Twins rookie third baseman Danny Valencia is enjoying life on the upswing in the top tier of professional baseball

By MORDECAI SPECKTOR

Growing up in Boca Raton, Fla., Danny Valencia says he was “a huge baseball fan.” He recalls cheering for the hometown team, the Florida Marlins, when they played against Cleveland in the 1997 World Series. In the fall classic that year, Jim Thome was a star for the Marlins’ American League rivals.

Flash forward 13 years, and Valencia, 25, third baseman for the Twins and one of the few Jews now playing in Major League Baseball, was on deck in the bottom of the 10th inning of the Aug. 17 home game against the Chicago White Sox.

The Twins had blown a 4-0 lead, and regained it in the fifth inning. Then newly acquired closer Matt Capps blew the save in the ninth, and Jon Rauch gave up the go-ahead run to the Sox in the top of the 10th.

In the bottom of the 10th, with the Twins trailing 6-5, Delmon Young led off with a single; and then Thome, the Twins’ designated hitter this year, smacked a Matt Thornton pitch into the right field seats, giving the Twins a 7-6 win, and entered the Target Field records book with the first walk-off hit in the new ballpark. (Valencia hit two doubles in the game; but the story, of course, was the veteran Thome’s big blast.)

Sitting in the Twins dugout at Target Field the following day, Valencia said that he had followed Thome’s long career in the Big Leagues, “and to be on the same team with him, and watch him go about his business, and do things like he did last night — being as I was on deck, so I would say that I had the best view in the house — it’s unbelievable, and I’m just really happy to be part of it.”

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A new photo exhibit by Victor Bloomfield depicts remnants of Jewish communities that once thrived in two Baltic states

By DORIS RUBENSTEIN

As a professor of biochemistry at the University of Minnesota, Victor Bloomfield explored the properties of DNA using sophisticated laboratory equipment and theoretical insight. Now that he’s retired, Bloomfield is exploring the building blocks of Ashkenazi Jewish culture using modern digital photography and artistic insight.

Bloomfield took more than 1,400 photographs during a two-week tour of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania last year and distilled them until he was left with 28 images that best illustrateKaddish for a World Destroyed: Remnants of Jewish Communities in Lithuania and Latvia, a photo essay on display at the St. Paul JCC through Oct. 17.

Kaddish for a World Destroyed was inspired by the interest of Bloomfield’s wife, Dr. Elsa Shapiro (herself a distinguished U of M professor), in her own Jewish genealogy. While Shapiro is of mixed ancestry — maternal Turkish and southern European, and paternal Lithuanian — the show had its genesis while the team was exploring this latter part of her background.

The Baltic States were central to the development of the Ashkenazic Jewish culture that predominates for U.S. Jews today. Judaism was vibrant there for more than three centuries, then crushed by both the Nazis and Russian Communist rule. While that Jewish world was destroyed, this exhibition shows both its remnants and memorials to the glory of what was, if not a Golden Age of Judaism, at least a beautiful, fragile crystal age.

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Dr. Ofer Merin directed surgical activities at the Israeli field hospital in the aftermath of the January earthquake

By ERIN ELLIOTT BRYAN / Community News Editor

On a train bound for Auschwitz, a mother throws her 9-year-old son into the woods. He wanders into a small Polish village, where he is taken in by a Christian woman and hidden for 18 months.

In 1950, the boy makes his way to Israel, where he eventually becomes a doctor. Years later his second son, Ofer, follows in his footsteps — and earlier this year directed surgical activities at the Israeli field hospital in Haiti in the aftermath of the catastrophic earthquake.

As it is written in the Talmud, “Whoever saves a life, it is as if he has saved an entire world.”

Dr. Ofer Merin, a cardiothoracic surgeon, is the deputy director general and director of the trauma unit at Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem. He is also a lieutenant colonel in the Israel Defense Forces’ Medical Corps, where he serves as chief of army field hospitals.

Haiti was Merin’s first delegation. He spoke about his experience there at a recent briefing and update for Twin Cities Maimonides Society members and communal leaders. Merin was in Minneapolis under the auspices of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas (JCRC), a partner agency of the Minneapolis Jewish Federation.

“It does change… your perspective on things in life,” Merin told the AJW. “Everyone is always very busy with their intimate, close issues of themselves and these [events] open your mind, when you really see the magnitude of disasters in other parts of the world. It changed my life in different ways.”

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Minneapolis native Baruch Frank knows everything there is to know about taking the perfect trip to Israel

By MAX JOHNSON

Traveling in Israel with a knowledgeable guide is an essential part of any Holy Land trip — there’s too much history and politics to depend solely on a guidebook. One can only hope to find a guide who will make the trip halfway around the world both educational and fun. And that’s where Baruch Frank comes in.

Born in Golden Valley to Dr. Mason and Raleigh Frank, he made aliya (moved to Israel) with his family when he was eight years old. The Franks immediately settled in the Ein Harod kibbutz, where Dr. Frank continued to practice dentistry. Frank left the kibbutz when he was 27 to study mechanical engineering, a profession he later took up in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

Frank served 19 years in the IDF, part of which he spent in Israeli military intelligence researching weapon designs of enemy nations. All of this gives Frank a unique perspective on Israel’s military endeavors.

Eventually, Frank left the IDF for a new profession: Israeli tour guide with his own company, Touring with Baruch.

“It was better to retire at the age of 43 and not wait until I’m 50, 55, when I’ll never be able to find another job,” Frank said in an interview with the AJW. “I wanted to do something that [wasn’t] in an office all day. I wanted to be outdoors, I wanted a flexible job, I love the country and nature, and I thought I would be good at guiding not only tourists but Israelis as well.”

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St. Paul’s Park Square Theatre presents Midwest premiere of Jennifer Maisel play

By DORIS RUBENSTEIN

We’ve all experienced it. If it isn’t the last seder with Dad or Zaide, it’s the last Thanksgiving with Mom or Auntie Freda. We dread it, knowing that the next time around, there will be an empty place in our hearts, if not at our tables. But we also savor it.

Playwright Jennifer Maisel’s award-winning play, The Last Seder, opens Sept. 17 at the Park Square Theatre in St. Paul, a venue that has treated Twin Cities audiences to many Jewish-themed plays over its 35-year history. And directing The Last Seder is one of Park Square and the Twin Cities’ favorite directors: Peter Moore.

While the play takes place at the start of Passover and a seder is part of the story, Moore’s participation in real seders came late in his life.

“My favorite seder memories take place in the last few years when I’ve enjoyed several with Susan and Joe Vass,” he admitted. “It’s fun just getting through the ritual so that we can get down to some great eating!”

Joe Vass is providing original music for this production. His wife, Susan, is a popular comedienne.

What Moore enjoys most about The Last Seder is working with its large cast: 11 players are on the stage together most of the time, working in ensemble. He finds the experience very cinematic, with lots of simultaneous action that’s been fun to choreograph.

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Gritty war film follows journey of a tank crew blasting its way through southern Lebanon in 1982

By MICHAEL FOX

Even if one did not know going in that Samuel Maoz’s stunning war movie, Lebanon, was based on his own chaotic, harrowing experience inside a tank in 1982, the attention to detail clearly conveys first-hand knowledge.

By the last reel, the emotional wounds that Maoz was unable to confront and depict onscreen for 25 years are just as palpable. What we can’t see, or fully extrapolate, is his prewar mindset and postwar shock.

“I can remember my teacher, in the class with the number on her arm, shouting hysterically that we need to fight for our country and we need to die for it if necessary because everybody wants to terminate us,” Maoz recalls. “I didn’t feel that everybody wants to terminate me. All that was in my head when I was 18 was the Tel Aviv beach and girls. But in a way we were brainwashed.”

Lebanon opens Sept. 3 at the Lagoon Cinema in Uptown.

Maoz, whose mother is a Holocaust survivor, can’t forget the disorientation and alienation he felt when he returned from Lebanon.

“To come back from war in the beginning of the ‘80s with your two hands, two legs, 10 fingers, without any burn marks on your skin and to complain that you had problems inside you, it was almost unforgivable,” he said. “They told us, ‘Say thank you that you are alive. We were in the camps.’ I remember that we hated the camps less because of what happened there but more because they used them against us all the time. It was so strong that even now when I’m talking, and after talking [about the movie] for six, seven months, I still feel like I’m a bad boy.”

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By MARCY OSTER

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Four Jewish Israelis were killed when gunmen opened fire on the car they were riding in at the entrance to Kiryat Arba, near Hebron.

Tuesday night’s attack in the West Bank comes on the eve of the opening of peace talks in Washington between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

More than one gunman approached the car and shot the victims — two men ages 25 and 40, and two women of about the same ages — at point blank range, according to preliminary reports, Haaretz reported. One of the women was pregnant. The car was sprayed with dozens of bullets, according to reports.

U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley was briefing reporters on the upcoming peace talks when news of the attack came in.

“We are cognizant that there could be external events that can have an impact on the environment” at the peace talks, he said. “There may well be actors in the region who are deliberately making these kind of attacks to sabotage the process.”

The Northwest Jewish Community will hold an Erev Shabbat service 7 p.m. Friday, Aug. 27 in the community room of Lunds, 3455 Vicksburg Ln., Plymouth. The family-friendly service is open to the public and will feature a High Holidays themed story reading for children.

The service is the second in a series of events to gauge interest and build membership of a Jewish community in the northwest suburbs of Minneapolis. This group is open to all Jewish people in the Twin Cities area and is reaching out to singles, couples, young families, mixed families, the unaffiliated, and anyone looking to reconnect with their Jewish faith.

For information and to make a reservation, call Mike at 763-464-4872 or e-mail: NWSJG18@gmail.com.

Obama administration invites Israelis and Palestinians to resume direct talks on Sept. 2 in Washington, D.C.

By RON KAMPEAS

WASHINGTON (JTA) — It’s a peace conference where nothing is off the table — or on it, for that matter.

The Obama administration’s invitation to Palestinian and Israeli leaders to launch direct talks on Sept. 2 attempts to reconcile Israeli demands for no preconditions with Palestinian demands that the talks address all the core issues: final borders, the fate of Jerusalem and the fate of Palestinian refugees.

The administration does this by calling on the sides to “resolve final-status issues” without saying when and how these issues should come up, if at all.

The vagueness of the invitation issued Aug. 20 underscored the distance between the two sides, as well as the immediate political and regional pressures that have lit a fire under U.S. efforts to restart the peace process. Whether or not the peace talks will be able to move from vague outlines to concrete resolutions remains to be seen. For now, merely having direct talks is an achievement, particularly for the United States and Israel.

For the United States, having the talks gives Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a reason to continue a partial settlement moratorium, thereby sustaining Arab support for U.S. policies. This support is seen as important as Washington attempts to juggle emerging crises in the region, including Iraq’s vexed attempts to set up a government and Iran’s accelerating nuclear ambitions. President Obama also wants a process under way before November, when his Democratic Party is likely to face a tough battle at the ballot boxes during midterm congressional elections.

For Netanyahu, the talks are a way to demonstrate that his government is interested in pursuing peace with the Palestinians.

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