David Cohn, head of the Cohn Family Restaurants in San Diego, has been touring the National Restaurant Association’s trade show in Chicago, and the U-T’s business writer Lori Weisberg caught up with him as he was touring the 2,000 exhibits with his son Jeremy Cohn and son-in-law Mike Feinman. With that many exhibits to see, said Cohn, it’s easy to become overwhelmed. So it’s best to focus on two or three things that might be brought back to some of the 25 specialty restaurants operated under different names.
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California’s Attorney General’s office is auditing the San Diego Opera in the wake of the financial troubles that prompted its former general director Ian Campbell to propose shutting it down. That resulted eventually in a reconstituted board deciding to go forward without Campbell, or his former wife Deputy Director Ann Spira Campbell, and have a shortened season next year. The new leadership of the board has promised to cooperate with the board, according to the U-T’s story by Michael James Rocha.
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In Memoriam – Norman Jay Kellner (10/31/1940–03/05/2014) was a retired principal of Bell Junior High School who subsequently worked as a mentor at Hoover High School and also was an amateur stand-up comic. A sponsored notice in the U-T noted that he had been a member of Zeta Beta Tau at San Diego State the year the fraternity sponsored Raquel Welch as a queen candidate at annual chariot races. The obituary also said “his Jewish heritage made him acutely aware of bigotry and prejudice that were playing out both on the world stage,” guiding his choice to work in schools affected by poverty and low achievement. As an amateur comedian, he liked to mimick such Jewish comics as Woody Allen, Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David.
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Preceding compiled by San Diego Jewish World staff. If you know of a local member of the Jewish community who has made the news, please let us know via editor@sdjewishworld.com and thereby contribute to this diary of our community which may prove a valuable resource to future historians.