In 2017, newlyweds Jonathan Moed and Zoe (Jurkowski) Moed went on a year-long dream trip around the world, and now Jonathan is pursuing a “passion project” to help high-tech start up entrepreneurs in developing nations realize dreams of their own. [Donald H. Harrison]
San Diegans’ dream trip leads to new website Read More »
Business & Finance, Donald H. Harrison, International, Jewish History, San Diego County, Travel and Food, USA
Based on extensive research, the author describes what happened to the Paris art gallery that her grandfather, Paul Rosenberg, owned and directed in the first part of the twentieth century, until the invasion and occupation of France by the Germans in 1940. When France was taken over by the Germans all Jews, including the Rosenbergs, were deprived of their citizenship and property. In its heyday the Rosenberg Gallery exhibited the works of painters such as Matisse, Braque, Picasso and others with whom Paul Rosenberg maintained warm relations and in some cases, especially that of Picasso, a close friendship. Many of these artists were defined as ‘degenerate’ by the Nazis, although that did not prevent them from using these works for their own ends, often selling them to museums and collectors who paid handsomely for them.[Dorothea Shefer Vanson]
History tells of Nazi looting of Rosenberg gallery in Paris Read More »
Dorothea Shefer-Vanson, International, Jewish History, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, USA
Two Reform rabbis from San Diego – Devorah Marcus of Temple Emanu-El and Jeremy Gimbel of Congregation Beth Israel – are among 347 rabbis who have signed a letter rejecting the “outrageous comments” made by Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders about the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). In announcing he would not attend the AIPAC Policy Conference in March, Sanders, who like the rabbis is Jewish, said “I remain concerned about the platform AIPAC provides for leaders who express bigotry and oppose basic Palestinian rights. For that reason, I will not attend their conference.” In a press release, AIPAC subsequently described that comment as “truly shameful.” [Donald H. Harrison]
347 rabbis denounce Sanders’ comment about AIPAC Read More »
Donald H. Harrison, International, Jewish History, Middle East, San Diego County, USA
Rabbi Roland B. Gittelsohn (1910-1995), assigned to the Fifth Marine Division, was the first Jewish chaplain the Marine Corps ever appointed. The American invading force at Iwo Jima included approximately 1,500 Jewish Marines. Rabbi Gittelsohn was in the thick of the fray, ministering to Marines of all faiths in the combat zone. He shared the fear, horror and despair of the fighting men, each of whom knew that each day might be his last. Roland Gittelsohn’s tireless efforts to comfort the wounded and encourage the fearful won him three service ribbons. [Michael Feldberg, Ph.D]
Rabbi’s sermon became popular WWII lesson Read More »
International, Jewish History, Jewish Religion, USA
The liberation of a prisoner-of-war camp in Manila, Philippines, in 1945 forged a bond many years later between a Jewish band leader and a Coronado civil servant. Lou Berger, a drummer and leader of the “Berger Kings,” was playing a Saturday night gig at the Town & Country Hotel in San Diego about 15 years ago for an ex-prisoners of war organization when he was introduced to Tom Crosby, a longtime purchasing agent and risk manager for the City of Coronado, who also was known as a successful volunteer springboard diving coach. [Donald H. Harrison]
Liberator and POW fast friends 75 years later Read More »
Donald H. Harrison, International, Jewish History, Middle East, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, San Diego County
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]
Jew who posed as Catholic child tells of WWII life Read More »
Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, International, Jewish History, Middle East, Obituaries & memorials, San Diego County, USA
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]
George Washington: ‘To bigotry no sanction’ Read More »
Jewish History, USA
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]
Victory against anti-Semitism at SDSU Read More »
Donald H. Harrison, International, Jewish History, San Diego County, Science, Medicine, & Education, USA
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]
Deicide libel against Jews surfaces in Nova Scotia Read More »
Bruce Ticker, International, Jewish History, Middle East, USA
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]
Hadassah Magazine article prompted OH! San Diego Read More »
Donald H. Harrison, International, Jewish History, Jewish Religion, Middle East, San Diego County, Travel and Food, USA
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]
Ohr Shalom, other Jewish venues, rated as architectural gems Read More »
Donald H. Harrison, International, Jewish History, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, San Diego County, Travel and Food, USA
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]
Lindbergh biography details his anti-Semitism Read More »
Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, International, Jewish History, San Diego County, USA
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]
Dita Kraus’ memoir tells of Shoah, early Israel Read More »
Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, International, Jewish History, Middle East
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]
Orlanskys spend their 71st Valentine’s Day together Read More »
Donald H. Harrison, Jewish History, Jewish Religion, Lifestyles, San Diego County, USA