International

The cacophony of politicians talking about music

Two politicians in Israel recently referred to music in one context or another. This made me prick up my ears and pay attention, which is not something I usually do when I come across statements by politicians, in Israel or anywhere else. The first was the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. When asked why he preferred to stand trial for the crimes and misdemeanors of which he is accused, he replied (not his exact words, but the gist of them): “The judges in Jerusalem go to synagogue and the judges in Tel Aviv go to the Philharmonic.” What he was implying was that the judges in Jerusalem are honest, god-fearing people, while the ones in Tel Aviv are hedonistic heathen. [Dorothea Shefer-Vanson]

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Dorothea Shefer-Vanson, Middle East, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts

Without Netanyahu, a coalition government?

Lieberman says not only that he doesn’t want to share power with the extreme Orthodox parties (though he has done so in the past), but, more important, he wants a unity government without Netanyahu at the helm. That would, indeed, be the best solution. Likud and Blue and White could form a government without any other party (even without Lieberman!). As far as the Israeli public can discern, the two major parties seem to have almost identical policies and thus could run the country with a measure of consistency and stability not seen recently. [Rabbi Dow Marmur]

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Middle East

Deicide libel against Jews surfaces in Nova Scotia

Someone finally did it – publicly blaming the Jewish people for the crucifixion of Jesus and, even more disgracefully, applying this libel to explain Israel’s so-called occupation of the Palestinian territories. Henry M. Bradford’s words were printed on Jan. 27 in The Chronicle Herald, the daily newspaper serving Halifax in Canada’s Nova Scotia. His letter to the editor responded to a commentary about anti-Semitism by freelance journalist Ralph Surette. [Bruce S. Ticker]

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Bruce Ticker, International, Jewish History, Middle East, USA

Hadassah Magazine article prompted OH! San Diego

The March 6-8 Open House San Diego in which 93 venues will open their doors to visitors can trace its origin to an article in the Winter 2012 edition of Hadassah Magazine, which featured an article about the Open House programs in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Susanne Friestedt said the article so resonated with her that she traveled to London, headquarters for the Open House architectural movement, to learn what she would need to do to add San Diego (and environs) to the list of cities in the Open House program. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Donald H. Harrison, International, Jewish History, Jewish Religion, Middle East, San Diego County, Travel and Food, USA

OpEd: Why critics argue Israel acts immorally

I have long maintained that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank defies the moral principle behind the creation of the state. Contrary to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s assertion, the occupation erodes rather than buttresses Israel’s national security and cannot be justified on either security or moral grounds. Trump’s “deal of the century” is tantamount to perpetuating the occupation, which will be to Israel’s detriment. Unless Israel embraces a new moral path and ends the occupation, no one can prevent it from unraveling from within only to become a pariah state that has lost its soul, wantonly abandoning the cherished dreams of its founding fathers to have an independent democratic Jewish state. [Alon Ben-Meir, Ph.D]

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Alon Ben-Meir, Middle East, USA

Ohr Shalom, other Jewish venues, rated as architectural gems

Approximately 50 cities worldwide, including San Diego and three others in the United States, offer free Open Houses at venues considered to be architecturally significant.  This year, March 6-8, San Diego will put on display 93 different locations, including Ohr Shalom Synagogue at 3rd and Laurel Streets in Bankers Hill as well as a few other places with ties to prominent members of the Jewish community. Those include the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, founded by Jonas Salk and designed by architect Louis Kahn;  the IGPP Munk Laboratory designed by the late oceanographer Walter Munk and his wife Judith Horton Munk in association with architect Lloyd Ruocco; the San Diego Central Library at the Joan & Irwin Jacobs Common, named for the co-founder of Qualcomm and his wife;  and the Hotel del Coronado, which underwent considerable expansion during the period it was owned by M. Larry Lawrence. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Donald H. Harrison, International, Jewish History, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, San Diego County, Travel and Food, USA

Identifying Israeli political parties’ supporters

Recent election ties, the likelihood of another one in two weeks, and the prospects of a fourth election raise the issue of who are we, and why do we cluster as we do. We can begin with several, more or less fixed, clusters of Israelis: *Ultra-Orthodox, Ashkenazim, very likely to vote United Torah Judaism *Perhaps a bit less fixed ultra-Orthodox Sephardim, likely to vote SHAS *Israeli Arabs, most of whom vote for the United Arab List *West Bank settlers, many of them Orthodox Jews, who vote for one of the right of center parties *Jews of Middle Eastern origin, traditional in their religious practices, who tend to vote Likud, especially, perhaps, those with lower education and income levels *Russians, a large and complex group, many of whom form the basic support of Avigdor Lieberman and go along with his right of center opposition to allying with Arabs or perhaps left wing Jews [Ira Sharkansky, Ph.D.]

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Ira Sharkansky, Middle East

Haifa, San Diego scientists to probe Israeli coastal waters

Before long the historic port city of Akko, Israel, will become headquarters for a search for sunken treasures of the academic kind in a project that brings together scientists from UC San Diego and the University of Haifa.

“Along the coast of Israel, submerged settlements, ancient harbors and sunken ships tell a unique story of 11,000 years of human resilience and adaptation,” explains Assaf Yasur-Landau, director of the Leon Racanati Institute for Maritime Studies at the University of Haifa.  “I am very excited for this tremendous opportunity in which both partners – the University of Haifa and UC San Diego – join forces to create pathbreaking underwater and coastal research as well as a joint training program on the Carmel Coast.” [Donald H. Harrison]

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Donald H. Harrison, Middle East, Obituaries & memorials, San Diego County, Science, Medicine, & Education, Theatre, Film & Broadcast, USA

Lawfare Project threatens to sue UC Berkeley to ensure safety of Jewish students

Following a set of distressing events at the University of California, Berkeley, The Lawfare Project has sent a letter to Chancellor Carol Christ calling on the university to act to ensure Jewish students feel safe and welcome on campus. [Press release from the Lawfare Project]

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Middle East, Science, Medicine, & Education, USA

Book tells of kibbutz movement’s rise and fall

A kibbutz, an Israeli collective settlement, originally agricultural, operates on the principles of shared ownership, equality among the sexes, and collaboration. In Hakibbutz Ha’Artzi, Mapam, and the Demise of the Israel Labor Movement, Tal Elmaliach, a postdoctoral fellow at the Ben-Gurion Research Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism, tells the history of the collapse of Soviet socialism in the late twentieth century and the concomitant death of the kibbutz movement (Hakibbutz Ha’Artzi) and Mapam, its political arm. He tells how the collapse of Hakibbutz Ha’Artzi accompanied the downfall of Histadrut, Israel’s federation of labor movements, which included both kibbutzim (plural of kibbutz) and industry, and Mapai, its political wing, whose power lay in the institutions it created through Marxist socialism. [Fred Riess, Ed.D]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Business & Finance, Fred Reiss, EdD, Middle East

How to talk to your children about climate change

There’s so much dreary and depressing news in the papers and on TV these days about the so-called ”climate emergency” and the ”climate crisis.” Article after article, op-ed after op-ed, it’s a never-ending drumbeat of dystopian news and I’m tired of it. Sure, I’m one of the people who coined and promoted the cli-fi genre of novels and movies over the past 10 years, but at the same time, I’m not in the pessimist camp. I’m a born optimist. [Dan Bloom]

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International, The World We Share

Lindbergh biography details his anti-Semitism

Aviator Charles A. Lindbergh was the first man to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, New York to Paris, landing at Le Bourget Aerodrome on May 20, 1927.  Ever since then, San Diego has been bedazzled by the daring pilot, naming after him its airport on San Diego Bay, a park near Balboa Avenue west of the 8095, a school in Clairemont Mesa (also named for humanitarian Albert E. Schweitzer),  and a street near Otay Valley Regional Park. A new book by Candace Fleming, intended for Young Adults, is The Rise and Fall of Charles Lindbergh.  Besides recounting the famous flight that made him a cultural icon, and the horrific kidnapping of the first child born to him and his wife Anne Morrow Lindbergh, the book tells how Lindbergh became an acolyte of Nobel Prize winning surgeon Dr. Alexis Carrel, with whom he worked on experiments designed to provide human beings with immortality.  Together, Carrel and Lindbergh dreamed of creating a panel of immortals who could devote themselves to eugenics, a field once popular in the United States that held that the human race could be improved through selective breeding of superior people and the sterilization of interior people.  It was a “science” that Adolf Hitler and the Nazis turned into their ideology. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, International, Jewish History, San Diego County, USA

Dita Kraus’ memoir tells of Shoah, early Israel

Antonio Iturbe, a Spanish author, wrote a fictional account of Dita (Polachova) Kraus’s life titled The Librarian of Auschwitz, in which Dita was cast as a heroine who risked her life to expose children at the notorious Nazi death camp to a few books on diverse subjects.  The point of the story, for many, was that in spite of the inhumanity all around them, there were people for whom kindness, literature, learning, and knowledge remained paramount objectives. Now comes Kraus’s own memoir of her remarkable life, which gives us a fuller picture of who she is, and the experiences she had pre- and post-Auschwitz. [Donald H. Harison]

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

Orlanskys spend their 71st Valentine’s Day together

Danny and Arlene (Addleson) Orlansky, who celebrated their 71st Valentine’s Day as a married couple on Friday, say the man who was their Cupid was the late Rabbi Morton Cohn of Congregation Beth Israel. Two years after the end of World War II, on a Sunday when Arlene was being installed as president of the Temple Youth League, Rabbi Cohn suggested that because the teens of the only three synagogues in the county (Beth Israel, Tifereth Israel, and Beth Jacob) didn’t know each other, they should have the occasion double as a dance in his Reform congregation’s social hall. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Donald H. Harrison, Jewish History, Jewish Religion, Lifestyles, San Diego County, USA