After a nationwide search, the Board of Governors of Gratz College has selected Dr. Zev Eleff as the college’s new president. He will succeed Dr. Paul Finkelman, who served as president for four years.

Dr. Eleff is currently chief academic officer of Hebrew Theological College and vice provost of Touro College Illinois. He is a professor of Jewish history at Touro College’s Graduate School of Jewish Studies and a member of the academic council of the American Jewish Historical Society. He is the author or editor of nine books and more than 50 scholarly articles in the field of American Jewish history.

Gratz College is a private Jewish college in Melrose Park, PA.

Library of Congress specialist Ann Brener, left, shows incoming White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Eric Lander and his family a 500-year-old copy of the Pirkei Avot shortly before he used it during his swearing-in ceremony on June 2. The 13-page volume, a subset of the Mishnah that focuses on ethics, contains an expression important to Lander, “It’s not required that you compete the work, but neither may you refrain from it.”  Lander and Brener said that using a 500-year-old Pirkei Avot to take the oath of office may serve as a reminder of an early collaboration between religion, technology and science: using a printing press to reproduce sacred texts.                                                                                                 Photo courtesy of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy

Shul member Graham Diamond has signed a contract with Veking Books of the Czech Republic to print a Czech language hardcover edition of Maybe You Will Survive, Aron Goldfarb’s Holocaust memoir as told to Graham Diamond. Publication date is late 2021. Diamond’s British publisher, Lume Books UK, is currently in negotiations to represent him for new editions across the European Union.

Graham Diamond led a “Lunch and Learn” session for our shul during Holocaust Remembrance Month, and discussed the harrowing story of Aron and his two brothers, who hid from the Nazis for three years in the forests of Poland.

Studio Libeskind, led by Jewish architect Daniel Libeskind, has released renderings of a 2.5-story building for a Jewish Museum in Lisbon. The project, called Tikvah, consists of a 41,645-square-foot structure created in collaboration with local architect Miguel Saraiva, to be built in Lisbon’s Belém area along the Tagus River.

Libeskind has designed a number of similar museums, including the Jewish Museum in Berlin, San Francisco’s Contemporary Jewish Museum, and Copenhagen’s Danish Jewish Museum, as well as Holocaust memorials in the Netherlands and Canada. Many, like the Lisbon design, feature angled walls.

The establishment of a Jewish museum in Lisbon is to promote Portuguese Jewish life and its contributions to the history of Lisbon and beyond, said Architectural Record magazine, which published the renderings in its April 2021 issue. Lisbon’s Jewish community originated in the early 1800s, 300 years after the Edict of Expulsion and almost a century after the Inquisition, with Sephardic Jews mainly from Gibraltar and Morocco settling there.

Libeskind: closer to home

Closer to home, Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life congregation has chosen Daniel Libeskind to design a new building for the site where 11 Jews were gunned down on Oct. 27, 2018, in the deadliest antisemitic attack in American history.

Tree of Life expects to retain the 1952 concrete building with modern stained-glass windows, where the main sanctuary is located. The rest of the building likely will be torn down and a new space built to house the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh, a small space dedicated to the study of hatred, and a place of remembrance for the 11 Jews killed when a white nationalist spewing anti-Jewish anti-immigrant sentiments entered the building and began firing.

Scott M. Stringer is a candidate in the 2021 New York City Mayoral election. Since Jan. 1, 2014, he has been the 44th New York City Comptroller. Previously, he served as a New York State Assemblyman (1993-2005), and as the 26th borough president of Manhattan, (2006-2013.)

Elie Kligman is a switch-hitter with power. He has pitched no-hitters and immaculate innings, and he can snatch the ball with cool precision from any spot in the infield. He is a star in every way at Cimarron-Memorial High School in Las Vegas, with dreams of reaching even greater heights. He is also shomer Shabbas and will not play ball on Friday nights or Saturday afternoons before the sun goes down, The New York Times said.

Based on talent and desire, Kligman is good enough to realistically entertain his dream of playing Major League Baseball, or at least top level college ball. But he knows his devotion to his faith could shatter that dream before it starts, and he is ready to accept that.

Even if a big league team were to offer him a $10 million signing bonus, with the promise that he would be playing in front of 40,000 people later this summer — provided he agrees to play on the sabbath — he insists he would stand firm in his conviction.

“No,” Kligman said, when asked if he could be enticed to break his religious obligations. “That day of Shabbas is for God. I’m not going to change that.”

Lee Zeldin, a Republican from Long Island, has announced that he plans to run for Governor of New York in 2022, opposing Democrat Andrew Cuomo, who is serving his third term as Governor. Cuomo has come under fire in recent weeks for questions alleging mismanagement of nursing-home residents in connection with Covid-19 infections and numbers of deaths and also inappropriate behavior toward several women.

Zeldin was sworn in for his fourth term as a member of the House of Representatives in January. He represents New York’s 1st Congressional District encompassing central and eastern Suffolk County, including the North and South Forks of Long Island.