One of the wonderful opportunities as part of my position as the Director of Pastoral Care at the senior living facility where I work has been a felicitous partnership with the Harkavy Committee, which provides wonderful classes and entertainment for the residents and their families. This includes group/individual art and music programs provided by an art and music therapist, exercise classes, jewelry making classes, and more. The Harkavy/Berg Committee was established in 2005 by Max Harkavy as his Bar Mitzvah project in memory of his Grandfather, Frank Harkavy, Cedar Village’s first board chair. The fund became endowed in 2019 by a major gift from Gerald J. Robinson, the first Chair of the Harkavy/Berg Committee.
In addition to having attended every single one of the quarterly Zoom meetings of the committee during my time as Director of Pastoral Care, there have also been a couple of projects upon which we have partnered together. The first of which was to boost the production quality of the Village Art Insights series, through a grant that provided a camera and associated equipment to Jewish Home of Cincinnati for our use for the most recent eight productions in the series. The Harkavy Committee also provided the funding for an event in late October 2021 featuring the new CEO of Jewish Home of Cincinnati, which also brought out the new Marx Hot Bagel’s food truck.
Here are the eight products of the Village Art Insights series that were made with this grant:
- Ketti Camus Holiday Art in the Hallway
- Sukkah Art over the years
- Highlighting Archie Rand’s Sixty Paintings from the Bible Exhibit at the Skirball Museum
- Cincy Upstander Project murals
- The Chagalls in Our Building
- Rabbi Judah HaLevi Poem & Mosaic in the Lobby
- Beth Goldstein’s Hebrew Letters Exhibit
- Sidra Ark Project
- Highlights of the Meyerson JCC’s Sukkah Art 2021
If you’re interested, here are my two most recent reports to the committee: