Jewish life stories: Columbia Hillel mourns Yakov Shapiro, 30, an Israeli emissary of ‘joy and warmth’

Yakov Shapiro, 30, an Israeli envoy at Columbia Hillel

Yakov Shapiro was born in Rishon Lezion, Israel, to a family that had emigrated from Belarus. After his military service, he staffed a Jewish Agency for Children in Ukraine – a decision that confused his mother.

“She could not understand why I would want to return to the former Soviet Union, a place that had been such a source of pain for my family,” he wrote. “I felt this was the most meaningful way for me to understand my grandmother’s memories and stories, and I felt compelled to go.”

For the next six years, he traveled to Ukraine twice a year and led programs for young Jews in underserved areas.

“These experiences in Ukraine not only touch me individually and help me understand my family’s story, but also help me connect with Jewish communities around the world,” he wrote.

Shapiro was connected to the American Jewish community from 2021-2024 when he served as a Jewish Agency Campus Israel Fellow at Columbia/Barnard Hillel. There he met Jewish students, chatted with Russian-speaking Jews and worked the room during Shabbat dinners. After his term, he remained in New York to teach Hebrew at the Abraham Joshua Heschel School. As a member of Front Runners NY, a running club for LGBTQ+ athletes, he completed the 2023 NYC Marathon.

“Jakov’s joy and warmth had a tremendous impact on our community,” Hillel employees recalled in an email announcing Shapiro’s death on September 30 at the age of 30. “He greeted us all with a big smile, kind eyes and an exclamation of ‘chayim sheli – my life!’” No cause of death was given.

Naftali Herstik, 77, well-known cantor and teacher ‘hazzanoot’

Cantor Naftali Herstik descended from a long line of cantors and rabbis. (Milken Archive of Jewish Music)

“My esteemed teacher.” “My dear teacher.” “My cantorial mentor.” The outpouring of tributes that followed the news that Cantor Naftali Herstik died on September 1 at the age of 77, noting that he was one of the best-known and most influential cantors of his generation.

As a prayer leader at the Great Synagogue in Jerusalem for 30 years, Herstik continued the almost operatic tradition of “hazzanut” that linked him to the mid-20se century famous cantors such as Yossele Rosenblatt and Moshe Koussevitzky.

But it was his former students from the Tel Aviv Cantorial Institute, which he founded, who seemed to take the news the hardest: in class and on the bima, one student said, “He served God and the text without ego.”

Born in Salgótarján, Hungary, he emigrated to Israel with his family at the age of three and studied with his own father, a well-known cantor. He completed his training at the Royal College of Music in London and was cantor of the Finchley Synagogue for many years. He also sang in concerts with orchestras in London, Jerusalem and Prague.

After retiring from the Great Synagogue in 2012, Herstik regularly led High Holiday prayers at the Chorale Synagogue in Moscow. “My father faced the challenge of how to lead so many people who have no idea about Jewish traditions,” Netanel Herstik, the cantor at Hampton Synagogue on New York’s Long Island, told the New York Times. “But my father knew how to do it right.”

Dr. Ruth Jacobs, 76, special education instructor and activist

Dr. Ruth Jacobsa special education instructor at Brooklyn and Queens Colleges who devoted her career to people with intellectual developmental disabilities, died on September 24. She was 76.

Jacobs worked for many years at the NYC Department of Education; after her retirement she received her Ed.D. degree from St. John’s University in Queens, New York – one of six advanced degrees she earned during her lifetime. Together with her optometrist daughter, Dr. Alysha Jacobs, she founded See A Brighter Future, a non-profit organization that provides free eyeglasses to underprivileged schoolchildren.

Jacobs was also active with the East Midwood Jewish Center in Brooklyn and its affiliated East Midwood Hebrew Day School, and with the Hatzilu Rescue Organization, which provides food, financial assistance and social work to families in need. Her son Michael remembered his mother as a “professor, educator, volunteer, mentor, congregation member, friend and an overall force of nature.”

Joel Fleishman, 90, a powerhouse in public policy and philanthropy

Joel Fleishman was a pioneering scholar in the field of philanthropy studies. (Duke University)

Joel Fleishmana scholar of philanthropy and public policy whose invaluable advice extended to a range of prominent Jewish institutions, died September 30. He was 90.

Founding director of the public policy program at Duke University, the North Carolina native was a professor of law and public policy at Duke for more than 53 years. As a mentor and networker, Fleishman, an observant Jew, founded a board to support Artscroll and Mesorah, publishers of Jewish religious texts, and offered advice to strengthen the Avi Chai Foundation, which promoted Jewish education and engagement before it became extinct by design. went down. 2019.

In 2021, the Chabad House at Duke was renamed Fleishman House in honor of his commitment to making Jewish students feel at home on campus. Fleishman was also a founder of the American Hebrew Academy in Greensboro, North Carolina, and served as a trustee of Brandeis University, the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and the American Friends of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem.

“It wasn’t just that Joel knew everyone,” recalled former New York Times columnist Frank Bruni, a colleague at Duke. “He also somehow kept in touch with everyone, nurturing his existing friendships with unparalleled emotional generosity and, moreover, magically mustering the energy to nurture new ones.”

Eugene Gold, 100, Soviet Jewish activist and prosecutor who put away ‘Son of Sam’

Brooklyn District Attorney Eugene Gold announces the breakup of a Mafia car theft ring in 1970. (Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)

Eugene Gold was known for putting one Jew behind bars and perhaps helping to free millions of others.

Elected district attorney in Brooklyn in 1968, Gold also served as chairman of the Greater New York chapter of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry in the 1970s, and later national chairman of the NCSJ. As prosecutor, his most high-profile case was the prosecution of David Berkowitz, the so-called Son of Sam serial killer whose rampage terrified New Yorkers in the summer of 1977. (Berkowitz, who received 25 years to life for each of the six murders, remains in prison in upstate New York.)

Gold declined to seek re-election in 1981 to devote more time to Jewish affairs, and moved to Israel for a time with his wife Rosaine. Speaking at a B’nai B’rith conference in 1975Gold said it was up to American Jews to fight for their co-religionists in the Soviet Union. “We must demonstrate our full mobilization of resources,” he said, “in support of this historic and momentous effort.”

Gold died on August 5 at his home in Woodstock, New York. He was 100.

Alan Potash, 64, a Hillel executive and federation professional

Alan Potash was the CEO of the Jewish Federation of the Desert in Palm Springs, California. (Courtesy of the Jewish Federation of Omaha)

Alan Potash described his nearly thirty-year career as a Jewish professional as a kind of “personal shlichut”—that is, a mission of “working across the spectrum of the Jewish world, helping people find their way to understanding why Israel matters and why it’s okay to be proud to be Jewish too.”

Potash served as director of the Hillel at the University of Illinois from 1998 to 2003, supporting students facing anti-Israel protests during the Second Intifada. He was the Midwest Regional Director for the Anti-Defamation League and the CEO of the Jewish Federation of Omaha, Nebraska from 2015-2021. In 2022, he was named CEO of the Jewish Federation of the Desert in Palm Springs, California.

He died unexpectedly while recovering from heart surgery on September 22 at the age of 64 at his home in California.