Brandeis Magazine

Michael Appel is a practice leader in retail at business management consultant Getzler Henrich & Associates. Paul Bikoff, P’02, who lives near Jiminy Peak, in Hancock, Massachusetts, has written his second book, “The N.O. Rathbun Farm/Ontara: My Journey Home.” He invites classmates and future Brandeisians to contact him at pbikoff@yahoo.com and signs off by saying, “Namaste with a pinch of oy vey.” Arthur Caplan was awarded the 2022 NYU Rory Meyers College of Nursing Humanitarian Award for his dedication to ethics in health. Arthur is the Drs. William F. and Virginia Connolly Mitty Professor and founding head of NYU Grossman School of Medicine’s medical ethics division, in New York City. David Kannerstein and his wife of 37 years, Winnie Lanoix, recently moved to the Quadrangle, a continuing care retirement community in Haverford, Pennsylvania. “We love it here — the community, the activities, the grounds, pretty much everything,” he writes. Photographer Mark Seth Lender, GSAS MA’74, produces wildlife segments for “Living on Earth,” on Public Radio. In January, he did some cage-free diving to observe Caribbean reef sharks. The sharks “immediately figured out I was a diver they did not know,” he writes, “and, though I carried no bait or anything to draw them, they surrounded me very closely, looked me in the eye, and behaved in every way indicative of intelligence and self-awareness.” Philip Rubin is president of the Federation of Associations in Behavioral & Brain Sciences, board chair at Haskins Laboratories, a professor adjunct in Yale School of Medicine’s Department of Surgery, and a trustee at the University of Connecticut. He and wife Joette Katz ’74 have two children, Jason Rubin, a pediatrician, and Samantha Katz, a creative director and curator, and 6-year-old grandtwins, Shoshana and Rex Rubin. The latest book by Michael Strassfeld, GSAS MA’72, P’05, P’09, “Judaism Disrupted: A Spiritual Manifesto for the 21st Century,” was published by Ben Yehuda Press in February. The book “re-envisions Judaism for our time,” Michael says. Steven Swerdlow has retired after long stints as a hematopathologist and the director of the University of Pittsburgh’s hematopathology division, and is finishing up his last term as a trustee of the American Board of Pathology, where he formerly served as president. He says he’s grateful to Brandeis for helping him succeed along a “most rewarding” career path and was sorry to hear of the 2021 passing of Michael Henchman, “who was a truly great chemistry professor.” Steven and wife Jenny have been married for more than four decades. Susan Townsend is mourning the loss of her mother, Elizabeth Pasternak Townsend, who died this year.