JANUARY

Joshua Henkin, author of The World Without You, is named recipient of the 2012 Edward Lewis Wallant Award from the Maurice Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Hartford.  He received the award at a special ceremony on April 17.

Joshua Henkin
Photo by Matthew Polis

At a series of communal meetings throughout Eastern Fairfield County, Jewish Home CEO Andrew Banoff and JCCS president and CEO Steve Wendell outline plans for a new campus on the site of the Jewish Community Center and UJA/Federation of Eastern Fairfield County that will house the Jewish Home for the Elderly and the JCCS. The two organizations are joined by the Thriving Jewish Community Initiative, a grassroots “visioning” effort that has engaged the Eastern Fairfield County Jewish community in defining its needs and direction.

FEBRUARY

Thirteen-year-old Joshua Ellin becomes the third generation in his family to celebrate his bar mitzvah at Congregation Knesseth Israel, a Modern Orthodox congregation in Ellington that turned 100 this year.

Joshua Ellin at his bar mitzvah in Ellington 

A year after moving into the site of the former Three Bears Restaurant on Newtown Turnpike, Chabad of Westport closes on the property on Jan. 29.  The sale of the property had been in the process for some 18 months, while town officials reviewed the Chabad’s application to open a religious center.

Rabbi Debra Cantor of B’nai Tikvoh-Sholom in Bloomfield is among a group of women known as “Women of the Wall” who were detained at the Kotel in Jerusalem on Feb. 22. Also among those detained: Rabbi Susan Silverman, sister of comedian Sarah Silverman.

Rabbi Debra Cantor, second from left, at the Kotel

MARCH

A quarter of a century after his passing, Italian-Jewish philosopher, author and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi is the subject of a year-long academic series, a collaboration between UConn’s Dept. of Literatures, Cultures and Languages and the Center for Judaic studies and Contemporary Jewish Life.

Congregation Agudath Achim, now located on North Main Street in West Hartford, celebrates its 125th birthday.

Congregation Agudas Achim

Rwanda President Paul Kagame speaks at a symposium launching the new and innovative genocide and Holocaust education initiative of the University of Hartford’s Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies.

The Himmelstein Homestead Farm – one of the first Jewish family farms to be established in Lebanon and now the only active one in the area, marks its 100th anniversary. Owned and operated by a third-generation family member, it may be the oldest Jewish family-owned farm in Connecticut.

Chabad of Litchfield files a special-exception application with the Town of Litchfield Planning & Zoning Commission, requesting permission to move into the Litchfield property it owns at 85 West St.

Chabad of Litchfield

The Fellowship for Jewish Learning, a small unaffiliated chavurah established in Stamford in 1973, celebrates its 40th anniversary by “reinventing” itself with a new name (Selah), a new rabbi (Rabbi Nicole Wilson-Spiro) and a new denominational affiliation (Reconstructionist). Here, Selah’s music director Nurit Avigdor leads a group of children singing.

APRIL

An article by Professor Nehama Aschkenasy of the University of Connecticut at Stamford is included in the first volume of work to be released by Yale University Press that will be included in the new Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, an ambitious project to collect, preserve and share the best of Jewish culture from around the world.

Nehama Aschkenasy

Former U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman joins a project on American leadership at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington, D.C. think tank. In June, it was announced that Lieberman had also joined the New York law offices of Kasowitz Benson Torres & Friedman as senior counsel.

Former Sen. Joseph Lieberma

The Stamford Jewish Federation welcomes a new director, James A. Cohen, a graduate of Yale.

Beth El Temple in West Hartford becomes the new regular meeting site of the Connecticut Council on Developmental Disabilities.

Beth El Temple

MAY

Rabbi Yosef Wolvovsky of Chabad Jewish Center in Glastonbury is one of 36 rabbis nationwide named the Jewish Daily Forward’s list of “America’s Most Inspiring Rabbis.” Pictured here: Rabbi Wolvovsky with Governor Dannel Malloy at a Chanukah candle-lighting ceremony.

Rabbi Yosef Wolvovsky. right, and Gov. Dannel Malloy

Bi-Cultural Day School‘s Excellence 2000 math students celebrate their victory, after taking first place in the International Math Competition sponsored by the Center for Initiatives in Jewish Education.

Students at Bi-Cultural Day School

The Greater New Haven Jewish Community Center presents the first annual Jewish Plays Project, an innovative national initiative founded two years ago by David Winitsky to rejuvenate Jewish theater.

Professor Sam Kassow of Trinity College is invited to Warsaw to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, where he is asked to speak at the unofficial opening of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews. Pictured here: Sam Kassow and his wife Lisa in Warsaw.

JUNE

This year marks the 90th anniversary of the dedication of Mount Sinai Hospital in Hartford, founded to serve the local Jewish physicians and patients.

Bi-Cultural Day School

To coincide with its 40th anniversary, the Jewish Home for the Elderly in Fairfield announces that it is changing its name to “Jewish Senior Services.” At the event announcing the name change: (l to r) State Rep. Kim Fawcett of Fairfield; Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch; Fairfield First Selectman Mike Tetreau; State Rep. Brenda Kupchick of Fairfield and Southport; and Andrew H. Banoff, president and CEO, Jewish Senior Services.

Dr. George Daniel Mostow of New Haven is awarded the 2013 Wolf Foundation Prize, one of the top international awards for mathematicians.

Moishe House, a pluralistic international organization that creates home-based, peer-led communities, opens in West Hartford. Here, resident Derek Holodak affixes a mezuzah to the new Moishe House, as Rabbi Brahm Weinberg of the Young Israel of West Hartford looks on.

JULY

After a syndicated crossword puzzle with the clue “Shylock, e.g.,” calling for the three-letter answer “Jew,” appears in newspapers across the country – including the Hartford Courant – the Connecticut office of ADL (alerted by the Jewish Ledger) informs its national office and elicits a printed apology from the Courant.

Leigh H. Shapiro of West Hartford is selected as Hartford’s first-ever Jewish interim assistant fire chief.

Leigh Shapiro

AUGUST

The Israel Cancer Research Fund, founded in 1975 by American and Canadian physicians, scientists and lay leaders to help raise funds for cancer research in Israel – with chapters in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Toronto, Montreal and Jerusalem – launches a statewide group in Stamford.

At Israel Cancer Research Fund kickoff event in Stamford: (l to r) ICRF CT Area Director David Kweskin, ICRF National Executive Director Eric Heffler, event host Len Mark, guest speaker Dr. Yossi Shiloh and his wife, Dr. Shoshi Shiloh.

Governor Dannel Malloy signs legislation authored by State Rep. Matt Lesser of Middletown that bars state contracts from going to companies that do business with Iran

At the bill signing: (l to r) Gary Jones, ADL regional director; Rep. David Baram; Rep. Brian Becker; Lt. Governor Nancy Wyman; Rep. Matthew Lesser; Gov. Malloy; JFACT Board Chairman Rob Lesser; Rep. Tony Hwang of Fairfield; JFACT Director Robert Fishman.

Hartford native Rabbi Elliot Feldman is appointed the new principal of the Bess & Paul Sigel Hebrew Academy in Bloomfield after his predecessor, Rabbi Mordecai Weiss, makes aliyah.

SEPTEMBER

Connecticut College Hillel makes plans for the opening in a few months of the new 6,700 square foot Zachs Hillel House, made possible by a combination of college-led fundraising and a $1 million gift from Hartford philanthropist Henry M. Zachs and family.

Joanne Blum of Colchester is elected and installed as president of Jewish War Veterans of the USA  National Ladies Auxiliary.

Days before the High Holidays, 20 gravestones at Beth El Keser Israel Memorial Park in Hamden are vandalized.

Beth El Keser Memorial Park

OCTOBER

The Pew Research Center and Brandeis University’s Steinhardt Social Research Institute release “A Portrait of Jewish Americans,” a survey of 3,475 Jews from Feb. 20 to June 13, 2013 – causing quite a stir in the Jewish community nationwide.

Rabbi Eliezer Greer unveils his newly created New Haven Jewish Cemetery Database. The New Haven rabbi spent two years walking through all 49 Jewish burial grounds, recording names from some 26,000 gravestones for the databse, which was created with the support of the Jewish Cemetery Association of Greater New Haven.

NOVEMBER

Rabbi Noach Muroff, a teacher at the Yeshivah of New Haven, and his wife Esther, are thrust into the national spotlight after he returns to its owner the $98,000 he found in the drawer of a used desk he purchased on Craigslist.

Rabbi Noach Muroff

UConn’s top administrators – including President Susan Herbst – return from a 10-day trip to Israel where they explored ways to expand partnerships and collaborations with the country’s leading academic institutions, including Hebrew University President Menahem Ben-Sasson, pictured here.

Menchem Ben-Sasson and Susan Herbst

This year marks the 125th anniversary of Temple B’nai Abraham in Meriden.

Temple B’nai Abraham

The Jewish High School of CT in Woodbridge becomes the first school in the state to offer the Center for Initiatives in Jewish Education’s CIJE-Tech Engineering Program.

Jewish High School of Connecticut

DECEMBER

The Anti-Defamation League’s Connecticut Regional Office (ADL) is the Connecticut recipient of the 2013 FBI Director’s Community Leadership Award (DCLA). The award was recently presented to Gary Jones, ADL’s Connecticut regional director by the FBI’s Patricia M. Ferrick, at a ceremony at the FBI’s New Haven office. A public presentation will take place in May.

The ADL’s Gary Jones, left, and Patrica M. Ferrick of the FBI.

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