Columnist Suzan Berns can be reached at [email protected].
Celebrity sighting
Billy Crystal told me that the S.F. audience for his show “700 Sundays” was “one of the best.” He was a guest at the Los Angeles wedding of the sister of former Sonoma County resident Jon Merwitzer.
The bride’s mother, Sandi Dean Merwitzer, is a childhood (and Akron) friend of mine, and Crystal’s neighbor. Crystal argued that the S.F. audience was not all that Jewish. “You can sense it,” he said.
Last-minute shindigs
Progressive Jewish Alliance’s vodka/latka party, appropriately subtitled “Festival of Rights,” attracted “hundreds of Jewish hipsters that danced the night away to Balkan Beatbox, a hard-edged electronic folk music group,” writes Abby Levine, program director for PJA. Among the dancers were Sarah Lefton, Deborah Kaufman, Alan Snitow, David Katznelson, Stephanie Rapp, Peter Gabel and his 12-year old son, Sam Gabel. P.S. You can hear the group at www.balkanbeatbox.com
Jewish Coalition for Literacy’s Chanukah Book Drive party featured Berkeley author Joshua Braff who read passages from his first novel, “The Unthinkable Thoughts of Jacob Green,” and had the group in stitches. Roberta Rothman and Becky Burgheimer, JCL Bay Area and S.F. directors respectively, said that Rachel Bernstein, Jerilyn Gelt, Naomi Lempert-Lopez and Bruce McWilliams planned the event. The group collected 250 books, which were distributed to underserved public schools. They can always use more. Visit them at www.jclread.org.
Shayna Lesovoy, 17, of Foster City and Peninsula Temple Beth El, put together a Chanukah carnival for Jewish Home residents as part of her community service project for the Diller Teen Fellows, a leadership group for outstanding teens. Lesovoy’s mom, Amy Shulman, said her daughter reads j. cover to cover each week, plans to receive it at college, and would be thrilled to see her name in the paper. It’s our pleasure, Shayna.
Power of one family
Selma Tandowsky, her daughter Joan Tandowsky Fox, and daughters-in-law Michelle and Ilana Tandowsky are chairing the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation Women’s Alliance’s Power of One. Non-family members and regional chairs include Stephanie Finkelstein (San Francisco), Sara Green and Jennifer Levine (North Peninsula), Talya Brinkman and Jacqueline Hantgan (South Peninsula), Rose Barlow and Helene Siegel-Fotos (Marin) and Dganit Herzig (Young Adult Division). The annual fund-raising and outreach evening is slated for Feb. 16 and will feature actor Marlee Matlin. Sunny Kaplan will receive the 2006 Judith Chapman Women’s Leadership Award. Visit www.sfjcf.org/go/power for info.
Short shorts …
Rabbi Melanie Aron of Congregation Shir Hadash in Los Gatos is the new president of the Pacific Central West region of the World Union for Progressive Judaism. She succeeds Rabbi Roberto Graetz of Lafayette’s Temple Isaiah, reports Marsha Felton, regional director. Aron will also spearhead the region’s work with the Association of Reform Zionists of America. … Sharon Miller has been named to the Community Advisory Board of Union Bank of California. Miller, CEO of the Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center, was formerly executive vice president of American Jewish World Service.
Apologies to …
Diane Portnoff of the American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science and Peninsula architect Stan Field for misspelling their names in recent Faces columns.