Longtime Jewish communal professional Anita Friedman was honored by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) during the museum’s 2025 Western Region Tribute dinner, held at the Beverly Wilshire, A Four Seasons Hotel, on March 19.
“‘Never again’,” Friedman said, accepting her award, “means never again being in a position of not being able to protect ourselves.”
Friedman, executive director of Jewish Family and Children’s Services in the San Francisco Bay Area, was feted alongside 99-year-old Holocaust survivor David Wiener.
The crowd of hundreds of guests, gathered in the hotel’s banquet room, included nearly 30 Holocaust survivors, including a 102-year-old survivor.
Friedman, a co-chair of the Governor’s Council for Holocaust and Genocide Education, was recently involved in the publication of a comprehensive statewide study that evaluated how widely Holocaust and genocide education was being taught in California’s public schools. State laws mandate that Holocaust education be taught in schools. But just 26% of California schools that responded to the survey have incorporated Holocaust and genocide education into their classrooms, the study found.
At the Beverly Wilshire, Friedman addressed the study’s findings, saying teachers want to be able to provide their students with an education about the Holocaust and other genocides.
“The problem is it hasn’t been offered in a systematic way,” she said.
Additional speakers included Rebecca Erbelding, a historian at USHMM. Erbelding discussed her experience receiving a mysterious photo album filled with old images depicting German soldiers and Nazi party members enjoying leisurely activities while supervising the genocidal operations of the Auschwitz concentration camp. As a historian and archivist at USHMM, Erbelding worked to determine the identities of those pictured in the photo album.
Her efforts are the basis of the real-life detective story in the critically acclaimed play, “Here There are Blueberries,” which is currently enjoying a theatrical run at The Wallis in Beverly Hills and was a 2024 Pulitzer Prize finalist.
Erbelding was joined onstage by surprise guests Moises Kaufman and Amanda Gronich, the show’s playwrights.
“It would be wonderful if this play felt like a footnote in history,” Gronich said, “but the events of the Holocaust pose an ongoing and urgent concern for all of us.”
The dinner’s co-chairs Sam Lauter and Susan Lowenberg also were in attendance along with a group of students from Harvard-Westlake School.
Bringing the evening to its poignant conclusion, the students joined Wiener onstage as he was receiving his honor. Instructing everyone in the banquet room to switch on small electric candles that had been placed on the tables, the students made a pledge to Wiener to carry on his legacy and ensure future generations knew all he’d endured to survive the Shoah.
Melvin Robert, an entertainment anchor and reporter at “KTLA Morning News,” emceed the program.
Jenni Asher has been named the full-time cantor at Hamakom, effective July 2025, following her ordination as a hazzan from the Academy for Jewish Religion, California.
“We are blessed to have Cantor Asher guiding us on Hamakom’s journey,” the synagogue’s board president, Paula Russell, said, “and we look forward to the inspiration and beauty she will continue to bring to our community.”
For the past two years, Asher has served as a cantorial soloist at the Conservative synagogue in West Hills, leading the congregation’s musical Zamru Shabbat service and bringing her energy to the synagogue’s adult and youth choirs, among other responsibilities.
A multi-instrumentalist, Asher holds a bachelor’s degree in violin performance from the Royal Academy of Music in London and a master’s degree in music leadership from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
As full-time cantor, she will be tasked with developing Hamakom’s culture and art programming while overseeing music for religious services and leading the community’s choirs.
Hamakom is inviting the community to attend its next Zamru Shabbat, held on Friday, April 4, which will be led by Asher.
On March 14, under the musical direction of Spectrum Laboratory co-founder Garth Herberg, the Spec Labs Neurotribe — a rock band comprised entirely of musicians on the autism spectrum — performed original up-tempo tunes and ballads for a packed house of new devotees, longtime fans, friends and family.
The concert, dubbed “A March Jamboree,” was held at the Scribble Community in Los Angeles.
The evening, according to those involved with the performance, had an inclusive atmosphere that seemed exactly in step with the moral teachings of Judaism.
