We locals have long taken pride in the spirit of innovation that animates our Bay Area Jewish community. It turns out that our reputation for creativity has spread far and wide.
Our story on page 5 this week, about a delegation visiting from San Diego’s Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center, offers ample evidence. Pointed to the Bay Area by officials from a number of national Jewish organizations, the JCC leaders came here eager to learn how key Bay Area institutions embody Jewish values and apply them to Jewish education.
The visitors stopped in at two local JCCs, the Osher Marin JCC in San Rafael and the Peninsula JCC in Foster City. There they saw vibrant early childhood, teen and adult education programs, décor that screams “Jewish,” and Jewish art, culture and spirituality integrated into every JCC offering.
The San Diegans also visited Lehrhaus Judaica, Jewish LearningWorks and The Kitchen, where they saw for themselves not only model Jewish education programs, but also cross-agency partnerships in action, designed to help allied institutions reach more people and do more good.
It’s a shame the visitors had only 48 hours in the Bay Area. With more time they could have admired the crops at Urban Adamah in Berkeley, or been wowed by the groundbreaking small-group adult education work of Kevah. Or they might have visited G-dcast, which crafts amazing nuggets of Jewish knowledge via short animated films. They could have met with educators at the Berkeley Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies on the Cal campus, stretched out on a mat for some Jewish yoga or sat in on a class at one of our excellent Jewish day schools.
Maybe we’re used to it, but it’s instructive once in a while to stop and remind ourselves that not only do we live at the center of high-tech innovation, but Jewish innovation as well.
And it doesn’t always take a think tank or incubator to come up with brilliant ideas. Our story on page 2 describes how Congregation Beth Ami in Santa Rosa found itself overstocked with boxes upon boxes of matzah, donated after Passover earlier this year.
Rather than haul the “wall of matzah” off to the landfill, congregants decided to hold an epic Matzah Brei Fry. Adding yet another Jewish dimension — the importance of helping others — organizers tied the event to a blood drive for a neighborhood blood bank.
Sure, it makes for a cute story, but this example reveals another facet of our community’s ceaseless creativity. We are blessed to live in Northern California, where the next Matzah Brei Fry is just around the corner.