\”Farther Along: A Civil Rights Memoir\”
by Marvin Caplan.
Louisiana State University Press, $29.95
Black and white liberals, among them an inordinate number of Jews, who fought the civil rights battles of the 1940s, \’50s and \’60s, are now often seen as faintly archaic figures.
If Aryeh Scheinberg were your typical Orthodox rabbi, the Jewish community of San Antonio would be engulfed right now in an ugly fight that would leave everyone a loser, most of all the children. But Scheinberg isn\’t typical, and the Jews of south Texas are at peace. Last August the community opened its spanking-new \”campus,\” bringing the Jewish federation, family service, community center and San Antonio\’s sole Jewish day school under one $18 million roof. \”It\’s an amazing place,\” says Pat Tonkin, who had become the day school\’s headmistress in July. \”We\’re all in it together.\”
This week, a bevy of presidential candidates paraded before the Republican Jewish Coalition to display their political wares. The RJC did its best to pitch the event as a watershed in Jewish politics, but that\’s a stretch; in reality, the first election year of the new millennium is shaping up as a yawner, from a Jewish perspective.
It was 6:00 on a Friday evening. My wife, myself, and 50 complete strangers had just managed to light two candles, each on one tiny table, without burning ourselves. Our names, printed in a groovy font, glistened under the nametags hanging around our necks. We were sitting in a circle, introducing ourselves and saying what the experience reminded us of. Was it any surprise that two-thirds of us answered, \”Camp?\”
Four years ago, when Robyn Ritter Simon\’s eldest son was ready to start kindergarten, she looked at her local public school and found it lacking. It was not that Canfield Elementary School fell short academically. The Simons live in a West Los Angeles neighborhood that is heavily Jewish and her son would have been one of the few white children — and perhaps the only Jewish child — in his class.
When the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles celebrated the launch of its anti-illiteracy program KOREH Los Angeles in September, the focus was on educators and celebrities to read children\’s books to kids. Meanwhile, on the outskirts of the spotlight at that event were some local women who are equally vital in the campaign against illiteracy: the creators of the children\’s books themselves.
Dealing with the holiday season is no easy task for a modern Jewish family. Tinsel, bright lights and department store Santas seem to leap out from every corner (certainly from every corner mall). Reinforcing the joy, and the values, of Chanukah can be a challenge to a committed Jewish parent.
The Croatian Tourist Office in conjunction with Lufthansa had generously put together a 12 day guest package, hoping we would like what we saw (after all, parts of Croatia, especially the Dalmatian coast on the Adriatic Sea, are quite beautiful). The thought was we would combine descriptions of the famous tourist sights with a report to our readers on the life and times of Jewish Croatia.
The peace process isn\’t the news in Israel anymore; it\’s poverty, unemployment and hunger. The domestic agenda, the one that Prime Minister Ehud Barak focused his election campaign on, has jumped up and bitten him.
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