Brandeis Magazine

Our 50th Reunion, part of Alumni Weekend in June, will be a grand opportunity for us to reunite with friends, and share updates on our lives along with memories of our Brandeis days. Members of the planning committee include co-chairs Penny Pressman Bernstein, Jon Bernstein, Mark Simon and Jacqui, as well as Steve Goliath Goldman, Lynn Silver, Andi John, Niecie Yood Roth, Marcia Kaplan Belgorod, Jay Kaufman, Marvin Kabakoff, Henry Sussman, Lois Gordon, Stephen Herman, Renee Tankaroff Brant, Allan Goroll and Ruth. Over the coming months, we will share more event information by email, phone calls and mailings. The weekend promises to be lots of fun, so plan to be there (and be sure to reserve your hotel room soon, before accommodations sell out).

Kenny and Margot Siris Helphand celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. Kenny wrote a book on Lawrence Halprin, one of America’s great landscape architects, whose works include the FDR Memorial, the Portland Open Space Sequence and its fountains, and Ghirardelli Square. After 12 terms, Jay Kaufman decided not to seek re-election to the Massachusetts House of Representatives. He runs a leadership-development practice and has launched a nonprofit, Beacon Leadership Collaborative, to enhance the leadership skills of those aspiring to serve in the public square. Nancy Miller Kozeradsky, who lives in New Jersey, is about to retire from the practice of law. “Although I feel fine, the Big 70 coming up has spoken to me,” she writes. “I want to be challenged to pursue interests I have not had time to explore — volunteer work, traveling, gardening, reading and improving my technological/ mechanical skills. My husband passed away in 2012, but I have an active social life.” Except for spending a year in Los Angeles in the 1970s, Ellen Novack has lived in New York City since graduation. She is divorced with two grown daughters: Gemma, a published poet, novelist (hoping to be published soon) and PhD candidate in literacy education; and Hallie, a writer/director in LA. Ellen is a talent consultant at Authentic Talent and Literary Management, and teaches film acting and auditioning at the Yale School of Drama and Juilliard, as well as privately. She also coaches actors. Her book “Taming the Cyclops: How to Do Your Best Work in an On-Camera Audition” was published in February. Judith Sachs’ program for dancers with movement disorders, Anyone Can Dance, was featured on the TV show “Seeking Solutions With Suzanne.” Judith is continuing her dance work with Parkinson’s patients and also with infusion patients at Penn State Hershey Cancer Center. Her new fall-prevention and fear-of-falling program, Close Contact for Couples, will be available in Philadelphia and Portland, Oregon. Mark Simon reports the fourth book on the work of Centerbrook Architects and Planners — “Centerbrook 4” — has been published. Mark, a principal at the firm, is busy with upcoming projects in China and with the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. Wife Penny is organizing with Planned Parenthood. Son Tom is a sculptor in Brooklyn and manages a lighting company. Daughter Jessica is a Boston doctor who does research with Vertex Pharmaceuticals. Eric Uslaner, professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland, College Park, is the author of “The Historical Roots of Corruption,” published by Cambridge University Press, and the editor of “The Oxford Handbook of Social and Political Trust.” Fully recovered after suffering a mild stroke, he reports he and his wife, Debbie, will go on safari in South Africa and Namibia this summer. Although Cheryl Zackian Weisberg planned to retire 11 years ago, substitute-teaching French classes led to part-time teaching, which has now led to a full-time teaching gig at a Manhattan private school. She and her husband, Richard ’65, have three sons, five grandsons and a granddaughter, and spend as much time as possible with them (in Chicago; Pittsburgh; and Forest Hills, New York). In a piece published in October in The New York Times, columnist Bret Stephens called Robert Zimmer, president of the University of Chicago, “the most essential voice in American academia today.” The column praised Zimmer’s ideas about free speech in higher education, and his championing of the ideals of “discourse, argument and lack of deference” on college campuses.