A Man named Winter Eases the Pain of Winter Mourners in Detroit Cemetery
Joe Winter
makes sure Ryan Unatin’s
headstone is clear each Valentine’s Day.
pation caring for cemetery grounds “just as
interesting as any other landscaping position.”
Easing The Pain
Joe Winter maintains Beth El cemetery
with compassion in every season.
| Stacy Gittleman
| Special to the Jewish News
Winter, especially the record-breaking one Detroit just endured, can be isolating and depressing. It is harder still for those observing an anniversary of a loved one’s death to visit their grave in a snow-covered cemetery.
Fittingly so, a man named Joe Winter, caretaker at Beth El Memorial Park in Livonia, eases the sorrow of the mourner bymaking sure that certain graves and the paths leading to them are cleared of snow.
For almost three decades, Winter, 56, has cared for the cemetery and lived in a house just outside the ground Joe Winter where he and his wife, Claudia, raised their four children.
Trained as a horticulturist, Winter always enjoyed working outside and saw his occupation as a peaceful one. He started out as a groundskeeper at Gethsemane Cemetery in Detroit and then became superintendent of the Beth El Memorial Park in 1985.
Growing up, his children never thought the location of their house was odd.
“They always just considered it as one quiet backyard. I’d let them ride their bikes
on the paths after the gates had closed for the day,” he said.
As superintendent of the cemetery, Winter’s responsibilities include keeping in daily contact with local rabbis and funeral directors to schedule burials. He also is the cemetery’s main record keeper.
The cemetery is open every day from morning until 5 p.m., except Saturday. If a mourner needs to linger a bit after 5 p.m., he says he does not mind keeping the cemetery gates open a bit longer.
As the weather warms, Winter and his staff keep the lawns mowed and the bushes trimmed. He provides a supply of American
flags come Memorial Day weekend and makes sure they stay up on each grave until Flag Day on June 14.
“Of all the mourners, the toughest ones to see when they come here are the parents of
young children,” Winter said. He recalled a woman who lost a young son and visited the
grave nearly every day for eight years.
“Joe Winter deals with human beings during the most vulnerable moments of their
lives,” said Rabbi Daniel Syme of Temple Beth El of Bloomfield Hills. Syme, who has
worked with Winter for 17 years, said overseeing a cemetery is a job that not many can
emotionally withstand.
“He supports all who come to the cemetery at a time when they are looking for
kindness, when their own inner coping resources are not there,” Syme said.
One such person Winter has comforted in his work is Julie Unatin of Huntington
Woods.
On Valentine’s Day, Feb. 14, 2000, Unatin gave birth to a son, Ryan. Five days later,
baby Ryan died. What should have been the happiest of days for her, husband, Brian,
and their two daughters turned out to be the worst.
In March of that same year, Unatin, a teacher consultant for the blind for the
Oakland Intermediate School District, learned that another co-worker, Kate
Salathiel, also had lost a child. The deaths of their children have created a special bond between the two women.
Each winter, they support each other as they visit their children’s gravesites in different
cemeteries — not on the anniversary of their death, but on the day they were born.
Expecting her arrival at Beth El Memorial Park, Winter clears a path to Ryan’s grave
in advance of her visit. Winter also makes sure that any snow is brushed away from the
gravestone.
“Every year I know what I will find,” Unatin said. “A beautiful stone that has been
dusted and cleared; sprinkled with 14 years’ worth of small tokens. Without even being
asked, Joe makes my unbearable Valentine’s Day a bit more bearable.”
How to Stand Up to BDS at U of M tonight, even if You’re not a Wolverine.
Let’s get something straight.
The anti-Israel “Boycott Divest Sanctions” movement hitting campuses across the globe is nothing more than a new fangled incarnation of simple Jew hatred.
In advance of tonight’s Central Student Government hearing tonight to reconsider its decision to table a vote to approve a resolution asking the University of Michigan boycott and divest from academic and business dealings with Israel, the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit sent out the following email:
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To Our Friends and Supporters: As you may know, the Central Student Government (CSG) at U of M last week rejected an anti-Israel divestment resolution. However, due to pressure from an anti-Israel campus group, CSG will reconsider the resolution at its meeting tonight. We want to bring you up to date on developments surrounding this resolution and how you can best support efforts to convince the CSG to sustain its initial rejection of it. Federation and JCRC work continuously to advance the interests of both Israel and the Jewish campus communities. Tilly Shames, the Executive Director of U of M Hillel, serves as our agencies’ eyes and ears on campus and has been keeping us well-informed on developments related to this proposed resolution. With her many years of experience fighting anti-Israel activities on campus, she knows what tactics work and don’t work with college students. Her most important advice is to ensure that it is students who remain most visible and vocal in the fight against the resolution. CSG is an organization of students serving the needs and wishes of students, and is not likely swayed by older adults, especially if they are not part of the campus community. Rather than show up at tonight’s meeting with calls or demands that CSG again reject the anti-Israel resolution, the most effective way you can affect the vote is to contact the university administration asking that it issue a statement calling for its rejection and expressing concern on how the issue is polarizing the campus. You can do this by emailing U of M President Mary Sue Coleman at presoff@umich.edu or calling her office at (734) 764-6270. Your contact will be most effective if you convey your message respectfully.
Please know that the BDS activists have been threatening and intimidating Jewish students at the University of Michigan. BDS is nothing more than intellectually disguising age-old Jew hatred in the name of “human rights.” if you are at a loss of words at what to write to President Coleman, I suggest you may want to take an excerpt from LA radio commentator Ben Shapiro‘s statement at a similar hearing at UCLA, where they voted against the resolution 7-5. Here is the full transcript of his statement:
Please do not be silent. Please write the UM president at presoff@umich.edu and stand for Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East which supports freedom of religion, gay rights, educational opportunities for women, and freeedom of expression, |
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Kosher Caterers Keep up with Foodie Trends – Not Your Bubbie’s Menu
Beef, chicken and vegetable kebobs at a Moroccan themed Kosher catered affair – photo by Quality Kosher Catering
My second article in the “Celebrate!” supplement of the March 20 Detroit Jewish News.
Stacy Gittleman | Special to the Jewish News
There are people who eat to live. Then, there are those seeking unique, exotic tastes created with the most superior ingredients chefs can get their hands on. These are the foodies — the people who live to eat. In cities like New York and Los Angeles, it is no longer about the restaurant that just opened, but the foodies who are following the hottest chefs sweating it out in the kitchen of a particular restaurant, which is making it impossible to get that Saturday night reservation.
Local kosher caterers agree; the foodie craze has also caught up to their business as well. The kosher-catered affair is no longer about the stuffed derma and kasha served at your grandmother’s wedding. Unless, of course, for nostalgia’s sake, you know your guests will want an “Old World Eastern European” station with old standbys like knishes and chopped liver spread. Then it will be there. Guests should also be prepared to make room on their cocktail-hour plate for cuisine from India, Ethiopia and Japan.
Daniel Kohn, manager of Quality Kosher Catering in Southfield, was witness to the global gourmet trend as he worked in the hospitality business in New York and Colorado. Now back in Detroit, he keeps the legacy of the business his grandmother started in 1968 going strong for the next generation.
He knows that not all in this generation who seek a kosher caterer keep strictly kosher. In fact, statistics from the industry show that 55 percent of consumers buy kosher products for health reasons, 38 percent are vegetarians, and 16 percent eat only halal. Only 8 percent surveyed said they buy kosher products because they adhere to kashrut.
“There used to be a time not long ago when the food was just one more element at a big occasion, like the flowers or the band,” Kohn said. “Today, as people have developed sophisticated tastes and have become involved themselves with new cooking techniques, the food takes front and center stage.”
It is this sophistication of the foodie’s eclectic palate that is driving chefs to create anything but the standard chicken or beef offerings at catered affairs. At a typical wedding catered by Quality Kosher, food selections may cover “at least” four different ethnic tastes, from sushi and noodles at an Asian station to Moroccan meat cigars and tagines, or Indian curries.
Casual, But High End
Another trend in eating is that party guests still love their casual food, even if they are in sequined gowns and tuxedos.
“You can take burgers and fries and other casual American food to another level and make them high end,” Kohn said.
A fine menu starts with advanced planning.
When Franci Goodstein Shanbom, 38, and Sam Shanbom, 45, of West Bloomfield planned their Nov. 27 wedding — the night before Thanksgiving and the first night of Chanukah — they knew that the food would have to meld these two holidays. Because they married later in life, the Shanboms said they did not want to subject friends and family to just another “sit down chicken and baked potato dinner.”
What Quality Kosher planned was something completely “off the board,” said Franci Shanbom. The evening included four buffet stations with varied types of potato latkes and pareve sour cream, mini turkey potpies in cups made of phyllo dough, a Pan Asian station featuring Asian noodle slaw and orange chicken, a Tex Mex station with steak fajitas and a burger station including sliders made from salmon and portabella mushrooms. “We wanted a fun affair with a cocktail party feel, with lots of casual good food. Daniel is very youthful, and he had great ideas of how to make the party fun and hip,” Shanbom said.
Vegan Gourmet
Chef Cari Herskovitz also wants to treat her kosher-observant clients to a meal and a catered affair with international flavors they may not ordinarily have a chance to sample. Herskovitz graduated from the Natural Gourmet Cookery Institute for Food and Healing in New York City in 2000 and worked in the food industry there for many years preparing gastronomical delights for Lenny Kravitz, Ralph Lauren and Elie Wiesel.
She moved back to Detroit in 2003 and founded Chef Cari Kosher Catering, a Glatt kosher company housed at Congregation B’nai Moshe in West Bloomfield. As vegetarian and vegan kosher venues open up in Detroit — such as Gold ‘n Greens at Wayne State University and Herskovitz’s summer pop-up falafel stand at Campus Martius Park — she loves to hear how they surprise the average restaurant goer. They realize that you don’t have to keep kosher, or even be Jewish, she says, to enjoy kosher food. What they are enjoying, simply, is good food.
“I want people to come to me to cater an affair, first and foremost, because they are coming to me for well-prepared food,” Herskovitz said. “I want them to know if they want that vegan wedding that will keep even their nonvegan guests happy, they can come to me. They can also come to me if they keep on the more traditional side and want a meal with beef or chicken as the centerpiece.” Herskovitz said she enjoys offering clients the healthiest food choices, creating vegetarian and vegan dishes as well as more traditional meat or dairy menus for affairs.
For the adventurous vegetarians, she will create entire menus using greens like the ever-popular kale or taking a cue from the trend in using ancient grains like farro, amaranth and quinoa. Herskovitz said that vegan and vegetarian entrees could go beyond pasta and tofu. She likes to experiment with proteins like tempeh and seitan and introduce different grains, all enhanced with fresh herbs and greens.
For one recent wedding, she created an entire vegetarian Indian feast consisting of eight to 10 dishes complete with yogurt raita and naan bread. As health trends evolve, so have the offerings of kosher caterers. Kohn and Herskovitz can attest that they have catered vegetarian and vegan weddings where courses included meatless entrees, such as stuffed manicotti or textured vegetable protein layered with roasted portabella mushrooms and asparagus.
“When we sit down with the clients, we explain to them: ‘You are inviting 350 guests; you want them to come and then leave happy,’” Kohn said. “We round out the vegetarian and vegan offerings with interesting salads, a great sushi bar and velvety vegan soups.”
And what about those pareve desserts?
Back at his kitchen in Southfield, Kohn said David Carris, his pastry chef of 15 years, is constantly working on the ultimate dairy-free dessert.
“Our pastry chef has a way of working with desserts, starting with the finest quality ingredients that you would never expect were dairyfree or even egg-free. How good are they? I tell clients they must try the pareve creme brulee. If you don’t have a dairy creme brulee sitting there right next to it, you could swear you are eating the real thing. It’s that good.”
Minding Those Manners on the Bar/Bat Mitzvah Circuit
Izzy Randel, 12, Scott Katz, 11, both of Farmington Hills; Matthew Brown, 12, of Franklin; Jacob Kroll, 12, of West Bloomfield; and Jessica Gordon, 11, of Farmington Hills play the family blowing out the candles at a bar mitzvah.
Minding Your Manners Young people learn the rules for sharing in their friends’ big day
Stacy Gittleman | Special to the Jewish News
PHOTOS BY JERRY ZOLYNSKY
On a typical Shabbat in any Jewish American house of worship, there is a young man or woman seated on the bimah. Dressed in a brand new suit or dress, these kids try to calm the butterflies in their stomachs before being called to the Torah for the very First time. You may think they are the only one in the building going through a rite-of-passage ritual. However, their peers sitting in the sanctuary are also enduring their own coming-of-age test as they navigate the bar/bat mitzvah ceremony and party circuit. It may be their first exposure to a formal occasion in an increasingly informal society. Bar and bat mitzvah etiquette starts with getting that invite in the mail (and responding in a prompt manner) and ends with knowing whom to thank at the end of the evening (the parents), and how many favors you are allowed to take at the end of the party (hint: one per guest). Fortunately, there are businesses like Joe Cornell Entertainment in Southfield, co-owned by sister and brother team Steve Jasgur and Rebecca Schlussel, to help these young adults learn the unwritten rules they are expected to follow.
On a Wednesday evening Hebrew school session back in February, around 35 sixth- and seventh-graders at Adat Shalom Synagogue in Farmington Hills were treated to an afternoon off from their regular studies to a 90-minute Joe Cornell Entertainment workshop. The workshop, complete with a candlelighting ceremony, cake and dancing, was a highly condensed sampling of a 12-week course offered by the company that teaches adolescents the fine points of attending a dance or other social occasion. Schlussel has been offering b’nai mitzvah etiquette for many years. Having just planned a December 2013 bar mitzvah for her own son, she now spoke through the lens of her personal experience. “When you get that invitation in the mail, find the family calendar.
As soon as you know that date is clear, you respond ‘yes’ and put the response card in the mail, or email your reply,” she instructed the students, seated around a dance floor where they would soon show off their best moves. “Your friend really wants you to come to their bar mitzvah, and the parents really have to know how much food to get — and how many napkins to order from the caterer.” I must offer you full disclosure here: In addition to being a writer, I am also the sixth-grade Hebrew school teacher at Adat Shalom. Throughout the year, I’ve watched my students mature from an energetic bunch of little kids into inquisitive, emerging young adults who demonstrate that they are prepared to do the work and studying required to become a bar or bat mitzvah.
As their teacher, I get an inside track on the mindset of the preb’nai mitzvah scene. At the start of class, a student will enthusiastically share the news with me that they received their bar/bat mitzvah date and Torah portion. Others will tell me how they recently attended a bar/bat mitzvah and to avoid getting “bored,” they actually made an effort to follow along with the service and the Torah reading. Or look up their Torah reading. This is music to a Hebrew school teacher’s ears. Continuing to focus on the ritual aspect of the b’nai mitzvah, Rabbi Rachel Shere led the students through a question-and-answer session of how to conduct oneself at Shabbat services.
She advised the students to tell their friends that it is acceptable to arrive to synagogue an hour later than indicated on the invitation. It is not acceptable to use any electronics in the building on Shabbat, so students accustomed to being constantly wired may have to arrange pick-up times with parents earlier or, at least, use their phones outside the building or in a quiet corner.
Matthew Berg, 11, of Farmington talks with Re-becca Schlussel of West
Bloomfield about the proper way to say thank you after a bar mitzvah.
“We know that cell phones are a fact of life. But on Shabbat we try to avoid these distractions as much as possible so we can pray with our community. If you must use a cell phone to contact your parents for a ride home, please be discrete about it,” Shere said. Shere added that options for “boredom” during services include taking a short break outside the sanctuary in the synagogue’s youth lounge, where there will be snacks to fend off mid-morning hunger. It is also expected of them to be gracious guests.
“Always remember to introduce yourself to the parents of your friend and thank them for inviting you to this very happy family occasion,” she said. After the more serious lessons, it was time to have some fun. Students played roles of the “bar mitzvah family,” in a mock candle ceremony and were then taught the hora and other dance moves.
According to Jasgur, dancing at a b’nai mitzvah party is not optional. “Dancing for your friend is a fun obligation that shows your friend how happy you are to celebrate with them on their big day,” Jasgur said.
At Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Rabbi Marla Hornsten said that Joe Cornell Entertainment offered similar workshops to adolescents, and proper dress and behavior in the sanctuary are discussed in the classroom. “Most of all, I hope this is a conversation parents are having with their children long before they are dropped off for the morning service,” Hornsten said. Andre Douville, executive director of Temple Shir Shalom in West Bloomfield, said the congregation prepares the entire bar mitzvah family for the occasion with a few meetings with the clergy that start 18 months prior to the big day. At these meetings, families are encouraged to come to services in the months leading up to the bar or bat mitzvah to become familiar with services and to understand what will be expected of them.
During these meetings, a family may want to share some information on the kinds of kids who are coming to the temple for services. If there will be a large amount of non-Jewish kids, the families have the option of inserting a one or two-lined “synagogue primer” in their invitation envelope about behavior and dress expectations.
The temple has also adjusted the start time of services on Friday nights from 8 to 7:30 p.m. to accommodate sleepy middle schoolers who have been waking up early all week for school. Also, Shir Shalom will “ramp up” the number of ushers depending on the number of young guests.
“We know times are different now. We expect a level of decorum in temple, such as no cell phones and limited conversations. But kids are kids, and we know they are going to be antsy. Sometimes, you have to be a little forgiving,” Douville said.
So, to my young friends in the bar/bat mitzvah circuit, and you know who you are: Do yourself a favor. Learn how to sit in services. Take the time to follow along with your friends’ Torah reading to give them your support — after all that’s what you are there for. There will be a bagel with your name on it waiting for you at the Kiddush as your reward for good behavior.
That college savings plan with those three little numbers – Part I
Here is Part I of a two-part series about strategies for saving with a 529 plan I wrote for http://www.road2college.com.
Know that you can shop around for a 529 plan and you don’t have to use the one from your state. Some state’s plans perform higher than others.
They still might be in diapers and are learning to crawl, which makes it the perfect time to know your savings options. Learn more about how 11 states are offering those with very small children a prePaid plan which allows you to lock in at today’s tuition rates for your future college scholar.
You can read all about it by clicking here.
About Me
Kreativ Blogger
Versatile Blogger Award
Stacy Gittleman 