Subjects in this column:
* 2020 may be the year of local exhibits on the Holocaust
* Rabbis weigh in on the controversy over kosher slaughter of animals
* How mayoral candidates are spinning the latest poll
2020 May be the Year of Local Exhibits on the Holocaust
CHULA VISTA, California — The year 2020 may be remembered as one of Holocaust remembrance in San Diego County, with an exhibit scheduled at the Chula Vista Heritage Museum and others under discussion both at the New Americans Museum at Liberty Station and at Grossmont Shopping Center.
The exhibit at the Chula Vista Heritage Museum, scheduled to open with a reception on January 12th, was conceived by Sandy Scheller and her late mother, Holocaust Survivor Ruth Sax, a recipient of many honors during her lifetime for her successes in classrooms, meeting halls, and even Comic-Con to educate younger people about the Holocaust. A day before Ruth Sax died on December 29, 2018, she visited the museum to discuss the exhibit.
Called “RUTH—Remember Us The Holocaust,” the exhibit will feature interpretive panels about the life of Ruth Sax, her late husband Kurt Sax, and ten other Survivors who lived or are still living in the South Bay area of San Diego County. They are Mark Fishauf, Ursula Israelski, Lilly Rosenfeld Stern Hecht (also known as Lilly, the Polka Dot Wearer), Bela Mark, Paul Schauder, Salomon Schlosser, Ona Yufe, Renee Haber Vogel, Zyndel “Sid” Wapner, and Max Weinstock.
Chula Vista Mayor Mary Casillas Salas will officially open the exhibit at a kosher lunch catered by Chabad of Chula Vista inside the museum’s domicile at the Civic Center Branch of the Chula Vista Public Library at 365 F Street. According to the museum’s website, the 12 Holocaust survivors featured in the exhibit “discovered the South Bay of San Diego as their place of work, worship and home.” The exhibit will “bring to light this dark time in history by sharing the sacredness of humanity.”
Grossmont Shopping Center in La Mesa and the New Americans Museum at Liberty Station in San Diego may also become venues for Holocaust exhibits, according to Cheryl Rattner Price, co-founder and executive director of The Butterfly Project, which has committed itself to placing 1.5 million ceramic butterflies around the world to memorialize the 1.5 million children killed in the Holocaust.
While arrangements have not yet been finalized, Rattner Price said she has been encouraged by the discussions.
Rattner Price and Scheller both have expressed to me a desire that someday a permanent museum might evolve from their respective efforts. I personally believe the time is long overdue for San Diego County to have its own Jewish Museum in which there could be permanent exhibits about the Jewish religion and Jewish history, as well as about the contributions that Jews have made to the three Californias – our U.S. State, and Mexico’s Baja California and Baja California Sur.
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Rabbis weigh in on the controversy over kosher slaughter of animals
The controversy in Belgium over kosher slaughtering (shechitah) essentially boils down to this. Halacha (Jewish law) requires a healthy cow to be slaughtered very quickly by slitting its throat with a sharp knife. It is believed that the loss of blood leaves the animal unconscious and therefore no longer in pain. Lawmakers in the Flanders and Wallonia regions of Belgium believe that it is more humane for an animal to be stunned, either through electric shock or via a bolt driven into its head, before it is slaughtered.
The chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, Isaac Herzog, in a letter this week to the Wallonia parliament, said, “This is not only an issue of freedom of practice for traditional Kosher butcheries … This is an unacceptable infringement of general freedom of religion.”
I asked local rabbis who observe kashrut for their opinions on the matter. Conservative Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel of Temple Beth Shalom in Chula Vista wrote a column on the subject which may be read by clicking here.
Rabbi Rafi Andrusier of Chabad of East County, responded to me, “I defer to the following articles” and sent three discussions of the issue from the national Chabad website.
The articles were entitled “What’s Wrong With Stunning?“; “Is There a Health Risk with Stunning” and “How is Shechita Performed?”
Rabbi Simcha Weiser, headmaster of Soille San Diego Hebrew Day School, summarized material he had read on the subject. Quoting Maimonides in the Guide to the Perplexed, Weiser wrote, “Since the desire to procure food necessitates the killing of animals, the Torah enjoins us that this be done as painlessly as possible. One is not allowed to torment an animal by slitting its throat in a clumsy manner, or by cutting off a limb while it is still living. It is prohibited to kill an animal with its young on the same day to prevent killing the two in the manner that the young is killed in sight of the mother, for the suffering of the animal would be very great.”
Rabbi Weiser also noted that Rabbi Yisroel Levinger, a zoologist turned rabbi who now lives in Israel, “is unequivocal about it. He’s proven that shechitah is the most humane way to slaughter animals.”
He quoted Rabbi Levinger as saying, “As part of my research, I did an EEG on animals to monitor brain activity during the shechitah process. It showed that the animals registered no change in brain activity at all. That’s because the knife is so sharp that it cuts painlessly and the animal loses consciousness in less than one and a half seconds after shechitah due to blood loss.”
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How mayoral candidates are spinning the latest poll
Although the overall results of the recent San Diego Union-Tribune/ KGTV-Channel 10 poll performed by SurveyUSA shows Todd Gloria ahead of Barbara Bry in the March 3 mayoral election by a margin of 31 percent to 15 percent (with Tasha Williamson receiving 8 percent), Bry has found what she believes is a silver lining.
She quoted Survey USA as saying “Bry is less-well known, but still has a +10 favorability,” which means 10 percent more voters have a favorable opinion of her than those who have an unfavorable opinion. On the other hand, Gloria, according to the same poll, has a +17 percent favorability rating.
The poll figures indicated that 18 percent of the voters had a favorable opinion of her versus 8 percent whose opinion was unfavorable. Voters who were neutral or had no opinion accounted for 74 percent of the sample of 550 voters.
In comparison, Gloria had 34 percent of the voters with a favorable opinion, 17 percent with an unfavorable opinion, with 49 percent either neutral or having no opinion.
According to Bry, “When voters get to know our campaign, they support us. And despite the establishment and a 12-year career of playing politics giving my opponent an 80 percent name ID, just 34 percent of likely voters view him favorably.”
Gloria’s campaign, meanwhile, had this reaction to the poll: “Although we are thrilled to see a decisive lead in the polls over our nearest opponent for now, with over 46% of voters undecided we know that we still have a lot of work to do!”
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com