\”Keeping Ahead of Winter\” written and illustrated by Ruth Silnes (Xlibris Corporation, $21.99).
Run a Google search of \”Jews\” plus \”boats\” and you\’ll likely come up with something about steamships and Ellis Island.
Then there\’s Ruth Silnes, one Jewish mariner who refuses to go into dry dock.
Fred calls Lamont a \”big dummy.\” Aunt Esther warns Fred to \”Watch it, sucka!\” Fred fakes a heart attack, crying out heavenward, \”Elizabeth, I\’m comin\’ to join you!\”\n\nThirty years ago, when few representations of blacks appeared on television, \”Sanford & Son,\” starring Redd Foxx, brought such gags into the pop culture lexicon. And for most of its 1972-1977 run, a couple of Jewish boys, Saul Turteltaub and Bernie Orenstein, oversaw the writing on the top-rated African American sitcom. Today, \”Sanford\” is the second most-watched program among viewers age 25-54 on rerun cable outlet TV Land, trailing only its doppelganger — the wholesome, decidedly white \”The Andy Griffith Show.\”
Nimrod, the youngest, was a creative kid, the wild type who wanted to try it all. Girls followed him around, and he was always busy with projects — building model cars, fixing computers, raising pets in his room.
Vicky, the oldest, was the responsible one.
As students around the Southland graduate and move beyond high school, The Journal sought out some of the outstanding Jewish high school seniors of 10 years ago, talking with five of the 13 valedictorians of the Class of 1993.
Dr. S. Jerome Tamkin doesn\’t keep a little black book, but he does keep a large white binder. And if you\’re an educational, Jewish or health organization, you want to be listed there, because the binder tracks 32 organizations which Tamkin and his wife, Judith, have chosen to support through their Tamkin Foundation. And that\’s just the major projects. It also includes a list of more than 100 additional entities which receive donations from the foundation.
I am not a Reform Jew, but I confess that I am often envious of the publications of the Reform movement. Whether I agree with their answers or not, I am impressed by the fact that they ask the right questions, the questions that are on the minds and hearts of our people today. So, for example, some years ago they published a book for children on how to cope with their parents\’ divorce. It was ahead of the curve in realizing that this was a real issue in many Jewish homes, and in providing a Jewish perspective on it. And last year they published a book in which they asked many different rabbis to respond to the questions that young people need to think about when they enter college.
Esther Weintraub is a stand-up comic who can\’t stand up.
The 169 residents of Orange County\’s only Jewish retirement home possess a varying range of physical and mental limitations. Yet, compared to the original occupants who moved in 12 years ago, new arrivals to Heritage Pointe are considerably older and more frail. The average age is 89.
That demographic shift is changing expectations about Heritage Pointe\’s targeted population, which is less independent than anticipated. Older residents are also likely to spur in the near future a broadening of services, such as a contemplated dementia unit. Yet, despite an over-60 county population of 13 percent that far exceeds the 4 percent state average, there is no waiting list for Heritage Pointe\’s 178 units, which average $2,600 monthly. Occupancy has declined to 88 percent, which administrators blame on a proliferation of newer, rival facilities that make the county one of the nation\’s most densely populated for senior housing.
Ellen and Francis (not their real names) are examples of a growing trend among formerly upper-middle-class women in their 50s and 60s, who undergo a life-crisis and plunge into financial straits. Orange County\’s Jewish Family Service, a social service agency that provides group and individual counseling to 7,000 clients from its $925,000 budget, has seen a 26 percent increase in pleas for assistance from women in transition in the last year, says Mel Roth, the agency\’s director. The agency has added a third full-time counselor to cope.
\”The Holocaust has been used as a word without much content,\” she said. \”When German writers use the word \’Holocaust\’ they don\’t have to think about children and women. We have yet to come to terms with mourning, the sorrow, the pain of them having destroyed a culture and a tradition.\”
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