Shana Tova to all our friends and sending you wishes for a beautiful, healthy New Year.

A Rosh Hashanah memory I will hold dear for the rest of my life occurred when we hosted President Barack Obama in Sweden on the eve of this great holiday. President Obama made a historic visit to The Great Synagogue of Stockholm on that day and met with Jewish leaders and survivors who were saved by great diplomat Raoul Wallenberg. Wallenberg is said to have saved up to hundreds of thousands of Jews by giving them passports.

As a Polish General Consul posted in Leipzig, Germany, Tadeusz Brzezinski also gave passports to many young Jews to escape Germany before it was too late. This man was my daughter’s great grandfather. A few days before my wedding which also occurred a week before Rosh Hashanah, a 90-year-old woman named Eve and her daughter reached out to my husband and myself. Tadeusz Brzezinski had given Eve a passport when she was pregnant with her daughter and they escaped to the U.S. eventually settling in Maryland. We invited Eve and her daughter to our wedding.

It was a full circle of love and humanity. Here is a link to the New York Times Opinion piece my husband Mark published about this beautiful story:

Beyond the call of duty
https://www.nytimes.com/.../10iht-edbrzez.1.11865186.html...