San Diego County

Seacrest Village takes coronavirus precautions

As a resident at Seacrest Village I am impressed how well management is educating and protecting the health of residents and staff from the Coronavirus. At a recent Town Hall meeting for residents, Carl Miser, Operations Officer, explained the rules and guidelines for residents to protect themselves from the virus. A follow up letter from Pam Ferris, CEO of Seacrest Village, was then placed in every resident’s apartment. Seacrest Village also has an in-house television station that streams continuing information to every resident. Special emphasis was placed on washing one’s hands for twenty seconds often, and avoiding shaking hands with others. [Cantor Sheldon Foster Merel]

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Cantor Sheldon Foster Merel, z"l, Lifestyles, San Diego County, Science, Medicine, & Education

Glass Menagerie resurfaces at Broadway Vista Theatre.

The play is set in the St. Louis apartment of Amanda Wingfield (Terri Park) and her two adult children, Laura (Marisa Taylor Scott) and Tom (Tim Baran). The time is 1937 and the country was in the middle of the depression. Tom works in a shoe factory (Williams sold shoes for a time) and Amanda sells magazine subscriptions from her home, much beneath her status as a genteel Southern belle when a young girl. Money is tight but hope springs eternal for Amanda, the faded yet once popular belle, as she glides around their apartment recalling her glory days as a teen growing up in the south. Her repeating and reliving her past encounters with her own ‘gentlemen callers’(seventeen in one day) fascinates Laura, who longs for a gentleman caller of her own, but it annoys the hell out of Tom. [Carol Davis]

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Carol Davis, San Diego County, Theatre, Film & Broadcast

Awe struck by 13-year-old Israeli cellist

I felt blessed to experience the extra-ordinary talent of the young Israeli cellist, Nahar Eliaz last Saturday evening in the sanctuary of Congregation Beth Am. Her’s was meaningful music-making of the highest order, music that touched the heart and replenished the soul. There was no awareness of technique. Every pitch was perfectly in tune, every dynamic, judiciously observed, every phrase, fluently expressed with natural ease. But it was more. The music had excitement, passion, and beauty. [Eileen Wingard]

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Eileen Wingard, Middle East, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, San Diego County

March of Living postponed; 12 local residents affected

Eight students and four adult leaders from San Diego County who had expected to participate during April in the annual “March of the Living” – a two-week trip including the concentration camps in Poland and a visit to the nation of Israel – have received news that the journey has been cancelled because of the coronavirus. [Our shtetl San Diego County column by Donald H. Harrison]

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

Works of Holocaust poets performed at LFJCC

“That was the last butterfly. Butterflies don’t live in the Ghetto” wrote Pavel Friedmann in Terezin, before he was deported to Auschwitz, where he perished in 1944. Myla Wingard opened the March 3 program in the Astor Judaic Library, Poets of the Holocaust, with an inspiring musical rendition of that iconic poem. “Never say that you are going your last way.” Those words, penned by Hirsh Glik, became the anthem of the Jewish Partisans. The Ohr Shalom Choir was joined by the audience in singing that song of defiance and hope to conclude the program in which fifteen poets were represented. [Eileen Wingard]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Eileen Wingard, International, Jewish History, San Diego County

‘No Place for Hate’ expanding to 150 local schools

The Anti-Defamation League currently partners with approximately 100 local schools in its “No Place for Hate” program, and next semester that number will go up to 150 schools, says Tammy Gillies, the ADL’s regional director in San Diego. [Our shtetl San Diego County column by Donald H. Harrison]

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

Local law enforcement and Israel

Israel boycott advocates in San Diego County have been attempting, so far without success, to persuade local law enforcement executives to refuse to travel with the Anti-Defamation League for familiarization with Israeli police techniques. Tammy Gillies, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, said such a push was successful a few years ago in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, “where the City Council was asked to stop organized trips to Israel by law enforcement.  They passed that and it was a shock to us. … There are organizations in San Diego working very hard and lobbying our law enforcement agencies not to send people to Israel.” [Sour shtetl San Diego County column by Donald H. Harrison]

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Donald H. Harrison, Eva Trieger, International, Middle East, San Diego County, Theatre, Film & Broadcast, Travel and Food, USA

All you can do is cultivate your garden

Reading the headlines of The New York Times wreaked havoc with my immune system, my hippocampus, my cardiovascular system, or possibly all of the above. Did I need to know that Venezuela’s hospitals are lacking medicines or that there is no food on the shelves of grocery stores? That there is a terrible drought in Australia while fires are ravishing the country and cattle are dying from lack of water? That bad floods are inundating city streets in India? [By Natasha Josefowitz, Ph.D]

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Lifestyles, Natasha Josefowitz, San Diego County

ADL’s Gillies tells of Poway shooting’s lasting impacts

Prosecutors announced on Thursday they would seek the death penalty against John T. Earnest, 20, the alleged shooter who killed congregant Lori Gilbert-Kaye at Chabad of Poway last Passover while wounding three others, including Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein.  Meanwhile, Tammy Gillies, the regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, was telling San Diego Jewish World that the effects of that April 27 shooting rampage are still being felt throughout San Diego County. “I think some of our institutions are taking more seriously the idea of security,” Gillies commented during an interview. “Some always have, and some not so much, but now are more on board.” Members of other religious communities are now “realizing that when we go to synagogue – when we take our kids to synagogue – we have to walk through armed guards to go, and I think that has been shocking to some other communities.  I think it has raised awareness about anti-Semitism.” [Our shtetl San Diego County column by Donald H. Harrison]

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

Jews urged to avoid kissing doorpost mezuzahs

A Conservative congregation in San Diego, Tifereth Israel Synagogue, is urging  members to practice caution as the coronavirus epidemic spreads across the United States. It recommended that congregants and visitors wave to each other or bump fists rather than shake hands, and also to refrain from  the custom of touching mezuzahs on doorpost and then kissing their hands [Donald H. Harrison]

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Donald H. Harrison, San Diego County

Eight of 12 Jewish candidates made runoffs

Sanders and Bloomberg were two of the 12 Jewish candidates whose names appeared on San Diego County ballots.  Of the other 10, semi-official returns indicated that three placed in first positions — Sara Jacobs in the 53rd Congressional District, Joe Leventhal in San Diego’s 5th City Council District, and incumbent Bernie Rhinerson in the District B race for the San Diego Community College District.  (Their second-place finishing opponents respectively were San Diego City Council President Georgette Gomez, City Attorney candidate Marni Von Wilpert, and Daniel Piedra.) [Donald H. Harrison]

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Donald H. Harrison, San Diego County, Sandi Masori, USA

How Jewish candidates fared in March 3 primary

There were 12 Jewish candidates on San Diego County ballots on March 3.  Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden were in a coast-to-coast race for delegates that stretched from Maine to California, with Biden winning or ahead at press time in Virginia, North Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Minnesota, and Massachusetts.  Sanders won or was leading in California, Colorado, Utah, and Vermont.  Michael Bloomfield won in the American territory of American Samoa, and was battling Elizabeth Warren for third place in many of the states.  Texas and Maine saw seesaw battles between Biden and Sanders, both too close to call as we went to press. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Donald H. Harrison, San Diego County, USA

12 Jews compete on San Diego County ballots

While San Diego Jewish World does not plan to make any formal endorsements until the November election, we would like our readers to be aware of the names of our fellow Jews who are on San Diego County ballots.  There are at least a dozen such candidates, whose Jewish affiliation has been made known to us.  Whether they are Democrats, Republicans, or independents, we would like to congratulate them for putting themselves out there. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Donald H. Harrison, San Diego County, USA