H eadlines
Vaccines Continued from Page 1
made appointments for about
65 people and have at least that
many on their waiting list.

Otero, a mother of three,
formerly provided her exper-
tise in international pandemic
preparedness to the Department
of Defense. Though she’s not
employed now, she’s bringing
that strategic thinking to this
community vaccine project.

“Not a lot of sleep is
happening, but we’re getting a
lot of appointments for people,”
she said. “People are very, very
thankful, and I’m happy to help.”
She stressed that the work
they do is intended for members
of their community only.

Otero, Levin and Klinger have
been inundated with stories from
immunocompromised cancer
survivors, transplant survivors
and others with complex medical
histories “who really should be
the first in line for the vaccine,”
Otero said. Helping them out is
not just pointing and clicking:
The choices inherent in the
process can be overwhelming,
and Pennsylvania is far behind
other states in terms of vaccine
distribution, making appoint-
ments hard to get.

“It feels like a ‘Hunger
Games’ situation,” said Klinger.

Dan Shmilovich, who has
known Otero for years through
their synagogue, praised her
efforts in pursuing appoint-
ments for his older parents and
immunocompromised brother.

“She’s kind of like a hawk,”
Shmilovich said.

“She’s checking the websites early
morning, at night, around the
clock, as far as I know.” She
ended up finding appointments
for them — but two hours away.

Such stories are common
on social media, where groups
offering emotional support
alongside blink-and-you’ll-
miss-it appointment leads have
cropped up nationwide. Some
groups focus on cities and
counties, while others tackle
whole regions.

“PA CoVID Vaccine Match
Maker,” a Facebook group
covering the southeastern part
of the state, has more than
27,000 members. Posters are
either “#Finders” or “#Seekers.”
There’s a sidebar with PDFs,
Word documents and a
spreadsheet with names like
“DELCO_VACCINE_LINKS. xlsx” and “weis_pharmacies_
with_vaccine_by_city_0.pdf.” Members post frequently;
some express frustration with
Neil Klinger, Rebecca Klinger’s father-in-law, receives his sought-after shot.
Courtesy of Rebecca Klinger
Cheryl Shmilovich receives a vaccine. Danielle Otero helped her to secure an elusive appointment.

Courtesy of Dan Shmilovich
their lack of success, and others
their gratitude for the help
they’ve received. Notifications
that appointments are available
come with the tone of a breath-
less courier: “Lake Ariel, PA
RITE AID!!!!!”
Lafayette Hill’s Ilene Schafer
and her husband Marshall have
medical conditions that qualify
them for the vaccine, but getting
an appointment has been like
trying to get Springsteen tickets
in the old days of Ticketmaster,
16 FEBRUARY 25, 2021
JEWISH EXPONENT
Ilene Schafer said. They’ve
had no luck using “PA CoVID
Vaccine Match Maker.”
“It feels totally patchwork,”
she said. “Everybody’s doing
their own thing. There’s no
coordination. There’s no central
database. There’s no central
anything. It’s like the Wild West
trying to get an appointment.”
About 44 million Americans
are at least partially vaccinated,
according to the New York
Times. At the current pace,
90% of the population will have
received at least one dose of the
vaccine by Christmas. Some of
those people will have a trio of
friends in Elkins Park to thank
— and they’re not stopping
their work anytime soon.

“Until we stop getting
names from the community,
I’m not really putting a limit on
it,” Otero said. l
jbernstein@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0740
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM



F TAY-SACHS
R F R E E E E
H eadlines
Chagall Continued from Page 1
Louis E. Stern.

Stern, born in Balta, Russia,
in 1886, was raised in Vineland,
New Jersey, and went to law
school at the University of
Pennsylvania. He practiced
international law in Atlantic
City, Newark, New Jersey, and
New York, and amassed a consid-
erable art collection, including
many works by Chagall, who
became a personal friend.

When Stern died in 1962,
some of his art collection went
to the Brooklyn Museum and
the Museum of Modern Art,
while his art library went
to Rutgers University. But
the bulk of the collection,
including “Purim,” was left to
the PMA, where it hangs today
in Gallery 267a. l
Marc Chagall in 1941
Carl Van Vetchen/Library of Congress/
Wikimedia Commons
Chagall was in high demand
when he painted “Purim” in
1916. Back in his hometown of
Vitebsk in present-day Belarus
after nearly a decade in St.

Petersburg and Paris, Chagall
was fresh off of successful exhibi-
tions in Berlin and Moscow and
snared a commission from the
Petrograd Jewish Society for
the Promotion of the Arts.

The society tasked him with
creating large-scale murals of
religious festivals for a Jewish
secondary school attached to
the city’s main synagogue.

“Purim,” a study Chagall
painted in preparation, depicts
a man and a woman as they
prepare to exchange gifts for
the holiday; the word “Purim”
is written in Hebrew in the
corner of the study.

“He had gotten connected
with these artists who were
really very interested in
exploring Jewish visual tradi-
tions, among others, in order
to create a kind of authenti-
cally Jewish modern art in
Russia,” said Matthew Affron,
the Muriel and Philip Berman
Curator of Modern Art at the
museum. The era of “Purim” was
a fruitful one for Chagall; the
following year, the revolutionary
Soviet government asked him to
serve as commissar for the arts,
but Chagall declined, establishing
a school in Vitebsk instead.

The commissioned murals
were never completed, but
Chagall took “Purim” with
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM jbernstein@jewishexponent.com;
215-832-0740 Front cover of the guide for the Degenerate Art Exhibition, which featured
Chagall’s paintings along with those of other artists.
Tel Aviv Stamps Ltd. auction photo licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
him when he moved to France
a few years later, and sold it
to Dr. Herbert Tannenbaum,
a German-Jewish art dealer.

Tannenbaum lent “Purim” to a
Chagall exhibition in Cologne
in 1925, and in 1928, sold it to
a museum in Essen, Germany.

But as Chagall’s star rose
higher in Europe, so too did
other forces.

A day after Chagall’s 50th
birthday in 1937, “Purim” was
confiscated by Nazi author-
ities for The Degenerate Art
Exhibition, conceived by Joseph
Goebbels, Affron said. The
exhibit in Munich, intended to
denigrate the work on display,
featured more than 5,000 confis-
cated paintings and sculptures
deemed insufficiently patriotic,
exceedingly modern in style
or generally inimical to the
Aryan ideal.

Several paintings from
Chagall were displayed in a
room designated for the dispar-
agement of Jewish art, Affron
said. More than 2 million
people attended the exhibition
as it traveled around Germany.

In 1941, Chagall and his
wife just barely escaped Vichy
France for the U.S. without
“Purim,” which had been
given to Ferdinand Möller, an
art dealer appointed by the
Nazis to sell “degenerate art”
on the international market.

According to the PMA, Möller
failed, as the painting was
sold to a German, Dr. Kurt
Feldhäusser, who was killed in
an Allied bombing raid. His
mother brought “Purim” to
Brooklyn in 1948; the following
year, it was sold to lawyer
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