Dunwoody Village
New Opportunity
The Residences at Llenroc
Lovely studio & one bedroom apartments in
Historic Newtown. Convenient to local
amenities, and programs on our Campus.

Lunch & dinner included in your monthly rate.

CALLTODAY:215-497-0905 Choose Chandler; lease an apt today!
www.ch.kendal.org 3500 West Chester Pike, Newtown Square, PA
484-424-6389 • www.dunwoody.org
Dunwoody Village is a continuing care retirement community
located in Newtown Square, offering residents unparalleled
comfort, five-star rated health care and a vibrant lifestyle.

Combining a picturesque wooded setting with convenient
nearby shopping and close proximity to the cultural attractions
of Center City and Main Line Philadelphia, Dunwoody Village
is truly the best of all worlds.

The Hearth at Drexel
238 Belmont Ave., Bala Cynwyd, PA
The Hearth at Drexel is a new assisted living community
located in the newly restored and expanded Mary Drexel
mansion in Bala Cynwyd. The Hearth offers a unique blend
of inviting elegance and innovative care that makes our assisted
living and memory care neighborhoods unlike any you’ve seen
before. Call to schedule a personal tour,
or RSVP for an Open House: 215-497-0905
I chose Sage.

Having Difficulty
Caring for an Aging
Loved One?
• Our la a w firm is dedicated to help ping families
f amilies who are o v erwhelmed
or confused by all of the decisions the y ha v e to make about ho w to
pay for long-term health care.

• W e can often assist clients in increasing their
income and obtaining benefits to help defray the
cost of long term care at home, in assisted li ving
facilities, adult medical day care, and in nursing
homes. Senior Living, but different.

Call and come see.

• Did you kno w there are V eterans benefits that
V eterans or W ido w(er)s of V eterans can recei ve
Jerold E. Rothkof ff f
to supplement income to pay for health care
Elder La w Attornee y
costs at home, in Assisted Li ving F acilities, Adult
Medical Day Care, and in Nursing Homes?
Offfices in:
Offices SPECIAL OFFER
610-690-1630 Supportive Living & Memory Care
Independent & Supportive Living
DaylesfordCrossing.com PlushMills.com
www .r othk offlaw .com
Paoli, PA
Wallingford, PA
Free T elephone Consultation
House Calls Av ailable
SAGE SENIOR LIVING COMMUNITIES
50 Call us to r equest y our
complimentary copy of our
“Nuts and Bolts Guide to
V eterans
e Benefits f for or Seniors”
610-640-4000 THE GUIDE 2016/2017
856.616.2923 215.546.5800
T o r egister & find out mor re e
about our seminars, visit our website.





Lionsgate
1110 Laurel Oak Road, Voorhees, NJ
856-782-1200 • www.lionsgateccrc.org
Welcome to Lions Gate, a full-service community dedicated
to lifelong happiness, comfort and care rooted in Jewish traditions
and values. Senior living options range from independent living
to a full continuum of on-site care. Assisted living, skilled nursing
and long-term, short-term and outpatient rehabilitation, memory
care and home care.

Granny’s Helping Hands, PA Inc.

We’re There When You Need Us!
Trusted, Quality, Aff ordable, Dependable,
Non-medical Home Care • Equal Opportunity Employer
For more information please call 610.284.4244 or visit grannyshelpinghands.com
bonded and insured
Paul’s Run
9896 Bustleton Ave., Philadelphia, PA
215-934-3021 • www.paulsrun.org
Community matters — and we invite you to come get a feel for
ours. Your loved one will be surrounded by friendly neighbors
and a staff who will treat them like family. With simple monthly
rental agreements and no entrance fee, Paul’s Run offers true
financial freedom.

Stay in Touch with
Jewish Philadelphia
H EADLINES
SUMMER’S HERE
Holocaust Survivor Doesn’t Let Age
Prevent Her from Spreading Message
UNIQUE VIEWS
L IFESTYLES /C ULTURE
Artist Isaiah Zagar Embraces the New
Isaiah Zagar shares his perspective on life.

PAGE 20
JUNE 2, 2016 / IYAR 25, 5776
ART LIZ SPIKOL | JE STAFF
LOCAL ANDY GOTLIEB | JE MANAGING EDITOR
WELL INTO HER 90s,
Holocaust survivor Dr. Lena
Allen-Shore has an energy that
belies her age — and she always
remains on point with a mes-
sage as timely now as ever.

“I will never forget. The
Holocaust is in me whatever I
do,” she said, pounding a table
for effect. “The Holocaust can-
not be forgotten. The Jews had
been killed before, but never
like this.

“I believe that God is in me,
not because I’m special. I am
art, philosophy and history?
Documented in countless
prior newspaper articles, those
accomplishments — which
would be impressive if they
were the combined efforts of a
dozen people — are important,
but they’re still secondary to
getting her message across
more than 70 years later.

She noted that Jews being
herded into gas chambers resort-
ed to prayer — but not for pity.

“They didn’t ask why they
suffered. If we want to remem-
ber the Holocaust, we have to
remember them praying,” she
said. “God was still with them.

“They were the Jews that
I believe that God is in me, not because
I’m special. I am nobody, but I feel different
when I feel God.”
DR. LENA ALLEN-SHORE
nobody, but I feel different
when I feel God.”
Allen-Shore may not believe
she’s special, but she’s led an
extraordinary life and touched
a multitude of people since her
1944 liberation — and more
than 35 years after moving to
the Philadelphia area.

How many people can claim
became victims, but at the same
time, they gave us lessons to
understand each other — and to
understand each other means
every human being on the plan-
et. We cannot divide ourselves.

We should try to be together.”
While interviewing Allen-
Shore is an intense experience
— and she’s the one tending to
mementos of her life. “Did you
ever think about it? Maybe the
trees have a soul. Maybe the
trees remember.”
Allen-Shore seems comfort-
able everywhere.

Back in her apartment, the
years seem to fall away as
Allen-Shore sits behind a shin-
ing white grand piano. The
piano is symbolic to her.

“The first thing the
Germans took was our piano,”
she said, noting that her mother
was a pianist who would play in
their home, while her father, a
lawyer and writer, would sing.

Allen-Shore’s eyes sparkle as
she deftly works the keys. Her
voice, which varies during reg-
ular conversation from a whis-
per to nearly a shout when she
wants to emphasize a point, is
gentle and sweet as she sings.

Close your eyes, and you’d
think a much younger woman
is singing.

She’s using the songs to
make her point. She’s always
making a point.

One would think Allen-
Shore would retain bitterness
about the Holocaust, but her
core message is rife with opti-
mism and working to find the
important things in life.

Pope John Paul II recog-
nized that.

JEWISHEXPONENT.COM — WHAT IT MEANS TO BE JEWISH IN PHILADELPHIA —
$1.00 OF NOTE
LOCAL GLOBAL
Film Headline
Examines Mount
Headline Airy Past
student project
A Headline
reviews copy integration.

copy 9
Page copy.

CULTURE Page 00
Learning to Value
LIFESTYLE & CULTURE
(and Make)
Headline Cocktails
Headline more to a
There’s than just
cocktail copy
alcohol. copy
copy. Page 14
Page 00
FOOD FOOD
Say Tomato,
You Law Aims to
Make Mark in
NJ Primary
RACHEL KURLAND
JE STAFF
HE MAY BE young,
but he knows South
Jersey pretty well after
25 years living there.

For the upcoming
New Jersey primary
on June 7, 25-year-
old progressive Alex A LEX L AW
Law is campaigning to replace U.S. Rep.

Donald Norcross in New Jersey’s first con-
gressional district.

Law grew up in South Jersey, mainly
Voorhees, though he is a fourth-generation
Collingswood Democrat, where his grand-
father was once the mayor.

Law — an Eastern High School and New
L The bonfire to celebrate Lag B’Omer grew slowly but surely under the hot sun at Fifth Street
Liz Spikol
and Cecil B. Moore Avenue in Kensington on May 26.

Music, Bonfire Light Up
Kensington for Lag B’Omer
IT WASN’T HARD to spot artist
Isaiah Zagar among the patrons
outside South Philly’s Black and
Brew, where we met a few weeks
ago. If his trademark snow-white
hair and beard hadn’t given him
away, his posture — hunched
over a drawing pad — served as
confirmation. We met there on a weekend
morning, not too far from Zagar’s
Magic Gardens on South Street,
an indoor-outdoor art installation
and museum that’s become one of
Philadelphia’s most popular tourist
destinations and event venues.

The space has rotating exhibits;
right now, the exhibit is called
“Dear Julia,” and is comprised
mostly of images of Zagar’s wife.

Like so many buildings in
Philadelphia, Black and Brew’s
exterior is covered with Zagar’s
mosaic work, a readily identifi-
able mix of tile, mirror and pot-
tery shards, some painted with
words, others with faces. It is
just one of hundreds of Zagar
mosaics in the city. They are so
omnipresent, even people who
don’t know his name recognize
his work.

As Zagar sipped his espresso,
I asked if it was strange to sit in
a public space so dominated by
his own artistic vision, and to live
in a city where so much of him
is on display.

“A lot of people ask that ques-
tion,” he said. “People want to
know how it feels because they
don’t have that situation, and
they think it’s a unique situation.

But to me, it’s what is. So it
doesn’t feel different.”
What does feel different is Za-
gar’s degree of celebrity, which
has increased significantly in the
past few years, due, in part, to In
a Dream, his son Jeremiah’s HBO
documentary. That — along with
the very public battle to save the
Magic Gardens, which was
threatened with demolition sev-
eral years ago — raised Zagar’s
profile. “I’ve reached celebrity status,”
he said, “but I have no idea about
that except on the rare occasion
where I will come into a room
and sit down next to somebody,
and we’ll both realize that I’m me
and I see goose pimples on their
body, which means that which is
celebrity is manifesting in a phys-
ical reaction.”
Zagar seemed slightly discon-
certed by that fact.

“The work that I’ve done has
amounted to this moment in
time where I am he who has
manifested that. But to me, I’m
just a guy who has dirty nails.”
In recent years, Zagar has ex-
panded his artistic practice to the
online realm, using Instagram
I SAIAH Z AGAR
Photo copyright TexasDex/English Wikipedia
both as a tool for creation and as
a showcase for work new and old.

He said the technology meshes
perfectly with his process.

“My artistic process for over
40 years has been autobiograph-
ical,” he said. “It is autobiograph-
ical in intent and everyday life.”
The photos of his new cat, for
instance, or of him lying on the
grass in the sun, contribute to the
ongoing representation of the self.

Then there are his captions,
which he dictates to Apple’s voice
recognition software, Siri. Some-
times Siri gets his words right;
other times, she mangles them.

He doesn’t correct the mistakes.

“I allow [the mistakes] because
it’s part of my artistic process to
anyway so I can say anything I
wantI love you.”
Naturally, he gets plenty of re-
sponses. One reads: “But… we
DO read it :) it is like a puzzle
everytime …”
“People are trying to decipher
what I’m saying,” Zagar said.

“They’re using their mental ability
to take two words that are prob-
ably one word to put them togeth-
er into that one word again.”
Textual interpretation is not
unfamiliar to Zagar, who grew
up in Brooklyn in a family of
rabbis. They’d originally come
from Lithuania, where they were
involved with the Vilna Goan,
the 18th-century Torah scholar
who became one of the most
Jeremiah. The monk agreed,
which is how a nice Jewish boy
ended up eating supper every
night at a table next to a bunch
of monks and a group of newly
arrived East German nuns who
didn’t speak a word of English.

While at the monastery,
he also completed a book about
Jesus. Zagar said his Judaism has
been very influential in his work,
as was that time in Latrobe.

“Latrobe, Pa., is where Rolling
Rock was made,” he pointed out.

“And Rolling Rock was founded
in 1939, the year that I was born.

I have a lot of bottles of Rolling
Rock in my work, so it all fits in.

It’s called predetermination.”
After the summer at Wood-
stock, he changed his name from
Irwin to Isaiah. When his sons
were born, he named them Jere-
miah and Ezekiel.

These days, Zagar and his
wife — who owns the Eyes
Gallery, a South Street institution
— lead a primarily secular life.

But Zagar does refer to being
Jewish from time to time on his
Instagram captions.

It’s hard to imagine what some-
one unfamiliar with Zagar’s work
would think if they saw his indi-
vidual posts without other images
for context.

“If a stranger finds my Insta-
gram account and goes back from
the very beginning, they have a
whole biography,” Zagar said.

Subscribe today at jewishexponent.com or call us at 215.832.0710.

A Premier Senior Living Community For
Quality Care, Peace Of Mind & Vibrant Living
Studios, One & Two Bedroom
Apartments Now With
Balcony, Patio &
Garden-view Options
A FIVE-STAR Senior Living Community !
Independent Living, Personal Care, Skilled Nursing & Rehabilitation
MON-FRI 9 a.m.-4 p.m.

SAT 10 a.m -2 p.m.

Evenings & Weekends by Appointment
Call 215-697-8086
THE PHILADELPHIA PROTESTANT HOME
6500 Tabor Avenue, Philadelphia PA A 19111
www.pphfamily.org THE GUIDE 2016/2017
51