Tag Archives: Bruce Baff

Connection

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My poem “CONNECTION” examines the difficult task of tracing one’s ancestral origins and the many challenges this search presents. We all fall into a time and space continuum with lives that reflect different aspects of those who have gone before us. Which often helps explain WHY we do certain things we do.  And how certain inherited traits, amazingly, impact our life so many years later! Indeed, there is much to learn from the past because in countless ways, it helps define the present.

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Shavuot Nature Wall

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CU yellow blossom w orange _ red_ St Barts, Feb 2011-COLLAGE (1)

Celebrate Beautiful Nature on Shavuot!

A Message From Rabbi Greenstein:

There is a wonderful custom of decorating synagogues and homes with flowers and leaves and pictures of nature on the holiday of Shavuot, the festival celebrating our receiving the Torah. While we are still not able to celebrate within the walls of our synagogue, we can create a wall of photos and images of nature’s beauty to enhance our joy.

Thank you to photographers in our community, Judith Antelman, Bruce Baff, Nancy Breslin, Aimee Brooks, Sarita Eisenberg, Aileen Grossberg, Rabbi Richard Hammerman, Laura Monka and Merrill Silver who have submitted their images in honor of Shavuot.

What a beautiful way to welcome our holiday! May we always take to heart the world’s great beauty!

view the gallery

Robert Bielsky Speaks About Widespread Jewish Resistance

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Bruce and I attended the Yom HaShoah Commemoration of the Jewish Federation of Greater MetroWest and Kean University Holocaust Research Center on April 11th, featuring Robert Bielsky as Speaker.

Director of the Holocaust Council of Greater MetroWest, Barbara Wind, said Jews did not go to slaughter quietly during the Holocaust. Between 1941 and 1943, underground resistance movements developed in approximately 100 ghettos in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe (about one-fourth of all ghettos), especially in Poland, Lithuania, Belorussia, and the Ukraine. Their main goals were to organize uprisings, break out of the ghettos, and join partisan units in the fight against the Nazis. There was widespread resistance by fighting and killing Nazis, Jews risking their lives to save other Jews, escaping from killing fields, ghettos and slave labor camps, keeping the Jewish religion alive and fighting with the Partisans in the forest. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising lasted more than a month before the Germans overcame the Ghetto. That is longer than France or Belgium held up against the Germans before surrendering. Continue reading →

Visit To Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida

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Bruce Baff

I had actually been thinking about visiting Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland for at least 3-4 days, especially when learning it was only twenty minutes, give or take, from the condo we are renting here in Coconut Creek. Fact is, Natalie and I were following each day’s developments quite closely ever since the fateful Wednesday, February 14. Continue reading →

Destination Unknown

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On Tuesday, June 6th, Bruce and I attended a screening of the feature film, “Destination Unknown”, at Joseph Kushner Hebrew Academy in Livingston. In 2014, director & editor, Claire Ferguson, started to work with the Film’s Producer – Llion Roberts of Wales on a feature-length account of the survivors’ stories.

The film’s Producer, Llion Roberts, was present and told us why he made this film. In 2003, he visited Auschwitz and experienced extreme cold while wearing a winter coat. He could not imagine the freezing cold felt by the victims, wearing only their camp uniform. After speaking to the son of a Holocaust survivor, he decided that he had to make a film.   He travelled the world, interviewing survivors.   The result of the entire fourteen year process is “DESTINATION UNKNOWN.”

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Kristallnacht Commemoration

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once_upon_a_familyThe Jewish Family Service of Clifton sponsored a community commemoration of Kristallnacht on Monday, Nov. 9th, and Bruce and I attended the movie, Once Upon A Family, the history of Jews in Poland. Holocaust survivors spoke in the film about their family’s experiences before, during and after the holocaust in Poland. Their stories were very powerful, expressing horrors and cruelty beyond human understanding. Some of their children and grandchildren were there to speak about their relatives after the film. Continue reading →