Donald H. Harrison

Donald H. Harrison

Donald H. Harrison is the publisher and editor of San Diego Jewish World. 

Harrison began his journalism career in 1962 on the UCLA Daily Bruin.  Following graduation he joined the staff of the Associated Press, and later became politics writer for The San Diego Union.  Afterwards he pursued a career in tourism, helping to establish San Diego’s Cruise Ship Program as well as Old Town Trolley Tours of San Diego.  He also wrote for such Jewish publications as the San Diego Jewish Press Heritage and San Diego Jewish Times before starting San Diego Jewish World in 2007.

Don’s  latest work is the three-volume Schlepping and Schmoozing Along the Interstate 5.  

He is the author of six previous books.  Those with links may be obtained on Amazon.

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Frida Kahlo Loved Jews So Much She Invented Jewish Ancestry

The Mexican artist Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) is the subject of several murals at Chicano Park. Modern genealogists say that she was the daughter of a mother of mixed indigenous and Spanish descent, Mathilde Calderon y Gonzalez, and a German Lutheran father, Guillermo Kahlo. However, Frida herself always insisted that her father, who was an important influence on both her life and her art, was actually Jewish. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, California, Donald H. Harrison, International, Jewish History, Lifestyles, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, San Diego County, Travel and Food, USA

Assassinated Gay Jewish Political Leader Harvey Milk Is Honored by the U.S. Navy

The “christening” ceremony featured a principal ceremonial address by Milk’s nephew, Stuart Milk, as well as remarks by Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro; Vice Admiral Jeffrey Hughes, deputy chief of naval operations for warfighting development; and Rear Adm. Michael Wettlaufer, commander of the Military Sealift Command. Sponsors of the ship were U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who had served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors with Milk, and Paula Neira, clinical program director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Transgender Health. Neira shattered a bottle of sparkling wine across the ship’s bow in a time-honored Navy tradition. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, California, Donald H. Harrison, Jewish Celebrities, Jewish History, San Diego County, Travel and Food, USA

Graduation Day at the Radiation Treatment Center

Today, April 29, 2022, was a bellringing day for me at the Jacobs Medical Center at UCSD Health Sciences.  I completed a 33-day course of radiation in the hope of arresting a meningioma that was growing on top of my brain.  On July 1, I will have an MRI to learn how well the treatment worked. [Donald H. Harrison]

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California, Donald H. Harrison, San Diego County, Science, Medicine, & Education, USA

Social Worker Serves as a Lay Rabbi for Elderly Residents of Paradise Village

Lazard, a social worker employed by the County of San Diego to determine financial and residential eligibility for cradle-to-21-year-old residents with major disabilities, says he is happiest when he gets to sing, particularly Jewish prayer songs. Through his tutoring of Ruth Sax, he got to know other Jewish residents of Paradise Village, and before long he was asked to officiate at the monthly Shabbat service. He met with Paradise Village’s Chaplain, Harry Bennett, before accepting the volunteer gig. Services are held in the non-denominational chapel, which has a stained-glass window bearing a picture of a dove. [Donald H. Harrison]

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California, Donald H. Harrison, Jewish Religion, San Diego County, Travel and Food, USA

Book for Toddlers Tells of the Lights of Shabbat

This tale for tots conflates the light of Shabbat candles with other pleasant and helpful lights that they might encounter.  These include a flashlight helping people to find their way; lanterns at an evening picnic; a lighthouse that aids sailors; the moon and stars; fireflies; and a soft nightlight in a child’s room. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, Jewish Religion

PJ Library Serves Up Stories About Passover and Mimouna

From PJ Library comes two Passover-related books suitable for reading to children.  Meet the Matzah is the kind of silly story that children will giggle over.  In this case, different kinds of breads and matzah have been anthropomorphized as students in a classroom where they learn about all kinds of holidays and the breads that are served.  For example, one might eat naan during the Hindu festival of Diwali and tortillas on the Mexican holiday of Dia de los Muertos. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, International, Jewish Religion, Middle East

Reframing the Arguments in Israel and the Palestinian Authority

Almost all arguments about Israel revolve around one or more of the following themes: security, collective identity, freedom, and territory. Authors Gringras and Sterne help us to conceptualize these arguments with a series of analogies.  They challenge us to argue, in the classic sense of the word, about right and wrong in the hope that we may learn from each other. Arguments are different from fights; they are mental exercises, not physical, and they are laid out methodically, with each side trying to educate the other using such tools as logic and empathy. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, Middle East, Science, Medicine, & Education

Jewish Brothers Al Lapin Jr. and Jerry Lapin Founded IHOP Chain

The International House of Pancakes at the Bay Plaza Shopping Center in National City was built in conformance with the shopping center’s architectural guidelines, rather than in IHOP’s usual configuration. However, it still has a trademark blue roof, and its menu is fairly typical of some 1,500 other establishments in the family restaurant chain created by two Jewish brothers. Al Lapin Jr. and Jerry Lapin started IHOP in 1958 in the tony San Fernando Valley neighborhood of Toluca Lake. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Business & Finance, California, Donald H. Harrison, San Diego County, Travel and Food, USA

Founded by an Antisemite, Ford Motor Co’s Leaders Became Pro-Zionists

We’re interested in the turnaround of the Ford family, starting with automotive pioneer Henry Ford, who was a vicious antisemite, and continuing with his grandson Henry Ford II, known as “Hank the Deuce,” who became a large supporter of Jewish and Zionist causes, and onto Bill Ford, Ford Motor Co’s current executive chairman. who traveled in 2019 to Tel Aviv to inaugurate a new Ford Research Center there. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Business & Finance, California, Donald H. Harrison, Jewish History, Middle East, San Diego County, Technology, Travel and Food, USA

Factual Errors Detract from Jewish Family Saga

This is a novel that traces a Jewish family through several generations from a shtetl in Poland to the big city of Warsaw, and later onward to Scotland, Germany, and England over the course of pogroms and two world wars. It is marred in the telling by a series of errors that might have been eliminated through more careful research or fact checking [Donald H. Harrison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison

Liberal Jewish Newspaper Publisher Made His Mark in a Conservative Town

Lowell Blankfort, a liberal Jewish Democrat, became co-publisher and editor of the staid, very conservative Star-News in 1961, and immediately began to shake up the old order. In his very first editorial, he announced that the community newspaper no longer would run columns by U.S. Rep. James Utt. Blankfort explained that Utt’s “so-called ‘column’ from Washington, or weekly political diatribe, is being dropped, pronto. Mr. Utt is the Republican Congressman from Santa Ana who, due to some deft GOP gerrymandering 10 years ago, also has been foisted on National City and Bonita.” [Donald H. Harrison]

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Business & Finance, California, Donald H. Harrison, San Diego County, Travel and Food, USA