Farewell to Donald Joseph z"l

Donald on Purim, as another Donald.
Photo courtesy of Barb Pearson

Betsy Teutsch, for GJC Centre Call

Donald Joseph z”l was a beloved Dorshei Derekh member for over 35 years, attending most every week and sitting in the front row--except for summers in Maine. He passed away this past April after a long decline. We send heartfelt condolences to Harriet, Rachel and Aden, Seth and Bonnie.

Over the decades, Donald loved Dorshei Derekh openly and expansively. He filled many roles in our minyan, both formal (longtime Treasurer, Membership Co-Chair, and Stefan Presser Social Justice Shabbat Chair), as well as informal, as a befriender and mentor.

Deborah Weinstein shared a COVID-era email correspondence with Donald, when she and Dick joined Dorshei Derekh:

“Welcome to Dorshei Derekh, where spirit, singing, intellect and community join in a single wonderful minyan.”

In the wider world, Donald’s first passion was teaching, though he spent many years lawyering at Wolf Block. We were around as he shared his exhilarating transition to teaching law school. Donald generously offered his legal skills to many. Ruth Loew, an Elkins Park neighbor, recalls how he “was always happy to help our kids find resources for school projects involving the legal system.” Indeed, their son Gabe joined Donald in the legal profession.

Donald was fiercely committed to correcting PA’s school funding inequity, chiefly through his 30-year Board service to Public Interest Law Center (PILC). He invited us all to City Hall when PILC announced the victorious results of the interminable case, at last declaring the Pennsylvania educational funding formula unconstitutional.

Unbeknownst to many of us, Donald was actually a mathematician, having done his undergraduate degree at MIT. This came out in his annual birthday davar torah and kiddush, when he divulged his age in a complex sequence of factors of prime numbers. Leah Weisman fondly remembers Donald recruiting her to lead chanting services for birthday celebrations.

He loved singing (loudly), and urged others to join him up front. Naomi Klayman noted his vocal leadership. She was inspired to take voice lessons in part to, as Shelichat Tsibur, better lead Dorshei Derekh in the key SHE picked.  “After three voice lessons, at the age of 68, I discovered a singing voice that I never knew that I had. I attribute that discovery largely to Donald’s enthusiastic participation in our services each Shabbat. He is deeply missed!”

When our cherished Dorshei Derekh member Stefan Presser was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor and could no longer work, Donald organized us (pre-internet!) to visit Stefan for lunches and visits. For fifteen years after Stefan’s untimely death, Donald headed up the committee planning the annual Stefan Presser Social Justice shabbat. The Stefan Presser topics had a big impact on the Dorshei Derekh community, and on the bigger GJC community, as well.

Do you recall Donald’s personal, over-stuffed copy of our Siddur, Kol Haneshamah? One of the artifacts in it was a thank-you from our daughter Nomi, for her bat mitzvah gift. “Thank you Donald for the [whatever it was], and for smiling at me every shabbat!” He always went out of his way to reach out to others.

Donald enjoyed meeting up with fellow Dorshei Derekh members over lunch. Nina Israel and he forged a strong friendship over many such get-togethers. “What an amazing characteristic Donald had to make each person seen and heard…. He made me more self-aware. Who does that? Donald’s explanation was, ‘Well, I have spent more money on therapy than most people do for graduate school.’” Nina was very devoted to visiting Donald when he was incapacitated, seeing him frequently through his last years.

Donald took Heather Shafter under his wing and we are all the better for it - she just joined GJC’s Executive Committee. 

In Heather’s own words, “When I started attending Shabbat services, Donald always invited me to sit next to him. He told me that the closer you are to the front, the more ruach you get. He explained we would get more holiness at the front! I was down for that, so we sat in the front row together from that point forward. 

“Not even a year into my membership at Dorshei Derekh, Dayle Friedman asked me if I would be the Membership Coordinator. I was honored to be asked, but I’ve never been good at doing things on a schedule. I told her I would need a co-coordinator to make sure I did my job. So Donald became my co-coordinator. He told me, ‘I know how to make the trains run on time.’ He had many opinions about what the communications and reports should look like, and what other things we should be doing as membership co-coordinators, but he also allowed me the majority vote. 

“During the pandemic, Donald and I decided to talk on the phone every Saturday after Dorshei Derekh’s Zoom service. This is when we really got to know each other. I learned from Donald about Mussar, and how it can help improve not only my personal experience, but also my most important relationships. Donald became one of my closest friends. I would not have anticipated that, and I was grateful for it.”

Farewell, Donald. Your memory is absolutely a blessing.

Team Organize!

L to R: Helen Feinberg, Merle Berman, Betsy Teutsch,
Simone Zelitch, and Serena Eisenberg

Dorshei Derekh has been meeting in the Maslow Auditorium since 1987. As its name “auditorium” implies, it was not designed to be a dovvening space; when our minyan outgrew meeting in a classroom, that location was what was available. It had no kitchen area for preparing kiddush, and no storage space. We made do.

Around a decade later, a fundraising campaign resulted in both the Temin and the Maslow acquiring lovely book shelves and storage cabinetry. While there’s no running water in the Maslow, we were able to equip it with a refrigerator and a small kitchenette for prepping kiddushes and other functions.

Many groups use the Maslow. Staff eats lunch there, bridge games are held, the ECP and Religious School hold programs in it, Children’s High Holiday Services take place in it, and classes and Board Meetings take place there, too, all harmoniously co-existing.

About 15 years ago, our beloved Donald Joseph introduced Schnapps Shabbat, a monthly happening. We quickly noticed that the schnapps would disappear over the course of a month, so we added a cabinet lock. Why did all the other cabinets also acquire locks? No one remembers.

Recently someone tried, unsuccessfully, to match the ancient key hidden on a high shelf to the cupboard locks. In frustration, they asked me, Dorshei Derekh’s present chair, to try to straighten out the locked cabinet situation.

After consulting with our synagogue office staff, we discovered they had presumed Dorshei Derekh stored important things in those locked cabinets. And Dorshei Derekh had likewise presumed that GJC used them. As it turns out, neither of us used them in any systematic way, and they had just slowly filled up over the decades with random stuff. This is unsurprising, given how many different people use the space.

On an appointed June Tuesday at noon, I asked for volunteers to help me with a clean-out. I pretty much expected I would be doing this solo…. Who wants to come clean out cabinets? People don’t even want to clean out their own cabinets, right? Imagine my surprise when I walked in to find Merle Berman and Simone Zelitch already flinging open the cabinets and cleaning them. And it wasn’t even Pesach!

Within a few minutes Past-GJC President Helen Feinberg and Serena Eisenberg also arrived. Our team of five included one PhD, three social workers, a rabbi, and two lawyers. We dove in and in no time flat we removed all the contents of the cabinets, sorted them, and figured out what to do with each category. With Jose and Kate’s help, endless items were moved on to new homes.

Simone was reunited with her Deviled Egg carrying case. We chuckled over the archeological records of our minyan’s commitment to sustainability: glass kiddush cups (too heavy for the weekly dishwasher to shlep), small metal cups (too light to stay on DW shelves), and an enormous collection of Dollar Store ware – bowls and trays for a lifetime. Plus the synagogue’s pre-composting accumulation of plates, cups, and cutlery in dozens of sizes, all of which we sorted. (We were very good at that, as it happens.)

We were delighted to donate our vintage IKEA plastic plates, forks, and spoons to the ECP. We used those for about a decade. One fine day, Dayle Friedman opined that she was tired of eating on nursery school plates every Shabbat, and we upgraded. But the old stuff remained in, you guessed it, one of our locked cabinets.

Within 90 minutes, we were done. There aren’t many jobs where after 90-minutes you can see  gratifying results from your efforts. (Ever been to a Committee Meeting?). We are all just compulsive enough to love looking at the newly empty closets and cupboards, with the shelves we actually use looking so orderly.

The biggest surprise? The vast majority of what was stored in the cupboards wasn’t there for any particular reason, except someone once put them there. Fixed!

Stefan Presser z"l Social Justice Retropsective: 15 Years!

Last night we gathered on Zoom for Havadalah and to hear from four of our leading Tikkun Olam activists: Donald Joseph, David Mosenkis, Tamara Cohen, and Seth Lieberman.

Betsy Teutsch shared this history of the Stefan Presser Memorial Social Justice Shabbat programing.

Stefan’s presence in our minyan intensified along with his illness. He was a husband to Sandy and father of their three young kids [adults, and all present tonight!], in his late 40s, when diagnosed with a brain tumor. His prognosis was not great. He had been a member of Dorshei Derekh for several years, but once ill, he came to Dorshei Derekh most every shabbat, often sharing where he was on this distressing journey. When he had to stop working, and his world became smaller, the times he spent with us became increasingly precious. He radiated love, and we all beamed it back at him. Many of our members regularly went to visit with him as he became more frail.

He died on Shabbat Shuvah, the Sabbath between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, in 2005. A few of us organized a program on his 2nd yahrzeit. His dear friend Professor Seth Kreimer spoke on legal issues issues of the day.

My memory is hazy on how we decided to repeat this annually, but I recall meeting up with David Mosenkis at High Point to kick around ideas. Stefan had been the Legal Director of the Pennsylvania ACLU and many Minyan teens interned for him. Inviting them to speak was a way for us all to process both the loss of Stefan, and nurture his legacy. We got to hear what work Ari Spicehandler Brochin, Josh Marcus, Frances Kreimer, and our son Zach Teutsch, were up to. They are all active in social justice work as adults.

By 2010 our planning group included Donald Joseph. In Stefan’s memory we  planned an annual program on a specific social justice topic in the late fall/early winter. While the GJC community was always invited, it has primarily been an internal Dorshei Derekh event.

Our formula was to choose an issue we wanted to learn more about, invite an expert activist to speak, and pair them with someone with substantial Jewish insight on the topic. Adding a lunch or, as we called it, lunchy kiddush, encouraged people to stick around. This was our approach for the ensuing decade, pulled off on a shoestring, funded by our minyan treasury.

In the ‘0s, Germantown Jewish Centre’s social justice portfolio resided in the Social Action Committee. This committee was tasked with the annual MLK program done in conjunction with local churches, through the Neighbourhood Interfaith Movement. They also planned the annual Granger Shabbat focusing on local social justice issues. Additionally, the committee focused on direct service, organizing volunteers for tutoring and Story Times at our neighborhood’s Henry and Houston Schools. GJC’s program for housing and feeding homeless families, the Philadelphia Interfaith Hospitality Network, began in 1996, a complex undertaking with its own team of in-house volunteers. It became a major focus of direct service GJC mitzvah activity.

What was missing at GJC was a way for members with a passion around a particular cause to organize and build support for shared activism. We have always had many members involved in a myriad of issues. In our minyan Stefan brought his ACLU background; Mike Masch z”l was our pipeline to city politics, as well as to Harrisburg and Pennsylvania state government policy and budget. It’s not every minyan that offers a misheberach when the State Budget passes!

Many of our Stefan Presser program topics were proposed by Dorshei Derekh members wanting a platform for causes in which they were  already immersed. Malkah Binah Klein became our committee chair, and brought some specific programs, including the one on Gun Violence and another on Returning Citizens. On some level, we used this Social Justice annual program as an incubator; quite a few of the topics grew into synagogue-wide concerns. 

In 2016 the GJC Social Action Committee was restructured as the Tikkun Olam Coordinating Team. One of those working to bring about this change is our own Abby Weinberg. The mission is now very different, supporting members to advocate and organize for the causes they care about, and running programs where congregants can get involved. Tikkun Olam means Repairing the World; clearly we have continued providing direct services to but have expanded to working for systemic changes.

And we will be hearing Donald Joseph’s update on the Pennsylvania School Funding Trial, the culmination of decades of work by the Public Interest Law Center.

David Mosenkis will be talking in a few minutes about the synagogue’s deepening commitment to POWER, a state-wide multi-faith multi-racial movement advocating for systemic change in a number of arenas.

We will be hearing from Seth Lieberman, the chair of the synagogue-wide Refugee Committee. 

We will be hearing from Tamara Cohen, on the minyan’s antiracism task force, along with hearing about the synagogue’s.

These are all topics that we featured at specific Social Justice shabbatot, and are now woven into our synagogue’s work.

Personal activism and community organizing have taken off exponentially since the beginning of our Presser Shabbatot in 2008. The language around this work has changed. We have moved from Social Action to Social Justice to Tikkun Olam. We are now more nuanced about justice: we speak of racial justice, environmental and climate justice, reproductive justice, education justice, disability justice, and gender justice. Kol Tzedek, the Reconstructionist Congregation in West Philly where many GJC Gen Xers are active, including Josh Marcus, named itself Kol Tzedek, A Voice for Justice - right there, front and center. There are many similar synagogues around the country that have sprung up with a primary focus on Tikkun Olam.

Obviously, the 4 years of the previous administration raised the pursuit of social justice to a crisis level. And 2 years of a pandemic have reset most everything.

The Jewish community has generated ever more justice-oriented organizations. Keeping track of all of them is challenging!

Tonight we are reflecting on how social justice/Tikkun Olam moved from the periphery of Dorshei Derekh - something some of our members were devoted to - to becoming a central focus of our community.  And how Dorshei’s Derekh commitment to these values connects to GJC, our larger home.

We cannot claim that our Stefan Presser Social Justice programs brought this about, but we immodestly perhaps, do think they have helped to galvanize Dorshei Derekh, and motivated many of us to get more involved in initiatives we learned about at these programs. Indeed, we are better together. Pursuing justice is more effective, and more satisfying, when it’s a shared effort.

    - Betsy Teutsch, January 29, 2022

Dorshei Derekh Pandemic Purim 2121

What a year - with Zoom replacing regular meeting, bringing many new "virtual" people to our community.
The Presser Committee usually plans one social justice event a year, but this year we are on a roll.  We've planned many Purim events to help us stay connected.

Thanks to all who have helped pull this off!

Chag Sameach from the Presser Gang:

    Malkah Binah Klein, chair

    Donald Joseph, Chair Emeritus

    Michael Blackman

    Debrah Cohen

    Mark Pinsky

    Atenea Rosado

    Betsy Teutsch

Here is how we've organized the four mitzvot of Purim

1. Mishloach Manot (Gifts of food to our friends)

Bags of love, in the form of goodies, are being picked up today by those who sent back the form.

Coordinator: Betsy Teutsch

Co-Assembling: Margaret Shapiro

Bakers:

Levanah Cohen

Fredi Cooper (thanks for the recipe!)

Dayle Friedman

Penina Kelberg, and Ellie and Kayla Kelberg-Gross

Pesha Leichter

Bob Tabak and Ruth Loew

Jennifer Paget

Allison Pokras

Genie Ravital

Heather Shafner

Howard Spodek (see his note on the baklava!)

Elyse Wechterman and Sharon Nerenberg

        Delivery Elves: Michael Blackman, Mark Pinsky, Donald Joseph, Betsy Teutsch

        Artwork: Micaiah Kimmelman-DeVries

2. Matanot L’evyonim (Gifts to the poor)

Dorshei Derekh has donated $500 to each of the following three local organizations.  We encourage you to learn about these organizations and lend your support: 

Philadelphia Interfaith Hospitality Network (http://philashelter.org)

Germantown Fridge (https://www.germantowncommunityfridge.com)

Philadelphia Bail Fund (https://www.phillybailfund.org)

Additionally Debrah Cohen is delivering 15 bags of goodies (our bakers really outdid themselves!) to her clients and to the Germantown Fridge, with a note explaning Purim gifts.

3. Reading the Megillah

We encourage you to join GJC for Megillah reading on Purim night, February 25, and on Purim morning, February 26.  See GJC emails for timing and details.  In addition, Dorshei will be hosting a Melaveh Malkah (a special gathering for escorting Queen Shabbat on Saturday night) on February 20 to prepare for reading the Megillah.

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Saturday evening, February 20, 2021, 7PM, begins with havdalah

Listening for the Voice of Queen Esther

Join Rabbi Malkah Binah Klein for an intimate evening of creative encounters with Queen Esther, the heroine of the Purim story known for her courage, beauty, connection with spirit, and friendship.   Bring pen and paper, as there will be opportunities for writing, and if you are so moved, wear some jewels or a crown.  

4. Purim Day Seudah/Feast

We won’t literally be feasting together this year; however, we will be coming together as a community for a feast of joy, on Purim Day, just before Shabbat.  Join us, even if you have traditionally thought that Purim isn’t your thing.

Friday afternoon, February 26, 4PM

Dorshei Zoom Purim Party Extravaganza

Come sing, play, and laugh, and most of all, let loose your inner, zany child with special guests Rebekka and Gedalia.  Silly hats/costumes are welcome. The Zoom link has been shared.

 

Hear Rabbi Michael Ramberg and about the New Sanctuary Movement

This program will be the 2nd of our Stefan Presser Social Justice Shabbatot.

Rabbi Michael Ramberg will be our darshan at approx 11:30.
Following a Lunchy Kiddush, he will speak about the New Sanctuary Movement of Philadelphia.

Stefan Presser Committee:
Rabbi Malkah Binah Klein - chair
Donald Joseph, chair emeritas
David Mosenkis
Betsy Teutsch