Karen Friedman, a judge on the Baltimore City Circuit Court’s 8th Judicial Circuit, has been appointed by President Joe Biden to serve as director of criminal justice innovation, development and engagement at the Department of Justice. She will start in the newly created position, which is housed in the department’s Office of Justice Programs, on Jan. 3, 2022.
Friedman was the first female Orthodox Jewish judge in Maryland. She has served on the circuit court since 2014, and will step down from the bench at the end of this year. Friedman was previously a district court judge in Baltimore, and before that served as a judge on the city’s Orphans’ Court.
The appointee has a long history of activity and involvement in the Jewish community. “Being a woman and being Jewish have been important factors in my life, and in shaping who I am and how I view the world. And that definitely informs my decisions on the bench,” Friedman said. “Jewish people have a strong belief that if you change one life, it’s as though you’ve changed the world. If you grow up with that belief and that belief is part of your value system, then you know that your ability to touch people’s lives on the bench is so important.”

The Shofar has learned that shul president Judith K. Weiner has been selected as a featured artist in the Heckscher Museum’s 2022 Emerging Artists Instagram Takeover Series. She will be introduced on the museum’s website beginning in mid-December, and on its Facebook and Instagram accounts in January.

The 2021 Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded jointly to David Julius, pictured left, and Ardem Patapoutian for their discoveries of receptors for temperature and touch. “Our ability to sense heat, cold and touch is essential for survival and underpins our interaction with the world around us,” the Nobel Committee said. “In our daily lives, we take these sensations for granted, but how are nerve impulses initiated so that temperature and pressure can be perceived? This question has been solved by this year’s Nobel Prize laureates.

Julius, a professor at the University of California/San Francisco, and Patapoutian, a professor at Scripps Research in California, will share the Nobel Prize of 10 million Swedish kronor ($1.1 million).

In an autobiographical piece published online last year in honor of his winning the prestigious 2020 Kavli Prize in Neuroscience, Julius described his family’s Jewish roots, saying he “grew up in a seaside Brooklyn neighborhood…that’s been a landing pad for Eastern European immigrants like my grandparents, who fled Czarist Russia and antisemitism in pursuit of a better life.”

Dr. Joshua Angrist is one of a trio of economists to share the 2021 Nobel Prize in economics for pioneering research that transformed widely held ideas about the labor force, showing how an increase in the minimum wage doesn’t hinder hiring, and for creating a framework to study this type of societal issue that can’t rely on traditional scientific methods. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said the three have “completely reshaped empirical work in the economic sciences.”

Sharing the prize with Dr. Angrist, a professor at MIT, are David Card of the University of California, Berkeley, and Guido Imbens from Stanford University.

William Shatner, the actor who portrayed Captain James T. Kirk on the original “Star Trek” TV series and its film adaptations, launched into space at 10 a.m. EDT on Oct. 13, 2021, aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital spacecraft. Liftoff was from Blue Origin’s launch site in West Texas with Shatner and three others aboard. Mr. Shatner’s trip on the rocket, developed by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, lasted about 10 minutes.

Those aboard got to experience a short period of weightlessness as they climbed to a maximum altitude just above 60 miles. From there they were able to see the curvature of the Earth through the capsule’s big windows.

Mr. Shatner was joined on the flight by Audrey Powers, a Blue Origin vice president; Chris Boshuizen, who co-founded the Earth-imaging satellite company Planet; and Glen de Vries, an executive with the French healthcare software corporation Dassault Systèmes.

When the capsule touched down in the Texas desert, it was quickly surrounded by ground teams. Mr. Bezos himself opened the hatch to check that everyone inside was OK. After the immediate celebrations with family and friends, the crew lined up to receive their Blue Origin astronaut pins.

“What you have given me is the most profound experience. I’m so filled with emotion about what just happened,” Mr. Shatner said through tears.

Blue Origin photo

Jews who have ‘boldly gone’ into space

• Boris Volynov: aboard Soyuz 5 in 1969, one of the original Russian cosmonauts
• Judith Resnik: first Jewish American person and second American woman, 1984 aboard Space Shuttle Discovery, tragically killed aboard her second flight on the Challenger in 1986 when the shuttle combusted seconds after takeoff.
• Jeffrey A. Hoffman: during his mission on Discovery in 1985, first American astronaut to make a contingency spacewalk, when he tried to repair a satellite. In December 1993, he celebrated Hanukkah on board the Endeavor with a dreidel and a small traveling menorah he had brought with him.
• Ellen S. Baker: her first mission in 1989, her team deployed the Galileo probe to study Jupiter. On her last mission in 1995, the Atlantis became the first American space shuttle to dock at Mir, the Russian station.
• David Wolf: participated in 4 space flights, including a 128-day mission to Mir. He carried with him a mezuzah, a yad, a small menorah and a dreidel, which sparked a debate with Jeffrey Hoffman about whose dreidel spun the longest. Wolf said his went for 1-1/2 hours, until it got sucked into an air intake.
• Mark L. Polansky: participated in three space missions. On his second mission in 2006, he took a replica of an artifact from the U.S. Holocaust Museum that had been donated by a survivor, and later donated it back to the museum.
• Ilan Ramon: the only Israeli astronaut, died tragically in 2003 with six other crew members when the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated upon re-entry into the atmosphere.
• Jessica Meir: spent 200 days in space in 2019 as part of Expedition 61/62. She took with her an Israeli flag, a postcard from Yad Vashem, and a pair of novelty Hanukkah socks.
• Jared Isaacman: commander of SpaceX’s Inspiration4, the first space flight comprised of private citizens to orbit Earth.

The White House has tapped an Orthodox Jewish man who had served as President Barack Obama’s Jewish liaison during his last year in office to fill that role again in the Biden administration.

Chanan Weissman, 37, currently director for technology and democracy for the National Security Council, will pick up his old job. Weissman has worked for the State Department for most of his career, most recently for the department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor.

Jewish groups had asked the White House to name a Jewish liaison in light of growing antisemitism. Recently, the Biden administration chose Deborah Lipstadt, a noted Holocaust historian and Emory University professor, as its special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism. That position, located at the State Department, is intended to advance U.S. foreign policy on antisemitism. Weissman’s job as Jewish liaison is more U.S. and community-relations based. The position is intended to serve as a bridge between American Jews and the White House.

Ian Kinsler and Danny Valencia, two former major league baseball players, joined the Long Island Ducks on July 2 for a one-week warmup before signing on with Team Israel for exhibition games before the official start of baseball in the summer Olympic Games, being held this year in Japan.

During Kinsler’s 14-year career in the majors, he played for the Rangers, Tigers, Padres, Angels and Red Sox, where he won a World Series ring in 2018. Starting at second base for the Ducks, Kinsler, whose father is Jewish, told Long Island Newsday, “Right now, this is probably the easiest way to catch up with the speed of the game and get prepared for the Olympics.”

Danny Valencia played nine seasons in the majors, mostly at third base, with the Twins, Orioles, A’s, Blue Jays, Royals, Mariners and Red Sox. Valencia was born to a Jewish mother and Cuban father, who converted to Judaism. “My heritage is Jewish, my baseball background is probably more Cuban. It’s a perfect combination,” Valencia said.