Class Correspondent

Rachel Lapidus and her husband, Adam Banks ’97, had a daughter, Yael Lapidus-Banks, on Aug. 3. Hayley (Cagan) Kamis lives in New Jersey with her husband, Alan ’89. Hayley is a practitioner in the integrative medicine program at Atlantic Health Services, where she provides supportive services and education to patients, caregivers and staff. Alan is vice president of operational excellence at NextGen Healthcare. Their son, Matthew, a college freshman studying filmmaking, completed his second internship at the Cannes Film Festival this spring. Brian Katz, a research director with the French National Center for Scientific Research, works at the Institut d’Alembert, part of the Pierre and Marie Curie University, within the Sorbonne Universitiés, Paris. His research is focused on real and virtual-room acoustics, and 3-D audio. Hope (Berger) Levav and her wife, Melanie, report their son, Aaron, became a bar mitzvah in November. Julie Smith-Bartoloni and Melinda Panken attended with their families, reassembling 60 percent of the 169 South St. crew on a sunny Brooklyn day. Cheering on from London were Elise Golden and her family. Julie Fisher and Daniel Shapiro ’91 sent love from Israel, where Daniel was finishing up his tenure as U.S. ambassador to Israel. NBC is bringing back its celebrated comedy series “Will and Grace” for 10 episodes during the 2017-18 TV season. The show’s original cast, including Debra Messing as Grace Adler, will return. “Will and Grace” originally ran from 1998-2006. Wendy Samuelson is managing partner of Samuelson Hause & Samuelson, a boutique matrimonial and family law firm based in Garden City, New York. She was named one of the 10 Best Female Attorneys in New York by the American Institute of Family Law Attorneys and is included in the matrimonial law section of “The Best Lawyers in America.” Wendy is associate editor of the New York Bar Association’s Family Law Review. Rebecca Shargel is associate professor of education at Towson University, where she teaches general education and Jewish education. She also serves as an affiliate to the Baltimore Hebrew Institute, created when Baltimore Hebrew University merged with Towson in 2009. While on sabbatical, she is researching critical thinking as well as applying havruta (dyadic learning) to a secular college-classroom context. Rebecca lives with her husband and daughter.

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