San Diego County

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]

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

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]

U-T endorsements elude most Jewish candidates Read More »

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

Seacrest Village through a resident’s camera lens Read More »

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

‘Legacy of Light and Love’ to provide care for needy elderly

Seacrest Foundation is hosting the 2020 Women’s Auxiliary Gala, “Legacy of Light and Love,” to benefit the increasing numbers of community members in the greatest need.  The event will take place on Saturday, February 22nd, from 6-11 pm, and all proceeds raised will support Seacrest Village Retirement Community’s Resident Assistance Fund. I was informed that this year alone, Seacrest will provide nearly $2.5 million in charitable care. [Eva Trieger]

‘Legacy of Light and Love’ to provide care for needy elderly Read More »

Eva Trieger, Lifestyles, San Diego County

Diversionary premieres ‘A Kind of Weather’

By Carol Davis SAN DIEGO — Playwright Sylvan Oswald identifies as a transmasculine interdisciplinary artist. That’s a mouthful for those of us just getting used to the words ‘trans’ or ‘transitioning’ or ‘transgender’, gender nonconformity, transsexual, gender reassignment, queer gender or labeling ones self as we/they or us. In the words of other mortals, “Get

Diversionary premieres ‘A Kind of Weather’ Read More »

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

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]

Victory against anti-Semitism at SDSU Read More »

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

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

Beautiful music with compelling stories

The 30th San Diego International Jewish Film Festival is underway. These aren’t your big-budget Hollywood blockbusters. These are indie films with heart that speak to who we are as a people. I managed to catch two Israeli films with music themes on Monday at the Reading Cinema in Claremont Square. And I was delighted to sit in nearly full houses. [Eric George Tauber]

Beautiful music with compelling stories Read More »

Eric George Tauber, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, San Diego County

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]

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

Swept up in ‘Hurricane Diane’

Rami Margron enters in purple robes and a golden garland. Dionysus has been reborn as Diane, who prefers the personal pronouns “they, them, and theirs.”  Diane is a landscape artist with the chutzpah to ‘follow their own vision, not their clients’. With a crocodile haircut, workboots and guns most men would envy, Margron gives Diane a brash, butch androgyny that makes them compelling. Diane’s vision is to “re-wild” the suburbs with permaculture, taking it from manicured lawns and rose bushes to producing food, herbs and medicine “off the grid.” But Carol (Liz Wisan) is not having it. A chatty suburbanite who clips pictures from HGTV Magazine, she cares too much about resale value, “curb-appeal” and what “the girls” will think. [Eric George Tauber]

Swept up in ‘Hurricane Diane’ Read More »

Eric George Tauber, San Diego County, Theatre, Film & Broadcast

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]

Haifa, San Diego scientists to probe Israeli coastal waters Read More »

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

Wrap group learns at Tifereth Israel

The national Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs (FJMC) has a tradition called “World Wide Wrap,” in which Jews around the world are taught traditional ways of wrapping tefillin (phylacteries) on their arms and placing a prayer box on their heads. Rabbi Joshua Dorsch, instructing a learning session sponsored by the Tifereth Israel Synagogue Men’s Club, an FJMC affiliate, on Sunday, explained that the custom derives from a literal interpretation of the v’ahavta prayer (Deuteronomy 6:5-9), … [Donald H. Harrison}

Wrap group learns at Tifereth Israel Read More »

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

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]

Lindbergh biography details his anti-Semitism Read More »

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