Happening

New York City

Browse the wish lists of New York City teachers and finance their projects. The website was created a year ago by history teacher Charles Best to link philanthropists and teachers. Since the World Trade Center attack this connection has helped bring an Afghan artist for workshops in a Bronx high school, an architect to help fourth graders design memorials to WTC victims and “recovery journals” for a class of students to write and draw responses to the terrorist attack.

www.DonorsChoose.com

Jewish women as survivors. Changing scholarship and the new attention being paid to women’s experience of the Holocaust are themes of a symposium on February 14th, 3-8 PM. Susan Weidman Schneider, Lilith Editor-in-Chief, will give the keynote address, followed by a panel discussion highlighting post-traumatic psychotherapy, and the compelling stories of women themselves. Museum of Jewish Heritage—A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, One Battery Park Plaza, New York, NY 10004-1484; (212)968-1800.

The Center for Jewish History in New York City houses the American Jewish Historical Society, the American Sephardi Federation, the Leo Baeck Institute, Yeshiva University Museum and YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. Tours every Tuesday and Thursday at 2PM, include the Reading Room, Genealogy Institute and major exhibitions. You can also visit a book/gift shop and kosher cafe. Tours are $6 per person; $4 for seniors and

students, an additional fee includes the Yeshiva University Museum galleries. Center for Jewish History, 15W. 16th St.. New York. NY 10011; (212)294- 8301; fax (212) 294-8302. For groups, contact Julie Kaplan at (917) 606-8226.

Where the Wild Things Are: Maurice Sendak In His Own Words and Pictures, is a multimedia exhibit that includes manuscripts, books, letters, photographs, illustrations, a video tape of spunky heroine Really Rosie, a lengthy Sendak interview, plus imaginative play spaces. Created at Atlanta’s William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum by curator Jennifer Needle Campbell, the show will tour through 2004 at the Skirball Museum, L.A.; Discovery Museum, Chattanooga, TN; the Young At Art Children’s Museum, Davie, FL; Children’s Museum of San Jose; the Strong Museum, Rochester, NY and the Pittsburgh Children’s Museum. From January 12 to May 2, 2002 see it at Manhattan s Children s Museum, 212 W. 83rd St., New York NY 10024; (212)721-1234.

Medieval Times

Cairo’s Ben Ezra Synaogogue: A Gateway to Medieval Mediterranean Life. See documents and fragments from that city’s famous Geniza, or repository, which was lost until 1896 when Scottish twin sisters Margaret Gibson and Agnes Lewis brought it to the attention of Solomon Schechter, then at Cambridge University. The “Gib-Lew” sisters found on the open market and purchased a fragment of the only extant Hebrew text of apocryphal book Ecclesiasticus, or the Book of Wisdom by Ben Sira, written in about 200 BCE. This exhibit documents Jewish civilization and the Islamic milieu of the Middle Ages with personal correspondence from Moses Maimonides, and the Spanish Hebrew poet Judah Halevi, a 15th-century letter from a wife asking her husband to return home from a business trip, and rabbinic court records of a businesswoman’s affair with a married man. Visitors enter a simulated Ben Ezra Synagogue and its neighborhood complete with a Cairo teahouse. Color catalog available. Through August 18, 2002 at Spertus Museum, 618 South Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL 60605; (312)322-1747; musm@spertus.edu; www.spertus.edu

The Medieval Feminist Index covers journal articles, book reviews, and essays in books about women, sexuality, and gender during the Middle Ages. http://www.nyu.edu/library/bobst/database/about/medfem/htm

Education

Peace of Mind in Jewish Education is a model interest- free loan program Jewish communities can set up to support their teachers and alleviate some of their financial pressures in a notoriously underpaid profession. This program allows teachers to devote themselves wholeheartedly to the education of their students. You can request a program kit that includes sample forms, loan agreements by-laws and advice from The Shul, 9540 Collins. Ave., Surfside, FL 33154, (305)868-1411; miriani@theshul.org; www.theshul.org

After Anne Frank: Children’ Books About the Holocaust. Anne Frank’s diary was originally published in the Netherlands in 1947, and has sold over twenty-five million copies in more than 50 languages. An exhibit, curated by Michele Palmer, offers selected examples of hundreds of other children’s books on the Holocaust published since then, plus a bibliography. The books in the exhibit are part of the Dodd Center’s permanent collection. Through December 31 at the Babbidge Library, The Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06369;

www.lib.uconn.edu/exhibtions

Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, Vienna 1898 – Auschwitz 1944, is memorialized in a special exhibition organized by the Simon Wiesenthal Center/Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. This remarkable Viennese-born, Bauhaus-trained artist was arrested and deported to the Terezin ghetto/concentration camp where she used her artistic talents and teaching experience to bring hope and beauty to the children. Her lesson plans and teaching techniques have survived, and many of her methods form the foundation of present-day art therapy. In August 1945, a former prisoner of Terezin brought to the Prague Jewish community two suitcases filled with 5,000 poems and drawings by the children of Terezin. After ten years, the drawings were rediscovered and exhibited. Many of the young artists were immortalized with the 1959 publication of the book …I never saw another butterfly. This exhibition opens in Atlanta beginning December 2, 2001-March 10,2002. It contains Dicker-Brandeis’s work before and during the war. Educational programs in conjunction with this exhibition will emphasize the value of creative expression as a means of spiritual resistance and survival. William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum, 1440 Spring St., NW Atlanta, GA 30309; (404)873-1661; fax (404)873-4009;

www.shalomatlanta.org

Domestic Violence

The International Network for the Rights of Female Victims of Violence in Pakistan (INRFVVP) exposes the unspeakable violence of “honor” murders of girls and women, carried out in the name of a grossly distorted version of Islam. This organization was founded by Riffat Hassan, a professor at the University of Louisville, KY and an Islamic scholar who has been tireless in her efforts to advance a feminist reading of the Qur’an and of Islamic law. To learn more about INRFVVP. PO. Box 17202, Louisville, KY 40217; (502)637-4090; fax 502-637-4002; inrfvvp@inrfvvp.org; www.inrfvvp.org.

Love—All That and More is the title of a new video series and a curriculum on healthy relationships. It comes with a guide for facilitators working with Jewish groups. Take a look at the 2001-2002 resource catalog of an organization that has been serving religious and community groups since 1977: Center for the Prevention of Sexual and Domestic Violence, 2400 N. 45th St. #10, Seattle, WA 98103; (206)634-1903; fax (206)634-0115; cpsdv@cpsdv. org; www.cpsdv.org

The Task Force on Famly Violence: 2001-2002 Resource Directory. Here is a 30-page directory with training programs, prevention, direct service, shelters, therapy programs for abused women, programs on elder abuse and more. UJA Federation of New York, 130 E. 49th St.. New York. NY 10022; (212) 980-1000.

Health

www.GynCancer.Pregnancy.com offers emotional support to women diagnosed with gynecologic cancer while pregnant. Jamie Roumeliotis and Mureall Hebert founded this website after meeting online while each had this traumatic experience. In addition, GynCancerPregnancy.com features links to gynecologic cancer medical sites.

Talking with your parents about health coverage? What does Medicare cover? Do people with Medicare need additional insurance? Should you buy a long-termcare insurance policy? How can you tell a good policy from a bad one? A consumer booklet may help you make informed decisions. Free from the Kaiser Family Foundation, 2400 Sand Hill Rd, Menlo Park CA 94025; toll free 1-800-656-4533; www.kff.org/docs/parents

Collections

In Other Words: The Jewish Writer Reads Her Work includes Helen Fremont, Myla Goldberg, Kathryn Grody, Eva Hoffman, Irena Klepfisz, Jane Lazarre, Leslea Newman, Alicia Ostriker, Cynthia Ozick, Grace Paley, Marge Piercy and Nessa Rapoport, reading their stories, essays and poems on a two-disc CD audio collection. $ 18 plus tax and shipping from the Hadassah International Research Institute on Jewish Women, Brandeis University, MS 079, Waltham, MA 02545- 9110; (781)736-2064; fax (781)736-2078; hirijw@brandeis.edu; www.brandeis.edu/hirijw/

The Jewish Counterculture Archive is seeking papers and artifacts from the late 1960s to the late 1970s. Send material from havurot, minyanim, early Jewish feminist groups, Jewish political organizations, collectives, and the alternative Jewish press to curators Riv-Ellen Prell and Chava Weissler for the American Jewish Historical Society. Riv-Ellen Prell, Program in American Studies, University of Minnesota, prell001@tc.umn.edu