Celebrating Israel@65

On Sunday, June 9th, we participated in The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington's Israel@65 Festival at Union Market. More than 10,000 people, young and old, celebrated Israel's 65th

At our booth:
- Children created Israel birthday cards.
- An exhibition, Ties That Bind, told the story of Washington's role in the establishing the Jewish State.
- We handed out 600 fans as well as posters about Washington's celebration of Israel's independence.

View our photo album of the event!

Longtime JHSGW member Paul Pascal led a tour of the history of Union Terminal Market and former sites of Jewish merchants. Check out the pictures! We plan to offer this tour again soon, so keep an eye out.

If you attended the tour, please comment here or email to tell what you thought! If a friend was on the tour, please share this request.

Another Successful Jewish American Heritage Month

We've wrapped up another successful Jewish American Heritage Month, again showing our role as the source for community history!

You may have seen Arthur Welsh, the first American Jewish aviator, featured in the "Flashbacks" comic in the Sunday Washington Post. Our efforts led to this feature and the Society was mentioned in the final strip! You can now view the entire six-part series.

Executive Director Laura Apelbaum and board member Diane Wattenberg were featured in The Federation's Jewish Food Experience blog -- read the post about the winning National Spelling Bee word: knaidel.

We partnered again this year with the National Archives on a very special program featuring Holocaust survivor Gerda Weissman Klein.

We were also featured in Moment Magazine (download article) and we were out in the community a great deal:

   - Exhibition, Jewish Life in Mr. Lincoln's City, was on display at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library

   - Led 8 walking tours:
         - Washington Hebrew Congregation’s 6th grade, EntryPointDC’s young professionals group, and a public tour of Downtown DC
        - Arlington National Cemetery for the public, Women of Temple Rodef Shalom, and a Jewish school from North Carolina
        - Old Town Alexandria for the Adas Israel Congregation Sisterhood and Jewish Federations of North America staff

   - Presented 5 talks on topics about local Jewish heritage for:
        - OASIS at Montgomery Mall
        - U.S. Customs and Border Protection
        - EntryPointDC’s Shavuot Study Night
        - Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library
        - Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington's annual meeting (related blog post)