S.F. federation award winners announced

The S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation and its Endowment Fund will honor individuals and programs that made outstanding contributions to the Bay Area Jewish community this past year.

The 2007 JCF awards of excellence recipients are: Sinton award for distinguished leader of the year, Ron Kaufman; visionary leader award, Helen Diller; volunteer of the year, Paul Resnick; agency staff person of the year, Flora Kupferman, Bureau of Jewish Education; JCF staff person of the year, Dawne Bear Novicoff, director, Israel and Overseas Committee; program of the year, Communities of Learning; and Lloyd W. Dinkelspiel award for young leadership, Judith Goldkrand Cheskin.

The Helen Diller family awards for excellence in Jewish education 2007 recipients are: for congregational or community school, Sacha Kopin, Contra Costa Midrasha and Temple Sinai Religious School; for day school, Shirley Goldstein, Yavneh Day School, and Marni Shapiro, Brandeis Hillel Day School-Marin; for early childhood education, Patricia Perez, JCCSF Helen Diller family preschool; for informal education, Emily Scheinberg, the Contemporary Jewish Museum.

This year’s regional winner of the Grinspoon-Steinhardt award is Gavriella Lazar, Congregation Emanu-El Youth and Family Education.

Recipients will be honored at the federation’s 97th annual meeting 4:30 p.m. Thursday, June 7 at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, 3200 California St., S.F. To RSVP, call (415) 777-4545 or visit www.sfjcf.org.

Dry Bones sweeps Israeli blog awards

The popular Israeli political comic strip/blog Dry Bones, which appears in j., has been voted best Jewish blog in this year’s Jewish/Israeli Blogosphere (JIB) Award Competition.

The site also took the award for best Jewish humor blog, best political/current events blog, best Jewish culture blog, and best pro-Israel advocacy blog.

American Israeli Yaakov Kirschen’s comic strip Dry Bones has been published in Israel since 1973. In 2005 the strip debuted on the Internet, along with the Dry Bones blog.