Seth and Heidi Seigel-Laddy

Parent Honorees

Heidi and Seth Seigel-Laddy met their senior year at SUNY Stony Brook.  Seth’s plan when taking Women in Judaism worked and they are celebrating 24 years of wedded bliss.  They have lived in Fair Lawn for over twenty years, and they are active members of The Fair Lawn Jewish Center – Congregation B’nai Israel.  Heidi is a member of several synagogue committees as well as a BCHSJS Board member, while Seth sits on the FLJC/CBI Board of Directors, is a Men’s Progress Club Past President, and chairman for programs throughout the year.

 

Heidi and Seth are the proud parents of three brilliant and awesome children:  Alyssa, Kayla, and Spencer.  Alyssa was graduated from BCHSJS in 2016, while Kayla and Spencer are current BCHSJS students, a senior and a ninth grader respectively.  The Seigel-Laddys are proud of their volunteerism and contributions to our community as well.  Seth is a technical executive in the software industry, and Heidi runs operations and finances for the Seigel-Laddy family.  We are humbled and honored to be receiving this year’s award. “We are grateful to BCHSJS for enriching and cultivating the Jewish lives of our children. 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.”

 

 

 

Debora Propper Lesnoy

Educator of the Year

Debora Propper Lesnoy, a Jewish educator for over 35 years, grew up in Fair Lawn.  She holds a degree from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.  Debora (Morah Debbie) ran an Israel Information Center there and served as Regional Coordinator for the American Zionist Youth Foundation.  She attended the Technion in Haifa as a graduate student.

 

While living in Israel, Debora worked for the Jewish Agency, translating and representing Israel on incoming cruise ships.  She was also a junior delegate to the Zionist Congress.

 

After returning to the U.S., Debora lived in New Hampshire where she taught Hebrew school.  After moving to Massachusetts, she helped found a Jewish Day School in Sharon, teaching kindergarten and also teaching at a religious school in Attleboro.

 

Debora moved back to Fair Lawn twenty years ago and became Director of the Leah Sokoloff Nursery School at Shomrei Torah.  She is currently the Director of the Helen Troum Nursery School at Temple Beth Sholom and has been teaching various grades at the Fair Lawn Jewish Center’s religious school for the past 19 years.  Last year she helped coordinate a teen trip to the National Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.  Many of her students from her seventh grade classes at the Jewish Center continue

their Jewish education at BCHSJS.

 

Debora, the 2014 recipient of the Grinspoon Award for Excellence in Jewish Education, is the proud parent of two boys and three girls, and the grandmother of five.

 

Jewish education is truly her passion.

David J. Fine has served as rabbi of Temple Israel and Jewish Community Center in Ridgewood since 2009.  He earned his degree in history from Wesleyan University, was ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary and completed his PhD in modern European history at CUNY Graduate Center.  He is the author of Jewish Integration in the German Army in the First World War (2012) and Passionate Centrism: One Rabbi’s Judaism (2016).  Rabbi Fine is an adjunct professor of Jewish law at the Abraham Geiger and Zacharias Frankel Colleges in Berlin, Germany.  In Bergen County he helped establish a consortium religious school and youth program.  He joined the BCHSJS board to liaison between the school and the community rabbis and now serves as treasurer of BCHSJS.  In addition, Rabbi Fine is president of the New Jersey Rabbinical Assembly, past president of the Ridgewood interfaith ministerial association and secretary

of the North Jersey Board of Rabbis. 

 

Alla Fine, born in Odessa, Ukraine, immigrated to the United States with her family and grew up in Brooklyn.  She earned her degree in business management and finance from Brooklyn College, and works now as a freelance conference/event planner, fundraiser. She is also an aspiring actor.  Alla, as a new parent at BCHSJS, serves on the dinner committee.  At Temple Israel and JCC she has coordinated the community seder, annual karaoke parties, and outings to Russian nightclubs sharing her culture

and love of music and dance. 

 

The Fines met when both worked at the Jewish Theological Seminary.  They are now the proud parents of two sons: Laurence, a ninth grader at Ridgewood High School and BCHSJS,

and Ariel, an eighth grader at Schechter Westchester.