AAA-Writers and photographers

Below are the names of writers who are currently active.  For others, living and deceased, please type their name into the search box above the masthead on our home page, www.sdjewishworld.com

A Word of Torah: What’s in an Alef?

This week we begin the third of the Five Books of Moses, the Book of Leviticus, known in Hebrew as VaYikra. The portion begins by G-d calling to Moses, inviting him to enter the newly-completed Tabernacle, also known as the Tent of Meeting. The purpose of this meeting was so that the Almighty could explain the array of sacrifices that the Jewish people were commanded to bring for numerous different reasons. For instance there was one type of sacrifice brought for sins, another for peace offerings (to offer thanks), daily communal sacrifices, special sacrifices for Shabbat and Holidays, and many other reasons as well. [Rabbi Yeruchem Eilfort]

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Jewish Religion, Yeruchem Eilfort-Rabbi

A Pilot’s Love Affair With a Beautiful Israeli

I ordered this book from Bibliophile because the blurb proclaimed that its main character was a pilot who fell in love with an Israeli woman and fought for his adopted country. That, in essence, is the nub of the story, but around it surges and swells a series of events and adventures involving love and enmity, joy and sorrow, and a veritable roller-coaster of emotions for the reader, who cannot help but be drawn into this gripping tale of romance, adventure and action. [Dorothea Shefer-Vanson]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Dorothea Shefer-Vanson, Middle East

Refugees will become hard-working Americans

With the wave of immigrants arriving at the border clamoring to be let in, I have been thinking a lot about immigration.  When Trump was in power, the border was basically closed, refugees and asylees had to wait in Mexico until their case was heard and that was a very long, inhumane process. In addition, many mothers were separated from their children. It seems like now the pendulum has swung from one extreme to another.  Do I agree with all the adults and unaccompanied minor rushing the border? It is creating unmanageable chaos and confusion.  However, I do understand why this is happening.  America is viewed as a safe haven for so many whose own countries or lives are in conflict, and they are desperate. [Mimi Pollack]

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International, Mimi Pollack, USA

Superstitions Behind Opening the Door for Elijah

After the Seder meal is eaten and the benchen, the Grace after Meals, is recited, a fourth cup of wine is filled, and the following actions are performed:
-According to the custom of many people, an additional fifth cup is poured for Elijah,
-A door is opened,
-Some people place a picture at the door entrance showing Elijah blowing a shofar announcing the arrival of the messiah,
-Some families have one of the participants rush out of the door and then reappear as Elijah,
 -Some families also exclaim baruch haba, baruch haba, “welcome welcome,” when the door is opened,
 -A paragraph that originated in the Middle Ages containing three parts, each of which say the same thing, is then recited,
(Rabbi Dr. Israel Drazin]

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Israel Drazin-Rabbi Dr., Jewish Religion

Coming Closer to Hashem

A year ago when we read this parasha that begins the book of Leviticus, we were in the beginning of anxious physical separation from each other. This year many of us are vaccinated and are beginning to be physically closer with others, B’H, with proper precautions of course. What sacrifices we’ve made over the past year! [Michael Mantell, Ph.D]

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Jewish Religion, Michael Mantell

Francisco Goya at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Perhaps what is most startling about the etchings of Francisco Goya, presently on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is the artist’s intensity of focus, his obsession with understanding the nature of human evil. Goya was a child of the Enlightenment, and he knew what it was to see humanity as the pinnacle of creation, the paragon of animals, the embodiment of reason, “in form and understanding how like a god?” as Hamlet would say. Yet this same creature, the light of reason in the world, was capable of the most barbaric cruelty. In one series after another Goya’s etchings attempt to grasp the universality of evil, to see it as an essentially human problem to be understood in terms of our capacity for moral choice. Evil is universally human, for Goya – a propensity in human beings that is at once basic and inextinguishable. [Sam Ben-Meir, Ph.D]

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Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, Sam Ben-Meir

In San Diego, it was lox, bagel and ‘pi’ day

Initially, the event on Sunday, March 14, was advertised by the Tifereth Israel Synagogue Men’s Club as a lox and bagel brunch, during which members could gather by Zoom and discuss how the coronavirus pandemic affected them, and what they look most forward to when it is over.  Members were invited to drive to the synagogue’s parking lot, where a boxed lox n’ bagel meal would be waiting for them. As my wife Nancy had some errands to run in the neighborhood of the synagogue, she volunteered to pick up the boxed brunch.  Inside of the box were two individual fruit pies — one apple, another cherry — in addition to the advertised lox, bagels and cream cheese.   How come?  “It’s pi day,” explained Bram Rubinstein, a Men’s Club member. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Donald H. Harrison, Jewish History, Lifestyles, San Diego County, Science, Medicine, & Education, Travel and Food, USA

A most unusual bar mitzvah

I attended the bar mitzvah of a young man who recoils from compliments or recognition.  So I can’t say who he is, but I can tell you that his friends and relatives are shaking their heads in wonder.  The young man turned 14  just two days ago, on March 11.  But today it was if he were 13 again.  Or so it seemed, because today he finally had his bar mitzvah, which normally occurs when a boy turns 13. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Donald H. Harrison, Jewish Religion, Lifestyles, San Diego County

Antisemitic graffiti riles SDSU

Earlier this week, an unidentified resident advisor at South Campus Plaza North, a large dormitory serving hundreds of students at San Diego State University, found scrawled on the exterior of the building three swastikas and coded messages often associated with white supremacist philosophy.  She immediately got some poster board to cover the offensive messaging, and drew hearts upon the poster board along with the message “Spread Love.”  After campus police were called to the scene and photographs taken of the offending material as part of an ongoing investigation, the antisemitic message was eliminated. [Donald H. Harrison]

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