Columnist Suzan Berns can be reached at [email protected].
Gliding into the holidays
Lots of Jewish community movers and shakers were celebrating with the Rev. Cecil Williams at Glide’s annual Mo’s Kitchen Holiday Gala (which is named after Jewish mover and shaker Mo Bernstein). Among them, Koret Foundation’s Tad Taube, S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation’s Tom Dine with his wife, Joan; and, at the Maisin Foundation table, Rick Schiller, proudly carrying his granddaughter, with Adele Corvin, Dana Corvin, Harris Weinberg and Lila Schiller.
Paying tribute to a leader
Ron Diller was in Israel last month to dedicate the Helen Diller Family Entrance Plaza at a ceremony marking the opening of Tel Aviv’s new Yitzhak Rabin Center for Israel Studies.
The Helen Diller Family Foundation of the Jewish Community Endowment Fund donated $1 million to the new center, which will provide educational programs focusing on the principles of democracy.
Helen Diller, Ron’s mother, notes that she had the honor of hosting the prime minister at a luncheon for Silicon Valley CEOs.
“It was a very moving experience for me,” she says. The contribution to the center is “a very meaningful way for my family to show our high regard for a distinguished leader and humanitarian.”
A mishmash of goings-on …
At the Hebrew Free Loan Association’s 109th Annual Meeting on Dec. 11, Peter Williams was elected to the group’s board of directors, and Esther Kamkar, a former loan recipient, told a moving story about how a loan from the agency enabled her family to remain in their home after a difficult divorce.
The group also honored George Hoffman and Shirley Baer, two supporters of the agency who died recently. Hoffman was a past president and Baer left a sizable bequest to HFLA for student loans.
Los Gatos movers and shakers took a reading break with students at Yavneh Day School in November. Mayor Mike Wasserman, California Assemblywoman Rebecca Cohn, Rabbi Melanie Aron of Congregation Shir Hadash, Jyl Jurman of the Jewish Federation of Silicon Valley and police officer Sam Wonnell and his dog Quarz were special guests during the reading week. Principal Joni Quintal came up with the idea, says Admissions Director Shelley Leveson. For 15 minutes each day throughout the week, faculty, staff and students “sat down, made themselves comfortable and took a reading break.”
Also, touching excerpts from Joseph Portnoy’s letters to his wife, Ruthy Portnoy, during World War II, along with a photo of the two of them, appear in the November 2005 issue of National Geographic in an article entitled “War Letters.” Portnoy is cantor emeritus at San Francisco’s Congregation Emanu-El. In one quote he tells Ruthy to “ask God to give you what you want.”
Grandma’s grand opening
“I’ve been fascinated with my grandmother’s life for years, feeling that her story held some key, some secret, and if only I could discover it, then I would have the answer for my own life,” writes Robin Meyerowitz.
Meyerowitz reports that “Susi Lewinsky: A Life in Painting,” an exhibit of her grandmother’s paintings, opened Dec. 16 and will run through March 12 at San Francisco’s Congregation Emanu-El. Meyerowitz, her mother Miriam Meyerowitz and sister Lisa Meyerowitz worked together to curate the exhibit.
Lewinsky was born in Hamburg, Germany, in 1911 and escaped from the Nazis, taking just two of her watercolors. They are among the 27 paintings in the show. She lived in London and El Salvador before moving to San Francisco in 1957. Her work has been exhibited around the world. Lewinsky died last year at 93.
Suzan Berns invites you to tell her what’s going on with you and/or your organization.