The Torah column is supported by a generous donation from Eve Gordon-Ramek in memory of Kenneth Gordon.

Passover
Exodus 33:12-23

We arrive at a strange moment in the seder. We are telling a story about Egypt. About slavery. About Pharaoh. About brick and mortar. And suddenly, the haggadah interrupts itself:

“In every generation, those who hate the Jewish people rise up to destroy them.”

It feels out of place. We are no longer speaking about Egypt. We are speaking about something much larger, much darker, much more enduring. Why does the haggadah do this?

Not to deepen our sense of tragedy, but to deepen our understanding.

If we confined ourselves to Egypt, we would search for explanations within Egypt. We would say: “The Jews were enslaved because they were foreigners, or poor, or too distinct, or perhaps too successful.” Each explanation has its logic. None survives the test of history.

Antisemitism does not behave like other forms of conflict. It appears under conditions that contradict one another. Jews have been hated when they were poor and when they were prosperous, when they were segregated and when they were integrated, when they were powerless and when they wielded influence. It persists in exile, and it does not vanish even when Jews return to their own land.

The mind searches for a pattern, for a cause that will make sense of it. But the usual categories fail. The explanations contradict one another. The question deepens.

Imagine a doctor trying to understand a mysterious illness. In one city, he studies the afflicted and concludes: it must be the water — the supply is contaminated.

Then the same illness appears elsewhere, where the water is perfectly clean. So he revises his theory. Perhaps it is the climate — the cold, the harshness. But then the illness appears again, in a place warm and gentle, untouched by such extremes.

At that moment, if he is honest, he must change the question. No longer can he ask, “What is different here?” He must ask, “What is the same?” For when every condition changes and yet the phenomenon remains, the cause is not in what varies. It is in what endures.

So too with antisemitism.

If it were the result of poverty, it would vanish with prosperity. If it were the result of separateness, it would dissolve with integration. If it were the result of weakness, it would disappear with strength. But it does not. And so we are compelled to look deeper.

What is it that has remained constant? What is it that the Jewish people have carried with them through every land, under every condition? It is not power. It is not wealth. It is not land. It is something far more dangerous. It is an idea. A vision. A moral insistence that has entered history and refuses to leave.

From the days of Abraham and Sarah, the Jewish people have borne witness to truths that were, and remain, revolutionary:

That there is a God who stands above all human authority.

That no ruler is ultimate.

That every human being carries within them a sacred worth.

That justice is not the invention of kings but the demand of Heaven.

That conscience is not to be silenced, even in the presence of power.

These are not merely articles of faith. They are the foundation of a moral universe.

And precisely because they are so, they have always been unsettling.

Any system that seeks to make itself absolute, any regime that demands unquestioned allegiance, must find these ideas intolerable. They limit power. They challenge authority. They remind rulers that they, too, are judged.

And so, across centuries and civilizations, we see a recurring drama. Different empires, different languages, different doctrines, but a strikingly familiar response.

Pharaoh cannot tolerate it. Haman cannot tolerate it. The Inquisition cannot tolerate it. Hitler and Stalin cannot tolerate it. Nor can the Ayatollahs. Nor can Hamas.

Antisemitism is not random. It is a reaction to something that refuses to bend.

The Passover haggadah teaches us to see this. It takes the story of Egypt and sets it within a larger horizon. It tells us: Do not be misled by appearances. Do not imagine that this began here, or that it will end here. There is a deeper current at work. And so it declares: “In every generation, they rise against us to destroy us.”

Yet the haggadah does not end there. It adds: “But God saves us from their hand.”

Empires have risen with great force and declared themselves eternal. They have marshaled armies, issued decrees, built monuments to their own permanence. And they have passed. The Jewish people have remained.

The seder, therefore, leaves us not with fear, but with perspective. Do not define yourself by those who hate you. Antisemitism is not the essence of the Jewish story. It is the shadow cast by a light that has not gone out. The story is what you carry.

If one must draw meaning from it, let it be this: When the greatest tyrants in history hate you, it is a badge of honor.

To live as a Jew, then, is not merely to remember what has been done to us. It is to continue what has been entrusted to us. To carry forward a faith in justice, in the holiness of mitzvah, in the sacred worth of every human soul.

Hatred may rise. It does not have the final word. For the story of the Jewish people is not the story of those who sought to destroy them. It is the story of a people who endured. And of a truth that still lives.

I sat down with two wonderful historians and archivists, Lara Michels and Susan Morris, on March 22 to discuss the importance of preserving California Jewish history. We met up at the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life in Berkeley as part of a celebration of 130 years of J., which was founded in late 1895.

Michels is head of archival processing at UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Library, where she oversees collections that include the records of the Western Jewish History Center. Morris is a former curator and executive director at the Judah L. Magnes Museum, the precursor to the Magnes Collection, and the author of “A Traveler’s Guide to Pioneer Jewish Cemeteries of the California Gold Rush.”

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Why even bother saving all of these bits and pieces of history? What’s the point of keeping all these records?

Michels: This is what I think about 24 hours a day. Archives are primary sources — the photographs, the documents, the letters, all the things that people create in their day-to-day lives. They are the primary sources upon which historical research is based. They’re part of keeping a society, organization or institution accountable.

The Jewish community in the Bay Area has kept its archives, at least some of them! They’re spread around a little bit.

These are not easy things to create or maintain. They are somewhat expensive. You need certain kinds of materials and climate and staff, so they take a huge amount of commitment. At the Bancroft, we have 100,000 linear feet of paper, and we have to maintain that … kind of forever.

Morris: I’m going to point out a particular object that we almost didn’t acquire when I was at Magnes. It’s a portrait of Max Lilienthal. [Lilienthal was an influential rabbi in the antislavery movement in Cincinnati and a key figure in early American Reform Judaism. The portrait was defaced in 1861 by Jacob A. Cohn, a Confederate captain who died a year later at Manassas.] 

What is scrawled on the portrait, what is boldly written, I quote: “Sir, since you have discarded the Lord and taken up the sword in defense of the Negro government, your picture, which has occupied a place in our southern homes, we here return to you, and may you present them to your beloved black friends. I shall be engaged actively in the field, and should be happy to rid Israel of the disgrace of your life.”

I was working at Magnes when [founder] Seymour Fromer learned this was going to be auctioned. He went to many prospective donors to say this is an important part of the holdings of the Magnes. In the end, members of the Lilienthal family helped to supply the funds needed to bid at that auction. This is such an important original piece of history.

How is it decided what will be preserved? How do you prioritize, when funds and space are not endless?

Michels: You have to remain connected to the community. We are short on space, short on paper, short on everything. But we have to make decisions. Sometimes our decisions do come down to: Do we have enough space?

They would have debates [at the Magnes] about what parts of the community they were capturing and which parts they weren’t. And they were sensitive to the fact that they were capturing more from the German Jewish community, from the Eastern European Jewish community, and they talked about that, and they were attempting to remedy that at various times.

In your work, are there collections or items that just stay with you?

Michels: I have collections that stay with me and that I think about all of the time. The Congregation Sherith Israel records — it’s a big collection, an amazing collection, going back into the 1850s. It is the only real significant organization whose records survived the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco.

Its records document the history of the city in really interesting ways. I was committed to retaining almost everything. This collection is truly spectacular. I’m very happy that I got to work on it.

Morris: This is a rough translation of a letter written from Downieville, California, Mother Lode country, in November of 1856. The writer is Johanna Mayer Hirschfelder. She writes to her mother and brothers in Germany, describing her trip from New York to San Francisco a month earlier.

Let me read you just a couple of passages: “Our trip was, with God’s help, one of the best and most beautiful that has been made in a long time.” 

There are pages and pages about what she ate and how she spent her time. She says, “On October 2 in the morning, at nine o’clock, we left on the Panama Railroad via the isthmus from the Gulf of Darién, where it was awfully hot, and my arm, which held the umbrella, was blistered.”

The point is — these are human beings, like we are.

J.’s archives are online at env-jweekly-jweeklydev.kinsta.cloud. How can people access other records?

Michels: The Bancroft Library is open to the public. You have to request [the records] ahead of time. It’s a little more logistically challenging, but everybody is welcome to use the Bancroft Library and any of the collections. We do have reference librarians who can help you figure out how to access things.

What should people do when they have materials that might be worth preserving?  

Michels: Our curators will engage with you. They do an appraisal, where they’re trying to figure out whether this is the right fit for the Bancroft Library.

It could be a lengthy process, deciding whether we should add it to the collection. But we are collecting Jewish Americana to this day. We’re still bringing materials in from various families and organizations.

Morris: This has to do with your curiosity and alertness and awareness of the importance of documenting and preserving the diversity and complexity of the Jewish community you live in, of your family. Recognize that each of your stories is important. We are the holders of the future archives. We are the collectors of the breadth and the depth of the knowledge of the Jewish experience.

Updated March 31

How did you or your family come to call the Bay Area home? 

Perhaps you come from a multi-generation San Francisco family. Maybe you showed up in the East Bay or North Bay for the Summer of Love and never left. Perchance you are a recent arrival in Silicon Valley.

J. has been serving the Bay Area Jewish community since 1895. In celebration of our 130-year-old archive, we are launching an audio-history project to preserve individual histories in our region. We want to hear your story.

If you’re interested in participating in the project, call us at 415-263-7200 ext. 953 by April 15 and tell us how you or your family became a Bay Area resident..

In the message, be sure to include your full name and how you or your family came to call the Bay Area home. Because we are organizing the project in chronological order, we ask you to include important years in that story. (A ballpark estimate is fine.)

J. kicked off this project at our “History is Calling!” event on March 22 at the Magnes Collection of Jewish Life and Art in Berkeley, where we marked the 130th anniversary of our publication and archive, which is online.

Even though your message will be recorded via voicemail, just know we’re all ears. We’re looking forward to hearing from you. Again, please call us at 415-263-7200 ext. 953 by April 15.

Thank you for preserving a slice of Bay Area Jewish history.

Update on March 31: Ednah Beth Friedman’s name has been corrected in the caption.

Food coverage is supported by a generous donation from Susan and Moses Libitzky.

“I’m obsessed with cabbage,” Bay Area chef Aliza Grayevsky Somekh said at a recent cooking workshop. She isn’t the only one.

The New York Times pronounced the cruciferous staple the darling of restaurant menus back in 2024. The cabbage craze has continued rolling along, like kale and Brussels sprouts trends did before it. 

Of course, for Ashkenazi Jews, cabbage has long been a staple. Many of us grew up on our bubbe’s decidedly not-trendy stuffed cabbage, often bathed in sweet-and-sour tomato sauce.

I remember when I visited Jules, the San Francisco pizza restaurant opened last summer by chef Max Blachman-Gentile, the charred cabbage appetizer was one of the most memorable dishes on the menu.

Somekh, an Oakland resident first covered in this column in 2019, is a Jerusalem born-and-raised chef and caterer whose Bay Area business is called BishulimSF. She professed her love of cabbage in a pre-Passover workshop put on by the JCC East Bay. This class took place at a private home in the El Cerrito hills, but when the new JCC campus opens this summer in the Rockridge District of Oakland, it will offer plenty of food and cooking programs like this one in the new on-site kitchen.

Somekh specializes in dishes from around the Jewish diaspora. The purpose of her workshop was not so much to provide inspiration for the Passover seder, but to suggest dishes that fall within the dietary restrictions of the holiday and can be eaten throughout the eight-day festival and beyond.

For Passover, “people have their own food traditions that go back generations,” she said, and she had no intention of interfering with those nostalgic holiday memories. The dishes she presented “can be an enhancement, or something extra,” she said. For Somekh, the Passover feast isn’t complete unless there’s chopped liver. 

Like many chefs, Somekh is a visual eater, so she favors dishes that are “very beautiful and inviting” to the eye. For example, roasting whole heads of cauliflower, as the Israeli chef Eyal Shani does, always elicits oohs and ahs, she said.

All of the dishes made that night were delicious — the group especially loved Somekh’s suggestion to put matzah balls in a creamy soup, as opposed to the more traditional chicken broth — but the cabbage cake was a standout, both in looks and taste.

“When you want to tell someone you love them, making stuffed vegetables is one way to do it, as it takes a long time,” she said, adding that she teaches a whole class entirely on stuffed vegetables. Knowing the group would be making a number of dishes in a short amount of time, she instead came up with this idea to make a “cake” with ground meat surrounded by cabbage leaves.

“I wanted to make something that takes all the flavors of stuffed cabbage without a lot of work,” she said. “This is not a traditional dish from anywhere, nor does it come from my family.” But it’s in the spirit of stuffed cabbage, and is perfect for Passover week.  

When asked the next morning where Passover falls among her favorite holidays, Somekh admitted that it’s at the bottom.

“I don’t like when people tell me what I can’t eat,” she said. “I don’t like restrictions on what I can or can’t make.”

The menu she put together for the workshop suggested otherwise, in that restrictions were barely noticeable. The menu was vegetable-forward, with produce in a riot of color. Even the cabbage dish, which could have remained a pale light green, had a layer of cooked tomato slices on top, giving it a rosy hue.

Somekh’s abundant menu included three types of haroset (Ashkenazi, Iraqi and Yemenite); Jerusalem Artichoke and Leek Soup with Matzah Ball; Roasted Rainbow Carrots with Moroccan Dressing; Whole Roasted Cauliflower; Roasted Beet Salad with Oranges; Herb Salad with Apples, Dates, Nuts and Pomegranate Vinaigrette; Savory Cabbage Layer Cake with Meat; and gluten-free Tarta de Santiago (Spanish Almond Cake).

She chose to use dates and apples in several dishes because they are symbolic foods for Passover. Dates are also a key ingredient in most Sephardic haroset recipes.

Amazingly, nearly all of these dishes were made and tasted in the span of a three-hour workshop. Somekh washed most of the vegetables and did other prep before our arrival, and then each dish was put together by a team of two. Yes, we did run over the allotted time, but that was because we were chatting so much. 

Participants came away with inspiration. Jen Friedman of Piedmont said the Middle Eastern spice blend baharat, made up of warm spices like cardamom, clove and cinnamon, was new to her, and she was going to seek it out.

Also, maybe just as important, she said, “I was reminded of how much fun it was to cook with friends.”

Savory Cabbage Layer “Cake” with Meat

Serves 8

For the cabbage:

• 1 large cabbage
• Water and salt (for boiling)

For the meat filling:

• 1 lb. ground beef or beef/lamb mix
• 1 large onion, finely chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, crushed
• 2 Tbs. olive oil
• 1 tsp. paprika
• ½ tsp. ground cumin
• ½ tsp. cinnamon (optional)
• 2 Tbs. tomato paste
• ½ cup water or stock
• Salt and black pepper, to taste
• Handful of chopped parsely

For the base:

• 2-3 ripe tomatoes, sliced (for the bottom layer)

Soften the cabbage

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Core the cabbage and place it whole in the water. Cook for about 10 minutes, until the leaves soften and can be separated easily. Remove, cool slightly, and gently peel off whole leaves.

Prepare the meat filling

Heat olive oil in a pan over medium heat. Add the onion and cook until soft and lightly golden. Add garlic, then the ground meat, breaking it up as it cooks. Cook until meat is fully browned. Stir in paprika, cumin, cinnamon if using, tomato paste and water/stock. Simmer for 5-10 minutes until the mixture is moist but not liquidy. Finish with parsley and adjust seasoning. 

Assemble the cabbage cake

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Lightly oil a medium baking dish or pan. Arrange a layer of sliced tomatoes on the bottom. Cover with a layer of cabbage leaves, also lining the sides. Add a layer of meat filling. Continue layering: cabbage, meat, cabbage, meat. Finish with a top layer of cabbage, folding any overhanging leaves inward to seal. Brush with olive oil. 

Cover with parchment and foil, and bake for 45 minutes. Uncover and bake an additional 15-20 minutes, until lightly browned. Let rest for 10-15 minutes before slicing. Serve in wedges or squares, like a savory cake or lasagna. 

Notes and variations:

• Add 1 cup of rice to the meat for a more traditional stuffed-cabbage feel.
• Include pine nuts or almonds for texture.
• This dish improves after resting and is excellent made a day ahead.
• For a more refined presentation, invert onto a serving platter before slicing, so tomato slices are on top.

The Torah column is supported by a generous donation from Eve Gordon-Ramek in memory of Kenneth Gordon. 

Tzav
Leviticus 6:1−8:36

I was 13 years old when I witnessed the birth of the milk cow Annabelle. I looked on with rapt attention as I leaned on a corral fence at a summer camp.

The counselors told us to be quiet as Annabelle’s mother labored. Even though we were generally rambunctious kids, it was easy for us to stay silent. We all understood that there is something sacred about birth.

When Annabelle finally emerged from her mother, she fell to the ground, coated in the placenta.

She didn’t move. I had never seen a birth of any kind before, and my first thought was that Annabelle hadn’t survived, that something tragic had happened.

But eventually she started moving. 

I returned to summer camp for six more summers. One year, Annabelle was a creature about my size. The next, she was a massive animal that we were allowed to brush. She then became a cow that would happily munch on hay as children milked her.

I think of Annabelle this week as our Torah portion Tzav outlines the routine use of animals in the sacrifices to God made in the ancient Temple in Jerusalem. Of the five types of sacrifices we read about, four of them use animals. In Tzav, we read detailed instructions for sacrificing pigeons, turtledoves, sheep, goats — and cows.

As this week’s Torah portion makes clear, there are currents in our tradition that advocate for taking animal lives. There is also a current of thought in Judaism that looks hesitantly on doing so. 

In the Garden of Eden, God tells the first two humans that they should eat plants: “God said, ‘See, I give you every seed-bearing plant that is upon all the earth, and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit; they shall be yours for food.’” (Genesis 1:29)

God makes no mention of eating animals. Some in our tradition, including Rabbi Yitz Greenberg, believe this means that the ideal way of being is not to eat meat or animal products. According to this understanding, people eat meat only in the imperfect world we inhabit after banishment from the Garden of Eden. Greenberg further teaches that the laws of kosher eating offer us a way of limiting a practice that is flawed.

I think about the value of refraining from eating meat precisely because it is idealistic. In this era, it’s difficult for everything we do to be in line with our values. Many of us shop online in ways we’re not proud of. We buy products that were made overseas in bad labor conditions, and we use gasoline despite knowing it harms the planet. These small decisions that each of us make add up to collective wrongs, contributing to problems such as global warming, income inequality and the large-scale harm we do to animals.

In laying out the rules for different sacrifices, our portion this week outlines what should happen when the community as a whole makes a mistake.

Tzav continues the Book of Leviticus’ detailed descriptions of the chatat, the sacrifice made as expiation for the community’s collective sins. 

Of course, what is proposed is to offer an animal sacrifice, so we have to read this text with an acknowledgment that it emerges from one of the threads of the Jewish tradition that is OK with taking animal lives.

Still, it is moving to consider that this ancient text was open to the idea that the entire community could sin collectively.

Perhaps we can learn from this that it’s possible for an entire community to err — that we should heed that small voice of conscience inside of us that wonders about the ethics of a widespread community practice. 

For me, a turning point in listening to this voice took place the last time I saw Annabelle.

I returned to camp for a weekend when I was in my mid-20s. It was early summer, before the campers arrived. Annabelle had stopped producing milk like she used to, and the decision had been made to call a butcher.

As someone who ate meat at the time, I wanted to witness a slaughter to make sure I was comfortable enough with the practice.

The butcher arrived in a worn truck that carried a refrigerator for the eventual meat and a set of poles and wires that would lift the cow’s carcass for butchering.

Annabelle stood in the same corral where she was born. I wondered if Annabelle knew what was coming. I felt an instinct to comfort her.

The slaughterer acted quickly and professionally. He pulled out his rifle and pointed it at Annabelle. The man shot. Immediately, Annabelle dropped to the ground.

I didn’t know what to make of what I had seen, but I knew it was jarring to watch life leave Annabelle so quickly. 

Gradually over the next year, I decided to stop eating meat. I felt that listening to the small voice inside of me that wished to comfort Annabelle could make a difference for animals — and also for me. Not eating meat could be a practice. Every time I decided not to eat meat I would be choosing to believe in a better world, choosing to believe in a world where we do listen to that faint voice of conscience.

As we go about our everyday lives, I think it’s good to make as much room as we can for our voices of conscience.

It makes sense to be skeptical of what one consumer can accomplish. Does recycling a bottle do much to stop pollution? Does one person going to a co-op instead of a chain grocery store make a big difference? Does one person not eating meat matter in the grand scheme of things? 

One sometimes hears that these small actions add up to make a difference. That every recycled soda can matters. I honestly don’t know about that. What I do know is that we need to make as much room as we can in our souls for our sense of what’s right.

Not eating meat is one thing we can do to help build up this muscle of compassion. However we choose to do it, it’s upon us to make sure this muscle doesn’t atrophy. So much is at stake.

One of the consistent challenges at Passover is bringing new perspectives to the texts and rituals that can too easily become rote. With the festival approaching, Steven Weitzman’s new book, “Disasters of Biblical Proportions: The Ten Plagues Then, Now, and at the End of the World,” is particularly welcome.

Our customary recitation of the 10 plagues at the seder table is notable for its minimalism. The lack of detail in the presentation of the plagues in the Book of Exodus makes them ripe for expansion and exploration.

Weitzman, who directs the Katz Center of Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, takes an unconventional approach. Rather than simply offering a close reading of the Biblical text and its rabbinic interpretation, he ventures widely and explores how the plagues have been understood by Jews, Christians and Muslims over the centuries.

The book, published in February, devotes a chapter to each plague, with Weitzman selecting something “odd or puzzling” in the text to examine.

For the fourth plague, he focuses not on the disastrous invasion of flies but on the fact that the Israelites are protected by where they live: Goshen. This region in Egypt appears in Exodus only in connection with the plagues: “I will set apart in that day the land of Goshen, where my people are stationed, so that no swarm of flies will be there…”

Weitzman examines how Goshen is at once a land populated by slaves and a haven of sorts from the plague. “If Egypt is a symbol of oppression and brutality, and Canaan of freedom and independence,” he writes. “Goshen represented something in between, a realm situated within the heart of an oppressive landscape that nonetheless offered room to act with a measure of autonomy.”

I was particularly moved by his consideration of how African Americans regarded Goshen. Weitzman finds that while Egypt and Canaan carried enormous symbolic power in African American thought and expression, the idea of Goshen as a haven within the world of enslavement did not gain traction at first — perhaps because no corresponding haven existed for Black people in the United States during slavery. In 1900, however, Black essayist Kelly Miller wrote “The Modern Land of Goshen,” calling for Black people to work toward economic self-dependence.

Dozens of self-governed Black towns emerged in the U.S. in the aftermath of the Civil War, offering some degree of insulation from the surrounding racism. One such place was Eatonville, Florida, where author and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston was raised. Her book “Moses: Man of the Mountain,” which fictionalizes the Exodus story, offers a vision of Goshen as a sort of prison camp. But it was one where, as Weitzman puts it, “the oppressed find ways to evade the notice of their taskmasters and express themselves freely.”

The author approaches the fifth plague of cattle disease by asking whether attention was paid to the suffering of the animals themselves.

He finds that early Jewish and Christian interpreters appeared unbothered by the afflicted cattle, viewed as “mere implements” of God’s designs. Christian sermons from the 17th century onward, however, showed increased concern about animal welfare, and real-world recurrences of widespread cattle disease kept it in public consciousness.

Weitzman traces a line from this emerging empathy to new language in some contemporary haggadahs, in which “God‘s killing of animals during the exodus began to be experienced as a moral embarrassment by Jewish animal rights activists, vegetarians, and vegans.“

In discussing the sixth plague, Weitzman focuses not on the boils, but on the “shift that Exodus registers from a pharaoh who hardens his own heart to a pharaoh whose heart is hardened by God.” This is familiar territory to those who have studied Jewish commentary on Exodus, but I particularly appreciated Weitzman’s discussion of Christian thought.

Paul the apostle, writing in the Epistle to the Romans, took a deterministic approach, asserting that God created Pharaoh to be hardhearted. This view met resistance early on, with the third-century scholar Origen arguing that God endowed people with free will and that human beings always have choices concerning their behavior.

Tracing a path through Augustine, Erasmus, Luther and other thinkers, Weitzman notes that “Christians will turn again and again to the story of Pharaoh’s hardened heart to try to work out whether humans have self-determining power in a world controlled by an all-powerful and all-knowing God.“ 

The book’s afterword reveals that it was inspired by the feelings Weitzman experienced at the first seder during the pandemic lockdown, with the plagues taking on a sudden immediacy. Other chapters convey the sense that the plagues remain relevant today, in a world marked by war, disease and environmental catastrophe. 

For those interested in the Bible’s enduring influence or seeking fresh insight before this year’s seder, the book offers a challenging and satisfying journey.

“Disasters of Biblical Proportions: The Ten Plagues Then, Now, and at the End of the World” by Steven Weitzman (Princeton University Press, 328 pages)

Food coverage is supported by a generous donation from Susan and Moses Libitzky.

Chef Ari Weiswasser’s most formative food memory took place in Israel when he was 16, on a teen tour. Which city? He doesn’t remember. All he recalls is feeling hungry, and when he saw a street cart selling shawarma, he bought one without knowing what it was.

He took a bite of the spit-roasted meat, bronzed to perfection, layered with salads and tahini in a fluffy pita. It was nothing special, as travelers to the region know; the traditional Levantine street food is available nearly everywhere.

“My mind was blown,” he said. “I couldn’t believe what was going on. Everyone’s looking at me, asking what I’m eating, and all I could say was ‘I don’t know, but it’s amazing.’” A bunch of people in his tour group followed suit. “It was life-changing,” he said.

Today Weiswasser, 46, is the chef and owner of two Sonoma County restaurants, Glen Ellen Star in Glen Ellen and Stella in Kenwood. Neither serves shawarma, but his family regularly makes a falafel recipe by Alon Shaya, the Israeli American celebrity chef who was his high school classmate.

Weiswasser and his wife, Erinn Benziger of the Benziger Family Winery, opened Glen Ellen Star in 2012 and Stella last year. Both restaurants offer a mix of Italian and California farm-to-table cuisine. Around 15 percent of the produce comes from the Glentucky Family Farm, owned by his in-laws and located a few miles away. 

Both restaurants use wood-fired ovens to make many of their dishes; at Glen Ellen Star, that includes a selection of pizzas. Stella is one of those wine country places that is classy but not overly fancy, with reliably delicious food and a large selection of fresh pastas. During a recent visit, highlights included fresh mozzarella with fava leaf pesto and pistachio crunch, and a classic cacio e pepe (Pecorino-Romano cheese and pepper) over house-made pasta.

Weiswasser and Benziger also own Park Avenue Catering, which frequently caters Jewish events.  He said Park Avenue has been a go-to around Rosh Hashanah, when local synagogues and Jewish organizations order upwards of 5,000 traditional honeycakes.

Weiswasser grew up in a Conservative Jewish household in the Philadelphia suburbs, where he said his cooking interest began early. His mother taught herself to cook when he was a kid, and he joked that the two of them organized their lives around their next meal.

When he was about 12, he was inspired to take control of the kitchen after a lackluster Thanksgiving dinner cooked by his great-aunt Doris. “God rest her soul,” Weiswasser said. “She tried, but it wasn’t very good. I remember telling my mom, ‘I think I can do better.’”

Two days later, they hosted another Thanksgiving dinner for friends, with young Weiswasser in charge. His mom helped, but he cooked most of it. The menu was quite basic, he said, but the sense of accomplishment “was pretty incredible.”

In high school, Weiswasser worked nights and weekends at the Lebanese restaurant Aldar Bistro, learning to make traditional salads and dips.

He attended college at the University of Colorado in Boulder, planning to pursue finance. But nothing he learned excited him as much as food did. This realization was cemented for him one summer while interning at an investment firm and working weekends at the Lebanese restaurant in its catering operation. Analyzing spreadsheets just couldn’t compare to the excitement he felt in the kitchen. Upon graduating, he attended the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York.

From there he worked several years in New York fine dining kitchens, including Restaurant Daniel under chef Daniel Boulud. He moved to Sonoma County with his wife and soon began working at the French Laundry. In 2012, he struck out on his own.

Last year, Weiswasser was a James Beard Award semifinalist for the best chef in California.

Stella is at 9049 Sonoma Highway in Kenwood; Glen Ellen Star is at 13648 Arnold Drive in Glen Ellen.

SMALL BITES

There are two new restaurant openings, both in San Francisco, led by fine dining chefs we’ve reported on before. Loveski, a “Jew-ish” deli concept from Napa chef Christopher Kostow, opened its third location, but its first in the city, bringing its Asian-influenced Jewish deli and lauded bagels to Jackson Square. We featured the first Loveski in this column in 2022. It’s at 499 Jackson St., near Montgomery, and is open daily from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Also, JouJou opened in the Design District recently, a second fine-dining concept from Lazy Bear chef David Barzelay, who was featured in this column in 2024. JouJou, a French restaurant focused on raw-bar seafood, is at 65 Division St.

Opening in Berkeley at the Lawrence Hall of Science is the ‘ammatka cafe, the latest project from chefs Vincent Medina and Louis Trevino. It highlights food from the Ohlone Tribe, which is native to the Northern California coast. The cafe was championed by Lawrence Hall of Science director Rena Dorph, who is very active in the East Bay Jewish community. “This is one of the most exciting and uplifting partnerships that I’ve had in my whole job,” Dorph told Berkeleyside writer Anna Mindess. The cafe features traditional Ohlone dishes like a smoked duck sandwich and a green salad with pine nuts, black walnuts and edible flowers. Dining at the cafe does not require museum admission. Open Wednesday to Sunday, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., at 1 Centennial Drive.

We also have one closing to report. Cheezy’s Artisan Pizza in San Francisco’s Saluhall (Ikea) food court recently closed due to low foot traffic and management issues. We first wrote about Cheezy’s owner David Jacobson when he was slinging pies at Oakland’s Acre restaurant in 2023. He plans to do catering and pop-ups while scouting a new location.

Judy Stein’s 1957 bat mitzvah was a milestone in the history of Bay Area Jews. Held at Beth Sholom, a Conservative congregation, it was the first time a bat mitzvah ceremony took place in a San Francisco synagogue on a Saturday morning. Unlike other bat mitzvahs of the era, which took place on Friday nights, Stein’s “followed the bar mitzvah ritual,” as we wrote at the time.

Our coverage in 1957 was brief, though our editors did consider it important enough to be front-page news:

Bas Mitzvah Set For Tomorrow In Unique Ritual

“For what is believed to be the first time in San Francisco, a 13-year-old girl will be Bas Mitzvah during a regular Sabbath morning service tomorrow and will recite in Hebrew the prophetic Portion of the Week with appropriate blessings, following the same practice as do boys in Bar Mitzvah.

“The girl is Judy Stein, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Louis Stein. Her father is area director of the Bonds for Israel organization.

“Judy for some time has been studying for her Bas Mitzvah with Rabbi Saul E. White and now looks forward to the event which it is believed will be a new departure in local Jewry. Bas Mitzvahs usually have been held on Friday nights and have not followed Bar Mitzvah ritual.”

That write-up makes it sound like everything was copacetic, but as Stein told me in a recent interview, that wasn’t exactly the case.

“I didn’t know this at the time because I was only 13, but my parents, they had to really argue for it,” she said. Stein is 81 and still lives in San Francisco. “I don’t know exactly how the conversations went in the shul, but from what my parents told me there were a lot of people who were very much against it, to the point of maybe even leaving the shul.”

Her parents, who were raised Orthodox, were always supportive of her receiving a Jewish education equal to the boys. “My mom actually went to a yeshiva high school in New York,” where she received a full Jewish education, similar to boys of the time, Stein said.

Stein’s parents were joined by Rabbi Saul E. White, the rabbi of Beth Sholom, who also advocated for her bat mitzvah, according to Stein. 

“And my guess is that that wasn’t an easy thing to do in those days,” she said. “When I said I wanted a bat mitzvah, they had offered me Friday night, lighting candles and making Kiddush, and I said, no, I wanted to do what the boys did. And it wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t championed it.”

Despite White’s support, there was a compromise at the heart of Stein’s bat mitzvah, a detail our original article got wrong: It was not done exactly “following the same practice as boys do.” At the time, it was the norm for boys to have an aliyah to bless the Torah, but not read from it. Then they would read the haftarah, the passage from the prophetic books that accompanies each Torah portion.

The compromise that allowed Stein to have a Shabbat morning bat mitzvah did not allow her to have an aliyah. Instead, that honor was given to her father. However, she did get to read the haftarah, a portion from Zechariah that begins somewhat auspiciously given the occasion: “Sing and rejoice, O daughter of Zion, for, behold! I will come and dwell in your midst, says the Lord.”

“It’s kind of odd when I think back on it now, but that’s what they agreed to,” Stein said. “And I was doing the part that at least felt to me the most substantial.”

After years of shul hopping, today Stein is again a member of Beth Sholom. She said she was drawn back after her mother died in 2008. Now Stein is primarily involved as a volunteer in the synagogue office, answering phones, helping with mailings and special projects.

Her bat mitzvah wasn’t her family’s only feminist first at Beth Sholom. Her mother, Toby Stein, was the first woman to have an aliyah on the High Holidays at Beth Sholom.

“What they used to do was they would give the male members of the board aliyot on the High Holidays, but they never gave it to a woman,” Stein said. “And the story I heard is my mother went to Rabbi White and said, ‘Hey, we have bat mitzvah, we have men getting aliyot on the High Holidays — why are not women getting aliyot who are on the board on the High Holidays?’ And so he gave her an aliyah.”

Stein’s 1957 bat mitzvah was the first known Shabbat morning bat mitzvah in San Francisco, but not the first in the city overall. That distinction goes to Marilyn Angel 10 years earlier at Temple Beth Israel, another Conservative synagogue (it later merged with Temple Judea to form Congregation Beth Israel Judea, which in turn merged with B’nai Emunah to form Congregation Am Tikvah in 2021). Angel was one of a class of girls who had their bat mitzvahs on Friday nights, without a Torah service or haftarah reading at all.

Unlike Angel, who had other girls to study with, Stein was the lone girl in a class of boys. Today, though, she is happy to be among the many women and girls who have had bat mitzvahs at Beth Sholom.

“When I see [a bat mitzvah], I just feel we’ve come a long way,” Stein said. “Maybe I had the first one, but it wasn’t really completely authentic. But I started it, and women now have full rights. It makes me feel good.”

Vayikra
Leviticus 1:1-5:26

“The world is one-part wilderness, one-part settled land, and one-part sea. Said the sea: ‘Master of the Universe! The Torah will be given in the wilderness, the Holy Temple will be built on settled land, but what about me?’ Said God: ‘The people of Israel will offer your salt upon the Altar.’” — Yalkut HaReuveni midrash collection

As the Book of Leviticus begins, we meet the elaborate rules and procedures that became essential in the ancient Temple in Jerusalem, and there find this mitzvah: “You shall salt your every meal offering with salt; you may not discontinue the salt of your God’s covenant upon your meal offering — on your every offering shall you offer salt.” (Leviticus 2:13) 

That the Hebrew word “melach,” or “salt,” appears four times in one verse suggests the centrality of this practice. Salt was an essential ingredient in the recipe book for our Beit Hamikdash.

With the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, Judaism evolved to regard the dining table as a suitable alternative to the once-central Temple altar. The Leviticus commandment is thus the reason why many Jews still salt their challah before Hamotzi, the blessing over bread, as they welcome Shabbat, and why salt is so often present on any table where food is shared.      

Why salt? By most reckonings, salt is undoubtedly positive. It adds flavor to foods, serves as a remarkably effective preservative, plays a major role in the kashering of meat and has numerous curative properties (think of gargling with salt water or soaking in a salt bath, for example). Its role in superstitions is well attested (after salt is spilled accidentally, some people toss a few grains over their shoulder to ward off evil). And describing anyone as “the salt of the Earth” is a compliment denoting goodness, loyalty and lack of pretense.

Salt is a ubiquitous symbol of hospitality and welcome. It is often given with wine and bread to friends moving into a new home, with the hope that they will receive many guests. One suggestion for why Lot’s wife became a pillar of salt when looking back on her ruined home (Genesis 19:26) is that she failed to show her guests proper hospitality, a primary theme of that tragic episode, by laying out sufficient food, drink and salt. An Arabic expression, “there is salt between us,” tethers a host and a guest in an unbreakable bond once they have shared a meal with salt.

A Middle Eastern tradition known as a Salt Covenant involved two parties meeting to establish a pact, with each bringing a bag of prized salt. (An Arabic word for “treaty” or “contract” is the same as “salt.”) The parties co-mingled their grains of salt in one vessel, declaring “may this bond last until these grains of salt can be separated and returned to their original owner.” Some modern weddings still feature a version of the Salt Covenant, where the marrying couple mixes colored salt in a transparent keepsake holder, symbolizing the unbreakable union they hope to create.  

And so, when we read of the Brit Melach, or Salt Covenant, between God and the Jewish people (also in Numbers 18:19 and 2 Chronicles 13:5), it suggests something enduring and preserved for all time. The rabbis likewise likened the Torah to salt because the world could not do without salt, nor could it do without the Torah. (Soferim 15:8)

But salt is also bitter, often representing tears. It can be destructive and corrosive, ruining land and plants. Diets high in sodium are known to be quite unhealthy. 

Ramban taught that the salt of the sacrificial offerings reminded us that, when performed correctly, the Temple service preserved Israel and its relationship with God. But when rituals were neglected, defeat and exile were the inevitable result. 

For many modern readers, the visceral, overpowering notion of animal sacrifice and its importance in the ancient world is too much to bear. But for those willing to grapple with this strange and wondrous book, Leviticus offers a way we might draw closer to holiness, in the truest sense of the Hebrew word for sacrifice, “korban,” with intention and commitment. 

We often speak of sacrifice negatively, as something precious we have to give up, yet that’s exactly how our tradition regards it. To give up something should involve taking something treasured and giving it up for a holy purpose.

The seminal but easily overlooked mitzvah of including salt with our sacrifices teaches that something seemingly ordinary can be mined for deep holiness. If we can add some “salt” to our daily lives, how much more meaningful might they become? As a devoted challah baker, I can also attest to the fact that omitting salt, which I did only once inadvertently, makes all the difference.

The kabbalists teach that when performing the salt with challah ritual, the bread should always be dipped into the salt, so that the sweetness of the bread dampens down any bitterness that the salt might represent. But it’s also a way to recognize that life contains both bitter and sweet; notably, the word for bread, “lechem,” and the word for salt, “melach,” contain the same Hebrew letters.    

As we begin the Book of Leviticus, we are also in the opening days of the month of Nisan. We are entering a veritable season of bread. In the weeks to come, we’ll clean out all the crumbs of the past year and revert to flat, unleavened matzah, the bread of potential, on Passover. We’ll count the Omer for seven weeks to commemorate the barley harvest and ascend to Shavuot, the joyful wheat harvest, when fully risen loaves were offered — with salt, of course! 

May our bread always be sweet, with just the right amount of salt, and may our offerings be brought, and received, with joy.

Vayakhel-Pekudei
Exodus 35:1-40:38

The public reading of the Torah this week features two portions that are thematically related. They speak of the fulfillment of the instructions given to Moses with respect to the Tabernacle and all of its accompanying articles. 

The actual instructions were laid out in the portions of Terumah and Tetzaveh, which we read a couple of weeks back. There is one major factor that God introduces in this week’s double portion. It is the assignment of leadership to ensure the success of the project. 

“Moses said to the Children of Israel, ‘See, God has called by name Betzalel son of Uri, son of Chur, of the tribe of Judah.’” (Exodus 35:30) Moses had informed the people that God had a particular individual whom he wanted to appoint for this operation. In fact, the language of “called by name” indicates that it was not just hinted at by God, but that God actually chose Betzalel as the chief architect. 

And what of Betzalel’s qualifications for the task at hand? The text tells us, “I have filled him with a godly spirit, with wisdom, discernment and knowledge, and with all of the skills.” God does not rely on the natural talent of Betzalel. He actually endows him with everything necessary to lead the effort. The verses continue listing the crafts, which include stone cutting, metal work (with gold, silver and copper) and even carpentry. (Exodus 35:31-33)

Building the Tabernacle was certainly a formidable task, and God did not stop at the appointment of just one leader. He also directly designated the second in command. Ohaliav, son of Achisamach, was appointed from the tribe of Dan. The verses have subtle nuances that suggest that there was a clear hierarchy and that Ohaliav was subservient to Betzalel.

“He filled them with wisdom of the heart to do all of the crafts of carving, designing and embroidery with the turquoise, purple and scarlet wool, and the linen, and to weave; the doers of every craft and designers of every design.” (Exodus 35:35) The skills that were necessary for the tapestry and the vestments of the priests were not just given to Ohaliav, but the pronoun “them” suggests that Betzalel was blessed with those talents as well. 

There was one other ability that was granted to Betzalel as well as Ohaliav: “And to instruct he placed in his heart, he as well as Ohaliav son of Achisamach of the tribe of Dan.” (Exodus 35:34) 

It is one thing for a person to have the talent to produce great work. It is a completely different skill to be able to instruct or teach others how to use their own abilities. 

Betzalel was a great-great-nephew of Moses himself. God was going to imbue him with everything necessary to accomplish the work, but Betzalel was also part of the leading family and was a beneficiary of the great merit accrued by his great-grandmother, Miriam, as well as that of his grandfather, Chur. Just to remind ourselves, Chur played a significant role just after the departure of the Israelites from Egypt. He was one of the two people who held up Moses’ hands during the battle with Amalek, and he was also appointed with Aaron to manage the people while Moses left for Mount Sinai.

According to a midrash in the Talmud (Sanhedrin 7), Chur actually attempted to stop the building of the golden calf. The midrash states that he was murdered by the perpetrators of the grievous sin, and hence, he is no longer mentioned. It is possible that granting such a prestigious position to Betzalel was a way to recognize Chur’s sacrifice.

There is another question that one could raise with respect to the choice of Betzalel. He is introduced as the son of Uri, who was the son of Chur. Why would God skip down to a younger generation and not enlist Uri as the chief architect of the Mishkan (Tabernacle)?

According to what was discussed in the midrash about the fate of Chur, it is possible that God did not want to have Uri because he was in a state of mourning for the loss of his father. The Tabernacle was the holiest place for the Israelites and should be constructed with great simcha, or jubilation. A mourner is not supposed to participate in such joy during the year of mourning for a parent. Betzalel was only a grandson and not required to observe the rituals of mourning.

In general, the observance of mitzvot should be done with joy. We can all learn that lesson from the appointment of Betzalel to this great opportunity he was given to serve God.

You should be skeptical of this article’s headline. The Jewish identity of William Leidesdorff, an entrepreneur who helped build San Francisco, is uncertain, given that he was buried in the Mission Dolores, a Catholic church. But his life story, marked by a series of firsts, reflects the wild diversity of early American Jews and the formative years of San Francisco.

This publication’s archives are replete with traces of the existence of Leidesdorff. His name lives on in the form of Leidesdorff Street, a three-block stretch between Pine and California Streets in the Financial District. Search “Leidesdorff” in our archives and one finds page upon page of ads and legal notices that refer to addresses on his eponymous street.

He could be considered San Francisco’s first Jew, depending on how one defines the term. His biography reads like an epic, and he is widely considered America’s first Black millionaire.

According to a 2005 book by Gary Mitchell Palgon, a descendant of Leidesdorff, he was born in the Virgin Islands to a Danish Jewish father and a Creole mother about whom little is known. Leidesdorff was not raised by his biological father. Sources cited by Paglon say his English adoptive father had him christened. 

Leidesdorff broke off an engagement after his fiancee learned he was, in Liedesdorff’s words, “a mulatto,” a term used at the time to describe a person of both Black and white ancestry. He later sailed from New Orleans to San Francisco, then known as Yerba Buena, where he became a wealthy master of ships, later establishing the city’s first town council and serving as its treasurer. He is known to have launched the first steam ship to sail the San Francisco Bay. In a less savory footnote to that legacy, a hotel he owned hosted what is believed to be California’s first recorded minstrel show.

But in this paper, there has been just one telling of his life story, written in the distinct florid prose of our founding editor, Rabbi Jacob Voorsanger, in 1903.

Voorsanger seems sure of Leidesdorff’s Jewishness, although he admits “Captain Leidesdorff did not affiliate with the nascent Jewish community of San Francisco, for he lies buried in the Catholic graveyard at Mission Dolores.”

How did Voorsanger, writing in 1903, a half century after Leidesdorff’s death in 1848, even know of Liedesdorff’s Jewish descent? There is a tiny clue buried at the end of his brief write-up.

Leidesdorff died without leaving a will and his estate was contested. Voorsanger wrote that “his Jewish relatives, scattered throughout Austria and the Duchy of Posen [now roughly modern-day Poland], are somewhat late in their effort to recover [Leidesdorff’s estate].”

The San Francisco Chronicle also reported in 1904 that Hungarian descendants of Leidesdorff were seeking the state’s help in recovering his estate. One of them, Elias Haupt, made multiple visits to San Francisco attempting to get local lawyers interested in the case. It’s easy to imagine that Haupt or another of these distant Jewish relations made contact with Voorsanger, then the most prominent Jewish community leader in the city. 

We Jews are always eager to claim even the most tenuously Jew-ish notables and celebrities as Jewish. Leidesdorff was raised in a Christian home and buried in a Catholic cemetery. Calling Leidesdorff a Jew flattens what must have been a complex personal identity. At the same time, claiming him as a Jew also complicates our contemporary understanding of who American Jews are and have been. And that, I think, is worthwhile.

Ki Tisa

Exodus 30:11–34:35

Without question, the breakout star of the 2026 Winter Olympics was Bay Area native Alysa Liu. She grabbed headlines not only because of her flawless routines and Gen Z energy, but also because of the captivating, relatable details of her life journey. 

By now, most of us know the outlines of her burnout from pressure and her retirement after a sixth-place finish in the 2022 Winter Olympics. Eventually, though, Liu realized she missed the thrill of skating and returned to the ice — under the condition that she be given complete control of her preparations. 

Liu’s decision to return to skating coincided with an important self-discovery. After realizing she had more than 145 missing assignments in her senior year of high school, Liu was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. As she began to understand her diagnosis, Liu learned more about the ways that ADHD had shaped her. 

Often, she waited until the last minute to face tasks, making her life more chaotic. At the same time, her ability to hyperfocus allowed her to engage in extended practice sessions: falling again and again before finally landing a jump.

Remarkably, the people in her life listened. Her father gave her the space she needed, and her coaches let her take the lead. The results for the 20-year-old skater were undeniable: a performance that some have described as among the most joyful and free in Olympic history. 

I thought of Liu this week as I reread the famous story of the golden calf. The details are well known: God summons Moses to Mount Sinai to receive the law. While he is away, the Israelites — who feel abandoned in his absence and find themselves incapable of faith in a God they cannot see — compel Aaron to form an idol to worship. Appalled by what he sees upon his return, Moses shatters the Divine tablets in his arms. 

On its surface, the episode appears to be a physical manifestation of the spiritual rupture brought about by the Israelites’ sin. But the moment is actually revelatory about Moses. I suspect that people with ADHD may recognize it immediately. 

If we probe Moses’ life with curiosity rather than judgment, a familiar profile emerges. Without seeking to diagnose Moses, we can still observe patterns in his life that resonate with contemporary discussions of ADHD. 

Moses reacts with impulse in the face of injustice, such as shattering the tablets upon discovering the golden calf. Likewise, he sometimes acts without listening carefully. When God tells him to speak to the rock to bring forth water, he strikes it instead — an act that costs him entry into the Promised Land. And Moses struggles to organize administrative tasks: It takes Jethro to step in and show Moses how to arrange the judicial system so that Moses isn’t judging every dispute on his own from morning until night. 

Moses also has remarkable strengths. He is fiercely loyal to the Israelites. Despite their endless complaining, he never abandons them. He has an endless thirst to connect, grow and learn. He yearns to encounter God’s presence. And when needed, he can enter states of hyperfocus: Twice, he communes with God for weeks in isolation, learning all of the law. 

He thrives in chaos, providing steady leadership in the face of plagues, scarce resources and threatening nations. Even Jethro’s critique sheds light on Moses’ unique leadership qualities: He is willing to give all of himself to the people he loves. 

It is because of this, I think, that God loves Moses. God demonstrates this love by giving Moses the support he needs. God protects Moses from sensory overload, giving him a quiet space in the Tent of Meeting, and makes sure Aaron is there to offer support. Perhaps the most surprising thing, though, is that God — who Moses describes in this week’s portion as slow to anger — does not frequently punish Moses when he seems to miss the mark. Instead, God tries to understand it. 

Consider the broken tablets. According to the Talmud, the shattered remnants were ultimately placed in the Ark of the Covenant, alongside the second set of tablets that God gave Moses after the people repented. The broken tablets come to represent the community and God joined in failure. 

In shattering the tablets, Moses acts before God explicitly instructs him but as soon as he recognizes that the people are not ready to receive the law.  

The rabbis teach that God responds to this choice by offering Moses a rare blessing — “Yasher kochecha,”or “May your strength be affirmed.” It is striking to me that the blessing Jews offer one another for engaging in Torah study traces back to the moment when Moses recognized that the people’s ability to engage with the law was still beyond their grasp. 

Some recent research suggests that ADHD may be overrepresented in the Jewish community, perhaps because of Jewish histories of trauma, migration and reinvention. Yet our institutions often struggle to accommodate these children. While we reassure them that their differences do not define them, we are often reluctant to do the harder work required to truly include them.  

Liu’s story offers a different model. It shows what becomes possible when adults are willing to listen carefully to children and to adapt to their needs rather than demand conformity. 

Ki Tisa asks us to be the parent who steps back or the coach who makes space — or even be like God, who offers a blessing — so that our children can become the best versions of themselves. 

Library cafes usually aren’t destinations unto themselves. When they do exist, the coffee is often stale and the food could easily have come out of a vending machine. But when I heard that Iliana Imberman Berkowitz was opening an As Kneaded Cafe in the San Leandro Public Library, I knew that it would become a destination.

As Kneaded Cafe held its grand opening at the library on Feb. 14, offering the same high-quality products found a mile away at As Kneaded Bakery, which I wrote about when it opened in 2018. But the cafe design — it seats 30 inside and 24 outside — allows Berkowitz the opportunity to expand her menu.

San Leandro, population just under 90,000, sees perhaps five new restaurants open a year, Berkowitz estimated. Calling it a “food desert,” she said she was thrilled to create “another great option for high-quality food in a welcoming, community atmosphere” in the city where she lives with her husband and two daughters.

The library cafe has a light, airy inside space and an outdoor patio, while the flagship bakery has limited seating and offers cold brew coffee only, with no espresso drinks. It also has its own entrance and its own hours.

Berkowitz was on one of her regular library visits with her children a year ago when she saw the vacant space at the entrance. “I felt a lot of potential in it,” she said. “I knew it could become something awesome.”

She emailed the library director and learned the city was accepting proposals from food vendors. She submitted her own pitch, advanced to the second round and then received approval. She signed the lease in September.

With help from Hebrew Free Loan — the nonprofit also gave Berkowitz an interest-free loan to start the bakery — she immersed herself in learning the ins and outs of running a full-service cafe. She is partnering with Counter Culture Coffee, and the cafe now offers a range of espresso drinks.

As Kneaded has earned high praise for its sourdough breads with dark, flavorful crusts. Its “miche,” a whole-wheat sourdough loaf inspired by the Parisian bakery Poilâne, has extra tang due to its rye flour and longer fermentation period. Another sourdough incorporates flax and sunflower seeds, and a honey rye porridge bread balances sweet and sour notes (despite sharing a name with the Chinese dish). Berkowitz also offers challah on Fridays and babka on Jewish holidays. I recall seeking out a cardamom-almond babka during the pandemic for comfort. 

The bakery traditionally has offered two sandwiches at a time — one vegetarian, one not — but the cafe features six. They go beyond standard deli fare. The turkey, apple and cheddar sandwich is accented with onion jam; Brie and spring mix is paired with fig jam; and the vegan option features chick pea salad with roasted red peppers and spring mix (selections rotate seasonally). The menu also offers charcuterie and cheese boards, a “breads and spreads” plate, three salads (including kale and grain), and quiche that “takes advantage of our flaky pastry dough,” Berkowitz said.

She is hoping to bring her Jewish holiday specials to the library as well.

“By the time the holidays roll around, I would love to figure that out. The library is big on celebrating holidays, so I’d love to collaborate with them. I’d definitely like to bring a little of myself to this.”

Berkowitz, 37, grew up in Palo Alto. When I met her parents at the 2018 bakery opening, her mom urged me to search for a J. article about Berkowitz at 17, when she was a Diller Teen Fellow. She would frequently take the public bus dressed as a clown to bring joy to day laborers commuting early on weekend mornings.

Berkowitz discovered her love of baking in college and began selling at farmers markets on the Peninsula, sometimes with help from her father, before opening the San Leandro bakery. She envisioned a business that could serve the entire Bay Area. She set out to build a wholesale business based on her confidence in the product. “If I don’t believe that, how can I expect anyone else to?” she said at the time. 

Over the next five years, she did just that, selling her artisanal breads in upscale markets throughout San Francisco, the South Bay and East Bay, reaching as many as 80 wholesale accounts.

In 2024, however, she realized she had drifted from what had initially inspired her. “I craved more face-to-face interactions with people,” she said. “You don’t know what impact you have on the world.”

Customers were asking for more items than she felt she could handle at the time. So she stopped her wholesale program and began expanding the bakery’s retail offerings, adding croissants and other pastries.

Now, with the cafe, she is poised to introduce her products to an even broader audience.

“I wanted to do something for my own community,” she said. “This is my library. I just feel very invested in the community here.”

As Kneaded Cafe, San Leandro Public Library, 300 Estudillo Ave., San Leandro. Open 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday, Friday and Saturday and 9 a.m.-7 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday. Closed Sundays. 

Small Bites

Buttercup Diner celebrated 30 years in its current Walnut Creek location with a ribbon-cutting ceremony last month attended by Mayor Kevin Wilk and Linda Vesneski of the Walnut Creek Chamber of Commerce. As I wrote in March 2019, Buttercup Diner first opened in 1988 on North Main Street before moving to its current location in 1996. Founded by David and Debbie Shahvar, the diner is now co-owned by the couple and their three children. They also operate locations in Concord, Vallejo and Oakland.

The diner has some Jewish dishes on the menu, like matzah ball soup, a nod to the family’s Jewish heritage. The Walnut Creek location has become such a popular meeting spot for the area’s Jewish community that it’s often referred to as “B’nai Buttercup.”

The Torah column is supported by a generous donation from Eve Gordon-Ramek in memory of Kenneth Gordon.

Tetzaveh
Exodus 27:20-30:10

This week’s Torah portion, Tetzaveh, is the only Torah portion, from the beginning of Exodus through the end of Deuteronomy, from which Moses is completely absent. Everywhere else in Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus and Deuteronomy, the great prophet dominates the text. So it is very strange, and highly unusual, that Israel’s quintessential leader is absent from this week’s story.

Why is Moses missing from the narrative?

Rabbis and Biblical commentators throughout the centuries have offered a wide range of interpretations as to why a figure as central as Moses is completely absent from this Torah portion.

One view is that the omission is meant to acknowledge the anniversary of Moses’s death, which is said to have been on the seventh day of the Hebrew month of Adar, one week before Purim, which is coming up, this year, on March 2. This parashah is usually read just before the joyous spring holiday, which reinforces the chronology and the gravity of this time period. There is a hole in our annual celebration.

Another perspective is that Moses’ name is left out of this week’s parashah as a kind of Divine rebuke for his jealousy (according to some traditions) over his brother Aaron’s appointment as the high priest of the Israelite people. The ordination and consecration of Aaron and his sons as kohanim, priests, serve as the major feature in the rest of the Torah portion.

Still other commentators — in an interpretation that essentially opposes the one above — think that Moses, a Biblical character often known for his humility and self-effacement, constrains his personal ego and instead graciously cedes the role of high priest to his brother. In this way, Moses absents himself from the narrative and does not appear in the parashah.

While there is a difference of opinion as to the reaction of Moses when he learns that Aaron is to become the high priest rather than him, the story suggests that, although his name is not explicitly mentioned, Moses remains God’s messenger, the agent for all that is to happen.

This is made evident through an unusual grammatical formulation found several times in the Torah portion, as observed by the 16th-century commentator Rabbi Moshe Alshich.

The very first verse of the parashah says to Moses that “You, yourself, shall command the children of Israel.” (Exodus 27:20) A few verses later, it says “And you, bring near to yourself your brother Aaron, with his sons, from among the Israelites, to serve Me as priests.” (Exodus 28:1) And then, immediately afterward, the text says “You, yourself, speak to all who are skillful, whom I have endowed with the gift of skill, to make Aaron’s vestments.” (Exodus 28:3)

The rabbi suggests that this repeated double emphasis is, perhaps, meant to tell us that Moses is not absent from this story after all. Rather, the prophet’s presence is only momentarily diminished so that other leaders can step forward to serve the spiritual needs of the people.

These interpretations are all very interesting, but to me, the most intriguing and notable example of the absence of Moses occurs in the Passover Haggadah. When Jews around the world sit down at the seder table and recite the words of the Haggadah, as they have for many ages, Moses is barely mentioned — even though he is the central character in the Exodus narrative.

Why is Moses missing from the Passover story in such a seemingly deliberate way? One explanation, which I find particularly compelling, is that when the rabbinic sages composed the Haggadah and developed the seder, they strived to downplay Moses’ role in the liberation and future redemption of the Jewish people so as not to create a cult of personality.

If excessive focus on Moses’ power and greatness were to lead to his becoming a venerated and, over the millennia, possibly even deified being in the Jewish tradition, then Jews would risk crossing a theological line and descending into avodah zarah, idol worship, one of the most grievous sins in Judaism.

In conventional Jewish thought, however, Moses is not viewed as a demi-god nor a messiah nor a magician who works wonders through his own Divine capabilities. He is treated as a mortal man, a human being, born in the image of God but also flawed and imperfect like all the rest of us.

The glory of the Exodus belongs to God, not Moses.

This anti-idol idea, embedded deeply in the Jewish religion, may not be unique among the world’s many faith traditions and belief systems, but it is without doubt one of the most longstanding and defining aspects of Jewish theology, mythology and ritual. It is also an idea about which I, as a rabbi and a student of different religions, am most proud.

No human being can transcend his or her own mortality. None of us is above the values, rules and laws that serve as the moral bedrock of our society.

In today’s troubling era of autocrats and strong men who lead countries around the world, whose gargantuan egos and circles of sycophants make them see themselves as messiahs and demi-gods unbound by the constraints and limitations of others, this is a timely and critically important teaching to remember. And it traces its origin all the way back to the Torah.

Food coverage is supported by a generous donation from Susan and Moses Libitzky.

Dawn Daabul was bringing her youngest son Yonatan, 10, to winter camp at the Osher Marin JCC when they noticed a sign on the way inside: The JCC was looking for a new vendor to run its cafe.

“Ima, you should do that,” said Yonatan — never mind that his mom had little food industry experience and a busy practice as a therapist. 

Daabul longed for more connection and community. Her family had always been part of the JCC, and she had worked in JCCs when she was younger. She dashed off a message to start a conversation about running the cafe. 

Just six months later, in May 2025, Eli’s Deli opened with a menu featuring Israeli favorites and Jewish deli classics and a focus on working with Jewish and Israeli vendors. Daabul said the new venture felt like the right thing at the right time (though she said her son likes to take the credit).

“I’m a very intuitive person, and if something feels right, I don’t really question it too much,” she said.

At the time, Daabul’s work was taking a toll, between the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and Covid, which moved most of her practice online.

“I’m a very people-oriented person,” she said. “And for years now, I was working in my bedroom, by myself.”

Daabul was also motivated in part by her feelings of isolation following Oct. 7. As an Israeli American therapist, she said, suddenly her practice didn’t feel like a safe space anymore. So she set out to create such a space in the cafe, a space that would be distinctly Israeli.

Eli’s is named in memory of Daabul’s father-in-law, who used to run a grocery store in Kiryat Tivon, Israel, that his own father started. Before Eli’s, predecessors have been the Mangia/Nosh Cafe from 2006 to 2012 and the Plaza J Cafe from 2014 to 2020, but nothing permanent had been there since the pandemic, and Daabul doesn’t recall either cafe having a specifically Jewish menu.

Daabul was born in Israel and came to the South Bay with her parents as a child. Her husband, Avner, also Israeli, has Sephardic roots; his parents are from Syria and Lebanon. He works in the solar industry, but he also contributes time to the cafe. Both of them helped a friend sell his hummus locally at farmers’ markets, she said, but other than that neither had much experience in food going in. But she finds it a refreshing change.

The regular social interaction and the work of creating a welcoming “third space” has lifted her spirits. Plus, unlike her therapy clients’ issues, which often took up residence in her head after work hours, “if the biggest stress is that we’re running out of pastrami or something like that, it doesn’t stress me out too much,” she said.

So what’s on the menu at Eli’s? There’s an Israeli breakfast that comes with a house-made boureka (we tried the spinach-feta, which is the most popular), a hard-boiled egg, olives, tahina and chopped salad of tomatoes and cucumbers with some of the tiniest cubes we’ve seen in this type of salad. There are also items from a more American-style breakfast: a bagel from Boichik Bagels, spinach and cheese quiche and a yogurt parfait.

Sandwiches include a Reuben on marbled rye; the Green Goat, which is goat cheese with nut-free pesto, sun-dried tomatoes and arugula on a challah roll; and chicken schnitzel with fried eggplant slices and tangy slaw, plus sides of tahina, matbucha (Israeli-Moroccan cooked tomatoes), and Israeli pickles and olives.

Salads include fattoush (a Middle Eastern salad of lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, fresh herbs and toasted pita chips) and a Chinese chicken salad, and the one soup is matzah ball.

The cafe also carries a wide variety of pastries, some made in-house (though, like the boureka dough, the Daabuls buy that pre-made and then create their own fillings) and some they buy from local vendors. They try to support local, Jewish or Israeli-American vendors when they can, such as Lady Babka, a Texas-based business owned by two Israeli sisters (never before had we tried mini butter pecan babka).

They have packaged foods, such as kosher salami and crackers, and Israeli snacks like Bamba and Bissli. They also sell wraps from Clara’s Kitchen, a Jewish-owned business I wrote about in 2021. And of course, they have the requisite espresso drinks (the coffee is from Equator) and smoothies.

Daabul considers the menu a work in progress. She plans to add new items from time to time, and is open to hearing what the community wants.

Since opening, Eli’s has been providing hot lunches for some of the JCC’s preschool kids, as well as the students at neighboring Brandeis Marin, using the JCC’s commercial kitchen. This helps guarantee income for the cafe, since foot traffic is limited to those using the JCC.

The menu at Eli’s is much smaller than the other two Jewish delis in Marin (Loveski in Larkspur and Bubbala’s Neighborhood Eatery in San Anselmo), and the three are so spread out there’s really no competition among them. Dabuul noted that Eli’s is the only place to get coffee on that stretch of San Pedro Road in San Rafael.

Plus, she said, “we were trying to skew a little more Israeli and Sephardic, so I think that sets us apart.”

Eli’s Deli, 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Open to all JCC visitors, membership not required.

The Torah column is supported by a generous donation from Eve Gordon-Ramek in memory of Kenneth Gordon.

Terumah
Exodus 25:1–27:19

On a trip to Minneapolis in late January, this week’s Torah portion came to life for me in an entirely new way.

Parashat Terumah brings us the ultimate invitation to communal generosity in the Torah. God commands the Israelites to bring “terumah,” meaning “gifts” (literally, “something raised up”), for the construction of the Mishkan, the desert tabernacle, “from every person whose heart is so moved.” (Exodus 25:2) The people contribute many belongings, including works of their own hands, to provide for the construction of the Mishkan. God says, “Let them make me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them.” (Exodus 25:8)

The people step up with a remarkable array of objects — striking, given that they had just come out of slavery in Egypt — and fashion them just as they were commanded. These gifts contribute to the construction of a beautiful altar and for the indwelling of the Divine Presence amid the Israelite community. Eventually the people must be told to stop bringing gifts because no more donations are needed.

In a totally different context, I saw an extraordinary outpouring of personal gifts among the people of Minneapolis in January. The explicit goal was not to build a sanctuary or create space for the Divine, but to push back against the cruelty and dehumanization enacted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in their city since early December. The declared intention was to communicate that Minneapolis residents would not tolerate the demonization and abduction of their neighbors including those without legal status, those with pending or full legal status and naturalized citizens. The people of Minneapolis vowed to say “no” to ICE’s ruthless and mendacious onslaught, insisting on a return of humanity and the rule of law. 

The gifts that were brought were expressions of love. I learned that wide swaths of Minnesotans were buying and delivering groceries for families afraid to leave their homes, accompanying school children whose parents were afraid to step outside, patrolling areas around schools to try to prevent the abduction of parents and staff, driving around neighborhoods to alert neighbors when ICE vans approached, fundraising to support families whose primary breadwinner has been detained or deported, and much more. I know of one person that identified an underused apartment in their family and offered it to an immigrant who felt unsafe to return to her own home.

I heard of new no-cost medical clinics that were set up for immigrants in the basements of churches. I met a pastor, himself an immigrant, leading his church of mostly immigrant congregants to help one another to maintain a sense of joy and abundance. This church periodically has dance parties, to invite people out of fear and degradation and into joy.

We learned that virtually every neighborhood has its own WhatsApp group, enabling neighbors to coordinate the needs of immigrant families and their neighbors’ desire to help. Through these hyperlocal WhatsApp groups, a system was self-organized to coordinate those willing to follow large black vans with tinted glass and out-of-state license plates roaming the neighborhoods. 

A driver would text the license plate number of the van in front of them to a dispatcher, who could confirm from an improvised database whether or not this van was ICE. If it was, the driver would honk repeatedly, get out of the car and begin to whistle in order to alert immigrant neighbors (or those who might be mistaken for immigrants) to be careful, to stay inside and keep their kids safe until ICE had moved on. In one case, a young volunteer was happy to say that his intervention had allowed a woman and her young son to run into their home before ICE could reach them.

There were seemingly endless stories about the remarkable outpouring of love and care being offered by otherwise “ordinary” people to those closest to the pain. It was awe-inspiring and uplifting.

We went to synagogue on Shabbat morning on Jan. 24. It was clear that our friends were exhausted, traumatized and deeply in need of support. And then the news surfaced that the Veterans Administration nurse Alex Pretti had been shot to death by ICE that morning. The rabbi gently announced the news and led us in song and prayer. Looking around the sanctuary, I saw that many people were crying. Pretti was not Jewish nor, to my knowledge, the co-worker of anyone in that room. But in that sacred space, there was no separation. Everyone felt deeply connected to him and his family and to everyone else. The air was thick with love, anguish and prayer.

After Shabbat, we were invited to a small gathering. About 40 people stood in a circle around a fire in the frigid cold, singing and expressing gratitude for one another. There was a request for songs, so I led “This Little Light of Mine,” my 6-year-old granddaughter’s suggestion. The Shechinah, the Divine Presence, was palpably with us.

The people of Minneapolis built a beautiful sanctuary, which I was fortunate enough to visit, in the midst of the reign of ICE. They built it with their time, their care for their neighbors, their idealism, their humanity. Even in the midst of saying a resounding “no!” to ICE’s callous disregard for human life and the rule of law, they said “yes!” to their neighbors, to love and community. I will never forget the sacred scenes I witnessed there.

The year was 1942. People were being rounded up and sent to camps for no reason other than their ethnicity. They weren’t death camps — this was not Europe. They were internment camps for Japanese Americans during a racist panic in this country over the possibility of enemy agents hiding among those with Japanese ancestry.

Feb. 19 marks the federally recognized Day of Remembrance for the Japanese American internment. It was a shameful period in American history, and one that Bay Area Jews reacted to in mixed ways at the time.  

On Feb. 19, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt signed an order that placed at least 110,000 Japanese Americans, mostly living in California and the Pacific Northwest, into incarceration camps. About two-thirds of them were born in the U.S., and none was charged with a crime. The rationalization was that the U.S. faced danger from Japanese Americans who might sympathize with a wartime enemy following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, and the U.S. entrance into World War II the next day.

Our paper at the time was full of news of the war and the trickle of horrific reports from Europe’s Jews. We also reported on what was happening closer to home.

Looking back, our response to the internment of Japanese Americans was a mixed bag. The paper was definitely intensely patriotic, pro-war and pro-America. That fits in with the overall bent of our publication in those days, which sought to ensure that American Jews were thought of as truly American. It was also underpinned by a natural fear of the Nazis, with whom Japan was allied.

Yet Jews, too, were immigrants and a minority in America. And those circumstances colored how this paper discussed the internment. Jews here were sensitive to losses of rights and freedoms — but some were also either racist or afraid to speak up.

The ambivalence that greeted the internment order was apparent.

Clearly, there was anti-Japanese sentiment in our pages. In an “Editor’s Comment” from in 1942, we mentioned the “lust of the Japanese for conquest and their capacity for cruelty” in a piece that chastised San Franciscans for complaining about the loss of their Japanese servants to the camps.  

Yet, in another “Editor’s Comments” that year, we surfaced a sense of unease: “Despite the general support of the movement, there is still a tremor among long-range supporters of a constitutional democracy who fear that such a step sets a precedent to deny other minorities their legal guarantees under a pretext of guarding the nation’s safety.”

Again, in 1942, we wrote about the American Civil Liberties Union’s argument that targeting Italians and Germans in the U.S. made no sense if they were known to be anti-fascist. As part of that, we wrote, “As for United States citizens of Japanese extraction, the Union argued that ‘to evacuate those who have been outspoken opponents of Japanese militarism, or who served in our armed forces during the last war, seems particularly unfair.’”

As early as 1932, after Japan had invaded China the previous year, Rabbi Rudolph Coffee of Oakland pondered what we’d now call “implicit bias” in the context of showing kindness to a gardener of Japanese descent who clearly doesn’t expect that.

“Can it be that the white man is letting his innermost feelings about Japanese atrocities in China react upon this innocent gardener?” asks Coffee. “Unfortunately, some mass-minded individuals will link all Japanese in one groove, quite unconscious of the startling fact that a poor Japanese gardener in the United States may be just as opposed to Japanese militarism as were the innocent Germans in our midst to the tactics of Deutschland’s Kaiser.”

The internment order was rescinded in January 1945, but returning Japanese Americans were greeted with discrimination. That year, we reported on a speech by Robert Sproul, then president of the University of California system, that explicitly called for an end to bias against Japanese American citizens:

“Generally, it is a warning that once any class of American citizens can be deprived of those constitutional rights, no other minority can feel safe. Mr. Sproul puts the proposition succinctly and eloquently: ‘The dream of America will be over when the color of men’s skins or other physical characteristics, determines the communities in which they live.’’’

In a 1945 article in our pages, Teiko Ishida of the Japanese American Citizens League posed a related question while noting the large number of Japanese Americans who volunteered to serve in the U.S. military during WWII: “Thirteen thousand Yanks with Japanese faces are proving themselves worthy Americans on all fronts of battle. Will the Japanese Americans who are returning to their homes in California, Oregon and Washington be given a fair chance to prove themselves?”

It was an appropriate and reasonable question in reaction to an inappropriate and painfully unreasonable period in American history — one we need to remember.

We here at J. are proud that our paper goes back to 1895. We’re also grateful to UC Riverside’s California Newspaper Digital Collection and the National Library of Israel, both of which host our digitized archives.

J.’s archives at the National Library of Israel are part of the institution’s large Jewish press collection. Poking around to see what else of a similar vintage there is in English, I found a number of treasures. I was particularly interested in reading newspapers that were written not for Jews in big East Coast cities or the capitals of Europe, but at the margins of Jewish diaspora — as San Francisco was back then.

Even older than the Emanu-El, as our paper was first called, is the First Fruits of the West, a short-lived English-language Jewish journal published in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1844. Jews started coming in numbers to the island in the 18th century after it became an English territory, and Kingston at one point had several synagogues.

The inaugural issue of First Fruits consists of a lengthy opening statement (“We shall, on all occasions, be temperate in our remarks….”), a sermon, poetry, fiction and a history of the Jews of England.

However, proving that Jewish congregational life is pretty much the same everywhere at every time, they also published this note:

“We have received a letter signed ‘A Friend to Justice,’ in which the writer strongly animadverts on the mode in which one of the Kingston Congregations is governed… ‘A Friend to Justice’ had better address the President of the Congregation alluded to, as our pages cannot be made a vehicle for the expression of, what we conceive to be, uncalled for censure.”

The Israelite, a publication in Mumbai, India, is another wonder. Founded in 1917 and published for about a decade, it was written bilingually in English and Marathi. The opening statement, written most likely by editor David Solomon Erulkar, reflects the tumultuous times:

“We are living in a most remarkable era, and in the midst of a great, yet bewildering civilization, when castes, communities and even nations are striving each for a particular ideal as the goal. From out of the unceasing agitation and perturbation, ‘progress’ of some kind or other, resounds as the watchword of the age. The whole creation seems astir…. Thus we are made the spectators of the greatest events the world has ever seen.”

The paper was written by and for the Bene Israel community, an originally rural group of Jewish Indians whose origins are hard to nail down. (They probably descended from Jews who came to India and intermarried. They are separate from both Cochin Jews and the Baghdadi Jews, both of whom have their own long histories in India.)

In an article in that first issue, the paper describes the Bene Israel as a “riddle.”

“In a land where the horizon seemed to them quite clear for the spread of their knowledge of Jesus Christ, [missionaries] were puzzled to find on the Western Coast, a poor, but industrious and well behaved class of people, calling themselves Bene-Israels (Sons of Israel or Jacob), observing Saturday as the Sabbath, performing circumcision of their male children on the 8th day after birth, and saying in Hebrew the most important prayer of Israel, which proclaims the unity of God.”

The National Library of Israel also has issues of the Jewish Guild Journal, a newspaper in what is now Zimbabwe, which was then the British colony of Rhodesia. It was launched in 1919 and published out of the city of Bulawayo until the 1930s.

“It is our aim to provide the Rhodesian and Congo Jewish community with interesting and, we hope, instructive reading matter, combined with as much news as possible of the doings of our friends in different parts of the country. We ask for the assistance of everyone to supply us with local news. The smallest event may prove interesting to a number of people.… We ask the community to accept our best Pesach wishes — in spite of the lack of Matzos.”

Most of the Rhodesian Jews had Eastern European roots and were quite Zionist. The paper carried news of Russia and the British Mandate for Palestine, but also social news from cities around the country where Jews lived. From Gwelo (now Gweru), it was “Mr. and Mrs. M. Sher have now moved into their fine new house,” while from Gatooma (now Kadoma) it was “Messrs. R. Fleishman and R. Ross have both opened butcheries at Eiffel Flats. We wish them luck.”

At the time the paper was published, Zimbabwean Jews were reeling amid the aftermath of WWI. In a long and impassioned treatise imploring for order and cooperation on the international stage, race is not mentioned at all or, if so, only obliquely: “We have heard of atomic energy, but what power is comparable to the emancipated soul of man? The sap of life is rising in the masses, they are determined to escape from servitude and to attain the fullest possible measure of self-realisation.”

These are only a few gems that can be found in the library. There are also the wonderful Israel’s Messenger out of Shanghai, the Australasian Hebrew and many more. Almost all are defunct — J. is one of only a few left standing.

Times change, but it’s interesting to reflect on this take from the Bene Israel newspaper:

“It can never be gainsaid that healthy journalism is the most necessary factor in the progress of any people; it is the best instrument for the interchange of ideas, for the introduction of all that is good and wanting in us; and for the abolition of all that is bad and present in us.”

Maybe that’s not how journalism is viewed today, but it’s a reminder that these Jewish publications held together fragile communities that were precariously placed at the far edges of the Jewish diaspora and reminded these Jews that they were part of a wider whole.

When a beloved children’s author unleashes a brutish antisemitic screed, his career is threatened. His publisher and wife scramble into damage control mode. Will the author back down? Will he apologize?

That is the subject of  “Giant,” which is coming to Broadway in March.

The play is based on true events. In 1983, prolific writer Roald Dahl, who was a giant in the publishing world and towered at 6-feet, 6-inches, reviewed a book about the siege of western Beirut by the Israeli army during the 1982 Lebanon War. His review was widely regarded as antisemitic.

In the play, Dahl’s longtime British publisher descends on his home, along with a representative of his New York publisher, a Jewish American woman. They plead with him to issue a statement explaining, softening or retracting his remarks — anything to offset the damage to his career, the upcoming publication of his next book and his pending knighthood.

Written by Mark Rosenblatt, “Giant” premiered in 2024 at London’s Royal Court Theatre with John Lithgow starring as Dahl. It won three Laurence Olivier Awards, including best new play.

The show has a Bay Area Jewish connection: Aya Cash, who stars as the Jewish American visitor, was born and raised in San Francisco and graduated from the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts. 

Provocative at the best of times, “Giant” premiered during a terrible time: the Israel-Hamas war. When my husband and I saw the play in London last June, Israel and the U.S. had also just bombed the Iranian regime, including its nuclear facilities. So the issue of military action was more than timely, as was (and is) the problem of antisemitism. 

For me, the most moving moments were the onstage debates about Jews loving Israel even if they disagree with specific actions taken by the government.

I won’t give away the play’s resolution, though it’s easy enough to find out on your own. Suffice it to say, Dahl was no angel.

The play is disturbing. Both my husband and I got little sleep that night. Few productions I’ve seen have so deeply affected me. To sit there and have hate spewed forth felt so personal, frightening and immediate.

“Giant” challenges viewers to think not only about antisemitism and the State of Israel, but also how we regard flawed cultural and political heroes. Can we admire their work while acknowledging their moral failings? 

Great art, music and literature is sometimes created by people whose personal behavior is morally complex or problematic. Do we stop reading and watching Dahl’s classics — “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” “James and the Giant Peach,” “Matilda” or “The BFG” (Big Friendly Giant) — with our children or grandchildren? Likewise, should we dismiss Picasso’s paintings because of his mistreatment of women? Do we avoid works by authors like Virginia Woolf, whose writings contained antisemitic bias? And what about the artwork of Caravaggio, who committed murder? 

I don’t know the answers, but “Giant” raises the right questions. I absolutely recommend you see the play when it opens in New York City in March, but be prepared to squirm and think. 

The Torah column is supported by a generous donation from Eve Gordon-Ramek in memory of Kenneth Gordon.

Mishpatim
Exodus 21:1-24:18

If you watch the news, you have likely seen the same heartbreaking images again and again: a coastal town flattened by a hurricane or a Midwestern community torn apart by a tornado.

You watch families sift through the wreckage of their homes, salvaging photographs, a child’s toy or a piece of furniture that somehow survived. And then, astonishingly, they rebuild. In the same place. Only for disaster to strike again a few years later.

Almost inevitably, someone watching from a safe distance asks the question that seems so obvious: Why don’t they move?

The answer is rarely economic alone. It is deeper, more human and more revealing.

That place is home.

It is where memories live, where identities were formed, where people know who they are and how the world works. Leaving would not merely mean changing an address. It would mean stepping into emotionally unknown territory. And for human beings, the unfamiliar can feel more frightening than danger itself.

Something strikingly similar happened at the dawn of Jewish history.

After centuries of slavery, God took the Israelites out of Egypt with miracles, drama and Divine power. The plagues, the splitting of the sea, the collapse of Pharaoh’s empire — all of it should have marked the beginning of joy and gratitude.

Yet almost immediately, the complaints began: It is too hot. We are tired. We are hungry. The water is bitter. 

Again and again, the same refrain emerged: We should go back to Egypt.

It is one of the great psychological puzzles of the Bible. Why would a people who had tasted freedom want to return to oppression?

The answer is profound. Egypt was not just a place. It was a mindset. It was the only emotional world they had ever known. Their parents had been slaves. Their grandparents had been slaves. Freedom, responsibility and uncertainty felt frightening. Slavery, for all its cruelty, was familiar. It had rules. It had predictability. It felt, paradoxically, like home.

So when life became difficult, they instinctively wanted to return — not because Egypt was good, but because it was known.

We are quick to judge them. We shake our heads at their lack of faith. But if we are honest, we do the same thing — just in quieter, more respectable ways.

Each of us has an emotional home.

An emotional home is the inner place we return to when life gets stressful, confusing or painful. For some people, that home is optimism, trust and gratitude. For others, it may be worry, anger, resentment or sadness. It’s not necessarily where we want to live, but it’s where we’re used to living. We know the furniture. We know the lighting. We know exactly where everything is. And because it’s familiar, it feels safe — even when it isn’t good for us.

Here’s how you can see it in real life.

Imagine you’re meeting someone you care about for dinner. You arrive on time. They don’t. Ten minutes pass. Then 20. Then 30. You’re sitting there, scanning the room, checking your phone.

What happens inside you?

Some people immediately feel anger: They don’t respect me. I’m not important. This always happens.

Others feel worry: Maybe something went wrong. I hope they’re OK.

Same situation. Same facts. Completely different emotional experiences.

Why?

Because each person returned to their emotional home. One lives in a world where disappointment turns quickly into resentment. The other lives in a world where uncertainty awakens concern. The external event didn’t change. The inner world did.

Notice what happens next. When the late arrival finally walks in, the angry person makes the evening tense and uncomfortable. The worried person turns caring and compassionate. One dinner. Two entirely different realities.

This is the deeper lesson of the Exodus as it appears in this week’s portion.

God did not take the Jewish people out of Egypt only to change their circumstances. He took them out to change their inner lives, to help them stop seeing themselves as victims of history and to begin seeing themselves as agents of destiny. That transition is far harder than crossing a sea.

That’s why, embedded in the story, God commands the people to remember the Exodus and to mark it in the future. Not as nostalgia and not as ritual alone, but as emotional education. Don’t forget where you came from — and don’t rush back there emotionally when life gets hard. Egypt will always call to you. Not because it was good, but because it’s familiar.

The Torah is warning us: Freedom is not lost only through chains. It is lost when we retreat into old emotional patterns that once protected us but now imprison us.

The quality of our lives, in the end, is shaped less by what happens to us and more by where we live emotionally. If we live in fear, the world feels threatening. If we live in resentment, life feels unfair. If we live in gratitude, the world opens. If we live in trust, life becomes meaningful.

This week’s Torah portion is asking a quiet but radical question: Where is your emotional home? And just as importantly: Is it time to move?

Leaving Egypt was the beginning. Learning how not to go back is the work of a lifetime.