Bernard Arfin, popularly known as Bernie, spent his working life in the sciences and his entire life as a “sports nut.” On Nov. 7, the Palo Alto resident marked his 100th birthday.
Days earlier, his longtime synagogue, Congregation Beth Jacob in Redwood City, hosted a Kiddush luncheon in his honor on Nov. 2. Three of his grandchildren read from the Torah during Shabbat services that morning.
“It’s a good life,” he told J. over the phone.
Born in Brooklyn on Nov. 7, 1924, and raised in the Bronx as the only child of Polish and Belarussian Jewish immigrants, Bernie spoke Yiddish at home with his parents. (To this day, he’s still literate in Yiddish.)
In college, Bernie went into electrical engineering, earning his undergraduate degree from City College of New York in 1945, followed by a master’s degree from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 1948. He moved to California in the 1950s to earn his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford University; his field of research was high-power microwave tubes.
While a student, he joined a Jewish young adult group called the Peninsulites. In July 1954, during a Western States Jewish Youth Council gathering at Asilomar, he met Joanne Sussman, the assistant editor of the Jewish Bulletin (forerunner of J.), who was covering the conference for the newspaper. The two began dating, and in July 1955 they married in Tacoma, Washington, Joanne’s hometown. (J.’s soon-to-debut podcast “Such A Match,” coming this winter, features an episode with the couple discussing their love story and 69 years of married life.)
Bernie and Joanne, along with their three children, hopped in and out of the Bay Area over the years. In the late ’50s, they briefly lived in New York, where Mimi and Joe were born. (Mimi died of lung cancer in 2010.) Their youngest, David, was born in San Carlos, where the family lived for many years. In 1968 they spent a year in Jerusalem, where Bernie taught physics at Hebrew University. In 1979, they relocated once again from the Bay Area, this time to Alexandria, Virginia, while Bernie worked at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., for about five years. Bernie also worked for many years at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Laboratory.
Amid all of these relocations, Bernie said Congregation Beth Jacob has always been the family’s second home. They first joined the Conservative synagogue as newlyweds. Bernie became a bar mitzvah as an adult, in 1963, along with a group of about 20 men who studied under Rabbi H. David Teitelbaum. Both Bernie and Joanne served on CBJ’s board, and all of their children and four grandchildren became b’nai mitzvah at the synagogue.
Arfin describes himself as a “sports nut” and has been a lifelong Giants baseball fan, dating back to their days as a New York team.
“I remember rooting for the Giants as far back as 1933,” he told J.
Bernie also enjoys following Stanford football and men’s basketball.
When asked how he feels about turning 100, Bernie said despite some health problems he’s “feeling fine.”