Courtesy of JTA. Photo credit: Cedars-Sinai
Pioneering surgeon and Holocaust survivor Dr. George Berci
Dr. George Berci, 103, Holocaust survivor who transformed surgery
As a Jew growing up in Hungary after it joined the Axis alliance, George Berci was barred from medical school, so he became an apprentice in an electrical shop and studied mechanical engineering. After surviving forced labor and narrowly avoiding deportation to Auschwitz, he studied as a surgeon in Budapest after World War II and ultimately settled in the United States.
He would go on to combine his medical training and engineering skills for the benefit of millions of people: In a long and illustrious career at Cedars-Sinai medical center in Los Angeles, he developed the tools and techniques of laparoscopy, the “minimally invasive” procedure that allows surgeons to perform delicate operations without gruesome incisions.
Berci was nearly 70 when laparoscopic surgery became the standard in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and he continued to come to work until after he turned 100.
Berci died Aug. 30 in Thousand Oaks, California from complications of COVID-19. He was 103.
“Unfortunately, I had a terrible early life in respect to being a Jew,” Berci said in 2018. “The next generation needs to know about what happened.”
Courtesy of JTA. Photo credit: Archiwum Rzeczpospolitej
Rabbi Burt E. Schuman served as rabbi of Beit Warszawa, a Progressive congregation in Warsaw, from 2006 to 2012
Burt Schuman, 76, Poland’s first Progressive rabbi since the Holocaust
Rabbi Burt E. Schuman, who in 2006 became Poland’s first Progressive rabbi since the Holocaust, died Sept. 20 in Pittsburgh of chondrosarcoma, a rare bone cancer. He was 76.
Ordained as a Reform rabbi when he was 42, the New York native served as rabbi at Temple Beth Israel in Altoona, Pennsylvania before answering a call to lead Beit Warszawa, a Progressive, or Reform, congregation in Warsaw. There he set about revitalizing a liberal Jewish community that was decimated by the Holocaust, organizing social and cultural events, staging Yiddish musical performances and establishing what he called a “very serious and very demanding” eight-month conversion course. “The more ways one can be Jewish, the stronger the Jewish community is,” Schuman told JTA in 2006. “We’re in the business of making Jews.”
He also initiated a gender-neutral translation of a Reform prayer book into Polish. Such efforts planted a seed for the growth of other Progressive communities among the country’s tiny Jewish population.
Schuman returned to the United States in 2012 and settled in Pittsburgh.
Courtesy of JTA. Photo credit: legacy.com
Temma Kingsley joined the Forest Hills Jewish Center as a newlywed in 1965
Temma Kingsley, 82, philanthropist and pillar of her Queens, N.Y. synagogue
Temma Kingsley was a pillar of the Forest Hills Jewish Center, a Conservative synagogue that long anchored its Queens, New York neighborhood. In 2022, Kingsley, the synagogue’s first woman president, spoke to the New York Jewish Week about the decision to sell its building and find a home for its priceless fixtures, including an ornate ark designed by the artist Arthur Szyk.
An early childhood teacher, director and consultant, Kingsley dedicated her career and philanthropy to Jewish education. She served on the boards of the Zamir Choral Foundation; the former Board of Jewish Education the Davidson School at the Jewish Theological Seminary; was president of the New York Jewish Early Childhood Association and the National Jewish Early Childhood Network; and chaired UJA-Federation’s Interboro Women’s campaign.
“Her exemplary philanthropy … impacted countless lives,” UJA-Federation wrote in a tribute. She died Sept. 8 at age 82.
