Bnai Brith Magazine Winter 2011 : Page 41
defuse or snuff it out right away or let people know it’s not acceptable.” While he says he has encountered little overt anti-Semitism, Halpern says one of his favorite movies is “School Ties,” a 1992 film about a Jewish public school student in the 1950s who goes to a New England prep school on an ath-letic scholarship. There he excels at team sports but faces prejudice when his schoolmates learn he is Jewish. Halpern says he’s “always loved” the movie because it showed “a Jewish high school athlete persevering through anti-Semi-tism. I didn’t experience anything like that at [St. Paul’s] school, but I definitely felt in the minority there.” The school is affiliated with the Episcopal Church but welcomes students of all religions and backgrounds, according to its website. Halpern’s wife, Kelly Cornwell, is a former Washington Redskins cheerleader whom he met in 2003. Two years before the couple married last June, Cornwell decided to convert to Juda-ism. Despite the joyful occasion, there was still sadness at their wedding. Halpern’s mother, Gloria, was killed with his aunt and uncle in a fiery car wreck in 2005. Halpern says that he thinks about his mother every day but has kept his thoughts on her death private since he gave her eulogy at B’nai Israel, the Conservative synagogue in Rockville, Md., where years before he had his bar mitzvah. “A lot of my beliefs in life are informed by her,” he says of his mother, who had been an accountant and taught at a local community All photos courtesy of the Washington Capitals and the National Hockey League B’NAI B’RITH 41
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