Brandeis Magazine

The Rev. Dr. Randy Becker received the Angus H. MacLean Award for Excellence in Religious Education, a lifetime achievement award presented by the Unitarian Universalist Association in recognition of Randy’s leadership in the field of liberal religious education. In other news, on June 25 Randy married Jane Leff, of Ridgefield, Connecticut. Stephen Herman practices forensic psychiatry. He also plays the 12-string guitar and takes singing lessons. Wife Carol is an attorney specializing in guardian/conservatorship and family law. Stephen has two stepdaughters and two grandsons. He and Carol divide their time between Arizona and Connecticut (“where we have water; trees; and, thanks to climate change, an occasional tornado”). Rabbi Ronald Kronish, P’99, who writes a regular blog for The Times of Israel and is a contributor to The Jerusalem Report, has self-published a book, “Profiles in Peace: Voices of Peacebuilders in the Midst of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.” Harry Malech is chief of the genetic immunotherapy section at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health. He and wife Emily celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary on June 4. Daughter Sarah is a speech pathologist with the Baltimore County, Maryland, school system; daughter Dora is an associate professor of poetry at Johns Hopkins University; and son Dan is senior vice president for strategy and general counsel at Plenty Unlimited, a high-tech indoor-farming company. Harry and Emily have five grandchildren. Andy Ross was interviewed in a San Francisco Chronicle story written in the aftermath of the August attack on author Salman Rushdie. Andy, who owned Cody’s Books on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, California, from 1977-2006, stocked Rushdie’s novel “The Satanic Verses” soon after its release. In February 1989, in what was presumed to be an act of retaliation, someone threw a firebomb into the bookstore; an unexploded pipe bomb was also later found inside. Andy told the Chronicle, “We all went to the store afterwards, and I told my staff, ‘I don’t know what you want to do. This book is dangerous.’ So we took a vote. And we voted unanimously to keep carrying the book. And that was one of the highlights of my career.” Roger W. Smith was a guest lecturer at “Russian Emigration on the Waves of Freedom,” a conference held at Columbia University’s Harriman Institute in May. Roger’s topic was “Pitirim Sorokin and the Russian Emigré Community.” Eric Uslaner is professor emeritus of government and politics at the University of Maryland, College Park. His books include “National Identity and Partisan Polarization” (Oxford University Press, 2022) and a volume he co-edited, “National Identity and Social Cohesion” (ECPR Press, 2021).