Insight

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1999's Last Shabbat

While millennial fever grips most of the country,
some Jews seek a quieter New Year's Eve.

DEBRA NUSSBAUM COHEN

Jewish Telegraphic Agency

hat will you be doing
New Year's Eve — or
should we say New
Millennium's Eve?
Will you be decked out in festive
holiday finery, tripping the light fan-
tastic, partying like it's (almost no
longer) 1999? Or will it not be Dec.
31 for you, but rather the 22nd of
Tevet, simply but pleasurably
another regular Shabbat?
Interviews with Jews from
around the country and
across the Orthodox-to-
secular spectrum
revealed that, for most,
the last Shabbat of the
millennium likely
will be a bit of both.
Some are going
to do their best to
ignore the impor-
tance of the date
on the secular cal-
endar and keep
millennial revelry at
bay.
Rabbi Arthur
Hertzberg, a humani-
ties professor at New
York University, will do
"what I always do on
Shabbat," he said. "I will
have dinner, will study the
sedra [Torah portion of the week]
a bit and go to sleep, and then the
next morning I will go to shul. Period.
"Any Jewish hoo-ha about the mil-
lennium is essentially playing into
Christian hands. It's not our party, not
our millennium, and let's cut it out,"
Rabbi Hertzberg said.
Bruce Temkin, director of young
leadership for the New Israel Fund,
and his partner are going "to try to
avoid the over-planned significance
and shmaltz of the evening," probably
by having a quiet dinner with friends
and family as they do most every
Friday night, he said.

For Rabbi Avi Shafran, a
spokesman for Agudath Israel of
America, an organization representing
the interests of the fervently
Orthodox, it will be a Shabbat like
any other.
"Shabbat stands for things very
antithetical to things like the noise,
the ribaldry and the wild parties that
go on

at
any New Year's Eve
and certainly at the turn of a millenni-
um. Shabbat is about calm and peace
and quiet. I hope it won't have to reg-
ister at all at our Shabbos table, but if
it does it will just be a reminder of the
contrast between the Jewish world and
the rest of the world," he said.
Yet other Jews expect to ignore the
Jewish aspects of Dec. 31 and Jan. 1
this year.
"The fact that it's Shabbat isn't

going to really affect my life or my
celebration at all," said Sari
Fensterheim, a New York-based video
producer. She plans to go to her
mother's beach house with friends.
"We'll probably cook a nice dinner
and drink some champagne, which
sort of sounds like Shabbat dinner but
isn't on purpose," she said.
For many, however, the confluence
of Shabbat with New Year's Eve will
be a chance to meld their Jewish
lives with an acknowledgment
of the fact that they live in
an overwhelmingly non-
Jewish world.
Rachel Levin and
her husband plan to
have friends to their
Los Angeles home
for Shabbat din-
ner, supplemented
by champagne to
toast the new
year, said Levin.
"I'm pleased
it's Shabbat, since
to me it is so
much about
marking time. It's
really about being
present in the
moment, so I can't
think of a ,nicer way to
begin the next century
than being with family
and friends," said Levin, a
program officer with the
Righteous Persons Foundation.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, a
Lubavitch rabbi famous for his book
Kosher Sex suggested, at a recent New
York City appearance, that one of the
nicest ways for Jews to celebrate the
millennium would be to invite non-
Jewish friends over for Shabbat.
In Miami, there will be a Shabbat
retreat devoted to an exploration of
the holy texts belonging to many of
the world's religions, at
Reconstructionist Temple Beth Or
and its Sh'ma Center for Jewish
Meditation.

Remember
When

From the pages of The Jewish News
for this week 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50
years ago.

Sidney Silverman was elected
national president of the Zionist
Organization of America.
Yeshiva Beth Yehudah announced
plans to demolish its Southfield
administrative office building to
construct an addition td its Joseph
Tannenbaum School for Boys.

Mother Teresa lauded the Israeli
army for its aid to the charity orga-
nization she established in Gaza 29
years ago.
President Jimmy Carter hosted a
25-minute meeting in the Oval
Office of a group of chasidic rabbini-
cal leaders — the first time any presi-
dent had received such a delegation.

r'r

WNOF

VCIN

Brian Kronick, son of Dr. and Mrs.
Peter Kronick, will compete in the
1969 National Invitational Diving
Championship at the swimming
Hall of Fame in Ft. Lauderdale.
Eighteen young Jews who
chained themselves to the gates of
the Soviet Embassy in Washington
to protest Soviet anti-Semitism, were
scheduled to be tried in February.
Hillel Day School added to its
curriculum a course in sex educa-
tion for grades five to nine.

A Rod Serling script about the
Warsaw Ghetto was dropped by
CBS-TV after sponsors of Playhouse
90 objected to the play as "too
depressing."
Fre s hwater Fury, the story of the
Great Lakes storm of November 1913,
written by Frank Barcus, will be issued
by Wayne State University Press.

'W,IUMN.
The Government of the Union of
Burma became the 58th nation to
grant recognition to the State of Israel.
Morton Feigenson, general man-
ager of the Faygo Beverage Co., was
elected treasurer of the National
Carbonated Beverage Institute.
—Compiled by Sy Manello,
Editorial Assistant

12/17
1999

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