This week’s issue of the JT covers a lot of changes: From the local, with the announcement of the impending retirement of Beth Tfiloh’s Rabbi Mitchell Wohlberg and corresponding promotion of Associate Rabbi Chai Posner; to the national, with the departure of Jason Greenblatt from the Trump administration.
Yet our cover story illustrates the power of something constant: the gratitude a Jewish woman bore for practically a lifetime for the American soldiers who liberated her from a Nazi concentration camp. Passed on to her son and relatives here in Baltimore and commemorated at a ceremony at the Myerberg Center, the gratitude of Esther Pasternak Greuz will remain a local legacy along with her courage and zest for life. As the generation of men and woman survived the Holocaust or served in the US armed forces combatting to end it continue their march into history, it is incumbent on the next generations to find ways to honor their memories and the put the lessons they teach us
into practice.
We focus on other legacies in this week’s editorials and Voices: the latest rustling and wrangling over funding for “the Wall”; Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent speech at a commemoration of the 90th anniversary of the Hebron Massacre; the bloody relationship between Hamas and a subsidiary of ISIS operating in the Sinai Desert; and takeaways from the
political life of Ariel Sharon.
This week’s Community page spotlights two local “stars” as well as some sage advice from our youth. Photos from a mock ballot-casting at Howard County Jewish Federation’s Israel Café earlier this month might have you feeling déjà vu, but we’re all feeling a little of that with Israeli Elections Part Deux coming up. Look for analysis of the results and the anticipated implications in the weeks to come in our Voices section.
In the meantime, we’ll have to wait and see if the old adage is true that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Shabbat Shalom. JT
