Walk for Hunger

Walk for Hunger

Organizers of the third South Orange County Interfaith Walk for Hunger and Cultural Fair invite the public to participate in the Oct. 26 event, which promises to build bridges between faiths while fulfilling the mitzvah of feeding the hungry.

Last year, the “crop walk” collected 1,500 pounds of food, enough for 15 families for a week, said organizer Sande Hart, of Rancho Santa Margarita. Already more than a dozen diverse groups, including Muslims, Catholics, Episcopalians and Juanano Native Americans, are committed to joining this year’s 1 p.m. walk, which starts and stops on the basketball court of Aliso Viejo’s Temple Beth El.

“The walk is short and symbolic,” Hart said, adding that her personal goal was to raise money to fight global hunger in a communal way.

Started in 1946 by farmers donating crops to postwar Europe, about 2,000 walks took place around the country last year. The walks raised $17 million, divvied up to 19 groups in 30 countries by Church World Services, said Jan Dragin, a spokeswoman in Boston. Local recipients designated by walk organizers receive 25 percent of the funds. Saddleback Outreach and Episcopal Service Alliance are the probable recipients, Hart said.

For more information, call Sande Hart at (949) 635-0279.

For My Next Impressionist…

Patrons of next month’s book festival sponsored by the Jewish Community Center will be treated to a guided tour on Oct. 15 of the first exhibit of California Impressionist paintings to tour Europe.

“That’s the big first,” said Jean Stern, executive director of the Irvine Museum and the exhibit’s curator. He will be onhand to explain to patrons his selections, assembled partly with loans from private collections and from the museum’s own resources, the collection of ranch heiress Joan Irvine Smith.

Many European art experts deride American artists as European imitators and California artists as lacking intellectual history, Stern said. Yet, the 58-work “Masters of Light” exhibit drew large crowds in Paris, Krakow and Madrid during its tour last year. The exhibit returned home earlier this month.

“It reaffirmed what I always believed,” Stern said, “that this is a legitimate style and this is a sign the style is maturing.”

Stern, a French Morocco-born Jew, is also the author of an accompanying book on the exhibit’s works. He will inscribe copies for patrons, who also can sample from a homemade dessert buffet. Volunteers and expert cooks, Barbara Klein and Aviva Forster, promised contributions from their own kitchens.

“It will not look like oatmeal cookies,” Klein said.

Ultimate Raffle

The “Ultimate Jewish Orange County Giveaway” sounds like a timeshare come-on with mezuzahs.

In truth, it is a raffle where winning ticket-holders, to be picked Nov. 14 if enough tickets are sold, can chose from a most unusual array of prizes that reflect the county’s wealth of Jewish opportunities.

The single grand prize winner is entitled to chose among several prizes including: tuition-free day school or summer camp; travel to Israel; or a Passover getaway. All grand prize choices include a $1,000 contribution to a local Jewish charity and free ad space in four issues of the Jewish Journal of Orange County. The package is valued at $10,000.

The raffle benefits the Community Scholar Program, which endeavors to inspire Jewish study in adults through local programs featuring recognized theologians, intellectuals and scholars.

Besides its name, the giveaway shares another similarity with timeshare promoters: fine print and complexity. A minimum of 500 tickets, costing $125 each, must be sold by Nov. 12 for the raffle to take place, said the program’s organizer, Arie Katz. The top limit is 2,500 tickets. Tickets may be purchased by credit card through the Jewish Community Foundation in Costa Mesa. Agencies and institutions that sell tickets keep some of the proceeds.

Nine other raffle winners are to select from prizes valued at $1,500, including a year’s free synagogue dues, a 50-person Chanukah party, a Shabbat resort getaway or a 20-person kosher catered meal and cooking class.

For more information, visit www.occsp.org  or call (949) 682-4040.