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Comings & goings

There are several new staff members at Urban Adamah, the 13-year-old organic farm and Jewish learning center in Berkeley. Elaina Marshalek, who has degrees in forestry and probability and a master’s in engineering from UC Berkeley, is the community and ritual director; she recently worked at SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva, and with her partner Rabbi Frankie Sandmel is a community builder with Base Bay Area, inviting people into their home for Shabbat, holiday meals, Jewish learning and social connection.

Filmmaker Noémie Hakim-Serfaty is Urban Adamah’s new community programs and ritual manager, and Rivka Weinstock is the educational programs director. Weinstock used to be the program director for JCU, a nonprofit that supports young artists in East and West Jerusalem.

After six years as executive director of Congregation Sherith Israel in San Francisco, Gordon Gladstone is leaving to take over as executive director of Congregation Kol Shofar in Tiburon.

Bar-Ilan University professor Joshua Teitelbaum has been appointed visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. Teitelbaum is a leading historian and expert on the modern Middle East and will conduct historical research about the Saudi armed forces. He grew up in Redwood City before moving to Israel 42 years ago.

Sari Bourne Kaplan has been appointed as the membership chair of the Stanford Jewish Alumni Network Board. Kaplan works for the health care company Abbott, where her title is director, senior counsel in the company’s heart failure business.

Adam Chase of San Francisco is joining an American Jewish Committee task force to help implement the U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism. Chase, who was president of the AJC San Francisco chapter through May 2023, will work with AJC staff members to ensure that the whole-of-society recommendations contained in the plan released by President Joe Biden in May are put into action. Chase is the president of Grape Experience, a wine and spirits education and consulting company.

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Honors

Adam Eilath, head of school at Ronald C. Wornick Jewish Day School in Foster City, is one of 19 Jewish nonprofit leaders chosen for the new Leading Executives program from Leading Edge, a nonprofit that helps Jewish organizations better achieve their missions. The six-month executive training program offers participants new and adaptable leadership skills, constructive personalized feedback and mutual support through a peer network.

Kathy Schwartz, senior director of professional learning at S.F.-based Jewish LearningWorks, received a grant from CASJE (the Collaborative for Applied Studies in Jewish Education) for her research project titled “Sensemaking and the Image of Today’s Jewish Educator.” Schwartz’s project was one of three selected by CASJE, an evolving community of researchers, practitioners and philanthropists based at George Washington University in the nation’s capital.

The Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley has selected its 2023-24 Haas Student Research Grant recipients among students working on projects related to Judaism and/or Islam: Amy Shoemaker (whose project focuses on what Islamic and Jewish stories reveal about our religions and ourselves), Jibreel Delgado (anxieties of authenticity, border issues and Muslim-Jewish issues of modernity), Katy Dickinson (supporting Muslim and Jewish inmates), Omar Naisan (comparing Messianic text in the Hebrew Bible and Quran), Zeinab Vessal (symbolism of the hamsa in Shia Islam), Morey Lipsett (the hamsa in both Islamic and Jewish societies) and Carey Averbook (menstruation in Judaism and Islam). Individuals will receive $250 to $500 and joint projects will get $500 to $1,000.

JOIN for Justice has selected five people in the Bay Area to its first Jews of Color Organizing Fellowship: Carolyn Cheng, Gen Slosberg, Noémie Hakim-Serfaty, Shekhiynah Larks and Victoria Alcoset. Including fellows from other cities, the yearlong program is the first national fellowship for training Jews of color in community organizing, officials say.

Deb Donig has been selected for the ADL’s Center for Technology and Society Belfer Fellows program. An assistant professor of English at Cal Poly and a lecturer at UC Berkeley, Donig will develop projects with CTS to study AI and other emerging technologies. Currently, her work blends issues of human rights and law with concerns about ethics and technology development. The fellows program aims to advance the Anti-Defamation League’s research into online hate and harassment.

Congregation Beth Am in Los Altos Hills received a $10,000 award from the Silicon Valley Clean Energy Electric Showcase for adopting a green technology in its HVAC system. The synagogue switched from a gas to electric HVAC system that uses a pump to cool the building in the summer and heat it in the winter. Beth Am is also hosting a Jewish Community Sustainability Fair on Oct. 22 with 12 partner organizations. Visit tinyurl.com/bajcsf for details.

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Happenings

On Sept. 10, the Reutlinger Community in Danville celebrated the completion of a cafe mural that senior residents and their families have been working on for five years. Betty Rothaus, the art program director, worked with them to develop the theme and design, which highlights the “holy place within” through scenes of the Israeli landscape.

In recognition of Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Month, an event has been planned for Oct. 15 at the Memorial Garden at  Eternal Home Cemetery in Colma. Sinai Memorial Chapel’s chevra kadisha burial society runs the garden, which is a calming, Jewish space in a meadow near olive trees and young redwoods. Its purpose is to provide a quiet, contemplative place for those grieving from fertility and pregnancy losses, and for the Jewish community to gather, remember and support those who have experienced pregnancy loss. Hasidah and S.F.-based Jewish Family and Children’s Services are co-organizers of the event at 1051 El Camino Real, Colma from 10 to 11:15 a.m. It’s free, but an RSVP is required.

The Chabad Jewish Center of South County in Morgan Hill dedicated its new building on Aug. 20. The occasion was marked with singing, dancing, a cocktail reception and dinner, speeches by various community members and Mayor Mark Turner, and the completion of a Torah scroll, which was then carried to the new building in a procession.

Jewish Silicon Valley led a group marching in the 48th annual Silicon Valley Pride Parade on Aug. 27. More than 150 people and 14 Jewish organizations participated, including synagogues, Jewish Family Services of Silicon Valley, the University of San Francisco’s Swig Program in Jewish Studies and Social Justice, Yavneh Day School in Los Gatos and the development nonprofit JLeaders.

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Opportunities

Berkeley Moshav, a multigenerational Jewish cohousing community in Berkeley that has been in the works for many years, is hosting a round of online information sessions, including two on Oct. 4 and 15. The one-hour Zoom meetings are for those interested in the project’s vision, its building plans and/or living in the community-to-be on San Pablo Avenue at Channing Way in West Berkeley. Get details here.