By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO – Approximately 550 members and friends of the Jewish community on Saturday evening, Nov. 16, attended a dinner sponsored by the Jewish Federation of San Diego that was dedicated to helping people in southern Israel to rebuild after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre and to providing Holocaust education here in San Diego.
Addi Cherry and her 16-year-old son, Guy, are residents of Kibbutz Nahal Oz in San Diego’s sister city of Sha’ar Hanegev, which faces the Gaza border. Addi reported that “only now” are residents of the terrorist-targeted kibbutz moving back to their homes, with the San Diego Jewish Federation helping in diverse ways such as providing transportation, donating washers and dryers, and constructing a therapy center. “Your presence showed us we are not alone,” Addi told the assemblage.
Guy, who now is an exchange student at San Diego Jewish Academy, told of hiding while “terrorists and looters” rampaged through the Cherry family home. He said that being a student at San Diego Jewish Academy allows him to be away from “the stress of war” and permits him to “be a kid again.” “Your support gives us strength!” he added, prompting a standing ovation for him, his mother, and the rest of his family who stood on stage with him.
Heidi Gantwerk, president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of San Diego, said that the organization would launch “an incredible teen trip to Israel” so that local teenagers might see “Israel unfiltered” and return with tools “to be loudly and proudly Jewish.”
Jeff Schindler, who will succeed David Bark as the chairman of the Federation’s board of directors, and Darren Schwartz, the Federation’s chief planning and strategy officer, previewed a travelling classroom with a 38-foot screen for Holocaust education. The mobile classroom also will utilize virtual reality devices to make more vivid what antisemitism and hate crimes can lead to.
The mobile home-sized truck will begin its round of schools, libraries, and service clubs 13 months from now, Schwartz said. At a cocktail hour preceding the formal dinner, guests were invited to strap on VR headsets and sample what a lesson might be like. The one I tried was a tour through Auschwitz, including the tracks leading to the infamous Nazi concentration camp in Poland, barracks, common latrines, and the gas chamber, all narrated by a Holocaust survivor.
Schwartz commented to me that living Holocaust survivors will participate in the traveling classroom experiences but when they can no longer participate, holographic images of them will be utilized.
The truck and classroom was funded by the largest-ever single donation to Federation, Gantwerk said. The $10 million donor does not want to be identified in print.
Additional highlights of the Fed360 event included a Havdalah ceremony led by Simone Abelsohn on the terrace of the Intercontinental Hotel on Pacific Highway; a welcoming talk by David Bark; a fundraising appeal by Sonia Israel; the presentations of the Kipnis-Wilson/ Friedland Award to Julie Bear and the Michael Jeser Outstanding Jewish Professional Award to Dana Koenig; and an after-dinner performance by the comedian Modi.
Bear has served as the lay leader for various Federation missions to Israel and to Jewish communities in other parts of the world, while Koenig has been the staff member who arranges and staffs many of those trips.
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Donald H. Harrison is publisher and editor of San Diego Jewish World.