Class Correspondent

Bob Macris writes, “I recall fondly my years at Brandeis: good friends, fun times and intellectual growth. I have three children — Camille, 16; Francesca, 13; and Luc, 11 — and split my time among the northwest Pacific coast of Costa Rica, NYC, the Hamptons and Old Quebec. As we say in Costa Rica, ‘Pura vida!’” Joseph Wolke and his wife, Barb, are celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary this year. He writes, “Our two children are married and live in the Boston area. We have three grandchildren and another one due to arrive at the end of May. Barb is a retired teacher, and I am a technology consultant. We have been living in Chicago since leaving Brandeis. We also have a second home in Cape Cod so we can spend summers with our children and grandchildren.” Fran Koslow Miller is a full-time art writer. Her features, interviews and reviews are published in magazines and professional journals worldwide, especially Art in America, Art New England and Sculpture magazines. She is also a regular contributor to scholarly publications; her essays on modern art are included in the Grove Dictionary of Art. Fran and her husband, Mark, live in Andover, Mass. Their daughter, Rebecca, is a sophomore at Clark University. Dan Meyers writes, “This year marks my 20th year in Denver. As of December, I’m heading a new communications office at the University of Colorado’s Health Sciences Center. The center is composed of six schools — including the med school, where I used to be — on a 220-acre campus built recently on a closed U.S. Army facility. My son, who is 19, survived high school and is working and attending college part time. He moved in March from the house to an apartment, which I think was less traumatic for him than for me. I’ve been in touch recently with a few Brandeis classmates and swim-team compatriots, which has been a nice reconnection.” Carol Manning has been a doctor in Minnesota for 37 years, first in an ER, then 30 years in urgent care. She plans to retire at the end of this year. She writes, “I’ve done ‘serial monogamy’ with a number of wonderful guys over the years, now with a great guy for the past three and a bit. I’ve done hypnotherapy on the side, along with photography, theater, dancing and solo singing. No clue what I’ll do after retirement, but I’m looking forward to it a lot. I’d love to hear from anyone who remembers me.” After 28 years at the University of Pittsburgh, where he is a professor of psychiatry and chief of geriatric psychiatry, Jules Rosen will be moving on to new challenges. He has accepted a position as chief medical officer at Colorado West Behavioral Health. He and his wife, Debra Fox, will live in their home in Breckenridge, Colo. Jakki Kouffman opened a solo exhibition of her acrylic landscape paintings in August at Pippin Contemporary in Santa Fe, N.M. This is her 12th solo show; her work has also appeared in more than 200 group shows around the country. She credits her Sachar Fellowship in Italy with affirming art as a life choice and her experiences with the Brandeis Upward Bound and Transitional Year programs for inspiring her dedication to teaching. See www.jakkikouffman.com and www.pippincontemporary.com for examples of her paintings. Barbara Golden writes that she is “back to being Barbara Golden, after 39 years of having a different last name.” She is an adjunct music professor at Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania, performs as a pianist and harpsichordist, and enjoys being a grandma. Janet “Jan” Lewis is associate professor and chair of theater at Wesleyan College in Macon, Ga. Before going to Wesleyan, Jan worked professionally in Los Angeles theater for many years as an actor, director, dramaturge and producer. She was the literary manager/dramaturge at the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble and the founder/artistic director of the Jewish Women’s Theatre Project. At Wesleyan, she directs and teaches a wide range of theater courses, both scholarly and performative. Her husband, Robert Fieldsteel, is a playwright and artist-in-residence at Wesleyan. Together, Jan and Robert have co-written several award-winning plays for their students to perform. Peter Wortsman’s recently published memoir/travelogue, “Ghost Dance in Berlin: A Rhapsody in Gray” — an unlikely declaration of love for a city and a state of mind by the son of German-Jewish refugees — has remained for three months and counting on the Amazon best-seller list in the specialty (literary/religious) travel category. Peter’s anthology “Tales of the German Imagination: From the Brothers Grimm to Ingeborg Bachmann” just went into a second printing. And his play “Burning Words,” on 16th-century German humanist Johannes Reuchlin’s defense of the Talmud and his dispute with the Dominicans and their mouthpiece, the converted Jewish butcher Johannes Pfefferkorn, has just been translated into German for a 2014 production in Pforzheim, Germany. Peter has been married for more than 25 years to Claudie Bernard. They have two children, Aurelie, 23, and Jacques, 18. Beverly Weintraub Magidson is director of chaplaincy services at the Jewish Federation of Northeastern New York in Albany, a program that reaches out to Jewish residents of long-term care facilities. She was ordained a rabbi by Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York City back in 1979; on the weekend she was ordained, the number of women rabbis in the United States doubled, from 11 to 22. She then became associate director of Hillel at Washington University in St. Louis. In 1983, Beverly was the first woman to become solo rabbi of a Conservative congregation when she was named the rabbi of Congregation Beth Shalom in Clifton Park, N.Y., just north of Albany. The Conservative movement’s rabbinical organization, the Rabbinical Assembly of America, admitted her and two other women, including Amy Eilberg ’76, as its first female members in 1985. Beverly and Richard Magidson ’72 will celebrate 40 years of marriage in August. They are the proud parents of two adult children, Shalom and Sarah. Shelley Wyant teaches mask work at New York University and the New School in New York City. Ronnie (Ra’anana) Levin, PhD’80, P’12, writes, “After graduation, I stayed at Brandeis for a PhD program in Near Eastern and Judaic studies (Bible). Then in 1978 (no openings in Bible), I took a job with the City of Boston’s Office of Management and Budget. In 1980, I moved to Washington, D.C., to work for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In 1985, I married Joel Schwartz ’69, PhD’80, P’12. We have two kids — Yuri ’12 and Natalia. We returned to Boston (Newton) in 1994. I’m still at the EPA, now as a senior scientist (economics and public health), and a visiting scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health. What a long, strange trip it’s been — but fun!” Gabor Rona is in his seventh year as the international legal director at Human Rights First, which is working to close Guantánamo, end indefinite military detention and military commission trials, and bring targeted-killing policy into compliance with international law. He is in his fourth year of teaching international humanitarian law (law of armed conflict) at Columbia. He was appointed to a United Nations Human Rights Council working group on the prevention of mercenarism and the regulation of private military contractors. Gabor’s daughter, Lilian, has been healthy for several years after a bout with leukemia while the family was living in Switzerland. “She’s preparing to enter high school in the fall, or perhaps drop out to play professional poker and self-school in astrophysics,” he writes. “I’m just hoping to be able to remember Woodstock when the 50th anniversary rolls around.” Rachel Gordon Bernstein’s most recent solo exhibition of paintings was at the Gallery on Cedar in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y. For the past 26 years, she has taught Hebrew and biblical Hebrew to children, including bar/bat mitzvah students, and adults at Temple Beth Shalom in Hastings-on-Hudson. She just completed a year of study of Arabic grammar and classic Arabic prose at Columbia University. She and her husband, Rob Bernstein, have two sons, Jonah and Jed, who are students at Harvard Business School and Brooklyn Law School, respectively.

Class notes opener A BIGGER, BETTER CELEBRATION: Reunion 2013 proved a record breaker as more alumni than ever attended the annual on-campus gathering on June 7-9. New events included Ollie’s Family Fun, and Kegs and Kickball. The second annual Alumni of Color Reception again drew a large crowd. Reunion celebrants, including many members of the Class of 1973, enjoyed the Ralph Norman Barbecue. Front row, from left: David Benjamin; Nancy Federman; Curtis Tearte ’73; Jylla Tearte; and Phyllis Coburn ’75, P’04, P’07, P’10. Back row: Art Benjamin ’73; Mitchell Lindauer 73; Richard Walsh ’73; Stephen Walsh; Jeffrey Hunter ’73, P’09; and David Coburn ’73, P’04, P’07, P’10.
Philadelphia 76ers SPIRIT OF ’76ERS: Members of the Alumni Club of Philadelphia, family and friends cheered as the Philadelphia 76ers beat the Indiana Pacers, 98-91, at the Wells Fargo Center. Attendees watched the teams warm up before tipoff and received complimentary ’76ers T-shirts and hats. Lee Brooks ’73, P’13, chaired the event.
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