Camping for dollars

At Camp Newman-Swig last summer, some 40 high school juniors who composed the Avodah program (a service-learning summer program for 11th graders) followed the tradition of past campers and raised money for the July 19 AIDS walk, which benefits San Francisco AIDS organizations.

The team came up with a variety of fun and serious fundraising tasks — such as signing on as Avodah personal assistants (cleaning cabins and waking campers), Spavodah (a spa night with manicures, pedicures, facials, etc., for staff), baking and selling cookies at the walk, and just plain solicitation of campers, parents and their rabbis, among others.

The team auctioned off their director Rachel Marder (a former j. intern and daughter of Rabbi Janet Marder of Congregation Beth Am) for a day, and she ended up with the fifth grade boys when she was “bought” by that group’s counselor. At the end of the campaign, the team raised $11,102 and ranked an outstanding 50 out of 632 fundraising teams!

That sure looks familiar

Marin’s Ron Berman, an almost-retired ad guy, saw his life flash before his eyes last week while watching “Mad Men,” the TV show about the world of advertising in the ’60s. Characters at the show’s Sterling Cooper agency were screening a commercial for Clorox — and it was the same one that Berman wrote 40 years ago for Clorox when he worked for the San Francisco agency Honig-Cooper.

“I was creeped out,” noted Berman from his Greenbrae home office.

And while we’re in Marin, at least four active Jewish community members are running for political office here. Marc Levine, who worked for the Jewish Community Relations Council a few years back, is running for a seat on the San Rafael City Council. Bruce Raful, who was a key leader in Congregation Kol Shofar’s fundraising for its new building, is running for county assessor. (His candidacy was “outed” at the synagogue’s groundbreaking last spring.) Roy Chernus, who served on the board of Congregation Rodef Sholom, is running for a seat on Marin’s Superior Court. He’s currently a court commissioner. And Len Rifkind, who was president of Congregation Rodef Sholom, is running for Larkspur City Council.

Short shorts …

In case you didn’t read it in Leah Garchik’s column in the San Francisco Chronicle, Susan RoAne reported that someone (with a fine sense of humor) put a white yarmulke on the head of the Bernard Maybeck bust at the Palace of Fine Arts, where Congregation Kol Shofar held holiday services while its building is under renovation … Former j. reporter Joe Eskenazi noted in SF Weekly that the San Francisco Board of Supervisors’ plan to honor Yom Kippur by canceling its scheduled meeting went awry when they mistakenly chose Sept. 29 instead of Sept. 28 (Yom Kippur day) to stay home. Noted Eskenazi, “sounds a bit ongepotchket, no?”

San Francisco photographer Susan Mall’s exhibit “Viva la Cuba” opens Wednesday, Oct. 21, in the lobby of the California Pacific Medical Center building at 2100 Webster St. … Congregation Beth Am’s Cantor David Unterman’s “special” birthday will be celebrated at services Oct. 23 and at a luncheon Oct. 27 (make your reservations by Monday, Oct. 19) … Juliette Katz Goldman is the new director of development at Kehillah Jewish High School, where she reports to Head of School Lillian Howard … Shmaltz Brewing Company, producer of He’Brew: The Chosen Beer, is celebrating its 13th year with a new beer called Jewbelation Bar Mitzvah.