Donald H. Harrison

By Donald H. Harrison EL CAJON, California – As if Thanksgiving and the first day of Chanukah falling on the same day were not coincidence enough, the comet ISON will be at its closest point to the sun—about 750,000 miles away– on that day, Thursday, Nov. 28th. Grossmont College Astronomy Prof. Ross Cohen says for

  By Donald H. Harrison SAN DIEGO–Celebrating her 99th birthday with family and friends at a Westgate Hotel brunch, Gabriella Hartstein Auspitz Labson, with the help of film maker Yale Strom, showed a documentary on Sunday, Nov. 24,  about her life in a town that changed hands between Czechoslovakia and Hungary, and her subsequent rescue

  By Donald H. Harrison SAN DIEGO–Friends from many walks of life gathered to pay tribute to Laura Simon on Saturday night, November 23, in anticipation of her 108th birthday, which comes Nov. 26.  If you can’t remember the date, check with Interim Mayor Todd Gloria’s office.  He proclaimed Nov. 26th to be “Laura Simon

By Donald H. Harrison SAN DIEGO–I think it is only fair to warn student journalists that anything they write for their publications–anything–may follow them around for the rest of their lives.  Now, this can be a good thing, as in two tales I will soon relate, or it can be a very bad thing, if

By Donald H. Harrison EL CAJON, California — When Jews comfort someone whose family member or close friend has died, we often use the phrase, “May his/ her memory be for a blessing.” We hope that after the immediate shock of her death wears off, and her husband thinks of her, he will think of

By Donald H. Harrison LA JOLLA, California — Ironically on an evening that television news was reporting the firing of a school bus driver for having a swastika and a personalized license plate reading “Not See,” a homonyn for “Nazi”  on his private car, KPBS Television and Union Bank were feting 18 diverse individuals at

By Donald H. Harrison SAN DIEGO — The other day as my father-in-law, children and grandchildren joined with Nancy and me for Shabbat dinner, we tried to think of some wonderful way to celebrate Thanksgivingukah–as the conflation of Thanksgiving and Chanukah is being called.  Supposedly, these two holidays only arrive together every 70,000 years, so

Aline Sax, author, and Caryl Strzelecki, illustrator, The War Within These Walls, Eerdman’s Books for Young Readers, 2013, ISBN 978-0-8028-5428-5, 169 pages. By Donald H. Harrison SAN DIEGO — Sometimes I think all of us are too young to learn about the Holocaust, because the more we know the more our souls feel crushed.  But

Peri Berger, Broken Mirrors, Menucha Publishers, 2013, ISBN 978-1-61456-086-7, 270 pages, cover price unlisted. By Donald H. Harrison SAN DIEGO–From the very beginning of this novel, its denouement is telegraphed. Students at a Jewish school express confusion and consternation when they meet Judy Rangler, their new secular studies teacher. She doesn’t wear a sheitel, but

Julie Weinberg, I Wish There Were Baby Factories, BookLocker.com, 2013, ISBN 9781626464124, 210 pages, cover price unlisted By Donald H. Harrison SAN DIEGO — Somehow smiling through her tears, Julie Weinberg tells “a story inspired by real life events” about a couple whose efforts to have a baby–including fertility and adoption–were beset with dramatic disappointments,

Shoshana Mael, Dancing in the Dark, Menucha Publishers, Inc., 2013, ISBN 978-1-61465-094-2, 276 pages, cover price unlisted. By Donald H. Harrison SAN DIEGO–Rikki and her older sister Daniella, who were both quite popular with their classmates at an Orthodox Jewish girls high school, showed up one day badly bruised. Rikki’s neck had been clawed with

Karen Goldman, Jordan and the Dreadful Golem, Penlight Publications, Rachel Moseley illustrator, 2013, ISBN 978-098-386-852-1, 224 pages, $15.95 By Donald H. Harrison SAN DIEGO –Jewish tweens and teens who enjoyed the Harry Potter series by J.K.Rowling may find themselves charmed by a new juvenile fiction series launched by Karen Goldman about a village in the

  By Donald H. Harrison SAN DIEGO—This book falls within one of those between genres—historical fiction—in which it is difficult to tell what is real and what is made up.  If you were writing a biography of Marilyn Monroe, you couldn’t reliably cite it, yet there is enough verisimilitude about the book that a reader