July 28, 1950
From “Radio Commentator Tells Her Impression of Maimonides”
From Sept. 8, 1950
Jane Todd, KCBS radio commentator, last week visited Maimonides Health Center for the Chronic Sick, and then said this on her radio program Monday afternoon:
Last week I visited a new institution in San Francisco — the only one of its kind outside of New York City, and in my opinion, in a class by itself. I think our city will have reason to be proud of it. I am talking about the Maimonides Health Center for the Chronic Sick at 2356 Sutter Street.
Maimonides has been open for two months now, and … it’s time to see what San Francisco has in this institution.
First of all, a beautiful building, designed by creative architect Eric Mendelssohn. Undoubtedly you’ve passed by it and seen the great expanses of glass and the soft-colored horizontal planes of the exterior.
Since they are caring for sick people, naturally the medical side is basic, which is why the hospital has an excellent staff of doctors. But nutrition is almost as important as medicine to many of the sick — you’d be surprised at how many people come in suffering from malnutrition as well as a chronic ailment. So the special diet kitchen stays busy building them up.
Along with this physical program goes physiotherapy — up to the minute equipment including items specially designed for this course of treatment.
The very reason they can hope for success in their program is that San Francisco abounds in community nursing facilities, educational ones, recreational and I don’t know what all.
As my last week’s guest, Albert Deutsch said, “most chronic disease hospitals have an atmosphere of waiting for death. This one has children, too — demonstrating that every age can suffer from chronic ailments. And its atmosphere doesn’t permit of the possibility of death.”
July 21, 1990
From “Schools chief hopes publisher will revise textbook in dispute”
California Superintendent of Public Instruction Bill Honig expects the publisher of a sixth-grade textbook to change language objectionable to Jews, he said Monday.
“I hope they change it,” he said in an interview. But if they won’t, he added, “they’ve got major problems.”
Honig, who is Jewish, declined to clarify what those problems would be should Houghton Mifflin, the book’s publisher, refuse to modify the portions found offensive by Jewish, gay and black groups.
Except for those sections he too finds fault with, the schools superintendent praised the 540-page text, A Message of Ancient Days.
In addition to his criticism of the two chapters that deal extensively with Judaism, Honig found some of the classroom activities suggested in the accompanying teacher’s manual “outlandish.” He cited one particular activity that called for reading aloud the New Testament narrative of the crucifixion while students act out the parts.
Honig cited one of many letters the state has received from Californians. In the letter, biblical scholar Peter A. Pettit, a Lutheran minister in the Los Angles area, characterized many crucifixion accounts as “vitriolic anti-Jewish polemic” and cautioned state educators not to “set another generation of innocents on this wretched path.”
Meanwhile, regarding the textbook itself, Honig concurred with those letters and scholarly evaluations that object to passages portraying Judaism as merely a set of rules rather than a religion of compassion and love.
He specified a letter from the Los Angeles Jewish Community Relations Committee: “The authors seem to want students to believe that Judaism is a religion primarily concerned with laws while Christianity is a religion of love.
“But if Jesus, while still alive, was preaching lessons of love, it must be understood that his understanding of love was derived from his religion, Judaism. It is in the Torah that we learn to ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’”
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