IsraAid CEO Yotam Polizer has been named this year’s Charles Bronfman Prize recipient, a $100,000 award launched in 2004 and given to a humanitarian activist younger than 50.

IsraAid, a nonprofit Israeli refugee aid organization, operates with a budget of approximately $20 million and 320 employees spread across 14 countries. “Yotam was chosen because IsraAid is not a government operation,” said Charles Bronfman, in whose name the prize was founded. “It’s an entrepreneurial philanthropy, and has done God’s work. Yotam has spearheaded an organization that now is usually the first in a country that’s in humanitarian trouble.”

At present, a major focus of the group is Ukraine. IsraAid now has more than 30 people on the ground inside Ukraine, and another dozen or so in the neighboring countries of Moldova and Romania.

The New York University Board of Trustees has named Linda G. Mills to be the university’s 17th president, the first woman to be appointed to the post. She will take up her new duties on July 1, 2023.

Prior to her appointment, the president-designate served for more than a decade as NYU’s Vice Chancellor and Senior Vice Provost for Global Programs and University Life. She is the Lisa Ellen Goldberg Professor of Social Work, Public Policy, and Law, also the executive director of the NYU Center on Violence and Recovery. Her principal areas of scholarly focus are trauma, bias, and domestic violence. She is a widely published author of articles and books. As a filmmaker, she has produced award-winning documentaries, including one on the Holocaust experiences of her own family.

She received her PhD in Health Policy in 1994 from Brandeis University, where she was a Pew Scholar; her MSW from San Francisco State University in 1986; her JD from the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco in 1983; and her BA in history and social thought from the University of California, Irvine in 1979. She was admitted to the California Bar in 1983, and first became a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in 1990.

Her appointment follows a six-month international search by a Presidential Search Committee of trustees, deans, faculty, students and administrators that reviewed more than 100 candidates.

Two stars of the hit television show Shtisel will be reuniting for a miniseries about a family that survived the Holocaust. Actors Michael Aloni and Hadas Yaron, who played Akiva and Libbi on Shtisel, will once again play a married couple in the new show, which is being made by Hulu. The new show, release date TBD, is based on a 2017 bestselling book, We Were the Lucky Ones.

The personal papers of Chaim and Inna Hecker Grade (pronounced Gra-day) have been digitized, and are now publicly accessible online.

Chaim Grade, who died in 1982, was one of the most important Jewish writers of the 20th century. In 2013, his personal papers, a 20,000-volume library, literary manuscripts and publication rights were awarded to the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and the National Library of Israel. His widow, Inna Hecker Grade, who died in 2010, was a fierce, self-appointed guardian of his literary legacy.

Reportedly, she would call The Forward to complain when one of the stories in the newspaper referred kindly to Isaac Bashevis Singer, the Nobel laureate whom she called a “blasphemous buffoon.

Harvey Weinstein, the former Hollywood mogul already serving a 23-year prison sentence in New York, was sentenced Feb. 23 in Los Angeles to an additional 16 years on charges of rape and sexual assault. Weinstein continued to deny any wrongdoing.

Reporting by The New York Times and The New Yorker in 2017 revealed Weinstein’s alleged history of sexual abuse, harassment, and secret settlements, using his influence as a Hollywood power broker to take advantage of young women. The revelations led to a wave of women speaking publicly about the pervasiveness of the abuse in what became known as the #MeToo movement.

The Shofar is proud to report that two shul members, Veronica Kaliski and Cookie Slade, have joined with two other women, Helen Finnigan and Ann Sande, to lead a course designed to help those immigrating to our country study for the Citizenship Test. They’ll review the 100 civics questions and practice reading, writing and speaking English, all of which are included on the test. The eight-session program will meet weekly for 90 minutes at the Cutchogue Library, from Feb. 8 through March 29.

“When one of the students passes the difficult test and becomes a citizen, it is a rewarding experience,” said Veronica Kaliski. “I was moved to teach this class because people from desperate means want to become part of our American dream; I want to help them do that.”

[Editor’s note: About 25 years ago, I was privileged to have been invited to Naturalization Court in White Plains, NY, to witness the swearing-in of about 100 people from nations around the globe, many of them dressed in native costumes, pledging allegiance to the United States of America. It was one of the most moving events I have ever experienced and, still today, I can recall every detail of it. SMB]

George Santos, the 34-year-old New York Republican who has confessed to lying about part of his background, was sworn into the House of Representatives on Jan. 7 amid several investigations into his campaign and calls for him to resign. Santos was elected in November to represent New York’s 3^rd Congressional District covering a part of Queens and Long Island’s North Shore.

Santos has faced intense scrutiny after The New York Times published a report indicating that much of his résumé appeared to have been manufactured, including claims that he owned numerous properties, was previously employed by Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, and had graduated from Baruch College. The report also raised questions about how Santos was able to lend his 2022 campaign $700,000 after having claimed on a campaign finance form in 2020 that he was making $55,000 a year.

And despite presenting himself as Jewish during his congressional campaign, Santos told the New York Post that he never claimed to be Jewish. “I am Catholic,” he said. “Because I learned my maternal family had a Jewish background, I said I was ‘Jew-ish,’” he added. During the campaign, Santos claimed his grandparents were Holocaust survivors, that his mother was in the World Trade Center on 9/11, and that he had employees at the Pulse nightclub when it was attacked.

Santos is now under investigation by the Nassau County district attorney, the New York State district attorney, and federal prosecutors in New York.