J. The Jewish News-02-21-25-Cutting the Cord

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Wednesday, March 12th 5 to 6 pm PT/8 to 9 pm ET

Jewish Communal Leadership: Lessons Learned from Leading Practitioners

Rabbi Ron Wolfson

F inger h u t Profe s sor o f Education , Ameri c an Je w is h University , & Autho r o f jewi s hl e aders h ipboo k. co m

Dan Libenson

P re s ident o f t h e L ipp m a n Kanfer Foundatio n f or L iving T ora h

Rabbi Denise Eger F o unding Spiritual Leader , Cong r ega t ion K ol A m i , W e s t Holly w ood , C A

MODERATOR Kyla Schneider V P Leader s hip Develop m ent and Ma s ter Exe c utive Coa c h, R a tlif f & T aylo r

CEO Jo Ellen Green Kaiser

PUBLISHER Steve Gellman

A.M. Wilensky

EDITOR Natalie Weinstein

NEWS EDITOR Gabe Stutman

CULTURE EDITOR Maya Mirsky

STAFF WRITERS Niva Ashkenazi, Emma Goss

ENGAGEMENT REPORTER Lea Loeb

PHOTOGRAPHER Aaron Levy-Wolins

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Andy Altman-Ohr, Sue Fishko , Dan Pine, Alix Wall

COLUMNISTS Howard Freedman, Karen Galatz, Janet Silver Ghent, Faith Kramer, Dr. Jerry Saliman, Micah Siva

ADVERTISING & PROMOTION

ACCOUNT EXECS Nancy Beth Cohen, Meryl Sokoler

ART & PRODUCTION

DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY DIRECTOR Antonio R. Marquez

GRAPHIC DESIGNERS Michelle Palmer, Steve Romero

BUSINESS

DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR Allison Green

DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATE Carrie Rice

MARKETING ASSISTANT Holley Newmark

ACCOUNTING ASSISTANT Linda Uong

TECHNOLOGY

IT SUPPORT Felipe Barrueto

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

CO-PRESIDENTS Steven Dinkelspiel, Carol Weitz

VICE PRESIDENTS Andy Rittenberg, Jerry Yanowitz

SECRETARY Patricia Rosenberg

TREASURER Jane Springwater

MEMBERS Liz Berman, Alex Bernstein, Mark W. Bernstein (imm. past president), David Cornfield, Alexandra Corvin, Rabbi Joey Felsen, Howard Fine, Inna Gartsman, Alia Wechsler Gorkin, Samantha Grant, Steve Katz, Susan Libitzky, Rabbi Deborah Newbrun, Susan Sasson, Harmon Shragge, Peter Waldman

PAST PRESIDENTS Marc Berger, Lou Haas, Jon Kaufman, Dan Leemon, Adam Noily, Lory Pilchik, William I. Schwartz

Bay Area

Two newly ordained rabbis invigorate East Bay as center of Renewal Judaism

SUE FISHKOFF | CORRESPONDENT

Elizheva Hurvich sat cross-legged inside a homemade chuppah in her Oakland backyard, surrounded by friends, as Amanda Bunde, a kohenet (Hebrew priestess), performed a ritual to welcome her as a newly ordained Renewal rabbi.

of Jewish Renewal, an approach to Judaism that combines old and new, and blends the Hasidic emphasis on direct connection to the Divine with New Age practices, from radical feminism and egalitarianism to meditation, dancing and drumming.

Although much smaller than the other major Jewish streams — in a 2020 Pew study of Jewish Americans, Renewal was counted in a group with “other” small branches, representing a combined 4% affiliation — Renewal

After readings from Sefer Yetzirah, a 2,000-year-old book of Jewish esotericism, the “three elements” mentioned in that book were invoked: Hurvich was showered with flowers (earth) and lightly brushed with feathers (air), before a bundle of sage was lit (fire) and passed around for folks to smell.

“It’s an ancient ritual that predates the Kabbalistic four elements,” Bunde said, referring to Jewish mysticism that emerged out of the 13th-century Zohar and is at the core of Hasidic Judaism. “I like it because it’s holy time, holy space and holy selves.”

The swirls of fragrance, myriad blessings and ancient symbolism in the ritual is typical

has influenced Jewish practice in certain circles, particularly in the Bay Area where the movement has a long, strong history.

That is especially true in the East Bay.

Aquarian Minyan, founded in Berkeley in 1974, is one of the oldest Renewal communities. It was joined in 1984 by Kehilla Community Synagogue in Piedmont, in 1994 by Chochmat HaLev and in 1996 by Beyt Tikkun, both in Berkeley.

Taking their cue from Renewal founder Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, who fled Nazi-occupied Europe and helped create the first Renewal communities in the 1960s, leaders today refrain from calling it a “movement,” preferring to call it an “approach” to Judaism. But one could argue that it looks a whole lot like a movement, with Aleph: Alliance for Jewish Renewal, an umbrella organization that has an ordination program for rabbis, cantors and rabbinic chaplains; a professional organization called Ohalah that meets annually; and a directory of four dozen affiliated congregations, primarily in North America.

Like Hurvich, newly ordained Rabbi Zvika Krieger was celebrated by his commu-

A dozen Renewal rabbis lined up in the center aisle while Krieger walked between them, stopping for hugs along the way, as the congregation sang a niggun, or wordless melody.

way, as the congregation sang a niggun, or wordless melody. He made his way to the bimah, standing under a purple chuppah while Rabbi SaraLeya Schley, a former spiritual leader at Chochmat, told him, “Today you receive a second smicha [ordination], from your community, which will make a brit, a covenant with you.”

After Krieger shared a list of his commitments with the congregation, those attending shouted out their commitments to him: “I commit to holding you with love,” “I commit to emulating your ethical chutzpah,” “I commit to dancing ecstatically with you and loving God on the dance floor.”

Finally Krieger turned around, the

nity in a colorful ritual at Berkeley’s Chochmat HaLev, where he’s served as spiritual leader since 2022.

On Jan. 25 in the main sanctuary of the 30-year-old congregation, five local Renewal rabbis each spoke about one of Krieger’s spiritual heroes, including the Ba’al Shem Tov who founded Hasidism in the 18th century, the late Schachter-Shalomi — known as Reb Zalman — and the late Rabbi Burt Jacobson, founding rabbi of Kehilla.

Then a dozen Renewal rabbis lined up in the center aisle while Krieger walked between them, stopping for hugs along the

congregation pressed forward tightly, and he fell backward into their waiting arms as blessings for him were shouted out.

“Do we accept Zvika as our rabbi?” Schley asked, to which the congregation responded with a loud “Yes!”

Hurvich and Krieger are two of the eight rabbis ordained by Aleph last month, and both live in Oakland, illustrating yet again the East Bay’s preeminent position in the Renewal family.

Five of Aleph’s approximately 40 affiliated communities are in the Bay Area, including

continued on page 39

Rabbi Elizheva Hurvich is welcomed to spiritual leadership with a ritual in her backyard on Jan. 19. (SUE FISHKOFF)

Berkeley’s Chochmat HaLev community blesses Rabbi Zvika Krieger during a Jan. 25 celebration of his rabbinic ordination. (AARON LEVY-WOLINS/J. STAFF)

Jewish fertility nonprofit to shut down after

NIVA ASHKENAZI & LEA LOEB | J. STAFF

Before Rabbi Idit Solomon founded a fertility-focused nonprofit, she struggled for years to get pregnant. She had turned to in-vitro fertilization, which led to anguish and financial strain after multiple cycles. She also felt isolated from the Jewish community in her grief, she told J.

Solomon decided that if she ever became pregnant, she would pay it forward to other Jews facing similar hardships. After additional IVF attempts, Solomon received the news she’d longed for, and in 2012 she gave birth to twin girls. By that time, she was already working to create Hasidah, focused on helping hopeful parents-to-be dealing with fertility challenges.

For over a decade, the Berkeley-based nonprofit with the motto “build Jewish families” has distributed grants averaging $5,000 to $10,000 to individuals and couples to pay for IVF procedures. Solomon has also offered spiritual care and resources to destigmatize the topic of infertility, which can be hard for some people to discuss.

In September, though, Hasidah transi-

“Our No. 1 donor type was a grateful patient.”

Rabbi

tioned to a spend-down model, prioritizing IVF grants. Once the remaining $40,000 runs out, Solomon said in early February, the nonprofit will shut down.

Solomon, who serves as Hasidah’s CEO, said the decision to close the nonprofit was tied to difficulties in fundraising. She also noted that the fertility-support landscape has expanded since Hasidah’s early days, with more organizations providing financial and other resources for fertility issues and with abundant information available online.

“A lot of pressure that we got was constantly about ‘expand, expand, expand,’” Solomon said. “But I think we’re just going to celebrate what we did, which was extraordinary.”

Solomon said Hasidah’s IVF grants resulted in the birth of almost 60 babies, served more than 1,000 clients and provided free information online, much of it Jewish-oriented, to countless others aspiring to become parents.

“Be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 9:7) is considered the first commandment given by God and one of the most important. In Israel, the state fully funds fertility treatments for Israeli citizens up to age 45 with a

Rabbi Gershon Albert, Rebbetzin Meira Albert and their children. (COURTESY)

limit of two children. Israel also has become a medical destination for treatments whose cost is prohibitive elsewhere.

IVF treatment is notoriously expensive.

According to a 2024 report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the average cost for a single IVF cycle can range from $15,000 to $20,000 and sometimes exceed $30,000. Because many people must undergo multiple cycles, the financial strain accumulates rapidly. IVF treatment is often not covered by insurance. California

is one of nearly two dozen states with laws for covering infertility treatments, but the terms vary widely.

Hasidah, which is Hebrew for “stork,” previously received funding from the Jewish Federation of the East Bay, which in 2019 became part of the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation and Endowment Fund, and from San Francisco’s Mount Zion Health Fund, among others. However, most of its budget, including the entirety of the IVF grant pool, came from individual donors,

some of whom, like Solomon, had their own experiences with infertility.

“Our No. 1 donor type was a grateful patient … who’s been through it and then gives back,” she said. “We even had past recipients of our grants who would give back.”

Rebbetzin Meira Albert was one such recipient.

Although she and her husband, Rabbi Gershon Albert of Beth Jacob Congregation in Oakland, were able to conceive their first child naturally, routine genetic testing during pregnancy revealed that she has a genetic mutation called Fragile X syndrome. This disorder causes a range of delays, including intellectual, behavioral and developmental issues. For Albert, it affects fertility.

“We were told that having my first child was lucky, or God,” she said.

The couple knew they wanted more children and would need help to conceive. They met with specialists, and she went through fertility treatments, hoping that a combination of science and faith would bring good news.

“Even though the doctor said it would take a miracle, we tried to retrieve my own eggs,” Albert said. “But it didn’t work. I didn’t get any eggs.”

By that point, the Alberts had exhausted their funds. Their family had already pitched in to cover some of the medical costs, and living on Meira’s social worker salary and Gershon’s rabbi salary left little disposable income for them to keep trying.

Fortunately, congregants at their Modern Orthodox synagogue connected them with Hasidah, and they were quickly approved for a grant. Because she had already successfully carried one child and undergone fertility treatments, Albert was a good candidate for IVF using an egg donor and her husband’s sperm.

For some reason, though, the transfer failed.

“That was quite devastating for me, because it was a lot to get to that point,” Albert recalled. She was ready to give up. “I wasn’t going to put my body through it anymore.”

She decided to try one final transfer, this time using two of the four remaining embryos to improve the odds of one sticking. Those two embryos developed into a healthy set of twins, a boy and a girl, who are now 6 years old. A few months after the twins were born, Albert discovered she was pregnant again with their “‘miracle’ baby against all odds.”

Albert was so grateful to Hasidah that

Idit Solomon, Hasidah founder

funding dries up and IVF landscape shifts

she began working for the organization, leveraging her background in social work.

“It’s a testament of how much I was indebted to them and how much they helped me,” she said. “I wanted to work for them and help other people through their struggles.”

As other fertility-related nonprofits and financial aid programs sprang up over the years, Hasidah cited these new resources as alternatives or even additional sources of funding for IVF.

When Hebrew Free Loan in San Francisco started a fertility loan program around 2019, for example, HFL executive director Cindy Rogoway could tell early on that collaborating with Hasidah had potential.

“She has referred a lot of people to us over the years who took out loans,” Rogoway told J. “I’m a big believer in collaboration.… I think it’s all for the better good of the community, and this was a prime example of one that really worked beautifully. I was very sad to hear when Idit told me that it

was time to close [Hasidah] down.”

Hebrew Free Loan makes 15 to 20 fertility-related loans per year, with around 40 loans currently outstanding, totaling over $500,000.

Even when Solomon could not offer financial support, she sought to help clients by combining her experience in pastoral care as a Reform rabbi with what she had learned during years of personal struggle.

“I was getting calls all the time for grants, and I would hear people asking very deep spiritual questions,” Solomon said. “I started offering that care and developed a framework over the years,” which she then shared with other rabbis to use.

Hasidah’s website houses Jewish approaches to infertility, such as a tashlich ritual for fertility around the High Holidays, a blessing for a newborn after infertility or a previous pregnancy loss, and a prayer before starting IVF. For clergy, Solomon has developed written materials for guiding congregants dealing with infertility. She has

also led training seminars on the emotional and spiritual elements tied to the issue. Once Hasidah closes, the resources that Solomon has accumulated will need to find a new home. Solomon told J. she has so far

considered options such as transferring the information to a national group like the Jewish Fertility Organization or I Was Supposed to Have a Baby.

Dr. Aimee Baron, a former pediatrician who herself had twins as a result of IVF, founded I Was Supposed to Have a Baby in 2019. She has collaborated with Solomon on summits on Jewish fertility.

“We would be thrilled to have her resources,” Baron said, “and with very clear credit saying that these resources came from Hasidah.”

Despite her years of work to shine a light on infertility in the Jewish world, Solomon credits the clients for their inspiration and insights. “By far one of the most meaningful experiences of Hasidah was when I could just work with people going through this,” she said. She compiled her resource library by “listening to the questions that people ask me and realizing these are the issues that people really have. Because that’s what I heard, that’s what I addressed.” n

THE CREATIVE SPIRIT OF SAN FRANCISCO

“Star Ferry”

By Elise Jordan

Artwork by the Residents of

Rabbi Idit Solomon (COURTESY)

Spotlight on the Community Our Crowd

COMINGS & GOINGS

Elyse Kaye has been appointed executive director of Mt. Zion Health Fund, a supporting foundation of the Jewish Community Federation and Endowment Fund. Mt. Zion Health Fund is a philanthropic organization dedicated to advancing health equity and improving access to care in San Francisco. Kaye brings more than 25 years of leadership experience to the role.

HONORS

A.J. Sass of Oakland was awarded the Sydney Taylor Book Award silver medal in the middle grade category for “Just Shy of Ordinary.” The award is named for the author of “All-of-a-Kind Family,” the first in a series about a Jewish family living in New York’s Lower East Side near the turn of the 20th century. The award is administered by the Association of Jewish Libraries and recognizes titles for children and teens that exemplify high literary standards while authentically portraying the Jewish experience.

Anita Friedman, longtime executive director of S.F.-based Jewish

Family and Children’s Services and its Holocaust Center and board president of the Koret Foundation, will be honored for her leadership and dedication to combating hate, advancing education and preserving Holocaust memory by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum at its Western Region Tribute Dinner on March 19 in Beverly Hills. Friedman is the child of Holocaust survivors and is co-chair of the Governor’s Council on Holocaust and Genocide Education. The tribute dinner is co-chaired by Sam Lauter and Susan Lowenberg

Alon Liubovitch a student at Wilcox High School in Santa Clara, was awarded the Shine A Light on Antisemitism Civic Courage Award, presented by the Jewish Education Project. Liubovitch founded his school’s Jewish Student Union and also serves as president and helps organize events to promote Jewish culture. When faced with antisemitic comments and threats, Liubovitch advocated for himself and

Anita Friedman (JAMEY STILLINGS/COURTESY FIRST REPUBLIC BANK)

his peers by collaborating with school administrators. The award recognizes students, educators, gamers and influencers who take meaningful action against antisemitism. He was one of two students nationwide to win the award.

Contra Costa Midrasha will honor Devra Aarons for her 18 years of leadership at its annual gala on Feb. 22. Aarons serves as executive director of the midrasha, which provides an educational and social community for Jewish teens in grades 8-12. Aarons was the recipient of the 2020 Ruby Award from Jewish LearningWorks and earned an executive master’s in Jewish education from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 2023.

Eitan Manhoff has been selected as one of five judges for the 2025 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards at San Diego Comic Con. Manhoff, who was featured in J. a decade ago, is the son of a rabbi and the owner of Cape and Cowl Comics in Oakland, which won the Will Eisner Spirit of Comics Retail award in 2023. Eisner was honored by the Jewish Museum in New York City in 2006 as one of the “Masters of American Comics.”

Jill Suzanne Jacobs, director of community relations at Claremont Hillel, and Hadar Aviram, a professor at UC Law San Francisco, were

Book Launch: “Connecting Dots” by Joshua A. Miele Author

in Conversation with J. Contributing Editor Alix Wall

Join us Tuesday, March 4 at 7 PM at the JCC East Bay for an evening of celebration and connection. Meet Dr. Joshua A. Miele and hear insights and stories from his latest book in conversation with journalist Alix Wall.

Josh is a MacArthur Fellow, scientist, and disability rights activist. He is known for inventing inclusive technologies that help people with disabilities navigate the world. He works with companies and organizations, including Amazon, on non-visual customer experiences, accessible designs, and disability inclusion.

Alix Wall is a contributing editor of J. The Jewish News of Northern California. She is also a contributor to the Vows section of the New York Times and writer/producer of the forthcoming documentary film “The Lonely Child.” As a contributor to local news site Berkeleyside, she wrote the first profile about Josh after his MacArthur Fellowship and “genius grant” was announced in 2021.

“Connecting Dots” chronicles Josh’s experience learning how to navigate the world as a blind person and using his intellect and creativity to help make the world a better place for others like him. This captivating memoir offers a powerful, humorous, and triumphant perspective on life.

JCC East Bay: 1414 Walnut St., Berkeley | Tickets $5 jcceastbay.org/events/book-launch-connecting-dots

LEA LOEB | J. STAFF

A.J. Sass. (DEVEN SASS-CAO)

Elyse Kaye

selected to participate in the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion’s inaugural class of students entering the rabbinical school through its new virtual pathway. Jacobs grew up in the Bay Area, attending Temple Isaiah of Lafayette. Aviram was born in Jerusalem and writes about the intersection of law, criminology and sociology. Minna Stess of Petaluma was honored on the California Assembly floor by Assemblymember Damon Connolly of San Rafael. Stess, an 18-year-old skateboarder, represented the U.S. in the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics in the women’s park event. Connolly presented the first-time Olympic competitor with a resolution to commend her achievements.

HAPPENINGS

In observance of International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Jan. 27, the California Legislative Jewish Caucus hosted the California Mobile Museum of Tolerance at the state Capitol for the first time. The mobile exhibit was created in partnership with the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles and featured interactive exhibits and educational modules to foster respect, tolerance and human dignity. Mobile Museums of Tolerance also operate in Illinois, Florida, New York and Canada. Santa Clara University, in partnership with Hillel of Silicon Valley and Hillel International’s Campus Climate Initiative team, hosted a regional one-day summit on Jan. 24 for administrators titled “Jewish Identity, Antisemitism, and Inclusion on Campus and Beyond.”

Thirty-eight administrators attended from five college campuses, including De Anza College and San Jose State University. A key goal of the summit was to help administrators and sta better understand the needs of Jewish students, recognize the diversity of the Jewish community and address antisemitism.

The HaZamir Silicon Valley Chapter will perform with 35 other chapters from across the U.S. and Israel at Carnegie Hall on March 23 as part of the annual HaZamir International Festival. HaZamir is an international Jewish teen choir for high school students to sing classical, contemporary and popular Jewish music.

OPPORTUNITIES

Nominations are open for the Jewish Community Federation and Endowment Fund’s Judith Chapman Memorial Women’s Leadership Award, honoring women who are role models in the Jewish community. Nominees should demonstrate significant and sustained volunteer leadership, model the importance of tzedakah, have a significant connection with the Federation, demonstrate volunteer leadership in the secular community and mentor, motivate and encourage others to follow in their footsteps. A $2,500 grant will be awarded and designated to a nonprofit of the recipient’s choice. Nominations close March 3. tinyurl.com/judith-chapman-25

Nominations and applications for the EarlyJ Impact Award are open. The award consists of a $10,000 personal prize and a $5,000 prize allocated to the recipient’s preschool to support an initiative led by the recipient and designed to expand programming and enrollment. The award is open to early childhood educators currently teaching in a Jewish preschool in the Bay Area with at least three years of experience in Jewish early childhood education. Nominate or apply by March 10. earlyj.org/impact-award ■

Minna Stess competing in 2024. (BRYCE KANIGHTS)

Rabbi Meyer May and Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis in front of the mobile museum at the state Capitol, Jan. 27. (COURTESY)

UC Berkeley Jews reflect a year after

EMMA GOSS | J. STAFF

Zellerbach Playhouse shows no trace today of the battering it took a year ago when a violent mob attacked the UC Berkeley performing arts venue.

A glass door and large window were broken the night of Feb. 26, 2024, when many of the 200 protesters forcefully banged against Zellerbach’s entrance and eventually stormed the theater. The protest shut down a planned speech by Ran Bar-Yoshafat, an Israeli attorney and combat reservist who had recently served in Gaza, and then forced him and attendees to flee through an underground tunnel. Several Jewish

But it may not be enough. A new federal investigation, announced Feb. 3, alleges that Cal’s progress in addressing the climate for Jewish students has fallen short. The prestigious university also faces a federal lawsuit over its handling of anti-Jewish discrimination and harassment. And last month, an Israeli postdoc at Cal filed a separate lawsuit alleging discrimination by her union.

The campus has been under intense public scrutiny since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas massacre. Anti-Israel protests repeatedly erupted on campus during that academic year, along

students who were at the event were injured in the chaos. One left with bruises around her neck.

“It was just hands being thrown, spit flying out of the corners of masks. It was slurs being thrown all over the place. It was really, really mortifying and terrifying,” recalled Vida Keyvanfar, a student leader who helped organize the event.

Keyvanfar was stationed by the front doors of the venue. She wrestled to keep the doors shut as protesters tried to enter by force. They eventually swung the doors open, spraining her thumb and wrist in the process. She couldn’t see protesters’ faces because they wore masks and kaffiyehs.

“If you were standing in that mob … you could barely see eyes,” she told J.

Since that night one year ago, the campus has invested millions of dollars to address Jewish student safety and has mandated antisemitism training for all incoming students. Ron Hassner, the UC Berkeley professor who famously slept in his office for two weeks to protest administrative inaction after the Zellerbach disturbance, now applauds campus leadership for “setting things right.”

with violent language calling for “intifada” and supporting Palestinian “resistance.” In the spring, two pro-Israel demonstrators were attacked in two separate incidents at a pro-Palestinian tent encampment on campus.

Regarding the Zellerbach incident itself, no one was ever arrested.

UC police opened a criminal investigation, interviewing people who had witnessed the violence and vandalism outside and inside Zellerbach, Dan Mogulof, assistant vice chancellor of communications, wrote last month in an email to J.

Cal police also publicly posted and distributed photos of five suspects, “most of whom were masked to one extent or another,” Mogulof wrote. The photos were circulated widely across local news outlets in late March 2024 and were emailed to all students, staff and faculty, according to Mogulof.

“They almost never do that,” Ethan Katz, a professor and the faculty director for the university’s Center of Jewish Studies, said about the release of such photos. “It reflects a serious level of commitment.”

None of those suspects was ever identified, and the case is

cold. However, the investigation remains open, Mogulof said.

“It’s unfortunate, it’s frustrating, but I also understand,” Keyvanfar said of the inability to identify the suspects given that most protesters covered their faces. “I really think that even the police officers themselves were really afraid and didn’t expect that [level of violence]. It makes sense to me that they would never be able to track down those people.”

The memories of what happened at Zellerbach Playhouse still haunt Keyvanfar, who graduated last spring and moved home to Southern California.

“I didn't realize that would follow me, even to another city where I'm used to feeling safe,” said Keyvanfar, 22. “But it did, and my parents made me do trauma therapy and things like that.”

Keyvanfar said she doesn’t identify as a victim. She credits the events of that night, as well as subsequent conversations with attorneys from the Anti-Defamation League and the Jewish advocacy group StandWithUs, for inspiring her to apply to law school.

“[Enforcing the rules] sends a message to those people that your behavior isn’t welcome here, and you can’t treat Jews like they’re a chew toy.”

Shaya Keyvanfar, Cal student

“The environment at Berkeley made me really strong and made me prepared for the worst situations, and also made me understand how hate forms,” she said.

Current students and faculty said that what occurred at Zellerbach showed UC Berkeley at its worst and that administrators have taken noticeable steps over the past year to support Jewish student safety.

In the wake of the Zellerbach incident, the university invested $8 million in more robust campus security measures, mostly toward staffing, Mogulof said. The reservation process for booking student-sponsored events on campus has also changed, giving administrators a heads-up on all scheduled events.

In March 2024, three weeks after the Zellerbach protest, Bar-Yoshafat was welcomed back to campus and spoke to a room of 150 people with no interference. Campus police and private security helped to ensure that the event went smoothly.

Anti-Zionist campus rage is no longer a staple of daily life, but rather “comes in waves,” said Keyvanfar’s sister Shaya, who is a sophomore and a campus senator representing Jewish students. She, too, was inside Zellerbach the night of Bar-Yoshafat’s canceled speech and witnessed a friend get “strangled” as she tried to stop the protesters from entering. Shortly after, she saw her sister Vida crying in pain.

“When I saw what happened to my sister, I was trying to hold in my cries because I didn’t want to scare the other Jewish participants in there, my friends, who I’d asked to come to the event,” she said.

Now, as a campus senator, Shaya Keyvanfar leads a team of some 20 students who help keep a record of antisemitic incidents on campus.

UC Berkeley sophomore Shaya Keyvanfar at the Zellerbach Playhouse a year after she witnessed the violent protest. (AARON LEVY-WOLINS/J. STAFF)

protest at Zellerbach turned violent

For instance, she noted that a group of students from Berkeley Law invited Simcha Rothman, a right-wing member of Israel’s Knesset, to speak last fall. He was driven off the stage within minutes by a mix of pro-Palestinian protesters and anti-Netanyahu Israeli demonstrators.

“There was a protest happening inside of the event, and people were being verbally harassed,” Keyvanfar told J. Rothman delivered the rest of his remarks over Zoom.

Two weeks later, on the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre in Israel, pro-Palestinian students and faculty participated in a “week of rage,” which included a walkout that triggered a standoff with pro-Israel counterprotesters.

“There was lots of graffiti around campus, and people were saying mean things and antisemitic things to students,” Keyvanfar said. In violation of campus rules, protesters hung a banner from the Campanile, the campus’ iconic clock tower, with the words “glory to the resistance,” she said.

Cal’s new chancellor, Richard Lyons, who stepped into the role in July, “was tested early,” said Katz.

Sather Gate, the main entrance to campus, was blocked twice in October by pro-Palestinian protesters. In both cases, the university intervened. The first time, staff got protesters to disperse after an hour. The second time, university staff took down an unauthorized structure overnight.

Last month, administrators removed an online description for a Feb. 11 anti-Zionist event that explicitly denied the rapes and sexual violence committed by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023.

Lyons emailed a statement to J. in late January that described Cal’s efforts to turn the page from last year’s violence.

“I believe the university’s review of security procedures

and the reservation process for student events, conducted after the terrible incident at Zellerbach Playhouse, was a needed and essential step,” Lyons said in the statement.

“Subsequent to that review we have seen nothing similar occur on campus, and it is my intention to maintain our commitment to enforce campus rules and policies, and ensure appropriate consequences are imposed when rules and

policies are violated.”

Lyons also made a point to engage directly with Jewish students by attending Shabbat dinners last semester, one hosted at Berkeley’s Hillel and the other at Chabad.

“On those Friday nights I was deeply moved by the warm welcome I received, and by the powerful sense of community, connection, and commitment that was evident at both of the gatherings,” Lyons wrote to J.

“He’s made a really demonstrable effort,” Katz said.

Shaya Keyvanfar concurred.

“So far, I only have really good things to say about him,” she said. “I feel really hopeful about the rest of the year too. He has not hesitated, and it’s not about taking the side of Jews over the side of anti-Israel people. It’s about the fact that he’s there to enforce the rules, and he’s been doing that to a much

“It was just hands being thrown, spit flying out of the corners of masks. It was slurs being thrown all over the place. It was really, really mortifying and terrifying.”

greater extent than our last chancellor was. As a result, it’s led to much more order on campus, and it sends a message to those people that your behavior isn’t welcome here, and you can’t treat Jews like they’re a chew toy.”

To mark the anniversary of the Zellerbach incident, Keyvanfar plans to introduce a bill this month to the Associated UC Student Senate condemning the violence of that night. Coincidentally, days ahead of the Feb. 26 anniversary, the Batsheva Dance Company from Israel is scheduled to perform at the adjacent auditorium inside Zellerbach Hall. n

Vida Keyvanfar, Cal graduate

Students set up for an evening concert on Jan. 25, 2025, at UC Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza, which had been taken over by a proPalestinian tent encampment during the previous academic year. (AARON LEVY-WOLINS/J. STAFF)

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators argue with pro-Israel demonstrators at a UC Berkeley event on Sept. 24, 2024, where farright Knesset member Simcha Rothman was the featured speaker. (JUDY MALTZ/HAARETZ)

HEBREW UNIVERSITY: A CENTURY OF PROGRESS Celebrating 100 years of academic

On the 1st of April 1925, in a ceremony attended by dignitaries from across the region and the world, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem officially opened its academic doors.

After decades of thought and over seven years of construction — from the setting of the cornerstones in 1918 to the start of classes in 1925 — the University’s official opening marked the start of a new era, setting the stage for the institution to become a beacon of academic excellence and an internationally-renowned incubator of discovery and innovation.

100 years on, the Hebrew University is linked to new inventions and schools of thought that impact on nearly every walk of life; from the foods we plant and eat, the medicines and machines we use to treat disease, the air we breathe, the nature of political and social discourse — among countless other areas where the University has left its mark.

In looking back on the University’s achievements over the past century, we know that for the people of Israel and her friends and supporters around the world, the Hebrew University has become far more than just a center of learning and productivity.

Indeed, the accomplishments reached within its many halls and campuses have been instrumental in charting the forward progress of the State of Israel, a nation blessed with tremendous success even in the face of ongoing challenges and threats to its very existence.

Alongside the founding of the University itself, committees around the world were created to support its development. As such, American Friends of the Hebrew University will also cele-

brate its 100th anniversary in 2025, marking one hundred years of partnering in growth.

To mark the onset of this historic year, we took the opportunity to speak to top executives at the Hebrew University and its American Friends to hear first-hand why this anniversary is so important for Israel, for the Jewish people, and for the world at large.

Yishai Fraenkel is the Vice President and Director General of Hebrew University, responsible for advancing a vision that he anticipates will firmly establish the University as one of the top centers of higher learning in the world.

As CEO of American Friends of the Hebrew University, Joshua Rednik oversees an ambitious and continuously expanding development effort manifested by what he describes as the “inextricable bond” between the American community and the University.

Both say that what sets the Hebrew University apart is how it is far more than just an academic institution. It has become a pillar of Israeli society, with its success being instrumental in both the founding and remarkable growth of the State of Israel and the modern Zionist movement.

Yishai points out that the initial concept for the Hebrew University can be dated back to the First Zionist Congress in 1897 and that its founding, more than two decades before Israel declared its independence, “can be seen as the first major project of modern Zionism.”

Joshua adds that it would be shortsighted to view the success of the University as solely an Israeli, or even Jewish, enterprise. “The vision of the Hebrew University really is about creating a better world for all people. Whether it’s through developing better medicines, a healthier and more sustainable environment or any of the countless areas with which the University is involved, it is no exaggeration to say that the daily pursuit is about creating a better future for all people to be able to live and thrive together.”

That pursuit to better society is what has helped forge

achievement and global contributions

relationships between the University and the international community, driving philanthropic investment in its forward development. “My experience has been that people view support of the Hebrew University as a fundamental way to achieve two meaningful ends: fulfill their commitments to Zionist ideals and improve the world around us,” Joshua says.

Yishai points to specific examples of how the University is charting an academic course that will benefit people far beyond Israel’s borders. “Our motivating vision is to see Israel as a light unto the nations in areas of science and forward-thinking. This manifests itself in essential research in areas including climate science and sustainability but no less so in educating the community on how minority populations can live together or how to advance social justice and greater inclusion.”

Like the early Zionist movement itself, the Hebrew University faced many challenges in its early years, and sadly those challenges have remained an ever-present reality even all these decades later.

“The vision of the Hebrew University really is about creating a better world for all people.”

Joshua Rednik, CEO of AFHU

As the University prepares to mark this 100th anniversary, Israel finds itself amidst another deeply tragic and increasingly costly war. “Sadly, this is far from the first time where we as a university community have been forced to respond to the pressures of war. The cornerstone of Hebrew University was laid while World War I was still raging and we have been here for every moment of tension,” Yishai says. “But our mission then and today has been to remain resilient and utilize all the means at our disposal to grow and support a diverse and inclusive Hebrew University community, one that reflects the democratic and multi-cultural values of Israeli society.”

Since the beginning of the war over 7,500 Hebrew University students have been called to military-reserve duty and all-too-many people from within the HU community have fallen or were injured in battle.

That sense of dedication is something which both Yishai and Joshua say is the ultimate mark of achievement, and what they believe will carry the University forward over the next century.

“While the miracle of the modern State of Israel might have happened even without Hebrew University, we take incredible pride in the fact that we supported it and were at the heart of making Israel the economic powerhouse and international success that it is today,” says Yishai. “The halls of Hebrew University have truly expanded the boundaries of human knowledge and science. As we now look towards this second century, it’s about doing all we have been doing and much more, with the specific goal of becoming one of the top twenty universities in the world.”

For Joshua, the next century is about harnessing what he believes firmly is the University’s greatest resource — its people. “Without the right people teaching, researching, and leading an institution, nothing else matters. Everywhere you turn in Israel, you will see leaders and achievers who trace their paths directly back to the University. I am very confident that if we continue to focus on our people and maximizing their potential, in 100 years’ time, humanity will look back at this moment and be able to state with certainty that the Hebrew University was instrumental in creating a better world.”

Suspended Israeli professor to tell his story in San Jose

DAN PINE | CORRESPONDENT

Before Oct. 7, 2023, Columbia Business School professor Shai Davidai was no activist.

“I’d drop my kids at school. Work, teach, have lab meetings with Ph.D. students, close my laptop at 5 o’clock, then be with the kids. Rinse and repeat,” he told J. earlier this month.

Davidai will visit the Bay Area to tell his story at a Hillel of Silicon Valley fundraising event on March 9 in San Jose.

Nothing has been the same for Davidai since Oct. 7. After the worst terrorist attack in Israel’s history and the onset of war in Gaza, Columbia became a hotbed of intense anti-Israel activism, reaching its apex last spring when protesters pitched tents on Columbia’s main quad, spearheading a national movement.

Shortly after the Hamas massacre, Davidai began speaking out. Since then, he has amassed 105,000 followers on X and 131,000 followers on Instagram by documenting what he sees as rampant antisemitism and expressions of support for terrorism from Columbia protesters — as well as the university’s response, of which he has been unsparingly critical.

In the process, Davidai has become a household name for those paying close attention to the post-Oct. 7 debate surrounding anti-Israel activism on college campuses.

Davidai testified on Capitol Hill in June, speaking before the House Committee on Ways and Means at a hearing titled “The Crisis on Campus: Antisemitism, Radical Faculty, and the Failure of University Leadership.”

“I am here to speak up for every decent American who believes that antisemitism and support for terrorism have no place on campus,” Davidai said. “Yes, I have paid a personal price for speaking up, but I would rather pay the price for speaking up than the price for staying silent.”

Columbia Business School in 2019. He is currently an assistant professor in the school’s management division with a special focus on the psychology of decision-making,

Amid an anti-Israel protest at Columbia on Oct. 7, 2024, the first anniversary of the Hamas massacre, Davidai posted videos on social media of his public confrontations with Columbia administrators.

In one video, Davidai told Columbia COO Cas Holloway, “You are indifferent, and you know what? Hatred happens when people like you are indifferent. You are the chief operat-

ing officer of Columbia. Do you realize that?”

He has continued to pay a price. The most recent and most public one: suspension.

In October, Davidai was temporarily suspended and barred from campus because of what the university described as the harassment of Columbia leadership. The suspension remains in place and he has no classes this semester.

Davidai will tell his story when he appears as the keynote speaker at L’Dor v’Dor 2025, a fundraiser for Hillel of Silicon Valley.

His appearance in San Jose will reflect his current role and focus. From the moment he was suspended, Davidai said, he transitioned from college professor to what he calls “community organizer.”

“I've been speaking with as many audiences as I can, engaging in conversation,” he said of his efforts to sound the alarm on increased antisemitism. “I travel around the world telling people what's happening on campus and city streets, and I help them organize.”

He has also turned to podcasting to spread his message with “Here I Am with Shai Davidai.”

A native of Kiryat Ono, just east of Tel Aviv, Davidai attended Hebrew University before earning a Ph.D. from Cornell in 2015. He became a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton and spent three years as an assistant professor of psychology at the New School for Social Research before joining

Despite his suspension, Davidai remains a faculty member and still receives a paycheck. However, the university demanded he undergo a sensitivity training course before he will be allowed back in the classroom. The professor said he’s willing to do so, except for one requirement.

He will not sign a nondisclosure agreement.

“Columbia requires that I sign a gag order about the training,” he said. “I refuse to sign. I'm completing this [training] for a crime I did not commit. So I want to be able to talk about it. I’m contesting this with a lawyer, but they refuse to work with us.”

According to his Columbia Business School bio, Davidai studies “people’s everyday judgments of themselves, other people, and society as a whole…. His topics of expertise include the psychology of judgment, economic inequality and social mobility, social comparisons, and zero-sum thinking.”

“Now that we have unearthed how deep the problems go, the goal is to create a normal future.”

Shai Davidai, Columbia professor

Campus newspaper The Spectator referenced another video of Davidai telling assistant director of public safety Bobby Lau, “You are such a useless administrator. But you know what, there were so many useless administrators in Nazi Germany. And you know what? After the war, they said they did everything they could.”

After the confrontations, the administration alleged that Davidai “repeatedly harassed and intimidated University employees in violation of University policy,” a Columbia spokesperson told The Spectator.

Davidai categorically denies the accusations.

“For the past 16 months I've never broken any rule,” he told J. “I'm aware I get very close to the boundaries, but I never do anything that breaches a rule. There are numerous videos of [protesting] students supporting terrorism, confronting faculty, cursing them. I've experienced it, too. I did not put the administration in a comfortable situation, and I admit to that. But that doesn't mean it’s harassment or intimidation.”

He said Columbia officials not only failed to provide him with definitions of the terms “harassment” and “intimidation,” they also “never replied to a few very basic questions asked by my lawyers: Who did I harass? How? What did I do? And who is in charge of this decision? I don’t know what the crime is. Given that, Columbia is the investigator, judge and executioner.”

He finds it ironic that, given his research into the psychology of judgment and decision-making, his teaching career has been “placed in purgatory,” as he put it.

“We’re never going back to normal,” he said regarding Columbia. “Now that we have unearthed how deep the problems go, the goal is to create a normal future. That has nothing to do with me. It’s a bigger issue with Columbia, the faculty, the administration and student organizations.”

He hasn’t been totally abandoned. In November, a few weeks after his suspension, more than 400 university professors, staff, students, alumni and parents signed a letter addressed to Columbia’s interim president, Katrina Armstrong, blasting the decision to suspend him.

Earlier this month, after President Donald Trump issued an executive order titled “Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism,” the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights opened antisemitism investigations into Columbia and other universities, including UC Berkeley.

But Davidai laments that few of his colleagues have stood by him as the only faculty member suspended amid the campus turmoil since Oct. 7.

“When there’s a rally, when I come to counterprotest, very few professors show up, in a university with 5,000 professors. I work with 30 [professors] in my department, and none have said anything. These are people training America’s future leaders, and they failed.”

Davidai said he has been forever changed by what has happened to him and by the explosion of Jew hatred. But he sees an even more insidious threat than the hatred alone.

“We focus so much on educating people on the problems of hatred,” he said, “but we really have to educate on the problem of indifference. I now see on an everyday level the dangers of hatred and the dangers of indifference. They work together.” n

L’Dor V’Dor 2025, sponsored by Hillel of Silicon Valley, is set for 3 p.m. Sunday, March 9, at the Rotary Summit Center, 88 S. Fourth Street, San Jose. Tickets, $72. $18 for students. hillelsv.org/ product/ldor-vdor-ticket

(COURTESY DANIEL DAVIDAI)

Jewish man suing Oakland coffee house that ejected him over Star of David hat

GABE STUTMAN | J. STAFF

A team of lawyers is putting the finishing touches on a lawsuit against Oakland’s Jerusalem Coffee House, J. has learned, and is planning to file a complaint in state court alleging civil rights violations “very, very soon,” one lawyer said.

The lawsuit promises to launch the coffee shop back into the headlines after a series of incidents last year, including an internet firestorm when it released a “Sweet Sinwar” drink around the first anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre orchestrated by Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.

Plaintiff Jonathan Hirsch of Oakland is working with lawyers from the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law in his complaint against the coffee shop. The lawsuit will center on an Oct. 26, 2024, incident that was captured on video and shared widely over the internet. In the video, Hirsch is sitting in the business with his young son and wearing a navy-blue hat emblazoned with a Star of David when he is told to leave.

“Get out of my business,” says Abdulrahim Harara, a co-founder of Jerusalem Coffee House. “This is a violent hat and you need to leave.”

“You can’t ask me to leave because of my religion,” Hirsch says.

“I’m not asking you to leave because of that,” Harara replies. “Are you a Zionist?”

“I don’t have to identify myself,” Hirsch says.

“Leave,” Harara says, pointing at the door.

Oakland police eventually arrive, and Hirsch and his son leave. The Jerusalem Coffee House did not respond to a request for comment sent via Instagram.

The shop, which opened in 2023, celebrates Palestinian culture and sells Palestinian-inspired items like a date tahini latte. It also hosts political events and fundraisers for Palestinians. It describes itself as “rooted in revolution.” The cafe features inverted red triangles, a Hamas symbol that represents violent resistance to Israel, on its menu and on an outside mural. The menu also features an “iced in-tea fada.”

Omer Wiczyk, a lawyer with the Brandeis Center, told J. on Feb. 12 that the lawsuit will name Harara and what he described as “the company that owns the place” as defendants.

“We’re going to be suing all of them,” Wiczyk said. “All of

them have the obligation to uphold the law.”

Wiczyk said the lawsuit will assert that Hirsch was kicked out of the business because of his religion, which violates California civil rights law under the Unruh Civil Rights Act.

The Brandeis Center, a pro-Israel nonprofit law firm based in Washington, D.C., for years focused exclusively on antisemitism at universities but more recently branched out beyond college campuses.

Wiczyk said the facts of the Jerusalem Coffee Shop case are clear-cut to him. “You can’t ask somebody if they’re a Zionist. It’s none of your business what my politics are,” he said. “It would be like if I was wearing a cross, and walked into a location and someone started asking questions about my politics. This is America. You don’t get to refuse service to Jews.” n

Two S.F. Muni workers allege antisemitic harassment

NIVA ASHKENAZI | J. STAFF

Two employees at the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency have sued the city, alleging that they faced persistent harassment, discrimination and retaliation because they are Jews.

The lawsuit, filed in late December by employment law firm Hoyer, Hicks & Gage in the Superior Court of San Francisco County, details allegations of verbal harassment against plaintiffs Alexander Lukovsky and Samuel Raphaelson. They also allege to have been targets of retaliation after reporting their complaints.

The plaintiffs worked in adjacent shops within the agency’s transit system, better known as Muni, starting in spring 2020, the complaint states. Lukovsky, 67, who is of Ukrainian Jewish descent, had worked for Muni since 1996 and was the primary target of most incidents alleged in the complaint. Raphaelsohn, 72, who is of Latvian Jewish descent, began working at Muni in May 2020.

Lukovsky and Raphaelsohn are suing the city and three co-defendants, including a Muni supervisor and a co-worker.

That co-worker began verbally attacking Lukovsky in 2017 and intensified such attacks after May 2021, the complaint alleges. The co-worker “habitually called Mr. Lukovsky a ‘Fat Russian F**got F**k,’ ‘Dirty Jew,’ and ‘cripple,’ because of Mr. Lukovsky’s hip replacements,” the complaint reads. The co-worker “seemed to believe that he could act with impunity, telling Mr. Lukovsky: ‘Go f**k yourself, I do everything I want here, and I am protected.’”

The San Francisco City Attorney’s Office, which is representing the city and the employees listed as defendants, acknowledged the lawsuit but declined to comment further.

“We are reviewing the complaint and will respond in court,” the city attorney’s office said in an email to J.

The complaint alleges that the supervisor overlooked the

co-worker’s conduct because of their personal relationship.

The lawsuit mentions a September 2017 complaint that Lukovsky submitted to human resources regarding an alleged verbal attack by the co-worker. The complaint was rejected, apparently because one incident wasn’t enough to create an “abusive working environment.”

After a May 2021 incident, the supervisor told Lukovsky that the co-worker could do “whatever he wants” and that Lukovsky should not “bother him,” the complaint alleges.

The harassment allegedly reached its peak following the Hamas massacre in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the complaint states.

The co-worker “praised the attack,” the complaint reads,

and told “Mr. Lukovsky that Hamas was making ‘very good progress… there will be less Jews in the world.’”

The complaint also alleges that the supervisor sought to undermine Lukovsky’s career advancement. Between April 2021 and June 2023, Lukovsky served as acting supervisor of the facility’s motor shop, but his tenure ended when the supervisor demoted him. According to the complaint, the supervisor explained his reasoning bluntly to Lukovsky.

The supervisor “wanted ‘to put the Jew in his place,’ and teach him to ‘keep his mouth shut’,” the complaint alleges.

The plaintiffs assert that the harassment, discrimination and retaliation violate California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act, the California Family Rights Act and Labor Code Section 1102.5, known as the state’s primary whistleblower protection law.

The lawsuit lists other allegations of harassment toward Lukovsky, who has been on administrative leave since February 2024.

Once Lukovsky was gone, Raphaelsohn became the primary target of the co-worker’s harassment, the complaint alleges.

The co-worker “told him, ‘all you f***ing Jews are genocidal maniacs and it is a pity that Hitler didn’t finish you off. But we will,’” the complaint reads.

Although Raphaelsohn is still a Muni employee, the lawsuit states that he is afraid to go to work due to the conduct of the supervisor, co-worker and other employees.

The complaint seeks damages for lost wages and physical and emotional distress, as well as for a declaration that the defendants retaliated against the plaintiffs in violation of the Fair Employment and Housing Act, Family Rights Act and labor code. n

A Muni Metro train leaves West Portal Station on Feb. 12. Two Jewish Muni employees are suing the city, alleging harassment and discrimination. (SUE BARNETT/J. STAFF)

A mural on Jerusalem Coffee House. (MAYA MIRSKY/J. STAFF)

Sacramento-area synagogue brings Czech Torah ‘back to life’

NIVA ASHKENAZI | J. STAFF

A 19th-century Torah scroll rescued from the Holocaust arrived recently at Orangevale’s Temple Or Rishon, where 200 people gathered on Feb. 2 to rededicate the precious item.

For years, the scroll was stored in a former synagogue in Prague, where the local Jewish museum accumulated more than 200,000 religious objects from destroyed Jewish communities following the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1939.

A London-based organization called Memorial Scrolls Trust sent the Torah scroll to Or Rishon as a long-term loan. Per agreement, if the congregation dissolves or merges with another, the scroll would be returned to the Memorial Scrolls Trust. If the Czech Jewish community to which the Torah belonged is ever revived, the scroll would be returned to its original home.

Or Rishon, a Reform congregation with about 250 households, was founded in 1983. Located about 20 miles northeast of Sacramento, Or Rishon is one of about 20 congregations and Jewish organizations in Northern California with a rescued Torah through the Memorial Scrolls Trust.

As one Bay Area congregation knows, sometimes the Torah scrolls actually do go home.

Foster City’s Peninsula Sinai Congregation returned one of its rescued Torahs in 2017 to the Eastern Czech town of Olomouc, where the Jewish community has re-emerged in recent years.

Or Rishon Rabbi Alan Rabishaw contacted the Memorial

Scrolls Trust last summer, after meeting a congregant’s cousin visiting from London who is a member of the Westminster Synagogue, a London congregation integral to the founding of the Memorial Scrolls Trust.

Rabishaw emphasized how important it was for his congregation to receive a rescued Torah in good enough condition to be used during services, including for b’nai

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mitzvah, rather than to sit on display as a memorial artifact.

“We don’t want one to just remind us of history,” Rabishaw told J. “We want one that would allow us to bring it back to life and to be celebrated as part of our synagogue today, not just the memory of what was.”

In November, Or Rishon was matched with Torah No. 492, a scroll from Domažlice, a small town about 12 miles east of the German border. At the height of its Jewish population in the late 19th century, 153 Jews lived in the town, according to the Jewish International Cemetery Project.

The scroll was restored by Neil Yerman, a New York-based sofer, or scribe, who has been writing, maintaining and restoring Torah scrolls for over 40 years. Although the scroll was originally estimated to be around 114 years old, Yerman told J. that he believes it is at least 50 years older, dating it back to around 1860.

Yerman traveled to Orangevale to hand-deliver the Torah to Or Rishon and join the rededication.

Since the recent releases of Israeli hostages from Hamas captivity, Rabishaw said he couldn’t help but see a bigger meaning in the ceremony.

“It wasn’t just about this Torah in particular. It was also about our shared commitment as the Jewish people to be strong and draw resilience from our Torah, from our history,” he said. “For me, it’s a message to Hamas: Those who want to destroy us will not succeed.” n

Valerie McGee and Annie McGee, daughter and granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor, reach out to the Torah held by Rabbi Alan Rabishaw. (LEN FELDMAN)

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$500+

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The ALL Share Fund

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Chizen Family Foundation

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In memory of Carol Cohen, Altamont Capital Partners

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Donor names continue on pages 18-22

$500+ CONTINUED

Nancy Klehr

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$360+

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Whittaker • Lori and Bob Wick • Rhoda Wolfe

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$180+

Sy Aal • Allen Ackerman • Betty Denenberg

Adler • Martha and Michael Adler • Alameda Land Company Inc. • Rina Alcalay and S. Osborn Erickson • Carol Allen • Marilyn Allen

• Marjorie Alpert and Jeffrey Warwick • Edward J. Anisman • Molly Antopol and Chanan Tigay • Sonia Apfelblum • Jo Anne

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•

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Up to $179

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•

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•

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•

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•

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•

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•

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•

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NBA’s Barkley visits S.F. Glide, comes away with challahs

GABE STUTMAN | J. STAFF

Charles Barkley, the NBA hall-of-famer and outspoken broadcaster who danced the hora at his daughter’s wedding in 2021, was gifted challahs by Rabbi Michael Lezak during a recent tour of a homeless services center in San Francisco.

Barkley was in town to cover the NBA All-Star weekend on Feb. 14-16. His visit was replete with controversy after he made disparaging remarks about the city last month, calling it “rat-infested.” He has previously described San Francisco as rife with homelessness and crime.

Needless to say, many Bay Area sports fans were not pleased about hosting him.

They also haven’t forgiven Barkley — who spent his NBA career playing with Philadelphia, Phoenix and Houston — for dismissing the Golden State Warriors starting a decade ago. In a 2015 statement that has aged about as well as a soft cheese in summer, Barkley called the Warriors a “jump-shooting team” that couldn’t win an NBA championship. (For anyone who is counting, the Warriors have won four championships since then.)

Over the weekend, a crowd gathered outside a taping of “Inside the NBA,” chanting “F**k you Chuck!” In retort, Barkley swiveled his chair around and lifted a pair of middle fingers.

Still, during his time here, Barkley appeared to make an effort to understand San Francisco’s problems rather than just ridicule them.

Barkley, who grew up poor in Leeds, Alabama, met with

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San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie and called him “tremendous.” And on Feb. 14, he toured Glide Memorial Church and its adjacent social services center in the Tenderloin district where he served free meals to low-income and homeless people. He also pledged to donate $250,000.

“He came for a couple hours to visit. He toured the whole building,” Lezak told J. “He was really rocked by what he saw.” Lezak, a director with Glide’s Center for Social Justice,

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said that Barkley was curious about the Jewish community’s involvement in Glide, a nondenominational church led for 60 years by the late Rev. Cecil Williams. Barkley sought out Lezak, made a crack about the Jewish calendar and told the rabbi that his daughter married a Jewish man.

“He looked at me and said, ‘Rabbi, you guys have a lot of holidays!’” Lezak said.

Barkley’s daughter Christina married Jewish entrepreneur Ilya Hoffman in 2021. At the celebration, the 6-foot-5, 250-pound former basketball star was joyfully lifted on a chair during the hora, notwithstanding some reservations he shared about the maneuver.

Barkley has also earned appreciation from the Jewish community for condemning antisemitism coming from Black celebrities. “I don’t understand how you beat hatred with more hatred,” Barkley said in 2020. He again condemned antisemitism in 2022 from NBA All-Star Kyrie Irving.

Lezak said he was impressed by the visit.

“He was here for the big show,” Lezak said, speaking of All-Star weekend. “But he also had a menschy, sweet heart that wanted to understand the pain of the city.”

The rabbi, who helps bake 100 challahs every Friday for kitchen staff (to “feed people who feed people,” he said), offered Barkley two challahs at the end of the visit and wished him a “Shabbat shalom.”

“He’s got my heart now,” he said. “I’m on team Barkley.” n

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NBA hall-of-famer Charles Barkley visits Glide on Feb. 14. (COURTESY)

Zionist billboard torn down in Humboldt County after 4 days

LEA LOEB | J. STAFF

A new billboard in Arcata, featuring a boldly Zionist message, was ripped down under the cover of darkness a er just four days.

e billboard, positioned along Highway 101 near Cal Poly Humboldt, said: “Call Me A Zionist. It Only Makes Me Prouder.” It featured U.S. and Israeli flags and a dark-haired young woman gazing into the distance, wearing a Star of David necklace.

An unknown individual or group tore down the billboard late Feb. 7 or early Feb. 8, leaving behind a blank wooden background and ta ered remnants of the sign.

Code Blue and White, a new pro-Israel group founded by David Porush of San Mateo, commissioned the roadside ad. Israeli-born Arcata resident Tamar Krigel helped design it.

e billboard sparked controversy on social media on Feb. 4, the day it went up, with some commenters calling for its removal — by force, if necessary. At least six threads with hundreds of comments were posted on the Humboldt forum on Reddit, ranging from debates over free speech to calls for torching the billboard with “kerosene and waterproof matches” because “fire cleanses all.”

“If promoting Zionism falls under free speech then so does vandalism,” wrote one anonymous commenter.

“Mr. Molotov would be happy to help,” wrote another.

One Jewish commenter said the talk of violence was worrisome.

“As a Jew living in Humboldt county, no a liation or opinion to Israel, should I be concerned about being targeted by crazies?” the person asked, garnering dozens of responses — almost all of them a resounding “yes.”

A Change.org petition calling on the advertising company that owns the billboard to take down the pro-Israel message had garnered 107 signatures as of Feb. 18. e petition said the billboard carried “genocidal messaging” that “does not reflect the values of this community.”

Porush and Krigel defended the billboard.

In an email to J., Porush said the goal was “to take back the word ‘Zionism,’” which he feels has been co-opted and distorted. Krigel agreed.

“ e word Zionism has been twisted in so many ways,” she said in an emailed statement. “Anyone can look up the meaning of the word, yet many have tried to distort it into a colonial or imperialist evil, falsely assuming it to be rooted in racism or even genocide.”

Krigel o ered her definition of the word, elaborating on the current war.

“To be a Zionist is to believe in Israel as a democratic, moral society — one that strives for peace even in the face of relentless threats. e horror of what has happened in Gaza is not a Zionist ideal; Zionism does not mean supporting every action of the Israeli government, nor does it mean ignoring Palestinian su ering. It is possible to want Israel to survive

and thrive while also demanding that its actions reflect the highest moral standards,” she said.

“Being a proud Zionist and feeling horrified by what has happened in Gaza are not contradictions — they stem from the same core values of human dignity, justice, and the sanctity of life,” Krigel continued. “Zionism is not about blind nationalism; It is possible — and necessary — to hold this belief while also feeling deep sorrow for the su ering of innocent Palestinians in Gaza.”

Porush said Code Blue and White plans to replace the billboard. e incident, in his view, amounted to a hate crime.

“ e equation between Zionism and Jews and the Jewish state is pre y clear, and the distortion of Jewish history — there was one comment on Reddit which said, you know, ‘all Zionists should be killed,’ and threats to throw Molotov cocktails at the billboard. Certainly, the energy is hateful whether or not it falls under the legal definition.”

A second billboard from Code Blue and White went up on Feb. 10 along Highway 101 in Redwood City. It displays the message: “America and Israel: Fighting Terrorism Together.” e billboard shows images of an Israeli female soldier and an American male soldier, both in uniform.

Porush said he reported the Arcata incident to the Humboldt County Sheri ’s O ce, the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice. e case has been transferred from the sheri 's o ce to the Arcata Police Department. ■

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Tribute band Valerie, based in Santa Cruz, reignites Amy Winehouse’s vocal legacy

MUSIC | LEA LOEB | J. STAFF

Elsa Cedeño was 15 when she first heard an Amy Winehouse song.

The song was “Stronger Than Me,” a jazzy ballad from Winehouse’s 2003 debut album, in which she laments her boyfriend’s substance abuse and his failure as a man “to live up to his role.”

The singer and her fan had completely different

upbringings — Winehouse, a Jewish girl born in London, and Cedeño, a Mexican American girl born in Chicago — but Cedeño related to Winehouse’s song as soon as she heard it. Her own father had been deported to Mexico several years earlier and had become addicted to methamphetamines.

“My dad was a gnarly drug addict, so I always kind of felt like that song fit with my life,” recalled Cedeño. “That was

“Because she died young, a lot of people never got to see her perform.”

Kevin Summer, tribute band manager

“Because she died young, a lot of people never got to see her perform,” Summer said. “We focus on re-creating an authentic and passionate experience where people can feel close to her.”

For performances, Cedeño dons Winehouse’s signature retro beehive hairstyle and winged eyeliner, but Cedeño’s expressive vocals anchor the re-creation. She originally answered Summer’s Craigslist ad for a backup singer because he had already chosen a lead. But after her audition, Summer knew she was the right person for Winehouse’s role, despite Cedeño’s lack of formal training or stage experience.

For Cedeño, feeling connected to Winehouse goes beyond the music. When Cedeño’s father was deported, she was 12 years old and her whole family was forced to relocate to the slums of Tijuana to avoid being split up.

the thing that started it for me, that song and her life story.”

Now 33, Cedeño didn’t know at the time that she, too, would one day struggle with addiction and depression, like Winehouse. She also never would have guessed that one day she would make a living impersonating the Jewish songstress, who died in 2011 at age 27.

Cedeño is the lead singer in the Amy Winehouse tribute band Valerie, which has played sold-out shows throughout the state since its first performance in August. The eight-piece band, based in Santa Cruz, was created by manager Kevin Summer, a lifelong Winehouse fan who wanted to bring the singer’s legacy to new audiences. He named the band for one of Winehouse’s best-known songs.

“We didn’t have money. We didn’t have anything, not even school,” she said. “So I started singing. I’d go downtown and I’d put out a little hat and I’d get money and bring it home to my siblings for food.”

About a decade later, in 2013, Cedeño moved to the Bay Area so her 6-month-old daughter could receive treatment at UCSF for bilateral retinoblastoma, a rare type of cancer that affects both eyes.

Cedeño said the stress from her daughter’s cancer diagnosis and subsequent treatments, plus a toxic relationship, caused her to become severely depressed and turn to alcohol.

“Alcohol was my best friend,” she recalled. “I feel like alcohol saved me so many times from killing myself. I didn’t want to live, and alcohol was right there, like, ‘Hey, just drink me and you’ll feel OK.’ But eventually it was killing me.”

Tragically, it did kill Winehouse, who died of alcohol poisoning.

In her short career, Winehouse earned numerous

Elsa Cedeño in her role as Amy Winehouse. (AARON LEVY-WOLINS/J. STAFF)

A makeup table backstage before a Valerie concert. (AARON LEVY-WOLINS/J. STAFF)

accolades, including six Grammy Awards. Her music and life story have continued to generate interest in the years since her death, with books, documentaries and museum exhibits, including one at San Francisco’s Contemporary Jewish Museum. She was also the subject of a 2024 biopic.

While critics praised her raw talent and lyricism, Winehouse was lambasted for her openness about her issues with mental health, addiction and long-term bulimia. Her authenticity made her relatable to fans but also loomed over her musical achievements. ose close to her have said in interviews that fame exacerbated Winehouse’s struggles with mental health and addiction. Others have argued that family members, especially her father, Mitch Winehouse, and her husband, Blake Fielder-Civil, enabled her heroin, crack cocaine and alcohol use and exploited her talents.

“Her addiction took her. She didn’t win that ba le, but she le a mark on a lot of people who have su ered the same story as her with family issues, romances and addiction,” Cedeño said. “ ankfully, I was able to get out. But she didn’t.”

Cedeño celebrated one year of sobriety on Dec. 7, 2024. Her daughter, though losing her right eye to cancer, remains in remission. During Valerie concerts, Cedeño always acknowledges Winehouse’s struggles with addiction and shares her experience with recovery. She said that many a endees come up to her a er the shows to discuss their own struggles and to o er words of strength and encouragement. She hopes that by spreading awareness through her performances, she can reach those who need support.

“I think it’s important that we put it out there — what addiction is and how you can recover,” Cedeño said. “I think it’s important for people to see that.” ■

“Thankfully, I was able to get out. But she didn’t.”

Elsa Cedeño, Valerie’s lead singer

Valerie tribute band Performances March 22 at Nile Theater, Bakersfield; March 29 at Spanos Theater, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo; April 5 at the California, Santa Rosa; April 19 at Golden State Theatre, Monterey; May 10 at Rio Theater, Santa Cruz; July 12 at Freight and Salvage, Berkeley; Sept. 6 at Flamingo Resort and Hotel, Santa Rosa. All shows start at 8 p.m. Tickets range from $35 to $70. valerieamyband.com

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Available now wherever books are sold.

Elsa Cedeño gets ready to become Amy Winehouse with the help of Rena Kaspar (back), including donning the iconic beehive wig. (AARON LEVY-WOLINS/J. STAFF)

Artist’s dreamy videos re-create family homes lost to Nazis

ART | MAYA MIRSKY | J. STAFF

What does it mean to visit a building that no longer exists?

To honor the memory of his relatives killed in the Holocaust, and the places where they once lived, San Francisco visual artist Ben Wood decided he would bring back those memories through art.

Through dreamlike yet highly detailed animation videos of his grandparents’ homes in Germany — buildings that were destroyed after his family members were forced to leave — Wood has re-created a vision of the past.

The two homes once had real walls and real doors, and real people lived there. Today, they exist only in his imagination and in his three-dimensional animations.

“I re-created these actually based on drawings, real drawings, that I found in an archive,” Wood said. “But they’re somewhere between history and a dream, or history or memory and a dream.”

Wood made the two videos in 2024 by poring over maps and photographs, then using software to create animated videos that loop through an exterior tour. The six-minute videos are accompanied by Wood’s voiceovers in German (with subtitles in English) that describe the properties and the people who lived there. The animations are realistic, except that the windows have been replaced with photographs of the one-time inhabitants.

“I’m telling their story,” said Wood, who has a master’s degree in visual studies from MIT and specializes in public art. “My idea was to bring back their faces and, in some ways, their voices.”

The first video, titled “Grosse Strasse 73, Strausberg,” brings to life the shop and home owned by Albert Levy, a

Ruth was Wood’s maternal grandmother.

Wood’s second video is titled “Berliner Strasse 46, Seelow,” a Berlin suburb. It was the home — now razed — of Max and Adelheid Philippsborn, Wood’s great-grandparents. Adelheid’s given surname was Reissner; the property was the Reissner home and workshop, where they traded in furs and hides.

clothing and textile seller, and his wife, Helene Levy. In 1939, the property was commandeered by a local Nazi agent who forced the Levys to sell it for a nominal sum. Then the site was demolished. The couple moved to the Jüdisches Altersheim, the Jewish Home for the Aged, in Berlin. Helene died in 1940 in a sanatorium. Albert, then 82, was sent to Theresienstadt then to Treblinka, where he was killed. Their couple’s adult daughter Friederike and her husband were also killed, but Friederike’s stepdaughter, Ruth, was saved by the Kindertransport mission that brought her to England.

his brothers is an Orthodox rabbi, and the other brother runs a Jewish deli.

He is known for his site-specific work, projecting photos onto San Francisco’s Congregation Emanu-El and onto city landmarks and historic sites such as Coit Tower, the Cliff House and Fort Point. In a 2017 exhibit at the Haas-Lilienthal House in San Francisco, he filled the windows with projected photos of the Jewish family — similar to how he has used photos of his own family members in the windows of the animated houses.

The videos about his heritage are part of a bigger project tied to the past. Last year, he and other family members participated in the installation of Solpersteine, or “stumbling blocks,” the bronze memorials set into the sidewalks in front of homes of Shoah victims — now including his family’s homes.

Nils Weigt, a Ph.D. student in Germany, studies Holocaust history and is a member of an antifascist organization (“Vereinigung der Verfolgten des Naziregimes – Bund der Antifaschistinnen und Antifaschisten”) that helped organize and pay for the Solpersteine in Strausberg, Wood said.

Weigt, a resident of Strausberg, describes Wood’s videos as “immersive.”

“The viewer goes on a journey back in time to a past that doesn’t want to go away,” Weigt said in an email to J. “We still live in a post-Shoah society here in Germany. I would describe what we see with the word ‘haunting.’”

“If you can’t reclaim property, you can at least tell the story.”

Ben Wood

Under the Nazi regime, Max was sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp and later released, but then died from an unknown “accident” at the hands of the Nazis in 1940, according to documents. Adelheid was sent to the Warsaw Ghetto and did not survive. However, the couple’s son did make it out: Heinz and two cousins fled to England.

Heinz was Wood’s maternal grandfather.

Wood, 44, was born and raised in England, the country where his maternal grandparents found refuge, and has lived in the Bay Area since he was 19. Wood is also a triplet; one of

Wood said his family has looked into reclaiming the properties but doesn’t expect to pursue that effort. Instead, he said, he has been inspired by what Native American artists have done in the U.S., which he describes as “cultural repair” or “cultural restitution.”

“If you can’t legally reclaim property, then you can culturally try to reclaim it, at least by telling the story,” he said.

Wood’s videos are not the only virtual renderings of Holocaust-related locations. The Holocaust Museum LA features a virtual replica of the Sobibor concentration camp for teachers to use in class. In addition, museums have used hologram testimony recorded from real interviews as survivors continue to pass away.

“I found a creative solution, which is to somehow tell the story through a different medium, bring back the memory through art, which is very empowering also for me as an artist,” he said. “That’s what I do.” n

Artist Ben Wood at his home in San Francisco. (AARON LEVY-WOLINS/J. STAFF)

The artist with his great-grandfather’s letters. (AARON LEVY-WOLINS/J. STAFF)

A still from Wood’s animation of his family’s former shop and home in Strausberg, Germany. (COURTESY)

Berkeley childhood friends bringing musical comedy about dating shows to ACT

THEATER | EMMA GOSS | J. STAFF

When it comes to dating, it can take years to find “the one.”

It also took quite awhile for Itamar Moses and Gaby Alter to get their musical comedy about love, dating and reality TV just right.

Moses, a Tony Award-winning playwright, and Alter, a composer with a forte for rock musicals, have been rewriting and reimagining the script off and on since 2007. Now they finally feel it’s ready for Broadway. But first, “Nobody Loves You” is coming to the American Conservatory Theater’s Toni Rembe Theater in San Francisco from Feb. 28 to March 30.

The two Berkeley-born men, who now live in Brooklyn, began their labor of love nearly two decades ago. Their friendship goes back even further.

Moses, 47, and Alter, 51, are both the sons of UC Berkeley professors who themselves are longtime friends — Israeli-born film scholar Gavriel Moses and Biblical scholar and author Robert Alter.

The Moses and Alter families, both members of Congregation Netivot Shalom in Berkeley, spent many Thanksgiving dinners and Passover seders together.

“The Thanksgiving tradition was charades,” Itamar Moses recalled to J. “The Passover tradition was every person at the seder was assigned some topic within the Haggadah to elaborate upon for the group at some point

during the evening.”

Moses and Alter attended Tehiyah Day School in El Cerrito and Black Pine Circle for part of their middle-school years. They are also both graduates of Berkeley High School, though their four-year age difference meant they weren’t there at the same time. They also both earned MFAs from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, Moses in dramatic writing and Alter in musical theater.

“There was this moment where we were hanging out in Brooklyn because we were friends, and it was like, ‘Well, I write plays. You write musicals. I guess we should write a musical together,’” Moses told J. “It was almost like it would be silly not to. And it started in Gaby’s room, with him at the keyboard and me with a yellow legal pad.”

Between 2007 and 2010, the two co-wrote the first of several iterations of “Nobody Loves You,” comically satirizing the reality show genre of dating competitions and probing the concept of authenticity and romantic connection in the scripted, hyper performative version of reality that such shows are famous for.

Their musical is about a wildly popular and fictional TV show called “Nobody Loves You.” The main male protagonist, Jeff, is a philosophy grad student who snags a spot continued on page 28

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Actors A.J. Holmes and Kuhoo Verma rehearsing “Nobody Loves You.” (SARAH SUGG)

Musical comedy by childhood friends aims Cupid’s arrow at dating shows

continued from page 27

on the show in an effort to win back his ex-girlfriend. But he ends up falling for Jenny, a show producer, who dreams of making serious films.

“Nobody Loves You” made its onstage debut at the Globe Theater in San Diego in 2012 and had an off-Broadway run at Second Stage in New York City in 2013. When that production came to a close, both Moses and Alter felt the material needed improvements and a rewrite. In 2017, a small theater in

want to say,” Moses said.

One of Alter’s favorite musical numbers from the show is “You’re So Real,” a song that a producer sings to Jeff to convince him to stay on the reality dating show.

“She’s like, people are going to love how authentic you are!” Alter said. “And it’s a disco number.”

Reviving the musical in San Francisco is particularly meaningful to both men, who are excited to bring family members and friends from New York and Berkeley to the premiere.

Atlanta called the Horizon allowed them to do just that, asking Moses and Alter to resurrect the musical.

“That was a crucial turning point,” said Moses, who won a 2018 Tony Award for best book of a musical for the adaptation of the Israeli film “The Band’s Visit.” “We got our hands dirty again, working on the show and starting to make some changes and feeling like there really was the possibility of making it feel finished to us.”

Once they had significantly altered the beginning and end of the show and felt it was ready for new audiences, the Covid-19 pandemic closed theaters.

Now the musical — featuring more new material, some of it written in the last six months — is coming back to the stage. This time it’s for a pre-Broadway tryout.

“It definitely feels like a new production,” Moses said. While the show is full of laughs, Moses and Alter told J. that there are several jokes specifically Jewish in nature (but no spoilers).

In the years since they began work on “Nobody Loves You,” dating competition shows have exploded in popularity. And newer ones, like “Love Is Blind” on Netflix, get binge watched by millions across the world.

“In retrospect, I think the changes that the show needed only became clear to us after time went by, both because of how we changed as writers and because of how the world now interacts differently with what we

Moses (left) and Alter as kids. (COURTESY)

“ACT was the place where I saw some of the formative productions that made me want to be a playwright,” Moses said of the San Francisco debut. “So to get to work there and at the Toni Rembe, what was back then in my day called the Geary, is really exciting.”

Added Alter: “l was doing rock musicals for 10 years in places that my friends and I rented. So doing something at ACT is mind-blowing. And then on top of that, we get to invite all our friends and family. This is really exciting and fun.” n

“Nobody Loves You” Feb. 28-March 30. ACT’s Toni Rembe Theater, 415 Geary St., S.F. $55 and up. act-sf.org

Itamar Moses (left) and Gaby Alter (COURTESY ACT)

Books

coverage is supported by a generous grant from The Milton and Sophie Meyer Fund

Award-winning book on pigs wallows in an old taboo

OFF THE SHELF HOWARD FREEDMAN

is year’s National Jewish Book Award for food writing and cookbooks, announced last month, went to a book focused on fare that one might not expect.

Jordan Rosenblum’s wonderfully wri en “Forbidden: A 3,000-Year History of Jews and the Pig” o ers a wide-reaching overview of the way the pig — whether as animal, metaphor or lunch — has had a major role in how Jews understand themselves and how others view Jews.

It is not simply that the pig is forbidden in the Torah, as Rosenblum, a professor of Jewish studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, demonstrates with a personal anecdote.

A er his infant son received a lovely set of blocks adorned with animals and their Hebrew names, Rosenblum purchased a matching set in Italian to reflect his wife’s heritage.

He then noticed that the sets were identical, except that, where the Hebrew version had a camel, the Italian version displayed a pig. e pig had apparently been deemed problematic for a Jewish child, but the substitution of an equally treyf (nonkosher) animal was acceptable. As Rosenblum writes: “If all we had was the Hebrew Bible, this would make absolutely no sense.”

In many ways, much of the book is an a empt to make it make sense, recording episodes over the millennia in which the pig has been given prominence and set apart, even from the voluminous menagerie of nonkosher animals.

ere is no definitive starting point for this outsized role, but we know that the pig took on conspicuous meaning during the period of the Second Temple. is is reinforced by numerous accounts of martyrdom recorded in the Books of Maccabees, with Jews choosing death rather than submi ing to their conquerors’ demand that they eat the flesh of pigs.

In classical rabbinic texts, the sages o en went so far as to avoid using the word pig altogether, preferring euphemisms such as davar aher, meaning “another thing.” But Rosenblum invokes the wisdom of Professor Dumbledore of the Harry Po er books

in asserting that “fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.” By making the pig unmentionable, the rabbis only increased the animal’s power in the Jewish imagination. e aversion took on new meaning as the rabbis of the period of Roman rule, through some interpretive turns, began equating the despised animal with Rome. e comparison took on a somewhat literal dimension in one rabbinic account of the destruction of the Second Temple, reporting that the chief of the Roman soldiers catapulted a pig’s head into the Temple — and that Jerusalem fell at the moment when the pig’s head landed on the altar.

As Rosenblum moves through history, we see how non-Jews grasped the pig’s symbolic importance and o en used it as a vehicle for mockery and denigration. In medieval Europe, Christians, via a twisted logical jump, began to identify Jews with the pigs they refused to eat. e image of the Judensau (Jews’ sow) was popularized in Germany, and artistic representations of Jews suckling or engaging in obscene acts with an oversized sow proliferated.

Simultaneously, many Christians began to see eating pork as a means of distancing themselves from Jews. Rosenblum cites a song sung by Christians in Burgundy in the 17th century proclaiming that, because Jews disavow pork, “the more we eat the piglets, the be er Catholics we become.”

Moving chronologically, the book takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of Jewish diasporic history, focusing primarily on Europe and America. ere was considerably less drama around pork in Muslim countries, given Islam’s ban on its consumption.

In classical rabbinic texts, the sages often went so far as to avoid using the word pig altogether.

Of course, the Jewish relationship with pork is not defined exclusively by rejection of it. Rosenblum discusses many circumstances in which Jews have taken to eating pork, willingly or by necessity, reflecting their negotiation of their relationship with Jewish identity.

For Spanish Jews who converted to Christianity in the 15th century in order to avert persecution or expulsion, eating pork signaled their embrace of their adopted religion — a behavior that would become all the more important once the Inquisition began using avoidance of pork as evidence that the convert was secretly practicing Judaism.

For agrarian Jews on collective farms in the Soviet Union, raising swine was a signal

of a full embrace of communism, with religious observance relegated to the past.

And for many Jews who have sought to distance themselves from their traditional upbringings, the first taste of pork has served as a sort of rite of independence.

Rosenblum brings the discussion to the present day, concluding with the recent refusal of the Orthodox Union’s kosher certification body to give its approval to the fake meat product Impossible Pork, despite the product’s absence of any animal-derived substances. e grounds are not legal, but, rather, very much about inheriting this fraught relationship with the pig.

In this way, Rosenblum’s book, a model of bringing religion, history, and contemporary experience together, shows how the decisions we make today o en live in the shadow of those we have faced for centuries. ■

“Forbidden: A 3,000-Year History of Jews and the Pig” by Jordan Rosenbloom (New York University Press, 272 pages)

Howard Freedman is the director of the Jewish Community Library in San Francisco. All books mentioned in this column may be borrowed from the library.

TAKE ACTION

ONGOING

L.A. FIRE GIFT CARD DRIVE—Peninsula JCC is collecting cash and/or gift cards from vendors like Target, Trader Joe’s and Albertsons to support families affected by the Los Angeles wildfires. Drop off during operating hours at the welcome desk, 800 Foster City Blvd., Foster City. Through Feb. 28.

BABY CLOTHES COLLECTION—Oshman Family JCC is collecting gently used and laundered baby clothes for infants in need. Through March 2. Drop off during operating hours at the OFJCC Leslie Family Preschool front gate and OFJCC gym, 3921 Fabian Way, Palo Alto.

DIAPER DRIVE—Temple Emanu-El in San Jose is collecting boxes of diapers and wipes for Jewish Family Services of Silicon Valley. Through March 16. Dropoff at Emanu-El, 1010 University Ave., San Jose. tinyurl. com/diaper-drive-25

JFCS PURIM FOOD DRIVE—Jewish

Family and Children’s Services food bank is collecting donations of nonperishable items including soup, peanut butter, jam, macaroni and cheese, rice, cereal, oatmeal, granola bars, toothpaste, lotion, soap, paper towels and toilet paper. Drop off items at food bank locations: 2150 Post St., S.F.; 2001 Winward Way, No. 200, San Mateo; 200 Channing Ave., Palo Alto; 600 Fifth Ave., San Rafael. Monday-Friday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. tinyurl.com/jfcs-food-bank

SUNDAY | February 23

NOSH, LEARN AND LUNCH-BAG PACKING—Southside Jewish Collaborative presents a volunteer opportunity to learn from Rabbi Chayva Lehrman and pack lunch bags for unhoused San Franciscans. At Congregation Am Tikvah, 625 Brotherhood Way, S.F. 1-2:30 p.m. Free. amtikvah.org

HOLIDAYS & SPIRITUAL

FRIDAY | February 21

COMMUNITY SHABBAT GATHERING— Tu Bishvat celebration with mystically inspired vegetarian seder. Presented by Jewish Gateways. At Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave., Albany. 6-8 p.m. $10-$25 suggested donation. tinyurl.com/ tree-shabbat

SUNDAY | February 23

“SECRETS HIDDEN IN MEGILLAT ESTHER”—Educator Aviv Matzkin discusses how the scroll of Esther contains surprising hidden references to three other Biblical stories. At Congregation Beth David, 19700 Prospect Road, Saratoga. 10:30 a.m. Free.beth-david. org/adult-education

FRIDAY | February 28

SHERITH ISRAEL REFUGEE SHABBAT—Seventh annual HIAS Refugee Shabbat with guest speaker

Adoubou Traore, founder and executive director of the African Advocacy Network. At Congregation Sherith Israel, 2266 California St., S.F. 6-7 p.m. Free. tinyurl.com/ sherith-refugee

SHABBAT AROUND THE TABLE— Shabbat celebration with rituals, dinner and live music. Pizza party for tots followed by catered buffet dinner from Wise Sons Deli. Presented by Jewish Baby Network. At JCCSF, 3200 California St., S.F. 5-8:30 p.m. $18-$72. tinyurl.com/ shabbat-table

FRIDAY | March 7

FAMILY SHABBAT—Family-friendly Kabbalat Shabbat service with special musical guest Lior Ben Hur. At Congregation Emeth, 17835 Monterey St., Morgan Hill. 7 p.m. Free. tinyurl.com/family-shabbat

BOOKS

SUNDAY | March 2

“WAGES OF EMPIRE”—Michael Cooper discusses his historical fiction book set in 1914 that follows a teen through the killing fields of the Western Front to Ottoman Palestine. At Congregation B’nai Shalom, 74 Eckley Lane, Walnut Creek. 3 p.m. Free. michaeljcooper.net

TUESDAY | March 4

“CONNECTING DOTS”—Joshua A. Miele discusses his memoir, which chronicles his experience learning how to navigate the world as a blind person. In conversation with J. columnist Alix Wall. At JCC East Bay, 1414 Walnut St., Berkeley. 6:30-8 p.m. $5. tinyurl.com/connecting-dots-book

WEDNESDAY | March 5

JENNIFER LANG IN CONVERSATION—

Jennifer Lang, author of Jewish- and Israel-centered books “Landed: A Yogi’s Memoir In Pieces and Poses” and “Places We Left Behind,” discusses compromise, country, yoga and self-acceptance with publisher

Clare Ellis. At Sausalito Books by the Bay, 100 Bay St., Sausalito. 6-7 p.m. Free. tinyurl.com/jennifer-lang

“MATZAH AND FLOUR”—Culinary historian Hélène Jawhara Piñer discusses her new cookbook, “Sephardi: Cooking the History,” a collection of 125 recipes showcasing how flour from sources such as barley and chickpeas sustained Sephardic families throughout history. Presented by JCCSF, the Magnes and JIMENA. At JCCSF, 3200 California St., S.F. 7-9 p.m. $42, includes cookbook. tinyurl.com/matzah-flour. Also, 5:30-7 p.m. March 6 at the Magnes, 2121 Allston Way, Berkeley. $20 (book sold separately). tinyurl. com/taste-sephardic

MONDAY | March 10

“COCA-COLA, BLACK PANTHERS AND PHANTOM JETS”—Historian Oz Frankel discusses his book, which examines the late 1960s as a unique moment when Israel became more closely entwined with the U.S. as a strategic ally and through its intensifying intimacy with American culture, society

BENEFITS & SOCIAL EVENTS

SUNDAY | February 23

YOUNG ADULTS WINTER SOCIAL— Evening for Jews in their 20s and 30s with catered dinner, open bar and live DJ. Presented by the Castro, Marina, Nob Hill and RSJ Moishe Houses, Malka Productions, Value Culture, JCCSF, SF Bad Jews, Jewbillee and Israel Bonds. At Menorah Center, 5600 Geary Blvd., S.F. 6:30 p.m. $25-$45. tinyurl.com/sf-winter-social

“KOSHER NY-STYLE DELI NIGHT”— Chabad of the Neighborhood popup that includes matzah ball soup, potato knishes, rugelach, pastrami, corned beef and challah to go. Prices from $1-$20. At Chabad of

Calendar

more listings see jweekly.com/calendar Submit items to events@jweekly.com

the Neighborhood, 85 West Portal Ave., S.F. 5:30-8 p.m. chabadneighborhood.square.site/deli

SUNDAY | March 9

“L’DOR V’DOR”—Hillel of Silicon Valley fundraiser and awards ceremony with keynote speech by Shai Davidai, an Israeli professor at Columbia Business School who has made headlines for his public stances against antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment in higher education. At the Rotary Summit Center, 88 S. Fourth St., San Jose. 3-5 p.m. $72. hillelsv.org/ldor-vdor

and technology. Followed by light reception. Presented by the Helen Diller Institute and the Center for Jewish Studies, the Magnes and the departments of history and American studies at UC Berkeley. At Berkeley Law building, 2207 Piedmont Ave., Room 141, Berkeley. 4-5:30 p.m. Free. tinyurl.com/ oz-frankel

WEDNESDAY | March 12

“STATECRAFT 2.0: WHAT AMERICA NEEDS TO LEAD IN A MULTIPOLAR WORLD”—Ambassador Dennis Ross discusses his upcoming book, which explores a range of key foreign policy issues including the Israel/Hamas conflict, the broader dynamics between Israel and the Middle East and the roles of Iran, Russia and the U.S. in navigating today’s multipolar world. Presented by Jewish Silicon Valley. At Addison-Penzak JCC, 14855 Oka Road, Los Gatos. 7-9 p.m. $18 and up. tinyurl.com/dennis-ross-book

ONGOING

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

“ROOTS AND WINGS”—Exhibit by Israeli artist Ronit Shalem reflecting the balance between two powerful forces: the “roots,” representing Shalem’s connection to Israel and her personal experiences, and the “wings,” symbolizing her continuous artistic journey and growth. Through March. At Osher Marin, 200 N. San Pedro Road, San Rafael. tinyurl.com/omjcc-art

“Oy, What They Said About Love.”

‘Oy

… Love’

Steve Budd’s one-man show called “Oy, What They Said About Love” tells the stories of real couples through their own words, culled from hours of interviews. From a Jewish couple who found each other through Craigslist to an interfaith pair who met at a Halloween party, Budd weaves in his hilarious search for “the one.” For ages 15 and up.

2 p.m. Saturday, March 1. At San Leandro Main Library, 300 Estudillo Ave., San Leandro. $30, cash only. tinyurl.com/ oy-love-show

Holi Purim!

Jews and Hindus in the South Bay will come together for a joint celebration of Purim and Holi. Purim recalls the Jewish people surviving a potential massacre in Persia. Holi, a festival that honors Krishna, includes the tradition of throwing colorful powders called gulal. The event will feature food, storytelling, performances, prizes, henna art and gulal. Presented by JCRC Bay Area, the Hindu American Foundation, Jewish Silicon Valley and Mosaic America.

12 p.m. Sunday, March 9. At Addison-Penzak JCC, 14855 Oka Road, Los Gatos. $10 early bird, $18 after March 2. tinyurl.com/holi-purim

Holi colors. (GOODFON.COM)

ONGOING

SACRAMENTO JEWISH FILM

FESTIVAL—26th annual festival with 25 films, featuring “The Blond Boy from the Casbah,” “Janice Ian: Breaking Silence” and “Bliss.” Available for viewing online or in person; details vary. At Crest Theatre, 1013 K St., Sacramento, through Feb. 23. Livestream Feb. 24-March 9. sacjewishfilmfest.org

SATURDAY | February 22

“THE TRIALS OF ALAN DERSHOWITZ”—Screening of documentary examining the famed attorney’s career, including his most notable victories, lesser-known losses and legal battles involving one of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims who accused Dershowitz of sexual misconduct. Followed by discussion with law professor Michael Asimow. At Congregation Beth Am, 26790 Arastradero Road, Los Altos Hills. 3:30 p.m. Free. tinyurl.com/ trials-film

JFI WINTERFEST—Opening night of 12th annual festival. With six films and events, including “Everything You Have Is Yours.” Through Feb. 23. At Vogue Theater, 3290 Sacramento St., S.F. Passes are $75, JFI members; $100, general public. jfi. org/programs/winterfest-2025

EAST BAY INTERNATIONAL JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL—Opening night of the 30th annual festival featuring “Midas Man” and 36 other films. Available for viewing online or in person. At Century 16 Theater, 125 Crescent Drive, Pleasant Hill. Feb. 22-27. Livestream March 9-20. $180 festival pass, $12-$15 individual films. eastbayjewishfilm.org

“UNDER G-D”—Documentary examines the complex struggles individuals face exercising their reproductive rights. Followed by discussion centered on how these issues align with Jewish values of human dignity, autonomy and justice. Presented by Tri-Valley Cultural Jews. At Castro Valley location provided with RSVP. 3-4:30 p.m. $15 nonmembers, free for members. RSVP at culturaljews@ gmail.com

TUESDAY | February 25

“SCREAMS BEFORE SILENCE”— Screening and discussion of Sheryl Sandberg’s documentary about the sexual violence committed by Hamas in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Facilitated by executive director of Shalom Bayit Naomi Tucker. At Peninsula Temple Beth El, 1700 Alameda de las Pulgas, San Mateo. 7-9 p.m. Free. tinyurl. com/screams-film

TALKS & WORKSHOPS

SATURDAY | February 22

DARWIN DAY/TU BISHVAT BAGEL BRUNCH—Author and environmental activist John Berger discusses climate solutions. Presented by Kol Hadash. At Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave., Albany. 11 a.m. $7.50 members, $10 public. kolhadash.org

SUNDAY | February 23

“WELCOMING THE IMMIGRANT: JEWISH ETHICS IN THE FACE OF RISING NATIONALISM”—Rabbi Armin Langer explores the Jewish concept of the “resident alien” and how this legal category could inform contemporary migration discourse. With kosher buffet brunch. Presented by Or Shalom Jewish Community. At JCCSF, 3200 California St., S.F. 10 a.m.-12 p.m. Free. tinyurl.com/ welcoming-immigrant

MONDAY | February 24

“TRAUMA AND TRANSFORMATION: CREATING A FOUNDATION FOR HEALING AND JUSTICE”—Karen Erlichman explores the physical, emotional, political and spiritual complexity of individual and collective trauma, offering tools and resources for healing. Part of “Narrow Bridge” series. Livestream option. At Congregation Sha’ar Zahav, 290 Dolores St., S.F. 7 p.m. $36 per session, $230 for series. tinyurl.com/the-narrowbridge

“AN EVENING WITH ISRAELI ARTIST HANOCH PIVEN”—Hands-on workshop exploring artistic reinvention and self-expression by creating

playful self-portraits using everyday objects. Followed by reception. For ages 14 and up. At Yavneh Day School, 14855 Oka Road, No. 100, Los Gatos. 6:30-8 p.m. $54. Proceeds benefit Yavneh. tinyurl. com/hanoch-piven-workshop

TUESDAY | February 25

“WHAT’S GOD PLAYING AT?”—Christine Hayes, professor emeritus of religious studies at Yale, explores Talmudic conceptions of Divine law through performance studies and theories of humor and play. 16th Annual Robbins Collection Lecture in Jewish Law, Thought and Identity at the Helen Diller Institute. With light reception. At Room 105, UC Berkeley School of Law, 2763-2719 Bancroft Way, Berkeley. 6-7:30 p.m. Free. tinyurl.com/god-playing

WEDNESDAY | February 26

“REVISITING THE LEO FRANK CASE”— Journalist and author Steve Oney discusses 1913 murder of Mary Phagan and subsequent arrest, trial and lynching of Leo Frank. Part of this year’s One Bay One Book program. Presented by Jewish Community Library. Online. 7 p.m. Free. tinyurl.com/leo-frank-case

“THE MEANING OF HEBREW IN AMERICA”—Sharon Avni discusses the significance of Hebrew for American Jews in an interactive presentation about how American Jews understand Hebrew both literally and symbolically. Presented by the Taube Center for Jewish Studies at Stanford. At Stanford University, Building 320, Room 220,

MUSIC

SATURDAY | February 22

“GATHERING IN PRAYER”—Israeli and Palestinian musicians Lior Tsarfaty, Naser Musa, Damond Moodie, Eliyahu Sills, Michaelle Goerlitz and more perform traditional music and pray for peace and safety in the Middle East. At Chochmat HaLev, 2215 Prince St., Berkeley. 7-9:30 p.m. $45. tinyurl. com/gathering-prayer

SATURDAY | March 1

DAN NICHOLS IN CONCERT—Jewish rock musician and composer performs original music. At Congregation Beth Emek, 3400 Nevada Court, Pleasanton. 6:30-7 p.m. $20 adults, $10 kids, free for 4 and younger. tinyurl.com/ dan-nichols

450 Jane Stanford Way, Stanford. 5:30-6:30 p.m. Free. tinyurl.com/ hebrew-meaning

THURSDAY | February 27

“CREATING COMMUNITIES THROUGH STORYTELLING: RUTU MODAN”—

Graphic novelist Rutu Modan presents screening of “The Property,” based on her novel of the same name, followed by a discussion with writer-in-residence and award-winning author Maya Arad. Presented by the Taube Center for Jewish Studies at Stanford. At Stanford University, CCSRE conference room, 450 Jane Stanford Way, Stanford. 3-6:15 p.m. Free. tinyurl. com/creating-communities

SUNDAY | March 2

“THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE: A NARRATIVE THEOLOGY OF JUDAISM”—Rabbi Irving Greenberg presents his magnum opus on Judaism’s covenantal journey through modernity, the Holocaust and Israel’s creation, calling for an ethic of power that advances life. Presented by Jewish Community Library. Online. 11 a.m. Free. tinyurl.com/triumph-life

MONDAY | March 3

“SPECTRA OF POLITICAL FREEDOMS”—Neil Grungras discusses the commonalities and differences among restrictive national environments, and what we can learn from those who have lived in such countries about protecting ourselves and preserving personal freedom and safety as Jews and queer people. Presented by Congrega-

KIDS & FAMILY

SUNDAY | February 23

SUNDAY FUN DAY—Jewish Baby Network and Temple Sinai preschool present event with music, dancing, puppets, play, tea and snacks. At Temple Sinai, 2808 Summit St., Oakland. 3:30-5 p.m. $18 suggested donation. tinyurl. com/sunday-jbn

SUNDAY | March 2

PURIM PARADE AND COSTUME PARTY—Jewish Baby Network and Kehilla Synagogue present holiday celebration with singing, dancing and hamantaschen. Bring a costume. At Dracena Quarry Park, 130 Dracena Ave., Piedmont. 10:30 a.m.-12 p.m. $18 suggested donation. tinyurl.com/purim-party-jbn

FRIDAY | March 7

FUN FRIDAY STORY TIME—Preschool teacher Jessica and PJ Library present holiday story time,

tion Sha’ar Zahav. Part of “Narrow Bridge” series. Online. 7 p.m. $36 per session, $230 for series. tinyurl. com/the-narrow-bridge

TUESDAY | March 4

“RAISE A GLASS, BUT NOT TOO MANY”—Shabbat workshop exploring the role of wine in Judaism. Part of the “Everyday Magic: Jewish Wisdom and Global Practices for Daily Life” series. At Oshman Family JCC, 3921 Fabian Way, Palo Alto. 9-10:30 a.m. $18. tinyurl.com/everyday-magic-series

WEDNESDAY | March 5

“FROM STUDENT ACTIVIST TO THE HALLS OF CONGRESS”—Shabbos Kestenbaum shares his journey starting as a student looking to make change to becoming the lead plaintiff against Harvard University, alleging pervasive and systemic antisemitism. Co-sponsored by Chabad North Peninsula, Peninsula JCC, Ronald C. Wornick Jewish Day School and Chabad at Stanford. At Lent Chabad Center in San Mateo, RSVP for full address. 6:30 p.m. Free. chabadnp.com/shabbos

“ISRAEL, THE ENVIRONMENT AND THE MIDDLE EAST PEACE PROCESS”—Alon Tal, visiting professor at Stanford’s department of sustainability and one of Israel’s leading environmentalists, discusses Israel’s environmental challenges, cross-border cooperation in the region and how environmental efforts can play a role in the Middle East peace pro-

cess. At Congregation Sinai, 1532 Willowbrae Ave., San Jose. Free. 7 p.m. Free. tinyurl.com/alon-tal

MONDAY | March 10

“DOES EMIGRATION MAKE SENSE FOR YOU?”—In light of the current political climate, Neil Grungras discusses options for living in another country, including factors to consider when relocating and pathways to getting there. Part of “Narrow Bridge” series. Livestream option. At Congregation Sha’ar Zahav, 290 Dolores St., S.F. 7 p.m. $36 per session, $230 for series. tinyurl. com/the-narrow-bridge

TUESDAY | March 11

“DRESSING THE PART”—Purim workshop exploring how special garments and accessories shape our emotions in everyday and special moments. Part of the “Everyday Magic: Jewish Wisdom and Global Practices for Daily Life” series. At Oshman Family JCC, 3921 Fabian Way, Palo Alto. 9-10:30 a.m. $18. tinyurl.com/everyday-magic-series

THURSDAY | March 13

ADULT EDUCATION: BOOK OF ESTHER—Rabbi Steve Finley and Reb Neal Attinson lead discussion-based lessons of the Book of Esther before Purim. Also March 20, 27. At Congregation Shir Shalom, 252 W. Spain St., Sonoma. 1-2:15 p.m. Free. tinyurl.com/adult-education-class

featuring “The Purim Superhero” by Elisabeth Kushner. Followed by a physical education activity. At Oshman Family JCC, 3921 Fabian Way, Palo Alto. 4:15-5:15 p.m. Free, RSVP required. tinyurl.com/purim-story-time

SUNDAY | March 9

“FAMILY COOKING: HAMANTASCHEN FOR PURIM”—Hands-on baking workshop for kids and parents to learn to bake hamantaschen from scratch. Led by Michelle Greenebaum from Together In The Kitchen. At Oshman Family JCC, 3921 Fabian Way, Palo Alto. 4-5 p.m. $44.52. tinyurl.com/family-cooking-purim

PURIM EXTRAVAGANZA—Jewish Baby Network event with singing, dancing, puppets, hamantaschen, holiday-themed snacks, costumes and a Purim goodie bag to take home. At Peninsula Sinai

Congregation, 499 Boothbay Ave., Foster City. 3:30-5 p.m. $18 suggested donation. tinyurl.com/ jbn-purim-25

CONTRA COSTA PURIM CARNIVAL—Holiday celebration with games, pony rides, face painting, a raffle, food, costume contest and more. Presented by Contra Costa JCC, Congregation B’nai Tikvah, Congregation B’nai Shalom, Congregation Beth Chaim, PJ Library, Contra Costa Jewish Day School, Midrasha and Shevet Egoz. At B’nai Shalom, 74 Eckley Lane, Walnut Creek. 10 a.m.-1 p.m. $20 per child before March 7, $25 after; under 2, free. ccjcc.org/upcoming-events

EAST BAY PURIM CARNIVAL—Holiday celebration with carnival games, crafts, face painting, hamantaschen, mishloach manot, Purim spiel, costumes and talent

show. At JCC East Bay, 1414 Walnut St., Berkeley. 2-5 p.m. $36 per family. tinyurl.com/jcceb-purim-25

PURIM PARTY IN THE PARK—PJ Library, Tkiya and Jewish Gateways present sensory-friendly, outdoor Purim celebration for families with young children featuring music, snacks, books, crafts and more. Costumes encouraged. At Kennedy Grove Regional Recreation Area, 6531 San Pablo Dam Road, El Sobrante. 3-4:30 p.m. Free. tinyurl. com/purim-party-park

FRIDAY | March 14

“PURIM IN ISRAEL”—Holiday celebration for families featuring live Israeli music, Israeli style food, selfies at the “Western Wall,” kids activities and Megillah reading. At the Lent Chabad Center in San Mateo, RSVP for full address. 5:30-6:30 p.m. $5-$10. chabadnp. com/purim

Opinion

Neuroscience, spirituality and teen mental health

ALISHA PEDOWITZ | GUEST CONTRIBUTOR

Jewish educators have at our fingertips a powerful antidote to the epidemic of despair and loneliness plaguing our society: spirituality.

That was my main takeaway from the keynote talk at SoulFull, a conference hosted by Jewish LearningWorks that drew close to 100 Jewish educators from across the Bay Area to Berkeley on Feb. 6.

As someone who has worked in the field of Jewish education for over 20 years and attended countless conferences on Jewish education, it was refreshing to have our day begin with a keynote on neuroscience. Dr. Lisa Miller of Columbia University, author of “The Awakened Brain: The New Science of Spirituality and Our Quest for an Inspired Life,” explained her latest research on the neuroprotective impact of spiritual experiences.

Miller’s research demonstrates that spiritual experiences — those which strengthen the sense that life is rich with meaning and which cultivate relationships with the self, one’s community and God — are important in countering the mental health crisis that impacts a majority of American adolescents. The U.S. surgeon general, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychological Society have all highlighted the dramatic rise in depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation. Over 50% of all adolescents meet the criteria for at least one of these, per the Centers for Disease Control.

In former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s “Parting Prescription for America,” he called the eroding sense of community a key factor in the “epidemic of diseases of despair.” His prescription is to build community through “relationships, service, and purpose.”

According to Miller, communal spiritual experiences strengthen the pathways in the brain that make it resilient to depression and prime it to find sources of hope and support. She speaks of using Jewish language and tradition to help young people not only ascribe meaning to daily lives, but to provide them with ways of feeling “loved, held, guided and never alone.”

During her talk, I was reminded of being a teenager at Jewish camp, as our camp rabbi was leading a discussion on the idea that God is the “still, small voice inside of us.” The rabbi invited us each to fully wrap ourselves in a tallit like a cocoon and stand in that stillness. I remember being aware of the other people around me, while also experiencing the “still, small voice” in a way I never had. My focus turned deeply inward while my awareness was attuned to the community around me. I felt “loved, held, guided and never alone” — priming my brain for similar experiences moving forward. That moment still influences the way I pray, as I seek both to feel held by the community and to look for guidance in navigating challenges.

Miller’s message was a balm for the souls of educators who feel depleted after buoying their communities through years of crises. We are nagivating a barrage of threats to young people’s emotional development and mental health: the pandemic’s lingering effects, the Oct. 7 attack and Israel’s reponse, antisemitism in schools, the climate crisis and other existential fears. Educators wonder if we are doing enough.

That is why this year, Jewish LearningWorks launched the Bay Area Jewish Youth Resilience Roundtable, a group of professionals representing 13 local organizations who sit at the intersection of adolescent mental health and meaningful Jewish youth programs. Together, we are exploring how Judaism can cultivate resilience in our students. We invite all Bay Area organizations concerned about adolescent wellness to join us. If this is a crisis of the public sphere, then we have the collective responsibility to respond. n

Alisha Pedowitz is a senior educator at Jewish LearningWorks who has worked for over 20 years in the field of Jewish education and community building.

PICTURE

THIS: The day before Tu Bishvat, the ancient tax day that has come to be known as a kind of Jewish Arbor Day, the Stanford chapter of the Jewish environmental organization Adamah held an event at O’Donohue Family Stanford Educational Farm in Palo Alto. Hillel Rabbi Eli Weinbach (second from right) and students (from left) Wyatt Sklarin, Adamah chapter co-president Gideon Witchel and Ben Stettin hold up girthsome etrogs they harvested at the event. (AARON LEVY-WOLINS/J. STAFF)

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Cal still has work to do

As a lecturer at UC Berkeley, I deeply appreciate professor Ron Hassner’s efforts to advance the rights and welfare of Jewish students, staff and faculty and their access to equality, freedom and fair treatment that respects our civil rights and access to justice. (“Trump’s antisemitism probe doesn’t reflect UC Berkeley’s progress,” online Feb. 7)

Harassment, abuse, intimidation and discrimination have impacted our campus Jewish community in lasting ways that continue to be felt, causing ongoing hurt and harm. Many Jewish members of our campus community are marginalized, are unable to express their Jewish identities and beliefs because of prevalent prejudice and hostility, and face both explicit and implicit forms of exclusion on account of their Jewish identities, practices and affiliations.

As Hassner writes, “much is left to be accomplished” to address antisemitic hate and discrimination at UC Berkeley. He notes that campus leadership reacted “slowly” to the violation of our rights and welfare and did not take vigorous action to adequately respond to these violations. Indeed, UC Berkeley still needs to do a better job of respecting civil rights law and equality for

all members of the Cal community, without discrimination on the basis of religion, ethnicity, shared ancestry or nationality and without excluding Jews from respect for these legal obligations and the university’s Principles of Community.

While there have indeed been some improvements in the climate on campus and in campus policies impacting Jewish individuals and our community under the new chancellor’s leadership, these need to be made more durable. Support for the welfare and both equity and equality of Jewish members of our community needs to be better resourced in a substantive, sustainable way that reflects a genuine long-term commitment to our wellbeing, dignity and full inclusion in the university community.

NOAM SCHIMMEL | UC BERKELEY LECTURER

Anita Friedman is a ‘community treasure’

Turning the pages of J.’s last few issues I was struck repeatedly by the positive impact of the San Francisco-based Jewish Family and Children’s Services under the brilliant leadership of its longtime executive director, Anita Friedman.

Gaza presents us with an impossible choice — or does it?

RABBI NICO SOCOLOVSKY | GUEST CONTRIBUTOR

Who doesn’t love a good round of “Would You Rather?” Would you rather always feel like there’s a pebble in your shoe, or have an itch you can never quite scratch? Would you rather relive your most embarrassing moment once a week, or have a stranger insult you every day? Would you rather lose your ability to taste food, or never be able to listen to music again?

President Donald Trump recently posed, essentially, a “would you rather”: Gaza — or no Gaza?

And thousands of voices, compelled by the idea of a huge challenge simply disappearing, got excited.

As a congregational rabbi with a weekly teaching from my pulpit, my thoughts turned to last week’s Torah portion, Beshalach, which offers the Israelites something of a “would you rather” as they flee slavery in Egypt:

“The Egyptians pursued them and overtook them encamped by the sea — all of Pharaoh’s chariots, horsemen, and army.” (Exodus 14:9)

Would you rather face Pharaoh’s army, or throw yourself into the sea? An impossible choice.

It was hard to believe that the mighty sea could split. In fact, the Midrash tells us that the sea actively resisted.

“As Moses stood before the sea ... the sea scoffed, ‘I was created on the third day — you, humanity, came on the sixth. Who are you to command me?’”

The Hasidic master Kedushat Levi explains that nature,

JFCS embodies the values that unite us as Jews across all boundaries and categories. Friedman is a truly remarkable and inspiring leader. She and her team have attracted, trained and retained a diverse group of highly skilled, able, hard-working and compassionate social workers, therapists and other professionals who have helped many of our families, often during our most difficult life experiences.

Friedman has built a once-tiny agency into what is now a crown jewel, a reflection of who and what we can be in our best moments. There is no way to begin to describe all the good JFCS has done. If you want to do something to alleviate the suffering we see all around us but don’t know what to do or where to start, may I suggest you send a check to JFCS today and or perhaps look over its volunteer opportunities.

There are so many of us who will never be able to thank Anita Friedman enough for making the health and wellbeing of our community her life’s work. She is a community treasure.

HAL PLOTKIN | PALO ALTO

after fulfilling its role for so long, can begin to see itself as independent. So God humbled the sea — not just splitting it, but forcing it to dry up completely with a mighty east wind, stripping it of its pride.

As the Israelites crossed, the Egyptians drowned behind them. In heaven, the angels prepared to sing in praise. But the God stopped them, saying: “My children are drowning in the sea, and you are singing before Me?”

The angels fell silent. Though justice was served, God did not rejoice in destruction. But the Talmudic Rabbi Yosei bar Chanina adds a striking nuance: While God does not celebrate the downfall of the wicked, He allows others to rejoice. The Israelites, standing on the shore, were not chastised for their song. Their joy was not in the suffering of their enemies, but in their own miraculous salvation. Justice had been done, but the heavens remained solemn.

But Trump’s proposal was not like Moses raising his hand and God splitting the sea. It was more like suggesting the entire sea be vaporized — for its own good.

Some have told me: “Now that the idea is on the table, those who didn’t want to get involved will engage.” Others have said: “What’s the big deal? It’s just a fantasy. Aren’t we allowed to have fantasies?”

And some have argued: “It’s nearly impossible to rebuild Gaza given the destruction and the tunnel system beneath. Relocating its people might actually be a good idea.”

In Israel, a survey showed that 82% of the Israeli Jewish population favor the idea — including 30% who find it desirable but not realistic. Among Israeli Jews, only 3% think the plan is “immoral.”

I’d like to offer three ideas I’ve been reflecting on over the past few days and invite you to think along with me:

1. Have empathy for our people. Before we judge Israelis or Americans who support something that could be considered ethnic cleansing, let’s acknowledge a painful truth: Most of us prefer to choose our neighbors. Imagine

within a few hours. (“Joy and pride, not crises, pulled me back to Judaism,” Feb. 7)

Praying at the Western Wall is a memory I will savor for the rest of my life. There is so much to see and absorb in Israel. The archaeological digs are fascinating. Spending time with local people and learning of life in Israel today is an honor. I gained so much on my 10-day visit, and later returned as a volunteer. I encourage people of any age to experience Israel.

JILL MALESON | FREMONT

Support for unions

The antisemitic statements and actions of certain union officials and members toward UC Berkeley postdoc Karin Yaniv and other Jewish union members were deeply disturbing to me. (“In suit, Israeli postdoc accuses Cal union of anti-Israel bias,” Feb. 7) However, the lawsuit was filed by the Fairness Center, which focuses on suing public-sector unions. This is disturbing and represents how difficult it is for a Jewish liberal like me who supports standing up to antisemitism and the role of unions.

being assaulted, tortured, abducted and witnessing loved ones murdered by your neighbors. Wouldn’t the idea of sending them as far away as possible feel compelling?

2. Measure with the same scale. “You shall not have in your house alternate measures, a larger and a smaller,” says Deuteronomy 25:14 — a rule that addresses inconsistent or unfair treatment in the form of a double standard.

Whether or not it’s realistic, we must ask: Is it morally acceptable? If we legitimize population transfers, what are we setting a precedent for? And could it backfire?

If we say that a large portion of a population living on a small strip of land is constantly causing problems for its larger and more powerful neighbor, and that this population can be removed for the sake of the more powerful neighbor’s security, what happens when we zoom this out?

Israel itself is a small strip in the Middle East. Could someone in the U.S. government one day make the same argument about Israel? Could they echo the rhetoric we have heard from antisemitic protesters, that “Jews should go back to Europe”?

3. It’s hard to imagine the sea can split. I hope that those advocating the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza don’t really want to see people forced to leave their homes. I want to believe that what most people really want is peace — but it feels so impossible to imagine something better, that we fall back on a much worse option.

Would you rather: see Israel and Gaza coexist, or see one side disappear? Would you rather: believe peace is possible, or believe destruction is inevitable? Maybe our greatest challenge is not choosing between impossible options, but choosing to believe there is another way. n

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

Invincible women of Beth Ami

Many thanks to Leslie Katz for the feature on the invincible women of Santa Rosa Congregation Beth Ami, Susanne Batzdorff, Evelyn Gurevitch and Edith Newman. (“Three centenarians find joy at Beth Ami, and with each other,” Feb. 7)

My sister Evelyn and I resided in Santa Rosa for many years; our parents were Beth Ami members. When our father became ill, Evelyn and Edith were always there for us. During difficult times, they were role models, reflecting the values of Judaism: strength, joy and kindness. After many years, my sister and I still thank them for making us feel part of the community. It was a privilege to know them.

DEBORAH MARGOLIN | AMHERST, MASSACHUSETTS

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Israel feels like home

Reading Janet Silver Ghent’s column, which mentioned her first trip to Israel, made me sad. My first trip to Israel still gives me chills. I literally kissed the ground upon arrival. It felt like home

I think it would have been helpful if you had included information about the Fairness Center. I wish she did not have such problematic, to me, legal representation.

CAROL EVANS | WALNUT CREEK

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.

Rabbi Nico Socolovsky is the senior rabbi at Congregation Shir Hadash in Los Gatos.

Former USAID worker: Who will help if America turns away?

RABBI CHAYVA LEHRMAN | GUEST CONTRIBUTOR

Before the U.S. Agency for International Development’s website was dismantled by the new Trump administration, it stated, “USAID leads international development and humanitarian efforts to save lives, reduce poverty, strengthen democratic governance and help people progress beyond assistance.”

USAID, where I once proudly worked, was essentially describing itself — albeit in classically stodgy governmental prose — as the outward-facing part of the mission set forth in Emma Lazarus’ sonnet “The New Colossus”: …Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. “Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

Lazarus’ poem, one of the greatest works of Jewish American literature, welcomed many of our families to this goldene medina. Despite fits and spurts of a tenacious antisemitism, American Jewry has thrived here.

I am one of many beneficiaries of America’s embrace of Jews. Upon graduating from college in 2011, my great American dream was to move to Washington, D.C., and work in foreign relations. In 2014, I started a job at USAID.

I was drawn to USAID by my Judaism; our somewhat nomadic history and the eternal link between Jews all over the world led me to feel like a citizen of the world. I was also motivated by my belief that each person is made b’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God. Many who work in the international development field are drawn by a similar sense of compassion and global citizenship.

America’s highest value is not its exceptionalism, but how we use the great privilege of our wealth and power.

And of course there is the practical side to USAID’s work. The agency’s raison d’etre and the best case for its federal funding is that its projection of American soft power is the U.S. government’s most cost-effective diplomatic tool.

The Trump administration claims that its philosophy is “America first,” but its behavior demonstrates a creed of “America only.” Closing USAID is not just a bureaucratic change. It signals a shift away from a vision of America that is engaged, compassionate and strategic.

As Jews and as Americans, we must respond by

opposing this shift and by articulating and championing a vision of progressive patriotism.

This vision must be framed positively: America’s highest value is not its exceptionalism, but how we use the great privilege of our wealth and power. I believed this long before I left government work and became a rabbi. My commitment to that perspective has only deepened over the years.

and South Africa. In fact, from 2001 to 2014, the value of USAID’s public-private partnerships exceeded $16.5 billion.

Now America will lose all of that income. And much worse, millions around the world could die. Nobody wins.

If service and lovingkindness — two out of three legs the world stands on — collapse, how will the world go on?

As Jews, we know what happens when countries close their doors, ignore suffering and frame compassion as

In Pirkei Avot, Shimon Hatzadik famously teaches that the world stands on three legs: Torah, avodah (service, either in prayer or good deeds), and gemilut chasadim (acts of lovingkindness). I have seen this fulfilled in USAID’s work.

I worked on a program called Partners for Enhanced Engagement in Research, which gave grants to scientists doing critical policy work for governments that did not have the means to fund research. I helped American institutions of higher education — from major agricultural research institutions to diverse urban community colleges — connect to similar institutions abroad and expand the impact of their work. I saw colleagues help end the Zika virus epidemic, provide water access in drought-stricken Kenya, protect against rising water levels in Bangladesh, help Indonesians rebuild after the Sulawesi earthquake and tsunami, and so much more.

Any American tourist knows that the U.S. dollar goes far in low-income countries; the most expensive part of many of USAID programs was paying American farmers for their crops and American drug companies for their medicines. USAID also partners with American corporations, such as Microsoft, to expand internet access in rural India, Nigeria

weakness. As Americans, we know that security comes from partnerships of mutual benefit and the value of a good reputation.

Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan taught that American Jews are dual citizens of both the Jewish and American civilizations. As such, we don’t just live here; through us, our Jewish values shape what this country stands for. Louis Brandeis famously said, “To be good Americans, we must be better Jews.” He was making a point about Zionism, but it also applies to responding to this moment in history with clarity and diligence.

Losing USAID shows us that something about America is broken. but our outcry against that proclaims there is an equal and opposing force for good within this country. Even as we feel besieged by domestic antisemitism, our Jewish community must take up the work of avodah and gemilut chasadim when the government steps away.

The work before us isn’t just the fight against populist isolationism. It’s also about claiming and propagating a vision of America that we are proud to call our own, one that reflects both Jewish and American values. And then we need to put our money where our mouth is. n

Rabbi Chayva Lehrman serves S.F. Congregation

Am Tikvah, a dual-affiliated Reform-Conservative synagogue.

Pallets of food, water and other supplies from USAID staged to be delivered to Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in 2010. (USAID VIA FLICKR)

J. Life

The

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

Even the Torah’s most cryptic rule can lead to a revelation

TORAH | RABBI SHANA CHANDLER LEON

Mishpatim

Exodus 21:1-24:18

The nation heard the mishpatim (rules) of the Eternal and cried as one: “Na’aseh v’ni’sh’ma!” (Exodus 24:7) This riddle of a declaration could mean: We will do and we will obey; we will do and we will understand; we will faithfully do; or in its most literal sense, we will do and we will hear.

We may never know what the people intended, but what echoes through the ages may be this: After Moses “took the record of the covenant and read it aloud to the people” (Exodus 24:6), our ancestors committed first to do, and then to wrestle with the implications of what it all might mean.

For many Jews, performing the mitzvot as diligently as possible is sufficient to honor the directives given to Moses as our forebears heard and interpreted them. For others, many of the Torah precepts, expanded and expounded upon by centuries of scholars, are just a mystery. We struggle with the idea of “doing” when we do not “understand.”

For much of my early life, one of the commandments laid out in this Torah portion left me (and just a few others) absolutely flummoxed. It floats there without introduction or explanation and reappears in two other places in the Torah, similarly without preamble or detail. And yet it is intertwined with the very essence of traditional Judaism:

“You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.” (Exodus 23:19, also Exodus 34:26 and Deuteronomy 14:21)

The plain, straightforward language of this mighty little statement, and the exact repetition of it later in the Torah, suggests that the ancient audience knew (and understood?) what they were being prohibited to do — and why — and that it was known across many strands of early Jewish society. But since then, even the greatest minds in Jewish history come up short when trying to make sense of it.

Maimonides (1135-1204) and others theorized that the edict responded to a Canaanite practice associated with idolatry, though modern experts point out that there is no historical evidence of such a practice. Some suggest the rule is part of the general prohibitions against forbidden mixtures of different “kinds,” but this, too, is “unconvincing, for in the

“Moses and Joshua in the Tabernacle” by James Tissot, ca. 1900

case of the Torah law, no mixture is involved — mother and kid are of the same kind,” as Reform scholar Rabbi Gunther Plaut wrote.

One medieval writer linked the mitzvah to a foreign practice of milk boiled with the meat of a kid goat that was then sprinkled on trees, fields and orchards to encourage fertility

We struggle with the idea of ‘doing’ when we do not ‘understand.’

(a ritual described by a number of authors), but again, as Plaut says, there is “no truly credible evidence” that the Torah referred to such a ceremony here. Another possibility is that this injunction, with its specific naming of “mother’s milk,” implies the Torah’s abhorrence of incest and the forbidden intermingling of blood relations.

Some suggest that the prohibition teaches sensitivity to animals, akin to the laws against slaughtering cattle on the same day as their young; sacrificing cattle in their first week of life; and taking a mother bird along with her fledglings

or her eggs. (Exodus 22:29; Levitcus 22:27-28; Deuteronomy 2:6-7). Now we’re getting to some explanations I can wrap my heart around.

While the commentators continue to debate this cryptic rule, let’s note that from this lone seed grew an entire system of observant Jewish life that rotates around food: the total separation of meat and dairy (including over time designating non-milk-giving animals like chicken as “meat”): laws against preparing, eating, serving or benefitting in any way from such mixtures; multiple sets of dishes and utensils; divided sinks (and even separate dishwashers for some); and prescribed amounts of time between consuming the two food groups.

I lived in an in-between place with this mitzvah for a long time. I’ve found space in small homes for meat and dairy pots, dishes and silverware, complying with the wishes of my chosen families. But outside the house, I ate more or less what was available on a menu and what looked appetizing — until one evening at a birthday party about 20 years ago.

The buffet was large and generous, and I helped myself to something containing meat (I’m quite sure it was chicken) and cheese. The woman sitting next to me, totally unbidden, decided to weigh in on my choice. Chutzpahdik, no? But she must have been sent by an unseen Hand because she said what I had never heard before and, at that moment, what I absolutely needed to hear.

“You know,” she said, “separating meat and dairy is a very important concept. It makes a distinction on our plates between symbols of life and symbols of death.” After so many years of grappling, this was a revelation.

I haven’t thought twice about it again, and I give thanks to that stranger for being the teacher I needed.

In the 16th century, Rabbi Yisrael Sarug-Ashkenazi, a kabbalist, wrote of the mystical power of eating: “Each person has the ability … in the grinding power of chewing food, to raise (Divine) drops of blessing absorbed in that food to a place of holiness.”

There are so many worthy mishpatim/rules to explore in this week’s parashah. But because all creations share the basic need for food, we ought to consider how and what we eat. Is our eating a holy act? Can it link us to the greater mission of the Jewish people to sanctify life? Might we be encouraged to be more mindful of the words that come out of our mouths if we are more careful about what goes in? I like to think so.

May we give thanks for the gift of sustenance and make good, careful choices that nourish not only our bodies but our souls as well.. n

Rabbi Shana Chandler Leon is rabbi of Congregation Ner Tamid in San Francisco, her hometown.

Sephardic culinary historian seeks to win

THE ORGANIC EPICURE ALIX WALL

The Not-So-Secret Society of Bay Area Jewish Food Professionals.

Hélène Jawhara Piñer understands that at first mention, a cookbook about matzah and flour might not grab the imagination. After all, she said, matzah has a long-held reputation as the “squared, crunchy, untasty” food we eat on Passover.

But Piñer is an academic who has studied medieval Jewish food culture in Spain and France, and she accepted the challenge of winning over matzah skeptics by writing a historical cookbook about it.

“Most people don’t know how matzah can be so exciting,” she said.

“Matzah and Flour: Recipes from the History of Sephardic Jews” (Academic Studies Press) will bring Piñer to the Bay Area next month for two appearances. On March 5, she will be at the JCCSF at 7 p.m. ($42 includes a copy of the book), and on March 6, she will appear at the Magnes museum in Berkeley at 5:30 p.m. ($20, book sold separately).

Piñer, 44, who teaches medieval history at Bordeaux Montaigne University and the University of Tours in France, said the idea for the new book grew out of her award-winning “Sephardi: Cooking the History. Recipes of the Jews of Spain and the Diaspora from the 13th Century Until Today.” After it was published four years ago, she was left with many recipes and stories connected to breads and flours that she didn’t have room to include.

She also wanted to expand people’s perceptions of what unleavened bread can be, especially since the term “flour,” at least in Sephardic cooking, can refer to varieties beyond wheat, like chickpea, chestnut, almond and semolina.

“At least for Sephardic Jews, going back to the 15th century, we have so much scientific evidence concerning different unleavened breads they were eating for Passover, but for other holidays, too,” she said.

Piñer’s academic interest in Sephardic Jewry is connected to her interest in her own identity. While she wasn’t raised Jewish, she said she was drawn to Judaism and Jewish people at a young age, and she believes she has Jewish roots on both sides of her family.

Her paternal grandmother’s roots are in Andalucia, Spain, where a Jewish community flourished before the Inquisition. Her grandmother has spoken at length about preparing certain foods for Easter (falling right around Passover), even going so far as to say, “You shouldn’t make this dish with flour, so use chickpea flour.” (Chickpea flour is a common Sephardic ingredient that under Sephardic dietary laws is kosher for Passover.) Her grandmother also prepared special meals for Friday night dinner, without making any reference to Shabbat.

she is “returning” to Judaism.

Piñer had always been fascinated by the connection between food and religion and how they influence each other. Food is also more than just a passing interest in her family; on her mother’s side, most of her relatives are in the food industry in some capacity, as butchers, caterers and chefs.

“I think every job in the food field” is covered, she said. On her father’s side are enthusiasts who just love to eat.

“It’s a great combination of giving me the background in both the technique in cooking, and the practice of eating,” she said.

Piñer’s book is interesting from the get-go. It opens with a recipe for “Ancient Judean Bread,” in which cooked leek, shallot and garlic are kneaded into a flatbread dough. There are also recipes for the breads cited by Moses Maimonides, otherwise known as the Rambam. This Jewish sage had much to say about how to stay healthy, and eating well was part of that.

“Everyone knows of Maimonides as a rabbi and doctor and lawyer, but he was also a dietitian, and his writings about dietary practices were always informed by Jewish dietary laws,” she said.

Also notable is that matzah appears in many holiday recipes that are not for Passover. For example, before the Yom Kippur fast, flour is kneaded with chicken broth to make an unleavened bread to eat with a Spanish chicken soup called puchero. (The recipe is included in the book.)

“It’s very bizarre, but quite common,” Piñer said about women of her grandmother’s generation, many of whom follow certain Jewish traditions while seemingly unaware that they are doing so, or of their origins. She has also found variations of her last name in historical records of Inquisition trials of Jews from Brazil and Mexico.

While she prefers to keep specific details about her own Jewish journey private, she said,

Piñer also relied on what’s known as “The Cookbook,” a 13th-century manuscript from Andalucia written in Arabic that is widely considered among the first of its kind. It includes Jewish recipes.

“Matzah and Flour” is full of recipes for mouthwatering

Matzah appears in many holiday recipes that are not for Passover. Before the Yom Kippur fast, flour is kneaded with chicken broth to make an unleavened bread to eat with a Spanish chicken soup called puchero.

dishes that Converso Jews ate, but so many of these dishes have an unfortunate history. What these undercover Jews ate often pointed to their secret origins, and their neighbors would use the clues to report them to the authorities. Many of the recipes’ headnotes tell such a tale.

One example is a delicious and unusual (to Ashkenazi taste buds) sweet soup for Passover called hormiguillos, with milk, honey, almonds and unleavened bread crumbs as its main ingredients. When a woman named Elvira made it for her household during Passover in 1486, one of her servants reported her to the authorities.

“Matzah and Flour” is a cookbook of its time, with abundant and gorgeous photography, and readers are bound to learn something with each recipe headnote. For example, we learn about

Alix Wall is a contributing editor to J. She is also the founder of the Illuminoshi:

Hélène Jawhara Piñer, a French-Spanish chef who studies the history of Jewish cooking, pictured in Seville, Spain, in 2022. (COURTESY)

Dishes with Sephardic origin include (from left) hummus with caramelized eggplant, stuffed eggplant with honey and labneh, and labneh with pomegranate seeds. (COURTESY)

over matzah skeptics

a bi er-tasting herb called sow thistle that was used by Andalusian Jews.

In addition to the recipes found in historical sources is a section called “Creations,” which features some of Piñer’s own recipes inspired by Sephardic ingredients, like a date and pomegranate cake for Rosh Hashanah.

“ is book is very important to me because it’s a tribute to our ancestors, and because I’ve heard people say there’s no Sephardic food,” Piñer concluded. “I wanted both of my books to prove the richness of our di erent Sephardic cuisines. ese recipes are not from my grandma, but I found them from historical sources dating back centuries, and this proves that our Sephardic heritage has existed for a very long time.”

SMALL BITES

Speaking of matzah, J. is holding a recipe contest called Matzah Madness! Surely you have an original recipe you’ve come up with, either to eat during Passover week or to use up extra boxes a er the holiday. Enter your ideas into our contest, and tell your friends. I’ll be teaming up with my cooking colleagues Faith Kramer and Micah Siva to judge your creations, and the winner will receive $250 and the glory of having their recipe shared in J. e deadline to enter at jweekly.com/matzah-madness-contest is March 1.

We’ve wri en about chef Spencer Horovitz and his Jewish pop-up Hadeem a number of times, including in this column on Feb. 7 where we shared that he is a semifi nalist for a James Beard Award in the emerging chef category. e Hi Neighbor Hospitality Group will be hosting Hadeem for two pop-up dinners in San Francisco on Feb. 27 and 28, both with tickets, so purchasers will be guaranteed a seat. (Popular pop-ups like Hadeem o en have long lines.) Tickets for a multiple-course meal are $95, with the opportunity to add specialty cocktails or wine pairings on site. While the menu is in flux, dishes could include cornish hen schnitzel, or guava and dulce de leche babka with burnt cinnamon crème anglaise. Substitutions can be made for vegetarians and pescaterians. Hadeem mixes California and Jewish influences from Horovitz's multicultural Jewish background in Los Angeles.

Bay Kosher, the small kosher grocery store in Lafaye e run by Chabad of Lamorinda, recently announced that it has teamed up with Uber to make deliveries of kosher food all around the Bay Area, and as far as Sacramento and Stockton for an additional charge. Fees are listed at baykosher.com/delivery. e market is also piloting a special delivery service to the Peninsula JCC, where people can order online and pick up their groceries in Foster City rather than driving to the East Bay.

We were pleased to see the news in Berkeleyside about the reopening of Homemade Cafe a Berkeley institution owned by Collin Doran that closed with li le warning on Jan. 1. e reopening is due to the intervention of a friendly neighbor, Rohit Singh, owner of the neighboring Breads of India, who is partnering with Doran.

Doran made the sad decision to close when the numbers were no longer adding up. In June 2023, we wrote about his “Everybody Eats” program, in which diners could buy someone in need a breakfast for $5. e initiative drew international a ention. He said the idea came from his Jewish grandfather, who taught him “to never look down on anyone.”

(Note that the mural on the side of his restaurant that featured Magen Davids made from bacon strips is no longer there.)

While some changes will be made to streamline the operation, Doran is just happy to be back in business. Homemade Cafe is at 2454 Sacramento St.

e food blog OMG! Yummy recently marked its 15th anniversary. e blog, subtitled “Recipes from a Multicultural Jewish Kitchen,” was started in 2010 by Jewish food writer and author Beth Lee of San Jose. We wrote about Lee when she published “ e Essential Jewish Baking Cookbook: 50 Traditional Recipes for Every Occasion” in 2021. Mazel tov, Beth!

Tell your L.A. friends: Now they, too, can enjoy Boichik Bagels. Based in Berkeley, Boichik just opened its first L.A. store at 4655 Hollywood Blvd. in the Loz Feliz neighborhood. ■

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Beth Lee’s food blog, OMG! Yummy, is marking its 15th anniversary. (COURTESY)

Yeasted hamantaschen: The bready result of a happy union

NOSH MICAH SIVA

Micah Siva is a registered dietitian, trained chef and cookbook author. She develops modern Jewish recipes inspired by her grandmother, with a plant-forward twist. NoshWithMicah.com

e hamantaschen I grew up with probably aren’t the cookie-based ones you find in a deli case or kosher bakery around Purim. In my family, we feasted on yeasted hamantaschen — pu y and bready, filled with sweet poppyseeds and walnuts, warmed slightly in the microwave and served with a cup of black tea or co ee.

Hamantaschen have a reputation for being dry and bland. But I’ve been on a lifelong mission to share my love and excitement for Purim’s sweet treat. Imagine if a challah and a poppy seed hamantaschen had a baby. Yeasted hamantaschen would be the result. Heartier and less sweet than the cookie variety, they bridge the gap between cookie and bread and are perfect for a holiday breakfast.

Yeasted hamantaschen are thought to be a tradition of the Soviet Union. According to the late Jewish food historian Gil Marks, the original hamantaschen were indeed made using a sweet yeasted dough, but smaller, cookie-based versions won favor because they were easier to work with.

My great-grandmother Freda was born in the former Soviet Union (now Ukraine) and came to Canada with nearly nothing, except for her love of cooking and feeding everyone around her. It’s no surprise that her hamantaschen were sent across Canada and into the U.S. for her family to enjoy, and she passed down those recipes to my grandmother Eva.

While I o en try to modernize classic dishes, some hold such powerful memories and feelings that I want to reconnect with them and go back to my grandmother’s kitchen.

The dough of yeasted hamantaschen is considerably more difficult to work with than its cookie-dough partner. If you’ve ever stressed about getting your hamantaschen to maintain a shape, this may not be the recipe for you. Yeasted dough often has a mind of its own, shapeshifting in the oven. To me, though, the rustic, haimish appearance of the yeasted hamantaschen is part of the charm. It reminds me of my grandmother’s stiff fingers covered in jewelry, kneading, rolling, folding and pinching dozens of hamantaschen for the family, where even the funkiest-shaped outcomes were made with love.

While my grandmother Eva was an avid cook, she also knew when to take shortcuts, “doctoring up” store-bought ingredients so her guests were none the wiser. One ingredient was poppy seed filling. She’d use a canned variety (o en Solo brand, which she’d pick up

from her local Eastern European grocer) and add walnuts, vanilla, citrus zest and a bissel or bit of salt to balance the sweetness. It was her way of adapting her mother’s recipes to the newfound comforts of living in North America.

While I do like to take the hard route, making 90% of my dishes from scratch, I also believe in the power of the shortcut, especially if it makes a dish more accessible. As a parent, I don’t always have the foresight to make and prepare my own poppy seed filling, so I like to keep a stash of Solo poppy seed filling cans in the cupboard. On the occasions when I use them, I miss my grandmother the most.

YEASTED POPPY SEED HAMANTASCHEN

Makes: 14 to 16 hamantaschen

Total time: 2 hours

Dough:

2 cups all-purpose flour

7 gram package instant yeast

3 Tbs. sugar

1 large egg

⅓ cup warm whole milk

3 Tbs. vegetable oil

1 tsp. orange zest

2 tsp. vanilla extract

¼ tsp. kosher salt

Filling:

½ cup canned poppyseed filling

3 Tbs. finely chopped walnuts

1 tsp. vanilla extract

½ tsp. lemon zest

¼ tsp. kosher salt

Egg wash:

1 large egg, whisked

In the base of a stand mixer fi ed with the dough hook, combine the flour, instant yeast and sugar. Mix to combine.

Add the egg, warm milk, vegetable oil, orange zest, vanilla extract and salt. Mix on low for 6 to 8 minutes, until a smooth dough forms.

Transfer to an oiled bowl, and cover with a lid or plastic wrap. Let rise in a warm place for an hour, until pu y — it will not fully double in size, but should be noticeably larger.

Meanwhile, combine the poppy seed filling, walnuts, vanilla, lemon zest and salt in a medium bowl.

Line two baking trays with parchment paper.

Once the dough has risen, roll it into a ¼-inch thickness. Use a 3-inch biscuit cu er or round cookie cu er. Re-roll dough scraps until you have no more dough. You should end up with 12 to 14 circles.

Use a rolling pin to reshape the dough as needed, as it might shrink or get misshapen.

In a small bowl, beat the egg with a pastry brush.

Place 1 tsp. of filling in the center of each circle. Brush the egg around the dough, and fold into a triangle, pinching the edges to seal. Transfer to the lined baking trays, with 2 inches between each hamantaschen. Cover lightly with plastic wrap, and let rise for 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Bake the hamantaschen for 11-13 minutes, or until just golden. Let cool for five minutes on the tray before transferring to a wire rack. ■

The uneven shapes are part of the charm. (MICAH SIVA)

New Renewal rabbis assure movement’s East Bay legacy

continued from page 3

Chadeish Yameinu in Santa Cruz. California as a whole has a major footprint, home to a fifth of all Aleph-affiliated Renewal communities in the country.

In an interview, Aleph executive director SooJi Min-Maranda described the Bay Area Renewal congregations as “flagship communities” and Aquarian Minyan as “ground zero for Renewal.”

Along with the congregations formally affiliated with Aleph are fledgling communities that Aleph advises. “New communities are starting all the time. Almost every month

then when they wanted [a different] community they came to Kehilla,” he said. “And Kehilla is sometimes a funnel to Chochmat. I always love it when people find a synagogue that meets their needs.”

Kehilla also “spawned Afikomen,” the Judaica shop and bookstore in Berkeley where Cooper once worked, he said. And he and Rabbi Stu Kelman, founding rabbi of Berkeley Conservative Congregation Netivot Shalom, spearheaded the creation of Gan Yarok in Marin, the nation’s first green Jewish cemetery.

“We are not an insular community,”

I get a call,” said Min-Maranda, who on that very morning heard from a new havurah, or prayer community, in Hood River, Oregon.

Aleph has produced 220 rabbis since the formal ordination program was established in 2000, in addition to 34 cantors, 38 rabbinic pastors and 91 spiritual directors.

Rabbi David Cooper, the former spiritual leader at Kehilla in Piedmont, estimates that “15 to 20” Renewal rabbis live in the Bay Area. Not all were ordained by Aleph; some went to other rabbinical seminaries and now identify as Renewal, and some of the older rabbis received direct smicha from Schachter-Shalomi.

Cooper remembers moving to the Bay Area in 1976 and spending Kol Nidre at the House of Love and Prayer, a San Francisco community founded by Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, who, like Schachter-Shalomi, was a former Chabad emissary.

“On Yom Kippur Day I went to the Aquarian Minyan, and Reb Zalman was leading the service,” Cooper said.

Today the East Bay Renewal communities have a symbiotic relationship, Cooper said. “We had quite a few people turned on to their Judaism through Beyt Tikkun, and

Cooper noted. “You find Renewal-oriented folks in many places.”

The two newest local Renewal rabbis have strong Jewish backgrounds and have been filling functions often thought of as rabbinic for many years.

Hurvich, 56, grew up in Mill Valley, where her family belonged to Conservative Congregation Kol Shofar in nearby Tiburon, but “I had a real boundary-crossing family,” she said. On some Saturdays her father would take her to the Shabbos Shul, led by the “rock ’n’ roll brothers” in a church basement. And the family spent vacations with his Orthodox, kosher-keeping family in Alabama.

When it was time for her bat mitzvah, she refused, saying it wasn’t meaningful to her. But she kept up with a teen group that met weekly with the rabbi “to talk about Jewish values and research on animals or space exploration.” She marked her bat mitzvah after high school and said her rabbi set her on the path to becoming a Jewish educator “because he took me seriously.”

After receiving a master’s degree in art, Jewish art and material culture from the Conservative movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, she returned to the

Bay Area in 1999. She has since compiled an impressive resume in Jewish education, including stints as community liaison at the Contemporary Jewish Museum and the JCC of San Francisco, and director of Kehilla’s Hebrew school. Today she continues to prepare b’nai mitzvah students and is a freelance Jewish artist and ritual leader.

So why rabbinic ordination, and why now?

“I remember thinking when I was still in college, I’m a Jewish woman at the end of the 20th century in America, and I don’t define myself through the Holocaust. I’m part of that pivot generation. I thought, what can I do that will have the most impact?” she said. “I know, I thought: I’m going to be a rabbi.”

It took her 30 years. She got married, had a baby and spent a decade running the religious school at Kehilla. It derailed her from that goal, she said, but she “didn’t lose the fire.”

Receiving ordination has changed her life, she said. “I feel different. It’s like marrying someone you already lived with. The ceremony felt like a veil was being lifted.”

Krieger has likewise been filling a rabbinic function without the title for years, notably the past three when he has served Chochmat HaLev as its part-time spiritual leader.

People who meet Krieger for the first time might find it hard to believe he grew up haredi, or ultra-Orthodox. It’s not just the piercings and the long hair. It’s the total package.

At his congregational welcome on Jan. 25, the 41-year-old told the 150 people gathered in the sanctuary that he “resisted the calling” to become a rabbi for many years, both because of the “hierarchical implications” and because he was “uncomfortable with this model of rabbi being ‘symbolic exemplar,’ the idea that people expect their rabbi to be the paradigm of perfection.”

Instead, he continued with a grin, “I can be a Shabbat-observing, neo-Hasidic, mysticism-loving, queer, body-positive, tech bro, single dad, ADHD, Enneagram 7, surfer, [Burning Man] Burner, meditator, ecstatic dancer, and everything else that goes into the soup of what makes me, me.”

Krieger is a whirling ball of energy. After getting his bachelor’s degree from Yale in 2006, he spent almost a decade in

journalism, covering the Arab world for Newsweek and serving as foreign policy correspondent for the Atlantic, among others.

Government work followed, including postings at the Pentagon, the World Economic Forum and the State Department, where he served as that body’s first-ever “ambassador to Silicon Valley,” working with the tech sector on emerging technologies. He has taught design, technology and social impact at Stanford and UC Berkeley, and most recently has advised tech and social media companies including Meta and TikTok on “responsible innovation” strategies to mitigate potential harm caused by their products.

In contrast to many who leave the ultra-Orthodox world, Krieger looks back at it fondly. He’s grateful for the years of Jewish learning, which give him a facility with Jewish texts not always available to new (or old) rabbis without that background.

As the years passed, he knew he wanted to do Jewish communal work but couldn’t envision a path to the rabbinate. What seminary would admit him? Where would he feel at home? In 2014 he heard about Jewish Renewal for the first time when he read Schachter-Shalomi’s obituary in the New York Times.

“I remember thinking, ‘Who is this guy who grew up Orthodox and was a Chabad rabbi but also dropped acid with Timothy Leary and is into singing and dancing and meditation and is egalitarian and pro-LGBTQ and cares about the environment and social justice?’” he told J. “If he could be a rabbi, perhaps I could be too.”

Now a rabbi, he continues to work part time in responsible innovation at social media companies, mostly TikTok, and is raising his 10-year-old son.

“I think the Bay Area has the richest Jewish community in the country,” Krieger said. “Even the institutions in the East Bay are great, and the mainline synagogues are, I’d say, some of the best synagogues of their denominations. Then you have so much entrepreneurial Judaism and creativity, and the fact that the communities get along so well with each other.

“Many of the innovations that happen here, just kind of radiate outward into the country. I feel just thrilled to be here!” n

“We had quite a few people turned on to their Judaism through Beyt Tikkun, and then when they wanted a different community they came to Kehilla. And Kehilla is sometimes a funnel to Chochmat. I always love it when people find a synagogue that meets their needs.”

Rabbi David Cooper, former Kehilla spiritual leader

Congregants link together for a communal blessing at Chochmat HaLev in Berkeley on Jan. 25 to celebrate Rabbi Zvika Krieger’s ordination. (AARON LEVY-WOLINS/J. STAFF)

Upcoming J. Special Sections

The

OPINION | ROB ESHMAN | FORWARD

This moment calls for sadness. So how come I am so filled with rage?

Yarden Bibas, 35, was freed on Feb. 1 along with two other hostages held by Hamas. But he returned without his family.

Now Hamas is sending the corpses of his wife and two sons home, and the world must seethe over their deaths: Shiri Bibas, 34, Ariel, 5, and Kfir, 2.

Rob Eshman is a senior columnist for the Forward based in Southern California. Follow him on Instagram @foodaism and Twitter @foodaism or email him eshman@forward.com. This article was originally published in the Forward and is reprinted with permission.

I’m seething. I’m enraged at Hamas. Its leaders and so-called soldiers bear 100% of the guilt for the unimaginable suffering of every hostage, and the deaths of the hostages who have died since Oct. 7. It was Hamas who planned and executed that massacre, and we know from materials captured by the IDF that those plans included the taking of civilian hostages in order to trade for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

That’s why Hamas terrorists attacked Kibbutz Nir Oz in the first place. And why, when Yarden Bibas and his family hid together in the safe room, Hamas used drilling equipment it had brought to break in. The terrorists murdered Shiri’s parents, Margit Shnaider Silberman and Yosi Silberman, and even the Bibas family dog.

Terrorizing civilians wasn’t an accident of this battle. It was the strategy. Taking a baby less than a year old — as Kfir, the youngest hostage, was at the time — was part of the plan. No matter who you are, that should chill and enrage you.

“Kfir and Ariel aren’t enemies of Hamas,” Jimmy Miller, Shiri’s cousin, said last year when Kfir turned 1 in captivity. “The world is creating a legal precedent that allows the abduction of babies from their land, from their homes.”

I’m also furious at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. I know some people may object that this pulls focus from the real perpetrators, but I refuse to absolve him of his share in this tragedy.

For years, Netanyahu allowed millions in Qatari cash to flow into Gaza, propping up Hamas, because doing so advanced his aim of undermining the Palestinian Authority. He plunged the country into civil chaos by pushing a judicial overhaul that was a naked attempt to stay in power,

giving Hamas the perfect opportunity to attack an Israel weakened by internal strife.

He kept the war in Gaza going beyond what his own generals said made strategic sense. His scorchedearth strategy, which resulted in massive civilian death and destruction, failed in its avowed aim to destroy Hamas. That strategy prolonged the suffering of the hostages who have survived, and made it more and more likely that many of them would die.

The Kahanist Knesset members Netanyahu brought into his cabinet boasted of rejecting previous hostage deals — deals that could have helped the Bibas family return home before this grievous moment. And to this day, Netanyahu has thwarted every attempt to launch an independent investigation into Oct. 7 so that those responsible will be held accountable and future families won’t face the agonies of the Bibases.

He is a reverse Moses, who has brought plague after plague on his own people.

I’m angry at Israel’s knee-jerk American supporters. The people who never saw fit to speak against a government gone mad, one that’s unrecognizable to those who support a secular, peace-seeking state for Jews and all its citizens. They have helped, with their silence, to enable Netanyahu as he has sowed division at home and terror in the West Bank.

And if this crowd dares to use the Bibas family’s pain — especially now, as it celebrates the return of one loved one, while mourning for others — as a reason to further oppress, occupy and terrorize Palestinians, they will be sealing the doom of Israel’s democracy.

I’m also livid at those pro-Palestinian protesters who have justified Hamas. Since Oct. 7, we have seen them on college campuses and in public squares, echoing Hamas’ demand to eliminate Israel. All I can say to them is: Are you happy? Those who were celebrating on Oct. 8, 2023 — can you not see where terror leads? To the destroyed lives of children, on every side?

Your breathtaking self-certainty undoubtedly encouraged Hamas. Instead of saying, as many brave Palestinians did,

response to the Bibas deaths: Pure rage

that the hostages needed to be released, and that taking the Bibas children hostage fouled the Palestinian cause, you donned retro-Guevara wear and helped suggest that further slaughter would be, if not actively endorsed, at the very least overlooked by the global le .

And do not dare cite body counts of children killed by Israel in Gaza in response to agony over the Bibas children. Each young life marred or taken by war is a unique tragedy: Palestinian or Israeli; Jewish, Muslim or Christian.

ere are, to be sure, heroes in this sad story, and to calm my anger, I look to them.

e Bibas family, which has endured

the unendurable with steadfastness and grace — including in a Jan. 31 statement that welcomed Yarden’s imminent release, while striking a grave note in admi ing they were “facing very complex days” ahead.

e hostage families, and others who have stood by and supported them and fought tirelessly for the captives’ freedom.

Former President Joe Biden and President Donald Trump and their diplomatic teams, who put aside di erences to finalize the deal that has freed many of the remaining hostages and will, if seen to completion, see all of them — living and dead — returned to Israel.

e Israelis and Palestinians who join together to reject murder and kidnapping as a legitimate tactic and work toward a shared future in the land.

We have seen this week what the awful

alternative is.

On my bookshelf, staring down at me as I write every column, is the spine of Serge Klarsfeld’s “French Children of the Holocaust,” his exhaustive 1983 compilation of the names and faces of 2,500 children deported and put to death in the Nazi camps. Klarsfeld spent some 20 years collecting the documentary evidence for the book, and photos of each child, all under age 18. He gave each one his or her own page, a final act of resistance to the Nazis who sought to obliterate whole families, their documents and any record of their existence, including by killing at least 11,400 French children.

As I stare up at the book, it is too easy to imagine the faces of Ariel and Kfir Bibas among those of the Nazis’ young French victims, two more innocents destroyed by a genocidal campaign.

It is imperative that their story be remembered, and repeated. My prayer is that their family may find comfort and that the rage we feel at their fate will lead us to fight, in their memory, for peace. ■

A mural by Benzi Brofman in Tel Aviv marked the 1st birthday of Kfir Bibas, who was kidnapped to Gaza along with his older brother, Ariel, and mother, Shiri. All three were killed. (NIZZAN COHEN VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS CC BY 4.0)

Robin Raphael and Jack Simke of Burlingame, and Julie and John DeRubes of San Diego, are very pleased to announce the marriage of their children, ARIELLA SIMKE and BRIAN DERUBES, at Monastery Beach in Carmel on Oct. 27, 2024, with Brian’s father, John, o iciating. Ariella is a senior editor at Scuba Diving magazine, and Brian owns Monterey Expeditions, a local adventure and guide company. Brian will be known as Brian John-DeRubes Simke. The couple will continue to reside in Monterey with their two cats.

B’NAI MITZVAH

YISHAI BASKIN Son of Aaron and Helem Baskin, Saturday, Feb. 8, at Beth Jacob Congregation in Oakland.

BEN CHARLSON Son of Susan Austin and Michael Charlson, Saturday, March 1, at Temple Sinai in Oakland.

ZACHARY HERBACH Son of Marah and Jonathan Herbach, Saturday, March 1, at Congregation Beth Am in Los Altos Hills.

THEO NIEMCZURA Son of Alexis Hayman and Je Niemczura, Saturday, Feb. 22, at Temple Sinai in Oakland.

GABE STEIN Son of Hoang and Eric Stein, Feb. 22, at Congregation Rodef Sholom in San Rafael.

GRIFFIN MICHAEL RIENDEAU Son of Michael Benjamin Riendeau and Lauren Victoria McGough, Saturday, Feb. 22, at Congregation Beth Shalom in Napa.

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

OBITUARIES

ELLEN CAROL BENJAMIN

April 30, 1950–Dec. 1, 2024

Ellen Carol (née Ecker) Benjamin, age 74, passed away on Dec. 1, 2024, in San Francisco following a long illness.

She was surrounded by her loving family, her husband, Jon Benjamin, and her stepchildren, Chloe Benjamin (Nathan Jandl) and Jordan Benjamin, along with her care team at Rhoda Goldman Plaza. She is survived by her mother, Geraldine Ecker, sister, Karen Yasgoor, brother-in-law, Stuart Yasgoor, and nephew, Justin Yasgoor. She was predeceased by her father, Gerald Ecker, and grandparents, Joseph and Ruth Radlow and Jack and Betty Ecker.

Ellen was born and raised in Lorain, Ohio. She graduated from Admiral King High School (1968) and Kent State University (1972) before receiving a Master’s Degree in Communications from Bowling Green University (1974). Ellen had a successful career in HR and development with organizations

such as UnitedHealthcare, the San Francisco Ballet, and the SF Symphony. Trips to Europe and Israel reignited Ellen’s connection to Judaism, and she returned home to become a Bat Mitzvah at Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco. Rabbi Cohn’s formation of the Spiritual Institute of Temple Emanu-El (SITE) led to Ellen’s work as a spiritual director and to her most treasured friendships. In 2010, Ellen studied for and received two certifications: one in individual spiritual direction from the Mercy Center in Burlingame and the second in group spiritual direction in a Jewish context. She led both individual and group meetings for over twelve years, inspiring and guiding women, including those who had recently converted to Judaism. She led her groups with love, music, and wisdom, and she will be remembered for her gracious spirit.

Ellen’s dedication to her family and religion became the heart of her life. Jon and Ellen built a vibrant, devoted partnership that spanned thirty years. She assumed the mantle of spouse and stepparent wholeheartedly, and her generosity took infinite forms, from maintaining their beautiful home life to caring conversations to acts of lovingkindness. She had many relatives

and friends — too long a list to mention here — who loved Ellen’s beaming smile, energy, and wisdom. She loved to travel with Jon, their family, and friends, with particular fondness for Mendocino, Hawaii, France, and Italy.

In addition to her synagogue commitments, Ellen was a docent at San Francisco’s Contemporary Jewish Museum, where she led tours with curiosity and enthusiasm — and, as her memory began to be impacted by Lewy Body dementia, with distinct bravery. Ellen felt injustice deeply and was motivated to make the world a better place. After losing a dear family member, Claire Cucchiari Loring, to domestic violence, Ellen joined the board of Shalom Bayit, where she served for ten years. Ellen’s kindness and compassion knew no bounds. Her sparkling laugh will ring forever in the minds of those who loved her.

A memorial will be held on Sunday, March 16, at 2 p.m. at Congregation Emanu-El. For more information, please contact Jon Benjamin at jonbenjamn@aol.com.

May Ellen’s life be a blessing for all who knew her. If you would like to honor Ellen’s life, please make a donation in her memory to any of the following organizations.

Shalom Bayit shalom-bayit.org

Social Good Fund/Shalom Bayit P.O. Box 2883, Berkeley, CA 94702

Lewy Body Dementia Association lbda.org/donate 912 Killian Hill Rd. SW, Ste. 105 Lilburn, GA 30047

Memory Care, Rhoda Goldman Terraces jfcs.org

Jewish Family and Children’s Services P.O. Box 159004, San Francisco, CA 94115

From the J. Archives As Hitler rose, Americans warned of homegrown fascism

MAYA MIRSKY | J. STAFF

The year was 1934.

That was the year Hitler purged his enemies from his own party and took complete control of it. That was the year the president of Germany died, leading Hitler to abolish the office and declare himself Führer, or in other words, dictator.

Fascism in Germany was swelling like a wave.

But it wasn’t only in Europe that fascism was broached. Jews in America were deeply concerned about whether fascist ideology could spread here.

Robert Bradon wrote an essay for this paper in September 1934 headlined “Fascism Threatens America.” In it, he issued a wake-up call to American Jews to take the potential of fascism in the U.S. seriously.

“What has occurred in Germany with the coming to power of Hitler has centered world attention on the political philosophy of Fascism. The Jews have had special concern in the terroristic phase of Fascism — for in Germany, in Poland and elsewhere, the Jews have been one of the minorities most severely affected,” he wrote.

“That Fascism might spread to America

is a threat no thoughtful citizen can ignore. Fascism takes different forms in different nations. But the principle remains the same. It is the terroristic rule by the most reactionary section of financial capitalism to preserve the benefits of the few at the expense of the broad masses — the workers, the liberals, the intellectuals, the minority racial and political groups. Democratic pretense is discarded: terror, repression are the instruments of Fascist dictatorship.”

Jews, including the readers of this paper, knew that the situation was bad in Germany long before Kristallnacht in 1938, before the race laws of 1935 or even before the boycott of Jewish-sold goods in 1933.

At the beginning of 1932, this paper was already calling out the “Hitler menace” and the dangers of antisemitic attacks at the University of Berlin. So by 1934, the danger was clear.

But this wasn’t only about Europe. Bradon was particularly concerned about what would happen if fascism spread to the U.S. It wasn’t an impossibility.

“The threat of Fascism to America is increasingly great. Our political orientation has become dangerously nationalistic. Organizations with frankly anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic, anti-negro biases spring up throughout the country — witness the Silver Shirts, the Khaki Shirts, etc. And in California, Fascism already has roped off the Imperial Valley as its special province.”

Bradon was most likely talking about the Associated Farmers of California, an anti-labor group that coalesced in the state’s inland agricultural regions. While not overtly

fascist, many historians consider it to have had fascist leanings.

The Silver Shirts were a pro-Nazi group based in the U.S. There was even a local following. In 1933, Raymond Dannenbaum infiltrated the San Francisco branch for our paper and delivered a mocking exposé headlined “Hate for Sale.” (The second segment was titled “Any ‘Good’ American Citizen Can Become A Silver Shirt Bigot By Paying $10

“That Fascism might spread to America is a threat no thoughtful citizen can ignore.”

Robert Bradon, September 1934

and Disclosing the Amount of His Bank Account.”)

“There is hate for sale in the Whitney Building here,” he wrote in the first segment.

“In a one-room bookshop, suggestively called ‘The Aloha,’ nestling among the appropriate sentiments about universal love and good will … should you be willing to contribute 15 cents more to the ‘war chest’ of American anti-Semites, you can purchase a charming pamphlet: ‘The Cause of Anti-Jewism in the United States.’”

Dannenbaum continued:

“For nothing, Mrs. Meyer, the attendant, will give you one of her sweetest smiles (if your nose is not too conspicuous) and a copy of a brochure: ‘Declaration of the Principles

of the Silver Shirts of America.’”

According to Bradon, fascism and its bigotry were ways to divert Americans from real problems, at the expense of minorities.

“The radicals and liberals, the pacifists and intellectuals — all threats to the Fascists — will suffer immediately. And along with them, the Jews and Catholics, the Negroes and Japanese, and the religious and racial minorities that will logically feel the brunt of the Fascist terror. They are the potential scapegoats in America.”

He focused in particular on how Jews would fare under a fascist government and appealed to a Jewish understanding of the unique place of America in world history.

“The Jew is threatened by racial prejudice: but he is also threatened as an American. Our valued liberty, which attracted the Jews first to this country, vanishes. And not only the liberty of the Jews, but the liberty of all citizens,” he wrote.

“If we believe in true liberty of thought, of action, of belief, we abhor Fascism, not only as Jews, but as Americans. The Jew values his Americanism: he should stand with all other sincere Americans in the battle against the Fascist forces.”

Bradon concluded by appealing to the Jewish sense of history and self:

“The Jew, historically a rebel, a lover of liberty, must again affirm his traditions by active resistance to the blight of Fascism.” n

A book about Nazis in America, advertised in this paper in 1944. (J. ARCHIVES)

A 1934 talk in San Francisco. (J. ARCHIVES)

A 1942 campaign ad. (J. ARCHIVES)

Complexity Welcome.

Coca-Cola, Black Panthers, and Phantom Jets: Israel in the American Orbit, 1967–1973

MONDAY, MARCH 10, 4–5:30 PM PT, ROOM 141, BERKELEY LAW BUILDING

In this book talk, historian Oz Frankel examines the period of the late 1960s as a unique moment when Israel became more closely entwined with the United States not just as a strategic ally but also through its intensifying intimacy with American culture, society, and technology. Taking an expansive view of Israeli–American encounters, historian Oz Frankel reveals their often unexpected consequences, including, for example, the ripple effects that the rise of Black Power had on both extremes of Israeli politics. Purchase the book here.

Introduction by Professor Emeritus of History, Sheldon Rothblatt. Hosted by the Helen Diller Institute and the Center for Jewish Studies. Cosponsored with The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, the Department of History, and the Department of American Studies at UC Berkeley.

A light reception begins directly after the lecture in the front courtyard of Freehouse Berkeley, 2700 Bancroft Way, Berkeley, CA 94704.

Yuval Shany, Hersch Lauterpacht Chair in International Law, Former Dean, Law Faculty of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Former Member, Chair, UN Human Rights Committee

Register: ozfrankel.rsvpify.com

Israel and the United Nations

5TH ANNUAL LIBITZKY LECTURE ON ISRAEL AND THE GREAT POWERS AT THE HELEN DILLER INSTITUTE

Masua Sagiv (MODERATOR), Koret Visiting Assistant Professor of Jewish and Israel Studies at UC Berkeley (2021–2025); Senior Faculty, Shalom Hartman Institute; Researcher at the Menomadin Center for Jewish and Democratic Law, Bar-Ilan University Law Faculty

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 12, 6–7:30 PM PT, ROOM 105, BERKELEY LAW BUILDING

How should we understand Israel’s complicated relationship with the United Nations? Please join Yuval Shany (Former Member and Chair of the UN Human Rights Committee) and Masua Sagiv (Koret Visiting Professor at HDI) for a frank discussion about the complexities and nuances of Israel’s current and historical relationship with the world’s preeminent international body. This is the fifth in a series of talks examining Israel’s relationships with global powers. Prior talks have explored Israel’s relationship with China, Russia, Turkey, and Iran.

Hosted by the Helen Diller Institute. Cosponsored with the Miller Institute for Global Challenges and the Law and the Institute of International Studies at UC Berkeley. A light reception will be provided to all registrants. PUBLIC EVENT

Register: israelun.rsvpify.com

Oz Frankel, Associate Professor of History, The New School for Social Research