Merage Jewish Community Center of Orange County • Samueli Jewish Campus • OC 2013 JCC Maccabi Games®

OC Wave Length Staff

Blaze Bernstein(Layout Editor) Abby SteinmetzDeana BermanLee-El YehezkelJeremy FrankAaron RatnerHenry PassoAnne Berg

Channa Schachet-Briskin

Deborah FrankMichael KaplanSydney PomishJustin Kalvari

Michael SandorDaniel Gillman

Joey KleidGabi PermbaLila Harris

Matana ZwirenCoaches:

Linda CooperKathy B Shapiro

Abby Cutler

JOIN US!

JCC Maccabi Arts-Fests Showcase

“Spirit”Today in the JCC

Myers TheaterAt 3:00

by Deborah Frank and LeeEl Yehezkel

Photo by Abby SteinmetzPage 1

Maccabi Saved My Life

Star Reporters

by Anne Berg and Aaron Ratner Meet Thelma Edell (pictured to the right), a resident from Heritage Point, who was sad until Maccabi came into her life. Two weeks before Orange County hosted the games in 2007 her husband died. She was incredibly depressed with her loss, but Maccabi managed to save her life. All the social activities kept her mind off her husband’s death. This is her second time volunteering at the JCC Maccabi Games in Orange County. She loves all the children she sees during Maccabi and the fun of the activities.

Have you noticed those people who are always walking around with a camera and notepad? Yep, that’s us. We are the STAR reporters, and during the day, our duty is to capture the JCC Macca-bi Games and ArtsFest experience by pho-tographing and documenting your stories and daily activities. After a hard day’s work of taking buses to multiple school campus-es, we return to our home base classroom and churn out the next day’s newspaper for your enjoyment.

Photo by Kathy Shapiro

Our crew consists of nineteen reporters from all over North America who all share a passion for journalism and photography. Together, we work hard at transferring our photos on the computer, editing them, writing articles and editing those, and then collaborating all of our work into a fun, visually pleasing news-paper format, as well as uploading photos and articles onto social media. We have also created a slideshow for the ArtsFest Showcase.

Meet the Coaches

Catching Up With Greater Washingtonby Deana Berman, Michael Kaplan, & Aaron Ratner

Photo by Henry PassoPage 2

by Henry Passo and Daniel Gillman

We caught up with some of the players from the Greater Washington Base-ball team; Noah Lerman and Zach Wiener. For Noah, it’s his first time in California, and he’s loving it! It’s also his first time par-ticipating in the JCC Maccabi Games. For Zach it’s his second time around. Both boys are planning on coming back next year. Their team has been playing with injuries, but are still playing hard. “Tear-ing it up in Cali” said Zach. In fact, yester-day they turned a triple play, which is one of the rarest plays in baseball. Their team has great chemistry and lots of heart. They couldn’t have done it without their won-derful coaches who give inspirational pep talks, that bring great energy. Baseball has been lots of fun for them!

During a press conference today, several reporters interviewed athletes and girls from Girls Inc (pictured to the left). They shared with us what they have done connecting with JCC Cares and what their experience has been. Girls Inc. is an or-ganization that teaches girls to be strong, smart, and bold. Athletes from the Greater

by Gabi Poremba

Steve Mendel the coach of the Philadelphia 14u baseball team and his players came ready to play ball. Steve said, “ Our only desire is to win!”. His job is not easy because nine out of twelve members of his team are thirteen year olds. The team was determined because one loss and they would be done for this year. The team beat

Philidelphia’s Youngesters Come Through

Shane Urowitz the coach for the Toronto inline hockey team with his good friend Bryan Robbins the coach of the De-troit inline hockey team have a friendly rivalry. But it never gets mean. They have nothing but good things to say about each other and each other’s teams. This is Shane’s 3rd year coaching and Bryans 5th year coaching. The Toronto teams record at the moment is 1-3 and the Detroit record is 3-0 and Bryan hopes to

Learn to be Strong, Smart, and Bold

Detroit 3-2. The pitcher pitched a completegame for Philadelphia in their win. Philadelphia had a golden oppor-tunity to score more runs with the bases loaded but failed. Their defense was amaz-ing when they got a Detroit runner in a run down during the last inning. The coach urged his players to continue their good work in the next round.

keep it undefeated. Earlier on at the JCC Maccabi Games Detroit beat Toronto. But even though Detroit beat them Shane still has faith in his team. Bryan says he thinks anybody could win once it comes to the playoffs. Bryan thinks that Shane’s team is always well prepared. Bryan also seems to think that the big competition for his team is Or-ange County. Both coaches are happy to be in Orange County.

by Justin Kalvari

Bryan Robbins (right) and Shane Urowitz (left) Photo by Justin Kalvari

Photos by Deana Berman

Wash ington Girls Basketball Team that we interviewed said that they participated in many activities such as art projects, relay races, and making cookies for the home-less. Besides the involvement with Mac-cabi, Girls Inc. participants learn how to run businesses and buy items from peers’ shops as well. In conclusion, it seems that they are all having a fantastic experience in Maccabi so far.

Photo by Gabi Poremba

Fourteen year old, Gabrielle Bur-kholz, from San Diego demonstrated her positivity and determination during her match today. She has been playing tennis for seven years, two of which she played competitively. Today she was nervous but she stepped onto the court with confidence. “Even when you are down in a game, don’t give up. The more you try, the more you will succeed,” said Gabrielle, as advice to future tennis players. When Gabrielle’s opponent took a

Page 3

A Tennis Girl’s Honor

Jazz and Dance are working to-gether on a masterpiece—Jazz is creating the music, and dance is creating an inter-pretative dance, expressing the emotions and feelings of the music. The chosen song (Ze Kore) is about disrespect, but later transitions into a song about repairing the world, or Tikkun Olam. The dancers are working very hard to adjust all of the dif-ferent kinds of dance into one song. “Jazz is the most collaborative art specialty, they are working with the visual arts and the dance ensemble” says Mattan Klein, the director of the Jazz ensemble. However, they are all

by Gabi Poremba and Lila Harrisgood shot, she was kind and compliment-ed her. That made it clear to us that she is friendly both on and off the court. At UCI, we learned that the scor-ing system for the tennis matches is based on the honor system. This means that the competitors keep track of their own score status. At the match today, Gabrielle and her opponent had a disagreement about a play. Quickly, they were able to talk it out, come to agreement, resolve it and continue on with the game.

very excited to work together and showcase their talents. One of the jazz musicians, Sam Sitzmann, has had a passion for music particularly for own instrument, the cello, since he was three years old. He says that, according to his mother, he just started to like cello music and so his mom signed him up for 5-minute cello lessons. Ever since then, he’s loved playing his instrument, even asking for Chicago Symphony tickets for his birthday! One day, Sam hopes to become a professional cello musician, pref-erably in the Chicago Symphony, but he is open to other ideas as well.

by Syndey Pomihs and LeeEl Yehzhak

Jazz and Dance Wroking Together

Meet the Athletes

Photo by Joey Kleid

Josh Bernstein

David SlusznyTrack and Field-

by Jeremy Frank and Blaze Bernstein

Photo by Matana Zwiren

The Alpha Males write their own songs. The songs they are currently writing are about their summer experience at the JCC. Josh said that he really enjoyed his sum-mers at Maccabi and that OC has an inter-esting culture. Another vocalist and gui-tarist from the Alpha Males, Jacob Wayne stated “I do vocals but he is so good that I don’t even need to”. Josh Bernstein is a very dedicated, nice and awesome Rock n Roll jew. We should all hope his name goes beyond the JCC.

Page 4

Artist!

Gold Medal Winners

Jake Pantic-Horn

Noa LihnCompetitive Dance- Ballet

Photos above and below by Kathy Shapiro

Photo by Joey Kleid

Photo by Michael Sandor

pushed him into the pool when he refused to go in. This was his introduction to swim-ming. Six years later on August 7, 2013, Jake Pantic-Horne has become unstoppa-ble. At the Orange County JCC Maccabi Games he has participated in eight differ-ent events. He has medaled in every single one, winning gold three times and silver five times. The teen that had only started swimming competitively two years earli-er was dominating athletes who had been competing all their lives. When asked about his journey to his success as a swimmer he said, “You can achieve anything you want if you truly believe in yourself.”

An old maxim says, “In a moment of weakness, you might surprise yourself ”. For Jake Pantic-Horne (pictured to the right) of Berkeley, CA this surprise came in the pool. Growing up Jake was a pretty average kid. Other then having a quick six-month stint in England when he was only one, life was normal. One thing that wasn’t normal was that Jake didn’t know how to swim. But that was OK. He had no qualms about being a child that preferred to spend his time on land. However when he was ten things took an interesting turn. At a local aquatic center one day, Jake’s mom

By Michael Sandor

Josh Bernstein is an orange county Jew and an extremely talented singer and key-board player. He is the lead vocalist for the Alpha Males, the band in room 103. Josh has been coming to the JCC Macca-bi games three years. The OC games will make up his fourth year. When asked if this will be his last year he said that it may or may not be, Depending on what’s going on next summer.