Rikki and Barry are longtime members of Temple Israel Center, joining at the same time as Rabbi Gordon Tucker in 1994. Temple Israel Center has been central to the Jewish life of their entire family, for which they are deeply grateful. Rikki has served on the TIC Board of Trustees, the Rabbi Search Committee, on the Temple Israel Center Religious School Board (now the Shorashim Advisory Board), and various other committees. Barry has served on the TIC Investment Committee.

 

Beyond TIC, Rikki and Barry are longstanding lay leaders at UJA-Federation, as well as active participants in several Jewish and other philanthropic activities in the New York area and beyond.

 

Rikki, the daughter of Holocaust survivors from what is now Western Ukraine, grew up in Lakewood, New Jersey. After a long successful career in institutional equity sales on Wall Street (where she met Barry), Rikki taught pre-school at Westchester Reform Temple. For the last several years she has been an instructor in the Learning to Look Program, an art history curriculum for K- 5 students.

 

Rikki serves on the Board of Directors of the New York Center for Law & Justice, and the Dean’s Advisory Council at NYU. She currently co-chairs UJA -Federation’s Community Initiative for Holocaust Survivors (CIHS) and serves on the Community Relations & Safety Committee. Rikki is also a former Scarsdale area co-chair for UJA-Federation. Rikki is a fluent Yiddish speaker and regularly participates in a Yiddisha Chevra (Yiddish speaking conversational group). 

 

Barry, originally from Newton, Massachusetts, founded Maple Tree Capital Management in 2003, an investment management firm specializing in public and private investments in the media, telecom and internet services industries. He was a partner at Goldman Sachs & Co, where he worked for more than 16 years as a securities analyst covering media and telecom companies, and later co-managed a proprietary equity fund for the firm.

 

Barry is a past Executive Committee member and board member of UJA-Federation of New York, where he serves on the Network Cabinet, Agency Oversight Committee, Audit Committee, and as a UJA liaison to the board of The Afya Foundation. Barry is also a board member and past Board President of Westchester Jewish Community Services (WJCS), where he currently chairs the Investment Committee and participates on several other committees. He is a former member of the Board of Overseers at the Brandeis University International Business School. 

 

After living in Scarsdale for 28 years, where they raised their three children, Lee, Natalie, and Sam, Rikki and Barry recently moved to the Upper West Side of New York City. Lee and Natalie are proud graduates of Temple Israel Center Religious School, and Sam attended the Solomon Schechter School (now the Leffell School) through eighth grade. All three celebrated their b’nai mitzvah at TIC.

 

Rikki and Barry are delighted to share this honor with Randi and Justin Kattan. Congratulations to Randi and Justin and their entire family on this well-deserved honor recognizing their meaningful commitment to the Temple Israel Center community. The Kaplans wish to express their deep appreciation to the entire TIC clergy and staff for their dedicated and skillful service to TIC and its members. They are deeply grateful to the entire TIC community for being at the core of their Jewish life for so many years. Rikki & Barry would like to thank gala co-chairs, Gail Wiesenfeld, Bree Schonbrun Dumain, and Diana Sklar, who worked so hard to make this evening truly special.