Other items in today’s column include
*Honoring the Righteous Gentiles
*Jewish community coronavirus news
*San Diego County Judaica
*Recommended reading
SAN DIEGO — With social distancing policies in effect during the coronavirus pandemic, Rabbi Scott Meltzer of Ohr Shalom Synagogue and Rabbi Ralph Dalin, the community chaplain who works under auspices of the Jewish Federation of San Diego County, jointly conducted an Internet observance of Yom HaShoah on Monday evening. The ceremony included such traditional prayers as the 23rd Psalm and El Moleh Rachamim as well as a special Holocaust Kaddish during which the names of the Nazi death camps are interjected into the traditional Kaddish text.
Manya and Mike Wallenfels read the Holocaust Kaddish from their home following the traditional lighting of Six Candles for the Six Million who perished by Holocaust survivors and or spouses. Introduced by New Life Club President Veronika Falus Lorell, the yahrzeit candle lighters were Adele Beim, Francesca Gelbard, Anita Fuchs, Sophie Rubenstein, Gerald Szames and Ilona Medweid. A seventh candle, which Dalin described as completing the number of candles in a traditional menorah, was separately illuminated by representatives of the 3rd generation — grandchildren of survivors– who included Edden Dembsky, Joel Gottschaulk, Marissa Moshkovitz, and Aaron Landau.
During the webcast which may be viewed via this link, special tribute was paid to those Holocaust Survivors who died during the past year in San Diego County. Those memorialized were Maximo Abramy, Alice Brand, Lia Dobraya, Charles Fuchs, Zelda Glick, Emma Khatsernova, Bernard Kobner, Leonid Medvinsky, Maya Mezhiritky, Valeriy Mosin, Yakov Radomishelsky, Miriam Studenberg, Eva Szames, Aleksandr Usach and Leon Zaidner.
While Rabbi Dalin joined the webcast from an indoors location, Meltzer stood across the street from Ohr Shalom Synagogue, located at 3rd and Laurel Streets downtown for his part of the program. Dalin noted that the Yom HaShaoh commemoration was established by Israel’s Knesset as a way to establish a yahrzeit date for all those whose dates of death during the Holocaust were unknown. Meltzer said that Psalm 23 reassures us that “life continues on” and that the “righteous will live in God’s house forever.”
*Shuli Hanover writes, “I will never know my father’s family. The entire Hanover family was murdered in August 1942 in Poland. My Grandparents Haim-David and Rivkah, my Aunts: Mania, Malka, Chavah, My Uncles: Roman and Moshe. Some were married with little children. All the Jewish families in the little town of Otvotsk, were murdered. They had to dig their own grave, and after the grave was deep enough, the Nazis – may their memory be eternally in disgrace — shot them and left their bodies to rot…. To the memory of all the pure souls who were slaughtered, I will ask the world : NEVER FORGET!!!
*Hedy Dalin, Director of Care Management at Jewish Family Service, messages, “In recognition of Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Memorial Day, I am posting for the first time a photo of my mother Martha Bermann Loeb and grandmother Hedwig Berman (standing). I was named after both of my grandmothers who were killed in concentration camp. Hedwig and her mother were murdered in Auschwitz Birkenau. My other grandmother Jenny Loeb was murdered in Terizenstadt. May their memories be a blessing.
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Honoring the Righteous Gentiles
While we remember the victims of the Holocaust, let us never forget the Righteous Gentiles who risked their own lives to save Jews from the Nazi murderers. Among those Righteous Gentiles was U.S. Army Master Sgt. Roddy Edmonds of Tennessee, who as a POW is credited with saving the lives of nearly 200 Jewish soldiers whom the Nazis wanted to separate from other Prisoners of War. The story, told in the video above, was forwarded to San Diego Jewish World by Charles Wax of Rancho Santa Fe.
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Jewish community coronavirus news
*Jeanne Shenkman, our correspondent at Seacrest Village Retirement Community, messages that residents of the Jewish communal home for the elderly have been advised that ” we are to wear masks when we leave our rooms and will have our temperatures taken daily.”
*With dental offices closed during the coronavirus pandemic, periodontist Jeremy I. Factor of San Diego recommends that parents brush their teeth with a flouride toothpaste twice a day, brush their tongues, and floss daily. He also recommended that parents of children under the age of three, “use a smear (rice size amount) of flouride toothpaste to brush their teeth. For children ages 3 to 6, use a pea-sized amount of flouride toothpaste.”
*The Yiddish Academic and Arts Association of North America is now posting its San Diego classes and events during the pandemic on its Facebook page.
*Sandi Masori, who helps authors self-publish their books, says with her new mask and cap, she feels like a Ninja warrior.
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San Diego County Judaica
*Musician Yochanan Winston treasures this photo of himself playing the clarinet with a large chanukiah behind him. He doesn’t have it anymore as it was an ice sculpture that melted back into the yard of Chabad at Rancho Santa Fe several years ago.
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Recommended Reading
*Lauren J. Mapp of the San Diego Union-Tribune tells how Jewish Family Service of San Diego has adapted its programs to the coronavirus pandemic.
*The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has mounted a full-scale attack against the appointment of Dianne Lob of HIAS to serve as chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.
*Tammy Gillies, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, passes along a survey taken by the ADL in January, before the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, indicating that American Jews feel more threatened than at any time before in the past decade. More than half the U.S. Jewish population say they have either experienced or witnessed anti-Semitism, and 63 percent say they feel less safe in the U.S. than they did a decade ago.
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Donald H. Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com