Hebrew School

Rabbi Jerome Yaakov Markowitz, whose career as a Hebrew school teacher spanned more than four decades, died of heart failure Feb. 28 at his Northwest Baltimore home. He was 77. Rabbi Markowitz was born in Syracuse, N.Y., and moved to Baltimore with his family in 1935. He attended City College and the Talmudical Academy of Baltimore. In 1950, he earned a bachelor's degree in accounting from the University of Baltimore, and was ordained as a rabbi after graduating from Ner Israel Rabbinical College.

Leo Reich, a retired Jewish educator and longtime Northwest Baltimore resident, died Monday of a bowel obstruction at Sinai Hospital. He was 82. Mr. Reich was born and raised in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School. He attended Mesivita Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin in Brooklyn before enlisting in the Army in 1943. He was a private with an Army engineering unit in France during World War II. After the war, he returned to Mesivita Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin.

Leo Reich, a retired Jewish educator and longtime Northwest Baltimore resident, died Monday of a bowel obstruction at Sinai Hospital. He was 82. Mr. Reich was born and raised in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School. He attended Mesivita Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin in Brooklyn before enlisting in the Army in 1943. He was a private with an Army engineering unit in France during World War II. After the war, he returned to Mesivita Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin.

Rabbi Jerome Yaakov Markowitz, whose career as a Hebrew school teacher spanned more than four decades, died of heart failure Feb. 28 at his Northwest Baltimore home. He was 77. Rabbi Markowitz was born in Syracuse, N.Y., and moved to Baltimore with his family in 1935. He attended City College and the Talmudical Academy of Baltimore. In 1950, he earned a bachelor's degree in accounting from the University of Baltimore, and was ordained as a rabbi after graduating from Ner Israel Rabbinical College.

Lights of the season come in many forms.At the Beth Israel Hebrew School in Randallstown, they range from a silver candelabrum first used in 1880 to the twists of red glass made to hold candles in 1970, from an ornate seven-branch menorah of bronze smuggled out of Nazi Germany in 1937 to an old shoe polish tin containing tiny wicks of blanket threads dipped in machine oil.This last is a replica of an improvised menorah of eight lights -- a chanukiah --...

Susan Chase baked coconut bread and brewed Costa Rican coffee yesterday, hoping fair-goers would sample South American and Caribbean culture at the New Windsor Service Center's annual International Festival."

Simply put, Beth Shalom Synagogue in Columbia needs room. The Conservative Jewish congregation is so crowded that it holds Saturday services in an auditorium that quickly gets turned into an area for Hebrew school classes - and then must be changed back again for the next set of religious services. Children in the Hebrew school are tutored on sofas in the halls. But this is something that Beth Shalom's leaders expected when opening 10 years ago. It was thought that an expansion would be necessary about this point, and they have started fund-raising for a $3.5 million project that will double the building's size and provide some badly needed relief.

Judaism comes alive at Beth Shalom Congregation Religious School. For Eve Klein and others of her generation, Hebrew school was a duty rather than a pleasure. "Growing up, nobody wanted to go," says Klein. For her children, it's a different story. As students at Beth Shalom Congregation Religious School, her sons Matthew and Benjamin look forward to attending classes, even after a long day at public school. "I used to hear that kids don't like to come to Hebrew school after a full day of school," agrees Richard Kavalsky, director of Beth Shalom school, "so we try to bring Judaism to life here.

The book of Exodus says that seven weeks after Passover, God delivered the first five books of the Bible, the Torah, to Moses, who gave them to the Israelites. From Thursday through June 10, Columbia Jewish Congregation, with Jews around the world, will celebrate this event during the multifaceted holiday of Shavuot. "Shavuot absorbs three streams of meaning: the giving of the Torah, the first fruits of the harvest and, in the non-Orthodox tradition, graduation from Hebrew school and post-Hebrew school studies," says Rabbi George Driesenof the Columbia Jewish Congregation.

IN MY YOUTH, my parents shipped me off to Hebrew school three times a week. They wanted me to discover faith and tradition, and some notion of God. In my restlessness, I would gaze outside the windows of the Liberty Jewish Center and discover what looked like Greater America. Out there, I saw gentile friends playing the great American game of football. In Mr. Aaron's Hebrew school classroom, we wore yarmulkes on our heads; out there in Greater America, they wore football helmets. In class, we each wore a gentle tallit around our shoulders; out there, they wore rugged shoulder pads.

On Dec. 19, 1906, the state of Maryland approved a charter that marked the founding of Kenesseth Yishroal, the "Assembly of Israel." It was the first synagogue in Annapolis, with about 150 members who met above a store on Market Space. Ninety-nine years and several locations later, Congregation Kneseth Israel, which bills itself as Southern Maryland's oldest Jewish congregation, is beginning a 100th anniversary celebration of its history, presence and service within the local community.

The Wonder Spot By Melissa Bank. Viking. 324 pages. $24.95. You are going to like Sophie Applebaum. In fact, she's going to be your new best friend this summer. You're going to drop Bridget Jones so fast, she'll bounce. Sophie is the heroine of Melissa Bank's long-awaited second novel, The Wonder Spot. The author of The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing has created for us a sharp-eyed, sharp-tongued young woman who stumbles out of the Philadelphia suburbs and her tight-knit, uptight Jewish family and into New York City, where she keeps stumbling, mostly through relationships.

Simply put, Beth Shalom Synagogue in Columbia needs room. The Conservative Jewish congregation is so crowded that it holds Saturday services in an auditorium that quickly gets turned into an area for Hebrew school classes - and then must be changed back again for the next set of religious services. Children in the Hebrew school are tutored on sofas in the halls. But this is something that Beth Shalom's leaders expected when opening 10 years ago. It was thought that an expansion would be necessary about this point, and they have started fund-raising for a $3.5 million project that will double the building's size and provide some badly needed relief.

IN MY YOUTH, my parents shipped me off to Hebrew school three times a week. They wanted me to discover faith and tradition, and some notion of God. In my restlessness, I would gaze outside the windows of the Liberty Jewish Center and discover what looked like Greater America. Out there, I saw gentile friends playing the great American game of football. In Mr. Aaron's Hebrew school classroom, we wore yarmulkes on our heads; out there in Greater America, they wore football helmets. In class, we each wore a gentle tallit around our shoulders; out there, they wore rugged shoulder pads.

WALDORF -- To find the congregation's Torah, you must enter an Episcopal church and ascend to a musty attic that is home to mice and cardboard boxes. It seems an odd place for the elegant, handwritten scroll containing Judaism's teachings, but its owners assure that it won't be there much longer. After a decade of renting space from the church and other organizations for services and storage, the fledgling Congregation Sha'are Shalom recently bought a 4-acre property here on which it will build Charles County's first synagogue.

Judaism comes alive at Beth Shalom Congregation Religious School. For Eve Klein and others of her generation, Hebrew school was a duty rather than a pleasure. "Growing up, nobody wanted to go," says Klein. For her children, it's a different story. As students at Beth Shalom Congregation Religious School, her sons Matthew and Benjamin look forward to attending classes, even after a long day at public school. "I used to hear that kids don't like to come to Hebrew school after a full day of school," agrees Richard Kavalsky, director of Beth Shalom school, "so we try to bring Judaism to life here.

The Wonder Spot By Melissa Bank. Viking. 324 pages. $24.95. You are going to like Sophie Applebaum. In fact, she's going to be your new best friend this summer. You're going to drop Bridget Jones so fast, she'll bounce. Sophie is the heroine of Melissa Bank's long-awaited second novel, The Wonder Spot. The author of The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing has created for us a sharp-eyed, sharp-tongued young woman who stumbles out of the Philadelphia suburbs and her tight-knit, uptight Jewish family and into New York City, where she keeps stumbling, mostly through relationships.

On Dec. 19, 1906, the state of Maryland approved a charter that marked the founding of Kenesseth Yishroal, the "Assembly of Israel." It was the first synagogue in Annapolis, with about 150 members who met above a store on Market Space. Ninety-nine years and several locations later, Congregation Kneseth Israel, which bills itself as Southern Maryland's oldest Jewish congregation, is beginning a 100th anniversary celebration of its history, presence and service within the local community.

The book of Exodus says that seven weeks after Passover, God delivered the first five books of the Bible, the Torah, to Moses, who gave them to the Israelites. From Thursday through June 10, Columbia Jewish Congregation, with Jews around the world, will celebrate this event during the multifaceted holiday of Shavuot. "Shavuot absorbs three streams of meaning: the giving of the Torah, the first fruits of the harvest and, in the non-Orthodox tradition, graduation from Hebrew school and post-Hebrew school studies," says Rabbi George Driesenof the Columbia Jewish Congregation.

FOR A boy growing up in New York in the 1960s, several players on the Mets were worthy of adoration: Tom Seaver, the pitcher destined for baseball's Hall of Fame; the fleet-footed outfielder Tommie Agee or even Ron Swoboda, a Dundalk native who stole the hearts of Orioles' fans with his diving catch in the 1969 World Series.A Jewish youth then, however, also had to reserve a corner of his heart for Art Shamsky, a fringe player and a rare Jew in the major leagues. Hebrew school lessons about the importance of religious custom were driven home by the fact that Mr. Shamsky wouldn't play on the Jewish High Holy Days.