By Eileen Wingard
LA JOLLA, California — This year’s rendition of Women of Valor was celebrated with six beautifully conceived scripts, written by Ali Veiterbi, who also directed the production, Sarah Price Keating, Becca Myers, and Todd Salovey, Director of the Lipinsky Jewish Arts Festival (JFest).
The performances took place Thursday June 9, at the Lyceum Theatre and the following Sunday afternoon at the Leichtag Commons.
The six outstanding women honored this year were Betzy Lynch, CEO of the Lawrence Family JCC and the Center for Jewish Culture; Ellen Fox, retiring Director of Temple Solel Religious School; Perla Myers, Mathematics Professor at USD; Phyllis Epstein, philanthropist and volunteer; Edith Palkowitz, Holocaust survivor; and Rabbi Susan Freeman, hospice chaplain.
The performance was bittersweet, given that the San Diego Repertory Theatre, as of June 19, will be suspending its operations, hopefully coming back in 2024, when the reconstruction of Horton Plaza promises to be completed. However, most of the remaining programs of JFest, except for Hershey Felder’s presentations, will be cancelled. Todd Salovey assured the audience that, during the intervening year, JFest will be presented in other venues.
The actresses who impersonated the honorees were all outstanding. Karen Parry portrayed Betzy Lynch, D. Candis Paule enacted Ellen Fox, Becca Myers played her mother, Perla Myers, Ellen Barnes was Phyllis Epstein, Catilina Maynard represented Edith Palkowitz, and Beatrice Basso played Rabbi Susan Freeman.
Betzy Lynch’s life was traced from her early childhood in Youngstown, Ohio. We learned about her love of sports, her working for the Baltimore Orioles, her directing a summer camp, and her previous JCC directorships before coming to the Lawrence Family JCC in 2016. Her nine years with the JCC in Birmingham, Alabama, included challenges she faced in the South. Since she has taken over as the energetic and capable Lawrence Family JCC CEO, all JCC staff meetings open with a “d’var Torah” as she strives to bring more Jewish learning into our JCC.
Ellen Fox’s life was reviewed from her growing up as one of three sisters in Barstow, California, where a small number of Jewish families resided, through her 34 years as director of one of the most innovative and successful religious schools in the country. She initiated different “Khugim” (Activities), such as cooking, drama, and robotics, through which to teach Judaism and make religious school fun and interesting. She finds good in every child and lets students know that she, too, makes mistakes and is imperfect. Her greatest tragedy was the sudden loss two years ago, of her son, Mark, assaulted on the streets of San Francisco by a deranged stranger. Rather than turn her sadness into hatred and depression, she has strengthened her resolve to help people with mental illness.
We learned of Perla Myers’ early years in Mexico City and some of the antisemitism she experienced. She is a dedicated educator who believes everyone is a math person and has devoted much of her professional career to proving that. She has taught math to future teachers and has developed interesting ways of using origami, Japanese paper folding, to teach mathematical concepts. Her son, Danny, who is part of the presentation, singing at the beginning and end, created an impressive paper fold to illustrate the narration. Perla is passionate about equity and making math and other STEM subjects accessible to all students.
Phyllis Epstein was a dancer and through that, developed her strong love of the arts: opera, symphony, dance, photography. After graduating from UCLA, she taught school, but since raising her two children, she has done volunteer work, mostly in the arts. She served as president of the San Diego Center for Jewish Culture and was on the board of the Museum of Photographic Arts. She was a member of the California Arts Council and she is the co-founder of the California Music Project, which seeks to bring music education back into California schools. Her volunteerism is matched by the philanthropy of her and her husband.
Last year, a large gift was donated to UCSD for a state-of-the-art amphitheater. The patron lounge beside the San Diego Symphony Orchestra’s new Rady Shell has the Epstein name on it. She is also very much involved in politics and worries about our democracy. Their recent donation was one million to UCSD to study homelessness. Foremost, she asks, “What would life be without the arts?
Edith Palkowitz’s first memory was of a cemetery in Budapest, Hungary, when she was a very young child and she was attending her mother’s funeral. She was raised by her grandmother, who continued to cover the mirrors, long after the mourning period, so saddened was she by her daughter’s death. At 13, when the Germans occupied Hungary, Edith was pushed down three flights of stairs by a German soldier and broke all her teeth.
A non-Jewish friend of her aunts gave her a cross, which she had tucked into her purse. When a German soldier demanded identification and she did not have the papers with her, the accidental falling of that cross from her purse saved her life. She went on to marry and lead a productive life in the U.S., where she frequently tells her story to students.
As a child, Rabbi Susan Freeman wanted to be a doctor. Although her direction changed, she continued to follow with that great interest in healing. Clinical pastoral education is what she ended up pursuing. She also was a talented dancer. She finds pure joy in dancing. She auditioned for a Jewish dance company called Avodah and was accepted. When she was in Jerusalem as part of her rabbinical program, she met her husband, Rabbi Philip Graubert. Currently, she does pastoral counseling for hospice patients in San Diego. She also incorporates music therapy in her work.
As in past performances of Women of Valor, my daughter, Myla Wingard, plays her violin to open the program. This time, she invited the audience to sing along as she finished the final phrases of the Sabbath hymn, Shalom Aleichem. Then, she accompanied Danny Myers’ singing the blessing, Eishes Khayil, Woman of Valor. Myla plays short segments to signal the end of each of the six narrations. Her violin playing serves as the musical thread that ties it all together. She chooses selections that fit the characters of the women. Her soulful intervals and Danny Myers’ heartfelt singing bind the presentations into a cohesive whole as music completes the program.
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Eileen Wingard, a retired violinist with the San Diego Symphony Orchestra, is a freelance writer specializing in coverage of the arts. She may be contacted via eileen.wingard@sdjewishworld.com