Temple News
In Memoriam
Dr. Barbara Ella Boyd 1944 ~ 2011
Dr. Barbara Ella Boyd, 67, passed away on Valentine's Day, collapsing while moving from her apartment. Barbara was a Professor of English at California State University, Northridge for more than 30 years, a job she truly loved, only just retiring last December 2010.
She was a native of Birchwood, Tennessee, born to parents Hubert and Mistie Hixson Boyd, both of blessed memory. She became a member of TBS in the early 1980s and converted to Judaism in November of 1982, taking on the Hebrew name, Rachel Rut bat Avraham Avinu v'Sarah Imenu. Rabbi Alan Henkin officiated at her conversion and had a great influence in her life over the next eight years.
April 27, 1984, Shabbat Kedoshim, Barbara was called to the Torah along with fellow students: Bess Hyman, Dolores Goldman, and Debijo Lovitch on the momentous occasion of their B'not Mitzvot. This ceremony was the culmination of their dedicated 18 months of Hebrew study with Rabbi Henkin, a facet of the TBS Adult Education Task Force.
At the 1985 World Games for the Deaf held at Pepperdine University in Malibu, Barbara was on the committee in charge of public relations working with TBS team members: Herb Schreiber, Myron Goldman, Joe Slotnick, David Freedman, Ron Stern, Doug Ellis, Marion Intrator, Bess Hyman, Sharon Dror, Lotte Friedman, Melissa Scott, and Marla Petal.
Barbara was very active in the Young Adults Havurah, leading workshops and mentoring at retreats, her favorite role. She sat on the board of the American Society of Deaf Children and the Jewish Deaf Congress.
At the elections in June, 1987, Dr. Boyd, was chosen to lead TBS as president for the next two years; she served four ending her tenure in 1991. One of her most important contributions was to modernize the administrative needs of the synagogue, bringing TBS into the computer age.
Through her influence and contacts, TBS received a generous $10,000.00 donation from Dr. and Mrs. Isaac Gorboty, used to install a Macintosh desktop publishing computer system with all the necessary accessories to handle the publishing of the newsletter. It was also especially helpful for the Prayer Book/Video Project for which Barbara was instrumental in acquiring a grant from the Council on Jewish Life. That Prayer Book is still used at TBS today.
Barbara, a staunch supporter of the University of Tennessee Volunteers, was buried on February 21st at Hamilton Memorial Gardens, Hixon, TN. Rabbi Bill Tepper, who is hearing impaired, officiated the graveside service.
The following is Barbara's Bat Mitzvah speech from 1982.
my friends...
people who welcome me into their worlds and share with me their sorrows and their joys...
the teachers I've had, my students...
the people I work with during the week...
the people I worship with on Shabbat...
and tonight, especially tonight, the people with whom I celebrate B'not Mitzvahs:
Debijo, Dolores and Bess,
And our teacher, our Rabbi, Alan...
We've laughed together, argued together, and griped together.
But best of all, we celebrate together
A moment in time that is holy.
I think of special moments I'll always remember...
The first time I lit the Shabbat candles Over in Temple Isaiah, when we worshipped there...
experiencing discrimination, and then forgiveness...
sharing my first Passover seder in a home with a family.
I think of other events in my life...
the years and years of study...
the deaths I've known...
the births I've witnessed,
all attesting to the continuity and the holiness of life.
In our Torah readings God commands us to be a holy people and gives us laws to follow.
But there's also a promise...
the promise of a land, or perhaps a place, a feeling, filled with milk and honey.
In our world today we sometimes seem to exist in a spiritual wilderness where we can't experience holiness.
But the pathways to holiness are everywhere, always present.
Search for them. Embrace them.
In Judaism,
in the study and the teachings of Torah,
in my family,
and in my friends here with me tonight
I find incredible riches -
aretz zavat chalav oodvash
the land of milk and honey god promises to us.
The Torah commands us:
"You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God, am holy."
The prayerbook teaches us:
"Every moment is charged with holiness."
How shall you and I be holy -
when we live in a world of paradoxes
where the opposites in life co-exist -
love and apathy,
innocence and experience,
kindness and hatred,
conformity and rebellion,
hope and despair,
heaven and earth,
goodness and evil?
All this seems contradictory,
the sacred and the profane
co-existing
in the same people and in the same things
at the same time.
But it does,
Einstein said, "God does not play dice with the universe."
In Ecclesiastes we read there is a time and a purpose
for every experience.
The key word here is AND.
We need both love and apathy.
We must experience love to understand the pain
of apathy and ignorance.
We must know apathy and ignorance to appreciate
the depth and the intensity of love.
Our task then, is to find a balance, a harmony between the demands of halakha,
or the laws we are given to follow,
and the spirit of agada, a spirit that allows us to choose for ourselves the way we will live our days.
Difficult? Sure, sometimes! Possible? Yes!
My own life has been blessed by holiness but also touched by evil and pain.
There is holines...
expressed in the love my parents have for each other... a love that gave to me the remarkable gift of life.
The love of my family that saw in each child thousands of unique possibilities.
In Memoriam
Rabbi Jerry Winston
September 9, 1936~December 19, 2010
Rabbi Jerry Winston, TBS' first full time Rabbi, passed away in San Rafael, California of complications from Parkinson's disease. He was 74.
Rabbi
Jerry Winston
After having had four wonderful student rabbis, TBS was filled with pride that they had grown enough by 1973 to hire Rabbi Winston as our first full time Rabbi. A welcoming social was held on August 25th as the congregation got to know him just before the High Holy Days.
Rabbi Winston, a native of Brooklyn, graduated from Hebrew Union College, New York, serving Temple Beth Or of the Deaf for two years as their student rabbi.
Since Rabbi Winston's wife, Mimi, was planning advanced coursework in Deaf Education at CSUN it worked out perfectly for them to leave San Francisco and move to Los Angeles. Unfortunately he only stayed with us for five months before they moved back to San Francisco.
In 1975, he founded Barah, The Creative Center for American Judaism, in the Bay Area, with the stated mission of being a service organization for "the deaf, the blind, the poor and the unaffiliated." He is credited with reaching out to hundreds of worshipers seeking an alternative to traditional synagogues. After the state-sponsored schools for the deaf and blind moved from Berkeley to Fremont, Barah focused on serving the unaffiliated.
"He helped create a community of people who just felt disconnected from Judaism," said Janet Lipsey, a former member.
Rabbi Winston became known among some congregants as the "barefoot rabbi," both for his nontraditional style and his attire, which included sandals and flowing white garments.
"He had this shock of white hair and a white beard and he wore these white garments," Lipsey said. "He looked almost other-worldly, out of some other time."
In the late 1990s as the organization began to dissolve, Rabbi Winston developed symptoms of Parkinson's disease, spending less time in public as his condition worsened. His current wife, Pamela Mosely Winston, gave up her job as a realtor to serve as his caretaker and the couple suffered financial problems, eventually losing their house. Sadly, Pamela died of breast cancer just a few weeks before her husband.
Rabbi Winston is survived by a brother, Bud, and sons Jonathan, of San Anselmo and Oliver, of Berkeley. May his memory be for a blessing.
Hugh Gottfried
November 26, 1936~February 9, 2011
Hugh Lawrence Gottfried, son of Abe and Sue Gottfried of blessed memory, passed away on February 9th. Hugh kept his parent's TBS legacy alive and became a wonderful benefactor after his parents passed away. He was a very warm and compassionate schoolteacher. He became a friend of Sherwin Podolsky's sharing their love of philately (stamp collecting). Our deepest sympathy to his family: beloved wife, Brenda, father of Jana & Rebecca, brother of Flora Suffin. His ashes were scattered at sea.
David Heine
1922~March 2, 2011
David Roberts Heine, 89, of Westerville, Ohio, departed this life on March 2nd with a smile. He married Ruth Simon, his sweetheart from PS 47 School for the Deaf and retired as a business contractor for home improvements.
David was a member of TBS in the 1980's before moving to New York and then in 1996 to Columbus. He continued his studies of seven foreign languages at the Sixty-Plus program at the Ohio State University.
At age 82, David was called to the Torah for his Bar Mitzvah at Temple Israel in Columbus, where he was a member for more than ten years. He served as President of Jewish Deaf group in the Columbus area and was an active resident of Columbus Colony Housing for 12 years, spending the last two years of his life at Columbus Colony Elderly Care.
David is survived by his daughter, Charisse Heine and daughter-in-law, Marla Berkowitz. Burial took place in Glendale, NY. In his memory, donations can be made to Temple Beth Solomon of Deaf, P.O. Box 33396 Granada Hills, CA 91394-3396 and/or Gallaudet University's Hillel Program Fund, Gallaudet University Development Office, 800 Florida Ave. NE, Washington, DC 20002.
Wayne Lesley Kelly
September 27, 1926~April 1, 2011
Wayne Leslie Kelly passed away April 1st after a brief illness. He was born in Warsaw, Indiana, the youngest of five children and one of three deaf siblings.
He attended the Lutheran Institute for the Deaf in Indiana and at the age of 17 owned his own shoe repair, Kelly's Shoe Hospital. Wayne moved to California in 1955 where he met his future wife, Dina Sanders. They married in 1958 and raised their daughters in Mar Vista, California. Wayne was a machinist for 30+ years. When he retired, he traveled the world. When not traveling, Wayne was the devoted Papa, babysitter, and chauffer to his two grandchildren. He was always up for a game of cards or dominoes, as well as a joke or two and his love of life and jovial spirit always put a smile on people's faces.
Wayne is survived by his daughters, Jennifer Kelly, Catherine Berman, Wendy Kelly, son-in-law, Hal Berman, and two grandchildren, David and Kaitlyn Berman.
Wayne was an excellent TBS ambassador in the mainstream deaf community. Even though he was not Jewish, he attended almost every one of our Passover seders and many holiday celebrations. He was a generous donor and one of our strongest supporters.
A celebration memorial of Wayne's life will be held June 18th at the Pilgrim Lutheran Church Parish Hall at 1207 So. Vermont Ave, LA, 90006 at 12:00 p.m. In lieu of flowers, donations in Wayne's memory can be sent to California Home for the Adult Deaf at 529 Las Tunas Drive, Arcadia, CA 91007
Sam Block
July 26, 1910~April 12 2011
Sam Block, born in Harlem, New York, passed away at the age of 101 on April 12th. At the age of six he contracted a near fatal case of Spinal Meningitis that left him deaf.
All of his school years were spent in Manhattan, and most of his working life was spent at the U.S Railroad Retirement Board, starting as a statistical clerk and working his way up to the position of Director of Research, retiring in 1973. Sam said that rising to this position was his second greatest accomplishment in life, but his greatest accomplishment was marrying Frieda (of blessed memory) in 1941 and raising four wonderful sons: Michael, David, Joel and Philip.
For his stellar achievements, Sam was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree by Gallaudet University. He had no formal Jewish education but accompanied his parents to synagogue for the holidays and trained for his Bar Mitzvah with a local retired rabbi. When he came to California he became a member of TBS, attending Shabbat services, serving on the Board of Directors and helping with convention planning.
He was a wonderful poet and began writing in his early teens until the end of his life. The last poem he sent to us, in June of 2010, just before his 100th birthday, aptly titled Temple Beth Solomon.
Temple Beth Solomon
A place where deaf Jews through hands and fingers
Can freely and devoutly address their God,
And learning of their past and how their blood
Survived to carry on their faith that lingers,
Whatever cruelties and hardships are applied,
When a vindictive foe seeks holocaust,
and fails before the power of belief inherent
Against millions forming a soulless deterrent.
We here though small in numbers have survived
Despite our losses due to age and death,
Promising to stay until the end.
We are happy that Jews have their own country,
Though still beset by foes on every hand,
But no longer facing genocide
Gloria Balacaier, Charter Member
January 22, 1925-May 4, 2011
TBS Charter Member, Gloria Balacaier, passed away in May at the age of 86. She was born in the Bronx, New York January 22, 1925 to Abraham & Sadie Shotland. Abraham, an emigree from Poland, was a designer of fine woman's apparel.
Gloria was diagnosed as deaf at a young age, so Abraham and Sadie investigated all their options for her education and at age 5, she entered PS 47 School for the Deaf. Sadie and Abraham wanted Gloria to have a normal childhood, so in addition to her schooling they enrolled her in ballet and music classes and sent her to a camp in the Berkshires every summer for five years. All of these extracurricular activities nurtured Gloria's interest in art. Over the years she produced many fine pieces, several of which were on display at TBS' art exhibit in 1995.
In an interview with Gloria, from the early 1990s, she said, "I loved to go downtown on Saturdays and see all of the popular musicals. I really loved watching Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. To this day I try not to miss a musical comedy. I can feel the rhythm so it makes up for what I cannot hear."
In the early 1940's, the Shotlands hired Harriet Balacaier, a speech therapist, to work with Gloria on her speech training. This eventually led to Gloria meeting her future husband, Harriet's deaf brother, David. They married on New Year's Eve, 1944; she was 19. They moved to southern California and became charter members of TBS; Gloria was the Sisterhood President from 1979-81.
Gloria and David enjoyed 55 years together traveling, taking classes and being very active in the deaf community until sadly, in 1999, Gloria was diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease, spending the last twelve years in a facility near her brother. David faithfully took the train to Orange county every month to visit her, even though she did not know who he was, until he could no longer physically make the trip; he passed away in 2007.
Leo Roller
February 8, 1921~April 24, 2011
Our deepest sympathies to the family of TBS Charter member, Leo Roller, cherished husband of Beatrice who predeceased him. Loving father of Steven (Lynn) Roller, and Sharon (Paul Taffolla) Caldwell, and brother of Al Roller. Beloved grandfather of Nathan, Jennie (Marcus), Candice, and Joshua, great grandfather of Jacob, Issac, and Isabelle.
In the formative years of TBS, Leo and Beatrice were searching for a place where their deaf daughter, Sharon, could get a Jewish Education. Upon learning about the formation of TBS they became members and Sharon attended the first TBS Religious School with instructor Joyce Groode.
Gary Sanderson
December 21, 1954~January May 12, 2011
Gary Sanderson, son of deaf parents, passed away May 12th after battling a long illness; he was 57. Gary was well known at TBS in the 1980's for many volunteer hours interpreting, teaching and performing.
He enjoyed a 38-year career with the National Center on Deafness at CSUN while earning his BA in Child Development in 1976. His career at CSUN began in 1972 as a note-taker and he moved up through the ranks at NCOD to Senior Interpreter, Coordinator of Communication Services, Coordinator of Training and Technical Assistance for Western Region Outreach Center and Consortia (WROCC), Associate Director for WROCC, Administrative Staff Interpreter, Interim Director and Special Projects Coordinator. Gary was renowned throughout the country for his entertaining style of training and his wonderful humor. He was an amazing gourmet chef and a devout lover of cats; his most recent, being Sam and Lola who now, sadly need a new home.
He served on the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf (RID) Board of Directors as the Region Five Representative as well as three terms as the President of the local Southern California chapter. He was the co-chair of the NAD-RID National Council on Interpreting.
He had published many articles and spoken nationally on Repetitive Motion Injuries and Educational Interpreting and was instrumental in the establishment of the RID Special Interest Group for Educational Interpreters. Here are a few of the awards he had received for his tireless work and service to the interpreting community:
- 1991, RID~Outstanding Service to the Organization and to the Profession
- 1998, Region V, RID~Distinguished Service Award for a lifetime of service
- 1999, RID~Judie Husted Award for dedication and commitment to the field of sign language interpretation
- 2003, RID~President's Award
Gary has left a deep mark on the deaf community on many levels-academic and personal. The interpreting field across the nation has his special stamp on it and that will remain forever.
Our deepest sympathies to Norman DeGroot, his partner of nine years, his brother Barry and wife Teresa and their children McKale and Rob.
Annoucements
Bonnie and Aaron Gudis announce the engagement of their daughter, Tali Dagan, to Jay Jorgensen. The wedding will take place in Newport Beach on September 3, 2011.
Mazel Tov to Ruth & Maurice Richter on the June 13th Bat Mitzvah, in Israel, of granddaughter Maya Resnick, daughter of Harriet and Joseph.
For your Library
TBS 50TH ANNIVERSARY COMMEMORATIVE PROGRAM BOOK: A 60 PAGE TRIBUTE TO THE
PIONEERS OF TBS INCLUDES: A 25 PAGE HISTORY OF TBS, A DVD WITH 320 PHOTOS,
ARCHIVAL FILM FOOTAGE OF TBS'S EARLY YEARS TAKEN BY ALVIN KLUGMAN, AND MUCH
MORE. IF YOU WOULD LIKE A COPY, SEND $10.00 TO: TBS, POB 33396, GRANADA HILLS CA 91394
If you are looking for the electronic edition of the CN click here.