Sharona Margolin Halickman grew up with vintage wooden bookends, adorned with the Chagall windows of the Abbell Synagogue at Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem.

They sat on her family’s Riverdale, NY, bookshelf, having been brought back from Israel by one of her grandmothers, both of whom were life members of Hadassah. She loved those bookends.

Just recently, Sharona and her husband, Joshua Halickman, celebrated the bar mitzvah of their son, Yehudah, with family and friends in the Abbell Synagogue under the Chagall windows. The Jerusalem winter sun was shining through the acclaimed stained glass--13 years after Yehudah was born at Hadassah Hospital Mount Scopus. The family had immigrated to Israel from the US in 2004, and their third son was born during Hanukkah 2006.

“We walked the halls and read the plaques all night,” reminisced Sharona about her experience giving birth to Yehudah at Hadassah. “I was given a room with the magnificent panoramic view of Jerusalem. My husband went to say the morning prayers. He was surprised that there was a service right downstairs—so different from giving birth in America.”

Their Hadassah baby was named for Yehudah Maccabi of the Hanukkah story and for the biblical Yehudah, who is the protagonist of the Torah portion, Vayigash, which the bar mitzvah boy read.

Sharona is a well-known Torah scholar and founder of a Torah study program named for her grandmother, Bronx Hadassah member Reva Margolin. Her other grandmother was Dorothy Dubrow, a devoted member in New Haven, CT.