New way to ‘rewire’
Last month Vicky Kelman left the Bureau of Jewish Education, where she served for 15 years providing family education programs — but she didn’t retire. “Vicky is calling it ‘rewirement,’ ” reports Ellen Brosbe, also of the BJE. Kelman “will continue to be an enormously creative contributor to the field of Jewish family education in between playing Lincoln Logs with her grandchildren,” Brosbe adds.
Film folks
San Rafael native and filmmaker Tamara Rosenfeld won an international film competition sponsored by a group that organizes contests for aspiring filmmakers to make video ads for products. Rosenfeld’s ad, called “Dirt Rocks,” was for Omo, a European laundry detergent. It shows a 10-year-old girl romping in a muddy creek to pick flowers for her mother’s birthday. The award came with a $15,000 prize to spend as a roving filmmaker-reporter. Rosenfeld will interview mothers and their children about their hopes and dreams. She accepted the award at the London Film Festival in October where her video was screened before the premiere of a Clive Owen movie, “The Boys Are Back.” To see the video, click on the link in the Marin Independent Journal story about Rosenfeld.
Sarah Lefton, founder and executive director of G-dcast, an animated series of 55 parshahs of the Torah, has been awarded a SFSS FilmHouse Residency. The award provides six months of office space free of charge to local independent filmmakers actively engaged in film production, courtesy of the San Francisco Film Society.
More media
A very pregnant Lisa Tabak and husband Jeff Lipsett of Oakland, were featured in the San Francisco Chronicle’s “On the Couch,” a column about couples, last month. Lisa has since given birth to a 10-pound-plus baby boy … Elise Trumbull of Oakland reports that Winter Nights, a program to house homeless families that her congregation, Temple Isaiah, participates in with Contra Costa County churches, was profiled in the New York Times (also in December) … Gayle Zahler, associate executive director at Jewish Family and Children’s Services, was part of an NPR radio panel on the psychology of giving … And in an e-mail with the subject line, “Oy Vey, Rabbi Eric is a TV star in Mexico,” Michael and Cynthia Fried, now living in Mexico, told Rabbi Eric Weiss (who is, among other things, the host of “Mosaic,” a weekly TV show about spirituality) that they tuned in their Dish TV satellite early on a Sunday morning to San Francisco’s CBS-5 and “imagine our surprise and delight when we saw your cute little face hosting ‘Mosaic.’ ”
Short shorts
Rabbi Lee Bycel will interview Robert Redford about the “Art of Activism” on Thursday, Feb. 4 at the Kabuki Cinemas, San Francisco. Bycel, formerly with American Jewish World Service, is director of Redford’s new nonprofit. Order tickets at www.redfordcenter.org … Chairing Jewish Family and Children’s Services Ninth Annual Émigré Community Gala slated for Feb. 6 are Boris and Alla Lipkin with help from co-chairs Leo Finkelstein (San Francisco), Igor and Tatiana Cherkas (Marin), Irina and Alex Shubat (Peninsula), Yelena Frid, Yelena Gortul and Oleg Grabarsky (Young Adult Leadership), and Albina Khazan, Yan and Irina Rozovsky and Alex Varum (79ers) … Heather Klein of Congregation Beth Am in Los Altos will entertain at the congregation’s annual youth auction on Feb. 6. Youth adviser Erin Goldstrom, Shaina Wasserman, educator, Teddi Kalb and Bill Greenwald, president and treasurer (respectively) of Beth Am Temple Youth said they hope to raise $17,000 for youth programs.
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