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

How about educating for real jobs?

Not one of Bloomberg’s adversaries bothered to criticize the mayor about a comment he was quoted saying dating back to November 17, 2016, which is the real subject of this article’s focus. “If you think about it, the agrarian society lasted 3,000 years, and we can teach processes. I can teach anybody – even people in this room, so no offense intended – to be a farmer. It’s a process. You dig a hole, you put a seed in, you put dirt on top, you add water, up comes corn. You can learn that. Then you had 300 years of the industrial society. You put the piece of metal on the lathe, you turn the crank in direction of arrow and you can have a job. And we created a lot of jobs. At one point, 98% of the world worked in agriculture. Today it’s 2% of the United States.” (Rabbi Dr. Michael Leo Samuel]

How about educating for real jobs? Read More »

Business & Finance, Michael Leo Samuel-Rabbi, Science, Medicine, & Education, USA

Pardons and partisanship

  During the 2016 campaign, President Trump declared: “We must maintain law and order at the highest level or we will cease to have a country, 100 percent. I am the law and order candidate.”  His record of commutations and pardons suggests the enforcement of law and order is selective and only applies to poor common criminals and not white (white) collar criminals, particularly if they are cronies of the President.  [Satire by Laurie Baron]

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Lawrence Baron, Trivia, Humor & Satire

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]

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

The cacophony of politicians talking about music

Two politicians in Israel recently referred to music in one context or another. This made me prick up my ears and pay attention, which is not something I usually do when I come across statements by politicians, in Israel or anywhere else. The first was the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. When asked why he preferred to stand trial for the crimes and misdemeanors of which he is accused, he replied (not his exact words, but the gist of them): “The judges in Jerusalem go to synagogue and the judges in Tel Aviv go to the Philharmonic.” What he was implying was that the judges in Jerusalem are honest, god-fearing people, while the ones in Tel Aviv are hedonistic heathen. [Dorothea Shefer-Vanson]

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Dorothea Shefer-Vanson, Middle East, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts

Deicide libel against Jews surfaces in Nova Scotia

Someone finally did it – publicly blaming the Jewish people for the crucifixion of Jesus and, even more disgracefully, applying this libel to explain Israel’s so-called occupation of the Palestinian territories. Henry M. Bradford’s words were printed on Jan. 27 in The Chronicle Herald, the daily newspaper serving Halifax in Canada’s Nova Scotia. His letter to the editor responded to a commentary about anti-Semitism by freelance journalist Ralph Surette. [Bruce S. Ticker]

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Bruce Ticker, International, Jewish History, Middle East, 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]

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

It’s not the creed, it’s the deed

In our Parasha, Mishpatim, laws, are two of more than 30 times that the Torah warns us against mistreating the sojourner, V’ger lo teelchatz “Do not oppress the stranger”(Shemot, 23:9). We learn about the value of treating others properly, equitably, impartially and what the way we treat others reveals about ourselves. These are certainly universal values that are essential to a healthy, fair, society. How do you live, not just profess, these values? [Michael Mantell, Ph.D]

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Jewish Religion, Michael Mantell

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]

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Donald H. Harrison, International, Jewish History, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, San Diego County, Travel and Food, USA

Good vs evil in a chessboard, parallel universe

Siblings Aaron and Stella eat some magic sushi and they find themselves in the parallel universe of Mushi,The Land of the Mind, somewhat similar in concept  on an updated, higher tech scale to what Alice found in Wonderland. In this parallel universe, many things are the same, but other things are quite different. Like a chess game, the world is divided into black and white spheres of influence, each presided over by a queen. Instead of knights, bishops, rooks, and pawns (and no king), the queens are aided in the Land of the Mind by various Lords and Ladies. [Book review by Donald H. Harrison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison

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]

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

Book tells of kibbutz movement’s rise and fall

A kibbutz, an Israeli collective settlement, originally agricultural, operates on the principles of shared ownership, equality among the sexes, and collaboration. In Hakibbutz Ha’Artzi, Mapam, and the Demise of the Israel Labor Movement, Tal Elmaliach, a postdoctoral fellow at the Ben-Gurion Research Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism, tells the history of the collapse of Soviet socialism in the late twentieth century and the concomitant death of the kibbutz movement (Hakibbutz Ha’Artzi) and Mapam, its political arm. He tells how the collapse of Hakibbutz Ha’Artzi accompanied the downfall of Histadrut, Israel’s federation of labor movements, which included both kibbutzim (plural of kibbutz) and industry, and Mapai, its political wing, whose power lay in the institutions it created through Marxist socialism. [Fred Riess, Ed.D]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Business & Finance, Fred Reiss, EdD, Middle East

Moses did not write the entire Torah

The rational Spanish sage Abraham ibn Ezra (1089–1164), whose views are included in most rabbinical Bibles with commentaries, stated that Moses did not write the entire Torah. Realizing that Moses was on top of the mountain alone where he died and did not descend to report what happened there even before he died, Abraham ibn Ezra states that Moses did not write all twelve passages in this chapter. He suggests that the chapter was written by Joshua who knew what occurred through prophecy. [Rabbi Dr. Israel Drazin]

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Israel Drazin-Rabbi Dr., Jewish Religion

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

Siba top dog by human, not canine, standards

While New Hampshire was voting in the presidential primary held this past Tuesday, the judges for the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show were selecting the winner of the Best in Show Award.   They chose a standard poodle named Siba.  Now I have nothing against poodles per se.  Indeed, they are highly intelligent, but in dog shows, superficial beauty is valued more than smartness.  That is why Siba received  the Westminster pewter trophy and hand-engraved Steuben crystal bowl as her rewards.  By the way, I find it obvious that these prizes are intended for Siba’s owners and not Siba whom I’m sure would prefer a year’s supply of filet mignon fed to her in the bowl and trophy which I surmise will end up in some display case. [Elona Baron as told the Laurie Baron]

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Lawrence Baron, The World We Share, Trivia, Humor & Satire