Brandeis Magazine

Jerrad Bloome has been elected president of Houston’s Congregation Beth Yeshurun, the largest Conservative synagogue in the U.S. In September, the synagogue re-opened after undergoing a $6 million repair project following Hurricane Harvey. Jerrad’s daughter Rebecca, 13, has been selected for Houston Grand Opera’s children choir. Daughter Amanda, 15, a visual artist, is a sophomore at the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. Israela Adah Brill-Cass, P’21, is serving for a second year as Wesleyan University’s first ombuds for faculty and staff. The work is similar to what she does through her company, fixerrr. She also teaches conflict, negotiation, mediation, advocacy and pre-law courses at Emerson College, where she was honored with the Alan L. Stanzler Award for Excellence in Teaching. Fugan Dineen (known as Doug Trachten during his Brandeis years) is a Zen Buddhist priest. He and partner Amy Walenga run a small Zen center on Cape Cod. Fugan performs widely as a percussionist — specializing in Indian, African and Brazilian music — and teaches ethnomusicology at Boston College. Amy is a nurse practitioner who works in community health. Brian (Gray) Katz is a research director, CNRS, at the Sorbonne Université, Institut Jean le Rond d’Alembert, working on architectural acoustics and audio virtual reality. Marni Smith Katz and Stuart Katz ’89, P’22, celebrated the bar mitzvah of their younger son, Ben, in April. “It was a wonderful day,” they write, “made more special by the 19 Brandeisians, representing classes from 1963-2022, in attendance.” Lyla Naseem Gleason joined Lisa Rus Gerber, Beth Gates Rivera ’88 and Kathy Fried ’91 to celebrate big summer birthdays with a cruise to Cuba. Wendy Samuelson is managing partner of the boutique matrimonial and family law firm Samuelson Hause & Samuelson, based in Garden City, Long Island. She is associate editor at the New York Bar Association’s Family Law Review and writes the publication’s “Recent Legislation, Decisions and Trends” column. Wendy has been chosen for Best Lawyers’ matrimonial law section. Judy (Cohen) Thalheimer is a registered dietitian and the managing editor of the Tufts University Health & Nutrition Letter.

CANDLES ON THE CAKE: Lisa Rus Gerber ’90, Beth Gates Rivera ’88, Lyla Naseem Gleason ’90 and Kathy Fried ’91 marked their birthdays with a cruise to Cuba this summer.