Dorian “Doc” Paskowitz, the Jewish, Stanford-educated surfing pioneer, died Nov. 10 in Newport Beach at age 93.
According to daughter Navah Paskowitz, her father had been ailing for some time after undergoing hip surgery in the fall.
Paskowitz was a revered figure in the surfing world who came to international attention with the 2007 release of “Surfwise,” a documentary about his eclectic and colorful life.
Born in Galveston, Texas, to Jewish immigrants from Russia, Paskowitz earned his medical degree at Stanford University. In 1956 he left his second wife and traveled with six surfboards to Israel, where he helped jump-start the sport.
Back in the States, he married Juliette and embarked on a nomadic surfing lifestyle. The couple had nine children, and the family lived together in a tiny, 24-foot camper, foraging for food and making do on what they could earn by teaching surfing. Paskowitz occasionally took small jobs helping out as a physician in deprived communities, but only to keep the family from starvation.
In a 2008 interview with the Los Angeles Jewish Journal (www.tinyurl.com/paskowitz-journal), Paskowitz reflected on his family’s alternative lifestyle.
“My kids lived a charmed life,” he said, “and if they hadn’t, I wouldn’t have continued it for five minutes, and my wife would not have allowed me to live a lifestyle where our kids were unhappy.”
Jewish kids growing up in a materialistic world, he said, “can become awfully overripened … like a plum … too sweet and gushy. Spoiled rotten. That wasn’t going to happen to my kids. I said my kids are gonna live like animals and puppy dogs — and I found a wife that would do that with me.”
Paskowitz retained a strong Jewish identity throughout his life, laying tefillin, lighting Shabbat candles in the camper on Friday nights and visiting Israel. In one sequence in the documentary, Paskowitz, on a cane after having hip-replacement surgery, is supported by two of his sons as he walks painfully to the Western Wall.
After their travels, the Paskowitzes opened a surf academy in San Clemente, which family members still manage. — l.a. jewish journal