Brandeis Magazine

Susan Kahn in April 2024 celebrated the publication of “Best Reading Spelling Methods, Ages 6-60: Parent and Teacher Training Text.” In July, she was interviewed about her “Sue’s Strategies” series of reading- and writing-skills books on “Waltham Watches,” a program that airs on Waltham’s community access TV station.

In 2024, Lucinda Rudin became a great-grandmother for the first time, and celebrated the engagement of two grandchildren and the college graduation of another. She enjoys teaching others about medicinal herbs.

Natalie Silber Weil lives in Carson City, Nevada, near her younger son. Her older son lives in Phoenix, and her daughter lives in North Carolina. Natalie, who also has grandchildren and great-grandchildren, stays busy by working at a food pantry and an animal shelter. Her husband, Albert, died in 2019. “I still treasure my time at Brandeis and value the phenomenal education I received there,” she writes.

Esther Geil, formerly of Annapolis, Maryland, is now widowed and living in a retirement residence in Honolulu, near one of her two sons. She writes, “I keep busy with classes that I take or teach. I am currently teaching line dancing, because there wasn’t anyone else to teach it and I wanted to dance. I also lead a writing group and a support/discussion group. I’ve taken classes in math, Japanese, Spanish, French, sign language, technology, acting, and films.”

Jeff Golland, P’96, reports that, given his age, he was “surprised yet delighted” to be appointed to the editorial board of the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association.

Dorothy Shubow Nelson retired from UMass Boston after teaching writing and literature for many years. She then created a writing workshop for veterans at the Gloucester (Massachusetts) Writers Center, leading to the publication of an anthology the vets created titled “The Inner Voice and the Outer World,” which earned her a Commendation Medal from Cape Ann Veterans Services. A prolific poet and reader, Dorothy in July 2024 was invited to a Boston Globe roundtable with other frequent authors of letters to the editorial board. She and husband Jim split their time between Cambridge and Gloucester.

Gitte Gram Swensson and Helge Evju ’63, both Wien Scholars from Norway, send a joint thank-you to Brandeis. Gitte, who studied education, worked as an elementary school teacher. Helge, who studied music, worked at the Norwegian Opera.

Eleanor Rubin’s artwork became part of the permanent collection of Wellesley College’s Davis Museum in June 2024. Her prints, drawings, and watercolors are also in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Boston Athenaeum.

Donald Newman and Larry Goldman report they had an enjoyable conversation over Zoom in July 2024 with Chad Williams, the Samuel J. and Augusta Spector Professor of History, and African and African American Studies at Brandeis. Williams contacted them to discuss Malcolm X’s 1963 speech at Brandeis, which Donald, Larry, and Edward Perlmutter were involved in organizing through the campus’s Student Political Education and Action Committee.

S. Ilan Troen, P’14, founding director of the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies and the Stoll Family Professor of Israel Studies, Emeritus, in April 2024 celebrated Palgrave Macmillan’s publication of his book “Israel/Palestine in World Religions: Whose Promised Land,” a Jewish Book Council selection.

No Class Notes submissions this issue.

Anne Hallinan appears in the short film “Deal of a Lifetime,” which made the rounds of film festivals and can now be viewed for free online. She plays the mother of a character portrayed by actor David Cross. “Doing this was a highlight of my pandemic years,” she reports.

Richard Weisberg, who celebrated his 80th birthday in May 2024, continues to teach in person and online. He was a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Pittsburgh for four years and now teaches at Carnegie Mellon. His online teaching has included a lecture on post-Oct. 7 antisemitism (to receive a link to the lecture, contact Richard at rhweisbg@yu.edu).

Connecticut resident Paul Bloom is working with the Greater New Haven Peace Commission on two projects intended to promote peace and reduce aggression. One is expanding the development of the West River Peace Garden. The other is developing community conversations in safe and welcoming environments, including New Haven’s main public library.

Susie (Rosenberg) Kaufman has moved from the Berkshires after 50 years there. She and her husband now live in St. Louis Park, Minnesota (home of Al Franken and the Coen brothers) from May to November and in the Sierras from December to April. Susie’s “seventysomething” essays can be read at susiekaufman.substack.com.

Michael Moscovich, P’99, writes, “Turned 80 — is that bizarre? Living in Vancouver half the year and the other half in Rancho Mirage, California. Visitors welcome. Zoom every Sunday with five Brandeis dormmates from 1962. Says much about the closeness of the Brandeis experience.”

Luis Recinos, who directed the psychology department at Francisco Marroquín University, in Guatemala, still sees patients as a psychologist and enjoys playing the saxophone. Son Iago is a sound technician in Vienna, and daughter Danina is a physiotherapist in Switzerland.

William Schneider, H’08, who lives in Washington, D.C., has retired from two careers: working as a television political analyst for CNN for 21 years (until 2009), then (until 2021) as a U.S. politics professor at George Mason University, with visiting professorships at Brandeis, Boston College, and UCLA. He now writes a political blog on Substack and teaches lifelong-learning courses via Zoom.

Jeffrey Schnitzer, who works as a psychologist, has been with his wife, Lois, for almost 45 years. The couple has lived in Lexington, Massachusetts, since 1989.

Paul Solman, G’26, is board chair of the American Exchange Project, a nonprofit that sends U.S. high school seniors to communities drastically different from their own — North/South, blue/red, rural/ urban, rich/poor — for a week during the summer after they graduate. Then they host someone in their own hometown. “A domestic foreign exchange program, just the sort of project Brandeis taught us to engage in,” Paul explains. “A thousand kids so far, shooting for a million.”

Bob Sunshine, P’94, P’00, retired in September 2024 after more than 48 years at the Congressional Budget Office, where, at various times, he served as the agency’s acting director, its longest-serving deputy director, and head of its budget analysis division.

Allen Zerkin, P’02, writes, “I took my 22-year-old grandson and 18-year-old granddaughter on a 10-day trip to Tallinn, Estonia; Riga, Latvia; and Helsinki, Finland. New territory for all of us, no mean feat since each of us is already fairly well-traveled in Europe. We were pleased to see Ukrainian flags everywhere, notwithstanding that Estonia and Latvia have large Russian-speaking populations.”

Allan Lichtman, Distinguished Professor of History at American University, in July 2024 welcomed the eighth edition of his “Lichtman’s Keys” book series, “Predicting the Next President: The Keys to the White House” (Rowman & Littlefield). His next book, “The Truth About Conservatism: It’s Not What You Think,” will be published in 2025. Allan and his son Sam have started a YouTube show on politics and history that goes live every Tuesday and Thursday at 9 p.m. EST. Allan gives interviews worldwide on the political situation in the U.S., and his videos have garnered some 10 million views on YouTube.

Toby Mostysser, who lives in Israel, has a daughter and four grandchildren, as well as two granddaughters by the first wife of her late husband. Retired as a freelance English-language and content editor, she visits with her family in Jerusalem once a week.

David Greenwald, P’02, writes, “At 77, I’m still seeing patients as a psychologist/psychotherapist. After all these years of ‘practice,’ I finally got pretty, pretty good at it.” David lives in Center City, Philadelphia, with his wife and dog, and reports he’s addicted to watching Korean dramas.

Ronald Kronish, P’99, celebrated his 55th wedding anniversary with Amy, whom he met on the kosher line in the Massell Quad dining room during his senior year. They have three married daughters and six grandchildren, four of whom live in Jerusalem, where Ron and Amy have lived for the past 45 years. The other two grandchildren live in New York City, where Ron and Amy live part time.

Joseph Matalon and his wife, Bernadette, live in Kingston, Jamaica, where they enjoy the sun, sand, and tropical climate. They visit Miami a few times a year to see their two grandchildren. Joseph reports he is completely retired, having given up all his directorships, both private and governmental.

After 20 years of planning and design work, Mark Simon has completed overseeing the renewal of the Yale Peabody Museum. Son Tom and daughter-in-law Daliza Cabrera have two children, Olivia (2-1/2) and Marcos (1).

Henry Sussman’s debut collection of poems, “Polaroids of Turbulence,” was published in April 2024 by BlazeVOX.

Lee Adlerstein, P’94, writes, “I’ve been enjoying a busy New York City-based retirement since 2020: auditing college courses, traveling to keep up with far-flung family, getting outdoors a lot, and taking in cultural surroundings.”

For the past 10 years, Michele Boll has painted at Western Avenue Studios, in Lowell, Massachusetts. She writes, “I am grateful to have found this supportive community of fellow artists as I keep discovering beauty in ordinary things.”

Bernard Gerber, P’98, who has worked half time at his medical practice in psychiatry for the past five years, has taken up iPhone photography as a hobby. One of his images was selected in a juried exhibition at the Houston Center for Photography last summer. He says he enjoys visiting his grandchildren and “those adults who care for them” in Austin and Dallas.

Neil Nyren, former executive vice president, associate publisher, and editor-in-chief at G.P. Putnam’s Sons, will be honored as the 2025 Thriller Legend at the International Thriller Writers conference next June.

Robert Panoff is a tax litigator in Pinecrest, Florida. Wife Jeanne is a writer. Son Joseph, who is a doctor, and daughter-in-law Vicky, a lawyer, have two children, Clementine and Juliette.

Dennis Sasso, G’28, has retired as senior rabbi at Congregation Beth-El Zedeck, in Indianapolis, after 47 years. His wife, Sandy Eisenberg Sasso — the first woman ordained as a rabbi by the Reconstructionist movement and the second in American Judaism — retired from Beth-El Zedeck in 2013. In 2024, Dennis and Sandy, the first rabbinical married couple in world Jewish history, celebrated their 50th anniversary in the rabbinate. Grandson Darwin ’28 is a Brandeis first-year.

Lee Schlesinger, associate professor emeritus of literature at Purchase College, SUNY, appeared in a community theater production of the musical “Urinetown” in spring 2024, then spent part of the summer in Montreal. He writes, “I also visited the Brandeis campus for the first time in more than 20 years. So familiar, so different.”

Ellen Schwartz’s edited volume, “Womanhouse at 50: Legacy and Inspiration,” is under editorial review. Her husband retired after 50 years of teaching at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. Their older son is completing a PhD in statistics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Their younger son is an assistant professor of music and director of choral activities at Knox College. When Ellen sent in her class note last summer, she was preparing to welcome her first grandchild in August.

Gail Schwartz and husband George are taking their son, daughter-in-law, and granddaughter to Italy in April in honor of their granddaughter’s bat mitzvah.

Ira Shapiro is the author of books about the U.S. Senate, including “The Betrayal: How Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans Abandoned America” (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022). An updated paperback edition of “The Betrayal,” released in May 2024, includes a new foreword covering the events of the previous two years. “We continue to live with the consequences of the Senate Republicans’ catastrophic failure to stop Donald Trump’s assault on our democracy in 2020 and January 2021, shaking off their lethargy only long enough to ram through the confirmation of an extreme, lawless Supreme Court supermajority,” Ira writes.

Nancy Shapiro has retired after 43 years at the University of Maryland and the University System of Maryland, serving in a variety of roles, including as director of undergraduate writing programs; founding executive director of the College Park Scholars Program, one of the first living-learning programs in the U.S.; and associate vice chancellor at the University System office. She is working as a senior adviser to Civic Learning and Democracy Engagement, a national coalition focused on advancing college civic learning and democratic engagement.