Lisa Niver's Blog: We Said Go Travel, page 45

Start with Small Steps: Niver’s News: March 2022

March News 2022 with Lisa Niver & We Said Go Travel: [image error]

My thoughts are with the people of the Ukraine and their incredible president, Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy. Many people have asked how they can help–here are six articles I published with ways to HELP: 

#StandWithUkraine GoFundMe with Mila Kunis, Ashton Kutcher, Airbnb and Flexport

Help the Ukraine media

Russia Ukraine War: ways to help 

Tim Pendlebury helping refugees at the border

Rabbi Yoshi and Stephen Wise Temple –how to help the Jews in the Ukraine

Hamantashen for HOPE and more ways to HELP the Ukraine

I am reminded of an interview I did with Gaby Natale last year when she said, “Starting small doesn’t mean thinking small.” She started her show in a carpet warehouse and now has 3 Emmys and 30,545,939 views on her YouTube channel. If we all do our best with our small steps, we can create big change.

[image error] Since the Jewish Journal resumed print publication in Fall 2021, I have been in the Blog Bytes section sixteen times! Click here to see me in print in September 2021, October 2021, November 2021, December 2021 and January 2022. I will be posting more months in future newsletters. [image error] As seen in the University of Pennsylvania PENN GAZETTE Alumni Notes:

Lisa Niver C’89 writes, “I loved being back on campus for Homecoming! I spoke at the RealArts@Penn program at Kelly Writers House to students who are aspiring writers; and I went to the football game with Heather Smay Fudala C’91 and Carl Law C’87. I am also happy to report that I won a third-place technology reporting award in the 2021 Southern California Journalism Awards for my piece in Thrive Global, ‘Is Talking Through Technology Making You More Human? with Rana el Kaliouby’ (tinyurl.com/LisaNiverThrive), and I sold my first article to WIRED, ‘8 Useful iPhone Tips for Ex-Android Users’ (tinyurl.com/LisaNiverWired).”

[image error] [image error] [image error] What are you reading for Women’s History Month? READ….WOMAN ON FIRE by Lisa BarrNO SMILING ALLOWED by Julia Bendis [image error] [image error] This ski season I went to Park City, Utah twice! Here are videos from both trips in January and March 2022: [image error] Skiing in Park City with Patricia and Wayne! March 11, 2022Are you road trip ready? We loved our trip to Joshua Tree in a Genesis GV70!Where did we hike in Joshua Tree? Here is THE LIST [image error] WHERE CAN YOU FIND MY TRAVEL VIDEOS?

Here is the link to my video channel on YouTube where I have over 1.55 million views on YouTube! (Exact count: 1,550,000 views)

Thank you for your support! Are you one of my 3,480 subscribers? I hope you will join me and subscribe! For more We Said Go Travel articles, TV segments, videos and social media: CLICK HERE

Find me on social media with over 150,000 followers. Please follow  on TikTok: @LisaNiver, Twitter at @LisaNiver, Instagram @LisaNiver and on Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, and at LisaNiver.com.

My fortune cookies said: “What you have long desired will soon be yours.”“Be patient, and you will be rewarded.” [image error] Lisa Niver at the top of McConkey’s Chair Lift, Park City Utah, March 12, 2022 on a ski and writing retreat for her BOOK!

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The Letters Project by Eleanor Reissa, Read by the Author...

The Letters Project by Eleanor Reissa, Read by the Author

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The Letters Project: A Daughter’s JourneyThe post appear...

The Letters Project: A Daughter’s Journey

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THE LETTERS PROJECT: A DAUGHTER’S JOURNEY

[image error] THE LETTERS PROJECT: A DAUGHTER’S JOURNEYBy Eleanor Reissa

The Letters Project is about big history, the Holocaust, but it is also an extraordinarily intimate personal narrative—a rare blend of informative, poignant, excruciating, startling, humorous, and ultimately inspiring storytelling.

In 1986, when her mother died at the age of sixty-four, Eleanor Reissa went through all of her belongings. In the back of her mother’s lingerie drawer, she found an old leather purse. Inside that purse was a large wad of folded papers. They were letters. Fifty-six of them. In German. Written in 1949. Letters from her father to her mother, when they were courting. Just four years earlier, he had fought to stay alive in Auschwitz and on the Death March while she had spent the war years suffering in Uzbekistan. Thirty years later, Eleanor—a theatre artist who has been on the forefront of keeping Yiddish alive—finally had the letters translated. The particulars of those letters send her off on an unimaginable adventure into the past, forever changing her and anyone who reads this book.

“‘The Holocaust,’ Eleanor Reissa writes in this unforgettable and courageous book, ‘is attached to me like my skin and I would be formless without it.’ A very personal story that begins with her discovery of some sixty letters written in 1949 is also a fundamental one of a woman trying to make sense of her life and family and of the shadows that go back before she was born. There is plenty of feeling and sentiment but it never feels sentimental. Her inimitable wit leavens the sadder scenes. This journey of discovery is riveting, told with tender insight, at times heartbreaking and at times heartwarming just like the Yiddish songs that have delighted Ms. Reissa’s audiences.” —Joseph Berger is a New York Times reporter and author of Displaced Persons: Growing Up American After the Holocaust

CLICK HERE TO BUY THE LETTERS PROJECT

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“The Letters Project is a wonderful book—funny, heartbreaking, and ultimately transcendent. Eleanor Reissa’s journey back into her family’s past makes for a gripping—and very human—international mystery. I highly recommend it.” —Tony Phelan, TV Showrunner for: Grey’s Anatomy, Doubt, and Council of Dads

“Eleanor Reissa has written a gritty, fearless yet funny memoir about herself, her family, and the Holocaust. Once I began reading it, I was completely swept away until the journey ended. I was moved by the power of this uniquely personal yet universal story.” —Julian Schlossberg is an American motion pictures, theatre, and television producer

The Letters Project: A Daughter’s Journey

Excerpt from the book: The Letters Project by Eleanor Reissa. Copyright © Post Hill Press 2022.

I begin to walk down the very long hallway, slowly and deliberately, looking at those mighty iron doors on each side. Left foot, right foot. It is an effort to move my legs.

I stop. I look. I listen. I am like Superman. I have x-ray vision.

I see them. My family. I feel their lives here. Their breathing. From behind the doors and in the halls. They are flying all around, phantom shadows in the gray air. I hear babies crying and Yiddish and Polish and shouting and occasional laughter and the footsteps of the children, clopping, running, shrieking as children do, and fathers’ yelling and women weeping. A dream within a dream. I inhale them into the center of my soul. I swallow this fortress and I become the whale.

Then I see my grandparents, my beloved grandparents, of blessed memory; the mourning in their eyes, so evident in the photos. And my mother, so young and beautiful. And my brother, such a skinny knobby-kneed little boy who had travelled hither and yon, from pillar to post, knowing more hardship than any young boy should ever know. I hear them and I see them all around me. I want to touch them. Maybe if I stand here a bit longer, they will materialize and come to me. That is my wish. And I am certain that they would be happy to see me too. I have never been more certain of anything in my life. I do not move. I will not leave. Oh my God, why would I ever leave this place? I want to be preserved here, happy to be like Lot’s wife. Frozen in time. I want to wait for them. I know they are here. I am submerged with the ghosts, and I want to swim with them forever. (pg. 82-83)

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The Letters Project by Eleanor Reissa, Read by the Author

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Feeling Our Way with Cantor Emma LutzThe post appeared f...

Feeling Our Way with Cantor Emma Lutz

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Finding Freedom and Fireworks in Our Hearts with Cantor E...

Finding Freedom and Fireworks in Our Hearts with Cantor Emma Lutz

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Remembering our Scars, Finding our Strength with Cantor E...

Remembering our Scars, Finding our Strength with Cantor Emma Lutz

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Installation of Senior Cantor Emma Lutz

[image error] Installation of Senior Cantor, Emma Lutz
Friday, March 25 at 6:15 p.m. | In-person and OnlineSince joining Stephen Wise Temple & Schools in 2016, Cantor Emma Lutz has made a significant mark on the Wise community. She has guided our Wise School students, mentored our youth, shared moments of joy and sorrow with our families, and brought beautiful, soulful music into our Sanctuary.

On Friday, March 25, we will officially install Emma as our senior cantor. As part of a special Shabbat evening, we will host incredible cantors, rabbis, and musicians from around the country—as well as young singers from our Wise community—all gathering on our beautiful hilltop campus to celebrate Cantor Emma Lutz with joyous song. 

We hope to see you here in person for this this momentous occasion, which will be followed by a celebratory reception on Nahmias Plaza. The service will also be streamed online.

​​​​​​​We look forward to being together for a special evening of song, as we mark this meaningful milestone in our community.REGISTER [image error]

When I was a little girl, my grandmother shared with me the story of how she became the first bat mitzvah on the West Coast. In May of 1939, when so much of the world was shifting and even crumbling around her (a bit like today), she stood on the bima at Temple Sinai in Long Beach and proudly led her congregation in prayer. Later on, when she was installed as president of her Hadassah chapter in 1998, she was honored in a special ceremony on the bima at Stephen Wise Temple for those two great accomplishments achieved some sixty years apart.It is no accident that I also ended up on this bima. As you well know, the hard work, commitment, and generosity of those in our family and extended family so often lays the groundwork for our own stories.Please join us for a special Shabbat service & celebration on Nahmias Plaza at 6:15 p.m. on March 25 when I am officially installed as Senior Cantor of Stephen Wise Temple & Schools. The service will, of course, be accompanied by great and prayerful music, lifted up by the voices of our youth and so many cherished cantors and colleagues from around the country. And yet, it is the presence of our community–your presence–that will make the evening truly sacred.

REGISTER

Remembering our Scars, Finding our Strength with Cantor Emma Lutz

Finding Freedom and Fireworks in Our Hearts with Cantor Emma Lutz

Feeling Our Way with Cantor Emma Lutz

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