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Bay Area

NEWS | EVENTS | PEOPLE

New Age center cancels Hanukkah concert due to threats

GABE STUTMAN | J. STAFF

A New Age retreat center in rural Northern California canceled a Hanukkah concert after the Jewish musician leading the event came under attack online for being a Zionist.

Harbin Hot Springs, a self-described “clothing optional” retreat center on 3,000 acres of “sacred land” about 20 miles north of Calistoga, features a network of spring-fed pools, meditation classes and sessions on “heart consciousness,” its guiding philosophy. Harbin, whose origins as a resort date back to 1870, is run by the Heart Consciousness Church, a religious nonprofit that describes itself as the “practical, living embodiment of Oneness.”

A church spokesperson said in a Dec. 23 statement to J. that Harbin’s leaders felt compelled to cancel the “sacred Chanukah concert” due to safety concerns. The Dec. 26 event, scheduled for the second night of the holiday, was canceled six days ahead of the concert date.

“This decision was not made lightly,” according to the email from Lia Findley Jennings, managing director of the Heart Consciousness Church. “In recent days, we became aware of escalating concerns regarding the event, including heightened rhetoric and potential threats of violence on social media. After thorough consideration and out of an abundance of caution, we determined that proceeding with the event under these circumstances posed an unacceptable risk.”

The statement added that Harbin would welcome the Jewish musician, Mikey Pauker, a former Oakland resident who lives in Orange County, in the future “when appropriate security measures are in place.”

The incident is only the latest example of a Jewish musician, writer or artist who has faced opprobrium or cancellation due to real or perceived support for Israel since Oct. 7, 2023, when the ongoing Israel-Hamas war began with an unprecedented terrorist attack on Israeli soil.

One of the most prominent examples has been Matisyahu, the popular Jewish reggae and hip-hop artist who has visited with and played music for Israeli soldiers. Early last year, three Matisyahu concerts in the U.S. were canceled due to threats of protests. His February concert in Berkeley faced protesters outside the venue but went on as planned.

At a music camp in the Bay Area this past summer, an Israeli guitarist who had served in the Israel Defense Forces was told he could not work at the camp amid protests from high-level staff after he was told he’d been hired. The camp cited administrative problems with his application. And in the literary world, San Francisco’s Book Passage canceled a February appearance by actor and short-story writer Brett Gelman, who is an outspoken Zionist.

Pauker is a guitarist, singer and composer who plays what he calls “devotional” Jewish music, akin to Christian rock but with Jewish lyrics and themes.

He is very much a part of the New Age scene, he said, and performs at festivals across the country that embrace spirituality, mysticism and environmentalism. He sings in both English and Hebrew, borrowing from prayer liturgy, such as the traditional Friday night song “Shalom Aleichem,”

which appears on his album “Extraordinary Love.” Pauker is currently studying to become a rabbi and cantor.

As a Jewish artist who supports Israel, he said, it’s been a trying period in the New Age music scene.

“I’ve been canceled from multiple festivals in the past couple years. I’ve had a lot of artists sending death threats, hate messages,” he said. “All I’ve been doing is putting my head down and just trying to move forward, but I can’t anymore. I need to tell people.”

After Harbin Hot Springs began promoting the concert on social media, a flurry of angry responses accused Pauker of being a “terrorist” who supports genocide.

“This Christmas Eve, you can listen to the project genocide music of Mikey Parkour,” one post from an anonymous account said, misstating the concert date and misspelling Pauker’s last name. “Ask Harbin not to support genocide and cancel him!”

Many of the posts came from Derek Cyr, a California man who has visited Harbin and feels a connection to it. In one post from his Facebook account, Cyr called Pauker’s work “devotional terrorist music.”

J. spoke with Cyr on the phone. He exulted that, in his view, he was able to convince Harbin to cancel the event.

“My main thing is I really dislike hypocrisy,” Cyr said. “For him to be going around claiming to be a peace-loving musician … and then posting pictures of tanks on his wall — it’s just not going to work for me.”

Cyr was referring to a social media post from Oct. 7, 2023, when Pauker published a photo of an Israeli tank kicking up a cloud of dust. Superimposed over the image were the words “I stand with Israel.” Cyr said that anyone who supports Israel,

in his view, supports genocide.

One angry Facebook post, which responded to a promotion of Pauker’s concert by calling the musician a “terrorist lover,” came from a Facebook account for Sinergy Events, which hosts adult sex parties in California. A background check indicated that Cyr at one time worked for Sinergy Events as a “tantrapeneuer.”

During his interview with J., Cyr called the publication an “evil Israeli newspaper.” Asked about the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, he said he believes that Israel was behind it and called it a “false flag” operation. Similar false conspiracy theories are rampant in far-left and far-right circles.

“I’ve been canceled from multiple festivals in the past couple years. I’ve had a lot of artists sending death threats, hate messages.”

Mikey Pauker, musician and singer

Soon after Pauker’s event was canceled, Cyr sent him a gloating email under the subject line “Canceled Bitch!” Pauker shared the email with J., and Cyr acknowledged that he had sent it.

“Winner winner canceled dinner!” the email said. “Keep your psychotic Zionist genocidal shit out of our peaceful communities!!! I am watching you and will have canceled [sic] anywhere you go.”

Pauker said he has contacted law enforcement about the email and other threats tied to his support for Israel.

On social media, Pauker has been open about his Zionism. He considers himself a “religious Zionist,” in the sense that he embraces the Jewish longing for Zion as part of his Jewish identity and practice. In October, on the first anniversary of the Hamas massacre, he posted about the topic on Instagram.

“I am Zion and Zion is within me,” his post said. “Our birthright is to be the guardians of Israel and of paradise. A small people yet with the strength of our God we will prevail.”

Pauker said he wishes for peace between Israelis and Palestinians and is involved with interfaith work between Muslims and Jews. “I do everything I can to build bridges and not be a part of the polarization,” he said.

After he learned his event was canceled, he sent a lengthy email the same day to Harbin expressing his disappointment and asking for a reversal of the decision.

He wrote that the “complaints” against him “stem from misinformation and a misunderstanding of Zionism,” which he said for most Jewish people is “intrinsic to our faith” and reflects a “spiritual and historical connection to the land of Israel.”

In the email, which he shared with J., he asked center leaders not to succumb to “cancel culture,” adding, “I believe Harbin Hot Springs has the capacity to stand as a beacon of fairness and understanding in these divisive times.” n

Pauker performing at Cornerstone Brewery in Berkeley in 2022. (COURTESY PAUKER)

Liberal Zionists felt ostracized in 2024. It could get worse.

ANALYSIS

| GABE STUTMAN | J. STAFF

A vocal segment of the political left trained their attention on Zionists with heightened intensity during 2024. Linking Zionism with colonialism, white supremacy, apartheid and genocide, they sought to ostracize pro-Israel Jews from polite society and progressive institutions. In some striking instances, they succeeded.

The trend has gained particular momentum in the Bay Area, impacting not only college campuses but museums, summer camps and even a hot springs resort.

“They’re targeting me and they’re canceling me, and they’re not even open to conversation,” said Mikey Pauker, a Jewish religious rock musician who said he has been disinvited from New Age music festivals and boycotted by other musicians because he is a Zionist. “I just feel like there are a lot of artists in the New Age world who don’t understand what they’re doing.”

The potency of this anti-Zionist movement, which has on numerous occasions spilled over into overt antisemitism, has left many liberal Jews, historically aligned with the American left on issues from economic policy to immigration to abortion rights, feeling betrayed and abandoned by individuals and groups they once considered allies.

The situation has put pro-Israel Jews into what feels to them like an impossible bind: Either fully disavow Israel as the Jewish national homeland and embrace the politics of anti-Zionism — “from the river to the sea” — or face wrath and ostracization.

Just before Hanukkah, the cancel campaign came to a New Age hot springs resort north of Calistoga where a

end of “vitriolic and antisemitic backlash” from activists who demanded that the museum remove Zionists from its board and support a boycott of Israel.

The list goes on.

The tendency to oppose Israel by targeting Zionists did not originate with the current war against Hamas in Gaza. In summer 2022, for example, several law student groups at UC Berkeley pledged not to invite Zionists to speaking engagements.

Anti-Zionist politics have formidable roots in the Bay

often has no interest in — political nuance.

For Bari Goldojarb, a social worker who worked as a mental health clinician for a progressive nonprofit in Silicon Valley, the animosity of her colleagues toward Zionists and Zionism became too much to bear. She wrote in a December op-ed for J. that after Oct. 7, her organization released a statement condemning Israeli “occupation” without mentioning the Hamas terrorist attack or the brutalization of civilians, including women.

“It was then I realized that I not only needed a new job,” Goldojarb wrote. “I needed to find a new community altogether.”

“I would never cede the word ‘progressive,’ or the progressive philosophy, to a bunch of antiIsrael zealots.”

Dan Kalb

Dec. 26 concert of Jewish music was scrubbed after a shadowy online campaign targeted Pauker as a genocide supporter and a “terrorist.”

The incident came as little surprise to those who have been following the anti-Zionist movement closely.

This past summer at a music camp in a redwood forest in San Mateo County, a group of musicians threatened a boycott because of Adam Flam, a young Jewish acoustic guitar player who had served, in accordance with the laws of his country, in the Israel Defense Forces. Flam’s employment offer was rescinded, though the camp blamed administrative issues.

Earlier in the year, the CEO of San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, a contemporary arts museum and performance center, resigned her position. Sara Fenske Bahat, who is Jewish, said she found herself on the receiving

Area, where influential groups like Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine were born. But incidents in Northern California, in particular, have accelerated, impacting spheres of life well beyond college campuses.

The pro-Palestinian movement has long borrowed rhetoric and tactics from the global anti-apartheid movement against South Africa. That movement, which peaked in the 1980s, successfully took aim at the country through academic, cultural and artistic boycotts. Many refused to do business with or perform in South Africa because of its legally enforced racial segregation.

Israel has no such laws. It does enforce a military occupation of the West Bank, where Jewish settlers enjoy the benefit of Israeli citizenship while Palestinians do not.

Many progressive American Jews oppose the occupation of the West Bank even as they recognize the immense security threats Israel faces, epitomized by the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas invasion and massacre.

But in the case of today’s anti-Israel movement, activists target both Israel and individual Jews. And rather than citing specific Israeli policies, they often name Zionism — the millennia-old theological yearning that became a political movement in the late 19th century, calling for the establishment of a modern Jewish state in some portion of the land between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea.

Similar to the anti-apartheid movement, the anti-Zionist strategy seeks to isolate and alienate Israel and its supporters. This accelerating protest tactic leaves little room for — and

It’s important to note that this attitude toward Zionists does not have much purchase in mainstream political institutions. In state legislatures and in Congress, support for Israel as a Jewish, democratic country remains strong. Nor is anti-Zionism reflected in surveys of American voters, who largely support Israel.

But opinions are shifting among younger voters. And the trend is experienced most poignantly at eye level, on the ground — by Jews living in progressive enclaves like the Bay Area and working, learning and volunteering in progressive institutions.

Anyone who has visited a bar in Oakland or San Francisco knows how common it is to see messages scrawled on bathroom walls saying something to the effect of “F— Zionists.” On dating apps, politically conscious young people routinely declare “No Zionists” wanted in their love life.

Dan Kalb, a longtime member of the Oakland City Council whose term ended this month, is an environmental activist who supports progressive policies like single-payer health care. He described what it’s like to get caught in the middle.

In late 2023, Kalb was boycotted by undergraduate students at UC Berkeley because he is a Zionist. A lecture he planned to deliver on environmental activism was canceled. Kalb said the students should be “embarrassed” about what they did, but he was also indignant about the idea that their behavior would impact his own political orientation.

To Kalb, his views define American progressive politics more than theirs.

“I would never cede the word ‘progressive,’ or the progressive philosophy, to a bunch of anti-Israel zealots,” he told J. at the end of 2024. “My position on single-payer, or Medicare for All — my position to protect renters, my position for strong environmental policies — those are not changing.”

We are now entering a new political era under a second Donald Trump administration. The president-elect has pledged to take a hardline approach to anti-Zionist speech and activism in American institutions, including on college campuses.

This approach risks further painting pro-Israel Jews into a political corner, as allied with right-wing politics, whether they like it or not.

Based on surveys of young voters and the tenor of political activism in progressive parts of the country, anti-Zionism appears to be gaining steam in cities, institutions and movements that American Jews have long embraced. This trend, if not reversed, could prod Zionists to make difficult, if not impossible, choices. n

Graffiti covers Manny’s facade in S.F. on Oct. 6. (COURTESY MANNY YEKUTIEL)

Anti-Israel graffiti pops up again near Oakland menorah

NIVA ASHKENAZI | J. STAFF

On the final days of Hanukkah, disturbing graffiti was discovered along Lake Merritt, where Chabad of Oakland had erected a giant public menorah. “Israelis are the new Nazis!” was scrawled, with an arrow pointing toward the menorah a short distance away.

It was the second Hanukkah in a row that Chabad's menorah became the target of hate. In 2023, its 11-foot menorah was torn apart in the middle of the night, with large pieces scattered across the sidewalk and thrown into the lake. Antisemitic graffiti was left where it had stood.

Zoe Levine Lenhoff, who is active in the Oakland Jewish Alliance, was sent photos of this year’s graffiti on Dec. 30 and reported it to Oakland Public Works. Within a day, the graffiti was painted over. Lenhoff said she didn’t know whether it was a city employee or a private citizen who did so.

Then on Jan. 1, the same graffiti reappeared — even larger. This time, a member of the Oakland Jewish Alliance, JT MatesMuchin, cleaned it up, Lenhoff said.

Lenhoff, a 34-year-old mother of three, has been leading cleanup efforts for the group, which formed in October 2023 following the Hamas massacre in Israel. According to the alliance’s website, the group seeks to fight antisemitism and safeguard Jewish civil rights.

Lenhoff said she takes her children on daily walks around the lake and regularly spots antisemitic or anti-Israel graffiti. She documents each instance, finds volunteers to paint over

the graffiti (or does so herself) and reports it to Oakland Public Works by dialing 311. She said she is concerned about her children seeing the messages, which often use explicit language.

“It feels that it’s just the Jewish community who cares, who feels that this is targeted to them, and it’s only our problem,” Lenhoff told J. “While I appreciate [the city] expediting these requests to 311, it’s clearly not enough. [Antisemitic graffiti] has been showing up now for 13, 14 months, relentlessly, nonstop. So it’s not enough. There needs to be

consequences for these vandals.”

For Chabad of Oakland Rabbi Dovid Labkowski, the recent incident was, unfortunately, one among many.

“Our center is near the lake,” he said. “We have people in our community who walk [around] the lake every single day. You have anti-Jewish, anti-Israel graffiti literally almost daily. It’s cleaned up, and it’s sprayed again.”

Following the 2023 vandalism at the lake, Labkowski said he heard from Oakland neighbors, some of whom identified as pro-Palestinian, who were upset about the menorah getting caught up in the political divide in such an ugly way. A few days later, hundreds of people came to a Hanukkah event at the site to show support and unity, celebrating with a borrowed menorah.

“Ultimately, the menorah is not about Israel, and it’s not about politics.” Labkowski said. “There were a lot of people from all political sides that came together… It was very important to us that this year we continue that.”

For 2024, a new menorah was erected –– standing 19 feet tall –– and attached more securely with a heavy concrete base. Labkowski coordinated with local congregations to recruit volunteers to monitor the menorah. He told J. he also spoke with an unhoused family living nearby who volunteered to keep watch.

“Every [day], there were people watching it,” he said, “walking back and forth, making sure it’s protected.” n

THE CREATIVE SPIRIT OF SAN FRANCISCO

“Untitled Digital”

By Ray Stone

Emanu-El interfaith service blesses Lurie as new S.F. mayor

NIVA ASHKENAZI | J. STAFF

More than 50 years ago, Rabbi Brian Lurie delivered sermons from the bimah of San Francisco’s Congregation Emanu-El as an assistant rabbi. On Jan. 7, he returned to bless his son, Daniel Lurie, the night before his inauguration as the city’s mayor.

About 1,000 people, including nearly 60 religious leaders, gathered at the synagogue for an “interfaith unity celebration” organized by the San Francisco Interfaith Council.

The evening service featured a prayer from a leader of the Ohlone Nation, a reading from the Quran by an imam with the San Francisco Muslim Community Center, and prayers for the city by leaders of other houses of worship including St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, the Presbyterian Church in Chinatown, Temple United Methodist Church and the Buddhist Church of San Francisco.

“I will work hard every single day to deliver results to San Franciscans. I will honor and protect our shared values of compassion, inclusion and progress.”

Daniel

Michael Pappas, executive director of the S.F. Interfaith Council, delivered the opening remarks, in which he described Daniel Lurie as one “committed to that core tenet of Judaism — tikkun olam, repairing the broken world — and whose faith is actualized in service of the city and to those who are in the greatest of need.”

Beyond the persistent “Levi Strauss heir” label, Lurie is best known for his philanthropic work. In 2005, he founded the nonprofit Tipping Point Community, which awards grants to local groups fighting poverty through housing, education and employment initiatives. Lurie also worked with business owner Manny Yekutiel in 2023 to co-found the Civic Joy Fund, which works to revitalize commercial areas in the city that have struggled financially since the pandemic.

In his speech at Emanu-El, Lurie did not shy away from highlighting troubling issues for which San Francisco has gained a nationwide reputation.

“How can we be a bastion of compassion when we allow drugs and mental illness to take thousands of lives on our streets? Strong values are not enough,” Lurie said. “I will work tirelessly, I will work hard every single day to deliver results to San Franciscans. I will honor and protect our shared values of compassion, inclusion and progress.”

The S.F. Interfaith Council launched in 1988. Its co-founder is Rita Semel, a Bay Area Jewish community luminary who has been a major supporter of the organization over decades. The council, which counts 800 congregations as constituents, is heavily involved in charitable work benefiting the poor and homeless.

Pappas, who has led the council for 18 years, praised Lurie in an interview with J. “He was very instrumental in helping to navigate us … from the Great Recession to probably one of the greatest, in recent memory, periods of prosperity for our city,” Pappas said.

Among the council’s functions are hosting unity services for incoming political leaders, which it has done for newly elected mayors in San Francisco since 2004. The first of such services was held for former Mayor Gavin Newsom.

Usually the service is conducted in a church. For Lurie, Emanu-El was an obvious choice. He is a member of the Reform synagogue and has attended services there since childhood.

Lurie’s wife, Becca Prowda, his two

children and his mother, Miriam “Mimi” Lurie Haas, were with him to celebrate on Jan. 7 as well.

After reciting the traditional blessing in Hebrew and English that Jewish parents offer their children on Shabbat, the mayor’s father offered a final remark:

“I believe, with all my heart, that he will be a blessing for all of San Francisco.”

His inauguration ceremony took place Jan. 8 in Civic Center Plaza, framed by City Hall and attended by a crowd of civic leaders and city residents. Speakers included Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr and the new mayor’s wife, with performances by Michael Franti, the Glide Ensemble and the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus. n

Lurie, ahead of inauguration

San Francisco interfaith clergy encircle Daniel Lurie and give him a communal blessing on Jan. 7, the night before his mayoral inauguration, at Congregation Emanu-El. (PHOTOS/AARON LEVY-WOLINS/J. STAFF)

Daniel Lurie with father Rabbi Brian Lurie during the interfaith celebration at EmanuEl, where the new mayor is a member.

Families suing school district on Peninsula speak out

EMMA GOSS | J. STAFF

William Kesselman seriously considered leaving MenloAtherton High School during his freshman year after two significant antisemitic incidents, he told J.

He said the first occurred in September 2023 when a substitute biology teacher told him and his classmates two Holocaust jokes about burning Jews in ovens.

Then a month later, during a break between classes on Oct. 16, 2023, he said, a classmate called him a “kike” and said he hoped Hamas would kill Kesselman’s entire family.

Both incidents are included in a multi-party lawsuit filed in November by Kesselman’s mother along with five other Jewish families. Represented by the Deborah Project, the families allege that Sequoia Union High School District did little to address the “pervasive antisemitism” their children faced during the 2023-2024 school year.

J. reported on the existence of the lawsuit after it was filed. Now, two of the families who are plaintiffs in the suit have described their experiences to J.

The lawsuit adds Sequoia Union to a growing list of Bay Area school districts under scrutiny following incidents of antisemitism, as well as for allegations of biased anti-Israel content in classrooms since Oct. 7, 2023. The Deborah Project, which describes itself as a public interest law firm supporting the civil rights of Jews, has spearheaded a number of lawsuits on behalf of families, including suits against the Berkeley, Hayward and Mountain View-Los Altos school districts for allegedly allowing anti-Israel or antisemitic material to be taught in classrooms.

Other families have turned to different groups and firms for help. In October, a Jewish family sued the Santa Clara County Unified School District over alleged antisemitic bullying.

in place dealing with hateful behavior and antisemitism.

“Menlo-Atherton High School does not condone antisemitism, hate speech of any kind, or hate-motivated behavior,” the email said. “M-A has adopted specific language and policy around hate-motivated behavior as well as adopting the US State Department’s definition of antisemitism. These policies are all outlined in our student and staff handbooks and we have communicated them to students, staff, and families.”

Losekoot added, “We also continue to design lessons that address antisemitism in the classroom …. As always, we continue to take all concerns and complaints seriously, strive to listen, and reflect on how we can better serve our diverse community.”

Sam and Andrea Kasle are also plaintiffs in the lawsuit. They are suing on behalf of their daughter, a former student at Woodside High School who left after her sophomore year. Sam Kasle asked that J. not share her name out of concern over “social blowback.”

“She is a social butterfly and does not want her wings ripped,” Kasle said.

Last school year, just after the onset of the Israel-Hamas war, Kasle’s daughter said her class was being taught a one-sided narrative on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by world history teacher Gregory Gruszynski, according to the lawsuit.

“The fact that they said it was my fault that I was harassed, that was when I realized, OK, M-A couldn’t care less about me.”

The Sequoia district lawsuit, filed in federal court in San Francisco, was brought by Jewish families at Menlo-Atherton and Woodside high schools, both in San Mateo County.

William Kesselman, Menlo-Atherton student

The Oct. 16, 2023, incident reported by Kesselman is described in detail in the lawsuit.

“I was listening to music and hanging out near the G-wing,” began his handwritten report, viewed by J.

A classmate, who Kesselman said bullied him in the past, came up “without provocation, encircled me with his buddies and proceeded to call me a kike and said he hopes me and my entire family burn in hell, and that Hamas kills us all,” Kesselman’s incident report continued. “And then said ‘go Hamas, free Palestine. Fuck all Jews.’ And then the bell rang.”

The school’s administration took a different tack in its response than Kesselman expected. According to the lawsuit, administrators “blamed” Kesselman for provoking the harassment and suggested he switch classes to avoid “provoking” the other student, who was enrolled in one of his courses.

“The fact that they said it was my fault that I was harassed, that was when I realized, OK, so M-A couldn’t care less about me,” Kesselman told J.

Principal Karl Losekoot responded to the lawsuit’s claims in an email to J. He noted that while he could not answer questions about the ongoing litigation, the school has policies

During one lesson, the lawsuit alleges, Gruszynski characterized Israel as perpetrating “wanton military violence,” without providing context about the Hamas massacre that started the war. Kasle’s daughter challenged Gruszynski and asked, “Who attacked first?”

Gruszynski “reluctantly admitted” that Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, according to the lawsuit.

From that point on, Kasle’s daughter and Gruszynski had a fraught relationship in the classroom. According to the lawsuit, Gruszynski began a class session in December 2023 by singling her out and “using a tone that implied” it was “preposterous” she didn’t consider Israel an “apartheid state.”

“He tried to use her as a useful idiot to show the class, you know, it’s ridiculous, it’s preposterous to think otherwise,” Kasle told J.

Kasle’s daughter came home from school in tears on multiple occasions, he said. He asked to see the course materials for her world history class.

“When she showed me the materials, that’s when it all clicked,” Kasle said. “She’s trying to get the truth out, and this teacher is subverting it in a very conscientious and directed way.”

Gruszynski did not respond to multiple J. emails seeking comment. He also declined a request for a meeting last school year, said Kasle, who spent “months” emailing Gruszynski and

school administrators to try to understand the source of the course materials and why some appeared to be created by Gruszynski himself without school approval, according to the lawsuit.

At first, Kasle said, administrators seemed to understand why he was asking questions about the factually inaccurate course materials about Israel and and how his daughter was experiencing them.

“The vice principal, the principal, the assistant to the superintendent,” Kasle said, “all of them gave a response similar to, ‘Oh, this is horrible. This should never happen to your daughter, we’re going to really look into this,’” he told J.

But nothing ever changed, he said. The students were still being tested on materials that misrepresented Israel’s history, Kasle said, and he was getting nowhere.

“It took me months to realize that they weren’t going to do anything,” he said.

The administrative vice principal, Charles Velschow, suggested filing a complaint with the school following the state’s Uniform Complaint Procedure, Kasle said.

Velschow declined to comment, referring J. to the law firm of Dannis Woliver Kelley, retained by the district for this case. The law firm did not respond to J.’s emailed requests for comment.

“I put in at least four, if not more, formal complaints,” Kasle told J.

The required 30-day period for UCP to respond to complaints took more than 90 days in some cases, he said, and other complaints received no response.

Unaware of any other recourse, Kasle said the next logical step was to sue the school district.

“This whole process needs to be fixed for other people,” he told J.

For his part, Kesselman chose to stay at Menlo-Atherton High School even with the lawsuit pending.

“He understands that we’re not running away from problems. We’re trying to solve them,” Margarette Ell-Kesselman, William’s mother, told J. “We’re doing our best and William is also doing his best.”

Now a sophomore, Kesselman told J. that he has good friends, joined the school’s water polo team and feels overall that “this year is going way better than last year.” The reason? He has “made up” with the boy who called him a kike and said “there’s not really any antisemitic events targeted at me.”

Despite these positive changes, Kesselman is glad the lawsuit is moving forward. He said the school’s mishandling of his complaints last school year was never adequately addressed.

“I think them getting sued is like a wake-up call,” he said. n

Parent Sam Kasle (right) is suing his daughter’s school over antisemitism. He appeared on NewsNation with journalist Chris Cuomo and attorney Lori Marcus on Nov. 18. (SCREENSHOT)

The 10 J. stories that most grabbed hearts and minds in 2024

DAVID A.M. WILENSKY | J. STAFF

With 2024 barely in the rearview mirror, it’s time to look back on which J. stories were the most popular and well-read. From Gaza protests on campuses to shifts in the Jewish philanthropic landscape to the first woman rabbi from Uganda, here are the Jewish Bay Area stories that drew reader interest. Links to all of the mentioned stories can be found at tinyurl.com/2024topstories.

10. Kehillah high school in Palo Alto drops ‘Jewish’ from its name, sparking backlash from alumni and others

In September, Kehillah Jewish High School announced it was changing its name to, simply, “The Kehillah School.” Many current parents and students as well as alumni were not happy about it, and they made sure that Kehillah leaders knew how they felt. Kehillah leaders disagreed with Labunsky’s characterization and told us, “We stand by our commitment to our longstanding Jewish values, our deep academics in Jewish Studies, celebration of Jewish and Israeli holidays, and creating belonging for all members of our community.”

9. First woman rabbi from Uganda steps into role at Beth Am in Los Altos Hills

In August, Andrew interviewed Rabbi Shoshana Nambi, the first ordained woman rabbi from the Abayudaya Jewish community in Uganda, as she stepped into her new job as assistant rabbi at Congregation Beth Am in Los Altos Hills. She is just the second Abayudaya rabbi ordained in the U.S. after Rabbi Gershom Sizomu, the longtime leader of the community, who has spoken to Bay Area audiences several times.

8. Anti-Zionist org gets $100K grant as Walter and Elise Haas Fund changes direction

The S.F.-based Walter and Elise Haas Fund, launched more than 70 years ago with money from relatives of Levi Strauss, has stopped making grants to Jewish nonprofits. On top of that, it has given a $100,000 grant to the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, whose public activities include protesting against Israel and organizing Gaza cease-fire

Our most-read stories of the year included campus protests, local government legislation and strife and the welcoming of a woman rabbi from Uganda. (PHOTOS/AARON LEVYWOLINS/J. STAFF AND @UCSF4PALESTINE/INSTAGRAM)

resolutions in local governments. The move angered leaders in the local Jewish community, including at nonprofits that have lost their Haas grants.

7. Man in ‘violent’ Star of David baseball cap asked ‘Are you a Zionist?’ and told to leave Oakland cafe

In this troubling story, a man wearing a Star of David baseball cap was berated by the co-founder of an Oakland coffee shop. Jonathan Hirsch, a customer at the Jerusalem Coffee House who was there with his 5-yearold son, argued back. The two men shouted at each other until the police arrived. This same cafe made headlines just weeks earlier for a new menu that included drinks with names that glorified terrorism.

6. Cease-fire resolution fever

Across Northern California, local politicians and residents derailed the business of city and county governments with proposals for resolutions and official statements in favor of a cease-fire in Gaza. Opposing groups

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of residents, for and against the measures, caused typically sedate meetings to boil over. In San Francisco, contentious meetings led to a compromise resolution that left Mayor London Breed in the no-win situation of deciding whether to veto it. Her quandary led to the single most-read article in all of our coverage of cease-fire resolutions: “S.F. Mayor London Breed denounces supervisors’ cease-fire measure after anguished letter from Haifa counterpart.” (Breed, by the way, eventually decided against a veto.) For more, check out our interactive map of cease-fire resolutions at tinyurl.com/resolutionmap.

5. When Elie Wiesel was assaulted in San Francisco in 2007, it was DA Kamala Harris who charged his attacker with a hate crime

Maya Mirsky’s most popular “From the Archives” column in 2024 came at the height of the presidential campaign, when she found a 2007 story of then-S.F. District Attorney Kamala Harris prosecuting the man who assaulted famed author and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel. Wiesel was in his hotel in San Francisco when Eric Hunt, an antisemite and Holocaust denier, attacked him. Harris’ office charged Hunt with kidnapping, stalking, elder abuse and a hate crime.

4. Pro-Palestinian activism puts Jewish UCSF patients and doctors on edge

Should patients have to face political messages that may offend or frighten them while seeking treatment? And what is the role of political activism in a school of

medicine? These are some of the questions raised by Gabe’s coverage of a series of incidents at UCSF, which is both a medical school and a working hospital. The incidents ranged from nurses wearing pro-Palestinian pins to anti-Zionist, antisemitic social media posts from a professor who is now suspended.

3. Campus clashes

Two stories about UC Berkeley were tied for the third spot on this list. The first was “‘Shiva-worthy’: Berkeley prof starts sit-in to force action against antisemitism,” the story of Professor Ron Hassner’s two-week office sit-and-sleep-in last March, aimed at pressuring Cal to ameliorate what many Jewish students and faculty said was a difficult environment for them on campus. (Our article about the end of his sit-in also drew significant traffic.)

The second story that tied for third place was one of the incidents that inspired Hassner’s sit-in: “‘I’m screaming for help’: Jewish students face violence at UC Berkeley Israel talk.” (This story, incidentally, also won an award from the SF Press Club.) News editor Gabe Stutman, staff writer Maya Mirsky and Emma all worked on this story about a protest that turned into a riot outside an event featuring a right-wing Israeli speaker. Multiple Jewish students suffered minor injuries, and a glass door and window at Zellerbach Playhouse were shattered.

2. Marco Troper, math whiz and Hausner alum, dies at 19

The death of a young member of our local Jewish community is always shocking. In February, we lost Marco Troper to an accidental drug overdose. The 19-year-old alumnus of Gideon Hausner Jewish Day School in Palo Alto was the middle son among five children of former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki and longtime Google executive Dennis Troper. In a story of compounding tragedy, Wojcicki, 56, died in August of lung cancer.

1. Citing safety, dozens of Jewish families are leaving Oakland public schools

This wasn’t just our highest traffic story of the year — it also made headlines in the mainstream press. In January, staff writer Emma Goss broke the news that dozens of Jewish families were planning to pull their children from Oakland public schools over their sense of growing antisemitism in schools, which they said was coming from both students and teachers. Some parents moved their kids to the nearby Piedmont school district, others to private schools. In May, Emma learned that in a two-month period, the Piedmont district received 261 transfer requests. n

S.F. Ner Tamid shines a light on Jewish first responders

NIVA ASHKENAZI | J. STAFF

Jeff Covitz, a paramedic rescue captain with the San Francisco Fire Department, recognized the direct impact of Oct. 7 on diaspora Jews when a friend began to hesitate over wearing her Star of David in public.

“Oh my God, are we really back to that?” Covitz recalled to J. “Are we really back to 1930s Germany? Are we back to the Middle Ages where you had to hide the fact that you’re Jewish? Are we really going down that path?”

As fellow Jews in the SFFD reached out after the 2023 Hamas massacre and global spike in antisemitism, Covitz said he wanted to find a way to help counteract the isolation and sense of being under siege that many were feeling in their personal lives.

This summer, Covitz co-founded the SFFD Ner Tamid Society and became its first president. The group for Jewish firefighters, paramedics, emergency medical technicians and other department personnel seeks to connect colleagues with one another and to the local Jewish community. “Ner tamid” is Hebrew for “eternal light,” referencing the gas flame or electric light that continuously burns or shines in a synagogue’s sanctuary as a symbol of God’s presence.

Since the group’s first meeting last summer, members have celebrated Shabbat, Rosh Hashanah and Hanukkah together. Ner Tamid is eager to expand its membership and outreach.

Mike Hamilton, a paramedic and emergency medical services lieutenant, was one of those colleagues looking to give and get support. Helping co-found Ner Tamid filled that need for Hamilton, who serves as its secretary.

“Like everybody after Oct. 7… I was running hot. I was full boil. And I was looking for a way to positively use that energy,” Hamilton, 44, told J. “I just started reaching out to other Jews that I know all over my life, but that also includes work…. I’m sure something that so many people can relate to, especially in the direct short term after Oct. 7, was that feeling of ‘Who can I trust right now?’”

Covitz visited San Francisco’s Congregation Sherith Israel to introduce Ner Tamid to the local community during Dec. 13 Shabbat services.

“We strongly believe that your public safety agencies should reflect the community we serve,” Covitz told congregants.

The fire department has 1,780 firefighters, paramedics and emergency medical technicians, according to public information officer Lt. Mariano Elias. There is no tracking of religious affiliation, but Covitz estimated

that fewer than 1% of SFFD personnel are Jewish. “We’d like to change that,” he said at the synagogue. (According to a 2021 Jewish Community Federation and Endowment Fund study, 17% of Bay Area Jews live in San Francisco.)

The group is building upon an institution that already exists on the East Coast. Only a few weeks after the Hamas attack, Covitz contacted Paul Demel, a firefighter in the New York City Fire Department and communications officer of FDNY’s own Ner Tamid Society.

“We tried to do whatever we could to help them along, give them advice, give them any resources that they needed,” Demel told J. “I’m really proud of what they’ve done.”

Established in 1926, FDNY’s Ner Tamid Society offers career development, community outreach and charity initiatives.

Before Oct. 7, 2023, Demel estimated that his group had around 100 members. In the following months, he said, membership and active participation in FDNY Ner Tamid events practically doubled.

Covitz told J. that he sees FDNY’s Ner Tamid as the role model for SFFD’s chapter.

“I want this to live long past me,” said Covitz, 57, who works as an EMS supervisor. “I’m going to retire at some point. I would like this organization to continue on and thrive.”

So far, SFFD’s Ner Tamid has around 15 members. As the group becomes more established, leaders hope both to increase membership and encourage more Jewish recruitment to the fire department.

Membership in S.F.’s Ner Tamid is not exclusive to Jews. Its vice president isn’t Jewish, though his wife and children are. Others have traces of Jewish ancestry, and others still have no Jewish affiliation at all but joined to support their Jewish colleagues.

“That was the pleasant surprise I got when I started doing this — is how many very supportive non-Jewish people we’ve encountered within the department,” Covitz said.

Neither Covitz nor Hamilton said they have experienced any antisemitism within the fire department itself. Interacting with the general public, however, is a different story.

As a paramedic, Hamilton said he has treated patients with swastikas tattooed on their faces.

In June, while treating a protester who lost consciousness during a demonstration, he witnessed a group spraying pro-Hamas graffiti on Department of Homeland Security patrol vehicles.

Covitz spoke to the anxiety and even

Members of the SFFD Ner Tamid Society, a new group for Jewish firefighters and first responders, visit Sherith Israel in San Francisco on Dec. 13. President Jeff Covitz is second from right. (COURTESY

dread that many Jews have been feeling. “I’m acutely aware that my Jewish community is a target,” he said. “One of the motivations I have for this organization is: What can we do in these very weird times that we’re living in right now to at least make the Jewish community better prepared for a worst-case scenario that we all hope doesn’t happen” — particularly a lone shooter or attacker.

In addition to offering training for emergency first aid, CPR and defibrillator use to the public, the SFFD Ner Tamid Society can also provide training for disaster preparedness and fire safety.

At the same time, Ner Tamid wants to celebrate the good that comes with strengthening their bonds with fellow Jews.

“There’s just so many different ways that we can help the community and strengthen it,” Hamilton said, recalling a tender moment from the group’s Hanukkah party on Dec. 19. “Seeing all these people that are being brought together and spouses and partners meeting each other, it’s just this beautiful thing.… We’re really doing something that feels really, really good.”

SF’s Ner Tamid Society can be reached at sffnertamid@gmail.com or via Instagram at @sf.fire.ner.tamid.society. n

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Campus protests are shifting as new rules curtail ’24 chaos

JUDY MALTZ | HAARETZ

As campuses across the country emptied out for winter vacation in 2023, university leaders were hoping against hope that the protests sparked by the events of Oct. 7 might die down once the students returned.

The break from campus life, they wanted to believe, would stifle the movement that had been picking up steam ever since the Hamas massacre and Israel’s devastating retaliation.

It would turn out to be wishful thinking. Not only did the protests gain even more momentum once the students returned to campus in January, but the spring semester of 2024 would go down in history as the most politically explosive since the Vietnam War era more than half a century earlier.

Encampments protesting the Gaza war would sprout up on hundreds of campuses across the United States. Thousands of students would be arrested, suspended and subjected to other disciplinary action, as riot police stormed campuses. Buildings would be overtaken, windows smashed. And countless graduation ceremonies would be disrupted by walkouts and rallies.

schools. In the fall, there were protests at 240. Last spring, 3,200 pro-Palestinian student protesters were arrested. In the fall, their number dropped to 80.

According to Jay Ulfelder, program direc-

Administrators had good reason to be concerned that the protests might intensify when students returned to campus in fall 2024, given the mounting death toll and growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza. But that didn’t happen.

In fact, protests have been few and far between since September, hardly drawing a fraction of the numbers of last spring. There have been no building takeovers and few arrests. On the rare occasion students have tried to set up new encampments, they have been torn down immediately.

Data tracked by researchers at Harvard’s Nonviolent Action Lab and the Crowd Counting Consortium — a network of experts who collect publicly available information on protests, strikes, riots and other political actions across the United States — illustrate how dramatic the change has been.

In spring 2024, the consortium logged more than 3,200 pro-Palestinian protests on U.S. campuses.

In the fall, the number dropped to 1,100. Last spring, there were protests at 410

tor of the Nonviolent Action Lab, the nature of the protest activity has also shifted, with a significantly greater share of actions falling into the quieter categories of vigils and “study-ins.”

“Another new twist this fall was the wave of sukkahs erected on campuses by Jewish students during Sukkot with explicit messaging opposing genocide and supporting Palestinian liberation,” Ulfelder notes.

“In all cases, I think these trends reflect the creativity of student organizers in trying to sustain the momentum from the spring in the face of stricter campus rules and police repression.”

Indeed, Ulfelder does not believe the protests have fizzled out because of a lack of commitment or passion. Instead, he blames new regulations introduced in the fall, as well as the fallout from the crackdown on campuses last spring.

“If you arrest or suspend a bunch of organizers in the spring, clearly those organizers and networks are going to have a hard time bouncing back and organizing new things in the fall,” he says.

Luca Robinson, a sophomore at

In December, the SF Hillel house was hit with graffiti that referenced a historic battle between Jews and Muslims.

Berkeley, recalls being shocked by some of the things he saw and heard during his first year at the university. “I’d be sitting in Hebrew class and outside, you could hear this mob chanting ‘Intifada, intifada,'” he says. “It was super weird and uncomfortable.”

Campus life has changed for the better in that respect, he adds. “The protests seem to have lost traction. Even some Jewish kids I know here on campus who used to join the protests, they’ve stopped going. What I hear from them is that the core group has gotten way too radical, and it made them feel alienated. I’d hear them say things like ‘This is not chill anymore’ or ‘We’re against the war, but not into all the rest of this.’”

Since the start of the fall semester, many universities and colleges have imposed absolute bans on encampments. Others have restricted protests to certain designated areas of campus, often away from the main hubs, or prohibited demonstrations after certain hours. At some campuses, signs and banners of a political nature are no longer allowed.

Jonah Rubin, senior manager of campus organizing for Jewish Voice for Peace, the anti-Zionist group that has played a vital role in the movement, sees these steps as the main reason for the protest movement’s failure to maintain momentum in the fall.

“Students and faculty are being banned from campus for participating in peaceful, at times even silent, protest — and in some cases universities are pressing criminal charges against students,” Rubin said in a statement to Haaretz. “Despite this, students continue to mobilize, organize and demand divestment — including on the 20-odd campuses where students erected Gaza Solidarity Sukkahs this fall.”

Many of the changes on campuses were prompted by complaints by Jewish students, alumni and donors. They charged that, in defending the free speech rights of the protesters, many universities were exposing their Jewish students to discrimination and harassment. Indeed, New York University went so far this fall as to update its student conduct guidelines to ban the use of the term “Zionist” as a pejorative.

“We’ve seen a few very significant positive changes this semester,” says Adam Lehman, president and CEO of Jewish campus life group Hillel International. “We have seen far fewer mass protests and many universities really upping their game when it comes to addressing issues of discrimination affecting Jewish students. They’re definitely responding more quickly, more aggressively and more effectively when these issues arise.”

But while the number of incidents may be decreasing, says Lehman, the nature of the incidents reported last semester has him deeply concerned.

“We at Hillel assign an intensity rating to every incident reported to us,” he says. “The average intensity has increased by 25 percent from last year to this fall. In concrete terms, that represents a higher share of targeted

vandalism, target threats and harassment, as well as full-on physical assault.”

A case often cited as evidence of how radical the protesters have become and how some of them increasingly embrace terrorism and justify violence is Columbia University Apartheid Divest. This coalition of anti-Israel student groups has been the driving force behind many of the protests at the Manhattan campus.

Last spring, Khymani James, a leader of the Columbia encampment, was barred from campus after a video clip emerged in which they were quoted saying that “Zionists don’t deserve to live” and “Be grateful that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists.” In response, the coalition posted a statement on its Instagram account distancing itself from James and noting that “we believe in the sanctity of all life.”

This fall, the coalition walked back the statement and apologized to James for alienating them.

While there have been radical voices in the movement from the start, notes Dov Waxman, a professor of Israel studies at UCLA, they appear to have become more dominant this year.

“The core activists and groups like Students for Justice in Palestine are the ones still engaging in these protests, whereas others who joined in last year … have drifted away.”

He believes that shift can be explained by new rules adopted by universities, as well as the greater enforcement of existing rules. “You can call it a more repressive approach toward protests or, alternatively, a zero-tolerance approach to harassment. But students are understandably wary of being disciplined, so there’s a chill in the air,” says Waxman.

At the same time, he doesn’t rule out the effect of simple fatigue: “We’re seeing a decline in protests on the streets as well. It indicates a broader kind of fatigue. And when you add the fact that people on the left in America are exhausted and also demoralized by the election, that also plays into it.”

Noah Lederman, a sophomore at Columbia, often rubs his eyes in disbelief when recounting some of the scenes he witnessed on campus last spring. “It feels unreal when I think about it, like a fever dream,” he says.

Despite a more settled environment in place of the chaos, he doesn’t feel heartened.

“Just because the protests aren’t as big doesn’t mean the underlying antisemitic, anti-Israel sentiment has gone away in any way, shape or form,” says Lederman, who wears a kippah. “Because the rhetoric has become much more insidious and malicious, there are times I feel just as unsafe, if not more, compared with last semester.”

Rubin of Jewish Voice for Peace sees things very differently, claiming the universities “are playing into the demands of the ascendant far right, gravely endangering freedom of speech not only for Palestine solidarity activists, but for all social movements.” n

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‘Col. Pete’ Gleichenhaus, 85, community hero to many

OBITUARY

| EMMA GOSS | J. STAFF

Col. D. Peter Gleichenhaus, or “Col. Pete,” as friends liked to call him, lived a life devoted to service, both in his nearly 30-year career in the U.S. Army and in his role as a Jewish community leader.

Gleichenhaus died on Dec. 25 in San Francisco. He was 85. The cause of death was complications after a fall while playing tennis, according to his adult children.

“The first night of Hanukkah is the night he passed, surrounded by his family,” son Army Col. Joseph Gleichenhaus told J.

A memorial service was held at Congregation Am Tikvah in San Francisco on Jan. 3, followed by graveside burial with U.S. military honors at Salem Memorial Park in Colma.

“Peter was a generous, compassionate leader — husband, father, brother, coach, congregant, and friend,” Rebecca Goodman, director of Jewish community engagement for the Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area, wrote in a Dec. 30 email.

Gleichenhaus served on the JCRC board from 2019 until the time of his death. In 2018, he received JCRC’s Lifetime Distinguished Leadership Award after having led the organization’s “Hiring Our Heroes” project to match returning Bay Area veterans with jobs.

On a memorial site, dozens of people shared fond memories of Gleichenhaus, including one lauding him as “a decisive leader and a mensch.”

“Pete was an exceptional leader and a remarkable human being,” Rabbi Doug Kahn, executive director emeritus of JCRC, wrote on the site. “When we worked together on a program to engage the Jewish community on behalf of veterans, Pete said it’s about “jobs, jobs, jobs” and then he approached the S.F. Giants and the next thing I know we have a major jobs fair for veterans.”

Born on Jan. 29, 1939, Gleichenhaus grew up in the Bronx in New York City.

“He was genuine and authentic and he saw the best in everyone. He never said a bad word about anybody. He sought out what made people spark and he would help enhance that. He focused on the positive.”

Morissa Gleichenhaus, daughter

After graduating high school at 16, he attended Blair Academy and Cornell University, eventually leaving Cornell to attend his dream school, the United States Military Academy at West Point. He graduated from West Point in 1961 and later earned a master’s degree in physical education at the University of Wisconsin.

Gleichenhaus’ three-decade Army service included two combat tours in Vietnam, first with the infantry and later in the artillery, according to family. He was highly decorated, earning three Bronze Star Medals, five combat Air Medals, two Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Crosses, a Combat Infantryman Badge and an Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal. He was stationed overseas in Panama and in Germany. He also spent several years at the Pentagon and had two assignments at West Point.

In 1985 he came to San Francisco, where he was assigned as deputy post commander and, later, inspector general at Sixth Army headquarters at the Presidio.

After retiring from the Army in 1990, Gleichenhaus worked in various jobs. He managed a medical group, had a short stint at a Silicon Valley startup, and served as dean at a business college in San Francisco. In 2001 he became the director of public

works in Daly City, retiring six years later.

Gleichenhaus and his wife, Barbara, were married 61 years and raised three children together. They had four grandchildren.

Gleichenhaus’ son told J. his dad led with generosity and knew how to make people feel seen and special.

“He had that unique ability, you were the only two there if he was engaging with you,” he said.

In a 2018 JCRC video that accompanied the leadership award, Joseph Gleichenhaus described his father as a “morning person” who made productivity part of every day.

“That’s how he operated. When you get things done you get them done quick, you come back, and you find you have lots more time to do a whole bunch of things,” he said, noting his father’s “extreme patience and amiability.”

Gleichenhaus’ eldest daughter, Wendy Veneris, spoke in the same video of her dad’s devotion to family, describing him as “honest and humble.”

“He always impressed upon us: If you are able to do something for your family, you do. If you can show up, you do,” she said.

Gleichenhaus was the president of San Francisco Congregation B’nai Emunah before it merged with Beth Israel Judea to become Am Tikvah. He served as chairman of Goodwill Industries and on the boards of the Bay Area Council of the Boys Scouts of America, the Lake Merced Golf Club, the Interfaith Center at the Presidio, the Korean War Memorial Foundation, the JCRC and the West Point Jewish Chapel Fund. He was involved in numerous other projects and organizations.

“He was genuine and authentic and he saw the best in everyone,” Morissa Gleichenhaus, his youngest child, told J. “He never said a bad word about anybody. He sought out what made people spark and he would help enhance that. That’s what he did all the time. He focused on the positive.” n

Peter Gleichenhaus carries a Torah scroll during a June 2023 ceremony to bring ritual items to newly formed Am Tikvah. (COURTESY COCO ROMANO GIORDANO)

When I met with Jimmy Carter about Israel’s ‘apartheid’

RABBI ANDREW STRAUS | GUEST CONTRIBUTOR

I had the pleasure of meeting President Jimmy Carter once and can testify that he was a thoughtful, decent mensch. He died Dec. 29 at age 100. It was late 2006 and the former president had just published his controversial book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.” His book created a great deal of contention among Jews, especially for its use of the word “apartheid.”

I was then serving as president of the Greater Phoenix Board of Rabbis. Carter was scheduled to do a local book signing on Dec. 12.

The board of rabbis decided to organize a protest against Carter. At my wife Karen’s suggestion, I reached out to Carter to ask if he would be willing to meet with a delegation from the board.

Carter responded: He would do his book signing, we should go ahead with our protest — and we could all meet afterward at his hotel.

A group of Phoenix-area rabbis spent well over an hour talking with Carter, who was then 82 years old. We were all impressed by his empathetic listening and his willingness to engage in respectful conversation. However, we walked out thinking, “That was a nice hour, but nothing will come of it.”

The next morning, the former president called me to say that he would issue an official letter to the Jewish community, reflecting on what he learned from our meeting and reframing his perspective.

In Carter’s Dec. 15, 2006, letter, he wrote: “I emphasized, as I had throughout the tour, that the book was about conditions and events in the Palestinian territories and not in Israel, where a democracy exists with all the freedoms we enjoy in our country… We discussed the word ‘apartheid,’ which I defined as the forced segregation of two peoples living in the same land, with one of them dominating and persecuting the other.”

The letter continued: “The chairman of the group, Rabbi Andrew Straus, then suggested that I make clear to all American Jews that my use of ‘apartheid’ does not apply to circumstances within Israel, that I acknowledge the deep concern of Israelis about the threat of terrorism and other acts of violence from some Palestinians, and that the majority of Israelis sincerely want a peaceful existence with their neighbors. The purpose of this letter is to reiterate these points.”

Although I still would not use the word “apartheid” to describe Israel, I acknowledge that Carter was right when he wrote in that letter: “Palestinian people were being deprived of the necessities of life by economic restrictions imposed on them by Israel…”

The situation in the occupied territory of the West Bank is much worse today than it was in 2006. Israeli settlements expand and settlers forcibly expel Palestinians, while the army and the government turn a blind eye — and at times even assist their efforts. In Gaza, we witness the denial of humanitarian aid for starving families, the overwhelming destruction of civilian infrastructure and the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians.

Carter was a true friend of Israel and the Jewish people. His warning of “apartheid” — which he also later clarified was meant to highlight the possible outcome if Israeli policies didn’t change — rings just as true today as it did in 2006. May we heed his warning and may his memory be a source of blessing and inspiration to us now. n

Rabbi Andrew Straus is J Street’s Northwest regional director and past president of the Northern California Board of Rabbis. The views expressed in this piece are his own.

J. director of news product

a candle on the fifth night of Hanukkah. The annual ritual is one of the oldest regularly held public menorah lighting events in the world. (AARON

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Appalled by Haas Fund

I am appalled by the Walter and Elise Haas Fund’s decision to support a known anti-Zionist organization. (“Haas Fund ends Jewish grants, adds anti-Zionist org to its list,” Dec. 19) Are there no other ecumenical organizations in the community that would meet its desire to reach out beyond the Jewish community? In one word: shameful.

MAUREEN RITTENBERG | SAN FRANCISCO

Haas Fund supports avowed enemy

As family foundations’ leadership moves through subsequent generations of family members, there is no guarantee that the founders’ passions and interests will continue to be shared. There are so many societal issues that require addressing and priorities shift. But there should be limits — not necessarily legal ones, but moral ones — to how far a foundation board can stray from the core values of its founders. They may move in new directions, but to support an organization dedicated to undermining or destroying what the founders believed in and helped build is unfathomable. Yet this is what has happened with the

recent Walter and Elise Haas Fund grant to the Arab Resource Organizing Center.

AROC is an avowed enemy of Israel and Zionism. After leading the 2014 “Block the Boat” campaign against a Zim Line ship at the Oakland Port, it followed up with a fundraiser entitled “Help us kick Zionism out of the Bay Area.”

AROC then utilized the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack to mount virulent anti-Israel campaigns in schools, including a school walkout, that led many Jewish students to feel isolated and intimidated.

Inspired by its founders, the Walter and Elise Haas Fund supported Jewish and civic causes, including Israel, for decades. Not only have its current leaders suspended the fund’s Jewish life portfolio, they have now rewarded an organization that represents the antithesis of what its founders stood for.

The board’s decision to award a substantial grant to AROC has done great harm to Jewish students and simultaneously shown the middle finger to the founders. The only way to repair the damage is for the current board and staff to engage in deep conversation with leaders in the Jewish community and to reflect on their continued on page 14

PICTURE THIS:

David A.M. Wilensky ascended the scaffolding up to the Bill Graham Menorah in S.F.’s Union Square, lighting

LEVY-WOLINS/J. STAFF)

Is Trump the secret ingredient to a successful hostage deal?

DAVID CHRISTOPHER KAUFMAN | THE FORWARD

By the time Donald Trump is sworn in as president later this month, the Israeli hostages trapped in Hamas’ tunnel network beneath Gaza will have endured nearly 500 days of captivity.

Trump has repeatedly declared, including earlier this week, that if Israel’s remaining 100-some hostages — more than 30 of whom are believed dead — are not released by the time he enters the White House on Jan. 20, there will be “hell to pay” by Hamas. Yet another round of negotiations commenced recently in Qatar, raising hopes that captives will finally be returned to their families. But even aided by Trump’s warnings, ending Israel’s hostage ordeal will require a level of sincerity and seriousness that’s been missing from all sides. To be clear, the biggest obstacle to a hostage deal remains Hamas. Lacking both the authority and accountability of a formal state, the terrorist group has always had little incentive to make any cease-fire or hostage release happen.

True, the fact that Hamas freed 100 or so hostages as part of a temporary cease-fire deal in November 2023 suggests that the group knows how to deal in diplomacy when required. But never forget: More than 1,000 Israeli-held prisoners were traded for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in a 2011 deal that saw Shalit released after five years of captivity in Gaza. Hamas knows that as long as they hold even one hostage,

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

they hold all the cards they need to.

Hamas’ recalcitrance has been enhanced by the ways the Biden administration has hamstrung Israel’s military efforts.

The current White House’s shameful efforts to appease Arab voters during last year’s election neither secured Vice President Kamala Harris the presidency nor delivered a ceasefire. In fact, noted Secretary of State Anthony Blinken in the New York Times, it actually made negotiations worse.

“Whenever there has been public daylight between the United States and Israel and the perception that pressure was growing on Israel,” said Blinken, “Hamas has pulled back from agreeing to a cease-fire and the release of hostages.”

This is why Trump’s arrival is so crucial. He is unlikely to allow such daylight, and likely to amp up public pressure on Hamas. Still, what exactly can Trump achieve on behalf of the Israelis trapped dozens of meters under the Gazan sand?

His prospects may seem dim. Hamas has shown scant interest in appeasing global political pressure to put its citizens’ best interests first. But that’s because there has never really been any such pressure put on Hamas. As Blinken himself said in the Times, “for all of the understandable criticism of the way Israel has conducted itself in Gaza, you hear virtually nothing from anyone since Oct. 7 about Hamas.”

Trump could embolden that chorus. He could do so by removing the constraints the Biden-Harris administration has placed on Israel’s tactics and use of weapons; or by throwing down the gauntlet and declaring that Iran, Hamas’ chief benefactor, is directly responsible for the hostages’ fate — and that its weapons are legitimate targets for Israeli reprisal. Iran would put up a good fight — but one severely weakened by Israel’s bombing campaigns, which struck Iran itself and debilitated Iranian proxies in Lebanon and Syria.

Trump could also target Hamas’ other chief patron, Qatar, by freezing the billions it has invested in the U.S. and banning any future cash infusions. The timing is certainly right. Qatar is competing heavily against its Gulf rival Saudi Arabia to

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duty to honor the memory, values and remarkable legacy of the founders, even as they carve new paths.

RABBI DOUG KAHN | SAN FRANCISCO

Disappointed in Haas Fund coverage

I was disappointed in the article “Haas Fund ends Jewish grants, adds anti-Zionist org to its list.” The organization in question is the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, or AROC. The fund prioritizes what they call “bridge-building” — engaging in solidarity between our diverse communities. In the present political moment, we need all of us to be able to work together; we need those bridges to be built.

The article complains that the grant to AROC runs counter to a widely held tenet in the Jewish community of support for Israel — though that support is neither universal nor unqualified. This insistence on what one group of Jews wants is the opposite of bridge-building.

The only quote in the article about AROC is from someone who makes the false accusation that it has participated in violence against the Jewish community. The plain fact is that AROC has worked in coalitions with a diverse group of

organizations, including Jewish organizations. That is exactly the bridge-building that we need.

Let us take off our blinders and work together with everyone to make a better future for our children.

HELEN FINKELSTEIN | BERKELEY

Thank you for supporting Haaretz

I want to thank Jo Ellen Green Kaiser, the CEO of J., for raising and analyzing the issue of the Israeli government’s sanctioning the newspaper Haaretz. (“Sanctions on Haaretz offer both a warning and a lesson,” Dec. 13) As she wrote, although the government has the right to pull its ads, it should not limit any means for the public to learn the truth via reporters who do their jobs. I applaud her strong call to her journalism peers to speak out against the Israeli government’s sanctions of Haaretz.

As an Israeli who strongly believes in democracy, I joined many thousands of my fellow citizens in protesting this government’s anti-democratic efforts for 10 months preceding Oct. 7, 2023 — and I continue to demonstrate and contribute what I can as a translator and editor. Since the war started, Prime

dominate crucial artificial intelligence funding. With the biggest AI prizes in America, removing Doha from the playing field as Riyadh is poised to possibly normalize relations with Jerusalem could be one slight too many for Qatar.

Trump could also cut funding to the Palestinian Authority, Egypt and even the United Nations, all of whom have been to some extent complicit in propping up Hamas rule.

Visiting Tel Aviv last year, I found a consensus belief among nearly everyone that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is extending the Gaza war to stay in power. Considering the corruption cases he’s facing and the prospect of a devastating probe into the security failures that allowed the devastation of Oct. 7, this is not entirely off base. But with polls suggesting Netanyahu would easily win re-election, he doesn’t necessarily need the war to sustain his popularity.

Instead, doing a deal to repatriate his citizens would serve Netanyahu. Nearly 80% of Israelis supported the Shalit exchange, and similar numbers are ready for Netanyahu to maneuver right now. That is why Netanyahu’s rejection of the most recent Hamas offer felt like a mistake — at least for him.

The deal would have seen 22 live and 12 deceased hostages returned, in return for Israel agreeing to Hamas’ reported demand that the deal include “terms for an end to the war.” Accepting such terms would have been painful for Israel — especially as it would reduce any leverage the country has to work toward the release of all the hostages — but it might have been Netanyahu’s most effective political PR tool.

Israel and Hamas have just days to negotiate before Trump assumes office. They would be wise to get this deal done in that time frame — in their own region, on their own terms and, most crucially, for their own people. n

The views expressed on the opinion pages are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of J.

Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has lied to Israelis and vilified the hostage families and delayed agreements or outright thwarted proposals to return large numbers of hostages at a minimal cost to Israel. Some hostages have died; all have suffered horrible conditions and torture.

Now, the only solution we can see to end the war, bring the hostages home and recall the present government is pressure from other governments and international institutions. Any of us who have the opportunity to speak out beyond our borders has the moral responsibility to do so.

May we have good news in 2025.

MARSHA BROWN DISPLACED FROM KIRYAT SHMONA, ISRAEL FORMER LIAISON, S.F. JEWISH COMMUNITY FEDERATION AND ENDOWMENT FUND’S PROJECT RENEWAL

Defending a definition of antisemitism

Sheree Roth’s letter to the editor mischaracterized the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism (“BDS inherently antisemitic,” Dec. 20), writing: “The JDA definition states that the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement is not inherently

David Christopher Kaufman is an editor and columnist at the New York Post and an adjunct fellow at the Tel Aviv Institute. A version of this article first appeared on the Forward and is reprinted with permission.

Why I divested Alameda County from Caterpillar

HENRY LEVY | GUEST CONTRIBUTOR

“A Jew is asked to take a leap of action rather than a leap of thought,” wrote Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel.

On Dec. 10, I took a leap of action that I knew would be controversial — by divesting Alameda County from Caterpillar, which has long been the target of a campaign by the boycott, divest and sanctions movement, or BDS.

I am a financial professional, as well as an elected official. As Alameda County treasurer, I am trusted to make decisions about our county government’s large investment portfolio, in accordance with our investment policy.

After I became aware that Alameda County held $32 million in Caterpillar bonds, I decided it was time to sell them. For years Caterpillar, an American manufacturer of construction equipment, has produced militarized bulldozers for the Israel Defense Forces, which uses them to destroy private homes in the West Bank and Gaza.

My values were formed when I was quite young. Through my Jewish heritage and education, I have absorbed lessons about the Ten Commandments, welcoming the stranger and Rabbi Hillel’s maxim “What is hateful to you, do not do to another.” Growing up as a Jew in New York City, this was my worldview, and I felt it was shared by my community.

I am 76 years old, born in1948. When I was young, anyone who asked me what year I was born received my stock answer: “1948, the year that Babe Ruth died and Israel was born.” I went to Hebrew school, had a bar mitzvah and gave money for trees in Israel. As a young person, I was deeply affected by reading the novel “Exodus” by Leon Uris. I

identified with the leading character, and the 1960 movie of the same name was seared into my subconscious. (It didn’t hurt that, like Paul Newman, I had dirty blond hair and blue eyes.) I was so proud of Israel.

My first trip to Israel was in 2018. When I returned, I began reading more about the history of Israel and Palestine and took a class from members of Jewish Voice for Peace. In 2022 I joined the Bay Area Network of Jewish Officials, which was formed by the Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area. For me, this was a period of considering the relationship of antisemitism to anti-Zionism.

I went to Israel again in March 2023 on a trip subsidized

When I was young, anyone who asked me what year I was born received my stock answer: “1948, the year that Babe Ruth died and Israel was born.”

by the JCRC. The JCRC encouraged us to read as broadly as we could in advance of our trip and gave us recommendations for a wide range of opinions.

While we were there, the entire delegation participated in demonstrations against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. We heard a lecture from an Arab citizen of Israel about discrimination against Palestinians. We took a day-long tour of the West Bank. And we visited a kibbutz near Gaza that would be decimated by Hamas six months later.

After the delegation left, I stayed for an extra two days to meet with the director of Breaking the Silence, an organization that gives Israeli soldiers and veterans a means to confidentially discuss their experiences in the West Bank and Gaza. I also met with an Arab owner of a small business in East Jerusalem and a Jewish lawyer who defends Palestinians

from discrimination. It was clear to me that relationships between Jewish Israelis and Muslim Palestinians would not withstand much more strain and would soon break.

The Oct. 7, 2023, attack was a shocking event, but the continued escalation of the conflict was not a surprise to me.

As a fiduciary, I must be extremely careful to stay within public policies. I also need to be careful not to impose my own values. So when a member of the Alameda County Board of Supervisors suggested the creation of a more substantial ethical investment policy, I was an enthusiastic supporter.

Unfortunately, one of our holdings, Caterpillar, which had already been the subject of more than two decades of protest by human rights groups, was simply an impediment to moving forward. The bulldozing of Palestinian homes appeared to be against our county’s official goals for our own residents that include “eliminate homelessness,” “eliminate poverty and hunger” and “accessible infrastructure.”

In the end, it was not a difficult decision for me to sell Caterpillar.

The current BDS movement against Israel began in 2005, but the use of boycotts and divestments was not unfamiliar to me. This is the way I learned to protest the actions of governments and big businesses in the 1960s. I participated in the United Farm Workers grape boycott that started in 1967, the campaign to divest from companies doing business in apartheid South Africa and other similar efforts over the years.

At the Board of Supervisors meeting on Dec. 10, I announced that I had begun to sell our three bond positions in Caterpillar; two had already been sold and the third would be sold soon. I never wanted to be a treasurer who divested, but now that it’s done, I am proud of my leap of action.

I remain dubious of the ability of divestment to bring substantive change, but I think this is a fair way to fight and to protest injustice. It is nonviolent. It is creative. It is transparent.

And it is my way of following my Jewish values. n

antisemitic. The JDA also excludes as antisemitic the denial of Jewish self-determination and comparisons to Nazi Germany.” All three of her assertions are incorrect. Because JDA doesn’t mention speech comparing Israel to Nazi Germany does not mean that it deems such a comparison to be not antisemitic.

The JDA says, “Boycott, divestment, and sanctions are commonplace, non-violent forms of political protest against states. In the Israeli case they are not, in and of themselves, antisemitic.” This statement deems the protest activities of supporting boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel not antisemitic. It does not mention the BDS movement as such. JDA’s position on anti-Zionism as antisemitism is nuanced. Section B10 states: “Denying the right of Jews in the State of Israel to exist and flourish… as Jews” is antisemitic. Section C12 states: “Criticizing or opposing Zionism as a form of nationalism” is not antisemitic, nor is supporting “arrangements that accord full equality to all inhabitants ‘between the river and the sea,’ whether in two states, a binational state, unitary democratic state, federal state, or in whatever form.”

Thus, if you oppose all nationalism, then your opposition to Zionist nationalism is not antisemitic. On the other hand, one can infer from the JDA that if Zionism is the only form of

nationalism that you oppose, then your anti-Zionism is in fact antisemitism.

Finally, JDA’s only mention of Nazis is this: “Denying or minimizing the Holocaust by claiming that the deliberate Nazi genocide of the Jews did not take place … is antisemitic.”

J. readers, including Roth, should read the actual JDA definition at jerusalemdeclaration.org before deciding on your support or opposition.

TODD SILVERSTEIN | SAN RAFAEL

Ageism is all too real

I read Dr. Adrienne Green’s ageism column with interest and concern. (“Redefining normal: Our ageist beliefs are holding us back,” Dec. 20)

Ageism among older people is real. However, as an octogenarian living in a retirement community, more often I see them helping and comforting others.

I encounter ageism most among many professionals and staff who see all elders as cut from one mold and assume various degrees of dementia. Our abilities, differences, experience and

expertise are often ignored. Professionals and staff are the experts, and we are the objects of their expertise.

During the holidays, I saw ageism in families who took vacations without their slower elders, leaving them lonely. We have all experienced family and friends who disappear as we age.

I see congregations and other Jewish organizations that focus on youth, but often forget the unseen elders who built and continue to finance these congregations and organizations.

Ageism deprives society of history, resources, wisdom and fun. It also perpetuates a myth about the unworthiness of those that are a bit slower. “Inclusion” includes elders. How do you want to be treated? With time and luck, you will become us.

KATE LORIG | LOS ALTOS

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

J. welcomes letters of no more than 300 words.

Submissions are subject to editing. See guidelines and form at jweekly.com/letters, or email to letters@jweekly. com.

Henry Levy is the treasurer of Alameda County.

TALKS & WORKSHOPS

SATURDAY | January 11

“THE LANDSCAPE OF LIBERAL JUDAISM IN ISRAEL”—Anat Hoffman, immediate past executive director of the Israel Religious Action Center, discusses liberal Judaism in Israel. With services and lunch. Part of the North Peninsula Jewish Collaboration’s scholar-in-residence weekend. At Peninsula Sinai Congregation, 499 Boothbay Ave., Foster City. 10 a.m. services, 12 p.m. lunch, 12:45 p.m. presentation. Free, RSVP required. tinyurl.com/ anat-hoffman

“SUPREME COURT CASES: TRIUMPHS AND SETBACKS IN SOCIAL JUSTICE”—Anat Hoffman, immediate past executive director of the Israel Religious Action Center, discusses legal and social issues. With reception and Havdalah. Part of the North Peninsula Jewish Collaboration’s scholar-in-residence weekend. At Congregation Beth Jacob, 1550 Alameda de las Pulgas, Redwood City. 7 p.m. Free, RSVP required. tinyurl.com/ anat-hoffman

“SCIENCE VS. TORAH”—Rabbi and scientist Yechiel Krisch discusses whether science and Torah can coexist as equal truths, debating topics like Jewish belief in dinosaurs, the age of the universe, evolution and the seven days of creation. At Oshman Family JCC, 3921 Fabian Way, Palo Alto. 8:15 p.m. $25. bit.ly/sciencevstorah

SUNDAY | January 12

“THE STRUGGLES WITHIN”—Anat Hoffman, immediate past executive director of the Israel Religious Action Center, discusses the conflicts that shape Israel’s identity. Part of the North Peninsula Jewish Collaboration’s scholar-in-residence weekend. At Peninsula Temple Beth El, 1700 Alameda de las Pulgas, San Mateo. 9:30 a.m. bagels, 10 a.m. presentation. Free, RSVP required. tinyurl.com/ anat-hoffman

TUESDAY | January 14

“I NEED SOME SLEEP”—Parent coach Lori Longo discusses standard sleep struggles with

toddlers such as bedtime battles, separation anxiety and middle of the night visits. Presented by JFCS Center for Children and Youth. Online. 7-8:30 p.m. $45. tinyurl. com/sleep-jfcs

SATURDAY | January 18

CLUB Z NATIONAL TEEN CONFERENCE—Two-day conference featuring speakers Col. Richard Kemp, Shahar Azani and Rawan Osman discussing Zionism and antisemitism. With breakout session and screening of documentary “Tragic Awakening.” At S.F. location provided with registration. 8 a.m.-8 p.m. $180, register by Jan. 10. tinyurl. com/club-z-conference

SUNDAY | January 19

ISRAEL AND TURKEY’S RELATIONSHIP—Senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Gallia Lindenstrauss discusses Turkey’s motives in adopting an anti-Israel stance and the chances of further deterioration into a direct military confrontation. Presented by Congregation Beth David. Online. 10:30 a.m.-12 p.m. Free. tinyurl. com/israel-turkey-relations

TUESDAY | January 21

“CITIES AND JEWISH LIFE”—New Yorker writer and essayist Adam Gopnik discusses how Jewish communities have shaped and been shaped by the cities they call home. At JCCSF, 3200 California St., S.F. 7-8:30 p.m. $20. tinyurl.com/ adam-gopnik

THURSDAY | January 23

“TO BE A JEW IN THE WORLD: TORAH FROM SINAI TO OAKLAND”—Rebecca Kaplan discusses finding Torah in unexpected places, from the Liberty Bell to area murals, contemporary community work and her years on the Oakland City Council. Also Jan. 30, Feb. 6. Online. 7-8:30 p.m. $45. tinyurl.com/jewworld

SF MEGA CHALLAH BAKE—Social gathering and workshop for women and girls to knead and braid challah. Led by Chanie Apfelbaum, author of cookbooks “Millennial Kosher” and “Totally

January 10-31

Kosher.” At JCCSF, 3200 California St., S.F. 6:30 p.m. dessert and wine, 7 p.m. program. $40. sfmegachallahbake.com

FRIDAY | January 24

“TWIST OF TRADITION”—New monthly event teaches participants different ways to braid challah. Dough provided by Grand Bakery; challahs may be taken home. Also March 28, April 25, May 23. At JCCSF, 3200 California St. 2:30-5:30 p.m. Free, registration encouraged. tinyurl.com/ twist-challah

SUNDAY | January 26

“THE JOY OF JEWISH MUSIC AND DANCE”—Five-part workshop series to learn klezmer music technique and Yiddish dance. With dance party, informal music jam and a series of performances/teachers including Ilya Shneyveys, Sarah Myerson and Saul Goodman’s Klezmer Band. Also Feb. 23, March 23, April 27, May 18. Presented by JCC East Bay and KlezCalifornia. At JCC East Bay, 1414 Walnut St., Berkeley. 1-4 p.m. Series, $180. Drop-in class, $18-$54 sliding scale. tinyurl.com/joy-25

“ISRAEL: WHAT HAS CHANGED SINCE OCT. 7”—Director of international programs for StandWithUs Israel Charlotte Korchak discusses the wars with Hamas and Hezbollah, attacks from and against Iran, the effects on Israelis and Palestinians and the impact on the Middle East and the Abraham Accords. Followed by Q&A. Presented by Beth Am’s Jewish and Israel Advocacy Committee, Congregation Beth Ami’s Israel Committee, Congregation Beth Jacob, Congregation Kol Emeth, Jewish Silicon Valley and Z3 Project. Online. 10-11:30 a.m. Free, advance registration required. tinyurl.com/israel-change

“WHAT DO I DO WITH ALL THIS HERITAGE?”—The Braid, the Brandeis School SF and Jewish Community High School of the Bay present performance where actors share real-life stories exploring Asian Jewish identity and culture. Followed by Q&A. At Jewish Community High School

Calendar

of the Bay, 1835 Ellis St., S.F. 5 p.m. reception, 6 p.m. show. $10 adults, free for students. tinyurl.com/ brandeis-heritage

MONDAY | January 27

“AFTERMATH: HOW FILMMAKERS RESPONDED TO THE HOLOCAUST”— Documentary filmmaker Peter L. Stein discusses the dramatic films that were made in the immediate aftermath of WWII and how they helped to shape people’s perception and understanding of the Holocaust. At JCCSF, 3200 California St., S.F. 7-8:30 p.m. Free. tinyurl.com/aftermath-films

INTERNATIONAL HOLOCAUST DAY PRESS CONFERENCE—With San Jose City Councilmember David Cohen in honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day and to announce the display in City Hall of the CHAIM (California Holocaust Awareness and Action Interactive Museum) exhibit. Speakers include elected officials and Holocaust survivors. Presented by JCRC Bay Area, Jewish Silicon Valley and Jewish Family Services of Silicon Valley. At San Jose City Hall, 200 E. Santa Clara St., San Jose. 3-4 p.m. Free. tinyurl. com/sj-holocaust

THURSDAY | January 30

“HENNA PARTY”—Celebrate Middle Eastern Jewish wedding traditions with a henna ceremony led by Rabbi Tsipora Gabbai, food by Hummus Bodega, live music, a private tour of the Magnes exhibition “In Plain Sight: Jewish Arts and Lives in the Muslim World” and an opportunity for 12 attendees to model wedding costumes. Presented by the Magnes, JIMENA, Berkeley Hillel, JCC East Bay and Our Sephardic Family. At the Magnes, 2121 Allston Way, Berkeley. 6-8 p.m. $10-$40. tinyurl. com/henna-party-magnes

SUNDAY | January 12

EVENING OF CLASSICAL MUSIC—

Concert featuring violinist Jennifer Choi, cellist Angela Lee and guitarist Marc Teicholz. At Congregation Beth David, 19700 Prospect Road, Saratoga. 2:30-4 p.m. $20. tinyurl.com/classical-concert

HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR BAND—Musician and Holocaust survivor Saul Dreier performs with his klezmer band of fellow survivors. At Chabad of Solano County, 730 E. Main St., Vacaville. 4 p.m. $5 students, $15 advance, $20 at the door. tinyurl.com/solano-survivor-band

ART MUSIC BOOKS

SUNDAY | January 12

“THE CHIEF RABBI’S FUNERAL”— Scott Seligman discusses his book, subtitled “The Untold Story of America’s Largest Antisemitic Riot,” about the 1902 funeral procession that was attacked by factory workers and police on the streets of New York’s Lower East Side. Presented by Jewish Community Library and New Lehrhaus. Online. 2 p.m. Free. tinyurl.com/ rabbis-funeral

SUNDAY | January 19

“HOW PRECIOUS THE GROUND ON WHICH WE STAND”—Rabbi Shelly Lewis, rabbi emeritus at Congregation Kol Emeth, discusses his new book, subtitled “Jewish

ONGOING

“IN PLAIN SIGHT: JEWISH ARTS AND LIVES IN THE MUSLIM WORLD”—Exhibit showcasing Jewish objects originating from Muslim lands that reflect cultural affinities and common threads between the cultures. Through May 15. At the Magnes, 2121 Allston Way, Berkeley. magnes.berkeley.edu

SUNDAY | January 12

“COAST TO COAST”—Art gallery opening for artist Caroline Blum, featuring 25 color pencil and watercolor works inspired by her early visits to the iconic Ruth Asawa’s studio with her father, John Blum. At Rhoda Goldman Plaza, 2180 Post St., S.F. 2-4 p.m. Free. rgplaza.org

Values That Could Save the Earth.” Presented by Congregation Beth Am’s Dayenu Circle. At Beth Am, 26790 Arastradero Road, Los Altos Hills. 2-3:30 p.m. Free. tinyurl.com/ dayenu-book-talk

THURSDAY | January 23

“RESTLESS LEXICONS”—Translators Dan Alter and Yael Segalovitz read from Yakir Ben Moshe’s “Take a Breath, You’re Getting Excited” and Simon Adaf’s “Aviva-No,” two books by divergent voices in contemporary Hebrew literature. They also discuss the pleasures and challenges of translating Hebrew poetry. At the Magnes, 2121 Allston Way, Berkeley. 5:30-7 p.m. Free. tinyurl.com/restless-lexicons

TAKE ACTION

ONGOING

THE GIVING KITCHEN—Seeking volunteers to cook meals for those in need at Chabad’s kosher community kitchen. At Chabad of SF, 496 Natoma St., S.F. Times vary. Registration required. tinyurl.com/ giving-kitchen

CLOTHING DRIVE—Congregation

Sha’ar Zahav is collecting blankets, jackets, and new or lightly used clothing and socks to be distributed to the homeless by the Gubbio Project. At Sha’ar Zahav, 290 Dolores St., S.F. Weekdays 9 a.m.-5 p.m. shaarzahav.org

SATURDAY | January 18

MLK WEEKEND WITH GLIDE MEMORIAL CHURCH—Repair the World, a Jewish service group that connects young adults to volunteer opportunities with local nonprofits, is seeking volunteers to help set up Glide dining room and serve the meal during its daily lunch service for 500-600 people. Wear closed-toe shoes. Location provided with registration. 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. Free. tinyurl.com/ mlk-glide

SUNDAY | January 19

MLK MITZVAH DAY—Oshman

Family JCC seeks volunteers for community projects for MLK National Day of Service, with a closing ceremony at Mitchell Park in Palo Alto. In partnership with 21 organizations, including JFCS, Repair the World and Palo Alto Humane Society. 11:30 a.m. to 5

p.m. At several locations, including OFJCC, 3921 Fabian Way, Palo Alto. Also 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Jan. 20. tinyurl.com/mitzvah-25

RISE AGAINST HUNGER—Congregation Beth Am is seeking volunteers to pack over 25,000 meals for Rise Against Hunger, an organization that provides food to children worldwide through schools, health clinics, disaster relief efforts and more. Volunteers ages 2 and up are welcome. At Congregation Beth Am, 26790 Arastradero Road, Los Altos Hills. 10 a.m.-12 p.m. Free, donations encouraged. Register by Jan. 16. tinyurl.com/rise-hunger

MLK WEEKEND WITH TINY VILLAGE SPIRIT—Repair the World, a Jewish service group that connects young adults to volunteer opportunities with local nonprofits, is seeking volunteers to help construct the new Richmond Tiny House Village Garden and Farm. With planting, painting and praying. Location provided with registration. 1-4 p.m. Free. tinyurl.com/tiny-village-mlk

MONDAY | January 20

MLK DAY WITH THE HOMELESS GARDEN PROJECT—Repair the World, a Jewish service group that connects young adults to volunteer opportunities with local nonprofits, is seeking volunteers to help at the Homeless Garden Project, a Santa Cruz nonprofit that provides job training, transitional employment and support services. Location provided with registration. 9:30 a.m.-2 p.m. Free. tinyurl.com/mlk-garden

FILM & TV

SATURDAY | January 11

“THE TRUE STORY OF TAMARA DE LEMPICKA AND THE ART OF SURVIVAL”—Screening of documentary about this renowned painter, including her rise to stardom in 1920s Paris, her move to the United States in 1940 to flee fascism, and her revival in the current art market. With introduction by curator Furio Rinaldi and film director Julie Rubio. In conjunction with “Tamara de Lempicka” exhibit. At de Young Museum, Golden Gate Park, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, S.F. 1 p.m. Free. tinyurl.com/ lempicka-film

THURSDAY | January 16

“ECHOES OF RESILIENCE: A HEALING JOURNEY THROUGH ‘SCREAMS BEFORE SILENCE’”—Screening and discussion of Sheryl Sandberg’s documentary about the sexual violence committed by Hamas in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Facilitated by psychologist and trauma expert Adi Zief-Balteriski and trauma researcher and sound-bath practitioner Limor Goldhaber. With reflection, guided discussion, therapeutic exercises, sound bath, care packages and refreshments.

ON STAGE

WEDNESDAY | January 15

“DON’T MIND ME”—Performance by Lauren Mayer reclaiming and reframing the negative Jewish Mother stereotype through comedy and songs. For ages 10 and up. At Marsh Youth Theater. 1062 Valencia St., S.F. 7:30 p.m. $15-$25 general sliding scale, $50-$100 reserved seating. tinyurl.com/ dont-mind-me

‘Sabbath Queen’

This documentary follows the 21-year journey of Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie, who left Orthodox Judaism, became a drag queen and later was ordained a Conservative rabbi. The film had its West Coast premiere at the S.F. Jewish Film Festival in July and returns for screenings and discussions with Lau-Lavie and director Sandi DuBowski at four Bay Area theaters.

Jan. 10–13. At Rialto Cinemas Elmwood in Berkeley; Rialto Cinemas in Sebastopol; Roxie Theater in San Francisco and Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael. Times and ticket prices vary. sabbathqueen.com/screenings

For ages 18 and older. At Oshman Family JCC, 3921 Fabian Way, Palo Alto. 7-9 p.m. $20. tinyurl.com/ echoes-resilience

SATURDAY | January 18

“COLLEYVILLE”—Screening of documentary about the 2022 Colleyville, Texas, synagogue hostage crisis, where a rabbi and three congregants were held captive for 11 hours after the rabbi invited a stranger in from the cold. Followed by discussion. At Congregation Beth Am, 26790 Arastradero Road, Los Altos Hills. 3:30-5:30 p.m. Free. tinyurl.com/ colleyville-film

WEDNESDAY | January 22

“THE BIBI FILES”—Screening of documentary investigating Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his inner circle, including legal interrogation footage. With guest speaker Offir Gutelzon of UnXeptable. Presented by East Bay International Jewish Film Festival. At Lafayette Library, 3491 Mount Diablo Blvd., Lafayette. 7-9 p.m. $10. tinyurl.com/bibi-files

HOLIDAYS & SPIRITUAL

FRIDAY | January 17

“MLK PULPIT EXCHANGE SHABBAT SERVICE” — Congregation Emanu-El and Third Baptist Church present 38th annual event. Sermon by the Rev. Devon Jerome Crawford, music by both congregations. With Shabbat meal and dessert. Second half of event on Sunday morning at Third Baptist (see below). At Congregation Emanu-El, 2 Lake St., S.F. 5 p.m. dinner, 6 p.m. service. Free, with registration. tinyurl.com/ mlk-shabbat-25

SUNDAY | January 19

“MLK PULPIT EXCHANGE SUNDAY SERVICE” — Event continues (see above). Sermon by Emanu-El Rabbi Ryan Bauer, music by both congregations. With lunch. At Third Baptist Church, 1399 McAllister St., S.F. 10 a.m.-12 p.m. Free. tinyurl.com/mlk-sunday-25

WEDNESDAY | January 22

“SOUND JOURNEY FOR NEW BEGINNINGS”—JCCSF presents soundscape meditation using chimes, crystal singing bowls and gongs to clear mind and body, promote relaxation and release tension. Performed by the Logos Method. Bring mat, blanket and pillow. At JCCSF, 3200 California St., S.F. 6:30-8 p.m. JCC members $30, public $35. tinyurl.com/jan-sound

FRIDAY | January 31

“THE QUEEN’S TABLE”—Chochmat HaLev presents a modern take on the Hasidic tisch with Melila Hellner Eshed and Daniel Matt, two leading scholars of Jewish mysticism, discussing the Zohar. Event will also include sacred chanting, wordless nigguns and food and drink. At Chochmat HaLev, 2215 Prince St., Berkeley. 8-11 p.m. $360 for tisch and dinner, $180 for tisch. tinyurl.com/queens-table

KIDS & FAMILY

16 and up. With discussion after show. At Oshman Family JCC, 3921 Fabian Way, Palo Alto. 7-9 p.m. $50. tinyurl.com/lenny-bruce-play

SATURDAY | January 25

“I’M NOT A COMEDIAN… I’M LENNY BRUCE”—One-man show starring Ronnie Marmo as Lenny Bruce, the “politically incorrect” Jewish stand-up comic who was legendary for shattering boundaries and discussing taboo topics. For ages

“TRAVELER’S PRAYER”—L.A.based The Braid (formerly Jewish Women’s Theatre) presents true travel stories performed by professional actors that explore the Jewish people’s place in the world. At Congregation Kol Emeth, 4175 Manuela Ave., Palo Alto. 7:30 p.m. Also Jan. 26 at Congregation Shir Hadash, 20 Cherry Blossom Lane, Los Gatos. 2 p.m. $20-$45. the-braid.org/bayarea

BENEFITS & SOCIAL EVENTS

SATURDAY | January 25

POLTAVA/ODESSA TRIVIA

NIGHT—Fundraiser hosted by Congregation Beth Am to support virtual psychotherapy sessions for members of its sister synagogues

in Ukraine who are impacted by the ongoing war. With prizes for winning teams. At Congregation Beth Am, 26790 Arastradero Road, Los Altos Hills. 7:30-10 p.m. $30 per person, register by Jan. 23. tinyurl. com/odessa-trivia

SATURDAY | January 11

SHABBAT FAMILY FUN—Jewish Baby Network presents event with singing, dancing, puppets, challah and juice. At Temple Israel of Alameda, 3183 Mecartney Road. 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Free. tinyurl.com/ shabbat-fun

SUNDAY | January 12

“A MUSICAL MITZVAH MORNING”— Jewish Baby Network event with instruments, puppets, singing, playtime and card decorating for seniors at Rhoda Goldman Plaza. At Parents Place, 1710 Scott St., S.F. 10-11:30 a.m. Free. tinyurl.com/ music-mitzvah

SCIENCE FUN—Wornick Jewish Day School, Jewish Baby Network and PJ Library present event for families with children 3-5 years old with science-themed activities and story time. With separate play area for families with children 3 and under. At Wornick school, 830 Foster City Blvd., Foster City. 10-11:30 a.m. Free, advance registration required. tinyurl.com/ jbn-science

THURSDAY | January 16

“CHILDREN’S TEMPERAMENTS AND PARENTING STYLES”—Parent coach Sheila Norman provides practical tools and strategies to support children to reach their full potential at school and home. Presented by JFCS Center for Children and Youth. Online. 1-2 p.m. $30. tinyurl. com/kids-temperaments

FRIDAY | January 17

“BABY AND ME”—Jewish Baby Network and Congregation Beth Sholom present event for families with children ages 2 and under with song, dance and prayer led by music maestro Jonathan Bayer and director of early childhood education Dale Kleisley. At Congregation Beth Sholom, 301 14th Ave., S.F. 10:30-11:30 a.m. Free. tinyurl. com/baby-and-me

SUNDAY | January 19

FAMILY FUN DAY—Jewish Baby Network presents event for families with young children with singing, dancing, playing, warm drinks and snacks. At James Kenney Park, 1720 Eighth St., Berkeley. 10:30 a.m.-12 p.m. Free. tinyurl.com/ fun-jbn-day

Culture

‘More relevant than ever’ One-man show gnaws at Lenny Bruce’s glory and downfall

THEATER | DAN PINE | CORRESPONDENT

Before George Carlin named the “seven words you can never say on TV,” fellow comedian Lenny Bruce exposed inconvenient truths about sex, drugs, discrimination and hypocrisy that no one else dared mention onstage.

His edgy topics and racy language also repeatedly led to his arrest on obscenity charges.

Six weeks after what became his final performance — at San Francisco’s Fillmore Auditorium in 1966 — Bruce died of a morphine overdose while sitting on a toilet in his Los Angeles home. That unglamorous end was also the beginning of Bruce’s posthumous road to canonization as a free-speech pioneer and comedy legend.

Today, Bruce has more fans than ever.

They include Los Angeles actor Ronnie Marmo, who has been portraying Bruce for close to a decade in his self-penned, one-man show called “I’m Not a Comedian… I’m Lenny Bruce.”

The play recounts Bruce’s New York Jewish origins, his legal torments and his ugly death. It’s a comedy.

Marmo will perform the show at the Oshman Family JCC in Palo Alto on Jan. 25.

“He really put his neck out there,” Marmo said of Bruce. “If you care about free speech, the First Amendment, if you care about comedy, he was the guy who was willing to put it all on

the line so people can do what they do today. He was the last person to be arrested and charged with word crimes in this country.”

To bring his portrayal to life, Marmo — who was born in Brooklyn a decade after Bruce died — studied his comedy albums and video clips of his performances. Marmo read everything he could, including Bruce’s autobiography, “How to Talk Dirty and Influence People,” published posthumously. He also had the assistance of renowned actor Joe Mantegna, who directs the show.

“He was the last person to be arrested and charged with word crimes in this country.”

Ronnie Marmo, actor

One key aspect of Bruce’s comedy was his unabashed Jewish roots. Born Leonard Schneider in 1925, Bruce peppered his stand-up with Yiddishisms and New York Jewish flavor. To nail Bruce’s Jewish flair, Marmo, an Italian American Catholic, had some homework to do, but not much.

“Different savior, same behavior,” Marmo jokes regarding the similar cultural personalities of Italian and Jewish Americans. “Lenny had this joke: ‘If you’re from New York, even if you’re Catholic, you’re Jewish.’ It was important for me to capture Lenny’s Jewishness and how he approached it.”

After serving in the Navy during World War II, Bruce slowly built a career in stand-up. By the late 1950s, he had earned a reputation for “blue humor,” salty language and then-unmentionable topics, especially regarding sex. He was branded a sick comic.

Bruce refused to soften his material, and by the early ’60s, the arrests piled up. Often busted on a stage, he had more and more trouble booking gigs. Eventually his act was dominated with rage about his legal predicaments. Bruce was convicted of obscenity in New York in 1966 and sentenced to four months in jail, but he died while out on appeal. He was pardoned in 2003 by George Pataki, New York’s governor at the time.

These days, Bruce would have landed a Netflix comedy special.

“He was very funny,” Marmo said. “The great comics are like this: They can look at a table and see something funny. But what made him very special — and dangerous to some — he also was trying to make a point. He used comedy as a means to hold a mirror up to society. You will see in the third act [of the play], even in his darkest moments, Lenny had a funny mind.”

Marmo’s own career has included dozens of roles on TV shows such as “Criminal Minds,” “Lethal Weapon” and “General Hospital, where he played Detective Ronnie Dimestico for 150 episodes. He also founded Theatre 68 in L.A. and

has served as artistic director for more than 20 years.

This play isn’t Marmo’s first go-round playing Bruce. About 16 years ago, a friend and fellow comedian Charlie Brill told Marmo about a play titled “Lenny Bruce is Back and Boy is He Pissed.”

Marmo eventually starred in the play and brought it to Theatre 68, where it had a long run. Five years later, Marmo couldn’t get Bruce off his mind and set out to write a different sort of show — one that showcased more of Bruce’s routines and didn’t shy away from the darker elements of his life.

But first he needed permission from Kitty Bruce, Lenny Bruce’s only child and the executor of his estate and material. Marmo met with her, got her blessing and went on to finish the play under Mantegna’s direction. More than 400 performances later, it’s still going strong.

And no surprise, interest in Bruce has never let up. Dustin Hoffman starred in Bob Fosse’s 1974 film, “Lenny,” and Bruce was a major character in the recent Emmy-winning series “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.”

Marmo said Bruce’s work remains timely, nearly 60 years after his death.

“The country is so divided,” he told J. “People don’t want to hear the other side’s opinion. We have regressed in this country. But if you care about the freedoms in America, Lenny Bruce has touched on all of them. His voice, sadly, is more relevant than ever.” n

“I’m Not a Comedian… I’m Lenny Bruce” 7 p.m. Saturday, Jan.25 at Oshman Family JCC, 3921 Fabian Way, Palo Alto. For ages 16 and up. $66. Students and seniors, $50. Lenny_Bruce_Jan25. eventbrite.com

“It was important to capture Lenny’s Jewishness,” Marmo says. (PHOTOS/DOREN SORELL)

Ronnie Marmo as Lenny Bruce

UCSF psychiatrist diagnoses the mental health industry

BOOKS | EMMA GOSS | J. STAFF

Dr. Nicholas Rosenlicht studied medicine at Case Western Reserve University in the early 1980s. Now 70, he completed his residency in psychiatry at UCLA in 1988 and has practiced and taught ever since.

Rosenlicht, who describes himself as a secular Jew, was raised in Berkeley by his father, Maxwell Rosenlicht, a distinguished mathematics professor at UC Berkeley, and his mother, Carla Zingarelli Rosenlicht, a social worker who later became a therapist.

He described his mother as someone who devoted her life “to really caring for others. That was her mission.”

Today a clinical professor of psychiatry at UC San Francisco School of Medicine with a private psychiatric practice in Berkeley, Rosenlicht has tried to follow a similar mission over his 40-year career.

However, his frustration with the industry in which he works became the impetus for his new book, “My Brother’s Keeper: The Untold Stories Behind the Business of Mental Health — and How to Stop the Abandonment of the Mentally Ill.”

In his book, published Oct. 1, Rosenlicht paints a bleak picture of the current U.S. health care landscape. He asserts that profits take priority over the patient — and that this is actually how the health care system was designed to function.

This “mess,” however, is fixable. “If we want to undo our mess, the first commitment we must make is that everyone in our society deserves healthcare, as is done in all other developed countries. Denying someone needed healthcare for economic reasons

is no more morally acceptable than for any other reason,” Rosenlicht writes, adding that for-profit corporations and investors must be purged from guiding medical decisions.

Rosenlicht spoke recently with J. about the treatment plan he’d prescribe for the mental health industry right now, as well as his views on the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on Dec. 4.

The following has been edited for length and clarity.

J.: What was your emotional tone when writing the book?

NICHOLAS ROSENLICHT: I think some of the emotional tone was frustration, having worked for 40 years in [the mental health] field, feeling like I could have or should have done a lot more. Rather than advancing, our care of the mentally ill has actually gotten worse.

With Brian Thompson’s murder, the frustration [that suspect Luigi Mangione was expressing] has become so prominent in our society in the last five years and has been present in mental health for 30 years. We threw the mentally ill under the bus, and guess who the bus is bearing down on now?

Why is the book called “My Brother’s Keeper,” which is a reference to the Biblical story of Cain and Abel?

I’d always heard “I’m not my brother’s keeper” as an excuse. People actually say, ‘Hey, I’m not responsible.’ But that’s not how it’s intended in the Bible. We do have responsibility. The lack of community has made us fall apart.

You write that people mistakenly claim the health care industry is broken, but you say it’s functioning exactly as it was designed: operating as a for-profit business. Can you explain that more? The system that we’ve built is not designed to care for people because caring for people costs money. For corporate executives like Brian Thompson, his job was to give as little care as he could get away with and enhance profits. That’s just not a model that is good for people.

UnitedHealthcare has $280 billion in [annual] revenue. But who decided that

health care should be a business? Every other developed nation has decided that caring for each other should be a right and a function of our government, our community. Ours is the only country that excludes people from care. One person’s cancer diminishes our community. One person lying in feces in front of our supermarket makes the community less. Yet our system is not about the community. It’s about enriching those who are charged with managing our health care. How did this happen?

What actions do you recommend to remedy this?

Companies aren’t supposed to make medical decisions. We have laws that could turn this around, but the largest lobbying industry in our society is health care. Why are our elected officials not doing something about this? It’s because it’s one dollar, one vote. We need to really lay into our public officials. For example, if our elected officials actually enforced the Park Doctrine [which imposes criminal liability on corporate officers], rather than roll in health care lobbying dollars and look the other way, I don’t think Luigi Mangione would have been so motivated to perform his horrific act, nor others to view him as a hero. n

“My Brother’s Keeper: The Untold Stories Behind the Business of Mental Health — and How to Stop the Abandonment of the Mentally Ill” by Dr. Nicholas Rosenlicht (Pegasus Books, 288 pages) tinyurl.com/ brothers-keeper

‘Such a Match’ podcast traces love found through J.’s pages

LEA LOEB | J. STAFF

In today’s digital world of dating apps, swipes and likes, it’s easy to forget a time when a love story could begin with a few carefully penned lines of text in J.’s personals section. For many couples, these brief, 30-word ads launched their lifelong journey together. Now, they are sharing their love stories in “Such a Match,” a new podcast from J. launching this month.

Created and hosted by staff writer Emma Goss, “Such a Match” dives into the history and humor of matchmaking through J.’s classified ads, which ran from the early 1990s to the early 2000s. Each of the seven episodes features firsthand accounts from a different couple who found their soulmate, or beshert, through this Jewish newspaper. Stories range from serendipitous connections to comical misadventures-turned-mishpocha.

In March 1997, Vivian was single, pushing 30, and had recently moved back home. One day, her mother put an ad in the Jewish Bulletin, as this publication was then called, to find Vivian a match. Soon, the home answering machine

was filling up with messages from eligible Jewish men interested in taking Vivian on a date.

One voicemail in particular stood out — it was a woman with a thick Polish accent, hoping her “vunderful” son Joe could meet Vivian. Vivian and Joe’s hilarious, sweet and enduring love story launches “Such a Match” on Jan. 21.

Another happy couple who will be featured are Bernie and Joanne Arfin, or “the journalist who got scooped.” Joanne was a Jewish Bulletin reporter and assistant editor who met Bernie while on assignment. They’ve been married for over 60 years and share their unconventional love story in episode three.

Each episode is about 15 minutes long and available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. New episodes will be released every Tuesday. Sign up to receive emails with links to each new podcast at jweekly.com/podcast, and follow J. on Instagram, Facebook and Bluesky for updates, behind-thescenes content and opportunities to share your own love stories. n

Joanne and Bernie Arfin pose with a photo from their wedding. The Arfins are just one of the couples featured in J.’s new podcast that met through the paper’s personals section. (AARON LEVY-WOLINS/J. STAFF)

J. Life

The

Torah column is supported by a generous donation from Eve Gordon-Ramek in memory of Kenneth Gordon

The hidden cost of holding grudges isn’t worth paying

TORAH | RABBI DOV GREENBERG

Vayechi Genesis

47:28-50:26

Simon Wiesenthal, the Holocaust survivor and famed Nazi hunter, shares a humorous anecdote in his autobiography. In a displaced persons camp after the war, a neighbor asked to borrow $10, promising he’d repay it within a week, as he was expecting a package from a relative.

The week passed, and the repayment didn’t materialize. Nor did it the week after, or the week after that. Excuses piled up for nearly a year. Then one day, the neighbor came to Wiesenthal with a $10 bill in hand.

“My visa has come through,” he announced. “Tomorrow, I leave for Canada. Here’s the money I owe you.”

Wiesenthal waved the money away and said, “No, keep it. For $10, it’s not worth changing my opinion of you.”

The story is comical, but it’s also profoundly insightful. Wiesenthal’s remark underscores how tightly we can hold on to our grudges, even when the cost of doing so far outweighs the benefit.

This tendency to hold on to resentment, to resist letting go, is deeply human. But it is also deeply corrosive. Resentment gives power to those who have wronged us.

As the saying goes, “Holding a grudge is letting someone you dislike live rent-free in your mind.” Why would we give anyone that privilege?

Studies show that resentment and anger trigger biochemical changes in the brain, altering blood flow, heightening stress and impairing sleep. Prolonged bitterness increases cortisol levels, undermines

cardiovascular health and weakens the immune system.

By contrast, forgiveness promotes physical and emotional wellbeing. Letting go of anger isn’t just an act of grace; it’s an act of self-preservation. When we forgive, we release ourselves from the chains of the past. We free our hearts to heal, our minds to grow and our souls to rediscover joy.

Forgiving others isn’t about excusing their behavior. It’s about liberating ourselves from bitterness and reclaiming our peace.

During a class I was teaching at Stanford on Biblical personalities, a Catholic student raised a question that cut straight to the heart of this issue:

“Rabbi, why is Genesis filled with so much animosity? The New Testament is about love, but Genesis seems preoccupied with hate. Why?”

Her observation was striking. Genesis recounts four sets of brothers, each locked in conflict.

The very first siblings, Cain and Abel, fail to get along. In a jealous rage, Cain murders Abel.

rivalry. But if we look deeper, we discover something extraordinary: These narratives form a single, unfolding drama, a symphony in four movements.

The key to understanding their unity lies in the conclusion of each story.

The first story ends in tragedy. Cain murders Abel and remains unrepentant. When God asks, “Where is Abel your brother?” Cain defies God with the haunting words, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”

coexistence and then to an embrace.

But the final story of Joseph and his brothers reaches a resolution of breathtaking beauty. Joseph had every reason to hate his brothers. They sold him into slavery, robbed him of his youth and exiled him.

Yet in Genesis’ closing chapters, Joseph does something remarkable. He forgives them. Not only does he forgive, but he reframes their betrayal, telling them, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good.” He transforms their cruelty into a vehicle of Divine providence.

Joseph doesn’t dwell on the pain of the past. He sees the larger picture: the good that emerged from his suffering.

He embraces his brothers, provides for them during famine and settles them in safety.

In doing so, he answers God’s question to Cain, “Where is your brother?” with a resounding, “I am my brother’s keeper.”

Why does Genesis devote so much space to these stories? Because they teach us one of life’s essential truths: Conflict is inevitable, but it need not define us.

Jealousy, rivalry and anger are part of the human condition. We will hurt and be hurt. What matters is how we respond. Without forgiveness, relationships fracture and families fall apart. Forgiveness is the bridge that allows us to move from pain to peace, from estrangement to love.

Isaac and Ishmael, the second pair, are divided by rivalry and part ways.

Jacob and Esau begin their struggle even before birth, wrestling in the womb — a conflict that continues for decades.

Finally, there are Joseph and his brothers, whose jealousy leads them to sell him into slavery.

At first glance, these stories seem disconnected — episodes of familial strife and

The second story takes a step forward. Isaac and Ishmael, despite their differences, come together to bury their father, Abraham. They do not speak but stand side by side in silent reconciliation.

The third story brings us further. After years of estrangement, Jacob and Esau meet again. At first, conflict seems inevitable. Jacob fears Esau’s approach with 400 men. Yet when they meet, Esau embraces Jacob, and the brothers weep together. Though they part ways afterward, the moment of connection is undeniable.

So we move from murder to silent

The Torah’s message is clear: Forgiveness is not just a virtue. It is the foundation of enduring relationships.

Like Joseph, we can choose to rise above grievance, to see the good even in the harm others may have caused us.

And here’s the truth worth repeating: Without apologies and forgiveness, no relationship can survive!

Those who seek love, family and happiness must learn to forgive.

In the end, Genesis is not about hate. It is about the transformative power of love — the love that begins when we forgive. n

Rabbi Dov Greenberg leads Stanford Chabad and lectures across the world.

“Cain Leads Abel to Death” by James Tissot, ca. 1900

Goat cheese and za’atar add tang to warm lentil salad

COOKING FAITH KRAMER

Tangy, fresh goat cheese dusted in zesty herbs and combined with a warm lentil salad makes a great vegetarian comfort dish for the month of Tevet, the 10th month of the Jewish calendar. Tevet is associated with winter and connects with the Hebrew Zodiac symbol of the goat and the constellation of Capricornus. The goat’s persistence, hardiness and sure-footedness is considered an inspiration for surviving a cold winter or trying times.

WARM LENTIL SALAD WITH ZA’ATAR GOAT CHEESE BALLS

Serves 4-5 (main) or 8-10 (side)

Cheese balls

4-5 oz. log of plain goat cheese (chevre), cold

½ cup finely ground za’atar spice mix (see notes)

Lentils

1 cup dried brown or green lentils

3 cups vegetable broth or water

¼ tsp. salt, plus to taste

¼ tsp. ground black pepper, plus to taste

Salad

2 Tbs. chopped green onions (white, green parts)

1 cup diced fresh tomatoes (¼-inch pieces), divided

½ cup diced carrots (¼-inch pieces)

½ cup diced celery (¼-inch pieces)

3 Tbs. chopped Italian parsley, divided

2 tsp. grated lemon zest, divided

¼ tsp. ground cumin

¼ tsp. paprika

1 dried bay leaf

½ tsp. minced garlic

3 Tbs. extra-virgin olive oil

2 Tbs. lemon juice

¼ tsp. salt, plus to taste

¼ tsp. ground black pepper, plus to taste

¼ tsp. chili flakes, or to taste

3 Tbs. strained fresh lemon juice

Form the cheese balls: Take teaspoon-size scoops of cold cheese. Roll in hands to form balls about ¾-inch in diameter and set on plate. Pour za’atar into a small bowl and roll cheese balls in herbs until covered. Shake off excess and return to plate. (If making ahead, store airtight in refrigerator for up to 3 days and bring to room temperature before using).

Cook the lentils: Rinse lentils. Put in pot with broth, salt, pepper, cumin, paprika and bay leaf. Bring to a simmer over medium-high heat. Cover and reduce heat as needed to keep at a simmer. Stir occasionally, simmering until lentils are tender but not mushy, about 25-30 minutes. Timing varies so go by texture, not time.

(AARON LEVY-WOLINS/J. STAFF)

Drain lentils, discarding cooking liquid or saving it for soup or stews. Taste and adjust seasoning if needed. (To make ahead, refrigerate drained lentils airtight for up to 3 days and reheat before continuing.)

Combine the salad: Put warm lentils in a large bowl. Immediately mix in green onions, ½ cup tomatoes, carrots, celery, 2 Tbs. parsley, 1 tsp. lemon zest, garlic, oil and lemon juice. Stir, then add salt, pepper and chili flakes. Taste and adjust seasoning. Reserve half of the herb-covered goat cheese balls for top of salad. Stir others into lentils. Pour pot into serving dish, topping with remaining ½ cup tomatoes, 1 Tbs. parsley, 1 tsp. lemon zest and reserved cheese balls. If making in advance, do not add cheese or garnishes. Refrigerate airtight for up to 3 days. Bring to room temperature or reheat. Add cheese and garnishes.

Notes: Za’atar is an herb and spice mix available in Middle Eastern, kosher and online markets. If needed, process it in a blender or a clean coffee grinder until fine and powdery. n

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THE FOOD

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THE PEOPLE

Our experienced Events team will expertly guide you through the planning and execution of every aspect of your party, from intimate gatherings to grand affairs.

For more information or to book a site visit, contact our events team: 415.777.2233 | events@onemarket.com

The Food section is supported by a generous donation from Susan and Moses Libitzky

15 years ago, Gather’s farm-to-table ethos

THE ORGANIC EPICURE ALIX WALL

Alix Wall is a contributing editor to J. She is also the founder of the Illuminoshi: The Not-So-Secret Society of Bay Area Jewish Food Professionals.

The downtown Berkeley restaurant Gather, known for its farm-to-table ethos, just marked 15 years in business. When co-owner Eric Fenster spoke at the party last month celebrating this milestone, he mentioned b’nai mitzvah receptions among the lifecycle events that have been held at the restaurant. What he did not mention was that some of the teenage celebrants at those events went on to work there years later — just one example of how Gather has built a community.

When it opened, Gather gained notice for its innovation and bold thinking. The vegan charcuterie on the opening menu garnered national attention at a time when no one was offering such things. A notebook kept in the dining room listed every item of produce or protein in the kitchen and the farm where it was sourced.

These ideas were praised by some and made fun of by others who thought they were taking the whole farm-totable concept a bit too far.

At last month’s party, Fenster shared some of the restaurant’s accomplishments in nearly 5,000 days of service, including feeding more than 1.5 million guests, diverting tens of thousands of pounds of food from landfill,

The inside dining space is complemented by an outdoor patio in the back. (PHOTOS/COURTESY ERIC FENSTER)

converting thousands of gallons of vegetable oil into biofuels and taking a leading role in ending the use of single-use plastics in Berkeley.

“As a measure of time, we’ve lasted 15 Earth orbits around the sun and 60 changes of season, from spring asparagus to summer tomatoes, autumn Brussels to winter citrus and kale,” said Fenster, who as a young man spent an influential year on staff at a Jewish environmental program.

Like any Bay Area restaurant still going strong right now, Gather has had to adapt to the times.

While it opened as a special occasion restaurant, it has since transformed into a more casual kind of place. It’s still serving its elevated pizzas and burgers, as well as

produce-forward dishes like a roasted delicata squash appetizer with whipped feta, pomegranate salsa and roasted pumpkin seeds, and a harvest bowl entrée with quinoa, roasted rainbow carrots, garbanzo beans and cabbage slaw in a lemon tahini sauce. It prides itself on offering dishes for the carnivores, the vegans, the gluten-free and everyone in between.

Fenster grew up in Rockland County, New York, in a mostly secular Jewish home.

“I wouldn’t say I was deeply connected to the spirit of Judaism growing up, but it was through the family and traditions and the food, like Passover at my grandparents,” that he felt the strongest connection.

As a young man, Gather co-owner Eric Fenster spent an influential year on staff at a Jewish environmental program.

As a biology major, Fenster studied endangered species at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and after a stint studying rare caterpillars and fireflies in the Costa Rican jungle, he moved on to the Colorado mountains to follow an extremely rare butterfly. After five days alone with plenty of time to think, he began wondering if tracking endangered species was his true life’s purpose.

Gather prides itself on having dishes for carnivores, vegans, the gluten-free and everyone in between.

Interrupting his thoughts, suddenly, came a cacophony of children hiking with a guide.

“Something clicked, that I should be doing environmental education and outdoor guiding work,” he recalled.

He remembered reading about the Teva Learning Center, a Jewish environmental program at the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center in upstate New York. He found his way to a pay phone in a remote town (it was 1998) and cold-called the center. Its then director, Adam Berman, answered and interviewed him on the spot. (Berman is the founder of Berkeley’s Urban Adamah; Fenster went on to consult with the Berkeley farm when it was building its retreat center.)

While Berman quickly ascertained that Fenster had the environmental chops for the job, he needed to know if he was good with children.

“Can you be silly?” Berman asked him, telling Fenster to “give me an animal sound.” Fenster chose a gorilla. It must have been a pretty good imitation, because the next thing he knew, he was headed East to join the Teva staff.

“Working at Teva was the first time I truly felt a deeper connection to my roots,” he said. “Learning about earth-based Judaism was what did that for me.”

After moving to the Bay Area in 1999, Fenster’s first job was at Berkeley’s Edible Schoolyard, founded by Alice Waters of Chez Panisse fame. From there, he and thenbusiness partner Ari Derfel founded Back to Earth, a company that did wilderness trips and organic catering.

While the pair had lofty goals about greening the catering industry, neither had that much kitchen experience. In the beginning, they did everything themselves before

was ahead of its time

quickly expanding to hire a chef and team members. When they began to dream of a restaurant, they approached people in their community for support.

Although it was right a er the economic collapse of 2008, Gather opened in 2009, with 110 community investors in a rare model for a restaurant.

A er Derfel moved to Canada in 2017, Fenster continued to hold the vision of Gather alongside co-owner Jodi Munson, who has served as general manager since the early days.

A er 15 years, he said, some people believe that a restaurant like Gather must be practically running itself. Not so.

“If you think that, you don’t know anything about restaurants,” he said.

“ ere’s a level of determination and consistent pressure that you have to keep your eye on, as the second you are complacent, it shows. It easily and quickly becomes mediocre until you bring the passion back.”

Fenster is 48 now, living in Kensington with his wife and two boys.

He’d love to see Gather continue on as a leader in the environmental justice movement as well as a mainstay of downtown Berkeley. e restaurant is located at 2200 Oxford St. on the ground floor of the David Brower Center, which is home to a number of environmental nonprofits.

Fenster also feels Gather has a role to play for the next generation.

“One of my sons worked there when he was 11,” he said. “Seeing him host, run food, be a barista and then sharing a meal with him at the end of a shi , talking about the flavors of a dish, that’s been so special.” ■

A selection of dishes including pizza (top left) and roasted delicata squash (bottom left).

An organic half-roasted chicken is one popular entrée.

Lifecycles

B’NAI MITZVAH WEDDINGS

ASHLEY AMALIA BLUMA BRYNN

MURPHY-CHUTORIAN Daughter of Julia and Erik Murphy-Chutorian, Saturday, Jan. 18, at Congregation Beth Am in Los Altos Hills.

BENJAMIN BRESS Son of Lisa and Daniel Bress, Saturday, Jan. 18, at Congregation B’nai Shalom in Walnut Creek.

MAXWELL DRAZAN PETRICK Son of Naomi and Jesse Petrick, Saturday, Dec. 28, at Congregation Beth Shalom in Napa.

GRIFFIN ROSENTHAL-KAMBIC Child of Leah and Justin Rosenthal-Kambic, Saturday, Jan. 11, at Congregation B’nai Shalom in Walnut Creek.

NOAH WEINGARTEN Son of Lisa and Eric Weingarten, Saturday, Jan. 4, at Temple Isaiah in Lafayette.

ELLEN FETHERSTON married JONATHAN FOOKES on Oct. 26, 2024, in Portland, Oregon. The bride is the daughter of Charlotte Salomon and Scott Fetherston of Carmel, California, and the groom is the son of Aimee and Shane Fookes of Hillsboro, Oregon. Ellen, a CPA, and Jonathan, an electrical engineer, happily live and work in San Francisco with their dog and two cats.

OBITUARIES

ROBERT NATHAN CUTLER

Born Jan. 4, 1930, to Alex and Clara Cutler at Mt. Zion Hospital. Died Dec. 29, 2024, in Thousand Oaks, CA.

Robert is survived by his loving wife of 62 years, Eleanor Cutler (Holtz); son Michael Cutler; daughter Nancy Cutler Dye; grandchildren Alex, Hannah, and Morgan Dye; sister-inlaw Arlene Leiber (Paul); niece Diane Goldberg (James, deceased); nephews Roger Colvin (Barbara), Mitchell Leiber, and David Leiber (Janina), and a host of great-nieces, great-nephews and cousins. Robert was preceded in death by his sisters Helen Hirsch (Alex) and Marilyn Colvin (Leonard); nephew Steven Leiber (Leigh); and oldest, lifelong friends Jack Grossman and Lloyd Sankowich.

Robert grew up in San Francisco’s Richmond District, attended Lafayette Elementary, Presidio Junior High, and George Washington High School before earning his B.S. degree in Business at University of San Francisco.

Robert joined the Air National Guard during the Korean War and spent several months in basic training in Spokane, WA, achieving the rank of Corporal and an honorable discharge after his unit was disbanded without overseas deployment at the conflict’s conclusion.

Robert returned to his beloved San Francisco in 1954 and joined his father Alex in the commercial real estate business, earning the unofficial title of “The King of Geary Boulevard” for his many years of selling, leasing, and managing properties in the Richmond District.

During his career, Robert served as Treasurer of the S.F. Real Estate Association and Director of the California Real Estate Association.

Robert spent 92 of his 94 years living in San Francisco and loved nothing more than taking family to dinner at a number of The City’s oldest and finest restaurants, like Harris Steakhouse. Robert was an enthusiastic, lifelong fan of the Giants, Warriors, and 49ers, and had season tickets to the Niner games for many years with his close friends from the service, from the time they played at Kezar Stadium through most of their run at Candlestick Park.

Robert met his beautiful wife Eleanor in the autumn of 1961, and they married at the Fairmont Hotel in the spring of 1962. They spent 60 years together in their beloved San Francisco, moving to Newbury Park in 2022 to be closer to their children and grandchildren. In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation in Robert’s name to the American Kidney Fund at give.kidneyfund.org

ISAAC AIRES OLSON Son of Shana and Mats Olson, grandson of Nina Weil, Julius Aires and Jeanie and Steve Olson, Saturday, Dec. 21, at Temple Sinai in Oakland.

SUSAN ELLEN ROSENBERG

June 20, 1942–Dec. 11, 2024

Susan Ellen Rosenberg, 82, of San Francisco, Calif., died surrounded by her loving family on Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2024, after a brief battle with cancer. She was preceded in death by her husband of sixty years, Edwin “Roddy” Rosenberg, and her brother, Jerome Miller, and is survived by her three children, David Rosenberg (Liz), Mark Rosenberg (Eileen) and Sandi Loftus (Jared), and six grandchildren, Ally and Jake Rosenberg, Chelsea and Liv Loftus, and Hannah and Zach Rosenberg.

Sue was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., to Martha and Sam Miller, on June 20, 1942. The family moved to San Francisco in 1955, settling in the Marina District. She attended Marina Middle School and Washington High School and was an active member of B’nai B’rith Girls, where she made many lifelong friendships. Sue met Roddy, the love of her life, when the two were just 15 years old, and they married on Dec. 15, 1962. Their union of sixty years was a testament to their love and devotion, and together they built a beautiful life centered on love of family and dear friends.

Sue was deeply dedicated to her Jewish community. She held leadership roles, including President of the Sisterhood of Congregation Sherith Israel, and was actively involved in the San Francisco Jewish Federation. Her volunteer efforts extended to Brandeis Day School, San Francisco Jewish Home for the Aged, temple gift shops and

The Obituaries section is supported by a generous grant from Sinai Memorial Chapel, sinaichapel.org

even serving as the beloved Girl Scout cookie mom for many years.

As a natural extension of her expertise as a travel agent with On the Road Again Travel in San Francisco, Sue loved to travel with Roddy and friends, creating unforgettable memories as they explored the world together. From climbing the Great Wall of China to embarking on an African safari and later discovering a love of cruising, there weren’t many places they didn’t visit. The two spent more than twenty summers on their boat at Tinsley Island with their St. Francis Yacht Club friends, bringing them joy and lasting connections.

Family was the cornerstone of Sue’s life. She and Roddy prioritized creating a welcoming home, moving later in life from the city to a large house with a pool in the East Bay so their family could gather and create cherished memories. Sue nurtured relationships across generations and maintained lasting friendships spanning more than fifty years from every chapter of her life.

Sue’s welcoming attitude knew no bounds; she opened her home not only to friends and family, but also to those who were far from their own, always a warm and gracious host. She was known for her honesty and candor which often led to loads of laughter and she never turned down a glass of Sauvignon Blanc or a Maker’s Mark Manhattan. Sue loved bringing people together for occasions filled with joy and love.

A memorial service was held at Beth Chaim Congregation in Danville, Calif., on Dec. 13. Contributions in Sue’s memory may be made to the Camp Newman Brotman Scholarship Fund at URJ Camp Newman.

DR. MARION ALLEN KOERPER BLUMBERG

July 8, 1943–Dec. 18, 2024

Born July 8, 1943, in Washington D.C., the daughter of the late Robert Allen Koerper and Marion Rittenour Koerper. Marion passed away at home on Dec. 18, 2024, in San Francisco, the city she called home for 60 years.

The beloved wife of 51 years to Dr. Robert Blumberg; devoted mother of Dr. Marc Blumberg (Dr. Elizabeth Jensen-Blumberg) and Andrew Blumberg (Jessica Perez); loving grandmother of Joshua Blumberg and Tobias Blumberg; cherished sister of Jean (Robert Burke); cherished sister-in-law of Estelle Goldstein; and cherished Aunt of Emily Burke Henesey (John) and David Goldstein (Angela).

Marion received her undergraduate degree from Stanford University and her Medical Degree from the University of California School of Medicine, San Francisco (UCSF). She received her post-graduate training in Pediatrics and Pediatric Hematology at University of California, San Francisco.

Retired from University of California, San Francisco, after a 40-year career as a Clinical Professor of Pediatrics and Pediatric Hematology. As a professor emerita of pediatric hematology at UCSF and founder of the UCSF Hemophilia Treatment Center, she helped shape the landscape of comprehensive care that we know today.

In 1978, she founded the Comprehensive Hemophilia Treatment Center at UCSF and a summer camp (Camp Hemotion) where children with bleeding disorders could enjoy an environment

where medical care and childhood adventures could seamlessly coexist.

Her influence extended far beyond UCSF through her extensive collaboration with the National Hemophilia Foundation and the World Federation of Hemophilia, where she contributed to global initiatives improving care for people with bleeding disorders worldwide.

The bleeding disorders community recognized Dr. Koerper’s extraordinary contributions with numerous honors, including the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Hemophilia Foundation. During her professional career she contributed hundreds of articles on medical literature, many of which continue to influence the care of patients with bleeding disorders. A pioneering figure in hemophilia treatment, Dr. Koerper’s impact on the bleeding disorders community will be felt for many generations.

In lieu of flowers, donations in Dr. Koerper’s memory may be made to the Hemophilia Foundation of Northern California (HFNC) Camp Hemotion Scholarship Fund, ensuring that her legacy of providing care and support to children with hemophilia continues for generations to come. Sinai Memorial | (415) 921-3636

Lifecycles

Feb. 17, 1928–Dec. 30, 2024

Bryna Naftaly, born in Somerville, Mass., but a lifelong resident of Oakland and San Francisco, passed away peacefully and comfortably on Dec. 30, less than two months shy of her 97th birthday.

Bryna Brill graduated from Oakland High where she was described as smart, sweet, selfless, swell and smitten with Stan, a shy, handsome, brilliant UC Berkeley honor student, with whom she’d lovingly spend every day until his death 68 years later in 2012.

A voracious reader, Bryna will be remembered for her buoyant personality, empathy, and appreciation of beauty, be it music, modern art, theatre, or savoring the serenity of the S.F. Arboretum, a feast of lush colorful landscapes.

Additionally, her life was marked by fearless conviction and a deep commitment to justice and community, standing up for the integration

of S.F. public schools, boldly challenging a room filled with opposition to a irm the power of unity over division.

Whether advocating for better care for her aging parents or rallying to save a beloved nursery school in the wake of disaster, her actions embodied resilience and a relentless drive to protect those in need. Through every challenge, she stood tall as a beacon of courage and a voice for the voiceless.

But Bryna’s most remarkable super-power was fueled by her boundless curiosity and sense of wonder. She was blessed with an uncanny ability to lock into the feelings of others, without judgment, whether you were a friend, loved one, or a total stranger. She would share her insightful, transformative advice so effortlessly that you might not realize that you’d just been the recipient of magic.

Bryna is survived by her sons, Eric, Bruce (Sara) and Keith (Nathaniel Bisson), and grandson Sam, along with devoted nieces, nephews, cousins and caregivers. She was predeceasedby her brother, David, and, of course, by her parents, Sarah and Samuel Brill.

Truly one of one, Bryna will be profoundly

missed. Memorial donations in Bryna’s name may be directed to the American Civil Liberties Union or Environmental Defense Fund.

Sinai Memorial | (415) 921-3636

BARBARA MYER KLEIN

Barbara Myer Klein passed peacefully on the morning of Dec. 10, 2024, Hebrew date 9 Kislev, 5785, at age 92. She was interred in the Myer family plot at the Home of Peace cemetery in Colma, alongside her beloved husband of 43 years, Steve Klein, who passed away in the year 2000. The family will hold a memorial service in mid-January; details to follow.

She was born and raised in Berkeley, and she and her sister, Jean Myer Radford, were third-generation Californians. Their parents were Arthur “Pie” Myer (of Boy Scout Troop 17 at Congregation Emanu-El) and Ethel Levy Myer.

Barbara raised her family in Orinda, California. She was a graduate of Stanford,

worked in the Contra Costa library system throughout her life, and co-founded a bookstore in Orinda.

In addition to reading, she loved swimming daily and playing bridge. Creative and generous, she was a lifelong volunteer on many fronts.

Barbara was devoted to extended family on both sides and kept in touch with them all, organizing great family reunions and adventures. She also loved hostessing, traveling and attending musical performances.

Barbara is survived by her three children: Sarah Rose, Ken Klein (Jennie), and Margo Eyon (Itzik), as well as two grandchildren in the U.S., Hannah and Stephen Klein, and three in Israel, Edan (Valery), Shaked (Yarden) and Kesem Eyon. She was also blessed with four great-grandchildren in Israel: Kedem Aharon, Raz Tuvya, Shachar Ami, and Lia Coral.

Barbara was close to her many nieces and nephews, all of whom have very special memories of her, as do a great number of other friends and individuals whom she sponsored and nurtured over the years.

Donations in Barbara’s memory may be given to Friends of the Orinda Library.

BRYNA NAFTALY

AUDRA WEISS

Sept. 28, 1967–Dec. 31, 2024

Audra Weiss, 57, resident of Mill Valley, Calif., passed away on Dec. 31, 2024, with her husband and children by her side. The wife of Jim Weiss, and mother of Ethan (23) and Emily (20), Audra was a quiet yet powerful force who walked through life exuding grace, strength and class.

The matriarch and CEO of the Weiss family, Audra will be sorely missed by family, friends, neighbors and her community at large. She loved fiercely as a devoted Mama Bear, loyal friend and passionate advocate for those who su ered, especially those living with cancer. Born and raised in Coram, N.Y., Audra graduated from the Whitman School at Syracuse University and forged a career in healthcare communications. She met her husband Jim through a mutual friend and found they’d been living parallel lives. He also went to Syracuse, bled Orange and worked in the same field but they had never met. Like “When Harry Met

Sally,” they built a strong friendship that led to an unbreakably strong marriage of nearly 25 years.

She knew from the get-go that she’d happily trade in her stellar professional career for a lifelong role of motherhood. She welcomed Ethan and Emily into the world and devoted herself to her calling.

Audra’s intellect and brilliance shined in the backdrop of Jim’s entrepreneurial quest to build a leading global communications firm.

As an advisor and confidante, Audra made her mark on the business that would become Real Chemistry. To her, success was a vehicle to do good – giving back through the Weiss Family O ice.

When she was diagnosed with cancer two years ago, she turned her journey into advocacy, crossing paths with the Dempsey Center and recently joining their board. She was a staunch ally who always demonstrated kindness, courage, integrity and care.

Even in the later stages of her disease she prioritized others, especially those who recently received a cancer diagnosis because in her words: “No one can do this alone.” Selfless to the end, Audra was committed to sharing

her wisdom about the cancer journey and her vision for giving free holistic medical care to patients in need.

Audra will be remembered by her family, friends, colleagues and her Syracuse Color War crew as a brave warrior who believed in her bones that she could defy the odds. For two years, she did just that — kicking cancer’s ass — until her disease burden became too great.

She rests knowing her tribe won’t let her death be in vain. We’ll be vocal about the urgency of early cancer detection and diagnosis. We’ll advocate for treating it holistically, not just with pharmaceuticals but with wrap-around care that makes the journey a much better experience for patients and their families. We’ll be dedicated to gaining funding to support treatments at the intersection of Eastern and Western medicine. And above all, we’ll care for her beloved Ethan and Emily with the radically practical heart and soul she’d bring to each challenge and life milestone.

In addition to her husband and children, Audra is survived by her parents Ronni and Mark Nass and brother Eric Nass and his wife Lisa, her uncle and aunt Steve and Honey Schwartz, her brother-in-law Harry Weiss and

sisters-in-law Beth Weiss and Cindy Weiss. She also leaves her furry longtime companion, Kona.

Services were held at Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco. Donations in Audra’s memory can be made to the Dempsey Center, Family Reach, Hope Lodge and Cancer Research Institute. Sinai Memorial | (415) 921-3636

From the J. Archives Energy costs are too high! So said coal customers in 1910

MAYA MIRSKY | J. STAFF

Jan. 10 marks national “cut your energy costs” day. For Northern Californians, this may feel a bit ironic.

Just last month, Pacific Gas & Electric, the utility that serves most of the region, announced an electricity rate hike — the sixth one in 2024 alone. That’s on top of a natural gas price increase a year ago and another set for 2025.

Customers can think nostalgically about the days of cheaper energy. But readers of this publication were worried about energy prices all the way back in 1910.

At the time, it was coal prices that had us burning up. In response to a question on everyone’s mind at the time — “Why is coal so high?” — we turned to Mr. Phillips of the J.J. Moore shipping company.

He offered a litany of reasons for the increase, explaining that the coal supply from Oregon and Washington “has diminished to such a degree that there is scarcely any.” The “rate of freight” had jumped up

as well, which made matters worse due to reliance on coal from Australia. “We are so far from our source of supply,” Mr. Phillips noted.

But the predominant reason for the price hikes was the fact that the region was still recovering from the devastating earthquake and fire of 1906.

“Up to the earthquake,” he noted, “prices were steady, winter and summer, but since the winter of 1907 the prices have at times soared to a height almost impossible to be reached by the rich or poor.”

Phillips mentioned that the first big increase following the quake was due to a “shortage of ships and cars to bring in a sufficient supply to meet the demand.” The complications only grew from there.

At the time, coal was used for industry, but city dwellers also used it for heating. Although Jewish arrivals in Northern California often sought success as dry-goods merchants, apparently some schlepped coal, too.

“Felix Gross knows the coal business,” according to an advertisement in 1923. “He knows your needs and advises everybody to obtain the forthcoming winter’s supply of coal now while prices are comparatively reasonable. The Felix Gross Coal Company, 480 Ninth street, is prepared to fill all orders large or small with promptness and despatch. Phone Market 792.”

While Gross was hauling sacks of coal across the city, San Francisco had also been transitioning to electricity. The city was an early adopter of electric light, and first saw electrification in 1876 in a small area. That changed dramatically by the 1920s.

“California is second in all the States of the Union in number of homes lighted with electricity,” we wrote in 1922. “There are now 752,000 residential consumers of electricity in this State, a gain of 102,000 during the

year 1921.”

Before that, gas had been used for lighting. In fact, PG&E is the successor company of the San Francisco Gas Company, founded in 1852. The company made a successful pivot just as electric light came into vogue.

“First manufactured as a lighting medium, gas long ago surrendered that field to electricity, a fact that caused great consternation among gas men when electricity was first introduced,” we wrote in 1922. “Its use as a fuel, however, has increased with such enormous strides that the Pacific Gas and Electric Company today finds its facilities all but overtaxed to supply the growing demand and is constructing in San Francisco one of the two largest gas holders in the West, capable of containing 10,000,000 cubic feet of gas.”

The PG&E gas holder, also known as a gasometer, consisted of a set of tanks enclosed in a steel frame with a water seal. The inner tanks rose and fell depending on how much gas was in storage, while the steel frame remained stable.

In 1922, we described the construction as the “mammoth” gas holder in the city.

“Its size may be visualized by comparing it with the St. Francis hotel, which is 187 feet

in height and occupies 45,000 square feet of ground area. Thus the new holder could comfortably include the hotel within its great shell,” we wrote.

PG&E is still with us, but the hotel-size gasometer is long gone. Coal, too, is a distant memory, though you can still see traces of the California coal mines. Out by Antioch in the East Bay, it’s possible to visit the Black Diamond Mines Regional Preserve, now a park. Meanwhile, natural gas is being phased out across California.

It was a century ago that customers were fretting over the price of coal, but we can’t help but feel some solidarity now as we open our winter PG&E bills and ask, “Why so high?” n

Felix Gross’ ad from our paper in 1930 (J. ARCHIVES)

The gasometer on what was then named Army Street and today is Cesar Chavez Street. (OPENSFHISTORY/WNP14.2249)

What you could get with a nickel’s worth of electricity in 1927. (J. ARCHIVES)

PG&E told our readers they could afford to heat their homes with gas in 1935. (J. ARCHIVES)

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