Shabbat San Diego: A memory to build upon

Challah Baking on the San Diego Jewish Academy campus
Challah Baking on the San Diego Jewish Academy campus

By Selwyn Isakow

Selwyn Isakow
Selwyn Isakow

SAN DIEGO – Pride and unity were the themes of Shabbat San Diego that was held Thursday through Saturday, Oct. 22-24.  There were such unforgettable sights and sounds as a Chabad rebbetzin teaching men, women and children to prepare challahs for baking while a Reform cantor provided entertainment. Amid this scene at the San Diego Jewish Academy, an Orthodox rabbi and a female Reconstructionist rabbi shared a prayer for the State at Israel.   Meanwhile, at Tifereth Israel Synagogue, rabbis of the Conservative, Reform and Chabad movements participated in a similar ceremony.

Those were just the opening scenes for a memorable schedule of Shabbat-oriented events that involved 45 Jewish congregations spread throughout San Diego County and 85 other Jewish organizations, clubs, and schools.  Just putting together the series of events, both large and small, required the work of approximately 300 volunteers serving on 52 committees.

I don’t mean to overwhelm people with statistics but here is a way to grasp the significance of the global Shabbat celebration, which was inspired by the Shabbat South Africa organization.  Take the complex San Diego celebration and multiply it by the 913 cities which simultaneously celebrated Shabbat in 75 countries.

For those several days, the Jews of the world united, and it didn’t make any difference whether they were ultra-Orthodox, Orthodox, Conservative, Reconstructionist, Reform, Jewish Revival or unaffiliated, they all came together to reaffirm their pride in their Jewishness and their desire to build the future together as one people.

The leadership in most of those cities had been contacted well in advance to start the planning process, but there were spontaneous celebrations as well. For example, Lucy Weiser, a graduate of Soille San Diego Hebrew Day School, is currently studying at the Touro College School of Health Sciences in Bayshore, New York, to become a physician’s assistant.  While listening to Pandora, she heard about Shabbat San Diego, and she told a classmate from Cincinnati about what she heard.  She later messaged: “Atara, myself and another girl arranged a Touro Challah Bake today (Thursday) at school for our PA class.  It was a huge success! … As a student group mostly made up of unaffiliated Jews and others in the class – all were excited to take part. Best of all for me was braiding challa with Hamera, an Arab girl in our class.”

One mitzvah leads to another, the rabbis taught.

On Friday evening back in San Diego, there were hundreds of congregational, community and private home dinners, including more than 70 at which Jewish families welcomed guests who had been placed with them by the organizing committee.  An estimated 200 families had ample gatherings of friends and relatives, with some serving as many as 50 people.

Across the county, there were congregational dinners, early bird Shabbat dinners at retirement homes, and in La Jolla, a Community Unity Shabbat luncheon and dinner co-hosted by an Orthodox and a Conservative congregation.  The JCC Preschool held Shabbat Under the Stars and NextGen held a surprise Pop-Up Shabbat under the stars in Balboa Park.

Shabbat morning saw open services in 44 congregations, many featuring Torah study programs, lunches, hikes and lectures.  Housing and hospitality at several hotels within walking distance of various congregations were prearranged, with kosher food included.

The weekend concluded with a huge unity Havdalah celebration in the ballroom of the Town and Country Convention Center in Mission Valley.  Channel 8 Co-Anchor Dan Cohen emceed the evening’s activities which included performances by the San Diego Jewish Men’s Choir and by Jonathan Valverde, the non-Jewish founder of Latinos for Israel.  The featured attraction was ten-time platinum record winner David D’or, whose rendition of “Avinu Malkeinu” was so musically pure that it brought many in the audience to tears.

David D'Or (left) and Jonathan Valverde
David D’Or,left, and Jonathan Valverde (Photo: JM2Group)

At one point, D’Or pulled Valverde out of the audience for a duet that was touching and dramatic.  After the event, the Israeli singer invited Valverde, a public school teacher, to join him in a concert at the Kotel, a dream of Valverde’s.  Shabbat San Diego assisted in raising the funds for Jonathan, his pastor father and mother to make the trip.

Spirituality creates unity and breaks barriers!

Now, Shabbat San Diego is in the process of evaluating the three-day event.  Initial estimates of the total attendance in San Diego was between 15,000 and 20,000,  with 90 percent of the respondents saying they found the experience “spiritual, emotional or educationally meaningful” and less than 1 percent saying they wouldn’t attend next year.

A typical comment was: “Thank you for bringing the community together and making Shabbat an integral part of our culture.”

My hope is that our spiritual and community leaders will build upon the seeds of knowledge of our rich heritage planted throughout the Shabbat San Diego weekend and make this beautiful, unified San Diego mosaic permanent.

The more individuals and families become involved in their Jewish heritage, the more cohesive our local community, the stronger our local institutions, the more devoted our support of Israel ,and the greater our likelihood of contributing to the repair of the world.

Shabbat Shalom, San Diego!

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Isakow was community co-chair with Robyn Lichter of the Shabbat San Diego celebration.

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