Toronto Jewish Couple Asphyxiated, Florida Police Say

This piece first appeared in The Times of Israel.

An elderly Jewish man and woman were asphyxiated while in their Florida townhouse, police said Wednesday, revealing the first details of the investigation since the grisly double murder in early January.

Rochelle Wise and David (Donny) Pichosky, retirees from Toronto. who resided in Hallandale Beach, Florida, during the winter months, were found dead on the evening of January 10. A neighbor used a key to enter their home due to concern over the couple having missed a lunch date scheduled for the day before.

Hallandale Beach Police Chief Dwayne Flournoy revealed at a press conference on Wednesday that the medical examiner had ruled the deaths homicide by asphyxiation. Flournoy declined to provide further details about the cause or time of death.

Wise, 66, was a respected and loved educator whose last position was as the preschool director at Toronto’s Bialik Hebrew Day School. She and Pichosky, 71, had been married for four years.

Despite some progress in the investigation, the perpetrators have not yet been apprehended. The family of the victims has put out a plea for help from the public, and Crime Stoppers has issued a $51,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of suspects.

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© 2013 Renee Ghert-Zand. All rights reserved.

New Director At The Contemporary Jewish Museum

This piece was first published on The Arty Semite blog at the Forward.

Lori Starr (photo by Dexter Quinto/Studio Kaizen)

Thirty-five years ago, Lori Starr, then a graduate student, spent nine months in San Francisco on a museum education fellowship. This June, she will return to the City by the Bay to become the executive director of the Contemporary Jewish Museum.

For Starr, this new position marks a return to California after seven years in Toronto leading the Koffler Centre of the Arts through an exciting period of development. Before heading north of the 49th parallel, Starr, a New York-area native, held high-level positions at cultural institutions in Los Angeles, including the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Skirball Cultural Center.

Starr told The Arty Semite in a phone interview from Toronto that she is very excited about moving to Northern California, an area known for its dynamism, diversity and innovative spirit. The special character of the Bay Area’s Jewish community is also a draw, and she considers it a boon for the museum. “San Francisco has been the destination of Jews with boldness and big dreams unfettered by the past,” she said. Following in this vein, “the CJM is a broadcaster of new ideas around arts and culture.”

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© 2013 Renee Ghert-Zand. All rights reserved.

Toronto’s Tears For Couple In Mystery Slaying

This article was first published in The Jewish Daily Forward.

David (Donny) Pichosky and Rochelle Wise (photo taken from Facebook)

The Toronto Jewish community has been stunned into a mournful silence by the murder of beloved educator Rochelle Wise and her husband David (Donny) Pichosky in Florida last week.

Many turned inward with their grief as the couple was laid to rest on Monday at the Bathurst Lawn Memorial Park. However, one man, whose children went to the school where Wise had worked and who also knew Pichosky, spoke to The Forward after attending the funeral and burial, calling the murder “a huge shock and a double tragedy.”

The father said he planned on generally acceding to the request from the Bialik Hebrew Day School, where Wise was Preschool Vice Principal for four years before recently retiring, to avoid speaking to the media out of respect for the family of the deceased. “However, I will say that nobody has anything but wonderful things to say about Rochelle,” he shared. “She was a fantastic educator and a warm person. We all held her in high regard. We wished she had stayed at Bialik longer, but understood her wanting to retire and enjoy life with Donny.”

Wise, 66, who had founded and run the popular Crestwood Valley Day Camp for many years before working at Bialik, was discovered by concerned neighbors dead alongside her husband, 71, in their Hallandale Beach, Florida townhouse. The retirees were “snowbirds,” Canadians who spend up to half the year in Florida to escape the cold northern winters.

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© 2013 Renee Ghert-Zand. All rights reserved.