By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO – Ruth Mastron, the president of the House of Israel in Balboa Park, has had an active love affair with that nation since 2008, the year she first volunteered to work for three weeks on an Israeli Army base.
She was put to work at such unglamorous tasks as packing boxes, mothballing tanks, painting, and doing general maintenance work so that Israeli soldiers and reservists could be assigned to more critical tasks. Every year since, through the Volunteers With Israel Program (Sar-El), she has worked for three weeks at different IDF bases in logistical jobs.
She has been president of the House of Israel since 2019 and helps keep it open not only on Sundays, but also on Saturdays, even though she is a member of Chabad of Oceanside who normally would spend Saturdays at home in observance of Shabbat.
“Saturdays is a requirement from the City of San Diego,” she explained in an interview. “You may remember for 50 years, we were only open on Sundays, and then Balboa Park looked around and said, ‘Hey, the Park is full of people; let’s open on Saturdays.’ We went through the whole shpiel about Shabbat, but essentially it is a requirement of the City of San Diego and if we don’t open, they can take the House away from us because it belongs to the City of San Diego. And that’s not going to happen!”
Concerning the impact on her own religious observance, Mastron says: “Like a lot of people who go to Chabad, I do the best I can, but I’m certainly not at their level. To me, I had to make peace with my own conscience. Would I prefer to be at home on Shabbat? Of course, who wouldn’t? But I think the House of Israel is just so important that I will do whatever it takes to keep the doors open!”
In our interview, she said while she grew up in a Zionistic household, which admired Israel, she did not visit Israel until a few years after her 50th birthday.
“My grandpa always said, ‘Don’t let anyone tell you that your family comes from Belarus … That was just a place we put down our suitcases for a few hundred years. After a while the other people who were there made it very clear that we weren’t from there.’ “
Born as Ruth Wiener in Milwaukee, she grew up with a family legend that her great-grandmother used to attend meetings of women Zionists at which Golda Mabovitch (the future Golda Meir) was a prominent and vocal presence. “My dad told me that my great-grandmother could not stand Golda Meir,” Mastron confided. “Whenever they would have a meeting, she would go ‘Oy gevalt, is that big-mouthed Golda coming tonight?”
The family moved to San Diego about the time of Mastron’s 12th birthday. She subsequently became a student at UC San Diego, participated in the UC Abroad program that took her to Bordeaux, France, where she met and later married business major Pierre Mastron, who today is a financial planner, and settled in San Diego, where she is in business “offering intercultural training and consulting mostly for corporations, sometimes for schools and non-profits.”
“That is what pays the bills,” Mastron said. “The House of Israel is my passion project, and every time I have enough money I head for Israel and volunteer again.”
In 2008, Mastron attended a class put on by Chabad’s Jewish Learning Institute (JLI) titled “The Land and the Spirit of Israel,” which motivated her to book a Chabad-led tour of Israel. “I knew I wanted to go on the tour, but I knew I also wanted to volunteer in some ways,” Mastron recalled. “I wanted to do a little more.”
An Internet search led to the Sar-El program, and “the next thing I know I am on an Army base in Israel. We’re not supposed to say the names of the bases, but I can say the first one was near Tel Aviv and we packed medical supplies and equipment,” Mastron said. “That is something I am proud of. Not only do they get used for the Army—and we hope they never have to be used—but also every time Israel sends foreign aid to Haiti or Turkiye or any other medical missions that they send the IDF on, the stuff that goes with them is packed by us volunteers.”
“The kids on the logistics bases are not the gung-ho combat soldiers,” Mastron observed. “A lot of them come from difficult family backgrounds. They see these nudniks coming from around the world—not just the U.S.—people who are as old as their parents and grandparents, and we say, ‘Yeah, this is our vacation, and here we are, right along with you’ and the morale and the discipline just go way up on the bases where we volunteer.”
Mastron said volunteers don’t know to which base they will be assigned until they get there. After arriving at Ben-Gurion Airport, “you sit there and a soldier comes by and checks your name off a list on a clipboard, puts a sticker on you, and you match your sticker to the bus and that is where you are going.” While volunteers can go from one to three weeks, Mastron generally goes for three weeks “because I’m not schlepping from California for one lousy week! You get weekends off so you can visit your family or friends, or just be a tourist, or go to the beach and sip your favorite adult beverage, or whatever.”
Her husband Pierre does not accompany her to the Army bases, but enjoys meeting her after her stints to tour around the country and visit its wineries.
In 2018, Mastron also started volunteering at the House of Israel. When the previous executive director Helene Held moved out of San Diego, Mastron stepped up to the leadership.
“The attraction for me is that the House of Israel is one of the few organizations that is not just preaching to the choir,” Mastron said. “We’re not just talking in synagogues and Jewish schools. We are in the middle of San Diego’s biggest attraction and not just for tourists but for people who live here. Nobody gets up in the morning and says, ‘I need to educate myself about Israel; I better go to Balboa Park.’ That doesn’t happen. People have a great time in the park with their family and friends and we get them for a few minutes and whatever time we get them for is time to give them some facts, some history, and some great food. We have the best bourekas this side of Israel.”
The bourekas are obtained frozen in boxes of 144 from a Los Angeles bakery, and then baked in a convection oven onsite, and given away free to visitors. “Our bourekas are filled with feta cheese and spinach,” Mastron said. The aroma of them baking “drags people in from across the park. People come in and say, ‘God, what smells so good in here?’”
The House of Israel is open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on both Saturdays and Sundays. At least three volunteers work each shift, with the first going from about 10:30 a.m. to get ready until 1:30 p.m., and the second going from 1:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m., including clean-up time after closing. In addition to the volunteers, an armed security guard is provided by StandWithUs, a pro-Israel organization based in Los Angeles which works with college students to counter anti-Israel propaganda on their campuses.
A House of Palestine also has been opened in the Park. To date, there is neither dialogue nor direct confrontation between the two houses, Mastron reported. At one lawn program, the House of Palestine led chants of “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free,” but that was not considered by the governing body of the House of Pacific Relations, which oversees the international houses, to be a violation of the “no politics” rules. Apparently “no politics” refers only to domestic, elective politics, Mastron said.
With many other houses, the House of Israel has decidedly friendly relations. The nearby House of Colombia and the House of France share a cottage, so no matter in which week, “we always can get some good coffee there.” Similarly, at the House of England, Mastron and her volunteers can enjoy some good tea. Often people from other houses will bring their goodies to the House of Israel in exchange for bourekas.
“We welcome every visitor,” Mastron said. “We ask them questions: Are you visiting from out of town? Have you had a chance to visit Israel? If they want to engage, we absolutely do that, and if not, we just let them look at the displays. A lot of times people have lots of questions because most of our visitors don’t know a whole lot about Israel. Some of them can’t find it on the map, or they only know the michigas that they see on TV. We get people from all over the world. I have had some great conversations with people on vacation, or with exchange students from Saudi Arabia, Iran, and countries you think might be hostile, but the people who have come in we’ve had great dialogues with them. We have a little exhibit about the Abraham Accords.”
In addition to the Saturday and Sunday open houses, the House of Israel each year sponsors a lawn program, typically around the time of Israel Independence Day, Yom Ha’atzma’ut. This past May marked the 75th anniversary of Israel becoming a modern state and “our lawn program was spectacular.” It featured band music by the “Special in Uniform” contingent of the IDF, in which people with physical and/ or mental disabilities are permitted to become regular soldiers, earning rank and sharing in the national pride that comes from serving in the IDF. Additionally Israeli singer Danny Robas gave a performance, and there were booths from different organizations and vendors.
A weeklong special event is the House of Israel’s participation in December Nights, an international Christmas and Chanukah festival, which is held throughout the first week of December. “Instead of bourekas, we have latkes and sufganiyot and this coming December we hope to have a booth in the Spirit Garden featuring Israeli wines and spirits.”
I asked Mastron if there were any quintessential moments that stand out in her memory. She recalled two. One was on Earth Day when grower Jim Sherman donated tomato plants grown from Israeli seeds that were presented to visitors after they toured an exhibit on Israeli agriculture and contributions to the environment. Mastron asked visitors as they received the tomato plants whether they had encountered any facts about Israel they had not previously known. One man responded, “I learned I need to question my stereotypes.” “Wow!” Mastron reflected.
She also recalled pleasant conversations with Saudi Arabian students who were studying at UC San Diego, with whom she made a connection “because that was where I went to school and the conversation flowed from there.”
If she has any frustrations, she said, it is that so many people are unaware of the international cottages at Balboa Park, even people who have resided in San Diego for a long time. She asked that San Diego Jewish World refer people to the House of Israel website, and to share the phone number, 760-644-0335, if they want more information.
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Donald H. Harrison is editor emeritus of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.om
I have served along side Ruth in the IDF. A couple times. The Israeli army needs more volunteers like her. She has a great attitude and works hard.
Her pro-Zionist spirit is awesome. If there should be a poster child for American Jews For Zionism it would be Ruth.
Great article, Ruth! Looking forward to your next visit. Sending hugs to you and Pierre.