Donald H. Harrison

By Donald H. Harrison EL CAJON, California–At Purim carnivals to be held on Sunday, March 16, throughout the world, children will dress up as such adult characters as Esther, Mordecai, Ahasuerus and the wicked Haman, and through the device of masquerade, will once again tell how Esther and Mordecai saved the Jews of old against

By Donald H. Harrison   SAN DIEGO–The former Portuguese Consul in Bordeaux, Aristides de Sousa Mendes, is credited with rescuing 30,000 people from the Nazi terror by means of issuing them visas to live in neutral Portugal, even though he had no authorization to do so. After the Germans invaded France in 1940, he signed

  By Donald H. Harrison SAN DIEGO — A representative of the Blue Star Camps near Hendersonville, North Carolina, says if you chat with any of the 65,000 alumni who have attended the kosher Jewish summer camp since its establishment in 1948, eventually the conversation may turn to the signature Elmore Solomon Chapel. “The chapel

Dan J. Puckett, In the Shadow of Hitler: Alabama’s Jews, the Second World War, and the Holocaust, University of Alabama Press, ©2014, ISBN9780817381073, 233 pages plus notes, bibliography and index. By Donald H. Harrison   SAN DIEGO – If there were guidelines for being Alabama Jews prior to World War II they were to “blend

By Donald H. Harrison SAN DIEGO– Congresswoman Susan Davis (D-San Diego) says American educators have a lot to learn from the i-Phone. “It is the design,” she said.  “If it were just a lot of codes, people wouldn’t want to deal with it.  But what people love about it is all the design.  And that

SAN DIEGO –Parents and grandparents know what it is like to introduce our children to a group and kvell when they give a very good account of themselves. But Congressman Scott Peters, D-San Diego, was able to kvell in a different way as the U.S. House of Representatives began a regular session on Tuesday, March

By Donald H. Harrison SAN DIEGO—My very first job as a young teenager was working as a busboy in a Los Angeles cafeteria called Ontra’s.  I was fired after a single shift, with the manager telling me: “We need someone to clean the tables, not to talk with the customers.”  I was a schmoozer back

By Donald H. Harrison SAN DIEGO–As a matter of halacha, Rabbi Victoria Armour-Hileman was always Jewish, as she was born to a Jewish mother  But growing up, she followed the ways of her Irish Catholic father, attending Catholic parochial schools, and even working for six years in Hong Kong and Thailand as a Maryknoll Lay

Laurel Corona, The Mapmaker’s Daughter, Sourcebooks, (c) 2014, ISBN 978-1-4022-8649-0; 400 pages, $14.99 By Donald H. Harrison SAN DIEGO– This novel relates the story of the fictional Amalia Cresque, daughter of a famous Converso mapmaker in 15th Century Spain, who has embraced his new Christian religion, notwithstanding the desire of his wife and daughter to

Nicole Nathan, Let My RV Go!, Mosaica Press, 2013, ISBN: 9781937887087, 222 pages including glossary By Donald H. Harrison SAN DIEGO– The title to this novel is well chosen.  It is a humorous play on the phrase “Let My People Go!” which we imagine Moses (or at least Charleton Heston in the Ten Commandments )

By Donald H. Harrison SAN DIEGO– On as yet an unspecified date in March, the Jewish Caucus, now numbering nine legislators, formally will be welcomed by other caucuses as an official body of the California State Legislature, according to State Senator Marty Block, the San Diego Democrat who founded the new organization. The Jewish Caucus