Jewish Community Center

Stanley N. Barer, 84, of Jenkintown, a retired sales manager and leader in the Jewish community, died of kidney failure Tuesday, May 25, at the Rydal Park rehabilitation center. Mr. Barer served on numerous boards and was past president of the boards of the Mid-Atlantic Region of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, Jewish Education of Philadelphia, the Klein Branch of the Jewish Community Center, and the Solomon Schechter Day School of Philadelphia, now the Raymond and Ruth Perelman Jewish Day School.

Annabel "Rusty" Flesher Lindy, 78, of Center City, a partner with Lindy Property Management in Jenkintown and a community activist, died of cancer Tuesday at the Visiting Nurse Association Hospice in East Falls. For more than 20 years, Mrs. Lindy worked with her husband, Philip, purchasing, rehabilitating, and managing apartment buildings in the Philadelphia area. The firm, which won awards for excellence from the Apartment Association of Greater Philadelphia, is now run by the Lindys' two sons, Frank and Alan.

Sharon Lieberman Ash, 63, of Bryn Mawr, who was active in the Jewish community and had a special rapport with old people and children, died of brain cancer Monday at her home. Mrs. Ash graduated from Germantown High School and earned a bachelor's degree from Temple University. In 1966 she married Frank Ash. "We were best friends," he said. "We believed in the same values. " While raising their two sons, Mrs. Ash earned a master's degree in counseling and gerontology from Villanova University.

Two Deliberation Day forums are tonight. The five Republican at-large candidates for City Council will be at the Jewish Community Center, Klein Branch, 10100 Jamison Ave. At The Enterprise Center, 4548 Market St., see these Democratic at-large candidates: Wilson Goode Jr., Blondell Reynolds-Brown, Jim Kenney, Maceo Cummings, Bill Green, Andy Toy, and Michael Ellis. Both events run from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. The rest of the Democratic at-large field will be at Holy Family University on Saturday.

Susanne Baum preaches the gospel of Pilates like the true believer she is. "It's so different from a gym," she said of the exercise program, which was created by Joseph Pilates around the time of World War I. "You don't need fancy equipment. You don't need fancy clothes," she continued. "It's not a preset workout - do this, then do that. Pilates is very empowering. " Baum, 41, of Cherry Hill, has gone to the mat with her belief. She started Viva Pilates in 2002, a program that offers classes in mat Pilates - machine Pilates is a different variation - in community recreation centers, schools and churches.

Over the last year, a former Baptist church in Newtown Borough has slowly been transformed into what its owners hope will become a spiritual hub for Judaism in Bucks County. The image of a silver menorah adorns the steeple, the stained glass windows dance with Torahs and dreidels, and the front wall of the lobby is covered with slabs of Jerusalem stone. The Glazier Jewish Center celebrated its grand opening yesterday on the eve of the Jewish new year, Rosh Hashanah. "It's a new year, a new beginning, and a great time to be opening," the center's executive director, Rabbi Yehuda Shemtov, said last week.

Irv Bilsky, among the senior members of Beth Israel Congregation in Woodbury, was called from his seat at last week's Rosh Hashanah services to blow the ram's horn, an ancient Jewish custom. The sounding of the shofar, a tradition thousands of years old, greets the arrival of another year with its call to prayer. During this High Holy Day season, the leaders of this cozy congregation in the county seat find themselves seeking a balance, between tradition and the changing profile of the local Jewish population.

The holiest of Jewish holidays is colliding once again with a deep-rooted conflict, as local congregations prepare for Yom Kippur services against a backdrop of hostilities in the Middle East. "This is a holiday for introspection and for evaluating life and one's role in life," said Barry Morrison, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith. But though Yom Kippur is largely a time for personal reconciliation with God, Morrison said it's also "a good opportunity to think about what contributions one can make in a small way, if not a global way, to address the problems between Jew and Muslim, Palestinian and Israeli.

As a student at Marple Newtown Senior High School, Amanda Rios sometimes felt like the only Jewish person around. While some of her peers were Jewish, many did not want to talk about it. "I don't feel like they were proud of it," said Rios, 17, a social activist at Temple Sholom in Broomall. So, Rios thought of other ways Jewish teens could meet: distributing canned food to the needy, visiting the sick, and spending time with the lonely. Now she is passing on those ideas to Delaware County's new floating Jewish Community Center.

Bananas and striped socks. Who would have thought that this wacky combination would help the A girls' soccer team from Cherry Hill's Katz Jewish Community Center advance to the medal round of the Maccabi Games? Lauren Kraemer, 14, and Amanda Kravitz, 15, said they believed the combo brought just enough luck for them to collaborate on the lone goal in Katz's 1-0 victory over Orange County, Calif., yesterday at Richterman Field. The two ate bananas for breakfast yesterday and were wearing black-and-white striped socks when Kravitz delivered a pass on a corner kick to Kraemer, who scored with her left foot early in the second quarter.