A trellis creates a living frame around a garden fountain.

A climbing frame looks elegant with or without plants.

If you think of your garden as a canvas, then a custom designed trellis is like a living sculpture. Aesthetically combining ornamental metal work and climbing plants, a custom trellis can be an expression of both your green thumb and your artistic taste. It can be a simple flat panel or a three-dimensional sculpture that looks terrific bare or with vines.
A trellis can add a strong focal point to a large expanse of wall. It can serve as a wall for an arbor or a post for a ramada. Stand-alone trellises are useful for dividing garden “rooms” or screening unsightly areas. A trellis can also be used to create a living frame around another element, such as a fountain or garden art.
In choosing a trellis, remember that the design should complement the architecture of your home, as well as existing elements in the garden. Take into account its location and the plants it will support. If it will be covered by a climbing plant that remains lush year-round, like star jasmine or tangerine crossvine, then a very simple design is best. In this case, you can save money by using a metal grid like the type used for laying cement. This grid can be enhanced by framing it with thicker poles or an unconventional shape.

A decorative trellis screens an air conditioning unit.

If you want the trellis for delicate specimens, such as snapdragon vine, or summer vines like queen’s wreath, consider a decorative design that provides sculptural beauty as well as plant support. Curved supports can be used to create a more organic feeling than standard lattice work. Another innovative touch is to create a window-like opening at the top of a stand-alone trellis by leaving space between the uppermost bar and the top frame. This creates visibility between garden “rooms.”
The ideal metal trellis for Southwestern gardens is constructed of steel with a rusted finish. Steel is highly durable, easy to maintain and never needs painting. Steel provides a strong structure that will be able to support the weight of a climbing plant as it matures. This is especially important for heavy, woody climbers such as grapevines. The rich earth tones of a rusted finish beautifully complement a garden setting. Glass, other metals, ceramics and wood can be used as accents.
Custom trellises are an excellent investment for your yard. Offering both year-round beauty and durability, they add a unique, personalized dimension to your garden.

Tidi Ozeri is an Israeli metal artist now living in Tucson. He owns Ozeri Metal Designs.  ozerimetaldesigns.com
Reprinted with permission from Northern Pima County Women’s Journal.

Wood smoke contains hundreds of chemical compounds and some of them can harm people with heart or respiratory disease, babies, young children and pregnant women.

Pollutants in wood smoke can cause the eyes, nose and throat to burn with irritation, and cause headache and nausea in some people.

Walking in neighborhoods where fireplace smoke is heavy can cause irregular heart beat, chest pain and shortness of breath in susceptible people. The smoke can make asthma symptoms worse and cause higher rates of lung inflammation and pneumonia in young children .

Also, unless chimneys are cleaned seasonally, creosote, a combustible byproduct of wood burning, can lodge in the chimney and spark a fire.

Fireplaces aren’t efficient home heaters. Most homes aren’t perfectly insulated, so cold air seeps in under doors and through cracks, while hot air escapes up the chimney.

If flues are not properly installed and maintained, particles released during wood burning can escape into the home. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says several of the pollutants emitted by wood burning have demonstrated cancer-causing properties similar to cigarette smoke.

To reduce your risk of harm from using a wood-burning fireplace, follow these tips:

• Burn hardwoods like oak, mesquite and pecan instead of soft woods like cedar, fir or pine. The wood should be split and dried for at least six months.

• Use smaller pieces of wood. They burn more efficiently and are a better source of heat.

• Allow enough room inside the fireplace for air to circulate freely around the wood.

• Never burn plastics, painted wood, charcoal, printed pages in a fireplace. They will release toxic materials into the air.

• Check your chimney from the outside. If you see smoke, your fire is not burning hot enough. Give the fire more air, and then check again.

• Check before you light a fire to see if local air pollution levels are elevated. If they are, avoid using the fireplacee. Get pollution information at airinfonow.org or call Pima County’s Department of Environmental Quality air pollution hotline at (520) 882-4AIR or (520) 882-4247.

• Remember … If you can smell smoke, you are breathing smoke!

(L-R) Dr. Scott Sherman, Dr. Elihu Boroson and his wife, Sarah, with Boroson’s ‘Excalibur’ sculpture, which he donated to the University of Arizona College of Medicine in honor of Sherman, a Parkinson’s researcher. (Photo courtesy AHSC Biomedical Communications)

For some people it takes a lifetime to find their passion. Dr. Elihu Boroson, a veterinarian for 23 years, found his when he became a full-time artist in 1980. He and his wife, Sarah, a librarian, lived in Stamford, Conn. She became the breadwinner. “When I stopped working I became an artist and a chef,” quips Elihu. “When the breadwinner comes home, dinner has to be ready.”

Since then, Boroson has created sculptures, ceramics, paintings and even musical instruments, including a harpsichord and five guitars — many of which adorn the couple’s 1,400-square-foot home in Marana’s Sunflower community. Before the Borosons moved from Pomona, N.Y. to Tucson in 1997, to be near one of their four children, they sold more than half of Elihu’s artwork.

Two years later, Elihu was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Unable to handle heavy tools, he still paints. “Since having Parkinson’s I’ve ended up doing what I could do, not what I wanted to do,” Elihu, now 83, told the AJP at the couple’s home last month. From his wheelchair, he proudly led a tour of years of his artwork.

“Combining materials like wood and steel is one of my passions, materials that wouldn’t necessarily be put together,” says Elihu, noting that it would take him about a month to plan a large sculpture and another month to create it.

One of these pieces, “Excalibur” — a sculpture depicting the legendary sword in the stone — was installed and dedicated on Nov. 18 at the University of Arizona’s College of Medicine, in the lobby of the medical research building. The Borosons donated the sculpture, carved from a single piece of white marble that was quarried in Lee, Mass., in honor of Dr. Scott Sherman, a Parkinson’s researcher at the university.

The text on the plaque accompanying the sculpture refers to Sherman’s “efforts to increase the quality of life for Parkinson’s patients, and his ongoing work to understand the disease and find a cure.”

Sherman, who has been Elihu’s physician for the past decade, has also toured the Borosons’ home/personal art museum. Patients with Parkinson’s “are a very creative group of people,” says Sherman, also a UA associate professor of neurology. “It’s been fun over the years for them to share their art and music with me.”

Elihu has received “standard treatment with medication” for his Parkinson’s, says Sherman, adding that “Parkinson’s doesn’t go away. Artistic pursuits and exercise have a definite positive impact, whether it’s visual arts, writing or poetry.”

Sherman and his research team at the UA Parkinson’s Research Laboratory conduct pharmaceutical-based trials for patients just diagnosed with the illness, whom, he says, “we hope will have a slow progression.” Researchers “also do pre-clinical research. We just hired a stem cell specialist to look at how to treat Parkinson’s by taking stem cells from patients and turning them into brain cells.

“The public doesn’t realize,” explains Sherman, “that one of the difficulties studying Parkinson’s is we don’t have access to brain cells directly because only humans get [the disease]. The bottom line is we have to study human cells.”

Another clinical study at the UA research laboratory involves molecules that are “somewhat related to caffeine,” says Sherman. “People who drink a lot of coffee, or smoke cigarettes, have an inverse relationship to getting Parkinson’s. I’m not advocating that people with or without Parkinson’s drink more coffee or smoke cigarettes.”

There are other factors involved “in whether people get Parkinson’s or not,”

he affirms. “My personal impression is that

patients I have with Parkinson’s are

disproportionately professional people.”

Making the most of a disability seems key to the Borosons’ lives. Some people who were previously too busy with careers who now have disabilities have found opportunities to express themselves artistically, says Sarah, adding that her husband “always had projects and lots of drive. He was always curious and wanted to learn new [ways of doing] art.

“He’s not as focused as he used to be,” she concedes. Still, she says, “We’re gadabouts,” staying busy dining out a lot with friends, going to the theater, movies and concerts, especially chamber music. “It’s not good for people with Parkinson’s to stay at home,” says Sarah. “We take classes at Pima Community College and at the UA Humanities Seminars Program. Socializing keeps the brain active and is very good for people with Parkinson’s,” says Sarah, 81, who’s a part-time librarian at Pima Community College, and has started a Parkinson’s support group for members of the Sunflower community.

“I’ve gotten very interested in gardening,” says Elihu, with Sarah adding, “He goes to the gym daily, which stimulates the growth of brain cells.”

And, there’s no doubt that continuing his artwork still gives Elihu satisfaction. Sitting down at the table for some tea, he points out the uranium glaze he used on the teapot. Smiling, Elihu asks, “Who knew you could make something so beautiful out of something so terrible?”

For more information about monthly tours of the UA Parkinson’s Research Laboratory, call 626-2319 or visit http://medicine.arizona.edu/news/ua-college-medicine%E2%80%99s-parkinson%E2%80%99s-research-lab-holds-monthly-tours. For individual home tours of Elihu Boroson’s artwork, call 579-6852.

— Babylonian Talmud Tractate Sanhedrin 37a

Tucsonan Bryan Jaret-Schachter relaxes during his second donation of stem cells for a recipient identified by the Gift of Life Bone Marrow Foundation. Blood from his right arm is fed through a machine to separate out the blood-forming cells, then returned to him via his left arm.

Bryan Jaret-Schachter, a 27-year-old financial analyst in Tucson, picked up the phone at work early one morning in September 2010 and was stunned by what he heard. The caller, a representative from the Gift of Life Bone Marrow Foundation (giftoflife.org), told him that he was a preliminary match for a stem cell donation. The recipient would be a 39-year-old male with Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

The news of a match might surprise anyone, but for Jaret-Schachter it was especially significant. His good friend and former roommate, Richard Sims, had died of complications from Hodgkin’s lymphoma earlier that year. When Jaret-Schachter found out the match was for somebody with Hodgkin’s, he says, “I almost fell out of my chair!” Jaret-Schachter would later go on to donate stem cells not once, but twice, for this particular recipient.

The story behind the match, however, goes back to 2009, when Jaret-Schachter was on a Birthright Israel trip (a free educational, first-time trip to Israel for Jewish young adults ages 18 to 26). There, he registered with a bone marrow database after hearing a presentation by the Gift of Life Bone Marrow Foundation, an organization that is especially interested in registering persons of Jewish descent.

“Everyone in our group, 41 in total, agreed to register, participating by getting their cheek swabbed,” he recounts. Even though he knew his friend Sims was not waiting for a bone marrow or stem cell transplant, it still seemed to him like an important thing to do. However, Jaret-Schachter admits, “I didn’t expect to hear from them.”

The day Jaret-Schachter returned to Tucson from Israel, he found out that Sims was in the hospital and not doing well. He rushed to the hospital and arrived in time to say goodbye. Sims passed away later that evening. The loss of his friend weighed heavily on Jaret-Schachter, especially in the days following the funeral. “Not many days would go by where I didn’t think about Rich, and how unfair it was for him to suffer through this ordeal,” he reflected in a blog he posted later for the Gift of Life Registry.

The phone call from Gift of Life, coming eight months after Sims’ death, seemed more than mere coincidence. The connection between his friend, his trip to Israel and the chance to save a life was not lost on him. “I’m not an extremely religious person,” he reflects, but “it was hard to deny the irony of the whole situation.” Jaret-Schachter felt this was a unique opportunity to honor the life of his friend, and an opportunity to affirm his ties to the Jewish community.

The stem cell donation, though simpler than a bone marrow donation, would end up requiring an extensive commitment of time and travel from Jaret-Schachter. Gift of Life flew him to New York City in September 2010 for a physical at the facility where the donation would take place. A month later, after five consecutive days of injections to stimulate stem cell growth, Jaret-Schachter traveled back to New York for the procedure, which took about seven hours. The main discomfort, says Jaret-Schachter, was being relatively immobile for that length of time. Fortunately, he’d brought his iPad with him to help pass the time.

Approximately six months after the first stem cell donation, Jaret-Schachter checked in with Gift of Life to inquire if it was safe for him to participate in a blood drive at work. To his surprise, Gift of Life called him back the next day to say the recipient of his original donation needed a follow-up donation. In March and April of 2011, Jaret-Schachter flew to New York twice more to complete the second donation. This time, he brought his work laptop to pass the time.

Jaret-Schachter is especially happy to have been able to help someone through the Gift of Life registry. “Their focus,” he explains, “is to get Jewish people involved, but anyone can donate. So many bloodlines were lost in the Holocaust. If you are Jewish and diagnosed, you are much less likely to find a match.” Last June, Jaret-Schachter flew on behalf of Gift of Life to a Jewish sleep-away camp in Denver, where he spoke to more than 50 counselors, alongside a former camper who had been diagnosed with leukemia. The majority of the counselors joined the registry.

Although Jaret-Schachter is curious about the man who received his stem cells, the donation will remain anonymous on both ends until his recipient passes the one-year mark since his last donation. Jaret-Schachter hopes to meet his recipient at the annual meeting of the Gift of Life Bone Marrow Foundation this spring.

After four trips to New York in a span of six months, Jaret-Schachter has no qualms about donating his time and blood. What would he say to people who are reluctant to donate? “You’re giving somebody the chance to live who otherwise wouldn’t be able to,” says Jaret-Schachter. “It’s hard to overcome fears, but it is a tremendous opportunity … I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”

Maria Ma-Tay Russakoff is a freelance writer living in Tucson with her husband and two sons.

I dislike all stereotypes whether based on gender or religion so I prefer to ignore the bad jokes (Boy to mother: “I got the part of the Jewish father in the school play.” Mother to boy: “Too bad. Maybe next year you’ll get a speaking part.”) and concentrate on the importance of Jewish fathers to their children.

I’ll start with my own father and grandfather, both secular Jews. My father encouraged me, opened horizons for me, and always had high expectations for my future. He would say, for example, the day after my sixth birthday, “You’re a big girl now, almost seven years old! Of course you can do it!” Valuable words, especially for a girl growing up when there were few female role models in professions or careers. He imparted his love of science, his curiosity about the world and the cosmos, his excitement about the future of technology. He taught me how to use a slide rule, play chess and find the constellations in the sky. When I started college he suggested I offer to report on college news for a Boston newspaper. The Globe hired me and paid a dollar an inch for the copy they printed, which gave me confidence in my writing.

My grandfather was an educated man who revered learning. I still have books he inscribed to me. I can tell from the dates that they were “stretch” books given to me before I was ready but that was another encouraging message: reach high.

A friend who is the daughter of a restless mother had a father and three stepfathers, two of whom were Jewish. One of these was her favorite. Why? Because he valued education. He was a kind man from a cultured family and not only assumed responsibility for my friend, but generously passed on his love of art and literature. He was a loving, encouraging mentor.

Fathers are critically important to their children. A father provides half of the genetic makeup of the child, is the primary support person for the mother during her pregnancy and the birth, and supports the mother as she enters her new parenting role. He plays a crucial role in the socialization of his children, daughters as well as sons, because there are gender differences in how men and women parent and every child needs both at every stage of development. And he is half of the family team that passes on values to the children, which develops their character and helps determine what kind of person they will become.

Although levels of observance vary, in my experience Jewish families in America hold similar values stressing the importance of education, family, tradition, hard work and helping others.

All families today struggle to parent in our rapidly changing world. As more women entered the work force a new and healthy phenomenon emerged: participatory fatherhood. The number of Dick and Jane families (a father who went off to work and a mother who stayed at home in her apron) has markedly dwindled.

More recently, dads are doing more than helping mom care for the children. Fathers are opting to stay at home with the children. New acronyms reflect this: WAHD (work-at-home dad) and SAHD (stay-at-home dad). One survey of over 350 fathers reported reasons fathers stay at home: they did not want to use child care, the wife made more money or wanted to work more or the father had the greater desire to stay at home. Fathers as well as mothers now report work-family conflict.

As I see it, the biggest problem for parents today is that they are losing control over what their children are exposed to. The “castle” that was once our home has been invaded by multiple screens that reflect values we do not share and do not want our children to see or hear.

My special advice for Jewish fathers?

• Stand united with your wife against what has been called the “toxic culture” and limit screen time.

• Be an encouraging father and remember to express the high expectations you hold for your children.

• Share your passions and interests. Teach your children what you know how to do and what you love to do while also observing them to figure out what they are good at and interested in.

• Try to spend some time alone with each child every day. This is special time for both the father and child.

• Be a role model to your sons and spend time with your daughters. Girls need their fathers and children of both genders must learn how to deal with adults of both genders. Teach both your son and daughter how to use a hammer and nails.

• Help around the house. Do chores together so your children learn the value of cooperation.

• Share stories with your children about your life growing up and your family.

• Enjoy your children!

Dr. Marilyn Heins is a pediatrician, parent, grandparent and the founder of ParentKidsRight.com. E-mail her at info@ParentKidsRight.com for a private answer to your parenting questions.

Kayla Tilicki at her Bat Mitzvah with her grandparents Joe and Sandra Bolze

Their daughter, Tucsonan Niki Tilicki, is in a similarly successful interfaith marriage. But Bolze is quick to point out that she and Joe do not promote interfaith marriage.

“It takes a lot of giving and forgiving to have a good marriage no matter what your faith is, and if you have an interfaith marriage you really have to be extremely giving,” says Bolze. Snowbirds from Sayville, N.Y., she and Joe arrived in Tucson early this year to attend the Bat Mitzvah of their granddaughter, Kayla Tilicki, on Nov. 19.

“I have been very, very lucky because my in-laws and my parents were both very supportive of our marriage,” says Bolze, the daughter of a kosher butcher.

“Niki is also very fortunate,” says Bolze, who was thrilled at how many of her son-in-law’s relatives came from far and wide to Tucson for Kayla’s Bat Mitzvah.

As it was a second marriage for both her and Joe, says Bolze, deciding how to raise their children was simple. “Joey had three children and I had one. Our children were 3, 4, 5 and 6,” and all had already started going to their respective Catholic and Jewish Sunday schools. “So we just told our children that they would be the religion of their mother,” she says, adding that Joe agreed if they had any more children together, they’d be Jewish. “Niki and Danny are our children, and they’re both raised Jewish,” she adds.

Joe was so eager to make her feel comfortable when she moved into his home, she says, that on their first married Shabbat he set up the Shabbat candles for her — a courtesy he’s repeated every week now for more than four decades. “Every Friday night I know how much he loves me,” she says.

While a two-faith household can be complicated, it is worse, says Bolze, that so many interfaith couples choose to “do nothing. It is so sad, to me, not to give your children a faith. It’s so easy to do everything if you do it well, if you’re giving. Joey and I always feel that we should come before God as a couple.” But she acknowledges that they are unusual — and admits that if something during a church service makes her uncomfortable as a Jew, “I just plan my grocery list.”

For Niki Tilicki, growing up with Jewish and Catholic siblings and parents “was the only world I knew, so I didn’t know there was anything different. And it was awesome,” she says, getting to celebrate Chanukah and Christmas, Passover and Easter.

As for her own marriage, she says she is “without a doubt a product of my environment.” Before she and Phil Tilicki were married, they went to pre-marital counseling with both a priest and a rabbi, who warned that raising kids in more than one religion might not work, but that one parent always suffered “if they didn’t get their religion.”

“It was the priest, Father Phil — we still send him a card every year at the holidays — who said, ‘you [each] identify with your religion, why don’t you raise your girls Jewish and your boys Catholic,’” Tilicki explains. They agreed, she said, knowing that they could end up having two boys or two girls or no children at all.

Their first child, Easton, was a boy, and Tilicki says when he was baptized it was hard for her, “realizing how much I was letting go of for my love for my husband. And when we named our daughter I’m sure that was hard for him,” she says. The naming ceremony for Kayla took place in her grandmother’s Jewish retirement home, with pictures of old, bearded rabbis on the walls. “My son was almost two and he’s screaming, ‘Santa, Santa,’ and my husband’s trying to hush him,” she remembers, laughing.

Although she and Phil are not as dedicated about attending religious services as her parents, she says, they go to church or synagogue, separately, at least two times a month. “I attend church with my husband when he asks me to, and [he attends] temple with me when I ask him to,” she says.

Kayla’s Bat Mitzvah, says Niki, “was perfect. People cried during her ceremony and laughed during her ceremony. And we really made sure everything was explained” for the non-Jewish attendees.

The ceremony and party also showcased several family traditions, including handing out chocolate bars to the kids, something Bolze’s Uncle Benny had done over the years at family B’nai Mitzvah, “because learning the Torah is supposed to be sweet and delicious,” says Bolze. The candy bar wrappers at Kayla’s event were printed with an explanation of the tradition.

In her Bat Mitzvah speech, Kayla drew attention to an empty chair on the bima behind her, “adorned with a tallit symbolic of my ancestors who did not have this opportunity that I have today because they were women” — a reference to Bolze’s mother and aunts, who were not allowed to have Bat Mitzvah ceremonies. Kayla told the congregants she hoped the empty chair would help them remember to “look beyond the rules.”

Bolze herself celebrated a belated Bat Mitzvah at age 50, while Tilicki, now 42, had a Friday night ceremony 30 years ago where she was not allowed to read from the Torah — a slight she remedied by reading from the Torah on the Friday night before her wedding.

At Kayla’s Bat Mitzvah party, as at several previous family parties, instead of flowers for centerpieces they used canned goods, which were later donated to the food bank at Interfaith Community Services, where Bolze and her husband volunteer. Bolze notes that ICS is supported both by Congregation Or Chadash, the family’s Tucson congregation, and St. Mark Catholic Church, where Joe is a parish member.

In her speech, Kayla thanked her “Bubbye and Poppy for taking me to Friday night services every week when you’re in Arizona. I love going with you!”

She also thanked her father “for supporting me in my faith from the day I was born,” adding, “It means everything to me that you are here today!”

A postscript to the story: Kayla’s sister Mariah, Phil’s daughter from before he met Niki, who was raised Catholic by her mother, became engaged on Dec. 16 — to a Jewish man.

And one more twist.

When the Jewish choir performed at the White House Chanukah party earlier this month, it chose to serenade the commander in chief with a song of peace.

“We were invited there for the party, a big honor,” said Cadet Evan Szablowski, 20, the choir’s non-Jewish conductor, a junior from Bakersfield, Calif.

After performing  for arriving guests such holiday favorites as “Maoz Tzur,” ‘Who Can Retell” and “Oh Chanukah,” the 34 singing cadets — a group of men and women — were directed to file quickly into the Diplomatic Reception Room for a photo with President Obama and the first lady.

“Then the president came in,” Szablowski said, “and in a big booming voice welcomed us. He and Michelle shook our hands. The president looked into each of our eyes.”

Moments after the photo was taken, “totally out of nowhere, [the president] asked if we can perform,” recalled Szablowski, who spoke to JTA shortly after completing his final in “Mathematics and Networks for Counter Insurgency.”

From its repertoire of Jewish songs, the chorus quickly decided to perform one of the group’s favorites, “Lo Yisa Goy.”

But first, Szablowski recounted, the group explained that the song is based on the words of the prophet Isaiah, which translated from Hebrew includes the famous passage, “Nation shall not take up sword against nation; they shall never again know war.”

“It’s probably the coolest thing I have ever done at the academy. We were giddy,” Szablowski said, adding that about halfway through the performance it hit him — “a Jewish choir was performing for the president of the United States.”

It was a thrilling experience for the cadets, said Susan Schwartz, the “officer in charge,” or faculty adviser, of the chorus and the campus Hillel who accompanied the group on the trip.

“They met their commander in chief,” Schwartz said. “Afterwards they were bouncing off the walls.”

“We received a warm reception,” said Allyson Hauptman, an alto in the chorus who is a sophomore double majoring in international law and IT systems. Hauptman, who attended Hebrew school and had a Bat Mitzvah in Philadelphia, felt that seeing such a high level of support of Jewish culture in public was “heartwarming.”

President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama listening to a performance by the West Point Jewish Chapel Cadet Choir in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House, Dec. 8, 2011. (Pete Souza/Official White House Photo)

According to Schwartz, the West Point Jewish Chapel Choir has been in existence for more than 60 years, with the most recent White House performance coming six years ago during the presidency of George W. Bush.

At the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in New York, 60 to 70 cadets identify as Jewish in a total population of 4,500, according to Schwartz.

Part of the group’s mission, the chorus and Hillel adviser said, is to make people aware that there is Jewish life at the school charged with educating the future leaders of the U.S. Army.

In the last year the group has performed at synagogues in Palm Beach, Fla., and Rockville Centre, N.Y., and the Hillel at Yale, as well as at the dedication of the Arlington National Cemetery’s Jewish Chaplains Memorial.

Especially for older Jews who have served in the armed forces, Schwartz has found that the group serves as a point of connection.

The Jewish Chapel Choir is one of several singing groups at West Point, including Protestant, Catholic and gospel, that serve as a form of outreach, showcasing the cadets’ and the institution’s religious diversity.

The choir itself is a diverse group, with Szablowski and other non-Jewish cadets taking part.

“All of these cadets are going to be officers, and they need to become aware of other cadets’ needs,” said Schwartz, who is Jewish and grew up in North Miami, Fla. “There is an expectation that they will respect our traditions.”

“I have learned more about Jewish culture than the beautiful songs,” said Szablowski, who only a few years earlier was the drum major at his high school in a region of California not known for having a large Jewish population. At West Point he sees his fellow choir members as “really just a group of friends.”

“If I have Jewish members in my platoon, I will be able to understand them more,” he said.

The non-Jewish members of the chorus “learn a little bit of Hebrew and Jewish culture through the songs,” Hauptman said.

According to Schwartz, some of the Jewish members, who were more “secular” in their Jewish identification when they first come to West Point, learn a bit, too.

“They find a Jewish home at West Point,” she said.

In addition to the private concert, Obama received a few early Chanukah gifts from the chorus.

The Jewish chaplain at West Point, Rabbi Maj. Shmuel Felzenberg, presented the first family with West Point Jewish Chapel coins.

Additionally the cadets “wanted me to give him one of our kipahs,” said Schwartz, speaking of the gray head covering imprinted with the chorus’ name. The group had the kipah made from the same fabric used for the full dress uniforms they were wearing the day of the party.

According to Schwartz, the president said, “I have several yarmulkes, but none like this one.”

(Edmon J. Rodman is a JTA columnist who writes on Jewish life from Los Angeles. Contact him at edmojace@gmail.com.)

Her sister Frima died in 1984 before they were able to reconnect, but thanks to Marlene’s son Robert, a Russian television program and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, Frima’s daughter Gulnora Jurajeva is due to arrive from her home in Uzbekistan in late December for a long-awaited visit.

“I don’t know how to describe my feelings,” Marlene, now 72 and living in Short Hills, N.J., told NJ Jewish News. “It’s wonderful, but it makes me so sad that my parents and my sisters aren’t here to share the joy with me.”

The saga began in Siberia in 1941 when Marlene, then Malka Lancman, was about 2 years old. Her family, who came from eastern Poland, was being sent by train from one forced labor camp to another.

At one of the stops, seeing his mother’s futile efforts to breast-feed her starving baby, 9-year-old Chaim went in search of scraps of food. When he didn’t come back and the train was about to leave, 16-year-old Frima went to look for him. The train left before either of them came back. Later that day the baby died.

“Can you imagine, losing three of your children in one day?” Marlene asked.

As little as she was, she remembers seeing the candle-lit shadow of a hammer rising and falling as her father made a coffin for the baby.

Her parents, with their five surviving daughters, did everything they could to trace Chaim and Frima. The search continued through the war years and after in the displaced persons’ camp, and then after the family came to the United States in 1948.

In recent years, Marlene’s son Robert, the youngest of her five children, made it his personal mission to track them down.

Robert, who lives in Union County, N.J., and works for a large pharmaceutical company, also is a writer. After trying every channel he knew, he finally made contact with “Wait for Me,” a reality show on Russian television that matches long-separated loved ones.

Last year, five years after he first contacted them, producers told Robert that a viewer in Uzbekistan had come forward with a story that almost exactly matched his mother’s.

As Robert explained in a story that appeared in the New Jersey Jewish News in June 2010, there were a few discrepancies. But when the viewer, a 51-year-old grandmother named Jurajeva, sent photographs from her mother’s later years, there no longer was any doubt.

“She looked just like our father,” Marlene said.

It seems that Frima, Jurajeva’s mother, lost track of Chaim. After the Soviet army put Frima in an orphanage, she was adopted by a Russian Orthodox Christian family and stripped of her Jewish identity. She eventually married a Muslim man. Frima raised her six children as Muslims in a small, remote village, but shortly before she died, she told them that she was Jewish.

Robert, who has spoken almost weekly with his cousin with the help of a friend who speaks Russian, said Jurajeva took the news in stride and told him that she feels Jewish inside.

The first call, he said, was “was full of emotion — lots of tears, excitement, etc.” It was the fulfillment of a promise for Jurajeva, as it was for him. “She said she promised her mother on her deathbed that she would find her family.”

Like Robert, among all her siblings Jurajeva has been the one most committed to re-establishing the family connections.

But locating Jurajeva wasn’t the end of Robert’s struggle.

Jurajeva was turned down twice by the U.S. Embassy in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, trying to get a visa to come for a visit. Robert asked his congressman, Rep. Leonard Lance, to help. Lance’s office tried but eventually told him that the State Department said that too many people have claimed this kind of connection fraudulently to get into the United States, and that Jurajeva did not have sufficient proof.

Robert and his wife, Dara, became parents earlier this year, yet he continued to pursue one avenue after anther. He had his cousin send a DNA sample, and he sent it, along with a sample from his mother, to the DNA Shoah Project, which maintains a database of genetic material from Holocaust survivors and their immediate descendants. To his disappointment, he said, after more than a year, the organization still has not been able to provide the completed analysis of the DNA samples.

Finally he turned to the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society for help. Mark Hetfield, the senior vice president for policy and programs at HIAS; immigration attorney Kelsey Breckner; and Mark Levin, executive director of the National Council on Soviet Jewry, all worked their contacts, eventually bringing the case to the attention of Hannah Rosenthal, the State Department’s special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism.

Last month the visa was granted. Robert and his siblings bought the airline ticket for Jurajeva, and she is scheduled to arrive Dec. 24 for a three-week stay.

In an e-mail response to the New Jersey Jewish News, Hetfield said, “This was a very difficult case because consular officers have near-absolute authority and discretion in the issuance of visas. Given Gulnora’s situation in Uzbekistan and her ties to the United States, it is understandable that the consular officer in Tashkent denied the application multiple times before and after HIAS intervened on her behalf.

“However, this is a particularly heart-wrenching humanitarian case and Gulnora has credibly asserted that she intends to return home,” Hetfield said. “HIAS is grateful that in light of these circumstances, and with the encouragement of …Hannah Rosenthal, the consular officer revisited the case and overturned the denial.”

Robert told the newspaper that “giving up was never an option.”

“My parents’ surviving the Holocaust was a result of their internal fortitude to never give up; the same will was instilled in me at an early age,” he said. “I made it so far with the search that I wasn’t going to let frustration or roadblocks deter me from doing this for my mother.

“I am so incredibly happy that I was able to bring a sense of closure to what was, in essence, a 70-year mystery. I am very excited to meet my newfound cousin and participate in this emotional reunion.”

But the process isn’t over. Given how he found his cousin, Robert is hoping word of the reunion might bring about one more miracle — a connection with his uncle Chaim.

“We know Chaim survived the war,” he said. “I received a record from the tracing service of the International Red Cross that in 1946 there was a Chaim Lancman who was searching for family in Argentina and the U.S., but we’ve never been able to find out anything else about him.”

Robert also wants to help other separated families. To that end, he has established a nonprofit networking website, “I am a link,” or www.iamalink.com. The site will enable genealogical searches for survivors and their descendants — and hopefully bring about more joyous reconnections.

It’s difficult to say exactly why I went. While I’m proud of the lineage, it’s mostly a harmless point of family trivia. I find even my immediate family’s mainstream brand of Orthodoxy foreign to me, never mind my extended family’s extreme observance. But my mother, who is always (but lovingly) on my religious case, has recently begun to invoke the Makove Rav in remarking upon my relative non-observance. (She went to the yahrzeit the year before I did and returned inspired.) I am, she tells me, letting him down. These exhortations are hard to take seriously. Who is this rabbi, and why should I care? Does it matter that I’m his descendant? When my mother offered to pay for a trip to Hungary, I agreed to go, if only to understand what I’m supposed to feel guilty about. This would be spiritually invested voyeurism.

Mako is in Hungary’s southeast corner, close to the Romanian border. It’s known, if at all, for its onions — some of the most arable land in the country is here — and as the birthplace of Joseph Pulitzer. Size-wise, it’s somewhere between a shtetl and a village: small enough that Reb Mechel, my cousin and the closest thing the yahrzeit weekend had to a host, didn’t feel the need to give directions or an address beyond “Mako.” I arrived on a Friday from Budapest, via a train and two buses, and stood clueless in the town square until I spotted a Chasid, whom I followed.

Only a block away, just past the refurbished synagogue, was an off-white, no-nonsense-looking building. Chasidim were scattered about, walking in little circles, talking on cell phones and smoking in the small parking lot, where a banner overhead referred to my forebear, in Yiddish, as “a great tzaddik … the miracle-worker of his generation.” This building was where everybody stayed — a Chasidic hostel. About 10 years ago, Reb Mechel had bought and thoroughly renovated a former egg factory so it could comfortably accommodate those making the annual pilgrimage to Mako. The building included two industrial kosher kitchens; a few dozen guestrooms, each with a bathroom offering a negel vasser kit (for ritual washing); a large main dining room, as well as a smaller women’s one; and at least one mikveh.

The men who arrived for the weekend (and a handful of their accompanying wives) were from all over — Austria, Israel, England, Belgium, New York, Los Angeles, Toronto — so the lingua franca was Yiddish. For me that meant halting conversation; the little Yiddish I know was learned in a college classroom, from a non-Jew. My pronunciation is hopeless. Many of the other attendees were related to me, though I couldn’t keep straight exactly how, and everybody I met wanted to know what I was doing there. I’d quickly mention my connection to the Makove Rav — aside from Reb Mechel, who’s a generation closer and has no mothers in the way of his connection to him, I had the most direct line, which garnered me instant credibility, even celebrity. People called me “der zun!” or “der ainekel!” (the son! or the grandson!) and when they did I suddenly felt very underdressed. At least I’d had the foresight to bring a white shirt.)

***

The yahrzeit proper, when we were to visit the gravesite, was on Sunday, so Shabbat should have been a gentle spiritual warm-up.

Except that the current and very much living Makove Rav was also in Mako. Background, quickly: When my great-great-grandfather died in 1943, the vacant rebbe position went to his son-in-law, because his son could not travel from Nitra, in modern-day Slovakia, to Mako to take up the post. The current rebbe is that son-in-law’s son — my first cousin twice-removed, if I calculate correctly — and he lives in Kiryat Ata, Israel, near Haifa, and has hundreds of followers in his congregation there. This rebbe set the tone for the entire weekend. Our meals, in particular, were rebbe-dictated. We sang when he sang, we ate when he ate (and took a piece of his leftovers), and we hushed (or shushed others) when he held forth. He spoke in a low, mumbly Yiddish; the second his mouth opened, he was surrounded by a huddled mass, heads angled and ears cocked, competing to hear him.

The Chasid to my left, who seemed much too young to have the five children he claimed, whispered that this rebbe doesn’t sleep. He only micronaps occasionally, and he owns no bed.

Toward the end of the Friday night meal, the rebbe, in shirtsleeves and woolen tzitzit, poured two beers and motioned that I take one. He raised his cup and, after briefly inquiring about my life, delivered a 10-minute blessing. This was awkward. He spoke to me, and only me, the only guy in the room not in uniform, about repentance and renewal, about the constant opportunity to start fresh, to not be weighed down by sin. He told me that my ancestors are ready and willing to help me redeem myself. I didn’t catch everything he said, but I got the general drift.

I nodded and blushed, and wanted to down my beer. Afterward, Reb Mechel came up behind me and put his shtreimel on my head. “Next year, it’s mandatory,” he said. “And this hair up here” — he mussed my crown — “belongs on your face.”

Eventually, the rebbe left, and things relaxed. One Chasid passed around solvent-grade schnapps. I asked for stories of the (original) Rav, of which there are many, almost all implausible, like how he assured the Mako community that they would survive the war. (Or, as a less-audacious variant has it, that they’d be OK as long as he was alive.) And how the cars holding Makovians got detached from an Auschwitz-bound train. Twice. How the more progressive members of the community sought to build near the graveyard, inevitably desecrating graves, and went ahead and broke ground despite the rebbe’s warning, only to then die within the year. I understand these as myths, not stories; in their retellings, these ever more fantastical legends overtake and obscure the personality they’re meant to valorize. They transform a real, multifaceted person into a one-dimensional miracle-worker, which makes it that much harder to gain any realistic understanding of who my great-great-grandfather was. But for the Chasids I met in Mako, the stories may be less important than the story-telling. Maybe this is how they ascribe greatness to their rebbe. And maybe that is how I’m supposed to know my great-great-grandfather — as someone about whom people tell miracle stories.

On Sunday morning, we headed to the gravesite, in a cemetery outside the city that was difficult to get to, even in the Jeep we had hired for the day. Its inaccessibility is a preservative — there were no signs of destruction. The Rav’s grave, along with that of his wife, is in a humble mausoleum. Weak daylight snuck in through the windows, barely supplementing the dozens of candles clustered on top of the tomb. A few people were reading the Rebbe’s writings (collected, edited, and published posthumously by Reb Mechel). The current rebbe was writing names on slips of paper — names of those who required prayers for healing or livelihood or some other blessing — that he would then place on top the tomb. There was an ongoing, unorganized effort to recite the Tehillim, the Psalms. I hadn’t brought a prayerbook of my own and know maybe one psalm by heart, which I started repeating. Then I stood idly for a while, feeling conspicuous and useless, until an old woman approached me. I don’t know who she was, but she knew my name. She carried a yellowed Tehillim, full of loose and uneven pages that looked like they might crack. She opened the book and showed me what was inscribed: “From the library of Moshe Vorhand.”

I prayed from my great-great-grandfather’s Psalms, and for a brief moment I felt what everyone else had been feeling the entire time. For a brief moment I understood — even if I can’t fully articulate — why veneration traverses generations, why family is something to take pride in, why it matters that my great-great grandfather was a rebbe.

(Menachem Kaiser is a writer living in Brooklyn. This article originally appeared on Tablet Magazine, tabletmag.com.)

Yes, my mother isn’t Jewish. And yes, I grew up with the tree, and the presents, and the stockings bulging with goodies from Santa. There were no creches, no midnight Masses, no religious ritual of any kind — Christmas was family time. My memories are of crackling fires and falling snow and a twinkling tree and, above all, that gorgeous, excessive dinner where all the relatives got together to eat, drink, laugh and reminisce.

Well, not all the relatives — just my mother’s side of the family. My dad’s parents hosted our Passover seders, which were what gave me the Jewish identity that eventually, at age 19, took me to the mikvah.

Let’s be clear: I am totally, unequivocally Jewish. I always have been, even before I got that official certificate signed by the three rabbis from Brooklyn (one didn’t speak English, I swear). Going to my mom’s for Christmas takes nothing away from that.

So why does the Jewish community make things so difficult for me and the hundreds of thousands of other American Jews who have non-Jewish relatives? In this country, one out of every two Jews marries a non-Jew, and those non-Jews have parents and siblings and uncles and aunts. That’s a lot of Christmas trees.

As intermarriage increases, so will those blended families. Six years ago, a Hillel survey found that 47 percent of college students who identify as Jewish come from intermarried homes.

Look carefully at that number: It means that for today’s young Jews, intermarriage isn’t a problem, it’s who they are. Many young Jews may be committed to marrying Jewish, but plenty of their friends don’t feel the same way, even if they want to build Jewish homes. As they say, it’s complicated.

I’ve been working in the Jewish media for 20 years, and many’s the time I’ve been called upon to cover events on Dec. 25. There I am on the phone with this or that prominent Jewish organization, telling them why I can’t attend, and the reaction is always the same. The sharp intake of breath. The careful pause. The unspoken question.

Why can’t we openly acknowledge what we all know is going on?

And don’t get me started on the shame. The Jewish professional who was asked at a Hadassah lunch where she got her sweater and was too embarrassed to say it was a Christmas present. The college student who mentioned his grandparents’ Christmas tree at a Hillel dinner and heard the room go silent. Like me, these are Jews. Like me, they love their families.

Sometimes we hide the truth to avoid embarrassing a well-intentioned questioner. I’ve done that, usually when older Jews ask me how I’ll be celebrating the holidays. Why make them uncomfortable?

Maybe that shame is generational. Paul Cohen, who facilitates the Journey to Judaism course at San Francisco’s Congregation Sha’ar Zahav, says the times are changing.

“I see less of it among younger people,” he told me. “It’s almost like having an LGBT relative — in our generation, it wasn’t talked about as much.”

Karen Kushner, the chief education officer at InterfaithFamily.com, spoke to a blogger in Dallas who said she was fed up.

“There are many people in her congregation who put up trees, and they’re tired of being criticized,” Kushner related. “It’s a symptom of ‘old’ thinking. There are so many people with non-Jews in their extended families who just want to celebrate with them.”

Now I would never put up a tree in my own house. To me, a Christmas tree marks a home as non-Jewish. You can put a Star of David on top of it, you can call it a Chanukah bush, but in my book it’s still a Christmas tree. And my home is Jewish.

But my mother’s home is not. And are we not commanded to honor our father and mother?
So enjoy your chow mein. Me, I’m having turkey. With all the trimmings. And afterward my mother, my sisters and their families will watch me light the Chanukah candles. And we’ll celebrate — together.

(Sue Fishkoff is the editor of j. and can be reached at sue@jweekly.com.)