May 2018

MAY 2018 • Iyar / Sivan 5778

Seacrest Village Retirement Communities Celebrates 75 Years and Honors Lee & Frank Goldberg CAMP EEMAH FUNDRAISER: Beth Israel Honors Educator Helene Schlafman

Congressional Candidate

SARA JACOBS

is Out to Make Politics “Cool”

Born in a Concentration Camp,

EVA CLARKE TELLS HER STORY

Iyar • Sivan 5778 | SDJewishJournal.com 1

YOUR GREATEST LEGACY CAN BE HELPING OTHERS REWRITE THEIRS. DONATE TO END HOMELESSNESS IN SAN DIEGO. Make your mark on this community with a generous gift to Father Joe’s Villages. You’ll bestow the power to innovate new ways to end homelessness.

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HIGH FASHION MEETS MODERN DANCE

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MAY 30 – JUNE 24 A sensation, honored with numerous awards, including a Tony nomination for Best Play. André, now 80, was once a tap dancer who lives with his daughter Anne and her husband Antoine. Or was he an engineer whose daughter lives in London with her new lover? He is starting to wonder if he’s losing control. THE FATHER promises to be a profoundly moving and memorable evening in the theatre.

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Iyar • Sivan 5778 | SDJewishJournal.com 3

Celebrate Shavuot

B"H

Did you know that Shavuot is the Holiday that marks the giving of the Torah?

Three million Jews stood together at the foot of Mount Sinai to receive G-d's greatest gift.

It is considered a great Mitzvah for every Jewish man, woman, and especially child to join together on this great occasion.

Experience Shavuos at your local Chabad Jewish Center.

listen to the 10 Commandments in Synagogue Sunday May 20th

recite Yizkor Memorial Service Monday May 21st 4 SDJewishJournal.com | May 2018

Enjoy a Dairy feast and ice cream bar all at your local Chabad Check the websites for more information www.ChabadDiego.com www.ChabadPoway.com www.ChabadatLaCosta.com www.ChabadCV.com www.JewishChulaVista.com www.ChabadPB.org www.JewishOceanside.com www.JewishRSF.com www.JewishStudentLife.org www.ChabadUC.org www.ChabadCoronado.com www.JewishEC.com www.ChabadDowntown.com www.AlefCenter.com www.ChabadofLaJolla.com www.JewishEncinitas.com

Iyar • Sivan 5778 | SDJewishJournal.com 5

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6 SDJewishJournal.com | May 2018

A Man and a Cat Named Yitz A sculpture, donated by Robert Shillman in appreciation for the summer job he had in the Physics Department in 1969 at the Technion.

M A Z E L T O V, DOCTOR BOB!

The A M E R I C A N T E C H N I O N S O C I E T Y SALUTES DR. ROBERT J. SHILLMAN The American Technion Society Salutes Dr. Robert J. Shillman on receiving an Honorary Doctorate from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. Mazel Tov, Doctor Bob! Robert J. Shillman, Ph.D. (“Doctor Bob”) of Rancho Santa Fe, CA, is a longtime supporter of the Technion, and a member of its Board of Governors. He is the Chairman and Chief Culture Officer of Cognex Corporation, the world’s leading supplier of machine vision systems.

If you plan to be in Israel and would like to join the celebration, please contact Mark Greenberg, Development Director, with the American Technion Society at mgreenberg@ats.org or 858.750.2135.

Conferral Ceremony Monday, June 11, 6:30 p.m.

Technion Campus, Haifa, Israel

ats.org © 2018 American Technion Society

Iyar • Sivan 5778 | SDJewishJournal.com 7

May 2018

On the Cover:

Iyar/Sivan 5778

32

Seacrest Foundation Women’s Auxiliary Diamond Anniversary Gala celebrating 75 years of Seacrest being a lifeline in the community & honoring Lee and Frank Goldberg.

Charitable Giving:

Sara Jacobs is running for Darrell Issa’s seat in the 49th District, and this 29-year-old Beth El congregant may give the men a run for their money.

35

Rabbi Dan Bortz founded JTeen several years ago and is finding news ways to connect the next generation to Judaism.

8 SDJewishJournal.com | May 2018

39

Politics:

Feature:

37

Eva Clarke, one of the youngest Holocaust survivors, will be in San Diego this month to talk about her and her mother's journey.

DIVORCE-FAMILY LAW Compassionate Yet Aggresive Family Law Experts

Hershey Felder is back, but this time he's behind the scenes.

MONTHLY COLUMNS 12 The Starting Line 22 Personal Development and Judaism 24 Israeli Lifestyle 26 Examined Life 28 Religion 72 Advice

Around Town 18 Our Town 20 The Scene 74 What's Goin On 73 Synagogue Life In Every Issue 14 Mailbag 16 What’s up Online 78 Diversions 76 News ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:

30 POLITICS Are Democrats and Republicans putting party over country?

32 Lee and Frank Goldberg talk about 75 years of San Diego Hebrew Homes/ Seacrest Village Retirement Communities.

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www.sdjewishjournal.com May 2018 • Iyar/Sivan 5778 PUBLISHERS • Mark Edelstein and Dr. Mark Moss EDITOR-IN-CHIEF • Brie Stimson ASSISTANT EDITOR • Jacqueline Bull ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR • Eileen Sondak CREATIVE DIRECTOR • Derek Berghaus OFFICE MANAGER • Jonathan Ableson CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Emily Bartell, Linda Bennett, Eva Beim, Judith Fein |(Senior Travel Correspondent), Patricia Goldblatt, Pat Launer, Sharon Rosen Leib, Andrea Simantov, Marnie Macauley, Rabbi Jacob Rupp, Saul Levine, Rachael Eden.

ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVES Ronnie Weisberg – Senior Account Executive Jonathan Ableson – Senior Account Executive Alan Moss – Palm Springs SAN DIEGO JEWISH JOURNAL (858) 638-9818 • fax: (858) 638-9801 5665 Oberlin Drive, Suite 204 • San Diego, CA 92121 EDITORIAL: editor@sdjewishjournal.com ADVERTISING: marke@sdjewishjournal.com CIRCULATION & SUBSCRIPTIONS: jableson@sdjewishjournal.com ART DEPARTMENT: art@sdjewishjournal.com LISTINGS & CALENDAR: assistant@sdjewishjournal.com

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SDJJ is published monthly by San Diego Jewish Journal, LLC. Subscription rate is $24 for one year (12 issues). Send subscription requests to SDJJ, 5665 Oberlin Drive, Suite 204, San Diego, CA 92121. The San Diego Jewish Journal is a free and open forum for the expression of opinions. The opinions expressed herein are solely the opinion of the author and in no way reflect the opinions of the publishers, staff or advertisers. The San Diego Jewish Journal is not responsible for the accuracy of any and all information within advertisements. The San Diego Jewish Journal reserves the right to edit all submitted materials, including press releases, letters to the editor, articles and calendar listings for brevity and clarity. The Journal is not legally responsible for the accuracy of calendar or directory listings, nor is it responsible for possible postponements, cancellations or changes in venue. Manuscripts, letters, documents and photographs sent to the Journal become the physical property of the publication, which is not responsible for the return or loss of such material. All contents ©2018 by San Diego Jewish Journal. The San Diego Jewish Journal is a member of the American Jewish Press Association and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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FROM THEEDITOR’S EDITOR LETTER

Respect

THE STARTING LINE

by Brie Stimson

editor@sdjewishjournal.com

Seniors have lived as interesting or likely more interesting lives than ourselves – and if we’re willing to listen they have some amazing stories to tell.

12 SDJewishJournal.com | May 2018

As we finish up with our senior issue, I am reminded of another senior in my personal life. My grandmother is turning 90 tomorrow. While I know many children don’t get to see their grandparents very often, I was always very close to mine. As a kid I stayed with them at least once a week (partially because my mom never trusted babysitters), but also just because they were fabulous people.

They had a swimming pool in which I learned to swim at a very young age, and in the winter (I’m from Washington State) we would go cross-country skiing in their extensive backyard. They definitely weren’t rich though – my grandpa worked in construction and grandma was a teacher – they just purchased the land (the same house my grandma still lives in that my grandpa built) at a time when a young family could live on a working class wage.

My grandma, Marjorie Pederson, was born in 1928 in a really small town called Eureka, Montana. She lived with her five brothers and sisters in a one-room log cabin. Her American father and British mother had met in England during WWI, and when she was 18, my great-grandmother left her home for the American West, never to return. My grandma was encouraged to get an education at a time when scholarly pursuits were not necessarily encouraged for girls; she got a bachelor’s degree, a master’s degree, taught English to middle school children (for which she should get a medal because middle school children are awful), became a published poet for the first time as a senior and taught me how to read before I went to kindergarten.

One of my interviews this month said something to me that I find so true: that we, as a society, tend to discard our elderly. That somehow they’ve outreached their usefulness and should go off somewhere to not bother anyone. I’ve never subscribed to this and I’ve been heartened by all the people I’ve interviewed this month who appreciate the vivacity, strength and wisdom of our older generations.

And we will all be them soon enough (if we are fortunate), and if we want our children and grandchildren to treat us with respect as we reach our 90th or 100th year,

we’d better teach them by our own example.

As it happens, my first real job with a paycheck (weeding my grandmother’s garden and babysitting the neighbors’ kids doesn’t count) was at assisted living in a retirement home that happened to be walking distance from my house. I was the dishwasher for the breakfast and lunch dishes, but I would also serve the morning juices to the residents. I got to know the people who lived there. I would hear about when their grandchildren were getting married, when their son got a raise and I would share in their grief when they lost a spouse. They were interesting, kind, full of information and sometimes tried to set me up with their grandson.

I’m also reminded of something that same interview said: that seniors have lived as interesting or likely more interesting lives than ourselves – and if we’re willing to listen, they have some amazing stories to tell.

My grandma has always told me stories of the wilds of 1930s Montana and of her mother’s turn-of-the-century tales from Liverpool; my grandpa (who I sadly lost at 94 several years ago) had incredible stories of WWII – especially the time his plane went down in the Pacific and he and the pilot were lost at sea for two days until he was able to get the attention of a plane using a mirror that reflected the sun’s rays – and every resident from assisted living who I sat with on lunch breaks would quietly tell me the most amazing stories I’d ever heard.

I believe the readers of our magazine appreciate the importance of honoring those who blazed the trail for us more than most, but it’s always a good reminder to take a moment to sit and listen to what our elders have to say. They have come before us, they have been through what we have yet to travail (or hopefully never will as they’ve striven to make our journey easier than their own) and they have come out the other side stronger. And it’s important to listen now, because none of us will be here forever.

With that, I leave you to the pages of this issue. Within, I hope you find inspiration, laughter, maybe a few tears and a reminder that none of is alone in this. A

The Behavioral Health Committee of Jewish Family Service of San Diego Invites You to Our Annual Luncheon in Support of Behavioral Health Awareness

Motherhood, Daughterhood and the Mess In Between Featuring author and performer

Judy Batalion

A humorous and insightful account of hoarding, healing, and the effects of the Holocaust on four generations of women Wednesday, May 30, 2018 | 11:30am – 1:30pm | Hyatt Regency La Jolla Honorary Chairs: Mimi Lee & Caryl Lees Witte Event Chairs: Marcia Foster Hazan & Karen Foster Silberman

“In this terrific and powerful book about hoarders, antihoarders, parents and children, Judy Batalion tells a laugh-out-loud story about her own mother and daughter—and shows how profoundly all of us are shaped by events before we were born, how trauma moves through families, and how responsibility can be the most meaningful path to freedom.”

—Dara Horn, author of A Guide for the Perplexed

THANK YOU TO OUR GENEROUS UNDERWRITERS Champions Marcia Foster Hazan & Mark Cammell* Loonin Family Fund*

Marie G. Raftery & Dr. Robert A. Rubenstein*

Caryl Lees Witte*

Joan & Irwin Jacobs* Vivien & Jeffrey Ressler*

Karen & Jeffrey Silberman*

Leaders

Barbara & Gerald Kent • Sylvia & Jaime Liwerant • Meiselman Family* • Hon. Lynn Schenk & Hugh Friedman z’l* • Karen Shein • Scott Schindler Fern & Leon Siegel

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Supporters Bonnie and Lawrence Baron • Barbara Bloom • Deborah Bucksbaum* • Pamela & Edward Carnot* • Robin & Leo Eisenberg* • Kira Finkenberg* • Laura Galinson & Jodi Diamond* Theresa Hassidim • Ed & Linda Janon • Susan & David Kabakoff* •Margaret & Jerald z’l Katleman* • Mimi Lee • Cheryl & Gary Levitt • Sheila & Jeffrey Lipinsky* • M.T. & James Schaeffer* Hano & Charlotte Siegel • Lisa & Brad Slavin* • Cathy & John Weil* • Rachel & Adam Welland* • Joellyn & Ron Zollman* April & Mathew Fink*

Chris & Emily Jennewein*

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*2018 Centennial Event Underwriter List as of 3/22/18

Join Us: www.jfssd.org/luncheon Questions? Contact Staci Tiras-Jones at (619) 508-0708 or stjevent@gmail.com

Iyar • Sivan 5778 | SDJewishJournal.com 13

@SANDIEGOJEWISHJOURNAL

let us know what’s on your mind.

Send us your comments: editor@sdjewishjournal.com 5665 Oberlin Dr., Ste 204, San Diego, CA 92121

Please consider our guidelines for Letters to the Editor prior to submitting your comments: The San Diego Jewish Journal welcomes reader responses to articles. Due to space limitations, responses to articles cannot exceed 200 words and will be edited in coordination with the letter’s author and at the discretion of the editor and publishers.

For readers who wish to submit multiple letters, we require three issue months to pass between published letters so as to make space for more reader responses.

All readers can comment as often as they’d like in the comments section of our website, found at the bottom of every articleon sdjewishjournal. comMagazine articles are republished on the website at the beginning of each issue month.

14 SDJewishJournal.com | May 2018

CORRECTIONS: In “World Premiere: The Wanderers are Finding themselves at the Old Globe” [April, 2018] the article incorrectly stated an actor and a movie star were in an email correspondence in the play when it was really a novelist and a movie star.

In “’Belonging’ is Our Blessing, But Tribalism is Our Burden” [April, 2018] the column incorrectly said the line “what nature doesn’t do to us will be done by our fellow man,” was written by Tom Lehrer. It was actually written by Sheldon Harnick.

SDJJ regrets these errors.

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Iyar • Sivan 5778 | SDJewishJournal.com 15

Israel Launches Fraud Investigation of Apple

what’s up online

An Israeli government ministry opened an investigation last month over Apple’s failure to disclose that software updates could slow the performance of some iPhones. If the consumer protection agency determines that Apple violated Israeli law, it could be liable for millions of dollars in fines.

@sdjewishjournal.com

Images Capture Israel’s Creation Photos from the Viterbi Collection of Israeli Photographic Art currently on display in the Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center’s Gotthelf Art Gallery reflect the realization of a 2,000-year-old vision – the creation of a modern Jewish nation. The exhibit titled “Documenting the Dream” marks the public debut of selections from Alan and Caryn Viterbi’s private collection. Contributor Sharon Rosen Leib takes us through the show.

Is Engaging Millennials the Best Use of Jewish Philanthropy?

In an opinion piece for JTA, professor of American Jewish history at the Jewish Theological Seminary, Jack Wertheimer, explores whether focusing on youth education might be a better use of resources.

Oscar-Winning Filmmaker Milos Forman, Dies at 86 Before ever directing films like “Amadeaus” or “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” Forman was just a kid from Czechoslovakia whose parents were killed in Auschwitz and Mittelbau-Dora. He attended film school in Prague and moved to the United States when communist troops invaded. “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” went on to receive five academy awards.

16 SDJewishJournal.com | May 2018

Iyar • Sivan 5778 | SDJewishJournal.com 17

L to R Honoree Inge Feinswog with daughters Carrie Greenstein and Hanna Gleiberman .

JFS Heart & Soul Centennial 2018 Gala L to R Gala Honorees Jill Spitzer, Estee Einhorn, Lois Richmond, Evelyn Rady, Marsha Berkson, Jenny Daniel, Kira Finkenberg.

our TOWN

BY LINDA BENNETT & EMILY BARTELL, PHOTOGRSPHY COURTESY OF THE JFS

Honorary Chair Ernest Rady.

18 SDJewishJournal.com | May 2018

With such excitement in the air, Jewish Family Service celebrated 100 years of vital support and life-changing connections with their Heart & Soul Centennial Gala, “Our Next Century Starts Now.” The celebration highlighted the contributions of inspiring women who have helped shape Jewish Family Service’s history.Centennial Mitzvah Honorees – Marsha Berkson, Jenny Daniel, Estee Einhorn, Inge Feinswog, Kira Finkenberg, Evelyn Rady, Lois Richmond and Jill Spitzer reflect and exemplify leadership at Jewish Family Service.Heart & Soul Centennial Gala Chairs, Jamie Carr, Erin Combs Pearl, & Karen Toranto created a beautiful evening, which included a pictorial catalogue, representing 100 years of the agency’s accomplishments. About 600 people were in attendance to enjoy the evening festivities, including Danielle & Brian Miller, Pat Libby & Mike Eichler, Gregg & Lisa Kornfeld, Barbara & Mathew Loonin, Ilene & Charles Mittman, Karen & Jeffrey Silberman, Caryl Lees Witte, Lee & Amnon Ben Yehuda, Liz & Dan Coden, Ron Cohn, Emily & Daniel Einhorn, Zita Liebermensch, Hannah & Mark Gleiberman, Vivien & Jeff Ressler, Nadja Kauder, Alberta Feurzeig, Beverly Press, Louis Galper, Beverly & Dick Fink, Carolyn & Herb Schaer, Brittany Lederman, Samantha Gleiberman, Ray & Rhona Fink, Vincent Andrunas, Ann & Charly Jaffe, Shari & David Jacobson, Debbie Kempinski, Bill & Elyce Nissinoff, Larry & Trish Liebermensch, Sheldon Derezin, Marc & Marlene Hamovitch, Nanci & Ron Slayen, Rebecca & Larry Newman and many others.

We would be remiss if we didn’t mention some of the wonderful theatre happenings we were lucky to attend. The Klezmatics took command of the David & Dorothea Garfield stage at the LFJCC, with an extraordinary performance, featuring special guest, Joshua Nelson. Some seen in the audience were Herb & Marsha Lubick, David & Elana Heller, Linda & Peter Levine, Karen & Warren Kessler, Sam & Sarita Zands, Sandra Silverstein and Leann Knetzer. Also of note, Phil Johnson performed in his latest solo show called, “A Jewish Joke.” This newest play, “a drama about comedy,” and written by Phil with Marni Freedman, will be headed back to NY for a run at off-Broadway’s Lion Theatre in 2019.

Audience members included: Carol & Harvey Korfin, Don & Dale Goldman, Natalie Stolper, Rosie Jacobson, Jeanne Gold, Ellen Gruer, Marty & Ruth Weiss, Barbara & Sandy Rosenthal, Lois Bloom and Paul & Suzanne Schulman.A

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Ray Riley and Joyce Glazer with Diana and Eli Lombrozo Lee and Frank Goldberg and David Brenner and Tatiana Kisseleva.

the

BY EILEEN SONDAK PHOTOS BY AARON GOULDING

San Diego Opera’s “Pretty in Pink” Gala

The San Diego Opera paid homage to the legendary Dame Zandra Rhodes recently at a fundraising gala aptly titled, “Pretty in Pink.” Rhodes, a long-time supporter and designer for the opera company, is well known around the world as much for her trademark pink hair as for the iconic high-fashion designs that made her the darling of the rich and famous for decades. Pink was the color of choice for the dapper Dans and Dames attending the festive event, and in keeping with the theme, guests walked a pink carpet to enter. An explosion of pink filled the ballroom, and Rhodes’ fashion designs formed a circle around the room for all to admire.

The gala, held at the US Grant Hotel, began with a cocktail reception adjacent to the lobby and moved on to a sumptuous dinner and dancing in the second-floor ballroom. The guest of honor was on the planning committee, and it showed in the imaginative décor and eye-popping color selections.

The goal of the fundraiser was to raise $250,000 for the opera, and according to company spokesman Edward Wilensky, the goal was “achieved and even exceeded.” Among the many delighted guests on hand were Gilda and Eric Adler, Judy and Dick Freeman, Jessica and Geoff Friedman, Joan Henkelmann, Robert Kaplan, Regina Kurtz, Susy Leff and Ron and Ruth Leonard. A

Sherry Ahern, Opera Ball Chair with Dame Zandra Rhodes, Opera Ball Honoree.

20 SDJewishJournal.com | May 2018

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PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT AND JUDAISM

This is Water

THIS WAY TO EDEN

by Rachel Eden

rachel.s.eden@gmail.com

Do we really get a mitzvah, a commandment, to live? Is that a freebie or is it for real? Just by virtue of living, aren’t we choosing life?

22 SDJewishJournal.com | May 2018

here are two young fish swimming along a bank when they come across a big, elderly fish. The big fish greets them cheerily, “How’s the water treating you today, boys?” as he passes. Safely out of earshot, the young fish turns to his counterpart and asks, “What in the world is water?”

This is how David Foster Wallace, author of “Infinite Jest,” began his commencement address to Kenyon College. The brilliance of this simple analogy is fairly obvious: There are principles we live and breathe by, that are pervasive and highly impactful, yet so insidious, we don’t even realize they’re there.

When I was 18 years old, I asked questions that were (perhaps) typical of my age.

What’s the point of it all? Why am I here?

My adult Jewish journey was paved with these abstract, universal questions. They motivated me to travel around the world and learn from some of the greatest teachers who lived as they taught. Now, almost 18 years later, I find myself grappling with a far more sobering set of questions. Is this it? I’ve checked the boxes of relationships, hobbies, family and career. Am I supposed to be done?

Dr. Meg Jay, a clinical psychologist, worked with a 25-year-old woman named Emma who struggled with passivity. Despite her young age, Emma was resigned to her life: her estranged family, a dead-end waitressing job, and her boyfriend who was “light in ambition and heavy in temper.”

One day, Emma spent nearly the entirety of her session sobbing because she bought a new address book but realized she had no one to fill in as an emergency contact. She had no friend or family member who would support her if she were in crisis. Dr. Jay used this revelation to share with Emma that she was passively allowing her life to float by without actively making decisions to shape her future for the better. Emma’s passivity, if left untouched, would have left Emma always feeling like a victim of circumstance and with a life that she didn’t ultimately choose.

One of my favorite commandments is when God instructs the Jewish people, “I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. And you shall choose life, so that you and your children shall live.”

(Deuteronomy 30:19). Do we really get a

mitzvah, a commandment, to live? Is that a freebie or is it for real? Just by virtue of living, aren’t we choosing life? Rabbi Doniel Katz, international speaker and founder of The Elevation Project, discusses the kneejerk response most of us have when a family member or friend shares “I’m tired” at the end of a day. Either we reply glibly “sorry to hear that” or begin an impossible competition of who is more exhausted. (“I got three hours of sleep last night!” “Well, I haven’t slept in two days!”) There is a missed opportunity in both of these responses. When someone shares a feeling, a bridge is forged and it’s up to us to meet our loved one on it. This requires us to switch gears, out of auto-pilot, out of passivity, and try to see life from a perspective other than our own.

By doing so, we access a transcendent space called connection, kindness and influence.

When we don’t actively choose life in every moment, we become trapped in our own inner vortex of self-centeredness, apathy and isolation. Like Emma, we passively allow situations and experiences to pass through us without choosing, as God commanded, to live, to truly live. We’ll end up living one day after the other fighting the questions: Is this all there is? Am I done now?

The typical adult’s life is filled with routine and can feel like drudgery. I wake up, dress and feed my children, drive to school, work, bring everyone home, prepare dinner, organize house, and repeat.

I have to pledge to reclaim my life every single day in order to make conscious choices. I must choose to view life as more than a list of checkboxes. I must choose to be present for people. I must choose to exert my best effort in every moment.

If we resist the temptation of living like those young fish and become aware of our ‘water,’ we can wake up each morning with overwhelming gratitude and purpose. We break through our survival mode and live a life where we refuse to just check the boxes. We think critically, make brave new choices, and use an enlightened lens when inspecting our environment. Our eyes are opened to our default thoughts and we wake ourselves up with the reminder: This is water; this is water. A

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ILLUSTRATION COURTESY OF PEPÉ FAINBERG

ISRAELI LIFESTYLE

LIVING ON THE FRONT PAGE

by Andrea Simantov

andreasimantov@gmail.com

"A kiss can be dangerous, fooling the receiver."

24 SDJewishJournal.com | May 2018

Go Tell it on the Mountain could make Jewish jokes about food and fasting but, like last month’s matzah, this would grow stale. Which is why, when speaking of Shavuot, I will refrain from talking about cheesecake and blintzes. I will not refrain from eating them, but will only mention that, unlike other major holidays, the reason we eat dairy might have to do with an unfamiliarity with the laws of kashrut before receiving the Torah in the desert and not wanting to mess it up. I personally do not prepare dairy for Shavuot but, rather, keep the meal ‘parve’ which means neither dairy nor meat. Serving fish, vegetables and grains, I’ve always felt that this better replicates the Sinai Diet. To each his own.

On Shavuot we read the Book of Ruth and each year I blink back tears from the narrative. Without a Me-Too button pinned on her tunic, Ruth uses her innate morality, God-given womanly gifts of beauty and gentleness and, along with oodles of intellect, morphs into an eternal role model for all genders. She is a chance taker, a defier of oppression, devoutly God-fearing, romantic and sensual. Everything I wish to be when I grow up.

When my then-young daughters were growing up and I assayed to instill some grace into their lumpish mannerisms, I would often say 'Pick up your toys like Ruth.’ This meant bending their knees to scoop up an offending Lego or Barbie instead of sticking a toddler butt in the air and falling forward.

Ruth did not want her skirt to immodestly rise in the back and I told my daughters to imagine themselves wearing skirts. And, no, I did not encourage my sons to bend at the knees but, nevertheless, insisted that they clean up their messes.

Mother-in-law Naomi encourages her widowed daughters-in-law, Orpah and

Ruth, to go home to their people, the Moabites. She understands that these childless ‘strangers’ will not receive warm welcomes from the same Jews to whom Naomi wishes to return. Orpah grabs the opportunity, gives her a quick peck on the cheek and splits. It should be noted that the root of the word “kiss” – neshikah – in Hebrew is neshek or “weapon.” A kiss can be dangerous, fooling the receiver. The abominable-to-thecore-Moabites are not friends of the Jews. (“Moab” literally means ‘from the father.’

They are products of the incestuous relationship between Lot and his eldest daughter. No modesty there.) Ruth, on the other hand, proffers a warm ‘hug,’ which means to press oneself against another. The root of the word “hug," – chibuk – is debek or to cleave.

(Glue is called devek in Hebrew. Get it?)

Hugs don’t lie. Ruth wants the connection, the heartbeat, regardless of the cost. She is born of royaltyalbeit twisted – but is willing to bring purity to her life even if it means a lowering of status. Until this time, many had embraced aspects of Judaism but Ruth is the first to boldly request official admittance to the tribe. She is the embodiment of ger tzedek, a holy convert. The upright and wealthy Boaz makes her his bride, thus announcing for all time that there is an authentic place for those who sincerely accept our code of ethics.

The matzah of Pesach represents humility.

Seven weeks later we aim to remain tethered to this spiritual thread and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our brethren – either by birth or by choice – at the foot of a figurative Mount Sinai and, again, receive our birthright with open arms and hearts. With a combination of both awe and entitlement, our outstretched arms again reach to the Heavens in an expression of gratitude. A

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Iyar • Sivan 5778 | SDJewishJournal.com 25

EXAMINED LIFE

Our Infernal Flu OUR EMOTIONAL FOOTPRINT

by Saul Levine, M.D., Professor Emeritus in Psychiatry at UCSD

slevine@ucsd.edu

Without warning, and out of the blue, I’ve just succumbed to a terrible flu...

Malaise, fever, cough and fatigue Have pushed me way out of my league, Have affected my outlook and my mood, I’ve become dour, cantankerous, even rude...

I deeply abhor this oppressive crud, Which feels like oozing, trapping mud, Suffocating and asphyxiating me, Overwhelming and debilitating me...

Rest, meds, fluids, the docs have foretold, Will soon return me to my persona of old...

Stop complaining, they say, this will abate, In the meantime, just be a good boy, and wait...

26 SDJewishJournal.com | May 2018

o, I’m waiting. Yes, I’ve had my flu shot. Yes, I’ve been resting and drinking copious fluids.

Yes, I’ve dutifully taken all the medications and symptom relievers prescribed.

In the meantime, my nasal passages and sinuses are suffused with infected fluids; my head is pounding and my eyes are red and tearing; my chest is filled with sounds of labored breathing and bronchitis, producing a deep and sonorous cough; fever comes and goes, as do chills and achiness; I am without energy, and feel listless, weak and tired. Still I wait…

You get the picture of my recent travails, best described as feeling “yucky,” and no doubt ringing true to your own experiences at one time or another.

Did I hear you say, “TMI”? Some of you are no doubt thinking, “What in the world is he complaining about? It’s only a flu bug!”

There are worse calamities in life than to be hit with the flu, but the influenza virus can indeed inflict real harm to some who get it, especially in my age group.

During the “Great Influenza Epidemic” of a century ago, upwards of 20 million people worldwide perished. While there have been dramatic improvements in public hygiene and health since that time, the annual infestations of varieties of the flu virus still exact enormous human debilitation and a significant death toll each winter, particularly this year.

I’m not suggesting that I am in such dire life-threatening straits, although the thoughts of my possible demise did cross my mind.

In addition to my concerns about my health and survival, however, what I am vividly reminded about is how dependent our moods and outlooks on life are on our sense of physical well-being. When we feel healthy and energetic, we are given to optimism, bonhomie and benevolence. But during bouts of malaise or pain or debili-

tation, our perceptions about ourselves and others, and our bountiful worldview can be dramatically upended. We become more emotionally and cognitively constricted and shriveled.

Then there is the remarkably quixotic nature of our existence: We might be happily skipping through our lives at one moment, and suddenly, through the interplay of serendipity and karma, we can be tripped up and find ourselves in an unexpected morass of misery. In the proverbial blink of an eye, we can be transformed from a state of sunny optimism to one of dour pessimism.

Just as physical debilitation has an oppressive effect on our moods, it is well known that prolonged sadness or loneliness make us more prone to physical illnesses. I’m not telling you something you don’t know, but it’s worth reminding ourselves about the extremely close and mutually dependent relationships between our psyches and somas, or our minds and bodies. It is for this reason that there are new "Departments of Integrative Medicine," combining forces of traditional medical specialties with psychiatry and psychology, as well as alternative healing approaches, such as mindfulness, acupuncture, nutrition, massage, exercise, meditation, spirituality and others.

'Our Infernal Flu’ is caused by a seasonal virus culprit, but it has major physical, psychological, social and economic roots and consequences.

If you do get hit with this nasty virus, know that there is “method to the madness” of doctors and others who espouse the old Latin dictum, “mens sana in corpore sana,” or “a healthy mind in a healthy body.”

I leave the last wise word to the late Stephen Hawking, who famously said, “One must have a positive attitude and make the best of the situation one finds oneself in. If one is disabled, one cannot afford to be psychologically disabled as well.” A

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Quiet Desperation

RELIGION

POST-POLITICAL

by Rabbi Jacob Rupp

rabbirupp@gmail.com

We love being able to attribute our lack of direction to the problems that we face. In fact, that’s the entire premise of Maslow’s hierarchy; we can only focus on big picture self actualization when our other needs are addressed.

28 SDJewishJournal.com | May 2018

he mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”

Thoreau’s insight into the human condition stirs all but the most deluded or self actualized of us.

Every now and again in history we are blessed with the ability to ascend Maslow’s hierarchy and to focus on the top tiers. Today, because of technology, an abundance of resources and a long period of peace in the Western World, many have the opportunity to sit back and attempt to figure out our highest purpose.

But is it so easy? Or is this opportunity an even more difficult path to tread?

Living our highest life was the original plan for humanity. In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Chava had all their material life provided for. The plan was for them to simply self actualize.

With their material life taken care of, G-d removed the excuses that we love to use as to why we aren’t living as our highest selves.

We love being able to attribute our lack of direction to the problems that we face. In fact, that’s the entire premise of Maslow’s hierarchy; we can only focus on big picture self actualization when our other needs are addressed. We can’t be who we want because we have to pay the bills, or take care of our kids, or aren’t healthy or whatever else. Of course, we usually drop dead on the path to living day to day.

In my estimation, Victor Frankl refutes this concept in “Man’s Search for Meaning.” We can find our purpose even when everything else is stripped away. But take another perspective: My Uber driver who had recently immigrated from Kenya. I asked him if he liked his life here in San Diego. He told me that despite the financial upside of America, he missed the community back home, and the fact that people were actually happy there. The “grind” and “hustle” doesn’t exist amongst the populace that are happy with a mud hut and a grass roof.

Their lower expectations of the materialism allows for the potential for more happiness and meaning.

But having it all doesn’t automatically make life easier. In the Garden of Eden, G-d went even further than just providing for Adam and Chava’s material subsistence.

He gave them a mission. Enjoy everything in the garden except for that one tree…

Imagine we had our life’s mission mapped out for us, and all our needs met.

Shouldn’t that be bliss? So why did early humanity self-destruct? Even having your needs met and having clarity of what you should do and all you need to do it seems to be the greatest challenge of all; do you walk through that door and take hold of your destiny?

From the way the Torah describes it, accepting your mission is actually more difficult, condemning yourself to a lifetime of struggle by ignoring it. It must have been, because that’s what happened.

Sometimes all we are, and everything in our lives, is too overwhelming for us that we need to hide. Hide from what we must do and from who we must be.

Rabbi Simon Jacobson, when he was a guest on my podcast, taught me a profound insight.

In the West we look up to the geniuses, the artists, the one in a billion. Beethoven, Shakespeare, Jobs. Do we ever know what happened to their families? In fact, in many cases, we do – these practitioners of excellence lived highly unbalanced lives; few if any of their children achieved prominence and those that did rarely went into the same field as their illustrious parents.

Judaism’s values are the opposite. Our legacy and our greatest achievement is our ability to transmit; it is the descendants we leave, either our children, our students, or our growth trajectory. Had Abraham, Isaac and Jacob stopped worrying about starting a family and instead stuck to the task of ‘spreading the gospel,’ from a Western perspective, we may have had a few more people who “thought differently” but we would never have Judaism.

Getting back to Thoreau, it’s true most people live lives of quiet desperation...a feeling of “is this all there is?” And as social media continues its influence in our lives, its only going to get worse. The solution?

Figure out your mission. What talents or skills demand being cultivated. And look at things in your life; don’t be upset with the daily tasks that require your attention.

Don’t see them as things that take you away from the path, but that they are your path.

And do them well. Perhaps you’ll find life is a little less quiet and not so desperate.A

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Feature: Campus Life GilofSery F POLITICS

Are We Putting Party Over Country? | BY GIL SERY |

N

ext month, Californian voters will vote in this year’s primary election.

In the last few years, both parties have gotten a lot more brazen about how far they’re willing to go to put their party’s needs (and their own need to hold on to power) over the country’s needs. With more money pouring into elections than ever, and hyper partisanship running rampant, these are just three events that show how much our democracy is currently at risk.

Let’s begin with South Dakota’s Initiated Measure 22 (IM-22). The South Dakota Government Accountability and Anti-Corruption Act was put on the ballot in South Dakota in 2016 and passed by 51.6 percent of voters. The measure would have banned gifts from lobbyists, increased penalties for bribes, created an ethics watchdog, and created a publicly funded campaign finance program. Once the proposition was passed, the South Dakota House acted swiftly.

They declared a state of emergency, which allowed them to pass House Bill 1069 to repeal IM-22, have it take effect immediately, and prevent voters from holding a referendum to veto the repeal. The repeal bill was signed into law by the governor less than three months after it was passed by majority vote, despite a massive outcry from voters.

South Dakota doesn’t hold a monopoly on reversing the voters’ will though. In November 2014, The Committee for Ranked Choice Voting in Maine collected more than 73,000 signatures to put ranked choice voting (RCV) on the ballot. This is a different system of voting that allows voters to rank their preference of candidates, instead of voting for just one. In November 2016, Mainers passed the RCV measure with 52

30 SDJewishJournal.com | May 2018

percent. Six months later, Maine’s Law court said there may have been some issues with some races. The Maine Legislature voted to repeal implementation of RCV and delay revisiting the issue until 2021, but the voters of Maine had other ideas. In November 2017, the Committee removed the races which may have presented some issues, and launched a People’s Veto campaign, trying to accomplish the Herculean task of getting 61,123 votes in 88 days in subzero temperatures in the dead of winter. They ended up with 80,000 votes — more than enough valid signatures to keep RCV as a law, one which will be used for the first time in June 2018.

Determining which system of voting to use presupposes that you’ll have an election in the first place, but what if you didn’t?

That’s the dilemma the people of Wisconsin are currently facing. Governor Rick Walker saw a member of the opposing party win in a state Senate seat in an area previously well-known to have voted for his party, and called it “a wake-up call.” Add to that, his party has lost 40 seats since the current president took office, and things aren’t looking good for his party. So, he made the decision to not hold special elections to replace two representatives, leaving over 229,000 Wisconsinites without any representation for 11 months — supposedly because special elections were too costly.

Walker is not alone in using this reasoning. Both Michigan Governor Rick Snyder and Florida Governor Rick Scott, members of the same party as Walker, have claimed they will not hold special elections either because they are too costly.

A group representing the opposing party recently sued Governor Walker and

won, with the judge ordering the governor to hold special elections, saying “To state the obvious, if the plaintiffs have a right to vote for their representatives, they must have an election to do so.” The Wisconsin Appeals Court denied a requested oneweek extension during which Gov. Walker hoped to recall the legislature to rewrite the law, so they wouldn't have to hold an election. The extension was denied. Gov. Walker wanted to appeal to the State Supreme Court, but later changed his mind.

Elections are now scheduled for June 12.

These three incidents barely scratch the surface of the kind of party-over-country politics that have been taking place over the past several years in states all across the country. There are many other incidents that are still ongoing, such as the gerrymandering of Pennsylvania’s electoral map to heavily favor one party, and the ensuing court case, which recently resulted in that party filing a lawsuit to impeach the judges for not issuing the verdict that the defendants wanted. Then there’s also the biased behavior of Florida congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz during last year’s presidential primaries, which cost her the chairwomanship of her party’s national committee.

With all these attacks on our democracy from both major parties, it is vital — perhaps now more than ever — that we as an electorate make our voices heard at the ballot box — while there still is a ballot box at which to vote! Historically, fewer voters vote in primaries than in general elections.

There’s no better time to reverse that trend than next month’s primary on June 5. A

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Seniors: Seacrest

75 Years of San Diego Hebrew Homes – also known as Seacrest Village Retirement Communities

The Diamond Anniversary Gala Shines a Light on Lee & Frank Goldberg | BY BRIE STIMSON |

The Goldberg family.

I

n 1944, the first San Diego Hebrew Home opened in a small house on 4th Avenue— housing a total of 10 seniors.

Mr. and Mrs. Frank and Goldie Winicki, the parents of Lee Goldberg, were original contributors of the Hebrew Home. Lee, along with her husband, Frank, showed me papers with her parents’ names on them when she and her husband invited me to their Rancho Santa Fe home for an interview.

“My parents were contributors, and I found all these old papers,” Lee said, showing me a pamphlet with hand written names on it. “And here my parents are listed—Mr. and 32 SDJewishJournal.com | May 2018

Mrs. Frank Winicki—and they made their donation in honor of his father, so I kept it all these years, and the original picture of 4th Avenue is on the cover of that pamphlet—the list is from 1944.”

Lee and Frank, who were instrumental in the development of Seacrest becoming what it is today, have been happily (and from what I’ve observed, wittily) married for 65 years. Frank moved to San Diego from Madison, Wisconsin, in 1949, and they met at her sister’s 16th birthday party. From the very beginning, the couple was deeply involved with the San Diego Hebrew Homes.

“It’s something that’s very close to our hearts,” Lee told me as we sat in her beautifully decorated living room, “and we have been involved with it for many years.”

We first spoke about the influence her parents had on her own philanthropy. “They were very charitable people and cared very much about the Jewish people, and they knew that there was a need for this and that’s why they got involved,” she said. “And we got involved, I guess, by osmosis, I don’t know,” she laughed.

“And we got a good price!” the ever joke-cracking Frank quipped about the land purchased for the second home on

54th Street.

Once San Diego Hebrew Homes outgrew their 10-bed location on 4th Avenue, they expanded in 1955 to what would become their first residential and long-term care facility. It was located on 54th Street near the original Jewish Community Center.

Frank said from the very beginning the home was for everyone. “It wasn’t any organization or temple,” he explained. “It’s wasn’t Orthodox, it wasn’t Conservative it wasn’t Reform.” He stressed that it was for everyone.

The home on 54th grew to multiple wings, until the space no longer met their needs. “We outgrew that in nothing flat,” Frank told me.

Thus began the planning for a new location, which would become Seacrest Village in Encinitas. In 1985, they purchased 10 acres of land.

“I remember actually the first drawings that they had,” Anne Nagorner, one of the Goldberg’s daughters, reminisced about the blueprint stage. “My father was very instrumental in creating Seacrest. I remember the first meetings. A small group of people, met in our home in the family room with drawings of the conception of what it was going to look like. Actually, we

would once in a while go with my father to see the construction, the development of it, and that started with one building to another to another to another to where it is today.”

“We had many meetings at the house. I’m surprised the girls even remembered,” Lee said when I told her what Anne had mentioned. “There were many meetings there, you know, getting organized, getting campaigns ready to raise money, and the blueprints were to see how much it was going to cost to build.”

“It’s amazing that it turned out the way it did, and the need is even greater than we anticipated,” she said. “What makes

how to be upstanding people,” Suzi Feldman, the Goldbergs’ other daughter told me during our phone interview.

“They also instilled upon us how important it is to support the things that are important, like Seacrest and the Hebrew Home back in the day. And how important it is not only to support it but to be active in any capacity that we can, which also includes showing up and doing our best because it’s important not only for the community and for the residents… but to take care of those who came before us,” she said.

Frank Goldberg worked in the furniture business and real estate while Lee, who was at

becoming more involved after spending time with her grandmother when she moved to Seacrest. “I remember going there with my kids, visiting her and bringing her here,” she said. "We had a puppy at the time, and we would go and say

80s, and to welcome her they had her apartment decorated before she arrived. “Anne drove her around all day while we were fixing up the apartment for her, so it was all ready when she got there,” Lee said. “It was her place.”

“A seasoned citizen can go through all the phases of living: independent, assisted, skilled nursing, rehabilitation, and memory care,” Lee explained. “The whole thing has just blossomed.”

Seacrest, I think, so unique is that you can live there in phases as you need it, where the seasoned citizen can start with independent living and have all of their needs met even as they change. You don’t have to move out at any time, it’s amazing.”

Frank said one of the first problems was trying to get the financing for Seacrest. It cost $14 million in the ‘80s, and they were able to build it without a loan. How did he manage that I asked? “Worked like hell,” he answered dryly. “First you had to get a lot… You had to get approved, it didn’t just work easily. It evolved, we had a difficult time getting permission from Encinitas to build it.”

“Nothing’s easy. That’s building,” Lee added.

“They are and have been wonderful role models for us as far as having great parents, how to give back to the community,

home with their three children, also helped with the furniture business. Their daughters say they were always involved with the Hebrew Homes when they were growing up.

“Our mom, always when we had extra things would say, ‘Oh let’s take this to the home. It will make it nicer for the residents there.’ Be it flowers or anything to perk it up, it was always, ‘Oh, we can take this to the home, let’s send it over there, they’ll enjoy that,’” Suzi said.

Anne recalls visiting the home as a kid. “I remember going to the JCC summer day camp, and at that point in time the JCC was in front of where the Hebrew Home was, so we would always go back as kids to say hello to all the seniors that were there,” she said.

Her father was on various Seacrest boards for several decades, and Anne remembers

Daughters Anne Nagorner & Suzi Feldman.

hello to all of the residents and sometime after that I got more involved and joined the board.”

She remembered when her grandmother wasn’t going to be able to attend her son Evan’s bar mitzvah, so the morning of his Bar Mitzvah they did part of the service at Seacrest.

“She wasn’t going to be able to go, and so what we did was on the morning of his Bar Mitzvah, my father and late husband, Joel, went up for an Aliyah, and Evan read from the Torah just because we wanted her to be a part of it.”

"I spent a good deal of time there,” Frank said. “My mother was there and my cousin was there… It is a wonderful place.”

His mother moved to Seacrest soon after it opened in the late

While at Seacrest, Frank would visit her nearly every day.

She lived the rest of her life out happily there, as well a cousin they brought to San Diego from Florida.

“Every day between 5:00 and 5:30, Mr. Goldberg would pull up,” Robin Israel, Chief Foundation Officer of the Seacrest Foundation, said. “He would pull up, walk right to his mother’s apartment to visit, and always spoke with the staff before he left. That’s how I remember it. Every day.”

“She was very happy there for the rest of her life,” Lee said.

While working to raise the money for Seacrest, they received a substantial donation from a man who asked in return that they promise the

Iyar • Sivan 5778 | SDJewishJournal.com 33

food would be kosher. “So we brought that back to the board and the conclusion was it should be kosher because we didn’t want to leave out one person.

Everybody can eat kosher, but certain people can’t eat anything if it’s not kosher,” Frank said.

“When we finally got it built and opened,” he began, “this little lady comes up to me and says, ‘You’re the president?’

Which I was at that time, and I said, ‘Yep’ and she says, ‘The food is terrible here,’ and with that her son runs up.”

“Oh, I remember that, he was a prominent doctor here,” Lee said as we laughed, hanging on for the punch line.

“And he runs up and says ‘Ma! What are you doing?’”

Frank continued. “’You’ve already gained 10 pounds since you’ve been here!’”

“He was so embarrassed, but it didn’t really bother me,” Frank said, throwing his hands

in the air and shrugging with a bit of a gleam in his eye.

In 1996, Seacrest purchased another site in Poway. Many other buildings have opened on the Encinitas campus in the past several years as well. And recently, they created Seacrest at Home, a home care agency, which helps seniors remain in their own homes for as long as possible.

“A seasoned citizen can go through all the phases of living: independent, assisted, skilled nursing, rehabilitation and memory care,” Lee explained.

“The whole thing has just blossomed.”

And just as it has for 75 years, the Goldbergs believe Seacrest will continue to evolve into its centennial year and beyond.

“The next generation will carry on,” Lee said without a doubt. “This will be something that’s ongoing. This isn’t something that’s built and you stop.

the musical phenomenon

34 SDJewishJournal.com | May 2018

It keeps going ... We are thrilled with the way it has evolved. It’s only going to get bigger and better I’m sure of it, because the need is there.”

And the San Diego Jewish community—including their three children: Suzi, Anne and Eddie—will be there when they’re honored on June 2 at the Diamond Anniversary Gala.

“We’re very humbled to be honored at this most special time in the history of the organization,” Lee said genuinely.

“The only reason we’re doing it is so she can raise some money!” Frank joked with his impeccable timing, as he smiled directly at Robin.

“The organization is so honored to have the opportunity to be honoring you,” Robin told them as we were finishing up the interview. “Lee and Frank, they are our mentors, they are our friends, they are the ones we call if we have a problem, and they

hold us accountable.”

“It’s the highest honor to be chairing this gala and to honor our parents for everything they’ve done for us and for the community,” Anne remarked during our interview. “It’s just wonderful that they can be recognized. It’s a labor of love, but it’s also incredible to be able to honor our parents, but to be able to do it with my sister, it makes it go full circle for me.”

Suzi agreed and then spoke about how her parents are proud of the accomplishments Seacrest has achieved. She concluded by saying how proud she and Anne are to honor their parents. A The 2018 Women’s Auxiliary Diamond Anniversary Gala will be on June 2 at the Hyatt Regency La Jolla at Aventine. Tickets are still available. Go to seacrestfoundation.ejoinme.org/gala18 to R.S.V.P.

Feature: Rabbi Bortz

F

In The Middle | BY JACQUELINE BULL |

R

abbi Daniel Bortz is the Founder and Director of JTeen. Rabbi Dan, as the teens call him, spoke to me over the phone from Israel, a few days after celebrating his 32nd birthday. Rabbi Dan is succeeding at something that many Jewish organizations are struggling to do in 2018: reach and engage teens in a meaningful way.

“It could have been that 50 years ago that kids would come after school or sunday school, or come to the synagogue. Nowadays, I feel that they are so busy with so many things that we have to bring it to them,” Rabbi Dan said. Many of JTeen’s programs meet at the high schools to create a casual and convenient opportunity to bring a Jewish element into the weekday.

“It’s about embracing what we have in 2018 and finding ways to infuse it with inspiration and meaning and basically showing how Judaism is relevant and cool for your life – not something that is outdated in any way,” he said.

One of JTeen’s programs is

a New Moon club, a girls club that celebrates the first day of the Hebrew month, like a Rosh Chodesh.

“We did a visualisation, meditation thing for pre Passover …

The word in Hebrew for Egypt, Mizraim, is the same as the word for limitation. The mystics say that on Passover you are leaving your Egypt, you’re leaving whatever is limiting you and your potential greatness. And we kind of mentally connected with what’s holding us back, how we can move past whatever is our personal Egypt and imaging what it would be like to be free,” he said.

He wasn’t always a model citizen of the Jewish nation though.

He explains that growing up he woud be the last person someone would expect to be a rabbi.

As a teenager and into his college years, he was missing a Jewish connection that felt relevant to his personal life. Gradually, he felt drawn to his own spirituality and then became utterly absorbed in Judaic studies. He went to Israel and studied Judaism for six years before coming back to his hometown of San Diego to fill a need he felt was

missing from his own teenage years.

“On a bigger scale, as much as I want to impart Jewish knowledge and everything, for me, as a teenager, what I lacked the most besides not being very connected to Judaism, was as a human being, I needed more coaching and therapy and things that were out of box that would have made me happier as a person.

We talk about life and we talk about relationships and talk about loneliness and bullying and all the things that everyone is going through,” he said.

He attributes some of his success to connecting and engaging with his students partly to his age: existing in a social space that is in the middle of a peer and a parent. And that he always treats them like adults and respects their opinions. This manifests in the program Judaic Honors, which is for the teenagers to debate and discuss important Jewish ideas (“I like to raise the bar a little bit”).

In addition to his age and ethos for relating to the teens, he has a cultural and generational understanding of his fellow millennials and his present day

teens, Gen Z. He relates universal Jewish teachings to modern anxieties and schools of thought in the zeitgeist. This doesn’t merely mean he understands how to use social media; he has a deeper understanding for prevailing beliefs and moods.

“I’m on Instagram and everyone is talking about the good energy in the universe and how things come back from the universe. I’m like ‘If you took ‘the universe’ and turned it to ‘Hashem’ or ‘G-d’ it would be the exact same way that I believe. I understand. I love that society is moving down a more spiritual path. The only difference is that I believe there is a certain knowledge and intent to ‘the universe’ meaning G-d, this loving energy that brings us blessing and reacts to the way we act, that is imbuing the universe with that, not something indepent from Him,” he said.

True to form, we end the conversation with him extending a warm invitation to his group for 20-somethings and tells me I can look him up on Facebook if I want. A

Iyar • Sivan 5778 | SDJewishJournal.com 35

Charitable Giving: Chesed Home

A Home of Loving Kindness | BY JACQUELINE BULL |

C

hesed Home, a community project that started with the mission of providing a safe environment and compassionate care for Jewish adults with mental illness, has come a long way since the opening of the home in August 2013. Their latest triumph is very San Diegan – real estate.

They are now able to purchase their own building, which has opened up the future of Chesed Home and their umbrella project, Hope Village.The reduction in overhead will help them become an overall more sustainable program, offer them an opportunity to award scholarships and open the door for the expansion of new homes.

“The demand is huge. There is a scarcity of housing for adults with severe mental illness,” Suzanne Marcus, Ph.D, a licensed psychologist and a board member at Chesed Home said. They are the only home on the West Coast – not exclusively – but particularly for Jewish people with mental illness.

Nationwide, the number of licensed residential care facilities has steadily decreased since the ‘80s.

The program was developed with a recovery model which moves people from a 24hour licensed care model, to semi-independent living in apartments on the complex, and then graduate into their own apartments independently.

“Providing them with a stable and secure environment and compassionately delivered services enables the individual to have the safety and stability that they haven’t had.

And so that they can begin to move forward whether it is to learn independent living skills, to begin to think about taking on a 36 SDJewishJournal.com | May 2018

part-time job or going to school and beginning to develop those skills that they haven’t been able to because they haven’t been stabilized on medication,” Dr. Marcus said.

For now, Dr. Marcus explains that the board is “very committed and in it for the long haul.” They will celebrate closing on the building in May and look forward to hiring an executive program director for the wider network of homes.

“The demand is huge. There is a scarcity of housing for adults with severe mental illness" Testimonials In our July 2015 coverage of Chesed Home, (“Living with Mental Illness” by Natalie Jacobs), the facility had not been open long enough to have had residents complete or graduate through the recovery model. Now that they have been open longer, families that have been helped by Chesed Home are able to share their experiences.

“Our adult child was living in an out-ofstate residential treatment home due to the lack of suitable housing for our child’s illness and continuous care. Following 13 months in a hospital setting, and transferring our child out of state, we endured another eight

long months of flying to and from this facility. One day we decided to bring him home to live at Chesed Home. The patience and tender loving care that he received from the first day he moved in was continuous.

The counselors, support services, individual program needs and consistent care never failed our child nor this family. Following three years of continuous care, even when our child resided in the independent living section, Chesed Home was always ready to check on our child to make sure that all was well. What a blessing! Today, our child is strong and healthy, happily employed, recently married, and building a stable and successful future. Words do not adequately express how grateful our family is for the loving care and recovery of our child.

Chesed Home helped us through a long, difficult journey and gave our child a second chance at life,” said a parent of a resident.

“One resident in particular has worked on publishing his own books with the goal of them being sold in stores. Most importantly, they have achieved personal happiness and peace through the establishment of closer relationships with their parents, siblings, families and friends. At Chesed Home, our residents have created strong bonds with like-minded individuals. They no longer feel alone and vulnerable in society. Most of our residents have graduated from our program and are now living in their own apartments. These families are closer than ever and less overwhelmed by the challenges of mental illness,” said Dana Glaser, a social worker that was worked with Hope Village/ Chesed Home for four years. A For more information about the home, visit chesedhome.org.

Seniors: Holocaust Survivor

Born a Survivor: An Interview with Eva Clarke | BY JACQUELINE BULL |

Eva

Clarke has dedicated her life to telling the incredible story of her family and how her mother gave birth to her during the Holocaust. This story gets a second act when in her 60’s she finds other families with a similar story and comes in contact with a biographer to share it to the world.

This interview tells the journey of finding the other families and how the book came into existence. It has been edited for space.

Can you tell me about the story of how the book came together? “‘Born Survivors’ is an amazing book, but I would say that wouldn’t I? [laughs] It was written

by a former journalist on The Telegraph, the newspaper here.

She was a war correspondent, she was in Iraq amongst other places.

Her name is Wendy Holden.

She did that for many years and then she had said about 18 years ago that she had enough of life and death and so she decided to give that up and she became a biographer. And she has written several biographies of people in all different walks of life.”

“Wendy, she was browsing the net one day and she saw the obituary of a Holocaust survivor, a lady who had died in Canada...

And it said in this obiturary that this lady had a baby in Auschwitz and died in Auschwitz. Wendy thought to herself, ‘I don’t know anything about babies born in the Holocaust and there must have been thousands.’ Anyway she started to browse the net a bit more and she came across my name.”

“She found my name and she then said she would have gone to Australia [to meet me] if necessary and couldn’t believe her luck because she found that I lived one hour’s drive away from her.”

“So she contacted me, she came over for the day; we hit it off straight away. She is a fantastic person, very lively, lovely person.

And so I told her the story and at the end of it she asked me if she could have the honor of writing my mother’s story and apparently I said something like ‘I’ve been waiting almost 70 years for this.’

And she said to me ‘Your story

must be absolutely unique.’ And I said, ‘Well not exactly’ and she said, ‘What do you mean?’

And then I told her the story of the other two babies who are featured and their mothers in ‘Born Survivors.’”

How did you hear about the story of these other survivors?

“I take all the credit for that.

I reckon I found them... My mother had always said that hundreds of photographs were taken of us by the American soldiers when we were liberated in Mauthausen. And I had never been able to find one single one. I’m convinced they must exist in somebody’s shoe box in somebody’s attic. And I contacted the United States Holocaust Memorial museum, I contacted the U.S. Army Veterans, because I found out it was the 11th armored division that had liberated the camp about the 5th of May, 1945."

“Anyway, then I contacted the Veterans’ Association, and I sent them a photograph of my mother, myself, my son, and my first grandchild-being a four generations photograph. And the Veterans Association, they used to send out a magazine quarterly. And the next quarter, I get a copy of the magazine with our photograph on the front [laughs]. And I had put the caption ‘Without the 11th Armored Division, We Wouldn’t Exist.’ In that particular edition, I opened it and on about the third or fourth page, I find Hannah’s

Iyar • Sivan 5778 | SDJewishJournal.com 37

story. Hannah is one of the other babies. I said to my mother, ‘You’re not going to believe this.’

And she said ‘No I don’t believe this.’ She always – we thought we were the only ones! [laughs] And anyway because of the wonders of the internet, I managed to get in touch with Hannah and within 24 or 48 hours, we were emailing. So that is how I made contact with her."

“In 2010, we were all 65 and we decided we were going to Mauthausen because they always have a very big commemorative ceremony around the time of liberation. And because we were all going to be 65 as well, so but what happened in the spring of 2010, was that Mark who is the other baby, one of his sons, knowing his father was going to be 65 started to browse the net.

He must have known that it was the 11th Armoured Division because he went onto their website and found my story.”

“Give another 48 hours and we were emailing with Mark, so we all decided to go to Mauthausen that year for two reasons: to meet one another, but also because it was going to be the last time that the American veterans were going to go there, because every couple of years they would sort of retrace their campaign trail, but because they are all in their 80’s and 90’s you know it was getting to be a bit much, so this was going to be the last time they

38 SDJewishJournal.com | May 2018

Eva and her mother in Cardiff

were going.”

“Anyway I sort of tentatively asked Hannah and Mark if they would consider coming to Cambridge and they came. I think they mainly came because they wanted to meet my mother because both of their mothers were dead, but my mother was anything but and she was also living with us at that stage. And so they came and by chance it happened that we are all only children, so we now feel we have siblings. And it’s wonderful. So Hannah and Mark come into our house and my mother looked at them and she says, ‘Well you’re my children.’ And we all start crying. And so that was the first time we met.”

“But then Wendy, being a reporter, she does a massive amount of research... What she did is she actually traveled all through Europe, she went to all the places where our three mothers had lived and grown up. She retraced their wartime steps in the camps and then she retraced their steps post-war...

And she is a very fast writer because she knew she had, if you’ll forgive the pun, the deadline of 2015 because she wanted the book published then because it was the 70th anniversary of the

liberation and we would all be 70. And she managed it. And we had the launch of the book in Mauthausen in May of 2015 and that was amazing. There were lots of heads of state there and it was amazing. They made

an enormous birthday cake for us [laughs].” A Eva Clarke will be telling the incredible story of how she and her mother survived during the war in person at UC San Diego on May 30.

AGES 4 – 8 One-Week, Half-Day (morning) Wonder Woman’s Superhero Slam . . . . . . . . June 18 – June 22 Monster Mashup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . July 9 – July 13 A Princess Party . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . July 23 – July 27 AGES 8 – 12 Two-Week, Full-Day Annie Kids . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . June 18 – June 29 Magic Tree House: Pirates Past Noon Kids . . . . July 9 – July 20 The Music Man Kids . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . July 23 – August 3 AGES 12 – 19 Two-Week, Full-Day

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More details on the website . Register for camps on the website or by calling the Box Office, (858) 481-1055 .

Questions? Contact Benjamin Cole, (858) 481-2155, ext . 216 .

NorthCoastRepTheatreSchool.org

Sara Jacobs

POLITICS

Making Politics “Cool”

Sara Jacobs

Steps into the Fray | BY BRIE STIMSON |

S

ara Jacobs is pretty unassuming when she walks through the door with her campaign manager, Chelsea Brossard. Dressed casually in jeans and no entourage, she could be mistaken for the new intern.

At just 29, she’s young, but that’s not a hindrance for her – Jacobs sees it as an asset. And why shouldn’t she?

Young people have become more politically active in the last couple of years than the country has seen probably since Vietnam. “We just feel like we’re catching the wave right at the right time and have the momentum to take us through to June,” Jacobs tells me.

She is running for Congress in the 49th District, which is basically Oceanside, Vista, Carlsbad, Encinitas and a small part of southern Orange County. Nationally, it’s known as Darrell Issa’s District, (which he barely won in 2016) and one of the most vulnerable seats for Republicans in the country. In fact, Issa announced his retirement the same day we were first scheduled to interview in January.

By March we had rescheduled, and the three of us sit in my office for the

interview. Brossard pulls up a chair that I later realize is a little broken, although she doesn’t say anything – and that’s no surprise. Jacobs’ campaign is what I would call no fuss. And though she’s not among the first generation of female candidates running for office, you still get a sense that she knows she has to work a lot harder just to break even with the men.

Jacobs, who worked for the State Department during Obama’s presidency, was also a foreign policy advisor on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign.

As she told me about the importance of relatability in a candidate, I ask her if she thinks that had been a problem for Clinton during the campaign.

“I am so grateful to Hillary Clinton and to the generation of women who came before who did have to be more guarded, who had to be sharper edges who had to push through the boys’ club, and I really believe that them doing that has made it that much easier for our generation of women,” she says.

It’s a good answer, but it’s also insightful. Women candidates are often darned if they do and darned if they don’t when it comes to demeanor.

A cautious female candidate is too guarded and an off-the-cuff candidate is shrill and emotional.

And while she hopes to win the female vote, the youth vote may be even more important. At 29, Jacobs would be the youngest congresswoman ever.

Ever. There have been younger men, but she would be making history.

“Certainly the youth vote is really important,” she says. “We have five colleges that are near the district, so there’s a number of students, and what we’ve seen across the country is a few things: first of all, young people tend to turn out for young candidates. We saw that in Virginia, we’ve seen that in Texas. Also they need to feel they’re part of something that’s bigger than themselves ... and, you know, you have to make politics cool and something they want to be a part of. For a lot of them politics is like their grandparents sitting around a card table. That’s the image. How do you actually bring politics to where they are instead of trying to bring them to their notion of what politics is?”

In the State Department, Jacobs worked on policy toward countering

Iyar • Sivan 5778 | SDJewishJournal.com 39

Boko Haram in the midst of the kidnapping of the Chibok schoolgirls, and helped the president’s efforts to improve governance in the security sector of the United States’ security partners. At the United Nations, she helped bring stakeholders together to create guidelines for peaceful and credible elections in other countries. She also helped create a strategy at UNICEF that allows the organization to more effectively navigate development and humanitarian challenges, including building a data-science team that has been effective in combatting the Ebola and Zika outbreaks.

Regarding Israel, she was against President Trump moving the embassy to Jerusalem. “Like every president before Donald Trump, I think that’s the wrong move,” she states. “I believe that the status of Jerusalem should be a final status negotiated issue, and just logistically the United States will have to decide where it thinks is Israel and where it thinks is not Israel by moving their embassy there, and I don’t believe it’s the United States’ role to draw that boundary. I think that boundary should be drawn between the two sides in a negotiated settlement.”

40 SDJewishJournal.com | May 2018

Jacobs sees a link between her foreign policy experience and her attractiveness as a candidate to the large military population in the 49th District.

“I worked in foreign policy, and actually what we found is that among military service members and their families, having that foreign policy background is really important to them because they want to know they have a representative who’s not going to send them into harm’s way without really thinking it through, and so we found that’s actually a really appealing background,” she explains.

Jacobs also has a lot of ideas for the military. “We’re also talking a lot to veterans, but also to military families and to the spouses of military service members, and I think there’s quite a lot we can do to make their lives better that frankly, if we had more women in office, I think probably would have been done already,” she says candidly. “For instance, subsidized childcare on base or making it so that the transfer schedule between bases is more aligned with school calendars so that the kids can stay in school for the full year, making it easier for military spouses

to maintain their credentials across state lines if they’re a teacher or a real estate agent or any of those state level credentialed positions. We’re doing a lot of outreach to the military family community because we think that’s a really good entry point, but also they tend to be a little bit more liberal.”

She says the biggest issue facing the 49th is “unequal access to opportunity,” which she admits she has benefitted from and wants to use her elevated platform to change.

“That manifests in access to quality public education, but it also manifests in other ways,” she tells me. “I think we need to fix our criminal justice system, and I also think we need to make workplaces aligned with 21st century families and focus on issues like affordable childcare, which is often a major barrier for women to enter the workforce, and we need to make sure that economic enfranchisement is translating into political enfranchisement. We need to fix the campaign finance system and end Citizens United, and also, one of the things I’m really focused on is how we create a more participatory approach to government, so it’s not every two years, but actually

all the time that you’re engaging with your elected officials.”

She says, in speaking to voters, trust in a candidate is a big issue right now. “I had a Republican leaning mom in San Clemente actually tell me that she doesn’t agree with me,” Jacobs said. “She’s a Republican, she voted for Issa, but this time she’s going to vote for me because she knows I’m going to be thinking about her kids, and that’s what matters to her.” Jacobs also believes health care is a right and supports a $15 minimum wage.

She works very hard on the aforementioned relatability and authenticity. “Being very relatable, I think especially among young people, authenticity matters a lot so – I’m never your normal politician – but especially when we’re engaging with young people it’s really important to make sure they can see themselves in the politician, but also that they feel like they have a champion that will really fight for the issues that they care about,” she said. “And it’s also making things fun like having fun music when we’re going door knocking, there are so many things you can do to get young people more involved that a younger campaign can do more easily.”

She says there’s a general acknowledgment that things aren’t working well in Washington right now, and voters want something new and different. “There was a couple weeks ago where we had a Trump voter, a Jill Stein voter, a Gary Johnson voter, a Hillary Clinton voter, a Bernie Sanders voter and someone who didn’t vote all say they were going to support me,” she explains. And those people never agree on anything.

Jacobs grew up in San Diego and is the granddaughter of Qualcomm founder Irwin Jacobs. She attends Beth El and considers the Jewish community a big part of her life. “I never thought that I would run for office, but growing up as a Jewish young woman here in San Diego, one of the most important things that my family and my community taught me was giving back and the need to repair the world.” She says she felt running for congress was the best way she could think to have the most impact on what needs change.

“I really do feel like it’s where I can have the most impact, and part of that impact is by serving as a model so that other young women can see that it’s possible.” A

J

acobs grew up in San Diego as is the granddaughter of Qualcomm founder Irwin Jacobs. She attends Beth El and considers the Jewish community a big part of her life.

Iyar • Sivan 5778 | SDJewishJournal.com 41

42 SDJewishJournal.com | May 2018

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44 SDJewishJournal.com | May 2018

Kosher Dining

FOOD

Kosher Dining in San Diego Rabbi Eddie of SPICE at UCSD inspects the wash water from veggies for bugs under ultraviolet light

| BY LEORAH GAVIDOR |

"K

osher dining is a problem in San Diego.” Those were the first words out of the mouth of Chabad Downtown’s Rabbi Zalman Carlebach, as soon as we began our conversation. Established in 2005, Chabad Downtown provides Shabbat dinner for visitors and the local Jewish community and partners with a caterer to prepare kosher meals during the week. The organization also hosts catered events in their 7,000 square-foot space. Since there aren’t any kosher restaurants in town, the rabbi considers the gathering space an important service.

“We like to provide an elegant dinner.

What we do is in response to our community,” Rabbi Carlebach emphasized.

The first kosher tablecloth restaurant in San Diego, Sheila’s Café and Bakery, opened in 1990 and closed about twelve years ago.

At 80, former owner Sheila Lebovitz, the “bubbe of San Diego,” still caters kosher meals for visiting families. She and her husband, who previously owned Chicago-style hotdog stands, were inspired to open the café after an aunt passed away and there was no facility that could provide food for shiva.

A family with five young boys from Los Angeles with whom I am acquainted first drew my attention to the limited kosher dining options in San Diego. When they drive down to visit grandma and grandpa, they make sure to fill up at Chabad of La

Costa, which offers kosher-to-go if ordered at least 24 hours in advance. Chabad of La Costa also partners with the nearby Omni to provide kosher meals and services with a special room rate.

“We had 400 nights booked last year.

It’s one of the Omni’s most popular room rates,” said Nechama Eilfort, wife of the rabbi and a mashgiach at La Costa. In the summer Chabad of La Costa offers barbeque on Sunday evenings and steak night on Thursdays.

Beth Jacob on College, where veteran kosher caterer Charles Rubin keeps his kitchen, cooks up Kosher Pizza Night on intermittent Thursdays. On a cold Thursday night in February, about 20 members of the Silverman family warmed up a corner of the temple’s multi-purpose room.

“This is about as big as it gets,” said Moses Hernandez, who cooks for Rubin and runs pizza night with his wife and daughter.

Cheese pizza, fish n’ chips, and fish burritos are on the menu. Summer brings tourists and visitors, enough business for Rubin to keep Moishe’s Grille open for customers to dine al fresco on Beth Jacob’s patio.

In La Jolla, Ralphs Kosher Experience is the go-to for kosher catering and takeout.

From sushi to Thanksgiving dinner, rabbis supervise preparation at the supermarket’s designated kitchen. The Place Café at the Jacobs campus JCC serves Israeli-style fare in a very casual dine-in setting.

The SPICE counter at UCSD’s Ocean-

View dining hall, with a view of the Pacific, is the newest kosher dining venture in town and first in the UC system. Opened two years ago in response to requests by student groups, the kitchen serves up kosher and halal with international flavors. Many of the customers choose SPICE counter for the “fresh and healthy food, they don’t realize it’s kosher,” Rabbi Eddie said while inspecting a batch of broccoli rabe for bugs under ultraviolet light. But word has gotten out to the community, including the family with five young boys.

“We get Jewish visitors from Israel, Los Angeles, New York, all over,” said Rona, who works at SPICE. They serve about 300600 people daily, and prepare sealed sandwiches for sale at other outlets on campus.

Leo Acosta of UCSD Housing, Dining, and Hospitality, who helped organize operations and certification, said UCSB, UCLA and Berkley have contacted him about how to run a kosher/halal dining counter.

Rabbi Carlebach observes a growing interest in kosher dining in San Diego, and Lebovitz said that young people are more observant, but both acknowledge the difficult prospects for the kosher restaurant business.

“It’s a very hard thing to do,” Sheila knows from experience. “People want kosher food, but they don’t want to pay the price for the extra costs associated with kashrut. And the restaurant loses a day and a half on Friday and Saturday, so it’s hard to pay the rent.” A Iyar • Sivan 5778 | SDJewishJournal.com 45

F

Feature: JCompany

“Reflection” on JCompany | BY AMBER BARTLETT |

My

clammy hands were shaking at the speed of a hummingbird. It was my very first audition and I was completely out of my element. I was a small, timid ten-year-old who was mute in certain large public situations due to bullying at school. I hadn’t found my place: a community that had a bold acceptance for the unconventional. I only revealed my playful personality at home and in front of select adults.

To be frank, the audition didn’t go so well. I sang “Reflection” from “Mulan.” I blamed my discomfort on the accompanist playing the song too fast (I’m sorry I blamed you, accompanist!) I held it together until the last person sang their audition song and then ran out of the room crying. Despite my salty tears, I was cast as a daughter in the ensemble in “Fiddler on the Roof.”

Little did I know that this would become the community I was searching for and that nine years and 25 shows later, as a senior in high school, I would be writing a reflection on the many values I learned in my time at JCompany.

In my very first rehearsals, I instantly could relate to my peers surrounding me. I admired the “older kids.” They became my idols and role models and I emulated their talent and how they treated the younger kids in hopes that one day I would become that leader and role model. I learned leadership skills and watched how they worked as 46 SDJewishJournal.com | May 2018

a team instead of taking the spotlight only for themselves. I also discovered how to treat others with respect and acceptance, specifically (or especially) those with different abilities, backgrounds, or attributes than I have.

In my second JCompany show, I was cast as a dancer, way above my skill level at the time. This role proved to be very difficult for me. The choreographer informed me that I should not have been cast in that role and that it seemed that I was not qualified to do it. This is when I learned one of my ultimate lessons: I have the power to face rejection and failure through positive affirmations and constantly pushing to improve in a healthy, positive way. Through extra dedication, I showed the choreographer that he had cast me correctly. I gained his respect, while discovering my own abilities.

Through this lesson, I was able to later comfort and help younger cast members find their strength and reach their potential.

Theater became therapeutic for me. It was a place where I was able to escape and cope with life’s challenges by infusing them into the character I was playing at the time and using my feelings and emotions as theatrical emphasis. In particular, during “Children of Eden,” when I was an innocent 11-yearold, a dear friend and father figure to me passed away. I was able to cope with my grief, finding hope and strength, when Joey and the two actors playing Adam would sing “The Hardest Part of Love,” a beautiful song encapsulating the challenge we face when letting go.

Theater gifted me a laboratory for the study of life, allowing me to explore the human experience through performance. I learned about suffering, salvation, creation, loss, survival, acceptance, human strength and above all: love. I grew in my ability to be vulnerable in front of 500 people in ways I never thought I could be, emulating secretaries, prostitutes, princesses, animals, women with immense wealth and women in immense poverty. I continued to discover common values in myself and others.

When I entered high school, new academic challenges arose. I had to figure out how to balance my schoolwork with my theatrical passions and other responsibilities. I learned invaluable time management skills when daily rehearsals cut into study time. I applied stage makeup while reciting AP Biology terms and completed math problems backstage between scenes. My time management became my secret weapon that helped me survive and succeed in onerous classes.

As I reflect on my theatrical experiences, I am tremendously grateful for my time at JCompany. Theater is the biggest gift you can give a young person, allowing them to explore, persevere, connect and find purpose. I truly believe everyone can benefit from theater. JCompany has enriched me and many others with a supportive home to grow and flourish. Theater has changed me for the better, providing me with a confident purpose that harnesses my imagination. A

Charitable Giving: Beth Israel

A Fuss 50 Years in the Making Beth Israel Honors Educator Helene Schlafman at Their Annual Fundraiser | BY BRIE STIMSON |

“S

he’s actually now teaching grandchildren from some of her early students so she’s taught the grandparents, the parents and now the children. So she’s teaching three generations of the same family, which is pretty remarkable,” Joanne Gimbel said of Beth Israel educator Helene Schlafman who is being honored at their annual fundraiser for 50 years of molding young minds.

Joanne andTammy Vener are good friends of Helene and co-chairs of the spring fundraiser “Camp Eemah" on Saturday, May 12.

Helene, known affectionately as “Eemah,” started working in Jewish education 60 years ago and spent all but 10 of them at Beth Israel. She was the congregation’s first female director of education and she helped with the development of the Beth Israel Day School and the Bill and Sid Rubin Preschool. She also started the first overnight Camp Beth Israel, UNI Camp, a day camp that brought together Jewish and African American children from the congregation, Beth Israel Babies (BIBS), the My Family and Me program and religious school weekend camps. Helene is perhaps best known for the Madrichim program (teen guides), which is now in its 48th year and serves as a model for similar programs across the country.

“Let me say that she has truly shaped the lives of our children and thousands of children,” Joanne continued. “I have a son and Tammy’s got a daughter. Tammy’s son’s a rabbi and my daughter’s in rabbinical school now, so those are direct links to the influence that she has had on all the children within the Beth Israel community and the

impact that she’s had on their lives.”

The fundraiser will be like a trip back to camp. “We’re trying to replicate a camp Shabbat with song sessions and Havdalah, and it’s going to be a tribute to her. I’m cautious because there are lots of surprises that I don’t want her to know about, so if it goes in print then it sort of spills the beans!” Joanne laughed.

The evening will include al fresco dining and upscale camp cuisine, signature cocktails, Havdalah in the Glickman-Galinson Sanctuary, a tribute to Helene, a dessert reception and an after party with a DJ and dancing.

Both Joanne and Tammy’s children were taught by Helene; they’ve known her for more than 30 years and they both consider her a close, personal friend. “We were asked to be chair people of this event ... because we have personal relationships with Helene Schlafman, and we wanted to make sure that we had an event that would represent her in a way that she would love to be represented and honored,” Joanne added.

With musical director Cara Freedman, Helene developed the children’s theater program Show BIS, which has won the prestigious Telly Award. “Her teaching method is through music and through just interesting ways that she has developed to teach children Hebrew and Jewish history, so she’s pretty accomplished,” Tammy said.

Helene began her career at Congregation Shaarey Tzedek in Michigan as a preschool and Hebrew teacher and youth advisor. She also taught in the Head Start program in San Francisco and the Soloman Schechter Day School in Chicago. During that time

she met her husband, David, and together they settled in San Diego.

“We believe through Helene Schlafman, and all the programs that she’s developed, that’s a really huge piece of why there’s been this Jewish continuity here at Beth Israel, what she’s taught and the fact that people from 40 years ago wanted their kids to come and have her as a teacher and experience what they experienced,” Tammy observed.

A big part of the fundraiser will involve bringing back some of Helene's former students to either speak at the tribute or send something in, and the co-chairs told me they have an entire subcommittee dedicated to finding people from Helene’s past. They have spent the better part of the last year tracking people down.

“Gathering the committee, though, was one of the easiest things Tammy and I've ever done because as soon as we told them what the event was for I don’t think anybody said no to me,” Joanne explained.

“Not one person,” Tammy added.

“They all wanted to do it, to be a part of it,” Joanne said. “And when Helene was told that we were doing this to honor her, she’s very humbled by it all and a little embarrassed probably that a fuss will be made over her, but it’s a fuss that’s 50 years in the making.”

The proceeds from the fundraiser will go toward youth programming that Helene helped develop over the years.

To find out more about the event, R.S.V.P. or share your thoughts and memories of Helene Schlafman, go to cbisd.org/programs/campeemah. A

Iyar • Sivan 5778 | SDJewishJournal.com 47

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Feature: Coastal Roots

Old Farm, New Farm | BY JACQUELINE BULL |

C

oastal Roots Farm is a nonprofit Jewish community farm in Encinitas. The farm’s ethos is a meeting between ancient Jewish agricultural practices and a new age sensibility (the green, eco-friendly, farmto-table, sustainable movement).

When they offered me an opportunity to visit the farm in person, I jumped at the chance. It’s exactly what you hope a farm will be like: warm air, the sounds of birds, big wooden buildings.

I arrived in the cool of the morning during one of their volunteer hours. They sat at picnic benches gently prying pepper seedlings from their segmented plug trays and replanted them into bigger containers. They 48 SDJewishJournal.com | May 2018

joked about the passions of pepper people, asked for advice for their own gardens and talked about daily life.

Damian Valdez, the Assistant Operations Manager, was leading the volunteer group and chatted with me while weeding.

The weeds, he told the volunteers, were to be gathered and taken to the chickens. “It is one way that we keep a closed loop cycle here on the farm. It is not their only source of food, but it helps supplement the food that they do get,” he explained. The closed loop cycle is just one example of both a modern and traditional practice; following the tradition of kayamut (ecological sustainability) that has been brought back into modern eco-friendly ideas.

Damian has been farming for

six years and has worked in small community spaces and larger for-profit farms, but in his ethos there shouldn’t really be a distinction between the two (“ultimately the goal shouldn’t be just growing food”).

“I think it is important if we are going to call something a farm – especially in the legacies that we carry with the Leichtags and the Eckes – is that it is important to provide a quality product even if it is pay-whatyou-can. You know it should be of the highest quality equal to what you can buy from a more conventional. It should be able to stand that test,” he said.

Damian seems a fitting representative of the mix of ancient Jewish agrarian ethos and the new age. He looks like the farmer you see quite a bit of in 2018,

substantial beard, earrings and multiple piercings, kind eyes.

Touring the farm, there is a fair amount of examples of the modern green mood. There is a coworking space, an office shared by multiple organizations. They are developing a food forest, a sustainable and ecologically beneficial forest that will produce food. And they run a large scale composting operation, just to name a few.

If you’re thinking, “Hey caring about the planet isn’t anything new,” I would totally agree with you. In fact, many of the moral desires of today are aligned with early Jewish traditions. And I think the synthesis of those two is the triumph of Coastal Roots Farm. A

Iyar • Sivan 5778 | SDJewishJournal.com 49

“EVEN WHEN IT’S WRONG, SPAMALOT IS OH SO RIGHT”

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Book and Lyrics by Eric Idle Music by John Du Prez and Eric Idle Directed by Sean Murray Music Direction by Terry O’Donnell

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Theater: Hershey and the Hunk

T

Hershey and the Hunk

“Nathan Gunn FLYING SOLO” by Hershey Felder, premieres at the San Diego Repertory Theatre | PAT LAUNER |

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e’s been called a “barihunk” (though he prefers ‘hunkitone’). People Magazine listed him among the Sexiest Men Alive.

Whatever you call him, Nathan Gunn is one of the most acclaimed, exciting and in-demand baritone singers of our time.

The Boston Globe dubbed him “vocally splendid. Gunn’s baritone is an object lesson in beautiful technique, vowels perfectly placed, the color balanced between bright and dark, consistently rich from top to bottom."

According to the New York Times, he “commands an operatic baritone whose mighty heft and richness confer an outsize authority on everything it touches.”

Go on YouTube and check him out. Listen to him singing opera – bare-chested ("Billy Budd,” “An American Tragedy”) or not bare-chested (“The Magic

Flute,” “Don Giovanni”).

The first recipient of the Metropolitan Opera’s Beverly Sills Award for young singers, he has gone on to perform in opera houses around the country and the world, including the Met and the Paris Opéra. He has sung on Grammy-winning opera recordings. He regularly performs concerts and cabaret shows.

Do not leave YouTube without catching some of his stellar turns with the musical theater repertoire. You’ll be blown away by his “Soliloquy” from “Carousel,” his amusing “C’est Moi” from “Camelot” and his magnificent “Johanna” from “Sweeney Todd,” which he sang at the New York Philharmonic’s 80th birthday gala celebration for Stephen Sondheim.

Gunn, who hails from South Bend, Indiana, has been general director of the Lyric Theatre at Illinois and the Opera Company

of Philadelphia’s director of the American Repertoire Council, promoting new American works.

One-third of the nearly 40 operatic roles he has taken on have been in new operas, and many roles he has created for the first time.

"As a musician,” he has said, “I don’t want to be a curator of opera. I want to help create the new ones.

“I like nothing better than to create a role that has never been sung before, because then it fits me like a custom-tailored suit – and it calls for all of my creative juices to make it come alive.”

In his non-operatic ‘free’ time, Gunn has performed Broadway classics with Kelli O’Hara and toured in a comic musical concert with Mandy Patinkin (“A kind of Martin and Lewis show,” he says. “I’m the Martin”). He released a solo album, “Just Before Sunrise.” And he was a spe-

cial guest artist at the “Christmas with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra at Temple Square” – with a live audience of 21,000.

Now, the 47-year-old megastar will be singing for us, at the intimate San Diego Repertory Theatre, thanks to the taste, foresight and artistry of Hershey Felder.

When Hershey first heard Gunn's sublime voice, the award-winning multi-hyphenate (performer-composer-writer-director-producer-designer) and rapturously received local visitor, was smitten - by the voice and by Gunn’s story.

So, departing from his enormously popular Composer Suite (sellout performances nationwide and locally, as Gershwin, Berlin, Bernstein, Chopin, Beethoven and Tchaikovsky), Hershey decided to write and direct a piece about and starring Nathan Gunn, who was seen and heard

Iyar • Sivan 5778 | SDJewishJournal.com 51

“His voice is glorious,” Hershey says. “He has an amazing instrument. He’s a classical leading man, but every director tries to force him to take his clothes off. I’m trying to keep it classy,” he quips. locally in the San Diego Opera production of Jake Heggie and Terrence McNally’s “Great Scott” – another role he initiated: Sid Taylor, the extramarital love interest for the opera’s title character, Arden Scott.

The new piece about him is called “Nathan Gunn FLYING SOLO.” A Solo Show, but not for Himself

Hershey has ventured from his own solo shows before, to adapt, direct and design the internationally performed play-with-music, “The Pianist of Willesden Lane.”

He produced and designed the musical “Louis and Keely: ‘Live’ at the Sahara.” He’s currently writing and rehearsing “The Story of My Cello,” a solo work for cello virtuoso Antonio Lysy. And there’s a piece on acclaimed actress Sarah Bernhardt he has in 52 SDJewishJournal.com | May 2018

mind. Not to mention a “big, funny musical” about American writer Washington Irving.

But “Nathan Gunn FLYING SOLO” has been a long time coming.

When he saw Gunn ten years ago on “The Today Show,” Hershey realized what a superstar he was and thought, “One day, I have to make something theatrical for him.”

Years later, when they met, Hershey told him, “You need a solo show.”

Though Hershey wrote the piece and will direct it, the musical direction duties will be taken on by Michael Bagby, who has a doctorate in vocal coaching and accompanying from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, where Nathan is an alumnus and a tenured professor of voice.

Gunn's wife, pianist Julie Jordan Gunn, also holds a doctorate in vocal coaching and accompa-

nying from the same university, where she’s now an associate professor in collaborative piano.

She’s often Gunn's accompanist, but not this time. Bagby, one of her students, takes over the keyboard. Over the course of his career, Gunn has brought his family with him as often as possible.

(He and Julie have five children, ranging in age from 16 to 23).

Hershey is rhapsodic about Gunn's vocal prowess, and he’s not unaware of the baritone’s rugged good looks and buff physicality.

“His voice is glorious,” Hershey says. “He has an amazing instrument. He’s a classical leading man, but every director tries to force him to take his clothes off. I’m trying to keep it classy,” he quips.

All that attention on his physique, Gunn reports, started in 1997, when the female director of a production he was cast in told him he would “get total-

ly wet onstage and would be bare-chested. Six months before the production, she said I should start going to the gym.”

Hershey seems to be more interested in his story and his spirit: “Nathan is Scottish with a bit of a Jewish soul,” he says.

Gunn's story concerns how he spent his life, like so many other men, trying to please his father.

His dad was the elder of the Scottish Clan Gunn.

“His father was the Clan Chief,” Hershey explains. “He was a very healthy, robust young man who one day three years ago, fell backward and broke his neck. Gunn had to take over the role of elder, and in the process, he had to learn what it means to be his father’s son.

“Nathan told me that, when his father saw him perform, ‘He sat quietly and watched, but I’m not so sure he approved.’ His father was very tough on him.

“The story is very emotion-

al and moving,” says Hershey.

“Some of it is extremely funny.

People will also start to cry.”

Because “music is inherent to him,” it’s woven throughout the piece.

“There’s some opera singing, but mostly, you’ll hear musical theater and pop songs and rock and roll,” says Hershey. “The first number is ‘Has Anybody Seen My Gal’ [‘Five foot-two, eyes of blue']. It was the first song he ever learned.

“This is the story of a normal person finding himself at the center of the world. He just opened a trap and astonishing sound came out. And then everything in his personal life changed.”

At its core, the piece is a father/ son story. A family tragedy that springs from his father’s literal and figurative fall – from strong paterfamilias to someone incapacitated, and in need of help and assistance.

During the course of the play, Gunn portrays his father and his mother (“a tough Irish broad,” says Hershey, “hysterically funny”).

Other characters he inhabits include tenor Placido Domingo, one of his idols, and a less likely singing sensation, John Denver.

“At the end,” Hershey promises, “he will wear a kilt. And the issue of what’s worn underneath may come up,” he teases.

Hershey has found Nathan to be “a strong, tough dude. He has such a powerful voice, so well produced, that he has no problem singing one day after another.”

That kind of “one day after another” is unheard-of in opera.

Singers give one performance and then they have days to rest before the next one. Gunn has discussed some of the differences between performing opera versus concert, cabaret or musical theater.

“In opera,” Gunn has said, “you’re dealing with different

languages all the time, and dealing with not being miked. I find the mic allows me to use a kind of palette I’d normally use for a recital hall of 600 seats, as opposed to the Met, which has 4,000 seats, where singers are pretty much on Loud and Loudest all the time.”

Hershey agrees, suggesting that “a small mic allows the singer not to push as hard. The San Diego Rep’s Lyceum Theatre [550 seats] does not have natural acoustics. The miking doesn’t change the voice. It just gives it a little wetness.”

Opera singers characteristically give 50-75 performances a year. In typical theatrical productions, with eight shows a week in musical theater, 56 performances would only require six weeks’ time.

“He hates the opera schedule,” Hershey says of Gunn. “He sings opera and then he has nothing to do for five days.”

Always a Zillion Irons in the Fire Hershey himself performs 315 times a year.

“I’m never not onstage. I can’t afford to stop. I have to support ten families,” he says, referring to the full-service production company he has helmed since 2001.

Many of his close-knit team of designers are from San Diego, which is one reason he comes here so often. Also, locals love him.

His world premiere production of “Our Great Tchaikovsky,” produced last year at the San Diego Repertory Theatre, surpassed the record set in 2014 by Hershey’s adaptation of Mona Golabek’s story, “The Pianist of Willesden Lane.” The box office record was broken prior to his first performance as Tchaikovsky, and the show became the highest-grossing production in San

Diego Rep history.

Hershey considers San Diego to be his theatrical home. He maintains a house here but also has domiciles in various cities around the world, shared with his wife Kim, former Prime Minister of Canada.

He also has another theatrical home, where he’s premiered many of his shows: the Laguna Playhouse which, due to scheduling, snagged the first opening of the Nathan Gunn piece (4/8/18-4/22/18).

Right after that show closes, Hershey will be doing a substantially revised version of his “Hershey Felder: Beethoven” in Laguna. An early incarnation of the piece premiered at the San Diego Rep in 2008. It will return to San Diego in February 2019. Hershey says this new edition was “a massive hit” when it premiered last summer at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley.

After his matinee performance in Laguna Beach on May 27, he’ll rush down to San Diego to perform at the Gala Celebration of the 25th anniversary of The Lipinsky Family San Diego Jewish Arts Festival which, over the years, has produced more than 50 world premieres (Hershey’s included) of theater, music, dance, film and opera.

The festivities will take place in a panoramic private home in Rancho Santa Fe. “It’s a Jewish event,” says Hershey. “For me, a ‘busman’s holiday.’ I’m not sure what I’ll be playing. But after 30 years of

doing this, I have a pretty large repertoire, probably 9-10 hours’ worth. I’ll see what the audience is up for and go through my mental library.”

Hershey maintains great loyalty to our community. That’s why he thinks he’ll bring the world premiere of another new work (the guy never stops!), an adaptation of the memoir, “Out on a Ledge: Enduring the Lodz Ghetto, Auschwitz, and Beyond,” by Eva Libitzky.

“I always wanted to put a Holocaust story onstage,” he says.

“I’m exploring a musical way to relate this story, maybe calling it ‘A Mother’s Tale.’ The mother is an American now; she was a hippie in the ‘60s. When her children are old enough, she takes them to Poland. She had never told them who she was and what she went though.”

“This story will be particularly relevant at this time,” he continues, “given the 100 percent increase in hate crimes, especially anti-Semitism, over the past year.”

But right now, his focus is on “Nathan Gunn FLYING SOLO,” which Gunn describes as “a semi-autobiographical oneman show that, through humor and song, illuminates a behindthe-scenes look into the fabulous and crazy industry and career that is opera.”

Prepare yourself for a few laughs and insights, from a hunky guy with a heart-stopping voice. A “Nathan Gunn: FLYING SOLO,” Hershey Felder’s latest creation (as writer and director), runs at the San Diego Repertory Theatre from May 23-June 10.

Tickets and information about the show and reservations for the gala celebration of the 25th anniversary of The Lipinsky Family Jewish Arts Festival: 619-544-1000; www.sdrep.org.

Iyar • Sivan 5778 | SDJewishJournal.com 53

Seniors: Silver Linings

Moving Pieces Silver Linings Transitions Helps Get Seniors Where They’re Going | BY BRIE STIMSON |

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eniors are living longer and longer and with that comes the realities of aging.

Often living in a big home by oneself just isn’t an option anymore.

That’s where Jami Shapiro’s team comes in. Jami is the founder and owner of Silver Linings Transitions, which isn’t a retirement community; it’s more like a conduit to the community.

“We basically help when seniors are downsizing from their home, physically moving into a senior community sometimes a smaller space and they’re overwhelmed with their belongings,” Jami told me during our interview.

She started the company around five years ago, and has watched it grow exponentially over that time.

“We help figure out what they’re going to take with them,” she said. “We do a ... plan based on where they’re going to go and then we help them tear down and sort through their things ... We do the physical packing and unpacking and we can usually get them completely unpacked in one day and then they spend the night in their bed that night and then the next day they wake up, make their coffee, leave their bed unmade and they meet us in their new home where we’ve decorated their home, recreated their night stand, the food in their fridge, hung their pictures made the bed, all of that stuff.”

Jami said her company is part of an emerging industry in a time when there are more seniors than ever before.

“I find that when people know what the business is – that it even exists –they’re like ‘I wish I had known about that for my mom.’

54 SDJewishJournal.com | May 2018

It’s such a tough time, it’s new – I think the industry itself; it’s definitely less than 20 years old.”

Jami still tries to visit every job, but as the business has grown she’s hired a team of experts to work with her clients.

“I do almost every consultation and I will usually stop by at some point in the process, ... and of course I’m always available to the client if they have any concerns.”

In the case of real estate clients, she works with licensed realtor Bryan Devore of Pacific Sotheby’s International Realty, helping pack and stage the home.

Jami told me one of the best parts of the job is when the client sees their new home for the first time.

“I will say every time a client sees their home it’s just an overwhelming – it’s just the best part of the job. A lot of seniors especially are really nervous. They don’t want to give up control. They never think we can do it and I always tell them you’re not going to believe me, but you’ll believe me and then that’s what happens.”

She said her company works with a lot of Jewish clients. “I don’t know if it’s because I’m Jewish,” she admitted. She remembered a recent client who had come from Nazi Germany when he was eight years old. “One of the things we found when we were going through his belongings was his kindergarten report card that was handwritten in German,” she said. She said many of their clients have led interesting lives, including a Hollywood producer who had worked with Dustin Hoffman.

“It’s just amazing, you really get to know the lives of these people and one of the things we do as a society is sort of discard seniors – and they’ve lived lives equivalent or better than the ones we’re living and they have stories and they want to talk and also they feel like they’re going to be forgotten. They want to give their belongings away, the subsequent generations don’t want the belongings because we’re becoming minimalist and we go to Ikea rather than buying good stuff, and so it’s eye opening,” she said.

Jami told me she decided to start the company when she found out she had thyroid cancer. “I didn’t want to continue the work that I was doing and I sort of began my own journey figuring out what I wanted to do with my life and so I called it Silver Linings Transitions for me, but also for the client because we try to focus on the good things that are going to come from the move that they’re making and the fact that they’re even alive to make the move; because I lost a friend at 40 to ovarian cancer and she didn’t get to be a senior.”

Silver Linings Transitions’ motto is “moving you toward a brighter tomorrow,” and for both Jami and her clients that will no doubt be true. A Jami is also working on a show for channel 4 called “Senior Savers” which is set to air in June. Information about the show can be found at SeniorSaver.tv and information about Silver Linings Transitions can be found at SilverLiningsTransitions.com.

Feature: Nobel Prize

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Former Alter Boy Turned Orthodox Jewish Astrophysicist Smashes Science’s Golden Calf | BY RABBI JACOB RUPP |

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o suggest that UC San Diego Professor Brian Keating has lived many different lives is an understatement.

When he decided to write a tell-all exposé on humanity’s most coveted prize, it marked just the latest chapter of his fascinating life.

Keating was born to two Jewish, albeit non-practicing, parents. Following his parent’s divorce and remarriage, he adopted the religion of his stepfather, a practicing Roman Catholic. And then things got really interesting. At the age of thirteen, when most Jewish boys begin preparing for their Bar Mitzvahs, Brian became an altar boy.

For his birthday that year, he received his first telescope, a gift that would change his life. Peering into the night sky, Brian was hooked. He became a “celestial evangelist,” learning everything he could about astronomy and trying to share his love of the night with everyone he knew. Along the way, the budding scientist became enthralled with the life of the great Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei. But the way the Vatican had treated his hero deeply disappointed Brian. After all, as Galileo once said, “The Bible teaches us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go." When he learned that as of 1986, the Church hadn’t pardoned the great man, Brian became incensed and disillusioned with Catholicism. Brian’s estrangement from organized religion persisted throughout his teenage years.

In college, he had become a devout atheist, determined that science and the laws of nature were the only higher powers he needed. Brian’s academic career quickly took off; he obtained his B.S. from Case Western Reserve University in 1993, his M.S. from Brown University in 1995, and his Ph.D. from Brown University in 2000. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Caltech from

2000 until he became a professor of physics at UCSD in 2004.

Brian began working with and learning from the leading cosmologists in the field, eventually focusing his studying on the universe’s oldest light, known as the cosmic microwave background, using it to glean information about the origin and evolution of the universe. Keating was a pioneer in the search for the earliest physical evidence of the inflationary epoch, the theorized period of expansion of space in the early universe immediately after the Big Bang.

Keating soon learned that building a research group of young scientists at UC San Diego was nearly as difficult as building a massive telescope in Antarctica. But build he did and he and his team of UC San Diego students would eventually take the telescope, which Keating named BICEP, to the South Pole. There, from the very bottom of the world, they studied the earliest moments of cosmic history. Brian seemed hot on the trail of the Big Bang, a sure ticket to winning the Nobel Prize. The discoveries he and his colleagues made about the origins of the universe made headlines around the world and put him at the top of the world of academia.

Yet, his studies would lead him to two unexpected places; one in the world of science, the other in the world of religion.

Scientifically, Brian’s Nobel dreams evaporated, as described in the central narrative of his new book. Nevertheless in 2016, he was called upon by the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences, to nominate others for the prize.

As he researched the original intent of Alfred Nobel, and the process of selecting the winners, he discovered a sinister reality lurking at the heart of science’s highest honor. He discovered that the prize had morphed from Alfred’s noble vision into a religion of its own. The faithful of the religion Keating calls “Nobelism” are often the scientists who

pride themselves as the great rationalists of our times. Yet, they seemed to be more similar to fervent practitioners of a strange cult worshipping golden images, partaking in ritual feasts, observing numerous holidays, and presided over by a unique clerical body.

A more troubling realization about the prize, Keating discovered, was how it actually impedes scientific progress rather than pushing it forward. He recognized that the body that awards the prize are a group of gender and racially homogeneous scientists (primarily white, European men) and the recipients nowadays do not reflect the broad diversity of the modern scientific community. Because so many young scientists aspire to win the prize, the lack of true representation stifles creativity, motivation and discovery.

Parallel to Brian’s disillusionment with the prize came his return to the religion of his birth. In the firestorm that followed September 11, 2001, Brian noticed how Israel, Judaism, Christianity and America were so central to many of the world’s most important events. He couldn’t help but admit that his knowledge of the religion of his birth was sorely lacking. His passion for learning eventually brought him to a Yeshiva in Jerusalem.

He became Jewishly observant, joined an Orthodox synagogue, and along with his wife, are raising their children to practice Judaism.

Brian Keating’s spiritual journey and his crusade to return the Nobel Prize to the original vision of the founder are captured in his upcoming book, “Losing the Nobel Prize,” recently voted one of Amazon’s ten best nonfiction books of the month. Professor Keating speaks extensively all around the world, and looks to profoundly elevate the conversation around science, religion, and how we value scientific contribution. Brian Keating will be reading from his book at the Dove Library in Carlsbad on Thursday, June 7. A

Iyar • Sivan 5778 | SDJewishJournal.com 55

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Feature: Special Needs

Can My Special Needs Kid Become A Bar Mitzvah?

Lessons I Learned Along The Trail | BY MARNI FREEDMAN |

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hen your child is a special needs preteen and still struggling with English, the thought of introducing Hebrew is a daunting concept.

The thought of having a full-blown Bar Mitzvah, well – it can feel like an impossibility. That was before I met Rabbi Bernstein.

Let me back up and say that I’d always dreamed that my son would be Bar Mitzvahed at Congregation Beth Israel, because a thousand years ago, I was Bat Mitzvahed there. You know, a full circle experience. Yet the reality is that my son has severe dyslexia, dysgraphia and four other diagnoses that make traditional learning seriously difficult.

The week before I walked into Rabbi Bernstein’s office, I was home for the day with my funny and brilliant son (I know every mom thinks that, but he really is, wait ‘til you meet him). That day he wasn’t feeling so brilliant. He was experiencing severe anxiety, refusing to go to school. To say that we have struggled with the public school system is an understatement. In this particular sixth-grade class, he was being bullied on a daily basis and the day before, his teachers had shamed him in front of other students, stating that he was only reading at a first grade level. His response: “I feel stupid.”

I sat, telling my son jokes to try to cheer him up, when my mother, herself a compassionate teacher, called. “Ready for your meeting with the Rabbi tomorrow?” I dropped my head. How would we tackle one more hurdle? In my gut I thought, this Bar Mitzvah won’t happen.

So that is the stage upon which I entered Rabbi Bernstein’s office. I assumed I would tell her a bit, enough for her to be scared 56 SDJewishJournal.com | May 2018

off, and then politely walk out. Then I could report to my mother that I had tried, but that’s not what happened. Within minutes I found myself opening up about what was happening in school.

I was waiting for her to look overwhelmed.

But instead, Rabbi Bernstein explained that she had a passion for students with special needs. “You know, he really struggles with reading,” I said.

“Well can he learn by listening? Does he like music?” “Yes,” I said.

“So that is how we will break through to him.” Then with a look I will never forget, she said, “About that school. They don’t understand him. Get him out of there.” It hit me like a ton of bricks. She was right.

Next, we met with the lead rabbi, Rabbi Berk. My son, voice shaking, admitted that he was nervous about his ability to learn all the prayers. The rabbi was confident. “We will tailor the service around your strengths.

And if you’re ever nervous, I’m right there on the Bimah with you.” Impressed, I spoke to the education director, Ava Kurnow. She shared that the school was committed to funding special needs education.

“We’ve hired consultants to give advice on successful methodology, have one-onone aides and there are always two – three classes that are designed for students who learn differently.”

Driving home, I asked my son, “How do you feel now?”

“Well, the rabbi’s gonna be right there with me, so I’m good. Plus, it just sort of feels good there.” He spent the next few weeks learning his Torah Portion. As he shared the speech – he wants to write about Jewish leaders who have learned from their

flaws – I was floored. It was more than real.

My son would become a Bar Mitzvah.

The week after the Rabbi Bernstein meeting, we took him out of that school. We floundered for a bit but landed with a charter school – where we could create our own recipe that involves a bit of home-schooling and tutors. The new school retested him, and he tested at the sixth-grade level. (I kid you not).

Parents of special needs kids: If you are wondering if you should introduce the challenge of a Bar/Bat Mitzvah, I say go for

“Our goal is for our Bar and Bat Mitzvah students, at the end of their ceremony, to feel great about themselves and to love being Jewish.

We accomplish that every time!” – Rabbi Berk, Congregation Beth Israel. it. Make sure the congregation has some awareness of your child’s needs. You will know from the first meeting if it’s a fit.

Jewish Educators: You can be the balm for parents and children who have struggled with mainstream approaches. But more than that, you can create a space where the child can find a sense of strength and pride – but most importantly – home. A

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Feature: Lipinsky

Klezmer, Leonard Cohen and Women of Valor Get Ready for a Quarter-Century of JFest | BY LEORAH GAVIDOR |

2018

marks the 25th year for San Diego Repertory Theatre’s popular Lipinsky Family Jewish Arts Festival, affectionately known as JFest. After so many successful years, now it’s time to celebrate—with a gala on May 27 that will feature performances by Hershey Felder, Malashock Dance and klezmer musicians Yale Strom and Hot Pstromi.

“It’s important to celebrate all of those who have been a base and a rock for the Jewish arts community,” said gala chair Julia Ramirez-Stone, also a trustee on the board at SD Rep. JFest director Todd Salovey, along with members of the Lipinsky family, will be guests of honor. Thanks to the patronage of Dorris and Bernard Lipinsky, the Jewish Arts Festival continues to bring new performances and old favorites to venues around town, including the Lyceum, the Encinitas Library and Seacrest Village. The Lipinsky children have carried on the family tradition of supporting the arts in San Diego. Salovey, also artistic director for the Repertory Theatre, was the founding director for JFest and is still at the helm.

In its history, SD Repertory Theatre’s Jewish Arts Festival has premiered more than 50 plays that have gone on to travel to other stages. “The Blessing of a Broken Heart,” produced in 2008, was Salovey’s first work as a professional playwright, and it still tours the U.S today.

Hershey Felder—a playwright and performer who has taken on the personae of such luminaries as George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Tchaikovsky, Leonard Bernstein and Beethoven, to name a few—has a long history with the Rep and JFest in San Diego.

58 SDJewishJournal.com | May 2018

“He found a niche here in San Diego,” said Ramirez-Stone, “and we are so honored to have him.”

Last year Felder debuted his Sholem Aleichem character at the 2017 festival, and he regularly tries out his work on the Rep stage. His Irving Berlin show premiered at JFest. His most recent piece, “Nathan Gunn FLYING SOLO,” plays at the Rep May 23-June 10. (Editor's Note: Read our theater piece on page 51). Felder’s performance at the gala will be a one-of-a kind experience for the guests.

Women of Valor, an annual cohort of four to six women who are chosen for their contributions to the community and featured during JFest, will also be honored at the gala. Dr. Ellen Beck, Marsha Berkson, Sura Leider, Evelyn Rady, Jill Spitzer, Ruth Sax and RamirezStone will be this year’s honorees.

Ramirez-Stone emphasized that the event is truly a celebration of the past, present and future of the Jewish Arts Festival. This year festival attendees can look forward to 11 shows from May 27-June 27.

The Klezmer Summit, highlights of the past 17 years of klezmer shows, takes the stage on June 5. Singer Perla Battala presents House of Cohen, a theatrical tribute to the late Leonard Cohen, on June 25.

“Having guided this Festival from a oneday event at the Lyceum downtown 25 years ago, to now a dozen events across San Diego, La Jolla and North County, I am just humbled and astonished by how our shows have brought people together from across the communities of San Diego to celebrate Jew-

ish traditions, history and ideas expressed in high-caliber art,” Salovey reflected.

“I never imagined I would stay at the helm of the Festival this long. In fact, I thought it might only be a year or two. But I witnessed the joy and pride that our shows bring, and I just got hooked.”

Barbara Fischbein “so graciously offered her Rancho Santa Fe home” for the gala, Ramirez-Stone shared. Tickets were almost sold out at press time. Organizers expect around 150 guests. A The gala is on May 27 at 5 p.m. at a private home in Rancho Santa Fe. Go to sdrep.org/jewish_festival.php to buy tickets.

Feature: What History Forgot

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WHAT JEWISH HISTORY FORGOT: Famous Jews And Their Pen Pals | BY MARNIE MACAULEY |

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emember when becoming pen pals was a major way to reach out, meet and form fascinating relationships with people who lived half a country – or half a world away? Did you know that Ann Frank had a U.S. pen pal, or that Albert Einstein was as much a humanitarian as he was a scientist? Let’s look at some of the more fascinating “alliances” made by MOTs – and others.

ANNE FRANK’S IOWA PEN PAL A teacher started it all. Birdie Mathews taught for years at the Danville Community School, near Burlington. During vacations overseas, she saw the benefit of connecting students with pen pals abroad.

In 1940, one student, Juanita Wagner, age 10, wrote a letter, detailing her life on the family farm, and posted it to an address in Amsterdam. The recipient was a young Anne Frank.

Juanita’s letter prompted two replies from both Anne and her sister Margot (who wrote to Juanita’s sister Betty Ann). The letters were in English. No doubt Otto Frank translated.

Anne also included a photo.

Anne’s letter was dated April 29, less than two weeks prior to the Dutch surrender to the Nazis, though there was no talk of the war in her correspondence.

“It was such a special joy as a child to have the experience of receiving a letter from overseas,” Betty Ann recalled years later.

The Iowa sisters wrote back but never again received answers from Anne or Margot.

After the war, Betty Ann, now a teacher herself, once again wrote. Otto Frank, in a long, hand-written letter described the now legendary story of the girls’ fate.

“When I received the letter, I shed tears,”

Betty Ann recalled. “The next day I took it with me to school and read [it] to my students.

I wanted them to realize how fortunate they were to be in America during World War II.” For more information about Iowa’s involvement in WW11, go to: medium. com/iowa-history/anne-franks-iowa-penpal-and-other-stories-from-world-war-ii83e008e03bd9 GROUCHO MARX AND T.S. ELIOT If ever there was an odd pairing, it had to be between the incomparable, incorrigible and unconventional Jewish comedian and the anti-Semitic T.S. Eliot, author of “The Waste Land.” The letters were written between 1961 and 1964.

Perhaps Groucho couldn’t resist the challenge or the opportunity to unleash his rancorous humor when he received a surprising missive from Eliot for a headshot of the comedian.

Groucho obliged and received another note from the poet asking for a photo of Groucho with a mustache and holding a cigar. Groucho again obliged. Eliot then wrote a thank you.

“This is to let you know that your portrait has arrived and has given me great joy and will soon appear in its frame on my wall with other famous friends such as W.B. Yeats and Paul Valery.”

Groucho was then off and running, pushing his own Jewishness, and punching holes in the Anglophile’s pomposity given the poet’s American roots.

Excerpted from Groucho’s letter: “Dear Tom…I think I read somewhere that your first name is the same as Tom Gibbons’, a prizefighter who once lived in St Paul.”

He may have feigned ignorance of the

poet’s known information: “My best to you and your lovely wife, whoever she may be.”

He calls him an “early American, (I don’t mean that you are an old piece of furniture, but you are a fugitive from St Louis). The name Tom fits many things. There was once a famous Jewish actor named Thomashevsky.

All male cats are named Tom—unless they have been fixed.”

In 1962, they finally met for dinner in London. It was one of the great dining disasters in history. In person, the two fizzled. "There were awkward lulls in the conversation," according to Anna Knoebel at The Outlet. "Neither man was inclined to discuss his own work, while the other was eager to praise it. They stopped writing shortly thereafter."

Groucho’s famous quip: “I have had a perfectly wonderful evening,” he once said to a host, “but this wasn't it" may well have been said of the dinner. And so ended the pen pals.

ALBERT EINSTEIN’S LITTLE-KNOWN CORRESPONDENCE WITH W.E.B. DU BOIS ABOUT EQUALITY AND RACIAL JUSTICE “Professor Einstein is not a mere mathematical mind. He is a living being, sympathetic with all human advance… and he hates race prejudice because as a Jew he knows what it is.”

We all know of Albert Einstein’s legacy in science. His very name is used in popular speech to mean “genius.” What is less known is his commitment to human rights, in an era where such views were not the norm. Among many examples, Einstein and Freud wrote to each other about human nature, violence and peace.

Forgotten as well, was his friendship with Iyar • Sivan 5778 | SDJewishJournal.com 59

Juanita’s letter prompted two replies from both Anne and her sister Margot (who wrote to Juanita’s sister Betty Ann).

The letters were in English. No doubt Otto Frank translated.

Anne also included a photo. the African-American singer, actor, and civil rights activist Paul Robeson. He also wrote to a small girl in South Africa, encouraging her not to let gender stop her from her scientific aspirations.

While certainly his experience with antiSemitism furthered his beliefs, his early correspondence on justice pre-dates the war.

One superb example is his correspondence, starting in 1931, with early civil rights legend W.E.B. Du Bois, who requested a piece from Einstein to the journal of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which Du Bois had cofounded 1909, 20 years after receiving a PhD. from Harvard, the first African-American to do so.

The letter from Du Bois, dated October 14, 1931, was originally written in German as Einstein was living in Berlin as well as

60 SDJewishJournal.com | May 2018

Du Bois who was in Germany as a graduate student.

Excerpted: “Sir: I am taking the liberty of sending you some copies of THE CRISIS magazine. THE CRISIS is published by American Negroes in defense of the citizenship rights of 12 million people descended from the former slaves of this country. We have just reached our 21st birthday. I am writing to ask if in the midst of your busy life you could find time to write us a word about the evil of race prejudice in the world. A short statement from you on this subject would help us greatly in our continuing fight for freedom.

I should greatly appreciate word from you.

Very sincerely yours, W. E. B. Du Bois.”

The 51-year-old Einstein answered within two weeks.

“My Dear Sir! Please find enclosed a short contribution for your newspaper. Because

of my excessive workload I could not send a longer explanation.

WITH DISTINGUISHED RESPECT, ALBERT EINSTEIN’S ESSAY: “It seems to be a universal fact that minorities, especially when their Individuals are recognizable because of physical differences, are treated by majorities among whom they live as an inferior class. The tragic part of such a fate, however, lies not only in the automatically realized disadvantage suffered by these minorities in economic and social relations, but also in the fact that those who meet such treatment themselves for the most part acquiesce in the prejudiced estimate because of the suggestive influence of the majority, and come to regard people like themselves as inferior. This second and more important aspect of the evil can be met through closer union and conscious educational enlightenment among the minority, and so emancipation of the soul of the minority can be attained. The determined effort of the American Negroes in this direction deserves every recognition and assistance.” A

Feature: Hebrew School

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Growing up Jewish:

Hebrew School | BY PATRICIA GOLDBLATT |

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irst there was the inviting environment of Sunday School, a place of acceptance, hugging, loving older women who resembled the bubbies of your dreams: soft, rounded ladies with greyish buns, hands overflowing with delicious goodies to eat, their warmth, their praise and delight at your coming, shaking yourself from your cozy bed on the weekend to come to this place of easy learning.

However, once you turned five or six and had started grade one at public school, you were faced with an entirely new reality, one tacked on to the regular school day, two days a week from 4:30-6:30 and another on Sunday morning. The teachers at Beth Shalom located across the street from my father’s hi fidelity store were a mixed lot. Some were university students, some displaced persons, European refugees or Israeli immigrants attempting to make a new life in Canada.

And instead of the front doors adjacent to the synagogue set out for Sunday School kindergarteners, we entered through the back of the building on the unpaved car park. Up narrow twisting hallways, we climbed, I expecting the same warmth of welcome that I had anticipated and experienced in Sunday School. Tales of Abra-

ham clubbing the idols, dancing Vashti, greggers to push out Haman’s evil name, trees bursting with buds on Tu B’shivat or the hard bark – I, like boker from Israel distributed to us, had set the stage for alluring, magical tales, interesting foods and the promise of rich and interesting experiences.

But on this first day before me was an empty classroom, and we girls, instructed to wait outside in a single line, began slowly and methodically to take up our desks in an orderly fashion. A sober stiff- backed young woman entered, took her place at the front and rapped on her wooden desk, calling us to attention. Rosh Hashanah would soon arrive, so she grimly indicated the large book drawn out filling the entire huge green board behind her. It was ominous. Commandeering a stick, she pointed out that this was the book in which we would be judged, our fates sealed. Although we were silly young things, ponytailed in summer dresses, our expressions of joyful curiosity quickly faded as we feared our futures were being foretold and our behaviors of prayer, charity and repentance set out as the markers that would determine whether we would continue to participate as the daughters of our families; or if we would be erased, struck down dead by G-d, for perhaps not sharing canIyar • Sivan 5778 | SDJewishJournal.com 61

dy hidden in the recesses of our pockets, pinching our siblings, or even coming late to class, having dawdled on the way from our other schools: all transgressions foretelling our doom. He, always watching, knew everything.

Years later, my own son’s first day also terrified him so much that trembling, he refused to re-

pushed closer and closer to the perimeter of the room where red-haired Yahudit inhabited the space in front of me and gum chewing Shira behind. We were conscious that our class location was prescribed by our inability to memorize and repeat the prayers.

In short, we were uneducable, easily ignored if we were beyond

lations. For Yahudit, Shira and me, a passing scowl should our teacher turn to acknowledge a breeze from the window. We giggled when the Hebrew word “bum,” a forbidden word, was uttered in the “Sh’ma Israel,” the teacher’s steely eyes burning into our souls. Even the smartest girls could not conceal their embarrassment when they had to murmur the word. But it was the three of us at the window edge that received our teacher’s displeasure as we tried to suppress laughter behind our fingers.

Although all seats were originally filled in first grade, as years passed, fewer girls persevered, and in spite of my lack of progress, I was passed on to the next grade, my seat always at the farthest reaches of the room. Grade three was catastrophic as a young Mr. Urbas, requesting I stand from my position now at the very back of the classroom, read from the board, and we discovered I needed glasses. I felt the

I looked with compassion and sorrow at this young woman, not understanding completely the horror story she was conveying of her life in a land that was far from milk and honey. In every class, I seemed unable to go beyond this narrative, her mannerism brisk, perfunctory in spite of the tragic tale she had shared with her wide-eyed students in her heavily accented voice. Throughout the year, I replayed in my mind, the parts of a black truck scattered in the sand, fragments of flesh turning the sand pink.

And from 30 pupils originally, there were maybe six of us left, ready for confirmation.

This final year, grade five, it was Mr. Green, warm, affable, understanding Mr. Green, wearing his short sleeved sport shirt who greeted us girls at the door at each class: and as studies have shown, one person can make the difference. Undoing the previous years, my aversion to learning loaded with unpleasant memo-

I learned so much from Mr. Green: that education can be fun; that I was teachable; that attending class could be more than just following my parents’ wishes, that there was even delight in gleaning new information, in connecting and comprehending lessons that might build me as a student, a Jew, able to communicate, participate and ultimately enjoy the tenets of my religion. turn. When we queried why, he tearfully explained, the teacher had taken the children to the sanctuary to see “the bones” of our ancestors. “Not bones,” I explained, “books.” He said he had kept his eyes down, tightly clenched, as his moreh had pulled back the screen from the ark and begun to unwrap something velvet, he, fearful a shaking skeleton who might grab him.

Those early days for me were not conducive to study. The brightest in my class were placed closest to the teacher, but I, preferring to watch the fortunate children free to play outside in the lane, and savoring the sweets I had smuggled into class, was 62 SDJewishJournal.com | May 2018

the teacher’s sight lines.

In the divided class, there was a profusion of names I’d not heard before, but I enjoyed the sounds of the elision of letters making a musical presence such as Rifka, Shulamed, Seepora, Channah, Miriam... My own name was ugly, I thought, Pessy, possibly meaning lazy as it was related to Pesach/ Passover when we recline at the table. Two bright girls were called Chava, although one’s English name was Honey and the other, Elaine: this was incomprehensible to me. They sat in locations one and two, directly in front of the teacher’s desk. For them, it was beaming smiles of encouragement, and congratu-

hot tears sear my eyes as I was now exposed as not only slow, but also near-sighted. Thick as coke bottles, those glasses did not encourage me on to heed better attention during those hours my mother insisted I attend, explaining she wished she had been able to participate in prayers and would not have her girls suffer the same lack of confidence. I’m not sure if he called on me again, but in my darkest heart, I hated him.

In Grade four, our teacher, an exuberant attractive sabra from Israel, recounted how she as a soldier had almost been blown to bits in a skirmish, her pregnant body losing its precious cargo.

ries, this man taught me how to actually read and write in Hebrew, bringing me close to the others whose learning had been properly scaffolded as they had progressed through homework, attention and absorption of concept, book work and recitation.

It was exhilarating to be moved closer to the front of the room, my presence accepted, even acknowledged with kindly nods of approval. In fact, I had improved so much that I was awarded a special certificate for my accomplishments. And, no doubt, were my past teachers still employed at the school and present at graduation, they must have shook their heads in unison that Mr. Green;

ordinary, cheerful Mr. Green was able to accomplish so much with that girl whose name they had likely forgotten – the one with curly hair whose head was permanently turned to look out that side window. On that day of graduation before the entire congregation, my heart soared.

I wore a white dress with flowers down the front, and at the conclusion of the service, my grandfather whirled me around in a dance.

I learned so much from Mr. Green: that education can be fun; that I was teachable; that attending class could be more than just following my parents’ wishes, that there was even delight in gleaning new information, in connecting and comprehending lessons that might build me as a student, a Jew, able to communicate, participate and ultimately enjoy the tenets of my religion.

I remember him teaching me, fondly, and wished that he had

been positioned earlier as my instructor, for there are so many deficits in my Hebrew education.

But unfortunately, like my mother, even now I cannot succinctly follow all the prayers in the book, requiring my husband to point out the particular line so I can rejoin the other congregants, and if at Passover, I attempt to read my portion in Hebrew, my words come slowly or my confusion with a dot at the top corner of a letter makes me stumble. No one minds, of course, only me, but I feel the contrast of the rest of the family, their smoothly flowing progressive Haggadah offerings, contrasting to my sounding out words that are unfamiliar, slowing the Seder to almost a standstill. Regrettably.

As a mother myself, I heard my own children’s complaints regarding their Hebrew education about “ Mr. Iraqi from Iran and Mr. Irani from Iraq,” and the teacher who admonished my son that “he did not care that his grandfather had died” ( no doubt a regular student excuse for not doing homework. Although yes, Jordan’s grandfather had passed away), but as in all schools, religious or not, there are those people who forget who their pupils are who are put into their precious care, and for whom it is the lesson, not the child, the need to accomplish so much in so much time, to complete the course of study as prescribed by the syllabus, forgetting or perhaps never comprehending that every child will learn differently: as Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences prescribes.

Still for me, there is a sadness that the spirit of those early days in Sunday School Jewish had not endured, yet I recall Mr. Green as a teacher who had truly impacted on my sense of self as a Jew and can remain hopeful for the Mr. Greens that come into one’s life. Would that be so for all of our children. A

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june 30 dinner package available

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Visit the website for ticket information, dinner options & additional artist announcements. Acts are subject to change.

Iyar • Sivan 5778 | SDJewishJournal.com 63

Book Review: A Survivor’s Compassionate Wisdom

A Survivor’s Compassionate Wisdom | BY SHARON ROSEN LEIB |

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hen an American G.I. extricated Edith Eva Eger from a pile of corpses in 1945 she was 17 years old and barely clinging to life. Now, at 90, she’s an acclaimed La Jolla psychologist, proud great-grandmother and first-time author.

Her 2017 book “The Choice: Embrace the Possible” may become the last professionally published memoir written by a living Holocaust survivor. This fact alone should make her book required reading.

and the debilitating anxiety of post-traumatic stress caused by witnessing Dr. Mengele send her mother and many others to the gas chambers. Then she goes to the next level, a higher plane removed from the daily torment of Holocaust horror, by challenging readers to break free of inner demons and mental constraints to become our best selves. She urges us to love ourselves above all else so that we can love others.

Dr. Eger movingly describes her journey from traumatized Holocaust victim who internalized her suffering, to psychology

book, she scatters stories demonstrating how her own long road to recovery enabled her to offer love and acceptance to her patients that in turn helped them process their suffering. Reading these moving accounts of her ability to channel her devastating Holocaust experiences into transformative empathy made me cry more than once.

She sheds her victimhood and prevails by turning the horrific traumas she endured into the gift of effective therapy.

Dr. Eger tells readers of this miraculous survival tale, “I want you to hear my story and say:

gary only 70 survived the war.

Her survival is a blessing to patients whom she has treated and readers able to revel in the wisdom of a 90-year-old survivor with the courage to relive the past and the stamina to tell her story. Dr. Eger embodies the light of loving compassion and enables us to feel its healing power. She is a living, breathing, caring historic treasure. She intends her book to be an affirmation and so it is. Read it and be inspired – it’s what the good Dr. Eger orders.

“The Choice” has already garnered two significant honors:

‘If she can do it, then so can I!’” She explains how her childhood training as a dancer and gymnast saved her more than once –she performed ballet to entertain Dr. Mengele, cartwheeled her sister Magda to safety and used her physical agility to skirt capture. After she and her sister were liberated, they learned that out of the 15,000 Jews deported from their hometown in Hun-

the Jewish Book Council’s National Jewish Book Award in the Biography, Autobiography and Memoir category; and a Christopher Award (created in 1949 to honor creative work that “affirms the highest values of the human spirit”). Her affecting memoir deserves these accolades, a wide readership and to engender so much more love. A

Her survival is a blessing to patients whom she has treated and readers able to revel in the wisdom of a 90-year-old survivor with the courage to relive the past and the stamina to tell her story.

But there’s so much more to “The Choice.” Eger takes us far beyond descriptions of her horrific degradations at Auschwitz and on the infamous 1945 Death March. She guides us through a searing explanation of what being a survivor feels like – the all-consuming guilt of “Why me? Did I deserve to survive?”; the profound lifelong grief at losing her parents to pure evil; 64 SDJewishJournal.com | May 2018

student who learned to express and embrace her wounds, and her ultimate emergence as a practicing psychologist and lecturer who transformed her profound pain into a tool to heal damaged psyches.

She describes her therapeutic method as CHOICE – choosing Compassion, Humor, Optimism, Intuition, Curiosity and self-Expression. Throughout the

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Shavuot

Shavuot-Giving of the Ten commandments | BY RABBI BEN LEINOW |

D

uring this month we celebrate the giving of the ‘Ten Commandments’ by the Creator (G-d) to the Jewish People. We celebrate by reading the Commandments, and talking about them. Why should we spend 10 minutes of our time reading the Ten Commandments? The reason is that the Ten Commandments are important. If we do not read them again and rededicate ourselves to carrying out the Ten Commandments, then in a moment without thought we might forget about them and break one of them.

Many people, including the politicians of our country, claim to read the Bible regularly.

They also claim to go to worship services regularly, and they tend to ignore the Ten Commandments regularly. Maybe writing a note to our leaders would remind them as well as us of our need for the Commandments.

If you are planning to go to synagogue when the Ten Commandments are read and discussed, then by reading this article you might be ready to think about the Commandments before hearing them read at synagogue services. The following is a quick summary that you could use for discussion purposes with friends or relatives.

The Ten Commandments are a contract.

In the first three commandments we are reminded who the contract is with – G-d and the Jewish People (the Jewish people represent all the people of the world that make this contract with G-d). When talking to friends and relatives, you might discuss how you relate to G-d. It would be helpful for you to

create a path for you to connect to G-d. We Jews do not make statues or images of G-d because that would limit G-d to a place and time, and we believe G-d is ever existent.

A way to connect to G-d would be to love and respect our environment. I actually cried when I heard that the last male northern white rhino died. Part of the contract is to protect all of nature. You renew the contract by reading the first three Commandments and thinking how you will fulfill all ten.

If you have difficulty in believing that there is a G-d, my suggestion is that you replace the word G-d with the word inspiration. You might say to yourself that it was inspiration that brought the People of Israel out of the land of Egypt. It is inspiration that causes you not to need carved images or likenesses. It is inspiration that connects you to the remaining commandments.

The next seven commandments are a shortcut to good communal living. We often forget that we are here on earth as the result of other people in our communities. We can only create a good environment if we work hard, produce goods and services that will aid us all to live well and establish a world where we feel good about ourselves and the people around us. If one of the basic needs of our contract is to work hard, then another should be that we find time to rest physically and mentally. So the fourth commandment is work hard – labor at your job six days of the week, but on the seventh day everyone, as well as work animals should have a day of

rest from physical and mental tasks. Remember the Sabbath Day during every week and make it holy.

The next communal commandment is to honor your father and your mother. I believe that the concept of honoring is a two-way street. If parents treat their children in such a way that the children will want to raise children, then the children will honor the parents by strengthening the family with the children they raise. If children in a family cannot give birth to children, then they will honor the parents by raising children who do not have parents.

The next five commandments are ‘do nots,’ which our society treats as ‘should nots.’ ‘Should nots’ are activities people will do if they think they can get away with the forbidden behavior. These actions are harmful to the individuals involved and harmful to society.

The last five commandments are: “Do not Murder, Do not Commit Adultery, Do not Steal, Do not be a False Witness against fellow human beings, and Do not Covet.’ You may notice I made a small change to one of the ‘Do nots.’ I changed the False Witness to include lying. I believe that lying and especially in public is being a False Witness to our society, and is therefore harmful to us all.

I hope you enjoy the holiday of Shavuot in the synagogue or temple of your choice. May you find joy in your connection with Judaism through the Ten Commandments. A

Iyar • Sivan 5778 | SDJewishJournal.com 67

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Lianne Goldsmith

KITCHEN PERI PERI

with Lianne Goldsmith www.kitchenperiperi.com

SOMETIMES YOU JUST NEED

FISH AND CHIPS!

Growing up in landlocked Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) in the 70s, salmon of any kind was an absolute extravagance served only at weddings and b’nai mitzvahs. I have strong memories of excitedly heading to the buffet table to grab one or two tiny fresh bagels and topping them with a generous swirl of smoked salmon. I loved its unique buttery salty flavor in combination with a generous squirt of fresh lemon.

I would always go back for seconds hoping against hope that the platter would not have been scraped clean, which it always was.

In Los Angeles, I’m fortunate to have access to fresh wild caught Alaskan Salmon whenever the hankering gets too hard to resist. While it’s certainly a little pricey, its subtle flavor and silky texture make it a worthy special indulgence. Baked salmon matched with simple, hand-cut oven-baked potatoes and a light cabbage salad, is simply one of my favorite gastronomic treats.

And the best thing about this delicious feast is the simplicity of it all. In fact, my daughter Lennon, whose cooking skills remain undiscovered as of now, mastered this recipe while interning at YSL in Paris. Appropriate don’t you think?

Lianne can also be found at: www.facebook.com/KitchenPeriPeri www.instagram.com/kitchenperiperi.

FOOD

Oven baked

ORGANIC SOCKEYE SALMON with Hand cut oven baked fries and mandolin sliced red cabbage salad

OVEN BAKED SALMON

RED CABBAGE SALAD

Ingredients: • 2-3lb salmon fillet • 4 freshly squeezed lemons • ½ cup chopped fresh parsley • ½ cup chopped fresh dill • Add chopped fresh tarragon and scallions (optional)

Ingredients: • One medium red cabbage • ¼ cup olive oil • ¼ cup balsamic vinegar • ½ cup fennel or dill • ½ cup roasted sesame seeds • 1 tsp salt • 1 tsp fresh ground black pepper

Directions: • Place salmon fillets in a roasting dish and season with salt and pepper • Mix olive oil and fresh lemon juice and pour generously over salmon • Sprinkle 2/3 of the herbs on salmon • Bake salmon in open pan for approximately 12 minutes at 400 degrees • Let salmon rest for five minutes • Sprinkle remaining fresh herbs over salmon • Feeds 6

Directions: • Finely shred cabbage with mandolin (be careful not to slice your fingers!)

• Place in a large bowl • Toss in fennel/dill • Whisk olive oil, balsamic vinegar and salt and pepper in a small bowl, and pour over cabbage • Toss in sesame seeds and let salad sit for 10 minutes prior to eating

OVEN BAKED POTATOES Ingredients: • 6 medium organic russet potatoes • Sea salt • Ground black pepper Directions • Wash and cut potatoes lengthways into ¼ inch thick spears (no need to peel the potatoes) • Place on a baking tray and sprinkle with salt and pepper • Bake/roast for approximately 30 minutes at 400 degrees or until crispy on the outside and soft in the center Iyar • Sivan 5778 | SDJewishJournal.com 71

ADVICE

Shalom, San Diegans: has a point — without letting her stick it to you. Time to sweeten things up.

Getting It! Your Personal Strategy:

ASK MARNIE

by Marnie Macauley

editor@sdjewishjournal.com

M

oney! If there’s one thing that can turn some relatively sane people into penurious swine, it’s shekels, scratch, gelt. We all know who they are. The uncle, zayde, bubbe who pinches our cheeks, then will roll over you with an 18-wheeler to pinch a penny. Should David Duke be reading this, it is not a Jewish ethnotype! It’s an equal opportunity mental health condition I call pathological cheapery. I could psychobabble you into a plethora of reasons: early poverty, equating money with success, an ego that resembles Swiss Cheese. But I won’t.

(OK, I lied a little.) As we age, we either get “more” or “less” of whoever we are when we’re young. Let’s look.

LET THE SUNSHINE IN DEAR MARNIE: I’m a 74-year-old widower who has kept company for the last nine months with a widow in the next condo. I’ve been lonely since my wife died two years ago and Rose makes me feel alive again. We both love golf, travel and are friends with other couples in the complex. I’m very comfortable financially, and we want to make it official.

The problem is my daughter, Leah. She’s 40, married, but refuses to accept Rose. It’s true Rose can be outspoken, but the final straw was when I gave her a pearl and ruby ring I bought for my late wife. Leah didn’t talk to me for a week. Marnie, my wife had nice jewelry. Why should it go to waste? Now, Leah says if I marry this “gold-digger” (Rose isn’t, she has her own money), we won’t be welcome in her life. Any advice for a Miserable Dad in California?

MARNIE SAYS: You mean aside from sending Miss Leah lemon peels? Her blackmail’s a stinker. But, in fairness, you erred. Not by daring to live and love, but by recognizing she 72 SDJewishJournal.com | May 2018

What’s feuling your maidel’s madness? She lost Mom. Upsetting enough. Now, she’s quaking over losing you — and losing stuff — to Rose. She saw giving away her mom’s ring as a betrayal (think Benedict Arnold).

Quit giving Rose your late wife’s things.

Separation of the “spouses” is more sensitive than recycling, which hints of “replacing.”

Buy retail. (OK, wholesale, but new.)

Offer Leah her pick of Mom’s treasures. To all my gritty readers, no, he doesn’t “have to” and no, he doesn’t “owe it.” It’s just smart and fair. Leah feels more entitled to wear Mom’s things. (So much for her point).

Before you go under the chuppah, consult an attorney. I’m very pro “nupts” and wills for those who’ve have been around a few blocks on more than a skateboard. A fair protection policy not only covers you, but (may) calm down suspicious heirs.

Speak to Leah’s fears. Establish you’ll recognize them, but won’t be held hostage by them. Tell her what you’ve done, reassure her she’s still your lemon drop and her mom is irreplaceable, but Daddy’s moving on. She can take the giddy ride with you or stay gridlocked. Her choice. You hope she’ll give Rose a chance and vice versa.

Then grab Rose and floor it while humming “California Dreamin’.” It’s time to catch the sun, because it’s cold where you were, and you deserve the soft warmth of a loving shoulder once again, my friend.

BROKEN TRUST DEAR MARNIE: My husband and I are in our mid-fifties. We have a gifted 21-year-old son I’ll call Aaron. We’re now at a crisis point that has put our son in therapy over an old incident. As for some background, until Matt was 13 (yes, that long ago), we were doing well financially. At the time of Matt’s bar mitzvah and until he went to college on a full scholarship, whenever he received fairly large money gifts from family, we gave him part of it, and put away the rest with the understanding we would hold it for him for something special. When he was 16, my husband made some bad business choices from which we are just now recovering. Well, the “special” time has come. Matt wants to buy a new car but the money is gone. When we were facing los-

ing our home my husband used it. We didn’t tell Matt then as he was too young, but were finally forced to admit the truth when he asked us for it recently. Matt is so enraged, he barely talks to us, and when he does, it’s a huge fight. My husband explained we never would’ve taken the money had it not been for an emergency and Matt should understand.

The more my husband explains he had to do it for the family, the worse things get and I’m caught between them. Now what? – Mom in the Middle MARNIE SAYS: While we’re on the subject of “middles” you and your husband get into the middle -- with Matt’s permission -- of one of his therapy sessions, then arrange for your own. Go! Do! Now! Here’s why. You broke the deal with your son. And yes. It’s a Very Big Deal. Actually, make that Very Big Deals.

Getting It! Your Personal Strategy: Deals broken: • You took his money without his knowledge.

You never explained the need at the time or afterward.

• You eviscerated trust and respect, which I assume are (OK, should be) family values.

• You “stole” it and used it. Your Robin Hoodish reasoning doesn’t play outside 14th century Nottinghampshire.

• You failed to even mention possible repayment.

Don’t confuse need with M.O. or “your rights.” He was too young, you say? Feh. He knew there were “problems.” He didn’t need every dire detail. He did need to hear you needed his gelt and the conditions that would allow you to make it up to him! Yes, you were desperate. But healthy families cannot violate one principle (trust) for another (“taking”) and expect to survive this dastardly shell game without nuclear destruction.

Apologize to Matt. Explain you now know the difference between helping and helping yourself to his holdings – and his hopes. Revisit the crime and replay how you’d do it over.

Finally, life is a journey of change and circumstance. How we manage them tests our values and defines who we are – who we can trust – and who we can’t.

Sadly, your son found out. Now go fix it. A

SYNAGOGUE LIFE

EVENTS Rock Around the Rabbi with Temple Adat Shalom May 5, 5 p.m., Temple Adat Shalom, 15905 Pomerado Road, Poway, CA, 92064 Temple Adat Shalom is celebrating Rabbi David’s 10th year with a 50’s style sock hop. Guests are encouraged to come dressed for the time and enjoy some dinner and dancing.

Visit adatshalom.com for tickets and more information.

Holocaust Survivor Lecture with Chabad of Chula Vista May 9, 7:30 p.m., Eastlake Beach Club, 2050 Lakeshore Drive, Chula Vista, CA 91913 Dr. Eisenbach’s astonishing story of Holocaust survival serves as a powerful message in our timely battle against anti-Semitism, bigotry and hate. Tickets are $15 for Adults and $12 for Seniors, visit jewishchulavista.com/remember for more info.

Statewide Ballot Measures: Nonpartisan Voter Information Session with Beth Israel May 15, 7 p.m., Beth Israel, 9001 Towne Centre Dr., San Diego, CA, 92122 On June 5, California is holding a statewide direct primary election. Come and receive information on the ballot measures that the state will be voting on. Visit cbisd.org for more information.

Illustration by Pepé Fainberg

Knit ‘n’ Nosh in Beit Midrash with Beth El May 10, 1 p.m., Beth El, 8660 Gilman Dr., La Jolla, CA, 92037.

Beth El’s Women’s Connection makes tikkun projects and more. Visit cbe.org for more information.

*Interested in having your event featured?

Contact assistant@sdjewishjournal.com. Submissions are due by 15th of the month for the next issue.

Iyar • Sivan 5778 | SDJewishJournal.com 73

City Ballet

what’s goin’ on?

BY EILEEN SONDAK

City Ballet will showcase the world premiere of its interpretation of “Carmina Burana,” a ballet designed along the lines of Carl Orff ’s powerful score. The production, headed to the Spreckels Theater May 11 – 13, will feature the Pacific Coast Chorale and City Ballet’s “Carmina Burana”. live music from the City Ballet Orchestra. Also on this ambitious program is “Mozart’s Concerto,” choreographed by Elizabeth Wistrich.

Lyceum

Photo by Kevin Berne

Nathan Gunn will perform “Flying Solo,” a new piece written and directed by Hershey Felder. In true Felder style, this solo work features the real story of one of America’s greatest baritones singing selections from classic American musicals, along with contemporary songs and a taste of opera. “Flying Solo” will make its home at the Lyceum Stage May 23 through June 10 – and with Gunn at its core, the show seems destined to be another soaring success for Felder.

The Lyceum Theater will welcome San Diego Ballet’s “Jazz Dance” May 18 – 20. This concert features mixed repertory and turns the spotlight on jazz saxophone great Charles McPherson. A world premiere by Kamau Kenyatta is also on the program.

Coronado Playhouse “A Thousand Splendid Suns”

The Old Globe

The Old Globe’s White Theater will wind down its production of Anna Ziegler’s “The Wanderers” on May 6. This Globe-commissioned world premiere revolves around a pair of shy young Orthodox Jews embarking on an arranged marriage. Another important element in the clever plot is a pair of high-profile celebrities involved in a dangerously flirtatious correspondence.

Following on May 26 is the West Coast premiere of “Native Gardens,” slated to inhabit the Globe’s theater-in-the-round space until June 24. The plot focuses on a young power couple and their culture clash over a backyard garden in a historic neighborhood.

The Globe’s Main Stage is ready to unveil “A Thousand Splendid Suns,” an epic theatrical adaptation of a best-selling novel about three generations of Afghan women and their remarkable resilience.

The emotion-charged play is set in the war-torn world of Kabul in the 1990s, when battle upends a family and a beautiful girl seeks shelter in the home of an older neighbor. “A Thousand Splendid Suns” will take over the main stage May 12 through June 17.

San Diego Opera

San Diego Opera is promising “One Amazing Night” at the Balboa Theater on May 5 – to culminate the season. Soprano Lise Lindstrom and bass-baritone Greer Grimsley will perform in concert with the San Diego Symphony on that very special evening.

74 SDJewishJournal.com | May 2018

Coronado Playhouse will present “Next to Normal,” an intimate musical that shines a light on flawed and complicated people, with humor and unflinching authenticity. The show will be ensconced at the Playhouse’s Coronado home May 25 through June 17 – taking audiences into the minds and hearts of this challenged family.

Cygnet

Cygnet Theater will follow up its successful production of “A Little Night Music” with a world-premiere to end its season on a high note. “The Wind and the Breeze” will be performed at the Old Town Theater May 16 through June 10. This new show explores the expectations of friendship and the consequences of standing firm on a shifting ground.

San Diego Symphony

The San Diego Symphony will play on with “Dances, Suites, and Serenades” May 4 – 6. Fabien Gabel will conduct a program that includes two works by Bernstein, Richard Strauss’ Suite from Der Rosenkavalier, and Offenbach’s Suite from la vie Parisienne. Violinist Simone Lamsma will be guest artist. The Bernstein salute continues on May 8 with “Bernstein and Beethoven, featuring pianist Orli Shaham.” “Barber, Bernstein, Beethoven” carries on the theme

Photo by Aaron Rumley

with Jahja Ling conducting the three-piece program May 11 – 13.

Pianist Martin Helmchen and mezzo-soprano Kelley O’Connor will be guest artists.

“The Passion of Joan of Arc” (a silent film that dates back to 1928) will be screened at Symphony Hall on May 19, with ensemble accompaniment. A special evening with Audra McDonald is slated for May 24. The multi-award winning actress/singer is making her debut with the San Diego Symphony. The season finale is set for May 25 – 27, with Edo de Waart on the podium and piano duo Christina and Michelle Naughton on the keyboards. The program features works by Bernstein and Brahms, along with the Concerto for Two Pianos by Francis Poulenc.

San Diego Musical Theatre

San Diego Musical Theatre’s revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s classic musical, “South Pacific,” continues its run at the troupe’s permanent home – the Horton Grand – through May 27.

Lamb’s Players Theatre

The Lamb’s Players is delivering the farcical merriment of “Noises Off,” a British comedy that proves anything can go wrong when you’re trying to put on a play – and that goes for both sides of the curtain. You can laugh at the misfortunes of these hapless players through May 20 at the Lamb’s Coronado home.

JCompany

JCompany’s 25th season continues May 4 – 13 with “Hairspray,” directed by Joey Landwehr. This ode to the 1950s is a family-friendly musical that is light and frothy enough to appeal to all ages.

San Diego Museum of Art

Front Row: L-R: Benjamin Cole, Noelle Marion, Sharon Rietkerk, Back Row: L-R: James Newconb, Jacqueline Ritz And Christopher M. Williams

North Coast Rep

North Coast Repertory Theater will give local audiences a chance to savor a contemporary classic by comic genius, Alan Ayckbourn, until May 6. “How the Other Half Loves” is a high-octane romp that juggles three very different marriages and turns them into a game of mixed doubles – involving sex, jealousy and tricky stagecraft. On May 8, the company will feature “Tuesday Night Comics,” hosted by Mark Christopher Lawrence.

David Ellenstein will direct the next NCR offering, “The Father,” a play that has amassed a treasure trove of awards in Paris, London and New York. This West Coast premiere deals with an 80-year-old man living with his daughter and son-in-law. He was a tap dancer in his heyday, but these days he’s losing his grip.

You can fall into “The Father”’s spell at the troupe’s Solana Beach home May 30 through June 24.

La Jolla Music Society

La Jolla Music Society will present Mark Morris Dance Group on May 12 at the Civic Theatre. The program will be a tribute to the 50th anniversary of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Beatles fans and modern dance aficionados alike will welcome this concert by one of our most influential contemporary choreographers. The Society’s Piano Series at TSRI will feature Juho Pohjonen on May 18. The pianist will perform four works, including Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasy. Following on May 19 (at Jacobs Qualcomm Hall) is “Schubert’s Swan Song III,” a program highlighting Schubert’s Piano Sonata No. 19 in C Minor, D.958. The Society will conclude its season with “Schubertiade II,” on May 20, but the venue is yet to be announced.

The Museum of Art is featuring “Nancy Lorenz: Moon Gold,” a solo exhibition of the work of this New York-based artist. The exhibition consists of 85 pieces, including sculptures, paintings, and others that reflect the artist’s East meets West oeuvre. The art museum has opened its vaults for “Visible Vaults,” a collection of 300 pieces, including works by Andy Warhol, Rodin, Toulouse-Lautrec and other great artists. This exciting exhibition will be on view through Nov. 12.

Mingei

Mingei International Museum is ready to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the founding of Israel by teaming up with the House of Israel in Balboa Park to showcase a retrospective exhibition of the nation’s diverse and lively craft and design. More than 80 artists will be highlighted in this show, set to be ensconced until Sept. 3.

Mingei is also featuring “Weaving a Path – Navajo Women and the Feminine Ethos” through May 28. The exhibition includes rugs and blankets. Mingei recently unveiled “Voluminous Art – Treasures from San Diego’s University Libraries.” This collaboration will feature masterworks of book art, and will remain at the museum through Sept. 3.

San Diego History Center

The San Diego History Center is celebrating “The History & Heritage of the San Diego Jewish Community” in its current exhibition, ensconced throughout May. Also on display is “Irving Gill: New Architecture for a Great Country” and “Art and Heritage: Maurice Braun, Belle Baranceanu, and Harry Sternberg.”

The History Museum’s permanent exhibition, “Placed Promises,” chronicles the history of the San Diego region – and the America’s Cup Exhibition, highlights the sailing race held in San Diego three times since 1988.

Timken Museum

The Timken Museum has extended its “Romantic Impulse in the American Landscape Tradition” exhibition until the end of May.

Iyar • Sivan 5778 | SDJewishJournal.com 75

the news Never Again Education Act

Forty Ambassadors to the United Nations visited Israel last month on a delegation organized by The American Zionist Movement Forty Ambassadors to the United Nations visited Israel last month on a delegation organized by The American Zionist Movement (AZM) in cooperation with Ambassador Danny Danon, Israel’s Permanent Representative to the UN. The ambassadors hailed from Africa, Asia-Pacific, the Caribbean, Europe and Latin America. While they were there they met with government officials, touring historical, religious and strategic sites and participating in events to commemorate Yom Ha’Atzmaut, Israel’s Independence Day, on the 70th anniversary. “Seventy years after the United Nations played a key role in the founding of the State of Israel, it is significant that so many foreign ambassadors to UN are visiting Israel to see firsthand the history and accomplishments of the country,” said AZM president Richard D. Heideman.

76 SDJewishJournal.com | May 2018

Last month, New York Congresswoman Carolyn B. Maloney joined Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America and Jewish advocacy groups to announce the “Never Again Education Act,” which will give teachers across the U.S. resources to teach their students the lessons of the Holocaust. Maloney introduced the bill with fellow New York Congressman Dan Donovan and seven co-chairs of the Bipartisan Congressional Anti-Semitism Task Force.

“For far too many in this country, the memory of the Holocaust is fading and we need to do all we can to ensure that people never forget those atrocities,” Maloney said. “This bipartisan legislation gives our teachers what they need to teach the Holocaust accurately and effectively. We know that hate is learned. Our children are not born with prejudices, and it is up to us to make sure they never learn them.”

Gaslamp Market

while supporting San Diego artists. Shoppers can also enjoy live music while they browse.

The market, which will run down Fifth from Market to Island, will have clothes, jewelry, flowers and handcrafted wood items.

The market is free and near restaurants and shops in the heart of downtown.

The Gaslamp Artisan Market, which features more than 30 local artists of all kinds, opened last month. Every Sunday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. shoppers can come out to the open space market to look for gifts, home items and anything else – all

5th Annual 5 Minute Short Play Festival The JCC David & Dorothea Garfield Theater is hosting a short play festival May 7 at 7 p.m. The plays include comedies, dramas, political and historical pieces. They were selected from over 80 entries into 10 plays by the review committee. The festival’s director D. Candis Paule expresses excitement over the growth of the festival in such a short time and notes that one of the 2015 plays, “A Jewish Joke,” is going Off Broadway in 2019.

MEETINGS AND EVENTS FOR JEWISH SENIORS JFS Balboa Ave. Older Adult Center Contact Aviva Saad (858) 550-5998 May. 10, 10 a.m. Enjoy a Mother’s Day celebration. Cost is $27.

Lawrence Family JCC Contact Melanie Rubin (858) 362-1141 May 10, 1:30 p.m. Using your iPhone/iPad camera. Price is $12-$16.

JFS College Avenue Center at Temple Emanu-El Contact Elissa Landsman (858) 637-3273 May 11, 12:30 p.m. Enjoy a Mother’s Day celebration with music by This String Trio and entertainment by Eileen Wingard.

U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Marks 25th Anniversary been more timely,” said museum chairman Howard Lorber. “Twenty-five years ago we aspired to reach every part of America. Today, with the rising tide of denial, anti-Semitism, and extremism and continued threats of genocide, our message can and must span the globe.” The museum is extending its campaign for a “living memorial” with a goal of $1 billion to reach by 2023.

Screenings of “American Socialist” The film “American Socialist: The Life and Times of Eugene Victor Debs” opens in San Diego at Digital Gym (digitalgym.org). SDJJ interviewed Yale Strom, the filmmaker of the documentary, in our Feb 2018 issue. The documentary chronicles Debs’ life in creating the American Railway Union and co-founding the Socialist Party of America. The screenings will be on-

Veterans Association of North County, Post-385 Contact Marsha Schjolberg (760) 492-7443 Jewish War Veterans meetings May 13, 11 a.m.

North County Jewish Seniors Club at the Oceanside Senior Center Contact Josephine at (760) 295-2564 May 20, 12:30 p.m.

On the Go Excursions Contact Jo Kessler (858) 637-7320 Jun 3, 10:30 a.m. Mingei International Museum is putting on a 70-year anniversary show of Israel’s craft and design. Registration is May 24.

line on the following dates: May 11: 6 p.m., May 12: 6 p.m., May 13: 1 p.m., May 15: 3 p.m., May 16: 7 p.m.

Harvard Students Host Israel Summit

Illustration by Pepé Fainberg

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum marked its 25th anniversary last month with 138 Holocaust survivors and supporters from around the world.

The Elie Wiesel Award was presented to all survivors for their courage, resilience and inspiration. “The lessons Holocaust history teaches about the fragility of freedom, the dangers of hate, and the consequences of inaction have never

Jewish War Veterans of San Diego, Post-185 Contact Jerome Klein at (858) 521-8694 May 13, 10 a.m.

Eight students from Harvard hosted a day-long conference to share their passion for and to educate about Israel. The summit featured prominent speakers on the impact of Israel and also included an Israel career and study abroad fair. Leaders in politics, education, entrepreneurship, sports and fashion were all speakers. The students organized the event to combat anti-Israel sentiment on their campus.

Iyar • Sivan 5778 | SDJewishJournal.com 77

Diversions

| BY JTA NEWS |

Fox Adapting Israeli Show About an Interracial Couple The latest Israeli TV show to be adapted for an American audience will be “Nevsu,” which depicts a marriage between an Ethiopian man and an Ashkenazi Jewish woman. It became the first Israeli show to include a black lead character on a primetime show when it debuted last year.

Fox’s version will be called “Culture Clash,” Deadline reported in April, and will focus on a relationship between an Ethiopian refugee and a white, Midwestern woman. Actor and writer Biniam Bizuneh and “Two Broke Girls” star Beth Behrs landed the lead roles.

According to Deadline, Bizuneh’s character, named Abel, spent time in a refugee camp as a child. Israel is dealing with an African migrant crisis; Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called off a deal last week that would have resettled thousands of African migrants in Western countries and granted thousands of others temporary status in the country.

The project is being spearheaded by Lee Daniels, who has produced or directed films such as “The Butler,” “Precious” and “Monster’s Ball.” The original creators of “Nevsu” — Yosi Vasa, Shai Ben-Atar and Liat Shavi — are listed as producers.

Roni Akale, the director-general of the Ethiopian National Proj-

78 SDJewishJournal.com | May 2018

ect, told JTA last year that he hoped the show, which has since garnered positive reviews, would “highlight the good things that happen in the Ethiopian community.”

Scarlett Johansson to Portray German Mom Who Hides a Jewish Girl From Nazis Scarlett Johansson is on board to star in a film in which she would portray a German mother hiding a Jewish girl in her home from the Nazis.

“Jojo Rabbit” centers on a young German boy who finds out about his mother’s heroism, Variety reported in March on the Fox Searchlight film.

The character of the son still needs to be cast. Production is expected to start this spring, Variety reported.

In Europe, the issue of rescue of Jews by non-Jews during the Holocaust is controversial. In Eastern Europe especially, government-led projects meant to highlight the actions of relatively few local rescuers has been criticized as designed to prevent an open discussion about the actions of countless thousands who collaborated with the German Nazis in the wholesale murder of Jews.

Johansson of late has been focused on action and comedy movies, including last year’s “Ghost in the Shell” and the comedy “Rough Night.” A

TAKE BACK YOUR LIFE AM ISRAEL MORTUARY We Are San Diego’s ONLY All-Jewish Mortuary Serving the community for over 38 years.

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Iyar • Sivan 5778 | SDJewishJournal.com 79

Cantor Deborah Davis

EVENTS

Custom Wedding Ceremonies

Design Decor Production

Let us work together to create a wedding ceremony that reflects the joy of your special day.

Mitzvah Event Productions

As Humanistic Jewish clergy I focus on each couple’s uniqueness and their love for each other. I welcome Jewish, interfaith and same-sex couples. I also perform all life-cycle ceremonies.

For further information please contact

Deborah Davis • 619.275.1539

LYDIA KRASNER 619.548.3485 www.MitzvahEvent.com

member of

lydia@mitzvahevent.com

The Joyous Music of Tradition and Transition.

Let the award-winning

Second Avenue Klezmer Ensemble

provide your wedding or Bar/Bat Mitzvah with lively, authentic music. Tradition has never been so much fun!

www.deborahjdavis.com

JEWISH COMMUNITY Welcoming babies and families to San Diego’s Jewish Community ARE YOU EXPECTING A BABY OR DO YOU KNOW SOMEONE WHO IS? Shalom Baby is an innovative program designed for San Diego families to celebrate the arrival of their Jewish newborns to affiliated, non-affiliated and inter-married families as a welcome to the San Diego Jewish Community.

To receive your Shalom BaBy BaSkeT and for informaTion conTacT: San Diego .............. Judy Nemzer • 858.362.1352 • shalombaby@lfjcc.org North County......... Vivien Dean • 858.357.7863 • shalombabyncounty@lfjcc.org www.lfjcc.org/shalombaby • www.facebook.com/shalombabypjlibrarysandiego

For information call Deborah Davis: 619-275-1539

To hear samples, visit our website: secondavenueklezmer.com

Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center, JACOBS FAMILY CAMPUS, Mandell Weiss Eastgate City Park, 4126 Executive Drive, La Jolla, CA 92037-1348

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Iyar • Sivan 5778 | SDJewishJournal.com 81

HERSHEY FELDER PRESENTS

Nathan Gunn

Flying Solo A MUSICAL STORY ABOUT FAMILY, LOVE, AND THE WILD WORLD OF MUSIC. Written and Directed by

Hershey Felder

Featuring selections from Carousel , Camelot , Golden Oldies, really funny opera stuff and more...

MAY 23 - JU NE 1 0 , 20 1 8 0N T HE LYCEUM STAGE

Get Your Tickets Now! 82 SDJewishJournal.com | May 2018

619.544.1000 | SDREP.ORG | Lyceum Theatre | Horton Plaza

JOIN US IN MAY AS WE CELEBRATE Photo Credit: Paul de Hueck, courtesy the Leonard Bernstein Office, Inc.

Leonard Bernstein at 100 is the worldwide celebration of the 100th birthday of Leonard Bernstein, the composer, conductor, educator, musician, cultural ambassador and humanitarian.

MAY 4, 6

DANCES, SUITES AND SERENADES

MAY 8

BERNSTEIN AND BEETHOVEN WITH ORLI SHAHAM

#BernsteinAt100

MAY 11–13

MAY 25–27

BARBER, BERNSTEIN, BEETHOVEN

SEASON FINALE WITH EDO DE WAART

Tickets & Information

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APRIL 21 – SEPTEMBER 3, 2018

Balboa Park, 1439 El Prado, San Diego, CA 92101 Tues-Sun, 10am– 5pm | Admission $7-10 | mingei.org/Israel Noa Raviv, Ensemble from Hard Copy collection (detail), 2014, mixed media. Collection of the designer.

Iyar • Sivan 5778 | SDJewishJournal.com 83

84 SDJewishJournal.com | May 2018