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COMPILED BY ELIZABETH APPLEBAUM

Violinist
Initiates
New
Facilities

iolinist Yitzhak Perl-
man recently inaugu-
rated new facilities
that make tunnels
under the Kotel accessible to the
disabled.
Thanks to an extensive pro-
ject initiated by the American
Jewish Joint Distribution Com-
mittee (JDC), disabled visitors
to the Old City can now follow,
by means of wheelchair, lifts,
ramps and elevators, the foot-
steps of kings and prophets
through the tunnels under the
Western Wall.
The route eventually will in-
clude such sites as the Cardo,
an ancient Roman marketplace
thoroughfare, and the Burnt
House, recreated from the Tem-
ple period.
The tunnel project was car-
ried out in cooperation with the
Ministry of Religious Affairs, the
Western Wall Heritage Foun-
dation, the Holy Sites Authori-
ty and the Jewish Quarter
Development Company.

V

Yehuda Rabinowitz with Steven Spielberg

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irector Steven Spielberg
met with children from
the contaminated areas
of Chernobyl during his
recent visit to Israel, where he
was opening his film, Schindler's

IR

List.
The children had been evacu-
ated to Israel as part of the
Chabad Children of Chernobyl
Medical Relief Program. Mr.
Spielberg and several members
of his family are members of the
organization's board of directors,
and Mr. Spielberg recently do-
nated a film showing of
Schindler's List as a benefit for
the Chernobyl children.
The children presented Mr.

Spielberg with a sweatshirt and
paintings they had made. Yehu-
da Rabinowitz, a 12-year-old from
Kiev, told the film director, "We
know you made a movie about a
man named Schindler who saved
many Jews. You, Mr. Spielberg,
are like Schindler to us, because
you helped save us from a very
bad place."
Mr. Spielberg, in honor of his
stepfather's birthday, sponsored
a group of children on one of 10
Chabad flights.
The Chabad program has
evacuated nearly 1,000 children
from Belarus and Ukraine and
brought them to Israel for med-
ical treatment.

Agunah." As part of the year-
long program, the ICAR held
panel discussions focusing on the
historical and current problems
of women trying to obtain reli-
gious divorce, as well as religious
legal solutions.
For information, contact the
ICAR at 240 E. 27th St., Suite
11a, New York, NY 10016, or call
(212) 779-8876.

T

he Reform movement has
introduced a new twist to
the mitzvah of coming of
age: helping Jewish chil-
dren in the former Soviet Union
obtain religious training.
Under the program, sponsored
by the Union of American He-
brew Congregations and the
World Union for Progressive Ju-
daism, a bar or bat mitzvah in
the United States or Canada is
matched with a student at a Re-
form religious school in one of the
new independent states.
The North American teen re-
ceives the name and address of
the Russian youngster and a

brief description of the religious
school attended. The bar mitz-
vah, or the family, is asked to
contribute $100 to the Russian
child's school to help underwrite
the cost of his religious training.
In return, the donor receives a
letter from the director of the
World Union office in Moscow
and a certificate signifying par-
ticipation in the program.
To date, Reform religious
schools have been established in
more than a dozen cities in the
independent states of the former
Soviet Union, including Moscow,
Rostov-on-Don, St. Petersburg,
Minsk, Kiev, Samara and Riga.

Nastya, 9, of St. Petersburg learns Hebrew.

BEAMY PIANS
BROADWAY DEBUT

omposer Alan Menken's Beauty and the Beast: A New
much-loved Beauty and Musical next month.Mr. Menken
the Beast melodies hit also wrote the scores for The Lit-
the Broadway stage this tle Mermaid, Aladdin and Little
month as the love story moves Shop of Horrors.
from film to play in Beauty and

C

Coalition Sets
Agunot Meeting

he International Coali-
tion for Agunot Rights
w
(ICAR) will hold a con-
ference next week in
0
= Jerusalem to address the diffi-
culties that face women while
L1J
waiting for aget, religious divorce.
[21
L.L., 'The Struggle to Free Agunot:
Achievements and Challenges"
begins May 2 and follows on the
heels of the "1993 Year of the

Program Helps
Russian Jews

Yitzhak Perlman navigating the Kotel
tunnels.

the Beast: A New Musical.
Adapted for the theater
by the film's author, Lin-
da Woolverton, with songs
and score by Mr. Menken,
Howard Ashman and Tim
Rice, Beauty and the
Beast, the play, features
Susan Egan as Belle, Ter-
rence Mann as Beast and
Tom Bosley as Maurice.
It premiered at the Palace
Theater.
In conjunction with the
play's premiere, Disney
Records is releasing the
original cast recording of

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