12 Feeling triggered: Local Jews meet up at firing range
3 Feds to investigate UC Berkeley after mob shuts down Israel talk
4 UC Berkeley Jewish students feeling uneasy, unsupported
5 East Bay man charged with felonies for stealing, burning Israeli flag
6 Thousands in S.F. join unity march against antisemitism
8 J. welcomes new editor-in-chief, noted S.F. writer Chanan Tigay
9 State pols visit Israeli sites devastated on Oct. 7
10 Complaint describes ‘severe’ antisemitism in Berkeley schools
11 UC Davis student government approves BDS measure
14 California election results show limits of Israel lobby
15 Marco Troper, math whiz and Hausner alum, dies at 19
16 At 100, Ernie Glaser calls himself a ‘lucky’ man CAMPS & EDUCATION
17 Sonoma arts camp hires Jewish leaders with a vision
18 Local Jewish camps wonder if Israeli emissaries will return
22 Teens consider antisemitism in their college searches
24 NYC med school goes tuition-free thanks to $1B donation
25 Student union at Canadian university rejects measure to boot Hillel after Jewish groups sound alarm
26 CALENDAR
32 New artistic director at El Cerrito theater promises a more authentic ‘Fiddler’
33 Podcast reveals painful side of Persian Jewish history
34 Pianist and oudist bring their jazzy collaboration to town
35 A flash mob for Israel dances near Golden Gate Bridge J. LIFE
36 Torah | Candlelightings
37 Food
41 Lifecycles | Obituaries
44 From the J. Archives
BAY AREA ON THE COVER: A rally held at San Francisco's Civic Center Plaza on March 3, after the first-ever unity march.
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Chanan Tigay
MANAGING EDITOR Sue Barnett
EDITORIAL
DIRECTOR OF NEWS PRODUCT David A.M. Wilensky
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PAST PRESIDENTS Marc Berger, Lou Haas, Jon Kaufman, Dan Leemon, Adam Noily, Lory Pilchik, William I. Schwartz
‘I’m screaming for help’ Feds to investigate UC Berkeley after mob shuts down Israel talk
EMMA GOSS, MAYA MIRSKY & GABE STUTMAN | J. STAFF
The U.S. Department of Education has launched an investigation into how UC Berkeley handles antisemitism, just a week after a mob shut down a Feb. 26 lecture by an Israeli speaker in a fraught incident that forced an evacuation of the venue through an underground tunnel and left Jewish students injured and shaken.
UC Berkeley joins a growing list of U.S. campuses and school districts facing investigation by the Office for Civil Rights under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination at federally funded campuses and school districts.
The federal government’s March 5 announcement came days after university spokesperson Dan Mogulof confirmed that campus police had opened a criminal investigation into the incident at Zellerbach Playhouse, including allegations of battery and a hate incident with “antisemitic expression.”
“There should be consequences for those that violated the law,” Mogulof said.
The anti-Zionist group Bears for Palestine, the Cal affiliate of Students for Justice in Palestine, organized the protest of the talk by Ran Bar-Yoshafat, an Israeli attorney and reserve combat officer in the Israel Defense Forces who was deployed in Gaza after the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre.
A Bears for Palestine post, which got more than 2,300 likes on Instagram, added glowing red eyes to an image of
“Protesters began surrounding the table I was standing at, yelling and screaming. There was spit flying left and right.”
Student Vida Keyvanfar
Bar-Yoshafat and a stamp under his face saying “murderer.” Bears for Palestine did not respond to a request for comment.
Videos of the Feb. 26 incident at Zellerbach circulated widely on social media, showing about 200 protesters outside wearing kaffiyehs and masks. They chanted and banged on a glass door until it shattered.
The police department’s Feb. 26 crime log during the time of the protest listed misdemeanors including trespassing, riot, battery on a peace officer/emergency personnel, battery on a person, and obstructing or resisting an officer or emergency med tech. It also cited two injuries and felony vandalism.
“The size of the crowd, the size of what was a mob, and the willingness and readiness of that mob to engage in violent behavior” were shocking, Mogulof said. “We are deeply disturbed by what happened.”
J. interviewed a number of Berkeley students who said the incident was deeply discouraging and frightening.
Senior Vida Keyvanfar, co-president of the campus pro-Israel group Tikvah, was responsible for checking student IDs against a list and stood outside Zellerbach.
Protesters began “surrounding the table that I was standing at, yelling and screaming. There was spit flying left and right,” Keyvanfar said. “I was pretty nervous, surrounded by this crowd.”
As Keyvanfar moved inside for her safety, she got a message saying the protesters had made it inside the building. They were “banging on the windows and the doors,” she said. “Eventually, glass broke.”
Keyvanfar saw protesters opening another door. She ran to try to pull it shut, but it was too late. As she held onto the door, a protester stuck out his foot to prop it open.
“It’s just me trying to pull the door shut,” she said. “And I’m screaming for help from the police. And I’m screaming for someone to come help me.” Eventually the protesters “ripped the door out of my hand.” The next day she said she was told she suffered a thumb sprain and began wearing a brace.
Elijah Feldman, a junior who belongs to AEPi, the Jewish fraternity, was also there to help with the event.
“I personally was verbally attacked, being called a Jew and dirty Jew, with a very nasty connotation,” he said. “I was also called a Nazi and spit at. All in my face.”
He said that the whole experience left him “in shock and with adrenaline pumping.”
One photo published on social media showed a young woman with several red marks around her neck.
“One of the rioters grabbed her neck,” said Joseph Karlan, a student leader of Tikvah and an event organizer.
Keyvanfar said the experience was disturbing in part because the demonstrators had their faces covered and it seemed like they could do whatever they wanted.
“When I was standing out there, when they were surrounding me, and they were yelling in my face to let them in, I realized that there were no repercussions for what they were doing. Because there’s no way to identify these people,” she said. “Something clicked in my brain. I was like, wow, they really could do anything to anyone here — and get away with it.”
Students told J. they were unhappy with what they saw as inadequate police protection. Mogulof noted that 19 officers were present, including the chief of campus police. Still, police seemed to be overwhelmed by the size of the demonstration.
Audio of the campus police scanner uploaded to YouTube revealed chaotic moments at the venue. At one point an
officer describes a door that’s been opened and protesters inside.
“I need more people at this gate,” an officer says, sounding alarmed. “We’re going to lose this.”
“We need cover!” another yells.
By 6:45 p.m., Karlan said, the Jewish students inside Zellerbach were told that the event was canceled. At that point, students contacted Rabbi Gil Leeds of UC Berkeley’s Chabad and arranged for Bar-Yoshafat to speak at the rabbi’s off-campus home nearby. Danielle Sobkin, co-president of the pro-Israel campus group Bears for Israel, said more than 20 students managed to make it to the lecture.
The university responded to the event with a Feb. 27 statement from Chancellor Carol Christ and Provost Benjamin Hermalin, who expressed “deep remorse and sympathy” to those forced to evacuate the venue and said the incident “violated not only our rules, but also some of our most fundamental values.”
On March 4, the university issued a second statement, confirming the criminal investigation by campus police and saying the university was aware that “two of the Jewish students who organized the event, as well as some of the attendees, were subjected to overtly antisemitic expression.”
However, another statement later that same day used more noticeably conciliatory language toward protesters.
“We also want to clarify that protesting an event due to its political nature does not make the protest activity inherently antisemitic or Islamophobic,” the statement said.
Sobkin said that pro-Israel campus groups plan to continue to bring speakers to campus. “We’re just going along with our plan,” she said. n
A week after anti-Israel demonstrators nearly incited a riot outside a UC Berkeley theater, some Jewish students on the school’s campus are feeling depressed, ostracized and confused.
“I’m too anxious and sad to go into my departmental building,” said “David,” a firstyear student who, like others J. interviewed, would only speak on the condition he be identified using a pseudonym, fearing for his safety and possible academic repercussions. “I have anxiety every time I walk past Sather Gate. I feel I’m too anxious and sad to be in class.”
than it once did.
The students shared their stories on the first day of “apartheid week,” with scheduled events “surrounding the history of Palestinian struggle,” according to the Bears for Palestine.
Daniel Solomon, a Ph.D. history student who has been vocal about the climate for Jews on Berkeley’s campus, said every time he has raised concerns to colleagues and instructors in his department about antisemitism, anti-Israel comments or calls to action, he becomes more ostracized.
“Each time I point out communications
David described his experience at the university as a “trainwreck.” He said he’s been subjected to antisemitic rhetoric from a professor and other students on campus and on social media. He does not identify as a Zionist and now feels he does not fit in anywhere on campus, so much so that he is considering leaving the school.
“I feel harrowingly lonely, because it really feels like there’s no one to speak to about this, especially because I don’t feel super comfortable hacking through conversations with Jews who are much more right-wing than me,” David said. “It’s so depressing.”
On March 4, a week after protesters shut down a talk at Zellerbach Playhouse by an Israeli reservist and lawyer, forcing their way into the building and injuring some Jewish students, J. met with a small group of students who described similar feelings of anxiety on a campus now under federal discrimination investigation for its handling of antisemitism. While their sentiments do not represent the totality of Jewish experience on campus, they nevertheless reflect a growing sense among some students that the university feels less comfortable for Jews
that are offensive, I’m accused of being uncivil,” said Solomon. “And I said to a department administrator, ‘This is, like, Orwellian. You’re telling me that I have to be civil as they promote barbarity.’”
Hannah Schlacter, a second-year MBA student from Chicago and a member of Jewish Americans for Fairness in Education, believes the failure of the university’s administration to effectively condemn violence against Jewish students in the past led to the incident at Zellerbach Playhouse. Schlacter submitted a 33-page testimony to Congress for a Feb. 29 hearing about campus antisemitism.
“Before Feb. 26, I did not feel safe outwardly expressing my Jewish identity at Berkeley,” she told J. “After Feb. 26, the underlying root cause of that sentiment continues. By and large, the reason the riot happened is because when you don’t call out hate against Jews, it continues to happen.”
“Rachel,” who is 18 and a freshman, says the school has reached a “tipping point.”
“[Protesters are] saying, ‘globalize the intifada,’ which Jews understand as a call for violence,” she said. “And that’s not how it was
treated by the administration. And now it’s crossed the line into violence where people were assaulted, and that’s a crime.”
Rachel was born in Israel but grew up in Southern California. She did a gap year volunteering in Jerusalem before starting at Berkeley in the fall. She lives in one of the on-campus dorms and says students on her floor are vocally anti-Israel. She often chooses not to be visibly Jewish or display items that identify her as Israeli.
“It’s not like I feel like on campus I’m going to be attacked or harassed, but it is kind of always in the back of my mind,” she said. “In conversations with people, it’s like, ‘Do I mention that I’m Israeli? Do I bring my gap year up at all? Is that going to make the conversation go in a direction I don’t want it to go?’”
Rachel said statements from the university and its pursuit of a criminal investigation are a good response to the Feb. 26 incident, as
“How bad does it have to get before something is done?”
Rachel, UC Berkeley freshman
demonstrating there daily, displaying Palestinian flags and posters and playing a 10-minute, amplified audio recording on repeat. The audio features a continuous drone sound, the voices of several people purporting to be besieged Gazans and a mock Israeli announcing that bombs will be dropped, followed by the sound of an explosion and screaming.
Demonstrators said that the audio was sourced from “many places,” including Red Crescent, the humanitarian organization that services hospitals and provides emergency medicine and ambulance services in Palestinian areas. The recording, they said, was edited together by Cal students.
When this J. reporter began to film the action at Sather Gate, demonstrators wearing masks blocked the camera with a kaffiyeh.
David, the first-year student, reported being harassed in a similar way on the same day. According to a statement he made to a professor and shared with J., as he walked toward the gate, a demonstrator began to film him. When he asked why, she refused to answer and was soon joined by five or six others who surrounded him, circling and recording him.
“This is when antisemitism gets physical,” David said. “I am now too scared for my safety to walk through Sather Gate to get to Dwinelle.” Dwinelle Hall is the second-largest
long as they are followed up by action.
“How bad does it have to get before something is done?” she said. “How serious of an injury do they need to see before they’re going to acknowledge that this is a problem?”
Signs of the heightened tensions on campus aren’t hard to find. Sather Gate is an iconic landmark that many students pass through to attend class. For at least three weeks, anti-Israel activists have been
building on campus.
Despite the fear and unease among Jewish students, Rachel said she is glad so many are continuing to show up and not backing down.
“It’s really important that there is that strong Jewish community on campus, and not to let [aggressive actors] push us out,” she said. “To say, like, ‘No. You can be hateful, but we’re still going to be here.” n
A Hayward man has been charged with three felonies and a hate crime enhancement for an incident in which he allegedly wrestled an Israeli flag from a woman’s hands and burned it in the street during a January protest in El Cerrito.
The Contra Costa County DA’s office charged Christopher Husary, 36, with second-degree robbery, grand theft and arson of another person’s property, according to a press release provided to J. The hate crime enhancement could mean higher penalties for a conviction.
Husary was arrested on Feb. 28 with a $115,000 bond, according to county records.
Part of the incident in El Cerrito was captured on video, which showed chaotic confrontations between about 100 pro-Palestinian protesters and a small group of pro-Israel counterprotesters at a Jan. 6 march calling for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war.
Many people marched peacefully, a video published on social media showed. A number of families brought children. But some demonstrators shouted antisemitic slurs, kicked cars with people inside them and celebrated Hamas, the Islamist terrorist group responsible for the Oct. 7 massacre in southern Israel.
A man wearing a denim jacket and a backpack, whose
face is wrapped in a kaffiyeh, can be seen on video holding an Israeli flag adorned with a gold tassel and affixed to a wooden pole, as he watches it burn.
“That’s my flag that he took out of my hands!” a woman shouts. The man yells in response: “And that’s our land that you stole!”
The flag’s owner spoke to J. in an emotional interview last week, explaining that the flag was not “just a piece of nylon” but an heirloom with intense personal meaning.
El Cerrito resident Faith Meltzer, 63, told J. that the flag belonged for decades to a well-known activist in the Jewish community named David Spieler, who died in 2019.
Spieler was a “Berkeley icon,” Meltzer said. An activist and an actor, he got involved in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s. For years he would “carry this flag whenever he went to events — any political protest event, or any human rights event,” she said.
He marked on the flagpole the dates and descriptions of protests he attended. “There were dates going back decades,” she said. “It was a chronicle of local activism. It felt like a historical artifact.” When Spieler died, his longtime partner gave the flag to Meltzer, who was overjoyed about the gift.
A fellow pro-Israel demonstrator was holding the flag that
day when someone knocked her down, sending the flag to the pavement, Meltzer said.
“I stepped out to retrieve the flag and the man … wrestled me to get the flag back. People grabbed at me from the rear,” Meltzer said. “I’m an older woman. I’m not going to prevail against young men. He ended up taking the flag to the middle of the street and setting it on fire.”
A Facebook account linked to Husary shows photos taken at a number of pro-Palestinian demonstrations, as well as expressions of support for Palestinian militancy. n
Title: L'Chaim
Title: Azure Dreams
Artist: Astrid Stange
Artist: Klara Muchnik and Ethel Epstein
Sponsored by:
www.ldgfund.org
Pouring rain and a chill wind could not dampen the mood of thousands of Bay Area Jews and allies who took to the streets of San Francisco on March 3 for a unity march against antisemitism.
Marchers gathered at Embarcadero Plaza before heading up Market Street to a rally at Civic Center Plaza. Buses arrived from across the region, including Santa Rosa, Walnut Creek, Pleasanton, Palo Alto and Los Gatos. Baby strollers jostled for space amid a sea of signs, banners and flags, both Israeli and American. The mood was festive. Still, private security teams and some 60 police officers were present and on alert.
Berkeley resident Rita Minas came with her 10-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son.
“We need more loud and public marches like this. And we need others to cry and march with us.”
Sheryl Sandberg, event speaker
group, carrying signs such as “Jews for cease-fire” and “Never again for anyone.” Some of those in the official march began chanting, “shame, shame, shame,” and police kept the groups apart.
After the march and with City Hall as a backdrop, a dozen political leaders and activists addressed the crowd.
“The antisemitism in our city is real and it is dangerous,” San Francisco Mayor London Breed told the crowd. Noting that nearly 30 percent of the hate crimes in the city last year targeted Jews, she said, “It’s shocking to see how divided we’ve become in recent years.”
Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, the highest-ranking politician who spoke at the rally, noted the large number of Jewish students who have experienced antisemitism since the start of the school year.
“That’s why we are here today — to show the Jewish community it has allies, not behind closed doors but out in the open,” she said.
Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s former chief operating officer, author of the bestseller “Lean In” and founder of a nonprofit of the same name, told the crowd she has given many speeches against bias and hate in her life, but this was the first time she was speaking publicly against antisemitism.
“I isolated myself after Oct. 7,” said Sandberg, who lives in Menlo Park. “I told my son to take off his Star of David because I was afraid.”
“I am here because it’s my moral duty to be with my Jewish brothers and sisters in the fight against antisemitism and terrorism,” said Param Desai, who was in the crowd holding one of the Indian flags. “We are very proud to be here.”
“When good people show up in support of Jews, antisemitism recedes,” Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen said. “Now is not the time to be quiet. Now is the time to be loud and proud.”
Few in the crowd knew that the march and rally were spearheaded not by a Jewish organization, but by three Israeli expats living in Silicon Valley. They recruited other groups to help, but the idea came from them.
Jewish Silicon Valley CEO Daniel Klein gave them a shoutout from the podium. “The strength, intelligence and perseverance of these grassroots organizers is amazing,” he said.
Edan Tal, Rachel Batish and Michal Shoham all work in tech marketing and product management and have young children. They were deeply troubled by the rising antisemitism and felt they had to do something.
“People are leveraging what happened in Israel to create a new narrative: ‘If you are Jewish, you are Zionist. If you are Zionist, you commit genocide. So Jews around the world are committing genocide,’” Tal said. “That’s the narrative we are facing in schools, on social media, everywhere.”
“We decided to take action,” he added.
“We’re here because we’re Jewish, and we want to be part of the community today,” she said. Her children are “aware of everything that happened” on Oct. 7 and “need to be a part of this,” she added.
Some people interviewed chose not to give their last names, citing fears for their safety amid the spike in antisemitism worldwide that has followed the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre and subsequent Israel-Hamas war.
“I wouldn’t have come alone today,” said Jennifer of Berkeley. “I really don’t feel safe. I live alone, I feel very vulnerable.”
Describing herself as “very progressive,” Jennifer said her Jewish identity has overtaken her politics since Oct. 7.
About 20 to 30 protesters marched alongside the main
Gradually, she said, she began calling her non-Jewish friends, all of whom offered their love and support. And when she asked her daughter what she wanted for her birthday, she asked for a Star of David necklace. Sandberg bought one for her daughter and one for herself, saying she now wears it every day. Since Oct. 7, Sandberg has also become an international advocate to raise awareness of the sexual violence committed by Hamas during the massacre.
“We need more loud and public marches like this,” she said. “And as I’m learning for the first time in my life, we need others to cry and march with us.”
Sandberg was one of several speakers who specifically thanked non-Jews for showing up at the rally.
Clearly visible in a sea of blue-and-white Israeli flags was the orange, white and green flag of India, marking the presence of some 50 members of the local Hindu community.
“I love this community,” Shoham told J., spreading her arms toward the crowd. “We organized this in their name.”
Shoham is on the board of Jewish Silicon Valley and reached out to groups asking for their support. More than 70 organizations, schools and synagogues eventually signed on, some agreeing to manage different aspects of the planning process so the three friends didn’t have to do it all themselves.
Despite the stated focus of the march, none of those interviewed during the event saw a distinction between anti-Israel and anti-Jewish hate in the current context.
Lior Verbitsky, a Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley, was one of many marchers who wrapped themselves in Israeli flags.
“The statement that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism is pretty old,” he told J. “People are using anti-Zionism to mask their antisemitism,. We are here against antisemitism but also anti-Zionism. You can’t separate them.” n
After an 18-month nationwide search, J. has hired Chanan Tigay as its new editor-in-chief.
Tigay, a journalist, author and professor, is “perfectly positioned to navigate J. through the current crises and challenges in the Jewish community, from antisemitism to an increasingly dispersed and unaffiliated Jewish community,” J. CEO Jo Ellen Green Kaiser said on March 4.
The editor-in-chief position doesn’t open up at J. often. The nonprofit publication’s previous editor, Sue Fishkoff, retired in mid-2022 after an 11-year tenure.
Managing editor Sue Barnett, who took on the role of interim editor during the search, has returned to her former position. She led the newsroom through the aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre, one of the most challenging reporting experiences in J.’s history.
“I’m excited about the ideas and the fresh perspective that Chanan is bringing to the newsroom,” Barnett said. “He comes from a fascinating background that is already expanding the way we think about the
Jewish community.”
Tigay, who has worked for Agence FrancePresse, the Jerusalem Report and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, said he sought this job for several reasons. Chief among them was his shock over Oct. 7 and the subsequent surge in antisemitism around the world, including a dramatic spike in the Bay Area.
These subjects have dominated the pages of J. for the past five months.
“After Oct. 7, it became clear to me that this was a moment when Jews more than ever need to be informed about issues specific to them,” said Tigay, who started at J. last month. “Antisemitism has raised its ugly head again, and we can’t skate along without having all possible information at hand.”
Tigay, who moved to the Bay Area in 2006, is an associate professor of creative writing at San Francisco State University. He will continue to hold that job while leading J.
“I love being at S.F. State,” he said. “A large number of our students are the first in their families to attend college. They are really bright and motivated.”
“It’s extremely important we own the antisemitism story and cover the amazing things Jews in the Bay Area do.”
Serving as editor-in-chief of the Bay Area’s Jewish newspaper is a role with the “potential to have a great deal of impact,” he added. “J. has already been doing a great job in getting news out there. So it’s exciting for me to join a publication where my job would not be rescuing it, but rather thinking of ways we can expand the portfolio of what we do and what we offer to our readers.”
J. reporters won five S.F. Press Club awards and 11 American Jewish Press Association awards last year, including AJPA's 2023 award for best newspaper. Tigay said he has long admired the publication’s coverage of hard news, as well as its focus on arts, culture, religious life and Jewish innovation. He wants to expand J.’s work in all of these areas.
“There are so many exciting things being done by Jews in the Bay Area, whether in music, film, literature, politics, academia or tech,” said Tigay, 48. “I don’t want that to be lost in the shadow of antisemitism. It’s extremely important we own the antisemitism story and cover the amazing things Jews in the Bay Area do with an equal amount of passion and fervor. I want to recognize, highlight and celebrate the positive and proactive things going on in our community.”
stand with
Tigay’s father is a Bible scholar and professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania. His mother, also retired, is former executive director of Philadelphia’s Auerbach Central Agency for Jewish Education. Born in Jerusalem while his father was on sabbatical, Tigay grew up dividing his time between Israel and Philadelphia. He is a dual IsraeliU.S. citizen and a fluent Hebrew speaker.
After graduating from Penn with a degree in political science, Tigay tried his hand at acting but was drawn to journalism. He worked first for the Long Island Jewish World, gaining experience interviewing political figures such as Hillary Clinton, John McCain and Joe Lieberman.
Once the second intifada broke out in 2000, Tigay felt compelled to return to Israel. He was hired by Agence France-Presse to cover the crisis for its English-language
service, an experience he described as “almost literally a trial by fire.”
“I did have to cover ugly things,” he said of the intifada, during which Palestinian terror bombings of buses and restaurants became common occurrences. “It was an incredible lesson in journalism.”
From there, Tigay attended Columbia University to earn a master of fine arts degree in creative writing. This opened new doors for him as a freelance writer for outlets such as the New Yorker, the Atlantic, Smithsonian, GQ, Newsweek, the Wall Street Journal, New York magazine, the Jerusalem Post and BBC.
Tigay was awarded an investigative reporting fellowship at UC Berkeley in 2011 and a nonfiction fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University in 2019. He taught writing at Stanford University starting in 2008 before joining SFSU’s faculty in 2012.
He wrote “The Lost Book of Moses: The Hunt for the World’s Oldest Bible,” which tells the true story of a 19th-century Jerusalem antiquities dealer who claimed to have obtained an ancient copy of the Book of Deuteronomy decades before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The 2016 book won the Anne & Robert Cowan Writer’s Prize and was a finalist for the Sami Rohr Book Prize.
Tigay lives in San Francisco with his wife, Molly Antopol, who is a novelist and an assistant professor of English at Stanford. They have two children.
As for J.’s future, Tigay already has ideas.
“I’d like to see change in the variety of products we offer,” he said. “I would like us to move into the podcasting business. That’s where a lot of people are getting much of their news and other information. I would like to see J. sponsor live interview series with great writers and thinkers, as a way to both inform and to gather members of the community. I would like us to do more investigative series where we’re taking a deep look at important issues facing our community. And I want to make sure we have a multiplicity of voices reflected in our pages.” n
When a group of California legislators visited Kibbutz Kfar Aza, where Hamas killed 63 residents and took 19 as hostages on Oct. 7, they could hear the sounds of Israel’s wartime bombardment a mile away in Gaza.
“We were hearing the constant booms of artillery exploding in Gaza and the constant buzzing of military drones,” state Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi (D-L.A.) said of the mid-February visit.
e booms interrupted Chen Kotler Abrahams, a kibbutz resident who was describing the events of Oct. 7 that ravaged and displaced her community.
“She would just be talking and then we’d hear the boom. And she’d say, ‘Oh, this is artillery’ — just kind of ma er of fact,” Muratsuchi said. “ at was my first personal experience in my life of visiting a war zone.”
Muratsuchi, who is Japanese American, joined a four-day trip to Israel last month for Jewish and non-Jewish state legislators.
State Sen. Sco Wiener (D-S.F.) and state Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel (D-San Fernando Valley), co-chairs of the California Legislative Jewish Caucus, led the trip, which was sponsored by the Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area, the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles and the Jewish Public A airs Commi ee of California.
ey traveled to the site of the Nova music festival massacre where more than 360 people were killed by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7. ey met with Jewish and Bedouin families whose relatives are still held hostage in Gaza. ey spoke with a Palestinian journalist for the New York Times and with leaders of rape crisis centers working with survivors of sexual violence on Oct. 7.
“ e Oct. 7 a ack and the war in Gaza have had profound impacts on both Jewish and Palestinian communities in California, so we thought it was important to go,” Wiener told J.
In a conversation with Rami Nazzal, a New York Times journalist based in the West Bank, the group learned more about how the war impacts Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, Muratsuchi said.
“He stated, perhaps more clearly than any other speaker during our trip, the two state-solution is the only solution, that we cannot lose sight or lose hope to recognize the right of Israel to exist but, at the same time, the urgent need to end the civilian carnage taking place in Gaza,” Muratsuchi said.
e delegation of California legislators also included Sen. Henry Stern (D-L.A.) and Assemblymembers Damon Connolly (D-San Rafael), Esmeralda Soria (D-Fresno) and Josh
Lowenthal (D-Long Beach). Tye Gregory, JCRC Bay Area's CEO, also joined the Feb. 14-18 delegation.
“For JCRC, the trip strengthened our resolve,” Gregory wrote in a message to JCRC supporters. “We will continue to advocate for the immediate return of all hostages, end Hamas’ control over Gaza, and increase humanitarian aid for Palestinian civilians. We will also continue to expose the hypocrisy and antisemitism emanating from anti-Israel groups, who refuse to hold Hamas accountable for its crimes against humanity.”
When Wiener, who had visited Israel four times prior, posted photos and takeaways from the February trip on X, formerly Twi er, he received dozens of ugly comments.
“Imagine your representatives touring Nazi Germany at the height of the holocaust,
“That was my first personal experience in my life of visiting a war zone.”
Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi
and explaining how the Warsaw ghe o uprising was the worst slaughter of Germany in 75 years. at’s what you just did,” one person wrote.
Wiener is a progressive politician who has been outspoken about his support for Israel but has also been a vocal critic of its current government and advocated for new political leadership.
He told J. that the negativity he received for visiting Israel was misguided.
“ ere unfortunately are advocates, a bunch of them are on Twi er, who want Israel to no longer exist,” Wiener said. “ ey want Israel to be destroyed. ey want the Jews out of Israel. ey may not say that explicitly, but that’s the consequence of what they’re advocating. And I just fundamentally disagree with that.”
He called a two-state plan “the only solution” that can create a lasting peace.
“I want there to be an independent and secure and prosperous Palestine and an independent, secure and prosperous Israel,” he said.
Muratsuchi had visited Israel once previously, on a 2018 trip sponsored by the American Jewish Commi ee, and said the recent visit “deeply moved” him.
“ is trip really brought home to me the urgency to work for peace in the region,” Muratsuchi said. “To keep hope alive for the ultimate dream of a two-state solution.” ■
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A complaint filed last week with the U.S. Department of Education accuses the Berkeley Unified School District of failing to address harassment and bullying of Jewish students by their peers and teachers in the wake of Oct. 7.
e 41-page complaint, filed Feb. 28 by the Anti-Defamation League and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, urges the O ce for Civil Rights to initiate an investigation into Berkeley public schools for alleged violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on race and national origin in programs that receive federal funds.
e two organizations filed the complaint on behalf of “many parents at BUSD schools whose children have been subjected to severe and persistent harassment and discrimination on the basis of their Jewish ethnicity, shared ancestry, and national origin, and whose reports to administrators have gone ignored for months.”
e complaint later adds: “ e verbal and non-verbal acts of harassment and bullying … have created a hostile environment that leaves Jewish and Israeli students feeling
“We just want the school to do its job and follow the law.”
Rachel Lerman, Brandeis Center
marginalized, a acked, frightened, and alienated to the point where many feel compelled to hide their Jewish or Israeli identity.”
If the O ce for Civil Rights opens an investigation, it would make Berkeley the latest Bay Area school district to face a federal probe for alleged antisemitic discrimination, a er investigations into the Oakland and San Francisco districts were announced in January.
Since the Oct. 7 Hamas a ack in Israel, the O ce for Civil Rights has opened 74 “shared ancestry” investigations, the majority of which are believed to be about antisemitism, Islamophobia or anti-Arab discrimination, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Among the many incidents cited in the complaint:
• Non-Jewish students asking Jewish students what their “number” is, referencing ta oos given to Jews in concentration camps during the Holocaust.
• Students hearing comments such as
“kill the Jews” in classrooms and hallways.
• A second-grade teacher allegedly leading lessons where students wrote “Stop bombing babies” on sticky notes to display on the school building.
• Teachers promoting an Oct. 18 “Walkout for Palestine” where Berkeley High School students le class “without parental permission and walked through the city chanting ‘Stop bombing Gaza’ and ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” As “students shouted vile anti-Semitic chants,” Berkeley High teachers were “watching from the sidelines.”
Rachel Lerman, general counsel at the Brandeis Center, said she’s aware of several instances of parents pulling their children from BUSD schools because of hostile incidents toward Jewish and Israeli students.
“ e parents keep hoping things can be resolved,” she told J. “But if the kids become so scared that they can’t or don’t want to go to school, the parents will pull them [out].”
Lerman said the complaint does not seek damages from the school district. e hope is that the district will instead comply with federal policies.
“We just want the school to do its job and follow the law,” she said.
Berkeley parent Chiara Juster told J. that her 13-year-old daughter was called a “midget Jew” at school, shortly before the Israel-Hamas war began. Her daughter’s experience is among the examples of harassment highlighted in the complaint.
At the time, Juster’s daughter was an eighth-grader at Willard Middle School. Juster said her daughter did not feel safe reporting the incident to the school or identifying who was bullying her.
Juster said she reached out to the district’s superintendent but ultimately wasn’t satisfied with the response. In January, Juster pulled her daughter out of the school and began homeschooling her.
“All children from all backgrounds should be able to go to school, feel safe and receive an unbiased, objective education,” Juster said. “And they can’t here in Berkeley.”
e complaint includes “suggested remedies,” including a district-issued statement “denouncing antisemitism in all its forms and recognizing that Zionism is a key component of Jewish identity for many students at BUSD.” It also suggests that BUSD create a task force of Jewish students and faculty members who can o er input on how to improve Jewish life in the district’s schools.
e UC Davis student government has approved a boyco of Israel and 34 companies with links to the Jewish state, amid a surge in acts of protest on college campuses since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.
e Davis undergraduate student senate, known as the Associated Students (ASUCD), voted nearly unanimously on Feb. 16 to approve the measure during a bruising, contentious student government meeting. e resolution calls for the body to withhold funds from its roughly $20 million annual budget from “Israel and corporations complicit in the ongoing genocide in Gaza.”
Since the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist a ack in southern Israel that led to the war, student governments or graduate teaching unions at seven American universities have passed measures in support of the boyco , divest-
“The Palestinian liberation movement at UC Davis has made history.”
Students
ment and sanctions movement, according to a database kept by the Amcha Initiative, a group that monitors campus antisemitism and anti-Israel activity.
Videos captured in the a ermath of the Davis vote showed pro-Palestinian demonstrators dancing jubilantly.
“Liberation within our lifetime,” the anti-Zionist campus group Students for Justice in Palestine at UC Davis wrote on Instagram. “We love you all so much. e Palestinian liberation movement at UC Davis has made history.”
e ASUCD runs two campus co ee shops, a community garden, the campus thri store and other programs, employing a number of students. Its mission is to “improve the quality of campus life by providing resources and services to cultivate a culture of involvement and student leadership,” according to its website.
“No ASUCD funds shall be commi ed to the purchase of products or services of any corporation identified by the BDS List as being complicit in the violation of the human rights guaranteed to Palestinian civilians under international law,” the measure stated, listing 34 companies, including Hewle -Packard, McDonald’s, Airbnb and Starbucks.
e measure passed 12-1, with one abstention.
e lone “no” vote came from Gabriel Gaysinsky, an American Israeli student who
criticized the measure in an interview with J. and said that the campus climate for Jewish students since Oct. 7 has become extremely challenging.
“ e actual immediate concrete e ects won’t be overtly detrimental,” he said of the BDS vote. “ ey’re going to pull Starbucks products and Sabra Hummus from the market that the student government operates. e long-term e ects and the normative e ects it will have on campus in respect to the Jewish community will be much greater.”
Gaysinsky said he and other Jewish students have experienced harassment in recent months. He said he had been “gagged at” while wearing a kippah and walking through campus on a Jewish holiday. A friend was pushed while wearing a “tiny pin of an Israeli flag” on her backpack, and another “had her shirt torn” for confronting someone destroying a poster of Israeli hostages.
About 400 to 500 people came to the student government meeting in support of the measure and “maybe 30” opposed it, Gaysinsky said. ose who spoke in opposition “were all laughed at, booed and jeered at every time they came up to speak,” he said.
e resolution is one of a handful of BDS measures passed at California universities in recent months, beginning with Stanford, whose graduate student workers union passed an Israel divestment resolution on Nov. 2. Students at Pitzer College in Southern California approved a resolution in favor of suspending its study abroad program with the University of Haifa on Feb. 1. Also last month, both the graduate and undergraduate student governing bodies at UCLA approved BDS measures.
Nor was it the first BDS resolution approved at UC Davis. e student senate passed a BDS measure in June 2021 in the a ermath of the Israel-Hamas crisis that year, while a similar resolution failed in 2020.
e new measure’s passage represented a major win for pro-Palestinian activists at Davis, even though the student government’s $20 million budget is small relative to the University of California system as a whole. UC has a $169 billion portfolio and one of the largest endowments of any American university system. e UC system remains invested in companies targeted by BDS.
A Feb. 22 statement signed by American Jewish Commi ee chief legal o cer Marc D. Stern and director of academic a airs Sara Coodin said: “It is apparent that facts are of no relevance to those responsible for this resolution, a ma er worthy of separate concern that an elite institution is educating students who care nothing about facts.” ■
Wednesday, April 10, 2024 | 6:30
Larry Baer
Lynn Bunim
Lisa S. Pritzker
Roselyne C. Swig
Marilyn Waldman
Samantha Bartlett
Natalia Kazakevich
Amanda Lenaghan
Claudia Lombana
Gioia McCarthy
Hakeem Oseni II
Branden Johnson grew up in a gun-owning family in Oregon. His mother and stepfather had several rifles and pistols, and they would head to a range in Eugene for target practice. Yet Johnson never had the slightest interest in joining them.
“I thought it was a little weird,” he said. His attitude toward guns would change after the Oct. 7 Hamas rampage in southern Israel, which precipitated the ongoing war and a spike in antisemitic incidents worldwide, including in the Bay Area. A recent survey by the Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area found that 61% of the region’s Jews feel less safe since the war began — and Johnson is one of them.
“I never envisioned myself being interested in learning how to shoot a gun, but since October 7th, I have felt very ill at ease in a way that I haven’t felt before,” he said.
That’s why on a recent Sunday, the 39-year-old San Francisco resident found himself sitting in a classroom at the San
Leandro Rifle & Pistol Range with 17 other nervous-looking Jews, most of them in their 20s and 30s.
They came for a handgun shooting class organized by SF Bay Area Degenerate Jews, aka SF BAD Jews, an off-beat social group that launched in December. With the pop-pop-pop of rounds discharging nearby as a soundtrack, an instructor played a slideshow covering the National Rifle Association's “safe handling” rules. Then the participants practiced with orange-tipped airsoft guns, learning how to grip the guns, load dummy bullets into magazines and aim using one’s dominant eye. After that, it was off to the indoor range to fire 50 rounds at paper targets from real 9mm handguns.
In interviews, many of the attendees said something along the lines of: “I’m not planning to buy a gun anytime soon, but I’d like to know how to use one if necessary.”
While waiting for her turn to shoot, Shani — who, like most others interviewed for this
article, declined to give her last name due to personal safety concerns — said she signed up for the class to “let off some steam” after months of stress over the war. She was living in Israel on Oct. 7 and moved to San Francisco shortly afterward.
“I want to learn how to shoot to feel a sense of stability for myself,” the Pilates instructor said.
Several of the participants had shot rifles
or shotguns before, but not handguns. Sarah grew up in a small town in North Carolina, and members of her family hunted. She owned a rifle when she lived alone in a rural part of the state. Now living in Redwood City, Sarah said she doesn’t feel the need to keep a gun around. But, she said, “anytime that a minority group is experiencing active hate, if there are things they can do to feel empowered, that’s a good thing.”
She added, “Learning how to shoot is a good life skill to have, like learning how to drive a stick shift.”
Shelley and Ron, an Israeli couple who also live in Redwood City, learned how to shoot rifles as part of their mandatory service in the Israel Defense Forces. They had never handled pistols, though, as private gun ownership was tightly regulated in Israel before Oct. 7. (After the war started, the Knesset eased the requirements to obtain a gun license. In December, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that the National Security Ministry was receiving 1,000 license applications per day.)
“I wouldn’t even know where to go to get a gun in Israel,” said Shelley, an information security engineer. “You’re much more likely to see a gun in America, so it’s good to know how to be safe around one.”
What was it like to shoot a 9mm?
“The first few rounds are loud and powerful,” said Ron, a software engineer. “It’s not like the movies, which make it look cool.”
Shelley added, “It was really fun, but after a few times my shoulder was getting sore.”
Since Oct. 7, Yaniv Cohen of Novato said he’s been mulling over a question he had never considered before: “Do I need to arm myself?”
For most of his life, the 46-year-old IT analyst said he was proud that he had never
shot a gun. But as an Israeli American, he has felt unsettled by the acts of harassment and vandalism targeting Jews and Jewish-owned businesses in San Francisco, Berkeley and other local cities.
“I feel the clock is ticking,” he said. “If someone comes to our house in the North Bay, I want to be ready.” He noted that his wife, who is Native American and “carries multiple generations of trauma,” supports his interest in learning more about firearms.
Igor Milgram, the 32-year-old founder of SF BAD Jews, is a gun enthusiast who owns several pistols and likes to go skeet shooting on the weekends. He said he organized the intro-to-shooting class because he had heard local Jews express concerns about their safety.
“I’ve been telling people: go to the gym, learn how to fight and learn how to fire a gun,” he said.
The general attitude among residents of the overwhelmingly liberal Bay Area is that guns are inherently bad, Milgram said, yet he knows many liberals, including Jews, who are gun owners. He called guns a “tool” that everyone should know how to use.
“If I could wave a magic wand and make every firearm in the world disappear forever, I would,” he said. “But that's not the world we live in.”
Shooting guns is not a traditional part of
Jewish culture, though the right to self-defense is well-established in halachah (Jewish law). The Talmud states, “If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first.” In the past, local synagogues such as Congregation Beth Emek in Pleasanton have offered gun-safety
classes for youth.
“Judaism is very big into self-preservation,” Rabbi Joel Landau of Congregation Adath Israel in San Francisco told J. in a phone interview. “My wife and I feel strongly about the importance of gun ownership for self-preservation. And we think background checks are crucial.”
Landau, who served in the IDF and owned a personal gun when he lived in Israel, said he supports local Jews who seek out instruction in firearms. “Just buying a gun and having it there is not enough,” he said. “Training is crucial. That’s the big deal.”
After Johnson, the Oregon native, took his turn shooting a 9mm, he posed for photos with his target. It was riddled with holes.
“My first few shots were really good, which is weird because I had never shot a gun before,” said Johnson, who works as director of business operations for Camp Ramah Northern California and director of education for Foster City’s Peninsula Sinai Congregation. “It seems strange to say that it was enjoyable, but I did find it somewhat enjoyable, just approaching it as developing a new skill.”
“Hopefully, I’ll never have to use it,” he added. “But at the same time, now I do feel much more comfortable with the idea of having to defend myself or others with a firearm.” n
Rep. Adam Schiff, the California Jewish Democrat who has the backing of AIPAC, advanced to the runoff for the U.S. Senate after the March 5 primary.
But the Israel lobby appeared to suffer a loss in a closely watched California House race where it had spent more than $4 million opposing the winning candidate.
And protesters interrupted Schiff’s victory speech with cries of “Free Palestine” and “Cease-fire now.”
Together, the results in California underscore the limits of pro-Israel campaign finance, which often gets outsize attention in elections.
Schiff’s win is a boost for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s affiliated political action committee, AIPAC PAC, and other mainstream pro-Israel boosters.
Schiff — who is running for the seat formerly held by Dianne Feinstein, the state’s longtime Jewish senator who died last year — is a star among Democrats for his lead role in impeaching former President Donald Trump, and he had the backing of much of the party’s California establishment, including Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker who continues to wield influence.
He will now face Steve Garvey, a Republican and onetime baseball star, in the November election in California’s “jungle primary” system, which requires all candidates regardless of party to compete in a single primary, and advances the two top winners to the general election.
But the win for AIPAC in the Senate race was dampened by its apparent loss in the
47th District, where Democratic state Sen. Dave Min, who attracted a barrage of negative campaigning funded by another PAC affiliated with AIPAC, will advance to face a Republican in the general election.
Schiff, who drew millions in AIPAC-affiliated money, hewed closely to President Joe Biden’s robust support of Israel in its war with Hamas, not using the term “cease-fire” until recently, when he said he endorsed Biden’s plan for a six-week pause in the fighting.
His top two Democratic rivals were tougher on Israel: Rep. Katie Porter called for a “bilateral” cease-fire contingent on the release of hostages still held by Hamas, but excoriated Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for hindering humanitarian assistance to Gaza Palestinians. Rep. Barbara Lee called for an immediate and permanent cease-fire with no preconditions.
Min, a Korean American, was seen as a must-win among Asian American Democrats. That constituency, which often aligns closely with the mainstream pro-Israel community, was baffled by the vehemence of AIPAC’s opposition to Min, who has barely mentioned Israel in his career, and lobbied unsuccessfully to get the pro-Israel powerhouse to back off, according to a Politico report.
Some speculated that Min’s position papers, which candidates routinely submit to pro-Israel lobbies, were not robust enough. Politico reported that J Street, the liberal Jewish Israel policy lobby reviled by AIPAC, had backed Min in the past. But a number of candidates, including Schiff, have
accepted J Street’s endorsement without alienating AIPAC.
The AIPAC-affiliated Super PAC, United Democracy Project, focused its negative ads on a DUI charge Min got last year. Super PACs may spend unlimited amounts of money, and UDP spent more than $4 million trying to end Min’s bid.
Mainstream pro-Israel funding went to his Democratic rival, Joanna Weiss, a community organizer in the Orange County area district. With 60% of the vote counted, Min was well ahead of her and it appeared likely he will face Republican Scott Baugh in November.
The 47th District is open because its current congresswoman, Porter, mounted a Senate bid that ended on March 5.
UDP noted its role in helping Schiff win. “UDP gave $5 million to the pro-Schiff superpac Standing Strong — this will be public in the filings on March 20,” its spokesman, Patrick Dorton, said in an email. “His win further demonstrates that being pro-Israel is good policy and good politics. Rep. Schiff’s strong support of the U.S.-Israel relationship reflects the views of the vast majority
of Americans. UDP remains resolute in our determination to build the broadest possible pro-Israel coalition in Congress.”
Pro-Israel PACs scored a victory in Texas’ Houston-area 7th District, where incumbent Rep. Lizzie Fletcher trounced Pervez Agwan, who called for cutting off defense assistance to Israel.
“Rep. Lizzie Fletcher’s massive win over a well-funded opponent who made anti-Israelism a centerpiece of his campaign demonstrated that the audience for anti-Israel messaging is vanishingly small among Democrats,” said Rachel Rosen, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Majority for Israel, which had backed Fletcher.
In Texas’ Fort Worth-area 12th District, Craig Goldman, a Jewish Republican in the Texas House, advanced to a runoff against another Republican, John O’Shea. Goldman got 44% of the vote to O’Shea’s 26.5% but needed a majority of the vote to win. The district is solidly Republican, and if Goldman, a real estate businessman with longstanding involvement in the Republican Jewish Coalition, wins, he will likely be the third Jewish Republican in Congress. n
Inside Congregation Kol Emeth’s sanctuary for the funeral of 19-year-old Marco Troper, his four siblings sang “Yellow” by Coldplay — an ode to his favorite color and warm personality.
Troper, the son of former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki and longtime Google executive Dennis Troper, died unexpectedly on Feb. 13. His body was found in his UC Berkeley dorm, according to campus police.
The family is waiting on the results of a toxicology test to determine the cause of death.
“We're all in shock and very, very sad and really missing Marco,” Susan Wojcicki told J. “He was a really important member of our family. We never expected this to happen.”
He was the middle child of five siblings. Wojcicki said she spoke or texted with him almost daily.
“Marco was super caring with his siblings,” Dennis Troper told J., noting that his son was incredibly close with his younger sisters, who are 16 and 9. “With the 16-year-old, she would go to Marco for questions related to her physics and math homework, and he would always be very, very happy to help her with it.”
A Los Altos native, Troper was enjoying his second semester at UC Berkeley and was a member of Zeta Psi fraternity, Wojcicki said. He intended to major in math and recently qualified for the 2024 American Invitational Mathematics Exam, a prestigious competition. He had also contributed to
an academic article on Harris graphs.
“He had an incredible love of learning and incredible ability to absorb, specifically math and scientific information,” Wojcicki said.
Troper attended Gideon Hausner Jewish Day School in Palo Alto through fifth grade and completed middle and high school at Menlo School in Atherton.
“He stood out in amazing ways,” Amy Watenmaker, Troper’s fifth-grade teacher at Hausner, recalled in an email to J. “He asked for more math challenges. He asked us to teach more geography. And he even wrote an entire book of poetry about Iceland during our poetry unit. I will always think of him and his light, his humor and his love of learning,” Watenmaker wrote.
During his Feb. 21 funeral service, Wojcicki read aloud from a college essay Troper wrote about his passion for math.
“Math brings me peace; it’s the only thing in my life that has pure, unbiased certainty. Math also quenches my desire to understand ‘why,’” he had written.
Troper aspired to apply his love of math to a career in artificial intelligence, Wojcicki said. He came from a long line of Silicon Valley academics and technology executives.
Wojcicki stepped down from her role at YouTube in 2023 after 25 years at Google, which owns the video service.
Troper’s father, a director of product management at Google, has worked at the company for more than 20 years. He serves on the board of Camp Tawonga and has served on the board of Hausner.
Troper’s maternal aunts are Anne Wojcicki, co-founder of the genomics and biotech company 23andMe, and Janet Wojcicki, a Fulbright-winning anthropologist and professor at UCSF. His grandmother Esther Wojcicki is a journalist and educator. His grandfather Stanley Wojcicki, who died last year, was a Stanford University physics professor.
During his years at Menlo, Troper co-founded the school’s Jewish Affinity Group to celebrate Jewish culture and values.
Wojcicki told the friends and family gathered at his funeral service that the rainy weather had also created many rainbows in the days following his death, which she sees as signs of Troper’s spirit.
“We were coming back from the funeral home and we just saw rainbows everywhere. On the left, on the right. We saw double rainbows,” she told J. “We just feel like rainbows are the way that Marco is continuing to greet us and tell us that he’s still in our lives.” n
“You’ll have lunch, yes?”
Well, yes. Who doesn’t want lunch? When I arrive at Ernie Glaser’s home in Rossmoor, the retirement community in Walnut Creek, the table is already set with bagels, lox, cream cheese, capers and sliced tomatoes and onions.
Glaser busies himself popping bagels in the toaster oven, pouring glasses of water, making sure napkins are beside the plates, moving back and forth constantly. The kitchen, indeed the entire home, is immaculate. Does he have someone living with him to help?
Glaser looks taken aback. Why would he need that? He has a housecleaner come in twice a month, more than enough, he said.
After all, he wasn’t turning 100 for another couple of weeks.
“My mother had a bubbe meise,” he said, using the Yiddish phrase for an old wives’ tale. “Children born on Sunday are lucky throughout their lives. That holds true in my life. I’ve been extremely lucky.”
As he writes in the introduction to his 2017 self-published memoir, “A Life Well Lived,” he was a “penniless German-Jewish kid who spent the Second World War in China, was interned by Japanese authorities, came to the United States, graduated from two top universities, raised a family and became a business executive.”
He also became a stalwart in the East Bay Jewish community, active in federation, the American Jewish Committee, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and Temple Isaiah in Lafayette.
Ernst Adolf Berthold Glaser was born in Berlin on March 2, 1924. His father sold agricultural jute and hemp products. The family was not religious, although Ernie became a bar mitzvah and they attended a Liberal synagogue.
At 10, Ernie was admitted to the local Realgymnasium, or pre-university secondary school, despite its 1% Jewish quota. When the family’s rabbi told his parents he’d be the only Jew in a class full of Hitler Youth, they sent him to a private school for Jews instead.
That was where he first developed his connection to pre-state Israel, via the Jaffa oranges that students received every Friday. (Jaffa oranges were a big export and became an important Zionist symbol after World War I.) He joined Hashomer Hatzair, a Labor Zionist youth group.
“That made my parents very unhappy,” he recalled. “They were not Zionist at all.”
Like other assimilated German Jews, Glaser’s parents did not consider leaving even as restrictions on Jews grew harsher through the 1930s. As friends and relatives began to be arrested, however, they started to look for a way out. By the summer of 1939, the only destination open to Jewish refugees was Shanghai, China, so that’s where they headed.
Jews were only permitted to take the equivalent of $4 per person when leaving Germany, but Glaser’s father managed to deposit some funds with the shipping company. Before arriving in China, he purchased a case of Curaçao triple sec liqueur from the ship’s bartender.
That purchase proved fortuitous. Life in Shanghai’s Jewish quarter was cramped, food was scarce and jobs hard to come by. So Glaser’s father figured out what was in triple sec and began making his own “bathtub gin” out of grain alcohol and dried fruit. He sold the stuff to local German speakers, mostly European businessmen. The family lived in one room, and the liquor-making took place on a small patio.
The Glasers spent eight years in Shanghai, and Ernie moved through a series of odd jobs. By the end of the war in August 1945, he was 21 and weighed 125 pounds “and my parents were equally thin.”
But, he acknowledges, they were better off than most European Jews. And in 1947, they made it to the U.S. docking in San Francisco on the Fourth of July, greeted by a representative from the Jewish Family Service Agency.
Glaser, then 23, got a job with a customs clearinghouse, spending weekends and evenings with other Jewish refugees from Shanghai. They’d go dancing at the JCC, where he ran into old friends.
“First is attitude, that plays a big role. I’ve also exercised my entire life.”
Ernie Glaser, centenarian
Then he got his draft notice. “I was A-1,” he said. “The only way to stay out of the Army was to go to college.”
Glaser enrolled in City College of San Francisco, transferring in his second year to what later became UC Davis. Taking an early employer’s advice that the “closer you sit to the cash register, the more money you’ll make,” he got his MBA from Stanford University. He married and had two sons. After several jobs in food manufacturing, he ended up at the Oakland-based Avoset Food Corp., where he eventually became president.
Glaser and his wife, Elly, were deeply involved in the Bay Area Jewish community. Elly, who had enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps during WWII, became a freelancer for the Jewish paper in Indianapolis, wrote the column “Honorable Menschen” in the Jewish Federation of the Greater East Bay’s weekly newsletter and was an oral historian.
Ernie was a founder of the local AIPAC branch, serving first on its board, then on its national advisory committee. He resigned when he felt it was moving too far to the right, in line with the rightward shift of Israel’s government.
He served on the East Bay Federation’s board for years, including two years as its president, and sat on the local AJC board. The couple were active members of Temple Isaiah.
“I was a tummler,” a mover and shaker, he said with a laugh.
The couple traveled extensively, through Ernie’s work and their Jewish involvement. His first visit back to
Germany, which was for business, was hard. “I couldn’t bring myself to speak German there,” he said.
He returned many times, though, including with an AJC mission and a trip for Holocaust survivors sponsored by the German government. Then, in 2023, when he was 99 years old, a Holocaust education organization based in Nuremberg invited him to tell his story to groups throughout Germany.
His first Zoom gig was a lecture to a college in Bavaria.
“I hadn’t spoken much German since my parents died 50 years ago, so I had the idea of writing out my speech and pasting it on a board in front of my computer, like a teleprompter,” he said.
On March 13, for his third lecture, he will address a conference of social scientists in Wurzburg. It’s something he thoroughly enjoys, especially the Q&A afterward.
Elly died in 2016. He misses her terribly but said he did not allow himself to sink into depression. That’s not what gets you to 100.
“First is attitude, that plays a big role,” he said. “I’ve also exercised my entire life.” He has a stationary bike in his bedroom, along with weights, a mat and exercise bands. He tries to work out every day for “an hour and 15 minutes,” he says with typical German specificity, although now he’s down to about four or five days a week.
Most of all, he is always around people.
“I always had a lot of friends,” he said, including his current “lady friend” who he described as “quite a gal.”
Yes, he smiles. “I certainly have been lucky.” n
As artists and educators, Joshua and Cinthya Silverstein are not afraid to put themselves out there.
In 2020, the Los Angeles-based couple and parents of three started a podcast, Silversteins’ Show, to document their lives during the pandemic. The following year, they swapped homes with a Mormon family for the NBC reality show “Home Sweet Home.”
Their latest project involves trying to revitalize the weeklong Cazadero Performing Arts Family Camp, a Sonoma County institution that, like other summer camps in the United States, struggled to make it through the pandemic. The camp was canceled in 2020, went online in 2021, returned in person in 2022 then had to be cut short last summer due to a Covid-19 outbreak.
This summer, the Silversteins will lead the camp together, with Joshua serving as director and Cinthya as operations manager. They are taking over from John DeSerio, who had served as director since 2014.
Meanwhile, they are spearheading a fundraising campaign to put the camp, known as Caz, in a stronger financial position. They hope to raise $150,000 by the end of 2024.
“Caz is a revelatory space where you get to be in community and use art as a tool to bond with people you don’t even know, and to connect with a deeper part of yourself,” Joshua said in a joint interview with his wife. “We want it to grow.”
Cinthya added, “This is a place to feel valued as an artist and to experience things that are difficult to do in your day-today life.”
Set among the redwood trees of Cazadero, an unincorporated community about two hours north of San Francisco, Cazadero Performing Arts Family Camp is a spinoff of
Cazadero Music Camp. The family camp launched in the 1970s and became its own nonprofit in 2010.
This summer’s session will take place Aug. 4-10. Campers of all ages and skill levels can choose from more than 60 classes in a variety of disciplines, including painting, calligraphy, poetry, band ensemble, DJing, breakdancing, circus arts, improv and musical theater. There is also programming for children under 5. Visit cazfamilycamp.org to see the full class list and register.
The Silversteins have been associated with Caz for more than a decade. Joshua, 42, started teaching creative writing and beatboxing in 2013. (He is also an actor who was last seen in the Bay Area in 2019’s “True Colors.”) Cinthya, 39, has taught photography since 2017. Their children have accompanied them to Caz a number of times.
Although not a specifically Jewish family camp, many Bay Area Jewish families attend each year. One camp tradition is to light Shabbat candles together on Friday night and eat fresh challah from a local bakery. As Jews of color — Joshua is Black and Cinthya is Mexican American — the Silversteins said one of their goals is to make Caz a more welcoming place for both Jewish and non-Jewish campers of different backgrounds.
“We want to make it a space where everyone feels welcome and seen and heard,” Joshua added. “I love how Cinthya and I, as Jews of color, can walk around and not have that questioned.”
As part of their vision, the Silversteins have recruited several new “teaching artists” who identify as people of color and/or LGBTQ. The new instructors include Cal Bennett, who will teach freestyle sax improvisation and band ensemble;
Alyesha Wise and Matthew “Cuban” Hernandez, who will teach poetry; Maya Jupiter, who will teach hip-hop songwriting; and Brooke Aston Harper, who will teach acting and youth show choir.
The Silversteins have also modified the daily camp schedule and added time for mindfulness activities.
Ethan Grossman, a longtime Caz camper who grew up in Oakland, said he is confident in the Silversteins’ ability to lead the camp into the future.
“They are doing everything in their power to not only maintain the magic that is there and has been there for years, but also transform it into something that is more sustainable and more accessible to a larger group of people,” Grossman said.
A 23-year-old filmmaker who currently lives in New York City, Grossman has been going to Caz every summer since he was 5. This summer he will serve on the staff, hosting an open mic event and organizing a new performance showcase for campers ages 16 to 25.
“There’s something about the nature that’s around you and the nature of the camp itself that just makes everything seem more significant, whether it’s the song you’re singing or the person you’re talking to,” he said. “It has a way of impacting me every single time I go back.”
Cinthya Silverstein said one of the things she appreciates about Caz is that campers can try something new in a completely supportive environment.
“I never thought I would take up the ukulele. But because of Caz, now I know that’s a thing I can do,” she said. “Caz is this really great opportunity for people to expand interpersonally and individually.” n
Cazadero Performing Arts Family Camp will hold a fundraising concert and family dance at 3:30 p.m. Sunday, April 28, at La Peña Cultural Center, 3106 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley. Tickets start at $20. tinyurl.com/caz-fundraiser Kyle Blaze (right) with his ukulele students at Cazadero Performing Arts Family Camp. (Photo/Scott Stanford)Summer a er summer, Israeli emissaries in their early 20s — “shlichim” in Hebrew — have been as integral to Camp Ramah Northern California as swimming, arts and cra s and seaside Shabbat celebrations along the craggy coast of Monterey Bay. is year, due to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, some familiar faces could be missing.
“We are concerned that many of our Israeli sta members from last summer who are planning to return to Ramah will not be released from their reserve army service in time to work at camp,” said Geo rey Menkowitz, executive director of Camp Ramah Northern California. “We have contingency plans for sta ng, but it will be heartbreaking not to have them back with us.”
Menkowitz’s reaction is well warranted.
e Oct. 7 Hamas massacre and the subsequent war have disrupted Israeli society and reached across continents, leading to a spike in antisemitic incidents such as violence on college campuses and “anti-Zionist” boyco s of businesses. A number of Jewish camps across the U.S. are also mourning the loss of former Israeli sta members
and campers killed in the massacre.
Each year, the Jewish Agency for Israel sends shlichim around the world to schools, synagogues, Jewish community centers, federations, camps and beyond. Many are young adults just out of their compulsory military service.
In summer 2023, the agency dispatched 1,500 shlichim to 158 North American camps. is year, with life during wartime so unpredictable, the agency initially wasn’t sure it could send shlichim at all, said Gal Atia, director of the Jewish Agency for Israel’s summer shlichut program.
Despite delays and challenges, the program is currently set to move ahead. With applications higher than ever, the agency actually expects to send around 100 more shlichim to North American camps than last year.
Still, the war means not everyone
continued on page 20
continued from page 18
accepted into the program can follow through with their plans, and that may include some beloved shlichim who would have returned to local camps where they’ve worked in the past.
Normally, the Israel Defense Forces releases some soldiers early from their mandatory service to become summer shlichim. As it now stands, 90 soldiers have had to drop out of the shlichim program due to the war, according to the agency.
“We hope to reduce that number as much as we can,” Atia said.
Maccabi Sports Camp, a program of the Oshman Family JCC in Palo Alto, has welcomed a small number of shlichim, up to four annually, since its inception in 2014. The emissaries share Israeli culture and traditions, teach Hebrew and offer kids the opportunity to meet and even befriend Israelis, sometimes for the first time.
The camp doesn’t yet have a final tally of 2024 shlichim. However, “it feels pretty positive right now” that the same number will join as in years past, said Josh Steinharter, executive director of the overnight camp, which cultivates sports skills along with
Jewish community.
Never has it been more critical for Jewish youth to connect with proud Israelis, he added.
“With the rise of antisemitism and a lot of negative Israel rhetoric out there, giving our campers and our domestic staff the opportunity to develop relationships with Israelis is a huge, important part of our program,” he said. “They can hear firsthand what it’s like to live and grow up in Israel on a normal day, and what it’s like to live through this tragic conflict.”
Maccabi Sports Camp is already preparing for the arrival of the shlichim. It’s doing so, he said, by exploring how to make them feel cared for, supported and understood.
“We are giving more thought and preparation to how these staff are going to show up when they get here in a few months having
been through what they’ve been through,” he said. Similar discussions are underway at Camp Ramah Northern California, which is expanding its care team with an additional mental health professional from Israel.
Camp Ramah Northern California is among the Jewish camps that typically send staff members to Israel to interview potential shlichim, and this year was no different. The trip, however, included sobering elements no one could have imagined five months ago.
“While in Israel, we also met with survivors of Oct. 7, family members of those murdered in the attacks, soldiers currently serving in reserve duty and family members of the hostages,” said executive director Menkowitz, who traveled there in January. “As representatives of our camp community, we wanted to show our support. As educators and leaders, it was vital for us to visit the sites of these horrors to bear witness.”
The Jewish Agency for Israel, Mosaic United and the Ministry for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism are sponsoring an initiative called Campers2Gether.
As part of the program, Israelis trained in trauma-informed care and in North American Jewish life, including the rise in antisemitism that’s left so many Jews around the world rattled and afraid, will accompany the Israeli teens to camps here.
In advance of the possible arrival of these Israeli teens, Camp Newman is developing programming to create a supportive environment. This includes working to make sure it’s a safe place for expressing diverse views and adding extra mental, emotional, social and spiritual assistance.
Special preparations are also in motion at the Jewish Agency for Israel. With the help of mental health professionals, Atia said, the agency is training its camp-bound shlichim to share their Oct. 7 stories in a way that’s age-appropriate for campers and reminding them they have stories far broader than the tragedy they’ve experienced. The agency is also training the shlichim in resilience because some situations and conversations outside of Israel could be challenging.
“With a lot of negative Israel rhetoric out there, giving our campers and our domestic staff the opportunity to develop relationships with Israelis is a huge, important part of our program.”
URJ Camp Newman typically hires 20 to 25 Israeli staff members each summer.
“These connections are year-round and lifelong,” said Ruben Arquilevich, vice president of camp and immersives for the Union for Reform Judaism and Camp Newman’s former executive director.
Camp Newman doesn’t yet know how many shlichim will join its campers in the Santa Rosa redwoods this summer. However, it does hope to be among the North American Jewish camps hosting Israeli teens who have been displaced by war from their homes near the Gaza border and along the northern border with Lebanon.
Josh Steinharter, executive director, Maccabi Sports Camp
“The reality is no one knows what will be triggers,” Atia said, “so we want to give them tools.”
In addition, the agency wants to make sure the shlichim understand the stresses some of their peers and supervisors here have experienced at school and elsewhere. And it’s guiding them on how to productively navigate differing perspectives about the war.
“When I feel safe, I don’t tend to put up a shield when I feel attacked when someone’s talking about Israel,” Atia said. “When I understand that you are my brother and my sister and you’re not a threat to me and you care for me, I will have the conversation with you and hug you at the end, rather than fight you and be angry with you.” n
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Ethan Smith ranks fifth in his New Jersey high school class, scored high on the SAT and aced a full slate of five Advanced Placement tests last year. On Oct. 1, he submitted his application to a nearby Ivy League school, the University of Pennsylvania.
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Six days later, Hamas attacked Israel, launching a war that has been accompanied by a reported spike in antisemitism in the United States — including on college campuses. About two months after that, Penn President Liz Magill told Congress that calling for the genocide of Jews wouldn’t necessarily violate the rules at her school.
Magill later resigned, but for Smith, the damage was done. He withdrew his Penn application and now plans to attend his home state school of Rutgers University.
hearing, where the presidents of Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology also declined to say outright whether campus policy prohibited calls for the genocide of Jews.
“A lot of people didn’t apply to those schools,” De Almeida said. “It became a safety concern.”
The teens’ rethinking comes amid a broad reckoning by American Jews in the wake of Oct. 7 and the ensuing war. Widespread, harsh criticism of Israel, a spike in reported antisemitic incidents and what some experienced as inadequate concern about Jewish trauma have caused many U.S. Jews to question their inclusion in institutions and milieus where they previously felt secure.
Colleges have been a particular source
“I just felt personally more comfortable there being fully who I am,” Smith said of Rutgers, which has a large Jewish population. He worried that Penn would be a place where he would be “constantly looking over my shoulder, worrying what somebody was going to do once I walked into Hillel.”
Smith’s decision is emblematic of a feeling shared by many teens active in the BBYO Jewish youth group, which met for its annual convention in Orlando this weekend: As they look at colleges, along with thinking about academics, location and the social scene, many have found themselves weighing a new factor: antisemitism.
A new survey of nearly 2,000 BBYO participants across North America, taken in recent weeks, found that 64% said antisemitism on campus was an important factor in their decision regarding where to attend college. More than 60% said they had experienced antisemitism in person.
“It made me not apply to some colleges,” Bianca De Almeida, a senior from Miami, told JTA regarding the December congressional
of angst, with advocates filing frequent federal complaints alleging antisemitism on campuses, Congress holding a series of hearings on campus antisemitism and parents banding together to share worrying reports about incidents at their children’s schools. Some Jewish schools have threatened not to send their graduates to schools that don’t commit to keeping students safe.
In Northern California, UC Berkeley and Stanford have come under scrutiny over incidents of antisemitic harassment.
On Feb. 26, protesters injured Jewish Cal students and forced an event with an Israeli speaker to be relocated off-campus. In an interview on NBC, Tye Gregory, CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area, said, “I don’t know what sophomore or junior in high school is looking at what’s happening at Cal if they’re Jewish, and wants to apply to UC Berkeley.”
Meanwhile, there’s evidence that a large number of students are choosing not to apply to Harvard: The university reported a 17% dip in early decision applications this year.
Though the early decision deadline was Nov. 1, a month before the explosive congressional hearing, Harvard faced scrutiny immediately after the conflict began, when a coalition of student groups circulated a letter blaming Israel for Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack.
De Almeida said she has gotten into Penn State but is mostly considering colleges in Florida, including the University of Florida, which is the only university in the country with more Jews than Rutgers. She said UF’s large Jewish community and its strong Hillel are appealing to her, though she acknowledged that it isn’t immune to bigotry: The campus Chabad was tagged with antisemitic graffiti in November..
Gabriel Golubitsky, a senior from Cleve-
active in college and advocate for Israel, where he plans to spend a gap year with Young Judaea after graduation.
“If anything, I wanted to go to schools with more antisemitism, so I could fight it,” Golubitsky told JTA. He said he is mostly considering state schools in Ohio.
Golubitsky, who traveled to Washington, D.C. for the massive pro-Israel rally in November, said, “Kids know me as the pro-Israel kid because I post a lot about it.” He said many teens don’t understand both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, something he blamed on the education system.
Antisemitism on college campuses also took center stage at BBYO’s opening plenary session on Thursday. Israeli influencer,
“I don’t know what sophomore or junior in high school is looking at what’s happening at Cal, if they’re Jewish, and wants to apply to UC Berkeley.”Tye Gregory, JCRC Bay Area CEO
tell you they don’t hate Jews, they just hate Israel. Or even better, they hate Zionists.”
Golubitsky’s friend Emir, a Boca Raton native who declined to share his last name, said he hopes to attend the University of Miami, partly because he wants to go to school locally.
“The school not having a big antisemitism problem and having a big Jewish community
made me want to stay in Florida,” Emir told JTA. He said his high school has a large Jewish population and is home to a lot of pro-Israel advocacy — something he described as comforting. After people started “realizing what’s really happening,” he said, “they’re standing with Israel, or standing with their Jewish friends.”
That kind of support is what Smith is hoping to find at Rutgers next fall. He knows that by withdrawing his Penn application, he’s forgoing a shot at one of the country’s most elite schools. But when he looks at the state of college campuses today, he feels good about his choice.
“I was literally pulling away my chance to go to an Ivy,” Smith said. “They’re very different, but it was a matter of where I could be more comfortable.” n
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The Bronx’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine will be tuition-free for the indefinite future thanks to a $1 billion donation from a Jewish philanthropist.
The massive gift from Dr. Ruth Gottesman, an emerita faculty member, will be “transformational” in drawing students to the
who can afford it,” Dr. Yaron Tomer, Einstein’s dean, said in the statement. “Additionally, it will free up and lift our students, enabling them to pursue projects and ideas that might otherwise be prohibitive.”
“This donation radically revolutionizes our ability to continue attracting students who are committed to our mission, not just those who can afford it.”
The college was founded by Yeshiva University in 1955, at a time when Jews faced discriminatory quotas in university admissions. In 2015, Y.U. transferred ownership of the medical college to New York City’s Montefiore Medical Center, though the two institutions remain affiliated.
Dr. Yaron Tomer, Albert Einstein College of Medicine dean
medical school in the city’s poorest borough. And by eliminating up to hundreds of thousands in student debt, the donation aims to make Einstein accessible to a broader range of candidates, the college said in a statement on Feb. 26.
“This donation radically revolutionizes our ability to continue attracting students who are committed to our mission, not just those
Einstein’s statement called the donation “the largest made to any medical school in the country.” It shared footage online of students leaping out of their seats and cheering for more than 30 seconds as Gottesman announced that tuition will be free starting in August.
Gottesman, 93, said the donation will help students attain expertise “to find new ways to prevent diseases and provide the
finest health care to communities here in the Bronx and all over the world.”
“l feel blessed to be given the great privilege of making this gift to such a worthy cause,” she said in a statement.
Gottesman, a former professor at the college, has a long history with the institution.
In 1968, she joined the college’s Children’s Evaluation and Rehabilitation Center where she developed screening and treatment methods for children. In 1992, she launched the college’s Adult Literacy Program. She serves as the chair of the college’s board of trustees, a role she also held a decade ago.
Gottesman is the widow of the wealthy financier David Gottesman, a prominent Jewish philanthropist who died in 2022 at the age of 96. Known as Sandy, he connected with billionaire investor Warren Buffett when the two attended Harvard Business School.
David Gottesman became an early backer of Buffett’s firm, Berkshire Hathaway, earning massive returns on his investment. In 2022, Forbes estimated Gottesman’s wealth at $3 billion.
The Gottesmans launched a family philanthropic foundation, the Gottesman Fund, in 1965, continuing a long tradition of Jewish philanthropy in the family.
In 2021, the most recent year for which
tax documents are available, the Gottesman Fund disbursed more than $24 million to dozens of groups and institutions, many of them Jewish, including multiple Jewish day schools.
The largest grant — more than $8.4 million — went to the P.E.F. Israel Endowment Fund, a New York-based nonprofit that allocates funding to charities in Israel.
The fund also donated in 2021 to non-Jewish causes including mental health treatment, aid for homeless people and the New York Public Library.
Ruth Gottesman told The New York Times that when her husband died, he left her a portfolio of Berkshire Hathaway stock to disburse at her discretion.
She decided to direct the funds to the medical college, where tuition currently costs more than $59,000 per year, leaving many students with large debts upon graduation.
Gottesman stipulated that the college not change its name despite the massive donation, the Times said. The only other medical school in the city to offer tuition-free admission to all students is New York University’s.
Einstein has 737 medical students enrolled for this academic year, in addition to hundreds of PhD students and postdoctoral researchers. It ranks 42nd in best medical schools for research, according to U.S. News and World Report. n
Student government leaders at the University of British Columbia rejected a ballot measure on Feb. 28 that would have called for an end to Hillel’s presence on campus, following intense pushback from Vancouver Jewish groups and capping months of discord between the Hillel and its critics in the student body.
According to the student newspaper, the council said the measure was rejected for technical ma ers and not because of the criticism directed at Hillel amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. e council reportedly rejected the measure because it violated bylaws stating that all referendums be “clear and unambiguous” and that they contain a simple “yes or no” answer.
The referendum specifically objected to Hillel having invited a member of the Israeli military to campus.
Known as Referendum 2, the measure would have pushed the university’s Alma Mater Society to “demand where feasible, that the University end Hillel BC’s lease,” in addition to demands that the school end partnerships with Israeli universities; divest from a list of companies that do business in Israel; endorse the Boyco , Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israrl; and compel the university to state that Israel is commi ing “genocide” in Gaza.
In a statement posted to social media on Feb. 29, Hillel BC said the verdict was “great news.”
“We are grateful that the AMS reached the right result and want to thank everyone who supported Hillel,” the statement read. “We are proud of our brave students and sta for their steadfast advocacy in preventing the erosion of spaces for Jewish community and culture on campus. Our commitment to providing students with a safe and inclusive environment is unwavering.”
BDS resolutions among North American university student governments are relatively rare but have been growing in popularity since the war; students at the University of Virginia held their own vote on the issue this week. But the inclusion of a clause specifically aimed at evicting Hillel, whose chapters support Jewish students on campus with religious services and
programming as well as Israel activities, was unusual.
e referendum triggered immense blowback from local Jewish groups, which issued statements opposing it ahead of the vote. e director of the Hillel also sent out an “action alert” to draw a ention to the vote.
“We write to ask you to please reject the recent referendum that poses a significant threat to the inclusivity, diversity, and fairness that define UBC,” the Rabbinical Association of Vancouver wrote in an open le er to the student council which Hillel BC shared on social media.
e le er continued, “ is a stark reminder of the antisemitism that Jews have faced for centuries as we’ve been driven from, and prohibited from, public spaces, and even forcibly removed from countries themselves.”
An outpost of the Jewish student life organization Hillel International, Hillel BC serves seven campuses in the Vancouver area, of which UBC is the largest. e more than 850 Hillels around the world operate from both on-campus sites and buildings located adjacent to campuses but not owned by the university.
e physical location of its Hillel House is on UBC’s campus, making it a target for students who were motivated by broader anger over the Israel-Hamas war, as well as by two local controversies. e referendum specifically objected to the Hillel having invited a member of the Israeli military to campus, as well as to a November incident during which a contractor a liated with the Hillel distributed “I [Heart] Hamas” stickers around campus and falsely a ributed them to the university’s Social
Justice Centre.
Earlier this month, the Social Justice Centre sued the Hillel and its former
contractor for defamation over the stickers, saying they were “made with actual malice, knowing it was false, for the improper or ulterior motive of impugning SJC’s reputation.”
At the time of the incident, Hillel BC said it didn’t know its contractor had distributed the “o ensive” stickers and that it terminated its relationship with the contractor. Its executive director, Rob Philipp, told the CBC, “ is incident has nothing to do with Hillel BC.”
According to the UBC student newspaper, the student council voted down the anti-Hillel measure 23-2 before it could make it onto a student-wide ballot. Referendums can be proposed if a certain percentage of the student body signs onto them, according to the bylaws, but the council still retains the final say on whether to include them on the ballot, according to a statement from the student union. ■
Students on the campus of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, in 2022. (Photo/JTA-Liang Sen-Xinhua via Getty Images)
SUNDAY | March 10
“WE SURVIVED, AT LAST I SPEAK”— Leon Malmed shares his experience surviving the Holocaust at age 5 by hiding with French neighbors after his parents were taken to Auschwitz. At Chabad of Solano County, 730 E. Main St., Vacaville. 3 p.m. $5 students, $15 advance, $20 door. tinyurl.com/ we-survived
“AN INTRODUCTION TO THE MUSIC OF BUKHARIAN JEWS”—Ethnomusicology professor Evan Rapport offers an overview of the Bukharian Jewish community, including their history and music. Presented by Jewish Community Library. Online. 2 p.m. Free. tinyurl.com/bukharian-music
TUESDAY | March 12
GILDA RADNER: CONTEMPORARY
COMEDIC GENIUS—Lecture on the trailblazing comedy of one of the first “Saturday Night Live” cast members and the only woman writer in the early days of the show. With video clips of Radner’s iconic scenes and characters. At JCCSF, 3200 California St., S.F. 1-3 p.m. Free. tinyurl.com/gilda-radner-talk
“THE WOMEN’S ORCHESTRA AT AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU”—Susan Eischeid discusses the only women’s orchestra formed in a Nazi concentration camp. With light refreshments. At Jewish Community Library, 1835 Ellis St., S.F. 5:30-6:30 p.m. Free. tinyurl. com/auschwitz-orchestra
WEDNESDAY | March 13
SEPHARDIC DEMOGRAPHICS—Discussion with Mijal Bitton, research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, and Sergio DellaPergola, a demographer and statistician. Part of the Voices of Distinctions series featuring contributors to JIMENA’s
Distinctions journal. Online. 11:30 a.m. Free. bit.ly/voicesofdistinctions
THURSDAY | March 14
“AMONG COSSACKS AND COMMISSARS”—Lecture on the history of Ukrainian Jews including Kna’ani or pre-Ashkenazic Ukrainian Jewry in medieval times, the Crusades, the growth of the shtetl, the development of the Yiddish language, Cossack massacres, the Ukrainian War of Independence, life under Stalin, the Babi Yar massacre during the Holocaust and Ukrainian Jewry before Putin’s invasion. At JCCSF, 3200 California St., S.F. 1-2 p.m. Free. tinyurl.com/ cossacks-commissars
“SUPPORTING JEWISH FAMILIES IN THE POST-OCT. 7 WORLD”—Jewish LearningWorks presents panel with psychologist and trauma expert Betsy Stone, congregational educator Hadas Rave and Jewish LearningWorks past president Julie Dorsey to discuss the challenges that schools, camps and youth programs face post-Oct. 7 and how to support them. Online. 9:30-10:45 a.m. Free. tinyurl.com/ jlw-briefing
SUNDAY | March 17
“LIFE AND DEATH DECISIONS: A JEWISH APPROACH TO MEDICAL CONCERNS IN OUR FINAL DAYS”— Scholar Rabbi David Teutsch delivers inaugural lecture in Rosenzweig-Apelbaum Annual Ethics Lecture exploring Jewish values and attitudes on end-of-life medical decisions. Presented by Or Shalom Jewish Community. At JCCSF, 3200 California St., S.F. 10 a.m.-12 p.m. Free, register by March 12. tinyurl.com/ethics-lecture
“IN FOCUS: ISRAEL AND GAZA”—Avital Leibovich, director of American Jewish Committee’s Jerusalem office, discusses the Israel-Hamas war. Part of a series presented
by Congregation Sherith Israel. Online. 10:30-11:30 a.m. Free, registration required. tinyurl.com/ in-focus-sherith
“FINDING THE LIGHT THROUGH EXPRESSIVE ARTS”—Workshop using writing, music, movement and art to explore emotions in challenging times, practice stillness and witnessing, and draw inspiration from Judaism. Led by interdisciplinary artist Judy Goodman. Bring journal or art pad. Art supplies will be provided. No previous art or movement experience necessary. At Chochmat HaLev, 2215 Prince St., Berkeley. 10 a.m.-12:30 p.m. $10-$50, sliding scale. tinyurl.com/ finding-light
“THE DYBBUK CENTURY”—Debra Caplan discusses the history and enduring influence of S. An-sky’s “The Dybbuk,” a 100-year-old Polish play about the possession of a young woman by a dislocated spirit. Presented by Jewish Community Library, New Lehrhaus, Jewish Folk Chorus of San Francisco, KlezCalifornia and Workers Circle/Arbeter Ring of Northern California. Online. 3-4 p.m. Free. tinyurl.com/dybbuk-century
TUESDAY | March 19
JEWISH ECSTATIC DANCE—Group in which participants dance to music and prayers and release themselves to move freely. Wear comfortable clothes. Led by Ilene Serlin, a psychologist and dance movement therapist. Also March 19, April 8 and May 6. At Osher Marin JCC, 200 N. San Pedro Road, San Rafael. 3:30-4:45 p.m. Free. tinyurl.com/ecstatic-jewish-dance
THURSDAY | March 21
“WALKING IN THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW”—Workshop series presented by New Lehrhaus on Jewish approaches to death, dying, burial, grief and comforting the bereaved, with both traditional
and contemporary concepts and practices. Instructors include Sam Salkin, Rabbi Me’irah Iliinsky, Rabbi Chaya Gusfield, Yael Galinson, Rabbi Peretz Wolf-Prusan and Edna Stewart. Co-presented by Sinai Memorial Chapel, Ben Zakkai Institute and Bay Area synagogues. Also April 4, 18, May 2, 23. Online. 7-8:30 p.m. $36 for series. tinyurl.com/jewish-death-practices
HONORING YOUR JEWISH CHILD’S NON-JEWISH HERITAGE—Workshop for interfaith/intercultural parents on how to teach Jewish children about their non-Jewish heritage and integrate both parents’ cultures into their identity. Presented by Building Jewish Bridges. Online. 7-8 p.m. Free. RSVP to dawn@ buildingjewishbridges.org.
“IN FOCUS: ISRAEL AND GAZA”—Consul General of Israel Marco Sermoneta discusses the Israel-Hamas war. Part of a series presented by Congregation Sherith Israel. Online. 7-8 p.m. Free, registration required. tinyurl.com/ in-focus-sherith
TUESDAY | March 26
“WHITE SUPREMACY, ANTISEMITISM AND ANTI-BLACK RACISM”—Civil rights and racial justice advocate Eric Ward discusses the foundational connections between anti-Blackness and antisemitism. Followed by conversation with Jewish community organizer April Baskin, moderated by USF professor Bradley Onishi. Second in three-part USF series on Antisemitism. At USF, McLaren Complex, 2130 Fulton St., S.F. 6:30-8 p.m. Free. tinyurl.com/usf-racism
FRIDAY | March 15
TOT SHABBAT PURIM EDITION—Purim-themed tot Shabbat program for families with children 5 and under with story time, songs and food. Bring unopened packs of diapers, wipes and formula to donate to Ayudando Latinos A Soñar, an organization in Half Moon Bay that works directly with individuals and families. At Congregation Beth Am, 26790 Arastradero Road, Los Altos Hills. 5:15-6:15 p.m. Free, registration required. tinyurl.com/ beth-am-tot
SATURDAY | March 16
KABBALAH/HAVDALAH—Sam
Shonkoff, an assistant professor of Jewish studies at GTU and a LABA faculty member, leads experiential evening of Kabbalah featuring immersive movement with LABA artists and guided ritual with Chochmat HaLev leaders. At Chochmat HaLev, 2215 Prince St., Berkeley. 7:30 p.m. $18-$36, sliding scale. tinyurl.com/kabbalah-laba
WEDNESDAY | March 20
“DANCE ‘TIL YOU DON’T KNOW”— Rabbi Zac Kamenetz of Shefa: Jewish Psychedelic Support facilitates an “ecstatic dance” ritual for Purim, in which participants release themselves and move freely as the music takes them. At Osher Marin JCC, 200 North San Pedro Road, San Rafael. 6 p.m. $25 suggested donation, registration required. tinyurl.com/ estatic-dance
SATURDAY | March 23
“THE WHOLE MEGILLAH”—Urban Adamah, Chochmat HaLev, Kehilla Community Synagogue and Base Bay present Purim festival with community dinner, Megillah reading, dance party, live performances, mystical tea lounge, costumes and more. At Urban Adamah, 1151
Sixth St., Berkeley. 7:30-11 p.m. $24-$72, sliding scale. tinyurl.com/ ua-purim
“MIDNIGHT MEGILLAH”—Purim celebration with Megillah reading, hamantaschen and snacks. At Chabad Jewish Center of Petaluma, 205 Keller St. No. 101, Petaluma. 8:30 p.m. Free, registration required. tinyurl.com/ midnight-megillah
SUNDAY | March 24
“IT’S A BARBIE PURIM SPIEL”—Congregation Rodef Sholom presents Barbie-themed Purim service and spiel. With dinner. Wear a costume. At Osher Marin JCC, 200 N. San Pedro Road, San Rafael. 5:30-7 p.m. Free, registration required. tinyurl.com/barbie-purim
“PURIM IN OUTER SPACE”—Holiday celebration with “zero-gravity jumping shoes,” science activities, face painting, “ha-moon-tashen,” groggers, space-themed megillah and costumes. At Petaluma Community Center, 320 N. McDowell Blvd., Petaluma. 4 p.m. $15 adults, $10 kids. tinyurl.com/petaluma-space
“PURIMPALOOZA”—Purim party with costumes, hamantaschen, crafts, games, mishloach manot making, photo booth, live music, dancing, magic show, Barbie-themed shpiel and more. Presented by JCCSF, Congregation Emanu-El, King Knish, Melita & Friends, PJ Library, Repair the World and others. At JCCSF, 3200 California St., S.F. 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Free, registration required. tinyurl. com/purimpalooza-jccsf
PURIM IN THE SHUK—Holiday celebration with Israeli-style dinner, drum circle, Israeli music, henna artist, freshly squeezed juices and megillah readings. At Chabad of Contra Costa, 1671 Newell Ave., Walnut Creek. 5-7 p.m. $18 single, $60 family. tinyurl.com/ purim-shuk
SUNDAY | March 10
PURIM PLAYDATE PARTY—Jewish Baby Network, Jewish Gateways, PJ Library Bay Area and Honeymoon Israel present Purim celebration with holiday treats, gift bags, crafts and a costume parade. At Dracena Quarry Park, 130 Dracena Ave., Piedmont. 3:30-5 p.m. $18 suggested donation. tinyurl.com/ purim-playdate
SUNDAY | March 17
S.F. FAMILY HAMANTASH BAKE— Chabad of the Neighborhood presents a workshop on baking hamantaschen. Baked treats can be taken home or donated to those in need. At Chabad of the Neighborhood, 85 West Portal Ave., S.F. 11 a.m.-12 p.m. $12, registration required. Chabadneighborhood. com
PURIM EXTRAVAGANZA—Jewish Baby Network and Or Shalom present holiday event for families with kids 3 and under with puppets, storytime, hamantaschen and Purim-themed craft. Wear a costume. At JCCSF, 3200 California St., S.F. 10-11:30 a.m. $18 suggested donation. tinyurl.com/baby-purim
PETALUMA FAMILY HAMANTASCHEN
BAKE—Chabad of Petaluma presents workshop to bake hamantaschen and create collaborative Purim joke book to bring joy to Ukrainian children. At Chabad Jewish Center of Petaluma, 205 Keller St. No. 101, Petaluma. 10:30 a.m. $5. tinyurl.com/petaluma-bake
JCC EAST BAY PURIM CARNIVAL—Holiday event with crafts, face painting, hamantaschen, talent show for kids and more. Wear a costume. At JCC East Bay, 1414 Walnut St., Berkeley. 2-5 p.m. $18 per family. tinyurl.com/jcceb-purim
PURIM PALOOZA—Jewish Baby Network and Honeymoon Israel present holiday event for families with kids 3 and under with music,
dancing, hamantaschen, themed snacks and Purim goodie bags. Wear a costume. At Congregation Beth Jacob, 1550 Alameda de las Pulgas, Redwood City. 3:30-5 p.m. $18 suggested donation. tinyurl. com/purim-bj
FAMILY PURIM PARTY—Camp Kehillah, Brandeis Marin and Osher Marin JCC present event for families with kids 4 and older with holiday-themed activities including baking hamantaschen, making masks and groggers, dancing and a costume contest. With pizza dinner. At Osher Marin JCC, 200 North San Pedro Road, San Rafael. 6-8 p.m. $18 suggested donation per family. tinyurl.com/purim-marin
FAMILY PURIM CELEBRATION—Urban Adamah, Chochmat HaLev, Kehilla Community Synagogue and Berkeley Moshav present holiday event for families with kids 12 and under with themed crafts, music, stories, games, puppet show and community dinner. Costumes encouraged. At Urban Adamah, 1151 Sixth St., Berkeley. 5:30-7:30 p.m. $12-$36 sliding scale, under 2 free. tinyurl.com/purim-puppet-show
TAKE ACTION
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. Free, registration required. tinyurl. com/giving-kitchen
MONDAY | March 25
COMMUNITY SERVICES AGENCY PANTRY—Congregation Beth Am is looking for volunteers to help at the food and nutrition center. Also April 22, 29, May 20. At Community Services Agency, 204 Stierlin Road, Mountain View. 9:30 a.m.-12 p.m. Email Viviane at wildco1@ yahoo.com.
WEDNESDAY | March 27
DISTRIBUTE BREAKFAST AT HOPE’S CORNER—Congregation Beth Am is looking for volunteers to do food prep under the direction of Hope’s Corner staff. Must be 16 or older. At Hope’s Corner, 748 Mercy St., Mountain View. 7-9:30 a.m. Email Rabbi Jon Prosnit at rabbi_prosnit@betham.org.
SUNDAY | March 10
SATURDAY | March 9
“LOVE ISN’T BLIND”—Jewish edition of dating game show hosted by comedian Allison Goldberg where four men compete to win a date with a bachelorette. At Chochmat HaLev, 2215 Prince St., Berkeley. 7-10 p.m. $25-$30. tinyurl.com/ love-isnt-blind
SATURDAY | March 16
“ALL THINGS EQUAL”—Broadway play from Tony Award-winning playwright Rupert Holmes about the life and trials of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. At Curran Theater, 445 Geary St., S.F. 1 p.m. $40-$105. tinyurl.com/all-things-equal
“KOSHER NY-STYLE DELI NIGHT”— Chabad of Solano County presents a pop-up that includes pastrami and corned beef sandwiches on rye, matzah ball chicken soup, rugelach and drinks. Pre-order or order there. Take out, outdoor seating and dine-in available. At Chabad of Solano County, 730 E. Main St., Vacaville. 12:30-3 p.m. tinyurl.com/solano-deli
“BRIDGING COMMUNITIES AND CELEBRATING CHAMPIONS”—JCRC Bay Area’s 75th anniversary event honoring community, civic and philanthropic leaders Barbara and Ron Kaufman and LSP Family Foundation executive director Abigail Michelson Porth. With special guests and dinner reception. At Palace Hotel, 2 New Montgomery St., S.F. 4-8 p.m. $500. tinyurl.com/ jcrc-75
SATURDAY | March 9
“MY THANK YOU TO NER SHALOM”— Cellist Susan Salm performs recital accompanied by pianist Toni Pearson, who will play on a baby grand piano that Salm’s mother shipped out of Germany while she escaped Nazi persecution. At Congregation Ner Shalom, 85 La Plaza, Cotati. 7 p.m. $35, $50 VIP.
SUNDAY | March 10
“A LILY AMONG THORNS”—San Francisco Choral Artists and Veretski Pass perform sacred and secular Jewish songs of love and courtship in Yiddish, Ladino and English and settings of the Song of Songs in Hebrew, English and Latin. Also March 16 in Palo Alto and March 17 in Piedmont. At Congregation Am Tikvah, 625 Brotherhood Way, S.F. 4 p.m. $35, $30 seniors, $15 under 30. tinyurl. com/lily-thorns
ONGOING
CONTEMPORARY JEWISH MUSEUM, 736 MISSION ST., S.F. THECJM.ORG
“First Light: Rituals of Glass and Neon Art”—Exhibition by She Bends featuring works in neon, glass and plasma exploring the role of light in our quest to understand our place in the universe. Through April. “Radiant Practices: Illuminating Jewish Traditions”—Exhibition exploring the significance of light in Judaism through a collection of ritual objects. Through April.
JCCSF, 3200 CALIFORNIA ST., S.F. JCCSF.ORG
“Nourish Your Roots”—Exhibition of over 40 works, including ceramics, collage, photography, oil painting, print, collage and sculpture, by 14 Bay Area artists who explore connections between humankind and the natural world. Through May 31.
SUNDAY | March 17
SHOMREI TORAH ART SHOW—
Opening and artist reception for exhibit featuring work from 30 congregants. With refreshments. Showings also March 18-20. At Congregation Shomrei Torah, 2600 Bennett Valley Road, Santa Rosa. 1-5 p.m. Free, registration required. tinyurl.com/shomrei-art
FILM & TV
ONGOING
EAST BAY INTERNATIONAL JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL—Virtual portion of annual fest features 17 films available to livestream. Selections include “Holy Wine,” “Less Than Kosher,” Shoshana” and “No Name Restaurant.” March 9-22. Online. $180 festival pass, $13.50 single film. eastbayjewishfilm.org
SACRAMENTO JEWISH FILM
FESTIVAL—25th annual fest returns with 39 films. Selections include “The Prince of Egypt,” “Irena’s Vow,” “The Future,” “Remembering Gene Wilder,” “Seven Blessings,” “Mourning in Lod” and “Bella!” Through March 24. Livestream or at theaters in Davis and Sacramento. $50-$150 for festival pass, $18-$36 single film. sacjewishfilmfest.org
THURSDAY | March 21
“ZIYARA”—Documentary following director Simone Bitton’s pilgrimage to Morocco to connect with her Jewish roots, in which she meets the Muslim guardians of the country’s Jewish cemeteries. Followed by Q&A and discussion. Part of Ya Rayah: A Mizrahi Film Series. At Urban Adamah, 1151 Sixth St., Berkeley. 6:30-9 p.m. $15-$36, sliding scale. tinyurl.com/ ziyara-film
THURSDAY | March 21
“THE TERRIFYING REALM OF THE POSSIBLE”—Actor and comedian Brett Gelman discusses his new book, a collection of comedic short stories following five characters who each navigate a uniquely strange stage of life. At Oshman Family JCC, 3921 Fabian Way, Palo Alto. 8-9:30 p.m. $25. tinyurl.com/brett-gelman
THURSDAY | March 28
“THE EINSTEIN EFFECT”—Journalist Benyamin Cohen, who also manages Albert Einstein’s official social media accounts, discusses his book that explores the genius’ ongoing relevance today and the myriad ways his influence is still with us. At OFJCC, 3921 Fabian Way, Palo Alto. 7-8:30 p.m. $25. tinyurl. com/einstein-effect
Sally Abed and Alon-Lee Green (Courtesy)
Israeli activists Sally Abed and Alon-Lee Green are visiting the Bay Area to discuss the work of Standing Together, the largest Jewish-Arab grassroots movement in Israel. They will share personal stories about their efforts to create a society promoting peace, equality and social justice at three free events. Presented by New Israel Fund, Congregations Beth Am, Beth El, Beth Sholom, Emanu-El, Etz Chayim, Netivot Shalom, Sha’ar Zahav and Sherith Israel, Temple Sinai, The Kitchen and JCCSF.
7 p.m. Tuesday, March 12, at Sherith Israel, S.F., tinyurl.com/ nif-focus; 12:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 13, at Etz Chayim, Palo Alto, tinyurl.com/nif-stand; 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 13, at Temple Sinai, Oakland, tinyurl.com/nif-israel
One of my favorite parts of seeing the J. land in my mailbox is how it showcases the richness and diversity of the Bay Area Jewish community. It’s something I’ve always loved about Israel, as well. Yet something about Emma Pearlman’s Feb. 23 op-ed “Gazans deserve normal lives, just like you and I do” struck a nerve, and it encapsulated precisely why so many Israelis, Jewish Americans and friends of Israel feel isolated and alone in this moment.
Emma’s 2003 experience in Rafah sounds delightful — and not all that different from life on a kibbutz in southern Israel near Gaza, where communities are closeknit and life’s moments are celebrated and mourned together.
Yet in failing to acknowledge what began the current war — Hamas’ brutal surprise attack, its organized sexual violence and its kidnapping spree that abruptly ended an actual cease-fire — those who call for a cease-fire now give the impression that Israel woke up one day and decided to launch its largest military offensive in memory.
When I speak to those who express outrage at Israel, they consistently cite Hamas’ casualty statistics, which are notoriously inflated, without acknowledging that roughly 12,000 of the dead are Hamas terrorists, according to a Feb. 19 report from the Israel Defense Forces. Noting combatant-to-civilian ratios obviously doesn’t take away from the tragedy of civilians killed, but it does put the war into a context that can be more thoroughly understood.
Those same voices cite the brutality of Israel’s occupation of Gaza without noting that Israel voluntarily evacuated every single Israeli and Jew from Gaza in 2005. Often deeper in these critiques are Israel’s maritime limits and border controls on Gaza, which supposedly constitute occupation. But maritime blockades are governed by the laws of war (not the laws of occupation), and Gaza has a border with Egypt with zero Israeli oversight or control.
There’s nothing more Israeli (or Jewish) to debate about what is the right course of action in Gaza and in confronting Hamas. There’s also nothing more Israeli (or Jewish) about disagreeing with those we love. We are a people bound together by a shared history, ritual practice and common destiny — with disagreement woven into our DNA. Yet as a community, we must forcefully call out those who shout slogans and accusations against Israel with selective information. The same voices that use a selective telling of the facts also consistently omit what Hamas’ leaders continue to tell us: that Oct. 7 was just the beginning and that they will perpetrate many more Oct. 7-style massacres as soon as they can.
If the tragedy of Oct. 7 taught us nothing more, it’s that we should believe the words of our enemies. Ignoring those words — or stringing them together in a selective way — will only exacerbate our collective sense of isolation and fear, and will not lead to the peace and dignity that Israelis and Palestinians both deserve. n
A fellow Jew called me a Nazi
As a proud Jew and person of conscience, I attended the March 3 “unity” march against antisemitism in San Francisco (“Thousands in S.F. join unity march against antisemitism,” March 4). This event was billed as a march “to champion the values of inclusion, respect, belonging, and democracy — standing united against antisemitism.”
Guided by my Jewish value of “pikuach nefesh,” the sanctity of all life, I arrived to the march with other community members walking behind a banner that urged us to “Fight antisemitism and genocide: ceasefire now” and proudly held a sign declaring my commitment as one of many “Jews for Palestinian freedom.” We sang “Oseh Shalom,” a Hebrew prayer for peace.
As soon as we entered the march, we were swarmed by fellow Jews wrapped in Israeli flags who yelled and cursed at us, calling us “Nazis” and telling us: “Return to the ghetto and die.” Those wrapped in Israeli flags chanted “shame, shame” in unison until our group was guided away from the route by police for our safety.
We were not allowed to enter the rally area and were instead cordoned off across the street and labeled by the San Francisco Chronicle as “counter-protesters.”
Jewish counter-protesters at a “unity” march against
antisemitism? As a proud Jew for Palestinian freedom and Palestinian humanity, to be barred entry from and be verbally attacked at a march against antisemitism was deeply painful.
The right to criticize the nation-state of Israel for its actions is at the heart of a democratic society and not an antisemitic act. This false conflation between antisemitism and anti-Zionism cheapens real acts of antisemitism that harm us all.
LAURA EINHORN | SAN LEANDROAfter having read news reports (“‘I’m screaming for help’: Jewish students face violence at UC Berkeley Israel talk,” Feb. 27) about the riot incited at UC Berkeley and organized by Bears for Palestine, I opened my Feb. 23 print edition of J., which had recently arrived in the mail.
The J. archives column was headlined “When university campuses were openly antisemitic” and included the phrase: “Jewish students at the universities across Europe were getting barred from class, ostracized, and even attacked.”
As Mark Twain was credited with saying, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”
MICHAEL HARRIS | BODEGA BAY
Jean-Paul Sartre long ago posited that antisemitism is a lethal passion. His thesis received ample proof recently on the UC Berkeley campus, where an antisemitic riot broke out Feb. 26.
Under the pretext of shutting down an Israeli speaker on campus, Bears for Palestine, the local Students for Justice in Palestine affiliate, called for a disruptive protest that ultimately degenerated into mob violence. Several Jewish students were assaulted and slurred with antisemitic insults. One student had to visit urgent care the next day. Glass doors and windows at Zellerbach Playhouse were smashed. Jewish students, including me, were forced to evacuate via an underground tunnel.
The university failed to protect our safety, much less our First Amendment rights. And it is still failing.
This latest episode caps months of harassment — and, on occasion, menacing outbursts — from “Free Palestine” activists. On Oct. 7, the day of the Hamas pogrom, Bears for Palestine released a statement (since deleted) praising its “comrades in blood and arms” for their operations “in the so-called ‘Gaza envelope.’” The same organization then mounted demonstrations at which participants clamored to “globalize the intifada” and “free Palestine from the river to the sea.”
On the day of the riot, Graduate Students for Justice in Palestine, another SJP affiliate, promised a reprise of Oct. 7, hanging from the campus’ main entrance a pledge to “Flood Sather Gate” — a reference to “Al-Aqsa Flood,” the Hamas code
The mob violence that occurred at UC Berkeley against students wishing to hear a talk by Ran Bar-Yoshafat, an Israeli attorney and a reserve combat officer in the Israel Defense Forces, was an ominous but also clarifying moment.
When a mob rampages against a speaker, threatens violence and causes property damage, the mob has, by its conduct, already rejected the option of nonviolent negotiation. This leaves two options open to the UC authorities.
Either they can give in to the mob, or they can impose law and order on the mob, using as much force as is necessary. Those who are willing to be intimidated would choose the first option. Those who want to coexist in a free society must pursue the second or permanently abandon any hope of that goal.
In this situation, one cannot be a spectator because by watching and doing nothing, one also becomes the victim. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
DESMOND TUCK | SAN MATEOI deeply appreciate Elizabeth Rosner’s recommendation that people who are triggered by words like “genocide,” “apartheid”
name for its rampage in southern Israel.
The university’s response to these events, going back months, has felt tepid at best. UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ acknowledged in early November that “fear is being generated by the rhetoric used at some of the recent protests on campus” — a turn of phrase that was telling in its use of passive voice and refusal to point to culprits — and closed with a lofty call to honor the institution’s “long-lived and unwavering” dedication to free speech.
That dedication has since been on display — for instance,
The mob savored its win in a triumphal march through the campus.
in the X feed of history professor Ussama Makdisi, who appeared to endorse the Hamas pogrom in tweeting “I could have been one of those who broke the siege on October 7.” It has also been seen in signs on campus depicting Israel as a snake and calling on people “to unite against Zionism.”
At UC Berkeley, this principled stand on the First Amendment has allowed anti-Israel groups to block campus entrances for hours at a time, forcing disabled students, including me as someone who is legally blind, to traverse through dirt and puddles.
Pro-Palestinian activists often lament a supposed “Palestine exception” when it comes to respect for the First Amendment. But on Berkeley’s campus on Feb. 26, the “Israel exception” was in full view. Bears for Palestine called on students to shut down the event with Ran Bar-Yoshafat, a reserve combat officer in the Israel Defense Forces, plastering his photo on social media, falsely blasting him as “dangerous”
and “colonialism” should look within themselves to explore why these words frighten them (“How words like ‘genocide’ trigger a fear response,” Feb. 23). Still, these words have legitimate meanings, and many people who use them are well aware of their meanings. They (we) do not use them “to stir up reactions” but to awaken people to reality.
I recently attended a meeting where a man claimed the Oct. 7 attack on Israel was genocide but what is continuing to happen in Gaza is not. While I understand that the Oct. 7 attack was horrendous, I also know that it does not fit the internationally recognized definition of genocide. If the man had looked up the definition, rather than simply reacted without knowledge, he would never have made this claim. At least one would hope he would not have.
Human beings have the capacity to recognize the difference between what is real in their lives and what they might have learned when they were children. This is part of what makes us human. It isn’t easy, but it is doable. And the truth shall set you free.
LOIS PEARLMAN | GUERNEVILLEYour article with photos of graffiti around Lake Merritt expressing support for Hamas were extremely disturbing (“Pro-Hamas
and a “genocidal murderer.”
When I arrived at Zellerbach, a few anxious undergraduates were checking IDs at the door. A sparse police cordon was also present at the entrance. Ultimately, only about two dozen attendees were able to enter prior to the disturbances.
Before the event could begin, the mob smashed the glass at the entrance, pried open a door and entered.
The police, no doubt hindered by the university’s restrictive rules of engagement, attempted briefly to block the rioters’ way. In all of five minutes, the event was canceled and a dean arrived to escort us out. Parading through the campus in a fashion worthy of the finest paramilitary, the rioters exulted in their victory, savoring their win in a triumphal march through the campus and a series of online posts.
The university dispatched this email to the entire campus: “The event is canceled; when exercising your right to free speech, please take care of yourself and others.” The message could not be clearer: Intimidation and the specter of mob violence carry the day at this institution. In one evening, the university contradicted four months of its own dross.
The university’s actions since Feb. 26 have not inspired confidence. The next day, Christ sent a note to the community deploring the mob violence but without uttering the word “antisemitism” or pointing to the culprits. She changed her tune a week later, denouncing the antisemitism at the riot.
But the university continues to throw obstacles in the way of pro-Israel and Jewish students’ speech rights. UCPD officials are warning pro-Israel groups that they need three weeks’ notice to secure adequate protection for their events and pushing these lectures to off-campus sites. The university has also failed to dismantle a hateful and obstructive pro-Palestininian blockade at Sather Gate. And Bears for Palestine is still allowed to operate on campus despite fomenting an antisemitic riot. Avoiding a repeat of the riot necessitates that we keep up pressure on the university. n
graffiti scrawled along Lake Merritt,” Feb. 23). At UC Berkeley’s Sather Gate, a sign placed by Palestinian supporters states, “Glory to the resistance.”Public spaces in the Bay Area have increasingly become sites of hateful expressions that are distressing to Jews and dehumanizing and devaluing of Jewish people and of those individuals raped, tortured and murdered in the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre and subsequent attacks.
The frequent appearance and increasing pervasiveness of these hateful expressions — and the indifference with which they are often met — threaten our welfare and our right to live freely without intimidation and without fear of becoming targets of bigotry and violence.
NOAM SCHIMMEL | BERKELEY LECTURER, INTERNATIONAL AND AREA STUDIES UC BERKELEYcontinued on page 30
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.
Note: This article makes references to suicide, which some readers may find upsetting.
On Feb. 20, a 16-year-old girl from Palo Alto died after stepping in front of a train. Her suicide, which took place about two miles from my house, ignited a community-wide conversation about mental health among teens in the Silicon Valley. There were vigils, and increased counseling services made available throughout local schools. Parents, myself included, talked to each other about what more we could do to make sure teens in trouble have more resources to turn to.
The incident was deemed a tragic loss of life, and the community around the girl and her family have been in mourning. We are all asking ourselves how this could have been prevented — the typical response to a suicide.
Fast-forward a week later, when a 25-year-old man named Aaron Bushnell lit himself on fire while screaming “Free Palestine” in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C. Bushnell later died in the hospital from his injuries.
This case of self-immolation has been praised by many as an act of protest against Israel’s war in Gaza. Immediately, all over social media, Bushnell was hailed as a martyr and freedom fighter.
On TikTok, people commented on videos of the incident, which Bushnell livestreamed on the Twitch video service, calling him a “true hero” and wishing that he “rest in power.” On X (Twitter), philosopher and independent presidential candidate Cornel West urged his followers to “never forget the extraordinary courage and commitment” of Bushnell. More than 6.7 million people viewed the post.
All of these comments, an endless parade of praise, seem to miss one fundamental truth: Bushnell died by suicide. And suicide — per my own recent experience in my own community — is not something our society is supposed to glorify.
The concept of self-immolation as a form of political protest is not new and has been used for centuries.
The views expressed on the opinion pages are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of J.
Bushnell is not the first person to light themselves on fire in protest of Israel’s actions in Gaza: In December, a woman with a Palestinian flag self-immolated outside of the Israeli Consulate in Atlanta. (She survived.)
One of the best-known cases happened back in 1963, when a Buddhist monk lit himself on fire on a busy street in Saigon. His protest of anti-Buddhist actions by the U.S.backed South Vietnamese government was captured by a photographer, and the picture of the monk sitting still as flames engulfed his body became one of the most haunting images from the Vietnam War.
More recently, self-immolation also played a role in planting the seeds for the Arab Spring.
In 2010, a Tunisian fruit and vegetable vendor lit himself on fire in protest of state and police corruption,
Cornel West urged his followers to “never forget the extraordinary courage and commitment” of Bushnell — a post viewed by more than 6 million people.
an incident that became a catalyst for the uprisings that swept several Arab countries, including Tunisia.
But while those who willingly burns themselves to death could be doing so out of desperation to call attention to a cause or injustice, as in the examples above, they’re still taking their own life — a deeply tragic thing.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, while suicide rates declined in the United States in 2019 and 2020, they were up 5% in 2021, and showed an increase of nearly 3% in 2022, when close to 50,000 people died by suicide in the U.S. (The CDC has not yet made data for 2023 available.)
The extraordinary personal tragedy of Bushnell’s death by suicide has, unfortunately, been completely lost in the mass of martyr talk taking place on social media.
There’s a lot we still don’t know about Bushnell, an Air Force cyber specialist who was based in San Antonio, Texas. But details are starting to emerge.
continued from page 29
Guest contributor Emma Pearlman (“Gazans deserve normal lives, just like you and I do,” Feb. 23) has good intentions. She spent her summer in Rafah, and evidently enjoyed it, in 2003, well before Hamas took over the Gaza Strip. I doubt that she would have enjoyed such a visit after Israel withdrew from the territory and Hamas took over.
She cites the “brutality of the occupation,” whereas it has been 15 years since Israel has withdrawn. Yes, every human being should have a normal life, including Gazans, but Israel must first be sure that another Oct. 7 will not be committed by Hamas.
ADELE GERSHATER | PALO ALTOThank you for publishing Emma Pearlman’s description of her time spent with a Gazan family, and her call to recognize the humanity of Palestinians in Gaza. The trauma of the Oct. 7 massacre cannot desensitize us to the horrific conditions in today’s Gaza and the killing of 30,000 Palestinians.
As long as Palestinians have no hope for living in a state of their own, Hamas will not be defeated through military means. Besides the inhumanity of what is being perpetrated in Gaza, I fear for the safety of my brother’s family and many cousins in Israel — and all Israelis and Palestinians — as long as Netanyahu and his gang continue on this murderous path.
RICHARD WEINER | OAKLANDAs several people who knew him told The New York Times, he was raised in an isolated religious commune called the Community of Jesus and had recently become increasingly disillusioned with both his upbringing and his military career.
Those familiar with Bushnell also said he had thrown himself into “leftist and anarchist activism.”
Bushnell’s social media posts painted a portrait of someone who cared deeply about Palestinian suffering and was against the Israeli military offensive in Gaza. But, at least according to current reports, he didn’t have personal ties to the region.
At the very least, these emerging details should prompt all of us to ask some tough questions about the factors that motivated Bushnell to take his own life. Whether or not his motivation was purely to draw attention to what he saw as an unjust war — and to U.S. support for it — he died by suicide, an act which, regardless of your politics and position on the matter, is not supposed to be celebrated on social media.
One of the conundrums of dealing with suicide and suicidal tendencies is something known as the Werther Effect, a phenomenon in which cases of suicide increase after the publication of news about them. This makes it tough to simultaneously raise awareness of such a devastating growing public health problem and prevent it from spreading.
And yet, Bushnell’s suicide is not only being spread online, but glorified. The original video of his self-immolation has been taken down by Twitch, but has nevertheless continued to proliferate on social media platforms — most of which not only have rules against depictions of suicide but also against promoting, normalizing or glorifying acts of self-harm.
To be sure, Bushnell’s self-immolation was meaningfully different from the death of the 16-year-old girl in my town. But let’s be real: Both were cases of suicide. And it’s not just social media platforms that should do a better job of treating such acts with utmost care and sensitivity. It’s all of us. n Michal Lev-Ram is a Silicon Valley-based journalist who has covered the technology industry for more than 15 years, most recently as editor-at-large for the leading business publication Fortune. This story originally appeared on forward.com.
I was astonished to see Hamas propaganda presented as fact in Emma Pearlman’s opinion piece. Hamas’ propaganda arm has provided casualty figures for the war in Gaza that began with the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7. There has been no independent verification of these numbers.
The “Gaza health ministry” that Ms. Pearlman cites as the source of her information is a branch of Hamas, which has controlled Gaza for nearly 20 years following Israel’s withdrawal. Please, when you present such propaganda, clearly identify it as such, even if it is in an opinion piece.
SUE KAYTON | MENLO PARKSharman Spector-Angel and Gary A. Angel
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Though born and raised in the East Bay, Joel Roster has spent a lot of time in Anatevka.
In 1986, he watched his actor father, the late David Roster, play Tevye in a production of “Fiddler on the Roof” — which is set in that fictional shtetl — at Diablo Valley College. Nearly three decades later, Joel played Perchik, Hodel’s love interest, in the 2015 production at Berkeley Playhouse. And next year, he will direct “Fiddler” at Contra Costa Civic Theatre (CCCT) in El Cerrito.
The show will run June 7-22 and close out the theater’s 2024-2025 season, which was announced on March 4. Tickets go on sale next month.
“It’s one of the most uplifting masterpieces I know, and it works beautifully as a closer because the final show of the season has to be a celebration of the strength in all of us,” said Roster, who became CCCT’s new executive artistic and managing director in January.
The nonprofit theater’s 65th season kicks off Sept. 7 with Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” and Tom Stoppard’s “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,” which will run on alternate nights through Sept. 22.
“Doctor Dolittle,” a musical based on the 1967 movie of the same name and the children’s stories by Hugh Lofting, will open in November. “Fairview” is next, opening in February 2025. Penned by Jackie Sibblies Drury, the comedy won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2019. The play follows a middle-class African American family as they prepare for a birthday dinner for their grandmother — and expect an odd twist in the story.
One “lightly staged” benefit concert, separate from the 2024-25 season, also is scheduled: “Irving Berlin’s White Christmas” in December.
“The Jewish half of me has deeply informed my outlook, my humor, my love for others and my love of the arts.”
Joel Roster
While planning his first season with CCCT, Roster, 41, demanded strong justification for telling each story. “That’s so important,” he said. “If a play matters to us, it will matter to our audiences, too.”
Roster recalled seeing “many, many productions” of “Fiddler on the Roof” over his lifetime, and he characterized them all as “overwhelmingly gentile.”
“Authenticity in this piece is the most crucial element, from traditions and observances to language spoken,” he said. “There will be additional Hebrew throughout the show,
especially when Tevye speaks to God.”
In a happy coincidence, “Fiddler” was the first play Roster ever attended. He was 4 when he saw his father play Tevye, and he said that was the moment he became “obsessed” with the theater. A family photo from the time shows him wearing the hat from his father’s costume and singing “Tradition.”
Throughout elementary and high school, Roster performed in more than 40 productions. He first got paid for performing at age 12.
“In his one act of nepotism, my dad, who directed ‘Bleacher Bums’ at a theater in Benicia, put me in the show,” Roster said. “I had two lines, and it was an incredible experience. When I got a check for $50, it blew my mind that I could get paid for doing something I loved.”
Roster studied theater arts at Diablo Valley College and has been a professional actor for the past two decades. Most recently, he played Nathan Detroit in San Francisco Playhouse’s production of “Guys and Dolls.” He also coaches acting students, has worked as an arts educator and once
headed up his own theater company.
Roster has a history with CCCT. In 2011, he performed there in “Big River” and a year later in “Barefoot in the Park.” He also has directed two shows for the 174-seat theater.
Roster credits his “Jewish side” with influencing his life and his love of the arts. “While my level of being a good practicing Jew is certainly on the lower half of the mezuzah — I was not bar mitzvahed and I enjoy bacon a great deal — my entire mother’s side of the family are Ashkenazi Jews, most of whom got wiped out in the Holocaust,” he said. “The Jewish half of me has deeply informed my outlook, my humor, my love for others and my love of the arts.”
Does he plan to step out of management and back on the stage from time to time?
“If it’s a project I’m passionate about and it works with my schedule at CCCT, I’ll continue to act now and then,” Roster said. “The board is fully supportive, but first and foremost I’m excited about my role at this beautiful theater, and I’m honored to start with a clean slate for the new season.” n
Iran, the 1950s: Mohammed Reza Pahlavi had recently been reinstalled as the Shah, the country was rapidly modernizing, and a Jewish man named Younes Dardashti was becoming an Iranian cultural icon. Dardashti, nicknamed “The Nightingale,” gained renown for being a master singer of Persian classical music with an unparalleled vocal range. He became a celebrity for his weekly primetime spot on Radio Iran and sang at venues from prestigious concert halls to the Shah’s palace.
And then, at the height of his celebrity, Younes Dardashti suddenly left Iran. His granddaughters Danielle and Galeet never knew why. Their father Farid — a ’60s Iranian TV teen idol in his own right — never spoke about it. Until now.
“The Nightingale of Iran,” a new documentary podcast from co-creators Danielle and Galeet Dardashti reveals the untold, painful and unmistakably Persian Jewish history of their family. Over the course of six episodes, listeners will hear a remarkable (and recently unearthed) collection of Dardashti family recordings, interviews with subject experts and commentary from Danielle and Galeet to finally understand what caused the Nightingale of Iran to fly free of his homeland.
Danielle and Galeet recently chatted with Hey Alma about the podcast. This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
Hey Alma: When did you realize that this project was more than just your own personal journey? When did it become an audio documentary series?
GALEET DARDASHTI: We originally thought it was going to be a documentary film. We started during the pandemic; we had more time than usual.
DANIELLE DARDASHTI: Well, it was a combination of having more time than usual and also Zoom started becoming a thing. People started interviewing people all over the world and having conversations and recording them. I’ve made video documentaries and so I automatically assumed we were making a film. But then two things happened
that kind of pushed us in the direction that it was going to be audio instead.
GD: First, we couldn’t really find any video.
DD: We had all this amazing, amazing, amazing audio, this treasure trove that gives us insight into the past. But no video. And then also, I got a fellowship for The Digital
all the time in my academic world and in my performing world.
DD: For me, I totally don’t. Normally, I’m not in that world. But I’m in the world of telling great stories. And we were like, “Why don’t we collaborate?” Galeet tells of the music of our family, but the story of our family has not
Storytellers lab through the Jewish Writers’ Initiative. They fund untold stories finally getting told.
GD: So it kind of crystallized for us. We hadn’t thought about making it a podcast until then.
The audio is incredible. Hearing your saba’s voice really stopped me in my tracks. What does it mean to you to have these recordings?
GD: It’s amazing. I’ve been kind of obsessed with my grandfather’s voice for a long time. I just released an album in September where I sing with recordings of him singing — I literally started that project like 15 years ago. I’m an academic and I use his body of work
been told. And that’s what I do. Finding these tapes and being able to collaborate with Galeet on it … we keep texting each other just being like, “Oh my God, I’m so glad we did this.”
In the first episode, you say that you’re not able to travel to Iran. Obviously, that logistically complicates things. But how did that emotionally complicate making the podcast?
GD: We knew that was never ever going to happen. When I applied to graduate school a million years ago, I thought I would be able to go to Iran. I was going to write about my grandfather and I started studying Persian. Then it quickly became clear that I couldn’t
Israeli American artist creates ‘regendered’ version of the Hebrew Bible (JTA)
In Yael Kanarek’s “Toratah,” which means “her Torah,” the genders of characters in the Hebrew Bible are reversed. The result is that divine inspiration expresses itself through matriarchal, rather than patriarchal, lineage.
The story of Shanghai’s Jewish community during WWII is now a musical (JTA)
In “Emigré,” which premiered in New York last month, two German Jewish brothers flee their Berlin home for a place halfway across the world: Shanghai, where they join a community of thousands of other Jewish refugees.
Why artist Arthur Szyk, whose work is at the Magnes, is more relevant than ever (Forward)
The Polish American Jewish artist’s political cartoons and magazine cover illustrations are “well poised to be used today in the fight against antisemitism, fascism and bigotry,” writes Diane Cole.
go to Iran. I think that’s the only time Daddy ever said, “Over my dead body, you’re gonna go to Iran.” It just would have been so dangerous.
DD: I’ve never thought about going to Iran. It’s so out of the realm of possibility. Our family name is pretty well known in Iran.
GD: So it wasn’t disappointing that we couldn’t go because we didn’t think we could. So it was almost like we discovered this secret way in.
DD: I’ll tell you, we did interview one guy as a resource. He’s a grad student living [in the U.S.] from Iran, and he was very tight-lipped. We can’t mention his name in the podcasts, not even to thank him in the acknowledgments or anything, because it’s dangerous for him to be associated with this story, because it’s about Israel and Jewish people. That’s how serious of a situation it is, even though we’re not being critical of the government. But still, he was like, please just don’t mention my name.
If you could go to Iran, are there certain places you would want to visit?
GD: I would love to see Tehran. I’d love to see where our dad grew up. We’ve heard all these stories about his childhood. I would love to see the house where he lived and where he peed on the… Has she heard that yet?
DD: That will be done today, actually. We’re just putting minor tweaks on different episodes. But the tapes are pretty crazy with the amount of detail they get into. There’s this one tape where I was really obsessed with it, because my grandmother kept saying this word that I couldn’t figure out what she was saying: “cloob.” And I was like, was that a nickname for Israel? The Persian translator didn’t know what she meant by that. And I won’t give it away, but we figured it out.
There’s so much content that we didn’t even know about, and there are even hundreds more tapes in my parents’ basement that we haven’t even converted yet. n
Read the full interview at jweekly.com/culture.
Israeli American pianist and composer Noam Lemish knows all about what it means to make music from a multiplicity of perspectives.
the book delves into various examples of “cultural-blending through the lens of Israeli jazz musicians, starting with the wave of early players who came to New York City,”
“Pardes,” his 2018 album with guitarist and oudist Amos Hoffman, is a sumptuous body of jazz arrangements largely based on liturgical and folk tunes from Yemenite and Moroccan Jewry.
But Lemish doesn’t just play culture-spanning music. He’s also a music professor at York University in Toronto and the author of a new scholarly book, “Transcultural Jazz: Israeli Musicians and Multi-Local Music Making.”
Expanding on his doctoral dissertation,
said Lemish, who will perform shows with Hoffman this month at Sonoma State University, San Francisco’s Bird and Beckett Books & Records and The 222 in Healdsburg.
Lemish, who hails from an Ashkenazi family, is no stranger to the local jazz scene. He was born in Ohio, raised in Tel Aviv and moved to the Bay Area in 2002 to study music at Sonoma State University. Over the next decade he established himself as one of Northern California’s most exciting young accompanists, composers and bandleaders.
“He is one of our most talented and accomplished alumni,” said Sonoma State professor Brian S. Wilson, who runs the school’s Jewish studies program and has presented Lemish and Hoffman as part of the Jewish Music Series he curates.
“It’s so gratifying to see Noam making his mark, especially with such important work as this collaboration,” Wilson added. “Even with the use of electric guitar, each beautiful old melody retains its spiritual essence while couched in a jazz idiom. Noam and Amos are masterful collaborators bringing an understated creativity to music of a higher order.”
Hoffman grew up in an Ashkenazi family in Jerusalem and started to play oud, a Middle Eastern lute, around the age of 10. His formal studies focused on classical guitar. Oud was for casual playing, figuring out songs he heard on the radio by ear, “songs we used to sing in the neighborhood,” he said. “As a teenager I was mainly playing jazz, and oud was something I played at home for myself. I went to school with kids and grandkids of oud players, and I kind of figured out how to do it.”
After moving to New York to pursue his love of jazz in the early ‘90s, he started making his way on the scene, performing weekly with saxophonist Jay Collins. Hanging out at Hoffman’s apartment one afternoon, Collins noticed the oud in the corner and encouraged him to bring it to their gig. Collins often played the bansuri, an Indian bamboo flute, which blended well with the delicate tonality of the oud.
“People were like, this is a hip sound,” recalled Hoffman, who now lives in South Carolina. “Back then nobody had heard oud before.” Encouraged by both his American
and Israeli colleagues to keep working on it, “slowly oud became a big part of what I was doing,” he said. “It wasn’t anything I was planning.”
One of the musicians who loved the sound of Hoffman’s oud work was bassist Avishai Cohen, whose work with piano legend Chick Corea marked a watershed in visibility for Israeli jazz musicians. Lemish became aware of Hoffman via his oud and guitar work on Cohen’s 1998 debut album “Adama” on Corea’s label Stretch Music.
Years later, with Canada’s generous support for the arts, Lemish sought out Hoffman to collaborate on a concert in Toronto. They quickly established a deep rapport, which led to the album “Pardes.” (It is not unusual in Israel for Ashkenazi musicians to riff on Mizrahi melodies.)
In addition to the Mizrahi material, the album includes popular songs that have circulated in Israel since the 1950s that Lemish describes as an invented folk song tradition “that Israeli jazz artists use as source material like American standards.”
As for why Israeli musicians are so drawn to jazz and have contributed so widely to the tradition in recent years, Lemish argues that Israeli culture is “already transcultural. Many musicians’ parents come from different ethnic origins, half Mizrahi and half Ashkenazi. You mix that with jazz, which is also a transcultural music to begin with, and you get what I describe as a blend of blends.” n
Noam Lemish and Amos Hoffman will play March 13 at Sonoma State (free, $5 parking). They will also perform March 15 at Bird and Beckett Books & Records in S.F. and March 16 at The 222 in Healdsburg. noamlemish.com
With the Golden Gate Bridge as a backdrop, 50 Bay Area residents staged a flash mob to show their support for Israel.
The performance took place Jan. 28 at Crissy Field in San Francisco, and a professional recording was posted on YouTube last month. (Visit tinyurl.com/sf-flash-mob to watch the video.)
The video caption reads, “Today, SF dances again for Israel” — a reference to “We will dance again,” the slogan embraced by survivors of the Oct. 7 Hamas assault on the Nova music festival.
A flash mob is a public performance by participants who quickly appear and then disperse after the performance. The San Francisco flash mob was organized by members of the South Bay’s French-speaking Jewish community.
“In the midst of the attacks that the people of Israel suffered on Oct. 7, we wanted to show our love and our support,” Isabelle Marcus, a co-organizer who lives in
San Carlos, told J. “We also wanted to show that we won’t be intimidated and that we are strong.”
Marcus’ 18-year-old daughter, Rose, choreographed the routine with a friend, Eden Sidov, to the song “Tadliku T’orot” (“Turn on the Lights”) by Israeli pop group Hype Crew. The song, which was released in November, is an anthem about Israeli unity and perseverance. “When our spirits are strong in our hearts, we can win a thousand wars,” they sing in Hebrew.
Marcus and the other organizers recruited the dancers — local Jews ages 7 to over 70, as well as a few non-Jews — through Jewish WhatsApp groups. They rehearsed for several weeks at one another’s homes and at dance studios. On the day of the flash mob, many wore white shirts, blue pants and Israeli flags draped over their backs.
“Some people said it was a healing process for them,” said Marcus, who opted
to wear an American flag on her back. “We are still in a terrible situation [in Israel], but I think it’s very important to keep our spirits high and show that we are together.”
Marcus said the organizers secured a permit from the city and hired security for the event as a precaution, but that there were no disruptions.
“People took pictures of us,” she said. “One of the security guards was from El Salvador, and she told us it was a blessing to
provide security for an event for Israel.”
Marcus, a business consultant who serves on the regional board of American Jewish Committee, said she hopes others will stage similar flash mobs for Israel in the U.S. and around the world.
“We started it in San Francisco, but the aim is to have this global, positive movement that we will do in every major city in front of every iconic monument,” she said. n
The Torah column is supported by a generous donation from Eve Gordon-Ramek in memory of Kenneth Gordon
Rabbi Shana Chandler Leon is rabbi of Congregation Ner Tamid in San Francisco, her hometown. rabbishanachandler leon@gmail.com
Vayakhel
Exodus 35:1-38:20, 38:21-40:38
At the start of 1998, I began a life-changing job helping 12-year-olds prepare for their bar and bat mitzvah ceremonies. (That means my first students are nearing age 40, which is truly surreal, but I digress.)
In those halcyon days of the late ’90s and still today, a family occasionally will ask early in the process: What is the best way to prepare (Josh/Sara/ Parker/et cetera) for their “big day”?
My answer, then and now, has always been the same: “Take a box of Shabbat candles, light two candles every Friday night as often as you can and stand together quietly for a long minute. Make the traditional prayer and give each other a hug and a few words of blessing. It costs pennies, but the rewards are priceless. That’s it. The rest we’ll learn together.”
Shabbat candlelighting transforms. It centers us. It filters out the unrelenting noise and stress of the modern world. It “changes our minds” even for a moment. As a Jewish home ritual, nothing is more simple and more effective for creating a sense of peace and connection to this people and its traditions, for Jews of all ages.
But it wasn’t until a Friday evening in the early 2000s that I stopped short and truly listened for the first time to the words of the blessing that I had taken for granted since childhood.
“Blessed is … the One that gave us holiness through mitzvot and commanded us to kindle the light of Shabbat.” Where is that mitzvah in the Torah? Not to mention the Chanukah candles, which use an equivalent blessing and which are even less mentioned in the Torah, which is to say, not at all — a subject for another season.
I knew about the “big commandments” to rest on Shabbat. And at that time, I knew a little about the very specific prohibitions against Shabbat work that grew in scope and detail over centuries. Those restrictions are based partly on a controversial verse in Vayakhel, this week’s Torah portion: “You shall kindle no fire throughout your settlements on the Sabbath day.” (Exodus 35:3)
But if kindling fire on the Sabbath is prohibited, why do
we make such a point of not only lighting fire to welcome Shabbat, but also of making a blessing of holy obligation before it?
As it turns out, Jews have been lighting candles before Shabbat for millennia, though the blessing appeared much later. It was such a widespread practice that the rabbis of the Talmud took it as a given and devoted their discussion to how, when, where and with what materials the Shabbat lights should be offered. Shabbat has always been connected intimately to oneg (joy). And the irresistible romance of candles contributes greatly to that desperately needed, and welcome, sweetness and delight.
Shabbat candles were so common in Jewish culture that by the time of the Roman Empire, certain officials found the practice intolerable, an untenable poke in the eye of the ruling authorities. How dare the Jews of the empire sit idle for one
Jews have been lighting candles before Shabbat for millennia, though the blessing appeared much later.
seventh of their lives and be so public about it? According to Rabbi Ismar Schorsch’s “The Meaning of the Shabbat Candles,” the Roman philosopher Seneca railed against the dancing lights as a pernicious and upsetting display of support for that era’s brand of Judaism, which was spreading fast and wide. (It should only be!) But the ritual couldn’t be extinguished.
Despite its ubiquity and antiquity, the earliest known reference to the blessing is in the first official prayerbook, the Siddur of Rav Amram Gaon in the 9th century C.E., which is very recent in Jewish historical standards. By then, the practice was assuming the status of “law” as a result of passionate dispute over the verse from our portion.
In the Middle Ages, sects of Judaism sparred over how to interpret this and many other Torah-based injunctions. The Rabbanites based their system of Jewish living on centuries of debates among the rabbis of the Talmud. They accepted Shabbat candlelighting as a sacred obligation. Without it, they felt Jewish homes would be bereft of joy at exactly the moment that joy was most required.
The Karaites read and practiced the Torah in a much more literal sense. They saw the ritual of “licht bentschen,” blessing of the light, as a direct violation of the commandment to “kindle no fire on Shabbat.” Kindling and burning were given equal weight, so Karaite homesteads in the Middle Ages went
MARCH 8 ADAR I 28, 5784
Light candles at 5:53 p.m.
Shabbat ends at 6:51 p.m.
MARCH 15 ADAR II 5, 5784
Light candles at 6:59 p.m.
Shabbat ends at 7:57 p.m.
dark and cool on Friday at sundown through to Saturday night.
The heads of the primary Jewish academies of the Middle Ages, the Geonim (of which Rav Amram Gaon was among the greatest), endorsed the authority of the Talmud and its countless interpretations and innovations. Shabbat candlelighting was not only good, and completely in the spirit of creating oneg on Shabbat, they decreed, but the practice would be enshrined in Jewish life and raised to the level of mitzvah (commandment) that its accompanying blessing conveys. Most Jewish communities followed that ruling and maintain it to this very day.
In just a few moments each week, the flickering warmth of the Shabbat candles reminds us once again of the fascinating tapestry of Jewish creativity, woven over centuries of argument, discussion, debate and consensus. It is a little ritual that has the power to change the world starting with each Jewish home, everywhere that the spark still burns, searching for and illuminating the path to shalom. n
MARCH 22 ADAR II 12, 5784
Light candles at 7:06 p.m.
Shabbat ends at 8:04 p.m.
COOKING FAITH KRAMER
Hidden fillings are a common theme of Purim foods, so I’ve adapted my Ashkenazi knishes to reflect the flavors of an Indian samosa and the similar sambooseh favored in Persia, the home of Esther and Mordechai.
Filled foods reflect the secrets inside the Book of Esther that must be revealed to bring down the evil Haman. My baked IndoPersian Spiced Potato Knishes are vegetarian (with vegan and parve options) because tradition says that Esther maintained kashrut during her time in King Ahasuerus’ palace by only eating plantbased foods.
You can eat the knishes by themselves or with one of the sauces below. You can also make a quick curry mustard by combining curry powder with mustard (and perhaps a li le mayonnaise) to taste.
Makes 8
1 lb. gold or Yukon potatoes
¾ tsp. salt, divided
2 Tbs. vegetable oil, divided, plus oil for baking sheet
1 tsp. cumin seeds
2 tsp. finely chopped green jalapeño chilis
2 tsp. finely chopped garlic
1 tsp. garam masala
¼ tsp. dried, ground turmeric
½ cup thinly sliced green onions
2 Tbs. lemon juice
2 Tbs. finely chopped cilantro or parsley
⅛ tsp. cayenne, optional
17.3-18 oz. box pu pastry (see notes), defrosted
About ¼ cup flour
1 large egg, beaten
Sauces (see below)
Put potatoes in pot. Cover with water. Add ¼ tsp. salt. Cover. Bring to simmer over mediumhigh heat. Adjust heat to keep at simmer. Simmer until fork glides through potatoes. Drain. Let cool until the skins can be rubbed or peeled o by hand. Discard skins. Mash potatoes until almost smooth.
Heat 1 Tbs. oil in skillet over medium-high heat. Add cumin seeds. Sauté for 15 seconds until they sizzle. Add chilis. Sauté for 2-3 minutes until chilis start to brown. Add garlic. Sauté 1-2 minutes until golden. Stir in garam masala, turmeric and remaining ½ tsp. salt. Add 1 Tbs. oil. Sauté 1 minute, then add potatoes and green onions. Stir until combined. Turn o heat. Stir in lemon juice and cilantro. Mix well. Taste. Stir in cayenne and additional salt as needed.
Heat oven to 375 degrees. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper. Lightly grease paper with oil.
Take out the 2 pastry sheets. Lightly dust work surface with flour and unroll first sheet. Sprinkle a li le flour on top. Use a rolling pin to lightly roll out into as square a shape as possible, roughly 8x8 or 9x9 inches. Cut into 4 equal sections as close to square as possible. Place ¼ cup filling in middle of each section. Using finger or pastry brush, brush water on the top of the outside edges of the section. Fold over one corner of the section up and over the filling. Tuck in the adjacent edge, then fold over the next corner, overlapping the first section and then tucking in the adjacent edge. Repeat until the filling is fully enclosed and totally sealed. Brush seams with water. Press seams, pinching together any weak spots. Place seam down on baking sheet. Repeat with remaining squares and second pastry sheet.
Brush tops and sides of knishes with beaten egg. Bake 28-30 minutes until golden brown. Let cool slightly before serving by themselves or with sauces.
Sauce suggestions:
Z’hug: tinyurl.com/faith-zhug
Green chutney: tinyurl.com/faith-chutney
Tomato-tamarind sauce: tinyurl.com/tomato-tamarind
Tahini sauce: tinyurl.com/faith-tahini
Notes: Pu pastry comes in dairy and nondairy (parve) versions. Most brands weigh 17.3 to 18 oz. and come 2 sheets to a box. Adapt recipe as necessary. For vegan knishes, use parve pastry and brush lightly with oil instead of egg. You can remove seeds from chilis for milder filling. ■
The Food section is supported by a generous donation from Susan and Moses Libitzky
Sam Tobis hoped he’d get a lot of interest when he announced in October that he would sell Oakland’s Grand Bakery for just $1. And he did. He got over 250 inquiries, in fact.
But one quickly stood out from the rest. It was from someone with Jewish bakery experience in his genes who happened to live just a few miles from Grand Bakery — so close, in fact, that he could bike to work.
Bear Silber is a descendant of the family that ran Silber’s Bakery in Baltimore. (Bear is a childhood nickname that stuck and is now his legal name.) Started by his great-grandparents Isaac “Ike” and Dora Silber in 1904, the bakery eventually grew into a chain with 36 outlets in Maryland and Pennsylvania. It closed in 1979, marking a 75-year run — a miracle for most food businesses.
Silber, 41, was raised in Los Altos and his great-grandparents died before he was born, but he grew up knowing about the unique role Silber’s played in Baltimore’s Jewish community.
He has a hard time accepting that he never got to taste the cakes or cookies that so many others grew up with. There’s even a Facebook group where people still wax nostalgic for the bakery.
“My great-uncle ran it for the last 20 years or so, and he would tell us stories about it,” Silber said. “I remember thinking even as a kid that it’s a bummer it doesn’t exist anymore. I think that sparked my entrepreneurial flame.”
New owner Bear Silber is a descendant of the family that ran Silber’s Bakery in Baltimore, started by his great-grandparents Isaac “Ike” and Dora Silber in 1904.
Silber has owned such brands as Pizza Party and Powell’s Sweet Shoppe stores and was the chief operating officer of Candytopia, an immersive, pop-up experience, all in the Bay Area.
Grand Bakery was opened in 1962 as New Yorker Bakery by Ernie Hollander, a member of Oakland’s Jewish community who survived Auschwitz. Later, it became Ernie’s Strudel Palace and then Grand Bakery. Bob Jaffe owned it for 18 years before selling it to Tobis in 2017. Similar to Silber’s, that’s a 62-year run and counting, though under different names and owners.
In October, Tobis announced he wanted to sell. He had entered into an owner partnership at Berkeley’s Saul’s Deli and felt he could no longer give Grand the attention it needed.
“Grand deserves fully focused leadership,” he told J. then, noting that it had been a great opportunity as “my gateway into the Jewish food world,” leading him to Saul’s.
It was 2021 when Silber learned there was a Jewish bakery operating not far from him in Oakland. He met Tobis through a mutual friend, and they bonded over their connections to iconic Jewish bakeries with long histories.
When he read about Tobis wanting to sell Grand, he texted him immediately. The $1 price tag was a draw, naturally, but the timing was fortuitous, too. Silber had been running MyGoodness, a soft-serve place on Oakland’s Lakeshore Avenue, but it was winding down after a year and he was looking for his next project.
“I remember my wife was out of town, and I didn’t even talk to her about it,” he recalled. “I was still figuring out what I was going to do, and it was perfect timing.”
While Tobis was willing to sell the recipes, brand and accounts to the next owner for $1, Silber needed to pull together funds to purchase the rest of the business, including its equipment. For that, he went to his relatives and to Hebrew Free Loan, which helped him with a small-business loan. e sale became final on Feb. 19.
Given his family history, Silber said his most important connection to Judaism revolves around community and food.
“ at’s the real reason why a Jewish bakery is meaningful to me, and why it’s not just a transaction,” Silber said.
In announcing his intention to sell the bakery, Tobis had emphasized his hope that Grand would remain kosher. Silber plans to see that through. He is also thinking about how to expand the bakery’s o erings. He eventually hopes to grow into a larger facility where he can add dairy items to the menu. Everything Grand o ers now — it’s most known for its challah and macaroons — is parve.
He also dreams of introducing some of Silber’s recipes into the repertoire, like a sugar cookie and an orange chocolate chip cookie that his grandmother made, but “I also want to see what the community wants.”
He even thinks about how he’d like to reopen a storefront somewhere. “I love interacting with customers,” Silber said. “ at’s what keeps me going.”
(One of the di cult financial decisions Tobis made when he bought the business was closing the Grand Avenue storefront and turning it into a wholesale-only bakery. Under Tobis’ ownership, Grand began baking its products at Oakland’s Food Mill.)
“Everyone talks about Bob and the Grand Avenue bakery, and I would love to do it,” Silber said, but the challenge is finding an a ordable location. “It’s clear that the brand means a lot to this community,” he added.
About 15 years ago, Silber began immersing himself in the history of Silber’s Bakery, learning everything he could about his family’s legacy.
He learned that the Jewish Museum of Maryland had three binders of memorabilia in its basement, including recipes, memos and handwri en notes. He paid to have everything scanned and received over 300 pages, many of them recipes.
“Bear is uniquely suited to this. He has Jewish bakery in his genes, and he’s built businesses from the ground up,” Tobis said. “He’s the perfect combination of operations and vision to give Grand the future it deserves.”
Tobis is staying on in an advisory role and added, “I’m super excited to see where this goes.”
Hummus Bodega, the Israeli-style, kosher hummus shop in San Francisco’s Richmond District, has closed. Feb. 18 was the last open day, but the owners are continuing to look for a new owner, hopefully someone who can keep the shop kosher.
Isaac Yosef told J. in January that he and fellow partners Din Leib and Yanni were ready to move on. “We’ve been doing it for a long time. … We’ve had no wind in our sails.” Interested buyers can reach Yosef at (858) 337-8533. ■
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SEBASTIAN FAROVITCH emerged just prior to scheduled inducement on Feb. 28, 2024. He is the firstborn of Jason Farovitch and Gabi Fermín, now residing in Austin, Texas. Grandparents Allan Farovitch and Roberta Steiner of San Rafael fell in love with him, as did his Uncle Aaron Farovitch, Aunt Dylan and their children, Fletcher (5 years) and Otis (17 months) of Brooklyn, New York. Seb will be raised in a Spanish-speaking-only household and will join his cousins Fletcher and Otis in learning Spanish from an early age. His grandparents in Venezuela are thrilled with their first grandchild! Bienvenido al hermoso, Sebastian!
Ben Stern, who survived two ghettos, nine concentration camps and two death marches, died Feb. 28 at home in Berkeley. He was 102.
Stern famously worked to prevent neo-Nazis from marching in Skokie, Illinois, in 1977, and he was willing to oppose them in Berkeley when they threatened to come to his city in 2017. He told his life story to countless groups, in the documentary film “Near Normal Man” and in his 2022 memoir, “Near Normal Man: Survival with Courage, Kindness and Hope,” co-authored with his daughter Charlene Stern of Berkeley.
“I’ve got to pay honor to my loved ones who were murdered by the Nazis,” he told J. in 2017. “I survived and I’m carrying out my promise, my obligation to them.”
“He was truly humble,” Charlene told J. “He just wanted to help repair the world, to prevent more horror from happening.”
Stern, who often signed his name with 129592, the concentration camp number tattooed on his arm, was born Bendet Sztern on Sept. 21, 1921, in Mogielnica,
displaced persons camp; they married after only six weeks.
In 1946, they moved to Chicago, where Stern first worked as a carpenter and then founded a successful laundry business.
“While he was liberated by the American Army, he really ‘freed himself’ two years later when he let go of hatred,” Charlene said.
In 1977, the neo-Nazi National Socialist Party of America declared it would march down the streets of the Chicago suburb of Skokie, which had a large Jewish and Holocaust survivor population. Stern knew he couldn’t stay silent and joined a major Jewish pushback against the march.
“I was not nervous,” he told J. in 2010. “After what I went through, nothing could shake me.”
The Sterns moved to Berkeley in 2008 to be close to their two daughters and grandchildren. They were active members of Congregation Netivot Shalom, where Stern essentially had his own designated seat in the second row of the sanctuary.
“I would have understood if he would have been an angry, depressed and withdrawn man. He was the opposite. I got a father who embraced life, loved people and lived life to the fullest.”
Daughter Charlene Stern
“I couldn’t understand how he could come out of that experience with so much love and joy and a mission for justice in this world,” she added. “We would later hear from many people who were impacted by hearing him and said they would lean on Ben’s teachings to help guide their life.”
In 2017, Stern was featured in the Washington Post when he took in a special roommate: Lea Heitfeld, the granddaughter of Nazis who was studying for her master’s degree in Jewish studies at Berkeley’s Graduate Theological Union.
“This act of his opening his home, I don’t know how to describe it, how forgiving or how big your heart must be to do that, and what that teaches me to be in the presence of someone who has been through that and is able to have me there and to love me,” Heitfeld told the Post.
Poland. He was the second youngest of nine children.
After Germany invaded in 1939, he and his family were sent to a ghetto in their town and then to the Warsaw Ghetto, where his father died in 1942. That same year, the teenage Stern was sent to Majdanek. Most of his family were killed at Treblinka.
He later bypassed one of Josef Mengele’s notorious “selections” at Auschwitz by using a false number after being marked for death. Near the end of the war, he survived once again when an inept guard failed to ignite a bomb planted in a barrack packed with Jews.
Stern met his future wife, Chayah “Helen” Kielmanowicz, in the Bergen-Belsen
“When Ben walked in, the congregation felt such reverence and respect. It was similar to taking the Torah out of the ark,” Rabbi Chai Levy told J.
In 2010, Stern was invited to accompany a group of high schoolers on a trip to Poland to visit Jewish memorial sites. His daughter decided to capture the trip on film, which became the half-hour documentary “Near Normal Man.” Its title came from Stern’s belief that after what he lived through, he could never be completely normal.
“I would have understood if he would have been an angry, depressed and withdrawn man. He was the opposite. I got a father who embraced life, loved people and lived life to the fullest. He lit up a room,” Charlene said.
The same year, a group of white supremacists set their sights on Berkeley for a rally. The Jewish community countered with a rally of its own, and ultimately the group backed down. According to a J. article, as Stern spoke at the rally, he was flanked by three rabbis.
“I must tell you, I’m not here alone,” Stern told J. at the start of a march against hate. “I see my family and friends who didn’t make it.”
In 2022, when he was 101, his memoir was published and a book party was held at Netivot Shalom. Levy said the reverence the congregation felt toward him remained until the end.
“We all felt this sense of sacred obligation to know him and witness him and hear his stories and his history,” she said. “We
knew it was a sacred experience to be with him and feel that weight.”
In addition to Charlene, he is survived by daughter Susan Stern of Fairfield, son Norman Stern of Georgia, seven grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.
Donations in his memory can be made to Netivot Shalom, JFCS East Bay, HIAS or Magen David Adom. n
Sept. 1, 1937–Jan. 17, 2024
Nancy, 86, died peacefully at home surrounded by family.
She is survived by daughters Laura Gallop (Michael) and Carol Ferguson (Russell), grandsons David and Brian Gallop and Kyle and Andrew Ferguson, and partner Paul Madwin, as well as many friends, relatives and loved ones.
Born in Los Angeles, Nancy graduated from Beverly Hills High School then attended Cal, beginning her lifelong passion as a Cal Bears fan. Nancy taught high school Spanish in Oakland and Contra Costa County schools for 60 years. She married in 1958, had two daughters, then moved to Moraga and never left. She was a volunteer extraordinaire, donating her time and talents to many organizations. As a volunteer Deputy Commissioner, she performed marriage ceremonies at San Francisco City Hall.
A passionate traveler, she visited 57 different countries over her lifetime, many of those with her partner of 19 years, Paul. She especially loved being a mother and grandmother, always ready to celebrate with her family no matter the occasion.
The family requests that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to AAUW Orinda, Lafayette and Moraga Branch, Cal Athletics, or Planned Parenthood.
Longtime Marin resident Lee Battat passed away on Jan. 29, 2024 after a short illness.
Lee was born Lilo Wertheim to Erna Lehrburger Wertheim and Herman Wertheim in Munich, Germany, in September 1935. Six months later she arrived with her parents in San Francisco. Lee attended San Francisco schools, graduating from George Washington High School in 1953 where she was Vice President of the Senior Class and Co-Editor of the yearbook. That fall Lee matriculated to UC Berkeley where she pledged AE-Phi, was the fall 1956 Women’s editor of the Cal Engineer and a member of The Pelican. Lee graduated in 1957 with a degree in journalism along with membership in the professional societies of Phi Alpha Sigma, Prytanean and Theta Sigma Phi.
After college Lee pursued a career in advertising copywriting for City of Paris, The White House and Livingston stores; later on she was the editor of the San Pedro Pointer and eventually the assistant editor and columnist for the San Rafael Pointer.
Lee met her husband, Frank, in May 1951 at George Washington High but showed little interest in him then. More than six years later they renewed their acquaintance, which led to Lee falling in love with Frank, and they married in the spring of 1958. They first settled in the city and then moved to San Rafael in 1959.
Lee and Frank both believed in giving back
to the community. Lee was involved with Sunny Hills, AIPAC, ORT, Hadassah, JVS, JFCS and served for 12 years on the Executive Board of the JCF Women’s Division. She was also involved in her children’s schools and served on PTA boards including two years as President of the Santa Venetia PTA. She served on the Citizens Advisory Committee for Curriculum for the San Rafael City Schools. Lee was also an excellent campaign manager, having run Dottie Breiner’s two successful bids for City Council.
In 1982 Lee joined the family-owned Lakespring Winery and became their top salesperson. Later she moved on to national marketing and retired in 1992 to devote time to family, friends and giving to her community.
Lee enjoyed the outdoors starting as a child through adulthood. Skiing, hiking, tennis, water aerobics and going to the gym were daily rituals, her motto being “use it or lose it.” For more than four decades she and Frank were ardent boaters, whether by sail or power boat. But above all, her favorite activity was traveling around the world, which she did with gusto with Frank and later as a family.
Lee was an exceptional mother to Mark, Michael and Suzanne, a caring Mother-in-law to Susan Battat and Frank Dowling and an adoring and fun-loving Grandmother to Hannah Battat, Aidan and Cian Dowling.
In a lifetime filled with many achievements, the only one that mattered was her 65-year marriage to Frank. Frank and Lee were true lovers and partners in every sense, and both gave each other a magical wonderful life of love, laughter and happiness. Her vibrant personality, infectious laugh,
caring advice and love will sorely be missed by friends and family near and far.
Contributions to the Rodef Sholom Sacred Space capital campaign preferred.
GLORIA EMILIA ECKSTEIN
March 31, 1934–Feb. 23, 2024
Gloria Emilia Eckstein, age 89, passed peacefully surrounded by her loving family on Friday, Feb. 23, 2024, at San Francisco Rehabilitation Center after a courageous battle with dementia.
Gloria was born in Nicaragua on March 31, 1934, to Arnoldo Corrales and Josefa Aleman.
She emigrated with her sister to San Francisco, California, at the age of 13. She was one of four siblings: Nimia Lorena, Thelma and Arnold.
Gloria married Carl Eckstein and had three sons: Tony, Joseph and John.
June 15, 1924–Jan. 31, 2024
Annie Glass (Chana Glatt) was born June 15, 1924, and died peacefully on January 31, 2024. She was the daughter of Azriel and Shprinza Glatt of WierzbnikStarachowice, Poland.
Annie (or Hanka, as she was also known) was a true “Yiddishe Mama.”
The Obituaries section is supported by a generous grant from Sinai Memorial Chapel, sinaichapel.org
She treasured her family, Jewish traditions, Israel and cooking. As a teenager, she survived Auschwitz along with her two younger sisters, and suffered the loss of her extended family in the Holocaust. In 1978, her youngest sister, Miriam was tragically killed in San Francisco. Despite these immense tragedies, she had an indomitable spirit, and always brought warmth and joy to her family, friends and neighbors. Hanka cared deeply about justice, and she fought for what she believed in. In 1966, she testified against a Nazi official who was
responsible for atrocities in her hometown. Again, in 1970, she traveled to Germany to testify against a commandant at the forced labor camp where she had been interned. In 1996 she was interviewed by the USC Shoah Foundation. A graphic novel about her life, “Hang On To Your Sisters” was written by her grandson.
Annie loved spending time with her friends, caring for her family, preparing beautiful meals, and taking walks in Golden Gate Park. She was a longtime member of Congregation
Adath Israel, along with her beloved husband of 70 years (z”l) Charles (Yeheskiel) Glass, and she was an active supporter of many Jewish organizations and philanthropies. Every Friday night, she would light candles for Shabbat, and her husband would sing “Eshet Chayl,” a tribute to the valor of a Jewish woman in the home. Annie Glass is survived by her sister Sally Recht, children Zepporah Glass and David Glass, as well as five grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
Sinai
It took this paper a long while to get behind ‘women’s lib’MAYA MIRSKY | J. STAFF
“The first Jewish women’s liberation convention, held in New York City recently, served notice that the day is soon approaching when the role of Jewish women will no longer be charted by men alone,” we wrote in a 1973 news brief titled simply “Women’s Lib.”
U.S. Rep. Bella Abzug of New York, a rising star in politics and feminism, spoke at the convention.
“Let us remember,” she said, “that Queen Esther rose to power through the beauty contest route and once in power had to risk her life at the command of a man who worked safely behind the scenes.”
The brief ended with a patronizing line: “Is there a male bold enough to challenge that observation?”
The tone seems like a relic now. But how were women discussed and recognized in our publication through the decades? Since March is Women’s History Month, it seems like the right time to examine how we covered Jewish women’s ongoing efforts toward equality.
Going back to our founding editor in the late 1800s, it’s clear that Rabbi Jacob Voorsanger of San Francisco’s Congregation Emanu El was rather tepid on the subject of women’s rights, including the right to vote.
“I do not say now that woman is not entitled to such political recognition as would illustrate the declaration that her inalienable rights are the same as those of man; but I also say earnestly and emphatically, that such a recognition at an improper time, at the wrong period in our educational progress, would be fraught with dangers to the future the extent of which cannot possibly be calculated.”
He wrote those words in 1896 in an editorial titled “The Women of To-Day.”
Voorsanger didn’t specify any of those “dangers” but stressed that the world wasn’t ready for a gender shakeup. A woman’s role had always been separate from a man’s, and “this point of view, thoroughly old-fashioned as it is, has much in its favor to commend it,” he wrote.
“Deep down at the root of our social evils is this reluctance to be old-fashioned, this hankering after new gods whose worth has not been tried, this mistaken idea that woman used to be a slave.”
No one could argue that Voorsanger was ahead of his time.
In 1928, Rabbi Elliott Burstein of San Francisco’s Congregation Beth Israel likewise used our pages to muse on women, their capacity for courage and their responsibility for countering the bogeyman of assimilation.
“Would that the Jewish woman today would inspire as her mother did — keep the sacred fires of her beautiful ideals of purity always glowing, spread the sunshine of a sweet and benign disposition in her home, instill within her children’s hearts a love for traditional values and ways of life, and above all, be herself prepared to uphold and re-establish her Jewish heritage!”
By the 1940s, the tenor began to shift toward change, and the undercurrent of dissatisfaction with women’s limited public roles started to grow.
“The evolution of the Jewish woman through history has taken her from her first role as benevolent guide to the
“We might even agree that women should give up their seat on a bus to a man, that women should pick up the restaurant check when dining with a man.”
“Miss
family to a far more complex position in society that knows neither boundary nor barrier,” Betty Tigay wrote in 1944.
This sentiment continued to slowly advance. By the 1960s, the murmuring was louder.
“American women demand equal rights in philanthropy as they do in politics and the professions, Mrs. Marvin C. Stang of New York, national director of the United Jewish Appeal women’s division, said here today,” we wrote in 1963. (The irony of our use of her husband’s name to identify this philanthropist is not lost on us in 2024.)
The desire for equality went well beyond philanthropy. Women wanted careers — and recognition. They began to seek roles as rabbis and cantors and as decision-makers in Jewish organizations and synagogues.
In 1975, we heralded Frances Green as the San Francisco Jewish Welfare Federation’s first woman president — and one of only two women with that type of leadership role in the U.S.
However, the fits and starts toward equality were visible in that article.
“Franny Green is quick to tell you that she is no soldier in the legion of Women’s Lib,” Geoffrey Fisher wrote. “She does declare that she thinks women with proper qualifications should be free to compete with men in seeking high office and leadership roles.”
What about the stance of the newspaper itself? Well, in 1973, we wrote:
“This newspaper has never taken a stand against the Women’s Liberation Movement, nor does it intend to do so. As a matter of fact, we are inclined to support equal pay for equal service, women bus drivers, football players, jockeys, black jack dealers, astronauts, deep sea divers.
“We might even agree that women should give up their seat on a bus to a man, that women should pick up the restaurant check when dining with a man, that the women of the house should mow the lawn and repair the leak in the roof.
“In all humility and sincerity we want to state unequivocally that we will fight for the right of women to attain any and all of these things.”
That sounds good, right? But apparently the newspaper’s style guide was off-limits.
“We draw the battle line when the ladies demand that this newspaper alter its editorial style by adopting the use of ‘Ms.’ as a prefix for names of the female gender. Our style is to use ‘Mrs.’ or ‘Miss’ unless some other form is specifically requested by the individual. … We hope our position on Ms. will not create any undue mis-ery.”
Thankfully, this publication has left that kind of thinking in the dustbin of history. (The pun was terrible, too.) We ditched all courtesy titles long ago. And our women’s section no longer focuses on committee meetings, tea parties, wedding announcements and holiday recipes. In fact, there is no “women’s section.”
This newspaper wasn’t particularly at the forefront of the women’s rights movement, although we got there eventually. In honor of Women’s History Month, it’s worth repeating the words of the Jewish Welfare Federation’s Phyllis Cook, printed here in 1975:
“The challenge of feminism, if confronted, can only strengthen Judaism.” n
PASSOVER FOOD & GIFTS
Issue Date: APRIL 5
Ad Reservation Date: March 26
PASSOVER GREETINGS
Issue Date: APRIL 19
Ad Reservation Date: April 9
