USA

Jew who posed as Catholic child tells of WWII life

A San Diegan who survived the Holocaust as a child by posing as a Catholic boy helped pay tribute Sunday to the 1.5 million children who perished during World War II under the regimes of the German Nazis and their allies.  After telling of his life, he joined listeners who painted ceramic butterflies that will be mounted by The Butterfly Project at the Grossmont Shopping Center in their memory. [Donald H. Harrison]

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

U-T endorsements elude most Jewish candidates

Jewish candidates haven’t done very well so far in their bids for The San Diego Union-Tribune’s political endorsements.  In most cases, on San Diego County ballots, the daily newspaper has selected non-Jewish candidates over Jewish ones.   There is one exception.   Here is a review by level of government: [Donald H. Harrison]

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Donald H. Harrison, International, San Diego County, Travel and Food, USA

George Washington: ‘To bigotry no sanction’

On August 18, 1790, Moses Seixas, the warden of Congregation Kahal Kadosh Yeshuat Israel, the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island, read a message to George Washington, welcoming the newly elected first president of the United States on his post-election visit to that city.  He was accompanied by Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson and Governor DeWitt Clinton of New York. Rhode Island was the last of the thirteen original states to ratify the Constitution, and Washington was visiting to celebrate the completion of the Union. [Michael Feldberg, Ph.D]

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Jewish History, USA

Seacrest Village through a resident’s camera lens

Jeanne Shenkman,  83, a retired teacher with the Grossmont High School District,  moved to Seacrest Village Retirement Community in Encinitas last May to live near her daughter.  Throughout her life, she has always been a busy person with varied interests.  For example, in addition to her teaching duties, she played violin in the Tifereth Israel Community Orchestra for 42 years and served as a docent at the San Diego Natural History Museum for 15 years. [Donald H. Harrison]

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

How about educating for real jobs?

Not one of Bloomberg’s adversaries bothered to criticize the mayor about a comment he was quoted saying dating back to November 17, 2016, which is the real subject of this article’s focus. “If you think about it, the agrarian society lasted 3,000 years, and we can teach processes. I can teach anybody – even people in this room, so no offense intended – to be a farmer. It’s a process. You dig a hole, you put a seed in, you put dirt on top, you add water, up comes corn. You can learn that. Then you had 300 years of the industrial society. You put the piece of metal on the lathe, you turn the crank in direction of arrow and you can have a job. And we created a lot of jobs. At one point, 98% of the world worked in agriculture. Today it’s 2% of the United States.” (Rabbi Dr. Michael Leo Samuel]

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Business & Finance, Michael Leo Samuel-Rabbi, Science, Medicine, & Education, USA

Victory against anti-Semitism at SDSU

Congratulations are due to San Diego State Professors Peter C. Herman and Risa Levitt Kohn, as well as to representatives of the campus Hillel, and the regional Anti-Defamation League for protesting the proposed inclusion of two anti-Semitic speakers on a planned, as yet unscheduled, panel presentation on whether African-Americans deserve reparations for the time their ancestors were enslaved and the subsequent institutional discrimination against their people. [Donald H. Harrison]

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

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

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

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

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