Brandeis Magazine

I hope everyone is enjoying our new system of soliciting and collecting Class Notes. It is creating a lot more response, and it is wonderful to hear how everyone is doing. In addition to working at my mortgage business, I held my 10th annual PATH Ventures Jazz and Blues Revue fundraiser. The event takes place at a premier jazz club in Los Angeles to raise money and awareness for PATH Ventures, a charity that builds permanent housing for the formerly homeless. This year, we raised more than $60,000.

Clayton Austin planned to retire this May after serving on the theater faculty at George Mason University since 1993. He was department chair from 2002-10. Clifford Cohn married Pamela Ward on July 23, 2015, at Appleford, a historic house in Villanova, Pennsylvania. Chuppah holders were James Daniels ’74, P’10, and David Marwell, P’10, Clifford’s freshman roommate. David’s wife, Judy Eisenstein Marwell ’71, was also in attendance. Edward “Eddie” Farhi, MA’73, lives in Brookline, Massachusetts, with his wife and two sons. He serves as director of the Center for Theoretical Physics at MIT. His research is focused on designing algorithms for quantum computers, a big change from his early work on particle physics. Vic Grossman was elected to the Supreme Court of the State of New York and sits in the Matrimonial Part in White Plains. He enjoys hiking and photography in his spare time. Seth Kamanzi, a Wien alumnus from Rwanda and a senator for the central African nation, recently returned to his alma mater to meet with current Wien Scholars. It was Seth’s first visit to Brandeis in more than 40 years. He has had an influential political career in his home country, including acting as Rwanda’s ambassador to neighboring Kenya. Sheila Hannah Katz is happy to have completed the manuscript for “Connecting With the Enemy: A Hundred Years of Palestinian-Israeli Joint Nonviolence,” and is ecstatic at the birth of her first grandbaby. She is in her 20th year of teaching Middle East history and contemplative studies at Berklee College of Music. Yon Lee, who celebrated his 30th anniversary with the Harvard Tai Chi Club, is planning an exhibition of kung fu/tai chi this summer, featuring monks from China’s Shaolin Temple. After more than 30 years of private practice as a psychologist, Patricia Steckler has embarked on a new learning venture while continuing with her practice: In January, she started a graduate program in science and medical writing for the general public at Johns Hopkins University. Shelley Wyant is on the faculty at New York University, The New School and the Atlantic Theater Company, where she teaches MaskWork. The work is personally devised and greatly informed by Pierre LeFèvre, of Juilliard; Jacques LeCoq, of Paris; and Idi Bagus Anom, of Bali. Shelley is married to William Brinnier. Peter Wortsman’s “Cold Earth Wanderers,” a dystopian novel about a world in which “outside” no longer exists, was a finalist for the Foreword Reviews INDIEFAB Science Fiction Book of the Year. Peter’s play “Burning Words,” a historical drama about a German humanist who helped prevent the burning of the Talmud in 1510, had a staged reading this spring in New York.