Class Correspondent

In January, we traveled to California to visit our older daughter and son-in-law. We visited my parents in Florida in February, and my family is planning to celebrate my father’s 90th birthday in June. Your Class Notes are wonderful to read — please keep them coming. If you’re not receiving email reminders from me, I don’t have your address, so please let me know.

Larry Beck is the head of the trusts and estates department at HaasNajarian, a San Francisco law firm where he has worked for 32 years. He and his wife, Anna, have twin 19-year-olds who attend New York University and the University of California, Berkeley. Larry swims every morning and loves to travel. Seyla Benhabib, a Wien alumna from Turkey and currently the Eugene Meyer Professor of Political Science and Philosophy at Yale University, was interviewed recently by George Yancy for an article in The Stone, part of The New York Times’ opinion pages. Karen Bernstein was named to the board of directors of Ovid Therapeutics, a privately held biopharmaceutical company focused on developing therapies for rare and orphan diseases of the brain. Karen co-founded and helped build BioCentury Publications into one of the most highly regarded sources of information related to the global biopharmaceutical industry. Robert Epstein published 20 scientific and popular articles in 2015, a personal record for him. His study of Google’s power to manipulate elections, which was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, generated more than 500 news stories. Kenny Fried and his wife, Sharon, celebrated their 35th wedding anniversary in February. Kenny is a general and vascular surgeon, and Sharon is a dermatologist. They live in Demarest, New Jersey, and have a second home in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Kenny has traveled extensively, inspired by his volunteer work in East and West Africa early in his career. While his children were growing up, the entire family visited places like Antarctica and Tibet. Kenny and Sharon have four daughters and one granddaughter. Bertha Friedman Braunfeld, P’01, P’03, writes, “Since graduation, I have had the pleasure of working for and retiring from IBM; getting married; and becoming a mother (Jessica ’01, Daniel ’03), mother-in-law (Josh Turnof ’99, Mara Michaels ’03) and grandmother (four times). On a more somber note, my husband (and hero) of 40 years, Charley, is battling ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease). He has, so far, prevailed for six long years. We continue to care for Charley at home, despite the challenges. Friendly faces and voices are always welcome, as our family attempts to make every day a ‘best day’ for Charley.” Don Friedman and Ilene Miller’s son Jeffrey and daughter Emily, along with a third partner, founded a boutique business-to-business conference company, BrainXchange. Their other son, Ira, is an entertainment lawyer in New York. Mark Gershenson reports that he continues to extract people from the legal bonds of failed intimate relationships. Kathryn Hellerstein is a scholar-in-residence at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute and is working on an essay on Jewish American women poets who are also translators. She is happy to be back at Brandeis after almost 42 years. Bob Jaffe acted in a run of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” playing Judge Taylor and Walter Cunningham, at Queens Theatre in New York City. He also spent three days playing a supporting role in a feature film, “Crazy Famous.” Bob continues to serve as an ensemble member and board chair at Ensemble Studio Theatre. He and his wife, Jill, joyfully became grandparents to Riley Leah in June 2015. Ninon Kafka writes that daughter Jessica works in the Social Security Administration and daughter Kimberly is a staff reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle. Judith Karp Kurnick serves as director of communications at the Houston Grand Opera. Son Daniel, who graduated from Williams, works at Clarion Healthcare in Boston. Daughter Susanna is in her last year of vet school at the University of Minnesota. Dan Klein is enjoying retirement, spending winters on Florida’s Gulf Coast. He stays busy with volunteer work, including for Brandeis’ Hiatt Career Center; golf; and singing with a local chorus. Dan and his wife, Shelley, traveled to Israel and Jordan in February, with a stop on the way home to see their daughter and son-in-law in England. Michael Krasnow was named benefit director/officer at THINKmd, a Vermont company working to expand global access to health care. The firm is developing a smartphone tool for diagnosing illness in children and recommending initial treatments. Michael has been an elected justice of the peace for more than 20 years and has served for 22 years as coordinator of an after-school ski-and-ride program for students K-8. Caroline Leavitt’s latest novel, “Cruel Beautiful World,” which is set in Waltham and based on a real-life murder, will be published in October. She hopes to see classmates during her book tour. Son Max is an acting student at Pace Performing Arts. Husband Jeff Tamarkin is an editor at Jazz Times magazine, and writes for Playbill and Carnegie Hall. Donna Lubin Goldman has worked as a docent at the Art Gallery of Ontario for 17 years and is also involved in fundraising for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Her companies, DG Editing and Russell Hill Publishing, keep her busy, as does tennis, golf, yoga and travel. She says she and her husband, Cal, are fortunate that their three children and six grandchildren live nearby. Dale Morse, P’00, and her husband, John Salvati, have retired and moved from Wellesley, Massachusetts, to Evergreen, Colorado, where they live near their daughter, son-in-law and two grandchildren. Dale spent 15 years as director of operations for a family foundation based in Cambridge. She and John planned to take a trip to Spain in late spring to visit their daughter and son-in-law, and then travel to Naples, Florida, to see their son and his wife. Dale recently saw Marian Bass, Jane Kaufman and Alan Melchior, MA’07, and hopes to meet up soon with Karen Bern­stein. Tom Phillips is composing a new music package for “Antiques Roadshow,” on PBS. He composed the show’s theme music many years ago. In March and April, Paula Rabinowitz was in residence as a research fellow at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, in Australia, where she conducted research on a project about Cold War fatherhood. Heidi Ravven, MA’74, PhD’84, a professor of religious studies at Hamilton College, writes that she has lectured on 17th-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza and the new brain sciences at Brandeis, Yale, Columbia and Emory. Her daughter, Simha, a forensic psychiatrist at Yale, had her second child in August. Shelly Stein and Barbara Brickman Stein ’73 celebrated their 41st wedding anniversary in August. Their three sons and five grandchildren all live within four miles of their Dallas home. Shelly is president and CEO of Glazer’s Distributors, one of the country’s largest malt, wine and spirits distributors. When she isn’t babysitting, Barbara is very involved in Jewish charities, and she and Shelly have both been active in state and national politics. They stay in touch with Larry Kaplan, David Pernikoff and Betsy Sarason Pfau. Glenn Wong has joined the faculty of Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, where he is the distinguished professor of the practice of sports law. Previously, he spent many years as a professor at UMass Amherst’s Isenberg School of Management.

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