Allen King loves to dance. The Bay Area native has been leading Israeli folk dancing across the region for decades, and, at 73, has no plans to stop. 

Both as a performer and as a teacher, King estimates that he has touched many thousands of lives at countless events, b’nai mitzvah and community dance circles. 

“The research shows that dancing is one of the most all-encompassing physical and mental activities a human being can do,” he said. “I can give that to people and engage them and get them feeling so happy.”

King, a former member of the venerable San Francisco folk dance troupe Rikudom, now dances and teaches in the East Bay. In Kensington, he teaches through Cafe Simcha and in Berkeley at the music and dance venue Ashkenaz, where he runs a special class a few times a year focusing on the old-school dances he first learned.

Israeli folk dance burst onto the Jewish American culture scene in the 1960s and has continued to thrive as what’s been called an “embodied identification with Israel.” Israeli folk dancing, along with singing, has also shaped generations of Jewish campers. 

That’s certainly true for King. 

Though he made his living at a Bay Area distributor of paper packaging before retirement, King said that his life has always revolved around dance. It is not only the core of his Jewish identity, it is the way he gives back. For him, it’s about seeing the joy on people’s faces after a dance session.

“They remember the happiness they had when they were dancing, how good a time they had,” the Berkeley resident said. “Because there’s nothing like the endorphins of dancing.”

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Tell me a bit about where and how you grew up.

I grew up in Richmond, California, and we belonged to Temple Beth Hillel, which is a Reform synagogue.

My life growing up was not super happy. There weren’t a lot of Jewish people in Richmond, and certainly in my schools there were almost none. But I was proud of being Jewish. My parents taught me to be proud. My mother was a Holocaust survivor who was in hiding during the war, and my father fought in the war. So I had a strong awareness of who I was. 

One of the highlights was in sixth grade. Every year at public elementary school, they would have a Christmas program and all the kids would sing various Christmas songs. And I asked the teacher, let me do a Hanukkah song because I celebrate Hanukkah, I don’t celebrate Christmas. And the teacher said yes, so we did a Hanukkah song, and they continued that tradition afterward. This was in the late ’50s, so very recently after World War II. It was a big deal to me.

It was camp — Camp Saratoga, as it was known at the time, later Camp Swig and now Camp Newman —  that introduced you to Israeli folk dance, right?

I signed up for dancing because I just thought it’d be fun. And it turned out I finally found one thing in my life that I was physically good at. Rather than being the last kid picked for kickball in fourth grade, I could do folk dance, and I was competent. It was a huge deal. 

That experience with dance changed my life, literally, and I’ve been dancing ever since.

So it wasn’t just a summer fling?

It was too big of a part of my life to ever end it. 

I became part of the Rikudom dance group in 1969, and three months later, one of the people in the performing troupe invited me to become a partner in the performing troupe. I was in that group until the group ended in 1994. 

In the meantime, in 1972-73 I was a junior at UC Berkeley and I decided I wanted to do a junior year abroad. I didn’t have much connection to Israel. I was a strong Jew, but I didn’t know much about Zionism.

So I said, I’ll go to Israel to the Hebrew University. And that was another awakening. The homeland of Israeli folk dance was quite amazing. I ended up signing up for a course to get certified as an Israeli folk dance teacher for Israeli public schools, a year-long course, all in Hebrew. 

I saw a sign on some telephone pole about tryouts for a dance troupe, so I tried out and was accepted as a troupe member for Lehakat Hora [now called Hora Yerushalayim], the hora dance troupe of Jerusalem, which is still in existence. I performed for tourists every Thursday night.

That was a year of study and music and dance that was just out of this world.

You got a job to pay the bills, but you kept dancing. What kept you going?

When I came back, I decided dance would always be my life, and I taught and led [dancing at] maybe 100 or 150 bar mitzvahs and bat mitzvahs over the years throughout the Bay Area. 

I saw when I taught dance and did dance, it brought joy to people. It brought multiple generations together on the dance floor. I run into kids now, 30, 40, 50 years later, where I led dancing at their bar mitzvahs. They don’t remember anything about the party other than that the dancing was so much fun, and their grandpa or great-grandpa was on the floor with them dancing. I mean, these are memories. I create memories for people when I’m dancing. 

You’re 73. What does your dance life look like now?

I’ve been retired now for six years. I turned 73 last November, and I’m still dancing. For the last 35 years, [Cafe Simcha has] been up in a church in Kensington, and I’m part of the committee that runs that evening.

What’s it like to step into a communal Israeli folk dance night?

People welcome you: “Hi. Where are you from? Have you ever danced before? Oh, if you haven’t danced before, dance next to me. Let me help you.”

Sessions are different, and I will tell [people] that, you know, after an hour or so of trying and working and thinking really hard, you’re going to be tired. But that doesn’t mean that you have failed. You succeeded. You came and you danced. 

When you listen to a song, it’s not just one part of your brain; every part of your brain is activated. Research shows dance is the same thing, because first, we have the music, plus you’re learning new steps. And how many people learn new things as they get older, right?

People walk in the room because they want something. They want a community, some place to go out at night, to do something for themselves and get some physical activity. Maybe they didn’t know what they wanted. 

They can get all of that there. Folk dancing is a very gregarious activity, and people don’t judge people for their skill level. They just welcome them. 

I can go dancing anywhere in the world and find someone that I know. It’s really remarkable.

A new artificial intelligence platform is transforming access to one of the largest and most important collections documenting Jewish life in Iraq. 

The Voices from the Archive project at judeoiraq.org uses AI to translate, categorize and help search the vast Iraqi Jewish Archive, opening a door to tens of thousands of records that had been largely inaccessible to the public. 

The platform was developed by Oakland chemical engineer David Breslauer, whose own family fled Baghdad in 1950 amid rising persecution. What began as a personal search for traces of his family history has evolved into a large-scale digital project, with Breslauer using AI to process thousands of archival documents into searchable text with English translations.

“I’ve put in thousands of hours and thousands of dollars into this because it’s just a pure passion project for me,” Breslauer told J. “This is an aging community, and that generation is not going to be around much longer, so I felt like it was sort of a personal race to get it published so that people could see it and tell their children about it.”

Historically, Iraq was home to one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world, dating back over 2,500 years. Its Jewish population largely disappeared in the late 1940s and early 1950s, when most Iraqi Jews were stripped of their citizenship and fled the country. Five years ago, the AFP reported that Iraq’s Jewish population, estimated at 150,000 in the mid-1940s, had shrunk to four.

The Iraqi Jewish Archive, also known as the Iraqi Mukhabarat Archive, is a collection of more than 2,700 books and tens of thousands of historical documents that chronicle the life, culture and institutions of Iraq’s Jewish community before its mass displacement. 

The archive includes school records, religious texts, legal documents, personal letters, photographs and communal records spanning hundreds of years through the 1970s. The trove was discovered in 2003 by the U.S. Army in a flooded basement of an Iraqi intelligence building in Baghdad. The documents were preserved and digitized by the U.S. National Archives.

Among the materials are items like a handwritten 1902 haggadah with paragraph-by-paragraph translation of the Hebrew text to Judeo-Arabic, a 1962 letter between local basketball clubs requesting a friendly match against each other and a 1950 offer from a travel company about arranging transportation for the airlift of Iraq’s Jews to Israel via Iran as part of Operation Ezra and Nehemiah.

For years, researchers manually sifted through thousands of pages without the ability to search by keyword or language, making meaningful access extraordinarily difficult.

“It was sort of an insurmountable challenge,” Breslauer said. “Imagine it was like a stack of 150,000 pages, kind of loosely organized into 3,000 different files, and you’re just online, scrolling through. Some are in Arabic, some are in Judeo-Arabic, a few are in English. Some are handwritten and some are typed.”

When Breslauer began the project two years ago, he ran into major challenges using AI to try to translate and organize the documents, as early models often produced inaccurate translations or “hallucinated” content that had nothing to do with the original text.

Standard Arabic, and particularly handwritten Arabic, is difficult for software to translate and transcribe, Breslauer said. Most AI models are trained in English, and Arabic is grammatically quite different and includes many regional dialects. 

Judeo-Arabic, the dialect used by the Iraqi Jewish community, is even more difficult for AI to understand. Not only is it a rare and regionally specific language, but it utilizes Arabic words written in Hebrew script, requiring models to handle multiple linguistic systems at once.

As AI tools started dramatically improving over the past year or so, Breslauer was able to train his model to run these linguistic systems and build a custom pipeline designed for the Iraqi Jewish Archive to process the images, ingest them, transcribe them, translate the text and make it searchable.

In addition to basic search functionality, the platform features an AI-powered Q&A interface that lets people ask questions in English and receive relevant documents, translations and contextual insights drawn directly from the archive. Because AI search is more flexible than simply looking for search terms, you can get unexpected answers. Breslauer asked the system to find something unusual, for example, and it surfaced a tongue twister once practiced by students in a Jewish elementary school.

For Breslauer, the work is deeply personal. While manually browsing the Iraqi Jewish Archive years ago, he stumbled upon a document mentioning his great uncle, which sparked his determination to make the entire collection searchable. With his AI platform, he has since uncovered additional family records, including school test scores and official documents tied to his relatives’ lives in Iraq.

S.F-based nonprofit JIMENA: Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa serves as the project’s fiscal sponsor and sees the platform as a major breakthrough in preserving and sharing Mizrahi Jewish heritage. (So far Breslauer has paid for the project himself, but he is looking for donors to upgrade the AI functionality.)

“For nearly 20 years, the Iraqi Jewish Archive has remained in physical limbo and locked inside archival platforms that few people could access or read,” JIMENA executive director Sarah Levin said in a statement. “This project represents a breakthrough in how we preserve and share the heritage of Jews from the Middle East and North Africa.”

The JCC of San Francisco celebrated the opening of its newly renovated Kanbar Hall with a March 19 appearance by comedian Sarah Silverman, filling every one of the 438 plush seats and even drawing the mayor, who gave a little speech.

Mayor Daniel Lurie, introduced by JCC CEO Paul Geduldig as a graduate of the JCC preschool, started by joking to the audience. “I think I know all 438 of you,” he said, before going on to hail the $2.5 million, 18-month renovation and the promise of the JCC as a premier cultural destination for all of San Francisco and beyond. 

Silverman, 55, is a taboo-breaking, award-winning comic, actor and political activist who can easily charm any Jewish crowd. She chose a fellow Jewish comic to interview her onstage: Robby Hoffman, 36, who has gained national notice for her recurring role on the HBO show “Hacks.”

The event was billed as a “conversation” — one that Hoffman largely dominated with hyper, in-your-face comic quips, taking Jewish overtalking to new levels. Silverman, who is accustomed to that Jewish cultural tick, seemed fine with it.

After an hour of banter between the two, with Hoffman asking unserious questions — “Do you remember meeting me?” “What do you think heaven is?” “Shower or bath?” — audience members had a chance to ask their own questions, which produced some of the evening’s more interesting exchanges. 

One woman asked the comedian about her sister, Rabbi Susan Silverman, who lives with her family in Israel. “My family is in bomb shelters five times a day,” Silverman said, her voice breaking. “It’s very hard.”

A man asked, “As a Democrat, how do you navigate feeling abandoned by your own party on antisemitism and Jewish concerns while still believing in democratic values?” (His question got enthusiastic applause.)

“It’s disheartening,” Silverman said, “because as liberal Jews we stand side by side with every ‘other-other.’ And when the other-others don’t stand with us, it’s very painful. I have friends who are posting things that just break my heart, and I don’t know what to say. I don’t say anything. And I’ve never been afraid to speak out. Never. There’s so much misinformation to combat, and there are so many truths to hold as true. It’s madness, and I don’t know what the solution is, and I don’t know exactly how to navigate it, other than to touch grass.”

Kanbar Hall is named after benefactor Maurice Kanbar, the late inventor and entrepreneur who gave generously to the JCCSF. His gifts total $10 million, including an endowment that just grew by $2 million after a new gift from Kanbar’s estate that was announced at the event. 

The upgrades, which the JCCSF calls a “generational investment in Jewish cultural excellence and pride,” include an immersive surround-sound system, a giant projection screen, improved acoustics, graded theater seating and cosmetic improvements.

The JCC also recently announced a partnership with the Jewish Film Institute, which will bring the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival to Kanbar Hall from July 17 to 26 and run programs there throughout the year. The closing weekend of the San Francisco International Film Festival will also take place in the new theater in early May. 

Every year, a raft of new haggadahs promise to enliven your Passover seder. And every year, I select a range of them for this little roundup of new haggadahs.

In this year’s crop, I spotted a theme running through several of them: What does it mean to believe in the text of the haggadah, in a modern context? Can one believe in its meaning without believing in its literal truth? Is it dishonest to use a haggadah that assumes the truth of the Exodus story if you don’t yourself believe in its literal truth? Answers, direct and indirect, follow.

“Echoes of Egypt: A Haggada” by Joshua Berman

If you accept the literal truth of the Passover story — that 3,500 years ago around 1400 BCE, hundreds of thousands of Hebrew slaves escaped Egypt after 400 years of bondage via the splitting of the Red Sea — then the premise of “Echoes of Egypt” makes perfect sense. This haggadah, by Bar-Ilan University professor Joshua Berman, supposes that we can better understand the story by placing it in an ancient Egyptian cultural context via archaeology.

This new haggadah is indeed replete with fascinating tidbits about ancient Egypt. Unfortunately, two centuries of academic consensus, from archaeology to linguistics, have shown us that the Book of Exodus was not drafted when and where it was supposedly written, but rather it was produced over centuries and was codified into its final form around the 5th and 4th centuries BCE, and not in Egypt. It is properly understood not as true history, but as meaningful myth. To understand the story in its proper context, we need to understand the time and place it was written — 5th and 4th century BCE Israel, not Egypt 1,000 years earlier.

“Echoes of Egypt” is full of non sequiturs and faulty, grandiose assumptions. In the introduction, there is a promise to deal with “questions at the very heart of Torah’s encounter with Egypt,” one of which is “Why did the Egyptians find no meaning in the unfolding of history?” I can’t make sense of the question, let alone take it seriously. There are plenty more like that throughout.

Some of Berman’s assumptions rest on the most tenuous of connections between ancient Egypt and the Exodus text. At one point, he tells us that the Biblical character Korach, whose name means “bald,” must have been an Egyptian priest because “during the period when Israel sojourned in Egypt… the lowest level of priests, the wab priests, were known above all by one distinctive feature — their shaved heads.” That’s a little too tidy and hardly proof of anything.

There is some truth to this next bit from Berman’s introduction: The haggadah “was a voice — indeed, a protest — against the great empires or the ancient world, and most of all against Egypt.” Yes, the haggadah is a protest against empire and oppression. But we need not take the story literally to see it that way.

“The Liberated Haggadah: A Passover Celebration for Cultural, Secular and Humanistic Jews” by Rabbi Peter H. Schweitzer

Taking the exact opposite approach, “The Liberated Haggadah” takes great pains to let readers know that it doesn’t take this story or any of its associated theology literally.

It is a reissue of a classic among the Jewish Secular Humanist denomination by the late Rabbi Peter H. Schweitzer, who was the rabbi of the City Congregation for Humanistic Judaism in New York. The Secular Humanist movement takes it as a settled matter that the entire Torah is nothing more than myth and that God is, at most, metaphorical.

The introduction asks, “If, in the face of modern scholarship, we no longer accept the Exodus narrative as historical, but as legend, why do we continue to tell the story? And if we do re-enact the story, how do we maintain our intellectual honesty?” The first question is a good one, while the second one is where Secular Humanism always loses me. Why can’t we enact Jewish ritual while also treating much (or even all) of it as metaphorical? That’s not intellectual dishonesty to me. That’s simply another mode of religious behavior. 

But if that contradiction does bother you, “Liberated” is the haggadah for you. Throughout, it goes out of its way to let you know that nothing here is literally true. Earnest attempts are made, as Secular Humanism is wont to do, to rewrite prayers and blessings so that they remain ritual formulas without appealing to a higher power. For example, rather than the standard blessing over the candles, this haggadah offers “Baruch ha’or ba’olam. Baruch ha’or ba’adam. Baruch ha’or bayom tov,” meaning “Radiant is the light of the world. Radiant is the light within each person. Radiant is the light of the festival.”

My favorite thing about this haggadah are the photos of myriad tchotchkes, knicknacks and ephemera from Schweitzer’s extensive personal collection of Jewish Americana, including everything from brochures for Catskills resorts to a Hebrew National promotional clock.

“The Pintele Haggadah: A Jewish Celebration of Liberation” written and illustrated by Noah Diamond.

Personally, I’m not looking for ambivalence and cute jokes in my seder, but if you are, consider “The Pintele Haggadah,” which takes a middle path between “Echoes” and “Liberated.”

“I stopped celebrating Passover many years ago,” writes Noah Diamond in his introduction. “I had always assumed that there was a sound historical basis for the general idea that the ancient Hebrews were slaves in Egypt, and it broke my heart to learn that there wasn’t…. Working on ‘Pintele’ [also the name of his podcast] helped me realize that … at its heart, Passover is a celebration of liberation. It provides the poetic and philosophical framework for the Jewish imperative to oppose tyrants and be allies of the oppressed.” Here, remarkably, even this self-described “nonreligious nonbeliever” agrees with Berman’s overall take in “Echoes of Egypt,” even if Diamond fundamentally disagrees on the historicity of the Passover story.

Where he loses me is his insistence on pointing out what “our ancestors” did, removing himself and his audience from the equation of what we all do on the seder night. In the opening pages of the haggadah, Diamond has the leader read out: “When our ancestors lit candles, they would say a prayer in Hebrew.” He places the practice in the past, but then he writes out the blessing for lighting Passover candles anyway. Why not just print that blessing on its own, without implying that it’s a silly thing from the past? People can choose to say it or not, object or not. 

I find the ambivalence about the proceedings odd in a haggadah. But for many seder attendees, I think this will work, as it gives people explicit permission to participate or not according to their own will.

Diamond structures the entire thing as a responsive reading, with chunks to be read by the leader and chunks to be read by the entire group. There is a jokiness to some of these sections. For example: “Leader: This is matzo, the bread of affliction. Group: This is matzo, the bread of affliction. Leader: I just said that. Group: I just said that. Leader: Now cut that out! Group: Now cut that out!” Moments later, he has the group inform the leader: “You know, they also have chocolate-covered matzo. It’s available wherever matzo is sold.”

“Haggadah for Believers and Heretics” by Moyshe Altshuler, translated and edited by Noah Leininger

This one is less a rejection of the literal truth of Passover than a rejection of the holiday itself. The “Haggadah for Believers and Heretics” is my favorite type of “new” haggadah — a republication of an old, obscure haggadah that illuminates the lives and beliefs of Jews in far-removed times and places. This one is a new translation of a Communist Yiddish haggadah published in the Soviet Union in 1927. (This new edition actually came out in 2025, but I didn’t get my hands on it in time to review last year.)

Its overall ethos is summed up nicely on the page for Yachatz, the breaking of the middle matzah, which includes simply an illustration and these words: “Humankind is divided into two camps: workers and parasites.”

This haggadah is both a political reimagining of the seder and a rejection of the seder itself. Its commentary on the famous line “this is the bread of our affliction” reads: “For poor bread, every capitalist has bought our sweat and blood.… Our Jewish masters, respectable bosses and rabbis, taught us to be patient…. They have turned their holidays into a means for binding and enslaving the people.… instead of actual history, they have taught us the Haggadah and Books of Moses.”

Despite its deep engagement with religious texts, it is resolutely anti-religious in classically Communist way, proclaiming at one point that the haggadah is a “tale of freedom, so as to hold you longer in slavery” and a “condemnation of humanity’s own initiative and struggle for freedom.” Opiate of the masses indeed.

My sense is that this volume is intended more as a primary source for understanding communist Jews of its time and place than for use at your seder. That said, of the new haggadahs I reviewed this year, it’s the only one formatted well for use around a seder table crowded with plates, glasses and ritual foods — i.e., it’s small enough that it won’t take up half the table, even if everyone has their own copy.

“Haggadah Shel Erev Rav: The Mixed Multitude Haggadah” edited by Rabbi Sarah Berman with art by Siona Benjamin

Finally, one of the most significant new American haggadahs this year is not particularly concerned with the debate over Biblical literalism, perhaps because it is produced by the Reform movement, which long ago decided that these stories aren’t literally true.

“The Mixed Multitude Haggadah” is produced to mark the 20th year of Rabbi Angela Buchdahl’s service to Central Synagogue in Manhattan. Buchdahl is one of the leading voices of the contemporary Reform movement and is well known as the first Asian American rabbi. The commentary is by her and other Central Synagogue clergy. 

The English translations are written by Rabbi Janet Marder, rabbi emerita of Congregation Beth Am in Los Altos Hills, and her husband, Rabbi Sheldon Marder, who served as rabbi of the San Francisco Campus for Jewish Living before retirement. 

The real draw here, however, is a wealth of new artwork by Siona Benjamin, an Indian American Jew, who grew up in India’s Bene Israel Jewish community. Her heritage is evident in her painterly work, in which mandalas, blue-skinned figures and her use of color recall the artistic milieu of India. My favorite pieces are her multi-page treatment of the 10 plagues, each represented by an abstract mandala, colored and detailed to represent each plague; the one for frogs is green, and two little frog legs protrude from it.

Noting the byzantine complexity of the Magid (storytelling) section of the seder, “Mixed Multitude” offers four relatively brief approaches to it that seder leaders can choose from: “Magid for All Ages,” which is especially appropriate for children; “With a Mighty Hand and an Outstretched Arm,” which focuses on God’s role in the story, the most traditional approach; “Go Down, Moses,” which focuses on liberation, “not just for the Israelites, but for all people in all times”; and “Miriam’s Song,” which tells the story of the Exodus from Miriam’s perspective.

That mixed approach is reflected in the name. In her introduction to the volume, Buchdahl writes of the many ways Jews celebrate Passover. 

“That multiplicity is not a modern invention — it has been with us since the Exodus itself,” she writes. “The Torah tells us that when we fled Egypt, we did so as an erev rav, a ‘mixed multitude’ — a diverse assembly of Israelites and fellow travelers, all swept us in a shared yearning for freedom.”

And with that, let me wish you and your mixed multitude a meaningful seder this year, no matter which new, old or cobbled together family haggadah you use.

Also new this year

There are two other haggadahs of note this year that I could not get my hands on in time for this review:

“A Living Tapestry” by Leon Fenster

Fenster is a British artist whose explosively vibrant, graphic-design-influenced art appears to leap off of every page of his new haggadah. I really wish I had a copy in hand!

“The Az Nashir Haggadah: On the Path to Redemption”

This haggadah comes from the Matan Institute for Women’s Torah Studies in Israel. It features a range of contemporary art, prayers and commentary from Israeli Orthodox women scholars.

One more thing

Sometimes I’m asked, after all these years of writing about new haggadahs, which one do I use? The answer is the “The Yedid Nefesh Haggadah” by Rabbi Joshua Cahan. It is lightweight, straightforward and features a solid commentary meant to elucidate the text of the haggadah. It also comes in a spiral-bound edition that folds over and lays flat so as not to take up too much space on the table. I recommend it to just about anyone.

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)

Dena Fox, 10, loves Purim. “On Purim, I love that happiness is everywhere,” she told J. “I love seeing people smile!”

So when J. gave Dena a camera to document the holiday, she was excited. “Life can be so serious, but on a day like Purim, happiness comes out,” she said, adding, “You should celebrate Purim, even if you’re not Jewish!”

Dena, who is in fourth grade at the Brandeis School of San Francisco, was one of 20 “kid reporters” across the Jewish Bay Area given the same assignment: to capture Jewish joy through a camera lens.

Dressed up as fairies, ’80s aerobics instructors, KPop Demon Hunters and the like, the kid reporters also wore press badges and carried disposable cameras. Ranging in age from 7 to 10, they represented three JCCs, three Jewish day schools and one Chabad.

Dena, who dressed up as Dorothy from “The Wizard of Oz,” told J. she felt “just like Esther — strong, Jewish and fierce!”

We didn’t give much direction. We simply encouraged our reporters to take pictures of whatever excited them — be it a cool costume, a baby watching bubbles or a grown-up acting goofy. 

The results, as we had hoped, were delightfully varied in focus. 

Though disposable cameras were foreign to most of our young reporters, at least two happened to have the same experience using them. Dena and Gabby Turetsky, 9, from Wornick Jewish Day School in Foster City, both have used disposable cameras to take pictures of their summers at URJ Camp Newman.

When taking photos at her school’s Purim celebration, Gabby noticed details about the costumes. “Their costumes kind of tell me things that they like and stuff,” she told J. 

“Before I went to JCCSF for Purim, I thought it was just a cool thing that my school did,” Dena said. “But this year, I realized that there’s a big community celebrating this holiday.” 

If you’re ever in need of a boost of Jewish joy, just peruse these photo galleries below, organized by location.

Brandeis School of S.F.

Ronald C. Wornick Jewish Day School

Chabad of Contra Costa

JCCSF

Gideon Hausner Jewish Day School

Contra Costa JCC

JCC East Bay

Thanks to all of our wonderful kid reporters — Abigail Frankenstein, Adam Hamer, Aleeza Kinder, Alianna Snell-Rood, Aimee Nevelev, Ari Goodman, Ari Peak, Aviva Bridgland, Ayla Deljo, Daniel Rimon, Dena Fox, Gabby Turetsky, Gil Israeli, Juniper Sepke, Lily Bercovici, Liv Levin, Miri Farber-Drabkin, Miriam Esterson, Raina Pilania, Rena Loeb, Ron Levin, Skyler Cohen; and Tom Levin.

And special thanks to our community partners who helped with the project — Sarina Fierro at Gideon Hausner Jewish Day School; Annie O’Donnell at Ronald C. Wornick Jewish Day School; Rabbi Genevieve Greinetz at Brandeis School of San Francisco; Gayle Lidman and Lorenn Kassel at JCCSF; Sarah Balagey at Congregation Emanu-El; Gravity Goldberg at JCC East Bay; Olga Zak and Ella Levin at CCJCC; and Rabbi Boruch Hecht at Chabad of Contra Costa. And a shoutout to Photoworks, the San Francisco business that developed the photos and taught us a thing or two about organizing 500 images.

The Contemporary Jewish Museum is selling its landmark building in downtown San Francisco.

The decision, announced Wednesday, comes 15 months after the museum closed its doors and laid off most of its staff due to financial constraints, amid a promise to restructure.

“I will tell you that the decision on the building was not made lightly,” CJM board chair Tom Kasten told J. “We weighed it very carefully, but we also felt that the building itself does not define the museum.” 

At the time of the closure in December 2024, Kasten and others told the community that they would begin a “period of intense reimagining.”

Despite the planned sale, executive director Kerry King said she has come out of this period optimistic about the museum’s future. In a year, “what I would most like to be saying to you is that we have a curatorial team in place, and we’re working toward our exhibitions,” she said.

“But to get from here to there, we have the step of fully stabilizing our finances,” she added. “We have come a long way in a year.”

King said the museum’s recent financial struggles should be seen in the broader context of a post-pandemic, post-Oct. 7 world.

Kasten called it a “perfect storm” of Covid, an economic downturn in San Francisco and a struggling U.S. economy. He told J. when the initial closure was announced that annual operating expenses had been outpacing operating revenue. (The shortfall was around $6 million in the fiscal year ending in June 2024, according to tax filings.)

CJM leaders told J. there was a roughly 50 percent drop in attendance between 2019 — before the pandemic — and a 12-month period in 2023-2024. 

With years-long budget shortfalls and declining attendance, King said, preserving the museum’s $20 million endowment was, and continues to be, a paramount priority.

“We wanted to make sure that we keep that fully intact,” she said. “We have done that. We had significant debt on the building. We still have debt, but we paid half of it over this past year.”

Founded in 1984 as the Jewish Community Museum, the institution first produced modest exhibitions in a small gallery space in the Jewish Federation building on Steuart Street. That museum kicked off with two shows: one with Judaica treasures and the other with a sukkah art competition.

Over time, the museum grew and so did plans for its future.

In the early 1990s, board members, including Roselyne “Cissie” Swig, the San Francisco philanthropist and advocate for the arts, were determined to create a new home worthy of the museum’s potential. After a series of setbacks and delays, Rabbi Brian Lurie was drafted to lead the organization as its CEO in 1996. Two years later, world-renowned architect Daniel Libeskind was commissioned to design the new CJM.

Libeskind combined a 19th-century former brick power substation on Minna Street with a gleaming, tilted cube of a structure that succeeded both in setting the museum apart from its surroundings and weaving it into the modern cityscape of downtown San Francisco. The 63,000-square-foot museum opened in June 2008.

In 2007, Libeskind spoke rhapsodically about his design. “The blue is a carefully considered choice, signifying the right relationship with the red of the brickwork,” he said. “It’s the color of Israel, the color of the Mediterranean, even the color of the tallit.”

CJM would be a “noncollecting” art institution that would instead host short-term exhibits of contemporary Jewish art, the board decided. Much of the original museum’s historic trove of art and artifacts had been transferred to what is now the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life in Berkeley. 

Paula Birnbaum, head of the master’s program in museum studies at the University of San Francisco, told J. on the occasion of the building’s 10th anniversary in 2018, that there are challenges with a noncollecting model, including “how to raise money, and court patrons and trustee-collectors, without being able to offer a home for their works.”

The museum’s future home is unknown. King said that “some of our options will be clearer once it’s known that we are going to be listing the building for sale. It’s certainly an option that we stay in part of the building.”

Meanwhile, King said museum leaders will be in “conversation with artists and curators and members of the community” to hear “how we can stay active,” such as offering traveling exhibits across the Bay Area.

Was the museum overly ambitious in investing in a downtown building? It opened to great fanfare after an $80 million fundraising campaign — $47 million for the building and the land, and the rest for operating expenses, setting up the space and funding an endowment. 

King said ambition wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.

“We’re very proud of what we’ve done,” she said. “We’re very proud of the incredibly bold and thoughtful group that raised the money, came together and built the building.”

“I suspect some people will be sad or angry” about the sale, Kasten added. “But I’m hoping that by focusing on our exhibitions, programming, on Jewish life and themes and ideas through the lens of contemporary art, that they will agree that we are making the right decisions for the future.”

Like Kasten, King is looking forward to the museum’s transformation.

“From the beginning, from the 1980s, from the development of the idea of the CJM, through all of the changes and where we are today,” she said, “we believe in the same need for this to be an institution that is unique in bringing Jewish stories through contemporary art to our Jewish community and beyond.”

Mitch Braff appreciates a room with a view. 

The award-winning filmmaker, entrepreneur and founder of the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation has at times worked in a windowless office in San Francisco and even had a bedroom without a window.

Five years ago, the San Rafael resident launched LiquidView, a company that sells high-definition screens that resemble large windows, turning a blank wall into a view of a striking coastline in California or a charming city in Europe.

Originally conceived as a design element for offices and homes, the “digital windows” have also been installed at senior care facilities, including Rhoda Goldman Plaza and the Frank Residences in San Francisco and The Redwoods in Mill Valley.

“The windows have been such a wonderful addition to our community at Rhoda Goldman Plaza, allowing us to introduce natural landscapes that are immersive and calming,” said Miki Lamm, a social worker in gerontology and dementia care who serves as director of Seniors at Home, a division of S.F.-based Jewish Family and Children’s Services. 

“We wanted to bring elements of nature inside to help residents keep a connection to the wider world,” Lamm added. 

Braff noted that LiquidView doesn’t project images onto a wall. Instead, it uses Sony screens to display a 24-hour loop of the same scene, synced with one’s local time, of local spots like Sausalito’s harbor, Marin County’s Rodeo Beach, the Farallon Islands, Land’s End coastal trail and the Golden Gate Bridge, and more-distant locales, like Hawaii’s beaches, Miami’s bustling Brickell neighborhood, Venice’s canals and France’s coastal city of Nice.

The scenes are recorded in 8K video, Braff said, “and the casing makes it feel like the view is through an actual window.” 

Earlier this year, LiquidView was featured on “Shark Tank,” the reality show where entrepreneurs pitch ideas to wealthy investors. In the end, the investor panel didn’t fund LiquidView, but Braff said his company is “constantly growing,” with dealers in seven states, installations across the country and an international presence. Braff said that he’s talking to several medical centers, including a hospital in Haifa, and that the University of Haifa is conducting a study on the health benefits of the product.

The product isn’t cheap; a screen with three views costs $9,999. LiquidView isn’t the only company that produces a window-like product, though Braff said others offer shorter loops and use cameras with lower resolution.

Three LiquidView panels were installed in a public area at Rhoda Goldman Plaza in September.

“Our residents gravitate to the windows, where they sit quietly, converse or reminisce,” said Lamm, who added that visiting family members are also drawn to the windows.

“The memory care team at Rhoda Goldman Plaza told me they consider the windows a nonpharmacological form of treatment,” Braff said.

The LiquidView digital window at the Frank Residences, installed in May, was championed by Peter Rosenberg, a San Francisco native who now lives in Miami. A son of the late philanthropists Richard and Barbara Rosenberg, he learned about the windows in 2024 when Braff showed him ones on display at the Battery, a club and boutique hotel in San Francisco. 

“It’s such innovative technology — and certainly a good enhancement to senior living. I know this initiative would have been important to my parents,” said Rosenberg. “They supported the Jewish Home and later, the San Francisco Campus for Jewish Living, both financially and in leadership.” Richard lived at the Frank Residences before he died in 2023. “He left a large endowment,” Rosenberg added, “and when I encouraged Stacey Lewis, the chief development officer, to consider installing a LiquidView digital window, she agreed.”

The idea for LiquidView occurred to Braff in 2020 when he worked at Liquid Canvas, a company that provides animated digital art that can be streamed to screens. 

“A client had good views out the front and back, but otherwise he was looking at the side of a neighbor’s house,” Braff said. “I thought what we needed was a digital window, one that looked like a real window — and that was the birth of LiquidView.”

He went on to found the company in 2021.

“I’m very proud that our windows can help improve people’s lives, and our success in senior living facilities in the Bay Area is really exciting,” Braff said. “That makes me feel fantastic because my heart is in making the world a better place.”

Books coverage is supported by a generous grant from The Milton and Sophie Meyer Fund.

Welcome to J.’s semi-regular column featuring new releases across genres by Jewish authors in Northern California. Writers have been busy creating new works about Jewish culture, parenting, travel, history and more. You can find these books online or at your local bookstore.

“Belonging to the World: A Journey from Grief to Connection in Every Country on Earth”

By Barry Hoffner (344 pages) Part memoir, part travelogue, Hoffner’s book chronicles his journey to visit all 193 countries on the globe following the death of his wife and travel partner, Jackie Hoffner. The trek brings him unexpected human connection and healing amid grief and loss. Hoffner founded Caravan to Class, a nonprofit that expands access to education for youth in West Africa, and the Bourse Jackie program, named for his late wife, which offers university and English-language scholarships to West African young women. He lives in Sausalito.

“Too Much Love: Stories of Mothering”

Edited by Nitza Agam (162 pages) In this anthology, 18 writers explore the complex bonds between mothers and daughters in essays and poems. The collection, edited by Nitza Agam, addresses the highs and lows of motherhood, including adoption and childbirth. It also considers grandmotherhood and daughters’ reflections on their own mothers. Agam lives in San Francisco. 

“Restrung: Fatherhood in a Different Key”

By Matt Fogelson (304 pages) This coming-of-age memoir opens in 1980s New York, where as a young man he struggles to cope with his father’s death. Music serves as a throughline as Fogelson grows up and becomes a father himself. Fatherhood ultimately compels him to unpack his grief and emotional constraints in order to connect with his son. Fogelson, a writer and former lawyer, lives in Oakland.

“The Many Lives of Michał K.”

By Martin Carnoy (496 pages) In 1939, 14-year-old Michał and his family must flee their comfortable life following the Nazi invasion of Poland. It’s the first of many turbulent developments in Michał’s life. Over the course of the story, he becomes a resistance fighter seeking retribution, searches for his sister after the war and eventually immigrates to the United States. Carnoy is a labor economist and professor of education at Stanford University and lives in Menlo Park.

“Tales of an Urban Mystic: A Spiraling Memoir”

By Andrew Ramer (170 pages) In this memoir, Andrew Ramer recounts mystical experiences set against the familiar city backdrops of Oakland and New York. He writes of experiences related to ancestors, angels and the Divine, inviting readers to consider their own spirituality. Ramer is a maggid, or Jewish storyteller, and lives in Oakland.

The Jewish Federation Bay Area celebrated reaching its $250 million Centennial Campaign endowment fundraising goal with a special appearance by world-acclaimed violinist Itzhak Perlman and a performance by the Israel Philharmonic’s flute quartet.

More than 350 longtime donors, community leaders and partners gathered for the event at Laura and Gary Lauder’s home in Atherton on March 4. The $250 million endowment is aimed at securing long-term support for Jewish organizations locally, in Israel and around the world, a Federation spokesperson told J.

The event was held in collaboration with the American Friends of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, which raises funds to support Israel’s national orchestra as cultural ambassadors for Israel. Perlman is its honorary co-chair.

Perlman, who was in town to conduct the San Francisco Symphony on March 5, joined the gathering for a conversation rather than a performance. The award-winning violinist was interviewed by members of the visiting ensemble and shared reflections on his career, mentors and experiences in music. Attendees described the conversation as humorous and candid, and said it offered a personal glimpse into Perlman’s storied life.

“It was a really neat opportunity to get to kind of know this person who is really renowned, who is sort of on a pedestal as a maestro,” said attendee Carol Weitz, who is a past president of J.’s board.

Following the conversation, the flute quartet performed a program featuring works by Mozart, along with the American and Israeli national anthems.

During the concert, the musicians briefly paused after their phones began buzzing simultaneously with emergency alerts from Israel. The messages informed them that missile strikes had been reported near Tel Aviv and that their families had taken shelter in bomb shelters. The performers shared the news with the audience before continuing the concert, acknowledging the emotional challenge of performing abroad while events unfolded at home.

“That was heart-tugging for all of us,” Weitz said.

Weitz described an evening of “gratitude and celebration” that was “the best reconnecting of community” the group had in a long time. “The warmth of the evening and the engagement of the cross-section of the community was really impactful,” she said.

The Centennial Campaign began in 2010 as the Federation marked its 100th anniversary, initially setting a fundraising goal of $100 million for its endowment. Strong community support allowed the campaign to surpass that benchmark in 2015, prompting leaders to raise the target to $200 million. Continued momentum ultimately pushed the campaign to a stretch goal of $250 million, which was reached in December.

“The Federation’s endowment not only fuels the steady, sustained investments for vital organizations strengthening Jewish life, caring for people in need, combating antisemitism, and promoting justice and inclusion, but in our ability to move quickly when it matters most — whether that’s responding to an emergency in Israel or an opportunity to do something transformational here at home,” Joy Sisisky, Federation president and CEO, told J. in a statement.

The completion of the campaign brings the organization’s total endowment to more than $400 million. Unlike annual campaigns, endowment funds generate ongoing support, helping ensure stability for the hundreds of programs and organizations the Federation funds, according to the Federation.

In July 1941, in a small village in Nazi-occupied Poland, hundreds of Jews were burned to death in a barn — not by the Nazis, but by their own non-Jewish neighbors. 

The Jedwabne pogrom, whose true history was revealed only in 2000 with the publication of Jan T. Gross’ book “Neighbors,” is the focus of a play coming to San Francisco this month.

“Our Class” follows the lives of 10 Jedwabne residents — five Jews and five Catholics — from 1925 through the end of the 20th century. The classmates begin as schoolyard friends, then grow into adults who love, betray, murder and confront the repercussions of their actions over the years. The play is based on the experiences of real perpetrators and victims of the massacre. 

Written in 2008 by Polish playwright Tadeusz Słobodzianek, “Our Class” has been staged around the world. It made its Off-Broadway debut at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in January 2024 in a production staged by Arlekin!, a Massachusetts-based troupe composed largely of immigrant artists from the former Soviet Union. It received numerous accolades, including “best theater of 2024” from the Wall Street Journal, and four Lucille Lortel Awards for outstanding revival, ensemble, director and scenic design.

On March 27, Arlekin! brings that production to San Francisco’s Z Space for a week-long run.

The company’s director, Ukrainian-born Igor Golyak, told J. that while many plays have explored the Holocaust, “Our Class” stands out for showing how “regular” people could turn on their neighbors.

“The way that I’ve experienced coming to a Holocaust play is you kind of button yourself up emotionally, you know what you’re going to get hit with,” he said. “I wanted to make this different, because it’s not about the Nazis doing awful things, it’s people just like us, you and me. In what situation would I do this to you? Or would you do this to me?”

As a Ukrainian Jew, the play’s subject “hits close to home,” he said, referring to both the long history of antisemitic violence in Ukraine and the ongoing Ukraine-Russia war. 

Golyak said the cast first gathered in August 2023 to read the script and began discussing the implications of antisemitism and neighbor turning against neighbor. Six weeks later, the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7 took place. 

“Jews have been persecuted for all of their existence,” he said. “We could say yes, we’ve learned our lessons. But obviously we haven’t. I don’t believe in teaching history lessons. The only thing I believe in is asking the questions and asking people to question themselves.”

The story of the Jedwabne pogrom has inspired several films, including the 2005 documentary “The Legacy of Jedwabne,” which contains testimony from Jewish and non-Jewish survivors of the pogrom, as well as from church authorities who claim that the entire operation was carried out by Germans rather than Polish citizens.

The full extent of the murders might never be known. In “Neighbors,” Polish historian Gross wrote that “one day, in July 1941, half of the population of a small East European town murdered the other half — some 1,600 men, women and children.” Later investigations claimed no more than 350 people could have fit in the barn.

But the numbers aren’t the point of “Our Class.” Eight of the 10 characters are based on real people, Golyak said. The barn-burning happens before the end of the first act, so most of the play is about how the characters deal with the tragedy for the rest of their lives.

The main protagonist, Rachelka, a Jewish woman, converts to Catholicism to marry her Polish lover, a choice that saves her life. How does she justify that decision to herself in the ensuing decades? Renowned Russian-language actress Chulpan Khamatova portrays Rachelka. As a member of the Tatar ethnic minority in the former Soviet Union, Khamatova said the Jewish girl’s story resonates with her.

“When I grew up in the Soviet Union, I didn’t want to tell people my name was Chulpan,” she said. “I always said my name is Masha, or Olga. Otherwise I’d get a lot of hate speech.”

Khamatova recalls watching the real Rachelka in a documentary. It showed her in her 80s spending time in a dark room watching TV. “She didn’t want to go for walks, or read letters, she just wanted to be in that unreal world of the TV screen,” Khamatova said. “She lost so much during her life, and was broken in such a brutal way.” 

In one scene in the play, taken from real life, Rachelka is asked by a judge after World War II to describe what her Polish neighbors did to her. 

“She says, ‘Nothing,’” Khamatova said. “That means she betrayed all her relatives who burned in that barn. Yet I can’t say she’s guilty or not guilty. I want to be very careful about judging. It’s so easy to lose your humanity, and so lose yourself. If audiences can get that from this play, great.”

Golyak said some descendants of Jewish survivors of the massacre have come to see the play. One was a woman whose grandmother was saved by the real-life Polish woman portrayed on stage by one of the actors. 

On the other hand, some of the perpetrators, whose stories are depicted in “Our Class,” have denied responsibility, Golyak said.

“These are real people, you can find them on YouTube in interviews saying this never happened,” he said. “It’s very scary. Again, it’s scary not because they’re them. It’s scary because they’re people just like us. And that is the questioning that I want the audience to leave with.”

IF YOU’RE GOING

“Our Class” runs March 27 to April 5 at Z Space in San Francisco. Post-performance discussions are scheduled on March 29 with descendants of Jedwabne survivors, and April 3 with Jewish theatermakers Carey Perloff and Igor Golyak. 

Boichik Bagels’ College Avenue location in Berkeley is the setting for a new short film about Alzheimer’s. “Lox” takes place as bagel-lovers greet each other and schmooze in a slow-moving morning bagel line. What appears to be a chance encounter between two strangers in line is slowly revealed to be something more.

“Lox” will be shown on the opening night of the East Bay International Jewish Film Festival on March 7 at 7 p.m. at the Century 16 theater in Pleasant Hill. It will screen alongside the festival’s opening feature film, “The Ring.”

“Lox” has already shown at 30 film festivals and won several awards, including best short film at the Bay Area & Sacramento Short Films Festival. It was originally staged as a one-act play at the 2023 Young Playwrights Festival in Los Angeles and was written by Leo Eigen, then 15, a student at Ramaz, the Jewish day school in New York City. 

The director is Dan Pavlik of Fremont, who is not Jewish but has filmed enough bar mitzvahs to feel confident with Jewish material. “This is a quintessential Jewish story, mostly because it’s about family and tradition — and also bagels,” he said, according to a press release from the EBIJFF. “But the issue, Alzheimer’s, also makes this film universal.”

In the film, a man encounters an elderly woman, seemingly a stranger, while waiting in line and strikes up a conversation with her. The woman, Ruth, is played by Bettina Devin, 74, who also produced “Lox.” When she saw the 13-minute film at another festival, “it was the only one that got any laughs, as well as tears,” she is quoted in the press release.

As the line inches forward, it becomes clear that Ruth is having memory problems. Eventually, the other shoe drops. (No spoilers!)

This year’s East Bay International Jewish Film Festival will feature 22 feature-length films, running from March 7 to 12 at the Century 16 in Pleasant Hill and at Vine Cinema in Livermore on March 22. An online component will be available from March 15 to 25. 

“I’m gonna make games,” Ellie Freeman declared at age 9. 

That was six years ago. Now a 15-year-old freshman at the Kehillah School, a private Jewish high school in Palo Alto, Freeman has a video game in professional development. 

“I’ve been playing video games since I could first use an iPad,” she said. She lives in Los Altos with her family, who are members of Congregation Beth Am. “When I was 7, I started playing Minecraft, and during the pandemic lockdown, I played every day. That’s when I decided I wanted to be a game designer.”

In July 2022, she pursued her dream by attending a three-week online day camp through Girls Make Games, an organization that supports girls ages 8 to 18 who want to pursue careers in the video game industry. 

Women make up more than 45% of the gaming population but less than 24% of the video game industry, according to the organization. The documentary “Girls Level Up” profiles the camp experience as a way to address that gender disparity in the field.

Since Girls Make Games was launched in 2014, more than 8,000 girls have participated in its workshops and camps, and 27,000 have used its tutorials, games and resources, according to the organization’s website. It offers three-week summer camps at multiple locations across the country and virtual programs open to participants worldwide. 

Freeman has attended the summer camp in San Mateo for the last few years, expanding her skills in coding and developing art and audio. Three years ago, she helped develop a game that won a prize in the camp’s junior bracket. Last summer, her team created a prototype for a game called “Paper Trail.”

“The premise is that a kid in the hospital with a broken right arm starts drawing with the other arm, and the drawings come to life and turn into monsters,” she said. “We wanted a horror game, but we didn’t want it to be really creepy or scary, so the monsters are evil, giant broccoli, an evil smiley face, an evil flower and an evil blob. Players race from room to room, solving puzzles to escape.”

“Paper Trail” won the camp’s grand prize. 

“We hadn’t set our hopes very high, because the teen bracket was hard, and we didn’t expect to get to the finals,” she said. “And then we won!”

Girls Make Games pays for the professional development process and will publish the completed game on Steam, a digital distribution platform for gaming, and on PlayStation consoles. Proceeds will go to the Girls Make Games college scholarship fund.

Freeman and her three teammates are busy polishing their winning game.

“We’ve had a couple of meetings to finalize what we want the [professional] developers to do next,” she said. “Later, we’ll see prototypes that we can approve or ask for more changes.”

In December, when the 2025 Game Awards — something like the Oscars of video games — honored Girls Make Games with the Game Changer Award in Los Angeles, Freeman was one of two girls chosen to accept the trophy. 

She has already registered for Girls Make Games camp this summer and recruited some friends to join her.

“I’m always excited to go to camp, and then camp makes me more excited to make games — it’s a circle,” she said. “Besides, it’s nice to be around other girls who have the same passion.”

It’s the summer of 1996 and 18-year-old Hannah and her girlfriend Sam have just arrived in the queer promised land of San Francisco.

Leaving behind Hannah’s strict Orthodox Jewish mother and their sheltered lives of secrecy in Long Beach, New York, the pair are eager to finally live openly and be part of a queer community. But when the cash from Hannah’s beloved bubbe begins to run low, their prospects for making ends meet in the city dwindle. Going home isn’t an option, so they turn to sex work to survive. 

That is the premise of Shoshana von Blanckensee’s “Girls Girls Girls,” released last summer, which offers an intimate look at being young, Jewish and lesbian in the tumult of 1990s San Francisco. It’s a world von Blanckensee knows well, because she lived it.

“I moved to San Francisco to be gay,” von Blanckensee told J. “You had to physically find queer culture and community. Being queer at that time was not what it is today, so it was necessary to find your people for survival.”

Her “people” included photographer Chloe Sherman, who was also queer, Jewish and looking for a roommate. Sherman arrived in San Francisco in 1991 and later earned a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. With camera in hand, she documented friends, lovers, community spaces and daily life on 35mm film.

Von Blanckensee moved into a Noe Valley apartment with Sherman in 1998 after touring with the queer spoken-word punk collective Sister Spit. The two quickly became inseparable, immersing themselves in the city’s queer underground. Bars such as the Lexington Club and cafes including the Bearded Lady served as regular gathering spots. 

Von Blanckensee describes the era as messy and imperfect. Addiction, poverty and trauma were ever-present, but so was a deep sense of community, she said. Friends helped one another move, hosted fundraisers when someone couldn’t make rent and collaborated on zines, art projects and political actions.

“There was so much freedom,” von Blanckensee said. “We did whatever we wanted and didn’t care what anyone thought of us. We had each other.”

Sherman sees her photographs as a testament to that collective becoming.

“It was this really special experience of finding yourself as a young person in a city filled with others doing the same,” she said. “We left our birth families and invented ourselves.”

Her photography book, “Renegades,” released in 2023, features images that captured that period.

“I was photographing my environment, my surroundings,” Sherman said. “I just found such a dynamic, beautiful group of people that I was moved by and inspired by and befriended. It was natural for me to photograph them and offer an inside view to try to reveal the beauty that I saw.”

On March 5, the longtime friends will discuss their books at Womb House Books in a joint conversation, followed by an audience Q&A and signing. Though one book is fiction and the other photography, both document the same electric moment in queer Bay Area history.

“It’s a treat to get to share a talk with her because our work most certainly intersects in a huge way,” Sherman said. “My book is historical, all images shot 30 years ago and her book is referencing that particular time. It’s very sweet to come back together as adults to share our work that reflects our young lives.”

Von Blanckensee, now an oncology nurse living in Berkeley, had been writing bits and pieces of “Girls Girls Girls” for two decades. Working on the front lines during the pandemic ignited in her an urgency.

“I thought, ‘what if I die and never write this book?’” she said. She soon finished her debut novel.

Though fictionalized, “Girls Girls Girls” draws from von Blanckensee’s experiences navigating queerness, family estrangement and survival in an expensive city. In an author’s note, she writes openly about the elements of the novel drawn from her own life, including her time working at a strip club.

“I had thought about just writing it as fiction and hiding behind that,” she said. “But then at the end of the day, I want to kind of model shamelessness for my children and for other young queer people — to just be authentic and respect the choices they made, even if they weren’t always the best ones.”

Girl Renegades: Shoshana von Blanckensee and Chloe Sherman. Thursday, March 5, at Womb House Books, Temescal Alley, Oakland. 7-9 p.m. $12.51.

One Sunday evening in early February, Congregation Beth Am in Los Altos Hills was quiet, save for one conference room. There, about a dozen people sat around a table to participate in a 15-year-old tradition: helping select the three top choices in the Jewish Plays Project’s annual national playwriting contest.

On March 29, voting will continue at the Oshman Family JCC in Palo Alto, where theater enthusiasts from across the Bay Area will pick one of the three as the overall winner. Anyone who registers can come to hear sections of the three plays read by actors and vote on their top choice.

The local panel is one of 11 such panels across North America (plus one more in Israel) that participate in selecting their favorites. The finalists explore topics in the Jewish world that are as difficult as they are timely: gender politics in the Hasidic community, fraught relationships on American college campuses and the gruesome aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas massacre in Israel. 

After each participating area picks its favorite, the  final round of the contest will take place at the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia on the July 4 weekend.

It’s a complicated but worthwhile process, according to Jewish Plays Project founder David Winitsky. He calls it a form of “artistic democracy.”

“This is about the community’s voice and what they choose,” he told J. “You’ve got to come and vote, right? Just like any other democracy, it only works if you show up. We want everybody’s voice in the room.”

The contest is the Brooklyn-based Jewish Plays Project’s flagship program, serving as an incubator for innovative plays that speak to “21st century topics” of interest to the Jewish community worldwide. The point of starting the contest in 2011, Winitsky said, was to move beyond familiar Jewish tropes.

Producers “just were not confident about some of the more challenging parts of the conversation,” Winitsky said. “I think people, on some level, don’t want to get in trouble. But I would say it’s more than that. [Jewish playwrights] want to do something that is good for the communities that they’re representing, and they need help to do that.”

The Silicon Valley panel has participated in the contest since its third year and contains a critical mass of “theater-connected” panelists, though that is not a requirement for joining, said group producer Judy Kitt. 

“I think that’s a strength in the Jewish community,” she said. “We turn to each other, and a lot of times through story. It’s just great fun.”

“Flatbush Lysistrata,” in which three Hasidic women plot a sex strike, is the first play from theater director Lila Rachel Becker of New York City. 

“I’m interested in the increasing power of fundamentalist thought in American life,” Becker told J. “I’m curious about what is available in strict traditionalist communities that’s not available in the rest of contemporary American life.”

“Havurah” by Margot Connolly of Pleasantville, New York, explores interfaith dialogue through the lens of a group of Christian university students who attempt to offer support to their school’s Jewish club following a shooting at a synagogue. More than that, however, it’s about the experience of growing up, Connolly told J. 

“We want to do good in the world, and none of us really know how to do that,” said Connolly, whose fifth play, “Belfast Kind,” won the contest in 2015. “We might goof it along the way, but there’s room for us to readjust, learn and keep trying.”

“Shura: The mission of identifying life,” by Israeli playwright Roee Joseph, is based on Joseph’s own experience when he was called up to military reserve service after Oct. 7. Part of a team tasked with identifying bodies of massacre victims, he kept a journal at the time about his experiences. The play was initially produced in Hebrew and premiered at the Israel Festival in fall 2024. It was translated into English by literary translator Shir Freibach. 

For Joseph, the act of writing helped clarify his feelings about what he witnessed. The process itself, he told J. in an email, felt instinctual. 

“Looking back, I understand that in real time I was placing a kind of screen between myself and what was happening, and that distance was protective,” Roee said. “Writing also gave voice to hidden thoughts and reflections that would not have surfaced otherwise.”

The next round of the “12th Annual Silicon Valley Jewish Playwriting Contest,” hosted by the Jewish Plays Project, is set for 7 p.m. March 29 at the Oshman Family JCC, 3921 Fabian Way, Palo Alto. $18 and up. tinyurl.com/play-project-tix

Daniel Jontof-Hutter is looking for planets. The astronomy professor, who was born in South Africa, raised in Australia and now lives in Pleasanton with his family, is at the forefront of a surge in research into exoplanets — planets outside of our own solar system.

Once the province of science fiction, the search for Earth-like planets around other stars is moving into the realm of reality, thanks to researchers like Jontof-Hutter and recent advancements in telescopes and data analysis.

Jontof-Hutter, who teaches at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, spoke with J. about Jewish life in Australia, a bar mitzvah trip to Israel that was interrupted by last year’s Iran-Israel war, and the search for Earth-like planets around farflung stars.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What was Jewish life like for your family in South African and Australia?

My grandfather escaped Nazi Germany in 1936 and went to South Africa, and my grandmother survived in the underground in Holland. After the war, she left and went to South Africa and met my grandfather there.

Things were not going too well in South Africa in the ’80s. We were pretty safe there as Jews, but the whole country was heading toward civil war. So we moved to Australia, and Australia was an amazing place for Jewish families. There are a lot of South African Jews like us who moved to the same suburbs in Melbourne. It is a pretty close-knit community, fairly strong community.

Did you know anyone who was affected by the Bondi shooting?

Not directly. I have family who had friends who were in Sydney. And my rabbi here in Pleasanton [Chabad Rabbi Raleigh Resnick] actually knew the rabbi who was killed in Bondi.

You were actually in Israel with Resnick for your son’s bar mitzvah during the brief war with Iran last June.

We were there when the 12-day war with Iran started, which was an unbelievable experience. [Resnick] organized getting us onto a humanitarian evacuation that was organized for religious Jews who were trying to get out of Israel, because all the flights were canceled. 

The war started just a few hours after my son’s bar mitzvah. My kids were disappointed that our plans to go to the Dead Sea and Masada were canceled, but I felt incredibly grateful that Israel was able to keep everyone safe. Most of the rockets were intercepted in space by the Israeli missile defense shield.

Well, how’s this for a segue? You mentioned that the rockets are intercepted in space — so I want to ask if you have an early memory of your interest in space.

Astronomy was always my hobby. When I was in elementary school, I borrowed all the books on astronomy I could find from the library, and I had a small telescope, and I could look at the planets and the moon and so on through my telescope. I went to the University of Maryland for my Ph.D. and haven’t looked back. It’s been an amazing journey. When you’re part of a study that you’re the first in the world to understand something or to discover something, it’s just a thrill. I really love being a scientist. 

When you’re looking at one of those new discoveries, these planets orbiting other stars, how much do you know about them at this point? 

Great question. We never see the planets directly. We look at the star and we see the stars dim a little [as the planet passes in front of the star]. So what that tells you is how often the planet goes around the star, what its year is. And it also tells you how big the planet is. So you can see, if it’s a small planet, it could be Earth-like.

So far, are you finding that our solar system is pretty average? Or is it an outlier?

Actually, it’s very unusual, and we don’t understand why. Before we found all these planets around other stars, we had a good theory for the solar system: that planets that are closer than the asteroid belt are small and rocky. Then you have these massive planets like Jupiter and Saturn, which have collected loads of water, hydrogen and helium gas. 

But that’s not what exoplanet systems are like at all. We’re finding that there are these systems of planets — three, four, five, six, seven planets — that are closer to their star than Mercury is to the sun. It kind of turned the textbook upside down. We have to understand why the solar system seems to be the exception. And we’re motivated by trying to find life out there, how common Earth-like planets are.

That’s very exciting. I’m a big sci-fi fan, and so I love the idea that the search for extraterrestrial life is moving into an observational phase, not just speculative.

We are very lucky now that we can turn questions like that — like, how common are Earth-like planets, which until recently was more of a philosophical question — into a practical question. Like, “Well, let’s design the telescope that can answer that question and learn how to analyze that data.” It seems like we can really find twins of the Earth around other stars in the next few decades. 

There just aren’t enough Jewish holiday movies or shows.

Actually, there seem to be almost none at all, especially ones for kids.

Sure, Passover has “The Prince of Egypt,” and Hanukkah gets its own “Rugrats” episode. But Purim? No such luck.

Frankly, I don’t understand this. An entire genre of children’s movies about princesses exists, and Purim’s main character is literally a queen. If Jews really ran Hollywood, you’d think Esther would have had her Disney moment by now.

This dilemma became alarmingly apparent when I was searching for a Purim movie or show to watch with my almost 4-year-old daughter last week. The few Esther adaptations I found were either not kid-friendly or just … bad. 

Then I remembered a strange VHS tape from my childhood: VeggieTales’ “Esther: The Girl Who Became Queen.” Miraculously, it is free to watch on YouTube.

If you’ve never encountered VeggieTales, it’s a wildly popular Christian franchise that first arrived on videotape in the mid-1990s and is still producing movies today. It stars anthropomorphic vegetables who live out Bible stories and parody pop culture. I know this sounds bonkers and, trust me, it absolutely is. (It’s actually so much weirder than I remembered.) But hear me out.

Obviously, animated Christian vegetables are not the ideal storytelling vehicle for Jewish kids. However, more than 25 years since its release, the VeggieTales Esther story remains one of the only Purim shows available. The 39-minute cartoon loosely “reimagines” Esther with nods to “The Godfather” and “Casablanca,” which is a sentence I never expected to write.

Immediately, my daughter had very important questions, like “What is she?” and “Where are their arms?” As a kid I thought Esther was a green bean, but upon researching these questions, I found out she’s a leek. Regardless, she is very green.

The plot includes sandwich-related royal drama, a villainous squash (or maybe he’s a gourd?), a pair of pea assassins and exile to the “Island of Perpetual Tickling.”

The movie begins with King Xerxes (Achashverosh) the zucchini in need of a new queen because Vashti (also a zucchini) refuses to make him a sandwich at 3 a.m. 

The next day, Esther the leek is walking with her cousin Mordechai the grape. Haman the squash/gourd comes along to collect all the eligible maidens for the king and demands that Mordechai bow in his presence. Mordechai refuses, and Haman becomes furious. He then takes all the maidens to the palace, where Esther sings a song and is chosen queen.

One day, two peas attempt to assassinate the king by dropping a piano on his head, but Mordechai and Esther save him just in time. Haman banishes the peas to the “Island of Perpetual Tickling” for their crimes. A grim reaper character with a giant feather appears, tickling the peas out the door and scaring my daughter, who clung to my arm as I tried not to laugh.

Though the king believes he is now safe, Haman convinces him he’s actually still in danger through an antisemitic song that has no business being as catchy as it is, with lyrics describing a “sneaky little family who do sneaky little things, who stick their sneaky noses into matters of the king.”

Unaware that Haman is talking about Mordechai and his family, the king authorizes an edict to have them banished to the Island of Perpetual Tickling. Mordecai appeals to Esther to reveal Haman’s evil plans to the king, but Esther is scared.

Mordecai reminds Esther that she never needs to be afraid to do what’s right. Esther is still fearful but eventually redeems herself as she finally embraces her position as queen. She eventually reveals that Mordechai is her cousin and that Haman has been plotting against him and his family, which includes her. 

The king, who respects Mordechai, adores Esther and would never harm either of them, banishes Haman to the Island of Perpetual Tickling, along with anyone else who dares scheme against his queen and her family.

Despite the entirely Jewish plot, Jews are not named at all in the show — a detail I somehow overlooked as a kid. Faith in God comes up multiple times, but the show doesn’t mention Jesus.

The show’s absurdities and omissions aside, its core message reigns: You should never be afraid to do what’s right. That’s a lesson worth teaching, even if it comes from armless, talking vegetables instead of a Disney princess.

Updated Feb. 24

Meng Yang, an assistant professor at Peking University in Beijing who is speaking in the Bay Area this week, has carved out a unique space in China’s academic landscape. She teaches the country’s first, and currently only, university-level Yiddish course and leads packed lectures on Jewish civilization, the Holocaust and contemporary antisemitism.

With Chinese interest in Ashkenazi Jewish culture and history growing since Oct. 7, 2023, and the global spike in antisemitism, Yang’s expertise has been in demand. 

She learned Yiddish as part of her Ph.D. research on the exile of Jewish refugees in Shanghai during the Holocaust and is regarded as the first person to write and perform a Chinese-Yiddish song. She is a fellow of the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism, and her research spans global antisemitism, Holocaust studies, Shanghailanders and Sino–Israeli relations.

Ahead of her Feb. 24 talk at Stanford, Yang spoke with J. about her path into Jewish studies, the surprising realities of teaching about Oct. 7 in China, and why she believes this moment urgently demands cross-cultural dialogue.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What first sparked your interest in Jewish studies?

I began as a German major and pursued my Ph.D. in Germany. I wanted a doctoral topic that combined German studies with something connected to my hometown, since I am from Shanghai, so I chose to research Jewish exile in Shanghai during the Shoah. During my studies, I received a scholarship to attend a two-week Holocaust education program at Yad Vashem for Chinese educators and students. Through my research and the people I met in Israel and Germany, I found myself drawn into Jewish studies.

What motivated you to learn Yiddish?

I got lucky and applied to a summer program at Tel Aviv University and received a full scholarship. I had not planned to study Yiddish. If you weigh the pros and cons of learning it, you might never begin. But at that time, no one in China was studying Yiddish, and there were no courses available. So I thought, “Why not?” The teachers were wonderful, and that experience shaped my academic path.

What was it like teaching the first Yiddish course in China?

I had to apply three times before the university approved it. In the beginning, I had about 30 students. Since Oct. 7, enrollment in my Jewish Civilization course, which is a broader class about Jewish culture, has grown dramatically, up to nearly 800 students each semester. Yiddish is difficult for Chinese students because the letters are completely different from Chinese characters. I use modern materials, like clips from “YidLife Crisis” [a comedy web series] to show that Yiddish is a living language. I find that students are not only interested in the language, but they also want to understand the culture.

How has teaching changed since Oct. 7, 2023?

After Oct. 7, student engagement increased a lot. I also see my classroom as a kind of research space. Some say antisemitism in China must come from the government. But from my teaching experience and student feedback, I see that much of the hostility actually comes from nationalist intellectuals and online opinion leaders.

When I lecture about the Israeli hostages, some students immediately ask why I am not speaking more about Gaza. When I screened the documentary “October 8” and asked whether it was the first time they had heard about sexual violence committed on Oct. 7, more than two-thirds of the class said yes. That information had not been widely reported in Chinese media. Some students openly express support for Hamas. That shift reflects how polarized the conversation has become.

What forms does antisemitism take in China?

Almost all classic antisemitic tropes have been localized in Chinese contexts, especially online. Chinese social media platforms operate independently from Western ones, with different algorithms and restricted access to foreign apps. Yet conspiracy theories about Jews, including versions of blood libel, circulate widely. Because China has a very small Jewish population and because Judaism is not among the five officially recognized religions in China, most people’s perceptions come from the internet rather than personal contact. That makes misinformation harder to counter.

How do students respond to learning about the Holocaust?

People are generally very interested in the Holocaust. I screen the 1956 documentary “Night and Fog,” and many are shocked by what they see. However, I think Holocaust education worldwide faces challenges. We see that Holocaust education has not prevented the resurgence of antisemitism. That is something scholars must examine more closely.

Why does this work matter now?

My research focuses on Holocaust education, global antisemitism and cross-cultural dialogue. As Elie Wiesel observed, antisemitism did not start with Jews and does not end with Jews. In many societies, hatred of Jews becomes a starting point, and later other groups are targeted as well. What has surprised me is how quickly antisemitism has surged globally after Oct. 7. In a country like China, with almost no Jewish population, antisemitic narratives can still spread online. That makes research and education especially important. For my doctoral research I interviewed Holocaust survivors who had lived in Shanghai. Today, as antisemitism rises again, I sometimes think about those survivors and about the many contributions Jewish communities have made worldwide. That is why dialogue across cultures is so necessary. Education alone may not solve everything, but without it, misunderstanding and hostility only grow.

Update on Feb. 24: The status of Judaism and the sources of antisemitism in China have been clarified.

A few years ago, I attended a talk at the Jewish Community Library where academic Sasha Senderovich was speaking about his book “How the Soviet Jew Was Made.” Howard Freedman, the library’s director, had created a display of related works. Several times during the talk, Freedman leapt to his feet as Senderovich mentioned increasingly obscure Russian and Yiddish books. Each time, he returned with a copy and added it to the display, saying, “We’ve got that too, if anyone wants to borrow it!”

Freedman, 59, is quiet, unassuming and well-read — exactly what you’d want from a librarian. He’s exceptionally well-read in Jewish fiction, thought and history, which makes him an ideal fit for this Bay Area institution, based at the Jewish Community High School of the Bay in San Francisco.

Through his leadership, Freedman connects Bay Area readers to Jewish literature, history and culture, using the past to illuminate contemporary issues.

The library became an independent nonprofit in 2023 after a long period as part of Jewish LearningWorks. Today, it serves as the school library, a public lending library and a gathering place for literary events. Freedman also oversees a mini-branch of the library in the form of a pushcart at the Oshman Family JCC in Palo Alto and programs ranging from the annual One Bay One Book series to the popular “Book Club in a Box,” which allows people to borrow 12 copies of the same book. He also writes “Off the Shelf,” a monthly column of book recommendations for J.

I caught up with Freedman in his office, piled high with books on nearly every surface, to discuss his career and the library’s role today. We also ended up talking about Soviet Jewry, racism in the Jewish community, and the past and present of undocumented immigration in America. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Do you have any early memories of books and reading?

I grew up in one of those homes with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. It was a very book-oriented home. And I grew up with, especially, lots of children’s books, which were really important to me. My father used to take me to a Jewish bookseller, J. Roth. There’s actually a book that just came out about this bookseller, which is kind of crazy, “Unpacking My Father’s Bookstore.” I remember my father telling me, “If you ever want to buy a Jewish book, I will pay you back for it. Just buy it, and I’ll pay you back.” And so that was a really powerful statement for me of values.

You grew up in Santa Monica in the 1970s. What was that like?

It was very different from what it is now. It was much less fancy. It was a nice and fairly diverse place to grow up. I had a lot of Jewish friends, but I had a lot of friends who were not Jewish. I went to public schools.

There was a lot more that revolved around Israel [during that time], and there was the movement to bring in Soviet Jews, who hadn’t had the experience of Jewish ritual. We had a family that would come for Passover and other family occasions, like Shabbat every Friday. 

But what was also happening at the very same time is that Jews were leaving Iran, and Los Angeles became the largest Iranian expatriate Jewish community in the world. And the same community that had been so welcoming to the Soviet Jews gave a very different sort of welcome to Iranian Jews with whom they didn’t jibe culturally. There wasn’t a sense of like, “Oh, we are all one people, come to my table.” And I saw what I view as just racism and pure bigotry, and that really disturbed me.

Did you have the chance to know your grandparents? 

I did. My paternal grandfather had a very interesting life. He was from Jerusalem. His father was an Orthodox rabbi. He grew up in extremely painful conditions during World War I, when there was an epidemic of typhus and cholera, and starvation. It was just a horrible, horrible time there. His father had been drafted by the Turkish army. Two of his older siblings died, and his mother lost it and died by fire in the house, possibly suicide. And my father and his remaining two siblings ended up coming to the United States as minors illegally, under false premises.

Has that illegal status been on your mind a lot lately?

Absolutely. If he were doing the same thing today, he would be in violation of our laws. He would be sent to whatever horribly named facility they have set up, and he would be excluded from this country, and I wouldn’t be here. I absolutely identify strongly with the stories of many immigrants who are here. My grandfather never left [the United States]. He was always afraid. He never exited the country’s borders for the rest of his life because he was afraid.

That’s a shame that he was never able to go and see what Jerusalem, his hometown, became.

He died too young in 1975. The next year my grandmother and the descendants all went to Israel, to where he was from, so we could actually go where he never felt comfortable returning.

What is your relationship with Israel like these days?

It’s very complicated. Something that I feel I can do in the course of my work is to promote engagement with Israel through literature, which can be a different kind of experience than going through the mire of politics. It saddens me that more people aren’t exposed to it, because I feel like it offers something to hang on to. It can be very disturbing to read, but it has a very different quality than watching this sort of very frustrating set of developments [in the news].

That’s very similar to how I feel about Israeli film. It’s a window that can be distressing, but also, like, it could be a comedy or a slice of life drama.

In literature and film, when it captures life as lived experience, that can be Jews, it can be Arabs, it can be whatever it’s portraying. That is a very different quality than reading [nonfiction] books about what should happen. I think it’s important to be engaged at both of those levels. 

Do the students here at JCHS make good use of the library?

Yeah. In fact, they use it more than they ever have, really.

What do you attribute that to?

One reason is that when the school started, they worked more pronouncedly from primary sources, meaning Torah and Talmud. They’ve moved to other areas of Jewish study, like Jewish history. They have a very serious senior thesis project that requires the use of materials from the library, and so the students use it in really creative and interesting ways. It’s a delight to see this collection that’s been built over so many years fall into their hands. 

You host a lot of public events here. Is that how you bring the general community into the library?

It’s a really big part of what we do. We still try for a balance that’s 50/50 online and in person. We really love the sense of community that develops through in-person programs. The nice thing about in-person programs is that there’s sort of a twofer kind of thing, where somebody can come and enjoy the program and while they’re here, “Oh, well, I’ve been meaning to read this book,” or “I have an interest in this. Do you have anything on on this topic?”

What’s your life outside of Jewish community and Jewish books and all that?

I’ve always been very involved in music. I play guitar, banjo, harmonica and drums. Not necessarily at a level where you would want to hear me play, but that’s a big part of my life, especially with my kids, who also play music. Listening to a huge variety of music is my favorite thing to do.

One of the things that was really big for me in my early years in San Francisco was being drawn to Yiddish culture, which is something that wasn’t a strong part of my upbringing, and I ended up being the coordinator of something called the Yiddish Song Circle, which was a monthly group of people sharing Yiddish-language songs.

What’s your favorite book?

Can I say “Go, Dog. Go!”?

OK, what’s your favorite Jewish book?

“Only Yesterday” by S.Y. Agnon. It brings together Jewish tradition and modernism, and it also has one foot in the land of Israel and one in the diaspora. It’s a really difficult book, which means that it’s very satisfying to return to it.

The East Bay International Jewish Film Festival’s 2026 lineup includes an award-winning Israeli documentary about a young man abandoned at birth, an indie comedy about a bar mitzvah boy and a “must see” Brazilian drama set in 1917.

In all, the festival will screen 22 films from eight countries, in theaters and online, in March.

The in-person screenings will take place at the Century 16 in Pleasant Hill from March 7 to 12, and at Vine Cinema in Livermore on March 22. Eleven films will be available online from March 15 to 25, including some that won’t be shown in theaters.

The festival kicks off with “The Ring.” This 2024 Israeli drama, based on writer and star Adir Miller’s own family’s Holocaust story, follows a man who travels from Israel to Budapest to find a gold ring that saved his mother’s life, as he seeks reconciliation with his estranged daughter along the way.

“More than ever, this year’s festival showcases a great diversity of films,” longtime festival director Riva Gambert said. “Much of this is due to our documentaries that portray the lives of Jewish individuals who have made a major impact on American life.”

Those documentaries include “Charles Grodin: Rebel with a Cause,” which follows the comedic actor’s advocacy to get wrongly convicted people out of prison; “Floyd Abrams,” about a First Amendment lawyer who helped define free speech through landmark cases, such as those related to the Pentagon Papers and the Citizens United case; and “A Man with Sole,” which paints a portrait of fashion mogul Kenneth Cole, who launched his shoe business in the 1980s and later committed himself to AIDS and LGBTQ activism.

Many of the festival’s films are themed around grappling with adversity and standing up to bigotry.

“Tatami,” an independent film co-directed by an Iranian woman and an Israeli man, is a drama about an Iranian judo athlete who finds herself in political danger when her government tells her to fake an injury rather than compete with an Israeli athlete. “Malachi” chronicles the life of a 19-year-old boy born with a rare genetic craniofacial disorder who was abandoned at birth by his parents and raised by a devoted foster mother. The 2025 Israeli film won best documentary at the Jerusalem Film Festival.

The festival also features the American premiere of “The Jewish Council,” a 2024 Dutch period drama that tells the story of professor David Cohen, a Jewish leader charged to work with the Nazis during World War II as co-president of Amsterdam’s Joodse Raad. The five-episode miniseries will be shown over two sessions on March 8 with a talk by professor Eran Kaplan of San Francisco State University.

For teens and tweens, Gambert recommends indie coming-of-age comedy “Ethan Bloom.” The film follows 13-year-old Ethan, who secretly decides he wants to convert to Catholicism while preparing for his bar mitzvah and navigating the loss of his mother.

For adults, she recommends “The Polish Women” as a “must-see” film at the festival this year. The 2023 Brazilian drama is set in 1917 Rio de Janeiro and centers on Rebecca, a Jewish immigrant fleeing famine and war in Poland to reunite with her husband and start a new life. However, upon arriving in Brazil, Rebecca discovers that her husband has died and ends up in a human trafficking network.

“It’s a very excellent film and something a bit different than we normally show,” Gambert said.

East Bay International Jewish Film Festival. March 7-12 at Century 16, 125 Crescent Drive, Pleasant Hill. March 22 at Vine Cinema 1722 First St., Livermore. Online, March 15-25.