USA

Swab your cheek and maybe save a toddler’s life

How incredible would you feel if you knew you could save the life of a beautiful 15-month-old baby girl, with something as innocuous as a cheek swab? The surrender of a few minutes on your part might provide a chance to reach milestones for this child and her parents.  Consider her first day of school, learning to ride a bike, losing her first tooth, observing her bat mitzvah, dressing for a first date, kvellling at her chuppah, welcoming her own child.  By registering with Be the Match, you may be offering Zoe and her parents all of these magical moments with minimal effort on your part. [Eva Trieger]

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Eva Trieger, International, Science, Medicine, & Education, USA

Museum of the Hebrew Language planned in Jerusalem

As the president of the Academy of the Hebrew Language since 1993, Prof. Moshe Bar-Asher has many friends and former students around the world.  For example, he recently recalled in his courtly English, he once had the pleasure of teaching Mira Balberg, who is now a professor in UC San Diego’s Jewish Studies Department. [Our Shtetl San Diego County column by Donald H. Harrison]

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Donald H. Harrison, International, Jewish History, Jewish Religion, Middle East, USA

Another Jewish institution may be involved in tax fraud

Information provided by U.S. Attorney Robert Brewer in the tax fraud case against Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein and five co-defendants alleges that another religious institution, not yet identified, has also been involved in tax fraud. [Our Shtetl San Diego County column by Donald H. Harrison]

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Donald H. Harrison, Jewish History, Middle East, San Diego County, Science, Medicine, & Education, USA

John Lewis: A man of painful sincerity, steel rectitude

As a seventeen-year-old lad from the gravely impoverished Troy, Alabama, John Lewis decided to write a letter to Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Montgomery. Lewis had breathlessly followed the recent narrative of King, Rosa Parks, and others during the successful eleven-month Montgomery Bus Boycott. Not only did King write back to Lewis, he also included in the letter a round-trip bus ticket to Montgomery and an invitation to meet him, which Lewis eventually did — in March 1958. “I was so scared. I didn’t know what to say or what to do,” Lewis recalled. “And Dr. King said, ‘Are you the boy from Troy?'”  [Source: NPR] [Ben Kamin]

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Obituaries & memorials, USA

Rev. C.T. Vivian, a sweet lion, is free at last

Sometime in the blistering heat of 1965, while Martin Luther King, Jr. and his allies were marching for the nation’s first inclusive voting rights bill, a wiry, feisty, articulate Baptist minister stood up to the condescending white sheriff of Dallas County—which encompasses Selma, Alabama.  Rev. Cordy Tindell Vivian, better known as “C.T.,” was 41 years old at the time, a local pastor gifted with vision, strong loins, and indisputable courage. [Ben Kamin]

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USA

Kayleigh McEnany is not what she seems

“Science should not stand in the way of schools re-opening.” This recent statement by White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany has made headlines. What children are supposed to learn in prematurely re-opened schools if not science was not clear. But pundits and internet trolls have been having a field day with the sheer absurdity of this statement. And it seems that at every press conference, Kayleigh McEnany will toss out such a bone. It’s like she’s not even pretending to sound credible or even halfway intelligent. [Eric George Tauber]

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Eric George Tauber, USA

Satire: Expect the worst

To counter a boycott against Goya Food in protest of its CEO praising Donald Trump, Ivanka Trump posted a photo of her holding up a can of Goya Black Beans captioned in English and Spanish, “If it’s Goya, it’s got to be good.” Criticized for using her office to promote a product, she retorted that the photo was intended as a campaign ad to show Latino and African American voters that “black beans matter” to her father.  [Satire by Laurie Baron, Ph.D}

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Lawrence Baron, Trivia, Humor & Satire, USA

What did the White House know about Rabbi Goldstein’s criminality?

I have more than a few questions about the conduct of the tax fraud case in which Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein is being recommended for probation, rather than a prison sentence, notwithstanding the fact that his pattern of illegal conduct reaches back several decades. [Donald H. Harrison]

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

Less transparency will worsen the pandemic

Hospital data is now going directly to the Trump administration rather than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This will have immediate and far reaching consequences. Already valuable CDC pages that tracked changes in the number of occupied and available hospital beds in the nation for COVID-19 patients stopped working as a result of the switch. We have essentially lost this important metric for gauging the progress of the disease. The sidelining of the CDC is nothing less than a travesty and Americans should be outraged and alarmed. This loss of transparency will lead inevitably to an even worse pandemic and greater loss of life. [Sam Ben-Meir]

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Sam Ben-Meir, Science, Medicine, & Education, USA

U.S. must reverse racist treatment of Black people

The rage, desperation, and determination which continue to bring tens of thousands of Americans to the streets in protest against racism and injustice hopefully will be just the beginning. They are sick and tired of systemic racism against Black people, of bigotry at the top, crude discrimination, police brutality, a prejudiced criminal justice system, economic disparity, and society’s robbing Black people of experiencing real freedom and equality. Hypocritically, White people blame the victims of racism for their own plight, claiming that Black people would do better in life if they were only willing to work harder. [Alon Ben-Meir, Ph.D]

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Alon Ben-Meir, USA

DeSean Jackson: Ignorance or hatred?

Purportedly quoting the most reviled monster in modern history, the Eagles wide receiver last week posted on Instagram that Hitler accuses “white Jews” of having a “plan for world domination…Hitler said, ‘because the white Jews knows that the Negroes are the real Children of Israel and to keep America’s secret the Jews will blackmail America. … The white citizens of America will be terrified to know that all this time they’ve been mistreating and discriminating and lynching the Children of Israel.’” [Bruce S. Ticker]

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Bruce Ticker, Sports & Competitions, USA