Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO –Parents and grandparents know what it is like to introduce our children to a group and kvell when they give a very good account of themselves. But Congressman Scott Peters, D-San Diego, was able to kvell in a different way as the U.S. House of Representatives began a regular session on Tuesday, March […]

By Donald H. Harrison SAN DIEGO—My very first job as a young teenager was working as a busboy in a Los Angeles cafeteria called Ontra’s.  I was fired after a single shift, with the manager telling me: “We need someone to clean the tables, not to talk with the customers.”  I was a schmoozer back

By Donald H. Harrison SAN DIEGO–As a matter of halacha, Rabbi Victoria Armour-Hileman was always Jewish, as she was born to a Jewish mother  But growing up, she followed the ways of her Irish Catholic father, attending Catholic parochial schools, and even working for six years in Hong Kong and Thailand as a Maryknoll Lay

Laurel Corona, The Mapmaker’s Daughter, Sourcebooks, (c) 2014, ISBN 978-1-4022-8649-0; 400 pages, $14.99 By Donald H. Harrison SAN DIEGO– This novel relates the story of the fictional Amalia Cresque, daughter of a famous Converso mapmaker in 15th Century Spain, who has embraced his new Christian religion, notwithstanding the desire of his wife and daughter to

Nicole Nathan, Let My RV Go!, Mosaica Press, 2013, ISBN: 9781937887087, 222 pages including glossary By Donald H. Harrison SAN DIEGO– The title to this novel is well chosen.  It is a humorous play on the phrase “Let My People Go!” which we imagine Moses (or at least Charleton Heston in the Ten Commandments )

By Donald H. Harrison SAN DIEGO– On as yet an unspecified date in March, the Jewish Caucus, now numbering nine legislators, formally will be welcomed by other caucuses as an official body of the California State Legislature, according to State Senator Marty Block, the San Diego Democrat who founded the new organization. The Jewish Caucus

Georges Yitshak Weisz, Theodor Herzl: A New Reading, Gefen Publishing House, (c) 2013, ISBN: 9789652295873, 295 pages including appendices and index. By Donald H. Harrison SAN DIEGO–This is both biography and historiography of the Zionist leader Theodor Herzl.  Through an examination of what previous historians have said about Herzl, Weisz provides readers with highlights of

By Donald H. Harrison SAN DIEGO– A Jewish community forum at Congregation Beth Israel heard several ideas on Friday, Feb. 21,  for improving the lives of present and future senior citizens.  All the suggestions required legislation at either the federal or state level. The meeting was an outgrowth of ongoing consultations among local Jewish agencies

By Donald H. Harrison ESCONDIDO, California –Now six months into operation, Chesed Home at Hope Village currently serves three residents with mental illnesses and has room for three more. Until recently there were five residents in the Home but two recently “graduated” to independent living units on the same residential property operated by Hope Village,

By Donald H. Harrison EL CAJON, California—The senior pastor whose  mega-church includes architectural homages to the Holy Land recently was joined in marriage by a Christian Zionist leader from the San Francisco area with ties to the family of Holocaust rescuer Oskar Schindler.  Now, the Rev. Jim Garlow and his bride, Rosemary Schindler Garlow, are

By Donald H. Harrison SAN DIEGO — Leslie Weening, a 30-year employee at the Jewish Federation of San Diego who rose to the position of  assistant to the executive director, was memorialized Wednesday, Feb. 12, in the sanctuary of Tifereth Israel Synagogue, where she had been a longtime member.  Weening had died of a heart

Azriela Jaffe, Unexpected Gifts: A Novel, Menucha Publishers, (c) 2013, ISBN 978-161465-132-1,                     255 pages. By Donald H. Harrison SAN DIEGO– “Everybody’s got tzuris,” my late father, Martin B. Harrison, liked to point out.  Were he alive to have read this book, he’d have tapped it authoritatively, and said, “What did I tell you?” Some