Vaccination Initiative, visit jhf.org/what-we-do/projects-programs/?15.
“More Than Just Learning” hosts Shirley and Morris Shratter, will broadcast a repeat of their interview Rabbi Aaron Bisno about his trip to Israel in 2006. The program airs every Tuesday in Sept. at 8 p.m. on Comcast Channel 21 and Verizon 47 in Pittsburgh.
Classroom Without Borders invites the community to “Secret Guests: Jewish Songs from a City of Poets” with the famous Jewish actress and Israeli singer Ruth Levin in the Bellfield Auditorium, Bellfield Hall, South Bellfield Avenue on Sept. 14 from 2:30 to 4 p.m.
Levin’s recital is accompanied by the classical guitar player Alexei Belousov of Russia and Israel. The concert will be devoted to Yiddish art and folk songs written by Jewish poets from Eastern Europe. The concert is free of charge and open to the public. There will be a reception following the concert.
For more information about the concert and a second event, a round-table discussion with Ruth Levin at the University of Pittsburgh, see german.pitt.edu.
Squirrel Hill AARP Chapter 3354 will hold its Wednesday, Sept. 17 meeting at New Light Synagogue, located at 1700 Beechwood Blvd. in Squirrel Hill, at 1 p.m.
Following the business meeting, a representative from the Pittsburgh Zoo will speak. The public is invited, and refreshments will be served.
The Greater Pittsburgh Interfaith Coalition, a new grassroots organization seeking to convene the region’s diverse faith communities, will host Dr. Lucinda Mosher as guest speaker at its launch event on Sunday, Sept. 14 at 2 p.m.
Mosher, director of the interfaith chaplaincy program at Hartford Seminary, will speak on “Building Interfaith Neighborhoods” at St. Mary of the Mount’s Sullivan Hall at 115 Bingham Street on Mount Washington. Admission is free, and open to all ages.
Mosher, a moral theologian in the Anglican tradition, is the author of Faith in the Neighborhood, a book series on America’s religious diversity. She also serves as the assistant academic director of the Building Bridges Seminar, an international Christian-Muslim dialogue of scholars founded in 2002 by the Archbishop of Canterbury.
This event is made possible through the financial support of Christian Associates of Southwest Pennsylvania, the Syed Farooq Husseini Islamic Interfaith Network and the Pittsburgh Area Jewish Committee.
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