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These 12 Jewish feminist trailblazers, all over 80, had dinner together last night
(New York Jewish Week) — On Wednesday evening at the Ziegfeld Ballroom in Midtown, hundreds of New York’s leading philanthropists, healthcare executives and businesspeople gathered for the New Jewish Home’s “Eight over Eighty” gala — an annual event put on by the senior healthcare and rehabilitation agency that honors extraordinary New Yorkers over the age of 80 “who personify the value of aging well into our 80s and beyond.”
But of all the VIPs in the room, there was one table in particular — Table 13, right in the center of the room — that may have embodied that spirit better than any other: Seated around it were 12 of New York’s most accomplished Jewish women, all 80-plus, who have had an outsized influence on politics, journalism, publishing, activism, business and, above all, feminism.
Writer and activist Letty Cottin Pogrebin — one of the evening’s honorees — organized the group, which she dubbed the “Table of Amazing Women.”
“I see a lifetime of my own reflected in the table because they all come from different parts of my life,” Pogrebin said.
There was photographer, musician, author and wife-of-Alan Arlene Alda, 90; attorney and former Democratic district leader Jane Bevans, 82; the co-founder of the National Organization for Women, Muriel Fox, 95; literary agent Jane Gelfman, 84; the award-winning journalist and urban affairs specialist Roberta Gratz, 82; founder of First Women’s Bank and NY Women’s Foundation, Sarah Kovner, 88; former Manhattan borough president and global ambassador of American Jewish World Service Ruth Messinger, 82; artist and financial advisor Annie Navasky, 83; TV producer Gale Robinson, 83, interior designer Judith Schlosser, 92 and literary agent Phyllis Wender, 89.
“It just hit me,” Pogrebin told the New York Jewish Week when asked what inspired her to assemble the all-star table. “They said you can have one table. I said I’m going to make it meaningful. I’m going to make it symbolic.”
Pogrebin, of course, is the founding editor of Ms. Magazine and the publication’s Foundation for Women, as well as the National Women’s Political Caucus. She’s well acquainted with awards — she won an Emmy for her work on “Free to Be… You and Me,” the ground-breaking children’s book, record and television special; was inducted into the Manhattan Jewish Hall of Fame, and received a Yale University Poynter Fellowship in Journalism.
Still, Pogrebin, who recently published “Shanda: A Memoir of Shame and Secrecy,” knew she wanted to mark the latest honor by celebrating the important women in her life who helped her, along with countless other women, forge her path at a time when it wasn’t clear where, and how, a path could be cleared.
And yet, finalizing the list wasn’t easy. “I had to prune,” Pogrebin said. “If I could have, I would have filled another table.”
“I felt very bad because I didn’t include a 100-year-old friend,” she added. “I think that I wanted to, just in a small way, celebrate admitting your age, owning your age, and coalescing around the idea of being youthful at any age.”
Pogrebin’s invited guests — though honored and excited to be included — weren’t particularly surprised their friend came up with such a creative way to celebrate the occasion.
“Leave it to Letty,” journalist Gratz told the New York Jewish Week.
Looking around the table, Gratz said she certainly felt a sense of accomplishment. “We’ve all done it,” she said. “Imagine that, despite everything we faced. That feels great. I’m glad to be here.”
“I thought it was a great idea,” said Messinger, who was New York City’s first woman mayoral candidate and serves as president of AJWS from 1998 to 2016. “I had the privilege of being honored here a couple of years ago. When Letty wrote, I would not have necessarily come back. But then Letty said, ‘What if we got a whole table together?’ I thought ‘OK, that’s a great idea.’”
When asked, Messinger offered this advice to current and future generations: “Pursue justice, organize and remember that you’re not required to complete the task, but you can’t refuse to participate,” she said, paraphrasing Deuteronomy 16:20 as well as Pirkei Avot, a classic collection of Jewish wisdom.
Fox, the NOW co-founder, also noted the important role Judaism played in shaping her path and that of her peers. “Judaism has always given women a special role, strong women,” she said. “Certainly in Judaism, we learned about overcoming adversity and overcoming opposition.”
Thinking back on the progress she and her tablemates made, Fox said that her appeal for future generations is that they “carry the torch.”
“There’s still so much to do,” she said.”People sort of thought it was all done. We’ve learned that isn’t the case.”
But Fox added there are many reasons to be proud, as well as optimistic. “We have to be inspired by the fact that so much was accomplished — we changed the world, really, in a very short time,” she said. “In the old days, women couldn’t get credit cards. The ads said ‘Help Wanted Male’ or ‘Help Wanted Female.’ Landlords could say, ‘I don’t rent to women.’ Employers could say ‘We don’t hire women.’ We changed all that in our lifetime.”
As the women chatted over cocktails, it became crystal-clear that they not only changed the world but still wake up every day committed to their causes.
“I really believe activism keeps you young. If you become passive, if you feel hopeless, and if you feel the problems are too big, you’re going to age,” she added. “You’re going to become pretty limp. Not just in terms of politics, in terms of being alive to the moment, of being interested in young people [when you’re old] and, when you’re young, being interested in old people. Not ruling anybody out of your life.”
The New Jewish Home, formerly known as Jewish Home Lifecare, runs nursing homes, rehabilitation facilities and senior housing in the five boroughs and Westchester Cunty. The other honorees of the evening were three-time Grammy winner Ron Carter; feminist author Erica Jong; conductor Eve Queler; inventor Sanford “Sandy” David Greenberg; former president and CEO of the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, Dr. Billy E. Jones; founding partner of Trian Fund Management, Peter May; former president of the League of Voluntary Hospitals and Homes of New York, Bruce McIver and the founder of TAG Associates, Stanley Pantowich.
David Remnick, editor in-chief of The New Yorker, hosted the gala, which raised $1.3 million, according to a spokesperson. Some of the funds, the spokesperson added, will be directed towards a new program dedicated to aiding older adults in the LGBTQ+ community.
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Memoir of child of Holocaust survivors takes riveting twists
Book Review by Julie Kirsh (former Sun Media News Research Director)
Exclusive to The Jewish Post
“We used to Dream of Freedom, A Memoir of Family, the Holocaust, and the Stories We Don’t Tell”
By Sam Chaiton (Dundurn Press) 2024
Sam Chaiton’s memoir of growing up with Holocaust survivor parents in downtown Toronto in the 1950s is a compelling read.
Jeanne Beker, a well known Toronto fashion writer, mentions in her praise for “We used to Dream of Freedom” that her survivor parents talked incessantly about their war experiences.
My own parents, both survivors, would drop tidbits of their stories now and again. I learned to be watchful and vigilant for these rare moments of revelation. However, questioning my parents about the Holocaust, would cause them pain. I knew when to stand down.
In his memoir, Sam Chaiton tells the reader that his parents chose to remain completely silent about their wartime experiences. Poignantly their son was left with a silence that he interpreted as huge empty sound. Although the son could understand some Yiddish, his parents turned to Polish in order to keep the “kinder safe”. Outright denial of illness and death was part of his parents’ way of coping.
Born in the 1950s on Palmerston Boulevard in downtown Toronto, Chaiton paints a vivid picture of his youth as the middle son of five boys. He describes the mayhem of a household of barked orders and punishment by his father’s belt. His mother, as with many other survivors, was obsessed with eating and food. Chaiton learned early that rejecting his controlling mother’s food was one of his few weapons. “It’s hard not to do what a Holocaust survivor wants you to”, he says. Chaiton had to stare down two parents both with tattoos.
Dance proved to be a saving grace for Chaiton. On the dance floor, with a partner, the gates of happiness and permission to be oneself, opened. The Toronto Dance Theatre in Yorkville was a salvation and home for Chaiton. Also important to Chaiton was a family – not his troubled blood family but a chosen one – a commune.
In 1973, after a sojourn in New York, Chaiton decided that he was not a performance dancer. Back in Toronto as he pointedly danced with his mother at his brother’s wedding, she told him that he was her favourite child, imposing “the psychological damage that parental favouritism caused”.
Living in a commune with a chosen family afforded Chaiton the freedom to dig deep into his psyche, face his traumatic upbringing and tear down the rigid rules of society and the biological family. At a certain point, for reasons he explains in the book, Chaiton made the decision to vanish from the lives of his parents and brothers.
In 1980 the commune took up the cause of the injustice and illegal jailing of Rubin “Hurricane” Carter. Carter had been exonerated, released from prison and then reconvicted and sent back to prison.
In hindsight Chaiton wonders if his disengagement from his family caused them the same wounds and feelings of emptiness that Carter had to face when he was reincarcerated.
In 1985 while sitting in a New Jersey prison yard with friends and Carter, Chaiton had the riveting vision that he was in a concentration camp, “on a mission to liberate (his) parents – the dream of every Holocaust survivor’s child.”
In the summer of 1985, Chaiton received the news from Toronto that his parents were involved in a fatal car accident. Only after his mother’s death, was Chaiton able to acknowledge that in spite of her smothering, she gave him a sense of self worth and strength.
In 1988 Chaiton co-wrote the story of freeing Carter. One of his brothers saw him on a news broadcast, contacted him and the 20-year silence between Chaiton and his blood family was over.
Riding on the coattails of the successful release of Carter, Chaiton and some friends established an organization that continues to exist today. Innocence Canada has helped wrongfully convicted people like Guy Paul Morin, David Milgaard and Steven Truscott.
In chapter 16, entitled Wierzbnik, Chaiton finally learns about his father’s testimony published in a book, “Remembering Survival”, by a university professor. Reading about his father’s history helped Chaiton to understand the damage done to survivors, his parents’ trauma and why the home that they created for their sons after the war was so fraught.
Chaiton remarks on the interconnectedness of learning about the sufferings of his parents, his own personal struggles and the gift his father left him of being able to tell his own story.
Sam Chaiton’s profound memoir took courage and brutal honesty to write.
His book teaches that the legacy left by Holocaust survivors, along with a deep sadness, is the innate need of the children to persevere and find their own path of survival and growth.
Obituaries
CAROL SLATER (née GENSER)
With great courage on Wednesday, November 6, 2024, surrounded by her family.
Treasured daughter of the late Esther and the late Percy. Beloved wife of Ron for 69 years. Loving mother and mother-in-law of Charles and Dina Slater, Erin and Joe Battat, Adam and Kit, Claudia and the late David. Cherished grandmother of Zach, Robert and Hydi, Ben and Martha, Liam and Addison, Thom and Emeline, Max, Ilai, Emanuelle and Eli. Proud great-grandmother of Rafael, Lily, Maya, and Jojo. Special sister and sister-in-law of David and Joan Genser, Roberta and Mayer Lawee; and sister-in-law of Joel and Sheila Slater. Greatly missed by her nieces, nephews, family, friends and by all who knew her.
The family would like to thank Drs. Shamy, Lipes, Chang, the doctors, nurses and staff at the Jewish General Hospital Palliative Care Unit as well as DeyDey, Linette and everyone who took such wonderful care of our Mom.
Funeral service from Paperman & Sons, 3888 Jean Talon St. W., on Sunday, November 10 at 9:30 a.m. Livestream available. Burial in Israel.
Donations in her memory may be made to the “Carol and Ron Scholarship” c/o Mothers Matter Canada 1-604-676-8250
Publish Date: Nov 9, 2024
CAROL SLATER
(née GENSER)
With great courage on Wednesday, November 6, 2024, surrounded by her family.
Treasured daughter of the late Esther and the late Percy. Beloved wife of Ron for 69 years. Loving mother and mother-in-law of Charles and Dina Slater, Erin and Joe Battat, Adam and Kitt, Claudia and the late David. Cherished grandmother of Zach, Robert and Hydi, Ben and Martha, Liam and Addison. Proud great-grandmother of Rafael, Lily, Maya, and Jojo. Special sister and sister-in-law of David and Joan Genser, Roberta and Mayer Lawee; and sister-in-law of Joel and Sheila Slater. Greatly missed by her nieces, nephews, family, friends and by all who knew her.
The family would like to thank Drs. Shamy, Lipes, Chang, the doctors, nurses and staff at the Jewish General Hospital Palliative Care Unit as well as DeyDey, Linette and everyone who took such wonderful care of our Mom.
Funeral service from Paperman & Sons, 3888 Jean Talon St. W., on Sunday, November 10 at 9:30 a.m. Live stream available. Burial in Israel.
Donations in her memory may be made to the “Carol and Ron Scholarship” c/o Mothers Matter Canada 1-604-676-8250
Features
How to Implement a Successful Casino Marketing Strategy
Your casino stands out in your market and attracts interest. But does your audience know that? With effective marketing, you can transform your casino from an average competitor into a top industry player. We will show you proven strategies to boost your business now and in the future. And when you have proven strategies like insights from a High Roller online casinos review in Canada, the possibilities are endless.
1. Improve Visibility
With stiff competition among casinos, being easily found online is crucial. Discoverability measures how simple it is for people to find your casino.
Put yourself in the shoes of one of your guests looking for a casino. How easy is it to find yours? Try searching on different engines, checking reviews on travel sites, and looking for your casino on social media. See how often your casino appears and how well it ranks. Use tools like Moz and SEMrush to get a clear picture of your current visibility.
To increase your casino’s online visibility, there are a number of strategies you can try. First, try to create distinct landing pages for each key amenity at your casino. Incorporate relevant keywords, high-quality images, and engaging headlines.
You can also use search engine ads carefully. Follow Google’s guidelines by targeting approved countries. These include responsible gambling information on your landing pages and avoiding targeting minors. Check local regulations and test ads with relevant keywords.
Don’t forget to set up social media profiles on platforms your audience frequents. Engage in discussions about gaming, your casino, local news, and community events.
Optimize your content with keywords about your amenities, location, unique features, and events. Highlight what sets you apart so visitors can easily find you.
Use beacons or proximity marketing to attract nearby guests, especially when competing with other casinos. This helps target customers in the real world, not just online.
Form partnerships with local businesses, entertainers, event suppliers, and food vendors to boost your visibility and word of mouth.
2. Focus on Events and Group Business
Your casino offers more than gaming. You might have a luxury hotel, advanced technology, event spaces, a spa, and great restaurants. So, think about the whole picture in your marketing.
Casinos are great for big events like weddings, conferences, and reunions. Make sure your marketing targets these opportunities to attract them.
3. Identify the Jobs to Be Done
Marketers used to rely mainly on demographics, like age, income, and education, to predict behavior. Understanding audience behavior based on demographics is useful. For example, Anderson Digital notes that Boomers and Gen Xers spend 80% of their casino money on gaming and 20% on food and entertainment. In contrast, Millennials spend 30% on gaming and 70% on food, entertainment, and other services. To attract Millennial and Gen Z customers, focus on better entertainment, food options, online game components, and mobile marketing.
However, demographics alone don’t tell the whole story. For instance, knowing a group of women outside your casino are in their late 20s, college-educated, and have high-paying jobs is helpful. But, it doesn’t reveal their reasons for being there.
These women might be on a business trip with some free time, in town for a family reunion, or celebrating a bachelorette party. With just their demographic info, it’s hard to know their motivations, challenges, or needs.
This framework helps marketers understand why customers choose their products or services. Women at a casino for a bachelorette party are looking for a fun atmosphere with entertainment, food, and drinks. But if they’re there for work, they need a stress-free environment with good Wi-Fi, charging stations, and quiet spaces for meetings.
Understand what your audience wants and how they see your role. This helps you tailor your messaging, marketing, and offerings.
4. Create Positive Feedback Loops
Casinos attract customers with fun experiences like gaming, dining, and entertainment. By enhancing these positive feelings, you can boost your casino’s marketing success and encourage repeat visits.
Feedback loops happen when the result of an action is used to influence the action itself. For example, if a child makes a parent laugh, they’re likely to repeat the funny behavior to get more laughter.
Positive feedback loops make it more likely that the action will be repeated. Negative feedback loops make it less likely. You likely use positive feedback loops in your casino already. Guests who win are happy and want to play again. Those who have a bad experience are less likely to return.
You can enhance marketing by using feedback loops. After a positive experience, like winning or a great meal, encourage guests to refer others or leave reviews. If a guest uses a discount, offer another deal immediately. If your casino has a hotel, send emails encouraging future bookings right after positive experiences, like upgrades or enjoyable events.
Reply to positive feedback and reviews with invitations for future experiences. Make sure to also reward loyal customers with special offers and exclusive perks. Don’t forget to address negative feedback by turning it into a positive experience.
5. Use Social Proof
People usually trust each other more than they trust your brand. They’re more likely to listen to recommendations from friends or online reviews than your own claims.
To build trust, you need endorsements from others. Social proof means people tend to follow the actions of those they admire.
Show positive reviews on your website and social media. Record video testimonials from satisfied guests and winners. Encourage guests to share their experiences online and tag your casino. Keep an eye on reviews and respond to feedback. Set up a photo booth in the casino for guests to take winning photos. Display pictures and videos of recent winners on screens around the casino. Think about your audience’s motivations and where they get their information to find creative ways to use social proof.
6. Keep Up With Gaming Trends
Casinos are changing quickly. Online gaming, e-sports, and new tech like virtual and augmented reality are key. To stay competitive, casinos need to understand and use these trends.
As you create your casino marketing strategy, consider these key trends. E-sports are growing fast, so partnering with teams can help you reach new audiences. Virtual and AR are changing how guests experience gaming, making it more engaging from anywhere. Online casinos are becoming more popular with relaxed regulations. So, keep up with industry changes to stay competitive. Finally, as gaming tastes shift, staying updated on new trends will keep you ahead.
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