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Comings & goings

Maya Avishai is the new deputy consul general at the Israel Consulate based in San Francisco. Avishai previously served as the spokesperson for the Prime Ministers Office, members of Knesset, the state comptroller office and the Israel Post, among others. She holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in communication and management from Ben-Gurion University, and in 2022 completed the Wexner senior leaders program.

JCRC Bay Area has two new staff members and four new board members. Allison Barnes is the new assistant director of public education. She has nearly a decade of experience as a public school teacher and holds a B.A. in liberal studies and a multiple-subject teaching credential from San Francisco State University.

Jessica Blitchok is the new director of community partnerships. She most recently served as JCRC director for Jewish Silicon Valley and currently serves on the board of Temple Emanu-El in San Jose and as an executive board member on the Silicon Valley Interreligious Council. Blitchok is also a co-founder of the San Jose chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. JCRC’s new board members are Richard Fiedotin, Arlene Noodleman, Arthur Slepian and Susie Sorkin.

J. has welcomed two new board members: Rabbi Deborah Newbrun and Susan Sasson. Newbrun was a longtime director of Camp Tawonga, where she started its LGBTQ family weekend and has remained active since leaving her full-time position in 2006. Newbrun is founder and executive director of Divorce & Discovery, a Jewish healing retreat. She has also served a wide array of other Jewish organizations, including the Svara yeshiva, Hazon, Shalom Bayit, Jewish LearningWorks, New Lerhaus, Hineni and Keshet. Sasson, a writer and policy analyst, is a founding board member of the Contra Costa Jewish Day School. Three longtime board members who completed their terms are Quentin Kopp, the retired Superior Court judge and longtime politician, who had served on J.’s board since 2015, and Fraidy Aber and Nadine Joseph, both of whom joined the board in 2018. 

Happenings

Writer and lifelong educator Flossie Lewis celebrated her 100th birthday with a celebration July 7 at Piedmont Gardens, the Oakland senior community where she lives. Lewis taught for 38 years as an award-winning English teacher with the San Francisco Unified School District, at Lowell and Lincoln high schools, and whose career spanned over six decades.

Jewish Silicon Valley will be sending 10 students to represent Team San Jose at the JCC Maccabi Games in Detroit from July 28 to Aug. 2. They are Mikayla Cooper (14U basketball); Gil Kalbfeld and Skyler Thiele (ice hockey); Dylan Lange and Blake Ostilly (14U baseball); Hannah Sherman (girls soccer); Luke Lange (14U soccer); Jake Pardes (tennis); Nareya Agola (volleyball); and Ethan Mutchnik (sports reporting). Some 1,200 Jewish teens from around the world convene at the event. Other local JCCs sending teams to represent the Bay Area are JCCSF, Peninsula JCC, Oshman Family JCC and JCC East Bay.

Twenty teachers from Catholic schools around the country were in Oakland this month for a seminar on the history of Jewish-church relations and teaching the Holocaust. “We Remember: Exploring the Holocaust and Antisemitism,” held July 17-20, was sponsored by the Olga Lengyel Institute for Holocaust Studies and Human Rights, a New York-based organization that provides professional development for educators who deal with the Holocaust. Executive director Deborah Lauter organized the seminar, which she based on a similar program at the Anti-Defamation League, where she served in senior management for 18 years and oversaw ADL’s domestic programs on anti-bias and Holocaust education.

“There’s such a deep history of anti-Judaism in the Catholic Church,” she told J. “The pedagogy is not just about content, but trying to get to their hearts and minds.” After two days at Oakland’s Cathedral of Christ the Light, which included a talk by Piedmont developer Moses Libitzky, son of a Holocaust survivor, the group spent an afternoon at Temple Beth Abraham, where Rabbi Mark Booth introduced them to Jewish rituals and worship. They attended a Friday night service and dinner in the synagogue, where survivors and second-generation survivors from the congregation told their stories. “It was extraordinary,” Lauter said. “Rabbi Bloom was so warm and informative, and the congregation was so welcoming.” Lauter expects the seminar, which was piloted in Oakland, to be repeated in other cities. 

Opportunities

Applications are open for J Leaders Academy, a program that aims to empower Jewish young adults to positively impact the world through leadership development, community building and networking opportunities with peers and mentors. Applications close July 31. tinyurl.com/j-leaders

Jewish Family & Children’s Services is looking for volunteer photographers to document the organization’s work and community programs. Volunteers will attend a lunch-and-learn session to meet other volunteers, hear about JFCS and its programs, and receive a 101 course in shooting photos.

Philanthropy

KlezCalifornia has announced grant recipients from its Yiddish Culture Fund. The fund is part of the Bay Area–based organization’s transition from producing Yiddish culture programs to facilitating and supporting the next generation of Yiddish culture leaders.

Among those who received $3,000 grants were Atid Kimelman and Elan Loeb for “Kol: A Retreat for Jewish Music Across the Diaspora,” a multiday retreat in the East Bay, and Mike Perlmutter, Bruce Bierman, Zina Pozen and Sarah Wolfman-Robichaud with the JCC East Bay for “The Joy of Jewish Music and Dance,” eight monthly events for klezmer instrumentalists and Yiddish dancers. Winners of  $1,500 grants were Freygl Gertsovski, Asa Brunet-Jailly and Sarah Schneider for “Queer Yiddish Camp,” an online language and cultural intensive led by an all-queer faculty. And a $750 grant was awarded to Binya Koatz, Aaron Goldstein and Atid Kimelman for “Borscht Bay Cabaret,” featuring musicians, comedians, Yiddish performances and a dance party.

JCCSF’s Citywide Arts Enrichment program, an educational initiative that provides art instruction to young students throughout San Francisco, has been awarded a $1.5 million grant from the Department of Children, Youth and Their Families to continue its work for the next five years. The JCCSF, through a partnership with nonprofit organizations the YMCA and Mission Graduates, sends its instructors to school sites in the city’s historically underserved communities to lead classes on watercolors, ceramics, printmaking and papier-mâché.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article incorrectly listed Sara Feinman as a KlezCalifornia grant recipient and said there were nine “The Joy of Jewish Music and Dance” events.