BCHSJS name honorees for celebration on April 26
The Bergen County High School of Jewish Studies, Bergen County’s only weekly Hebrew high school, will hold its annual gala on Thursday, April 26, at Temple Israel and Jewish Community Center in Ridgewood. Heidi and Seth Seigel-Laddy of Fair Lawn, Rabbi David and Alla Fine of Ridgewood, and Debora Propper Lesnoy of Fair Lawn are the honorees.
This year’s parent honorees, Heidi and Seth Seigel-Laddy, are active members of the Fair Lawn Jewish Center/Congregation B’nai Israel. Heidi, a BCHSJS board member, is a member of several shul committees, while Seth sits on the FLJC/CBI board, is a Men’s Progress Club past president, and chairs several programs throughout the year. Their oldest daughter,
Alyssa, graduated from BCHSJS in 2016, and her siblings, Kayla and Spencer, are students there now. “We are grateful to BCHSJS for enriching and cultivating the Jewish lives of our children,” Heidi and Seth said. “We thank BCHSJS for this honor and hope that our participation will encourage others to get actively involved in our school and in the Jewish community.”
Rabbi David and Alla Fine will receive the inaugural Walter Ramsfelder Exemplary Service award, created to honor the late Walter Ramsfelder, who was on the BCHSJS board from 1974 to 2014. David Fine has been the rabbi of Temple Israel and Jewish Community Center in Ridgewood since 2009; he joined the BCHSJS board in 2011 as a liaison between the school and the community rabbis. He is now the board treasurer, and he is among the Bergen County rabbis who teaches at BCHSJS. He is also president of the New Jersey Rabbinical Assembly, past president of the Ridgewood Interfaith Ministerial Association, secretary of the North Jersey Board of Rabbis, and an opinion writer for the Jewish Standard. Alla Fine, a conference and event planner and fundraiser, has organized several events for Jewish community organizations in Bergen and Westchester counties and is on the BCHSJS gala committee. At Temple Israel and JCC, she has coordinated the community seder, annual karaoke parties, and outings to Russian nightclubs to share her native culture. The Fines have two sons, Laurence, a BCHSJS student, and Ariel, an eighth-grader at Schechter Westchester.
Debora Propper Lesnoy, a Jewish educator for more than 35 years, will be recognized as the BCHSJS Educator of the Year; in 2014, she received the Grinspoon Award for Excellence in Jewish Education. She is the director of the Helen Troum Nursery School at Temple Beth Sholom and has been teaching at the Fair Lawn Jewish Center’s religious school for 19 years. Many of the students from her seventh-grade classes continue their Jewish education at BCHSJS. She has five children and five grandchildren.
For more information on the dinner or to place an ad in the green journal, go to www.bchsjsdinner.org.
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