arts & culture
DRIZIN - WEISS REGIONAL POST 215
Est. 1946 - Chartered by an Act of Congress 1896
215 - 728 - 9368
A Proud Host Philadelphia
USA 2026
SEMIQUINCENTENNIAL JEWISH WAR VETERANS
75 th + ANNIVERSARY
‘VETERANS HELPING VETERANS
and THE COMMUNITIES WE SERVE’ SM
THANK YOU to the Women who chose to Serve,
the Men who were called upon as well as those that
volunteered for duty, and the families of all Veterans
On Memorial Day and weekend, Please take an
extra minute to remember that Jews served,
in uniform in peace and in every time of confl ict,
from the beginning of the Revolutionary War,
Indian Wars, Civil War, Spanish American War, WWI,
WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Beirut, Middle East,
Afghanistan and thru to today.

Post 215 functions, support Veterans and families
of all Veterans of every race and creed.

Join us.

Greatly Appreciated your Donations, Gifts, Estates,
And Bequests are TAX DEDUCTABLE
Veterans Drizin-Weiss Post 215 is a 501(c)(3) in good standing, fully permitted by law to support
membership and their families living within all of the communities of our membership.

Congratulations Cindy Veloric
College Graduate PhD
Happy! Proud! And Love You!
Congratulations!! Much Love, Aunt Judy
www.jewishexponent.com 22
MAY 26, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
Haim Sisters Have
Philadelphia Roots
JARRAD SAFFREN | STAFF WRITER
T he Haim sisters are hot right
now. In 2021, their album “Women
in Music Pt. III” was nominated for
Album of the Year at the Grammy
Awards. Later that year, the youngest
sister, Alana, starred in a Paul Thomas
Anderson movie, “Licorice Pizza,” which
earned a Best Picture nomination at the
Academy Awards in March.

Flash forward a couple of months,
and the Jewish sisters, Este Haim, 36,
Danielle Haim, 33, and Alana Haim, 30,
are in the midst of a North American
and United Kingdom tour in which they
are selling out venues like the Hollywood
Bowl in Los Angeles and Madison Square
Garden in New York City.

On May 28, they will perform at The
Mann Center in Philadelphia.

The show before a potential audience
of about 14,000 will be a homecoming of
sorts for the girls, as their mother, Donna
Haim, grew up in the Northeast and
Huntington Valley. Though she moved
to California at 19 and later met the girls’
father, Mordechai “Moti” Haim, there,
Donna would not be a true Philadelphian
unless she imbued the identity into her
daughters. In 2000, Donna Haim’s parents bought
a shore house in Margate, New Jersey,
and Donna and Moti Haim started
bringing the girls down every summer.

For the kids, it was time to enjoy the
beach and boardwalk. For Donna, it was
a way to stay connected to old friends and
family members.

The family also ate plenty of sticky
buns during those excursions.

“So they know what down the shore
meant,” Donna Haim said of her daugh-
ters. But that was about the extent of the
girls’ Philadelphia upbringing. Donna
Haim, on the other hand, has an entire
history in the region.

Her grandparents and extended fam-
ily settled in the area after immigrat-
ing from Russia, Poland and Lithuania,
she said. Growing up in the Northeast,
Donna Haim would visit her grandpar-
ents, celebrate Jewish holidays and grow
to understand her Jewish identity.

“They brought a lot of the old country
to us,” she said.

When her brother grew old enough to
become a bar mitzvah, the family moved
to Huntington Valley and joined Reform
Congregation Keneseth Israel in Elkins
Park. Donna Haim got confirmed there.

“It was a beautiful, beautiful temple,”
she said.

The Haim matriarch graduated high
school in 1973, attended Penn State
Ogontz (now Abington) for a year, then
moved to California with her parents.

Moti Haim, a former professional soccer
player, moved from Israel to the United
States in 1980 and met his future wife a
couple of years later.

Este, Danielle and Alana Haim were
born between 1986 and ’91 and then the
Haim origin story — now well-known
— began. Moti Haim had been a profes-
sional drummer and Donna Haim sang
and played guitar as a kid. So when the
girls were young, Moti Haim woke up
one day with a crazy, Richard Williams-
like idea.

The family should start a band!
“I said, ‘That’s interesting because
Alanna’s only 4 and doesn’t play any-
thing,’” Donna Haim recalled, laughing.

Yet they started playing anyway as a
family band called Rockinhaim that cov-
ered Eagles, Billy Joel and Santana songs,
among others, at churches, synagogues,
elementary schools and street fairs.

The girls did not think anything of it,
according to Donna Haim. When their
friends asked them to go to the mall, they
would respond by asking, “Don’t you
have to practice, too?”
“We had to practice because we didn’t
want to embarrass ourselves on stage,”
Donna Haim said.

Eventually, though, the girls got so
good that they, as the mother put it,
kicked their parents out of the band. One
summer when Este Haim was in high
school, they started writing songs in the
living room and decided to try playing
music full time.

As they kept playing, the Haim sisters
grew from an opening act to a second act
to a headliner. They got their first record
deal in the UK in 2012.

“It was like 100,000 hours,” Donna