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.

Having grown up in the shadow of the Holocaust, Susan Hirshfield had a gnawing question she wanted to answer once she got to college: How could a civilian population fail to prevent or protest such an atrocity?

By the time she arrived at UCLA as a Jewish studies major in the early ’70s, she had to grapple with a new calamity: the war in Vietnam. So she took to the streets and joined the anti-war protests.

Although Hirshfield’s family immigrated to the United States from England and Ukraine before the Holocaust, studying its history proved to be “extremely emotional” for her. At the same time, she became acquainted with recently discharged Vietnam War veterans and found her true calling.

“It was being a Jew that led me into the war in Vietnam, and studying post-traumatic stress disorder,” said Hirshfield, now 78 and an Oakland resident.

She described the veterans she interacted with as “a bunch of wonderful people, but very, very damaged. There were physical wounds, but primarily it was the emotional, psychological wounds that they lived with all their lives.”

After receiving a master’s degree in psychology and then a Ph.D., Hirshfield embarked on a 30-year career in clinical psychology working with combat veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.

She completed a fellowship at Kaiser Hospital’s adult psychiatry department in Santa Rosa and spent four years as a psychotherapist for the Agent Orange Class Assistance Program, where she worked with veterans who suffered from dioxin poisoning. After the program concluded in 1997, Hirshfield launched her private practice in Santa Rosa. 

Through her work with Vietnam vets, Hirshfield discovered her clinical skills could also help another population: the blind and visually impaired. Since early in her career, she has worked as an independent-living skills instructor at the Earle Baum Center for the Blind in Santa Rosa. 

Hirshfield spoke with J. about the evolution of her work, common misconceptions about PTSD, and how we can create meaning out of our most painful experiences. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

J.: There was a point when you were studying for your Ph.D. when you realized everything you studied about PTSD was wrong. What did the scholarships get wrong at the time?

Susan Hirshfield: People didn’t understand what trauma was. And war trauma is such a unique piece. The term “post-traumatic stress disorder” was used to understand the trauma of Vietnam veterans who had no choice but to be there. When they were drafted, the military owned them, could put them in any place they wanted, so they had no agency. It was a unique kind of war. There was absolutely no reason for the United States to go into Vietnam in the first place. World War II veterans, for example, were fighting for a cause, but there was no cause in Vietnam. The United States was not a target.

How accurate are depictions of PTSD episodes in films and TV? Can war flashbacks literally take over a person’s field of vision when their symptoms are triggered?

The war experience changes the brain. Our brains are malleable in general; every experience you have is stored there. Something that may have happened to you 15 or 20 years ago, when you start talking about it, it’s almost like it just happened. With any war there’s the concept of foreground and background. The war transposes those two things, so the war is the foreground, and the life you’re living is the background. It’s just about impossible for people who have never had a trauma to imagine what that could be like.

What inspired you to expand your practice to work with anyone who is dealing with a major life change, whether or not they have PTSD?

It stemmed from the work I’ve been doing for over 30 years now with people who are losing their sight. A friend of mine, a Vietnam veteran with PTSD, connected me to a guy who was born with an eye disease that was very difficult. He was born and raised in Detroit, a failed town. He would not use a cane, he would not admit to his sight loss. He had an attitude when I met him, and I asked, “Why don’t you use a cane?” He said “Could you imagine growing up in Detroit and having to use a cane? I wouldn’t survive a day. I had to be tougher than they were.” So I worked with this man for a while.

I later met with his counselor at the Department of Rehabilitation, and he said, “I’ve been working with him for years now. I have never seen a change in him like in the last six months since you’ve been working with him. What are you doing?” I explained that I was working with his trauma from childhood. I realized that losing one’s sight is a trauma like any other major trauma in a person’s life. The foundation is pretty much the same. How do you deal with the trauma of being terrified that your vision, your primary sense for being out in the world, no longer functions?

Have you thought at all about how the experience of war in Israel might differ from the experiences of American soldiers?

The huge difference is that we don’t live in a country that was being bombed. In Israel, they have been involved in wars, or almost wars, since 1948. You can’t escape the fact that they’re surrounded by countries that have waged war on Israel since its birth. It’s a totally different thing. The people who are fighting in the Israel Defense Forces, they all have a stake in it. It’s personal. That’s probably, weirdly, the beauty of drafting everybody into the military, because they are already living the war in a way.

Of course that does not make Israelis immune to PTSD. Former hostages who were kidnapped into Gaza by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, and later released have reported suffering from PTSD symptoms. Yet at the same time, as painful as it is for them to recount their captivity, they also say speaking out helps them persevere. Has this come up in your own practice?

Absolutely. When I was working with combat veterans, I would tell them “you need to talk about what is causing you to be the person you are today, because that’s not the person you want to be. But if you don’t talk, there’s nothing I can do to help you.” I’ve worked with people who were so angry and so traumatized that they couldn’t get words out. One of them told me “I’m afraid that if I tell you what happened, I’ll never come back. I will cease to exist.” I said “I won’t let that happen to you. I am with you, and I’m not going to let that happen.” There was something about the way I communicated with them, and they just started to spill their guts. And it made all the difference in the world. Once they screamed or cried, or whatever it was, they started to come back to the person they were before. 

Read this story in English

La vida de Raquel Issenberg sigue un camino marcado por la migración, la reinvención y un firme compromiso con la narración de historias.

En poco más de un año como Editora en Jefe, Issenberg ha ampliado el alcance de La Prensa Sonoma, la publicación en español del Press Democrat News Group, convirtiéndola en una presencia mediática dinámica que ofrece cobertura culturalmente relevante e información crítica para los residentes hispanohablantes del Norte de la Bahía.

También colabora con frecuencia con The Press Democrat. En 2025, su trabajo de redacción y edición sobre temas que afectan a las comunidades latinas locales fue reconocido en los California Journalism Awards.

Issenberg nació en Mérida, México. Más tarde su familia se mudó a Monterrey, donde obtuvo una licenciatura en Ciencias de la Comunicación en el Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey.

Su primer día como reportera en El Norte, un importante periódico nacional, fue el 11 de septiembre de 2001. Fue una introducción sobria a la gravedad e imprevisibilidad de las noticias. Durante los siguientes 14 años trabajó en importantes publicaciones mexicanas, entre ellas Reforma y El Horizonte, donde desarrolló su carrera como reportera, editora y editora ejecutiva.

En 2016 emigró a Estados Unidos con una visa de prometida y comenzó una nueva etapa. Vivió con su esposo en Pensilvania y luego en Georgia, donde trabajó como maestra, intérprete e instructora de yoga, hasta que finalmente abrió su propio estudio de yoga.

Aun así, el periodismo seguía siendo su vocación. Cuando surgió una poco común vacante para editor bilingüe en el condado de Sonoma, decidió aprovechar la oportunidad.

Issenberg, de 50 años y miembro de la Congregación Shomrei Torah en Santa Rosa, habló con J. sobre el periodismo, su conversión al judaísmo y el delicado equilibrio entre la neutralidad y la compasión al cubrir historias que afectan a su propia comunidad.

Esta entrevista ha sido editada por motivos de extensión y claridad.

¿Cuándo se dio cuenta por primera vez de que el periodismo podía ser su vocación?

Mi abuelo también era periodista. Me contaba muchas historias sobre su trabajo y eso captaba mi atención, pero no era mi intención convertirme en periodista. Cuando terminé la universidad, tenía muchas opciones. Esto fue alrededor del año 2000 y estaban ocurriendo muchas cosas en México en ese momento. Había mucha frustración con el gobierno porque el mismo partido había estado en el poder —lo que muchos llamábamos un régimen— durante 70 años, debido al fraude electoral. Un candidato del partido opositor ganó la elección y eso provocó un gran cambio en México. Decidí que quería ser parte de ese momento y escribir sobre ello.

Después de casi 15 años en el periodismo mexicano, ¿cómo fue cambiar de carrera en Estados Unidos?

Cuando me mudé aquí, pensé que nunca volvería a trabajar en el periodismo. No me veía trabajando como escritora o editora, especialmente con la barrera del idioma. En algún momento renuncié a esa idea. Me convertí en instructora de yoga, hice trabajos de traducción, enseñé español, y cualquier cosa que pudiera hacer para trabajar en Estados Unidos.

Cuando me mudé a California, The Press Democrat estaba buscando un escritor y editor bilingüe con dominio del español y experiencia en noticias. Nunca pensé que vería un trabajo así. Recuerdo que llamé a una amiga y sentí escalofríos y mariposas en el estómago. Fue emocionante y estimulante. Me hizo muy feliz ver que estaban buscando a alguien que prácticamente me describía a mí.

¿Cuál era su visión para La Prensa Sonoma cuando asumió como editora?

Me sorprendió que la mayoría de las agencias en los condados de Sonoma y Napa no tengan versiones en español de sus avisos de servicio público cuando hay emergencias como incendios forestales o ríos atmosféricos. Así que empecé a traducir el trabajo de mis colegas. En tiempo real, el tráfico en redes sociales de La Prensa Sonoma aumentaba muchísimo. Eso dio forma a mi visión inicial, porque estas comunidades necesitan información básica sobre emergencias y muchas personas solo leen en español.

Todos los temas relacionados con inmigración en los últimos dos años también han cambiado mi enfoque. Ahora cubrimos más sobre la aplicación de leyes migratorias, recursos legales, organizaciones sin fines de lucro que brindan ayuda y cómo la comunidad latina está tratando de entender qué viene después y qué es lo mejor para ellos y sus familias.

¿Cómo maneja personalmente la línea entre ser periodista y ser inmigrante afectada por las historias que cubre?

Ser neutral como periodista, para mí, en realidad significa ser veraz. Buscar la verdad, y cualquiera que sea esa verdad, escribirla. Y sí, a veces es difícil. Es desgarrador. La verdad no siempre es fácil de escribir ni de contar.

¿Qué le enseñó su experiencia como instructora de yoga que ahora aplica al periodismo?

La filosofía del yoga me ha enseñado a ser más consciente de mi entorno y de mi conexión con los demás. He hablado de esto con colegas: ¿Cómo estamos reportando? ¿Cómo tratamos a nuestras fuentes? ¿Qué compasión y conciencia aportamos? ¿Estamos buscando la verdad? Al hacerlo, ¿soy consciente de si mi fuente se siente demasiado vulnerable para hablar conmigo o de la forma en que hago mis preguntas? ¿Hay una mejor manera? ¿Puedo ofrecer algún tipo de apoyo?El yoga me dio una mayor conciencia sobre los demás y sobre cómo puedo ajustarme dentro de mi papel como periodista para proteger a mis fuentes, evitar retraumatizarlas o hacerlas sentir más vulnerables de lo que ya están.

¿Qué papel cree que juega La Prensa Sonoma en el panorama mediático actual?

Acceso para nuestra comunidad y hacia nuestra comunidad. The Press Democrat tiene un muro de pago, pero La Prensa Sonoma es gratuita. Se trata de acceso. La versión impresa de La Prensa Sonoma está solo en español, pero en línea se publica tanto en español como en inglés. Nuestras noticias en español sirven directamente a la comunidad latina y la versión en inglés permite que otros lectores se informen sobre lo que está ocurriendo en la comunidad latina.

Cuénteme sobre su judaísmo. ¿Qué la llevó a convertirse?

David y yo nos casamos con un rabino reformista, así que no tuve que convertirme en ese momento. Pero como periodistas siempre queremos saber más sobre todo. Yo quería aprender más sobre cada festividad judía, cada tipo de observancia, todo lo que hubiera que saber. Tomé muchas clases. Un día mi suegro me dijo: “Has estudiado tanto, ¿has pensado en convertirte?” Entonces decidí que sí quería hacerlo, porque ya me sentía espiritualmente muy conectada con la comunidad judía en Pittsburgh. Comencé el proceso de conversión a finales de 2016 y lo terminé en febrero de 2018. Fue hermoso. Decir mi primera oración judía, mi primer Shemá — todavía me emociona hablar de ello porque fue muy importante para mí.

En Pittsburgh usted formaba parte de la comunidad de Squirrel Hill. ¿Estaba vinculada a la sinagoga Tree of Life cuando ocurrió el ataque en 2018?

La sinagoga Tree of Life es donde me convertí. Tree of Life tiene un edificio muy grande y mi sinagoga en ese momento, New Light, alquilaba espacio allí. Tres de las personas fallecidas eran de New Light y eran amigos de nuestra congregación. Fue devastador. Estábamos fuera del edificio cuando todo estaba sucediendo. Después de eso, la comunidad de Squirrel Hill se unió de una manera hermosa, aunque muy dolorosa, porque todos estábamos de duelo. Mi esposo y yo tratamos de recordarlos cada año a nuestra manera, en casa.

Gran parte de la cultura latinoamericana, especialmente la mexicana, está influenciada por el catolicismo. ¿Cómo reconcilia esas partes de su identidad?

Sin juzgar. En México hay festividades católicas que se sienten más como celebraciones sociales que religiosas. En diciembre escribí sobre la primera Posada durante la celebración navideña de Windsor. La Posada es una tradición mexicana durante la Navidad que representa el momento de la historia del nacimiento de Jesús cuando María y José buscan un lugar para hospedarse. Eso me hizo recordar mi infancia y realmente lo disfruté. Siento la misma alegría al ir a una fiesta de Purim o al celebrar Tu Bishvat. Pero ahora que soy judía y estoy muy conectada con la comunidad judía, el significado es diferente.

Lee esta historia en español

Raquel Issenberg’s life traces a path shaped by migration, reinvention and a commitment to storytelling.

In just over a year as editor-in-chief, Issenberg has expanded La Prensa Sonoma, the Spanish-language publication of the Press Democrat News Group, into a vibrant media presence that delivers culturally attuned coverage and critical information to Spanish-speaking residents across the North Bay.

She also frequently contributes to the Press Democrat. In 2025, her writing and editing on issues affecting local Latino communities was honored at the California Journalism Awards.

Issenberg was born in Mérida, Mexico. Her family later moved north to Monterrey, where she earned a degree in communications sciences from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education.

Her first day as a reporter at El Norte, a large national newspaper, was Sept. 11, 2001. It was a sobering introduction to the gravity and unpredictability of news. Over the next 14 years, she worked at major Mexican publications, including Reforma and El Horizonte, building a career as a writer, editor and managing editor.

In 2016, she immigrated to the U.S. on a fiancé visa and began a new chapter. She lived with her husband in Pennsylvania and then Georgia, working as a teacher, interpreter and yoga instructor, eventually founding her own yoga studio.

Still, journalism remained her calling. When a rare bilingual editor position opened in Sonoma County, she seized it.

Issenberg, 50, who is a member of Congregation Shomrei Torah in Santa Rosa, spoke with J. about journalism, her conversion to Judaism and the delicate balance between neutrality and compassion in covering her own community.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

When did you first realize journalism might be your calling?

My grandfather was also a journalist. He would tell a lot of stories about his work and that kept my attention, but it was not my intention to become a journalist. When I finished college, I had so many options. This was around 2000 and a lot of things were happening in Mexico at that time. There was a lot of frustration with the government because the same party had been in power — we would call it a regime, because it lasted 70 years — because of election fraud. A candidate from the opposing party won the election, and with that came a big shift in Mexico. I decided that I just wanted to be part of it and to write about it.

After nearly 15 years in Mexican journalism, what was it like making a career pivot in the U.S.?

When I moved here, I thought I was never going to work in journalism again. I couldn’t see myself working as a writer or editor, especially with a language barrier. At some point, I gave up on it. I became a yoga teacher, did translation work, taught Spanish, anything I could do to work  in the U.S. 

When I moved to California, the Press Democrat was looking for a bilingual writer and editor with strong Spanish and news skills. I never thought I’d see a job like that. I remember calling a friend and felt like … goosebumps and butterflies. It was so exhilarating and exciting. I was just so happy to see that they were looking for someone basically describing me.

What was your vision for La Prensa Sonoma when you became its editor?

I was surprised that most agencies in both Sonoma and Napa counties don’t have a Spanish version of their PSAs when there are emergencies like wildfires or atmospheric rivers. So I started translating the work of my peers. In real time, the traffic would get super high for La Prensa Sonoma on social media. That shaped my initial vision, because people need basic emergency information in these communities that only read in Spanish. 

All the immigration issues over the last two years have also changed my focus. Now we’re covering more around immigration enforcement, legal resources and the nonprofits helping out, and how the Latino community is trying to figure out what’s next and what’s right for them and their families.

How do you personally navigate the line between being a journalist and being an immigrant affected by the stories you cover?

Being neutral as a journalist, to me, is actually more like being truthful. Look for the truth, and whatever the truth is, just write it. And yeah, sometimes it’s hard. It’s heart-wrenching. The truth is not always easy to write about, not easy to tell.

What did your role as a yoga instructor teach you that you now bring into journalism?

Yoga philosophy has informed me to be more aware of my surroundings and my connection with others. I’ve talked about this with peers and colleagues: How are we reporting? How are we treating our sources? What compassion and awareness do we bring? Are we looking for the truth? By doing so, am I being aware if my source is feeling too vulnerable to speak to me, or maybe the way I direct my questions? Is there a better way? Can I offer some support to my source? Yoga gave me an awareness of others and how I can adjust within the role of a journalist to not only protect my sources but also to not retraumatize them, or not to make them feel more vulnerable than they already are.

What role do you think La Prensa Sonoma plays in today’s media landscape?

Access for our community and to our community. The Press Democrat has a paywall, but La Prensa Sonoma is free. That’s about access. The print version of La Prensa Sonoma is only in Spanish but online it is both Spanish and English. Our news in Spanish directly serves the Latino community, and the English version allows other readers to be informed about what’s happening in the Latino community.

Tell me about your Judaism. What led you to convert?

David and I got married by a Reform rabbi, so I didn’t have to convert at the time. But as journalists, we always want to know more about everything. I wanted to know more about every Jewish festival, every type of observance, everything there is to know. I took so many classes. One day my father-in-law said, “Hey, you’ve studied so much, have you thought about converting?” I decided then that I wanted to because I already felt so connected spiritually through the Jewish community there in Pittsburgh. I started converting in late 2016, and I finished in February 2018. It was beautiful. Saying my first Jewish prayer, my first Shema — I get emotional talking about it because it was very important for me. 

In Pittsburgh, you were part of the Squirrel Hill community. Were you connected to the Tree of Life synagogue in 2018 when 11 worshippers were massacred?

Tree of Life synagogue is where I converted. Tree of Life has a huge building, and my synagogue at the time, New Light, rented space there. Three of the deceased were from New Light and were our shul friends. It was devastating. We were outside the building when it was all unfolding. After that, the Squirrel Hill community came together beautifully but very painfully because we were all mourning. My husband and I like to remember them every year in our own personal way at home.

So much of Latin American culture, especially Mexican culture, is influenced by Catholicism. How do you reconcile those parts of your identity?

With no judgment! In Mexico, there are Catholic holidays that feel more like social festivities than religious ones. In December I wrote about the first Posada at the Windsor town holiday celebration. Posada is a Mexican celebration during Christmastime representing the part of the nativity story when Mary and Joseph are looking for a place to stay so Jesus can be born. It took me back to when I was a kid, and I really enjoyed that. I feel the same joy going to a Purim party or Tu Bishvat. But now that I’m Jewish and very connected to the Jewish community, the meaning is different.

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.

Born into a prominent Persian Jewish family, Shahpour “Shawn” Matloob was just 6 years old on Feb. 11, 1979, when the Iranian Revolution culminated in the dramatic fall of the Shah. The trajectory of his life was forever changed by the cataclysmic event, as the pro-Western Pahlavi dynasty was overthrown and replaced by a theocratic Shiite Islamic republic.

The new regime imposed strict conservative religious laws, including mandatory hijabs for women, and reversed the country’s foreign policy by developing an anti-Western, anti-U.S. and anti-Israel stance, while projecting its influence across the Middle East, contributing to the rise of Islamic extremism.

Matloob’s father was a respected psychiatrist who loved his job and had no intention of leaving Iran, despite the mass exodus of most of the family’s relatives, friends and Jewish community.

Matloob, on the other hand, knew by age 12 that he wanted to come to America.

“I knew that I didn’t have a future in Iran,” he said, noting that as a gay Jewish person who wanted to pursue a higher education, he would have had a very difficult time surviving there.

It took him two years to convince his parents to let him go. But at age 14, on the day he would have started high school in 1987, he instead started his journey to immigrate to the U.S. 

Matloob was smuggled out of Iran with other Jews, spending Rosh Hashanah in the dangerous desert between Iran and Pakistan. He flew from Karachi to Austria and stayed in Vienna for about 10 months with other Jewish refugees from Iran and the Soviet block, supported by the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (now called HIAS). Finally, about a year after leaving his parents in Iran, he arrived in Los Angeles as a Jewish refugee.

From there he lived with a series of uncles, aunts and cousins until he made his way to the Bay Area, attending UC Berkeley and UC Law San Francisco.

Matloob, who is a member of Congregation Sha’ar Zahav, has been practicing immigration law for over 25 years. In addition to running his own firm, Matloob is dedicated to helping immigrants in any way he can, from mentoring other attorneys for asylum and immigration cases to representing naturalization applicants pro bono and volunteering with the Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area, AIDS Legal Referral Panel, American Immigration Lawyers Association and the Bar Association of San Francisco’s Justice and Diversity Center. In September he was hired by UC Berkeley as a part-time staff attorney providing immigrant legal services for legal permanent residents at his alma mater.

Matloob spoke with J. about Iran, immigration and how his personal story affects his professional practice. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What was your childhood like in Iran?

I was born in a very Jewish but nonobservant family. The only observant person in my family was my paternal grandfather, who was the principal of the first Jewish school in Tehran. So before the Islamic Revolution, we would only celebrate the major holidays. But when the revolution happened, religious studies became mandatory. My parents had to decide whether they were going to send me to Jewish classes or Islamic classes. On Friday mornings I would go to Jewish studies and Hebrew and Torah studies, which my parents would never have had me do if it wasn’t mandatory.

What was it like to be Jewish living under an Islamic government?

My mother had many issues. Almost all of her relatives had left, and the government wanted to confiscate their properties, so she had to go for regular interrogations. Then, from 1985 to 1992, she was forbidden from leaving the country, since they kept her hostage while trying to confiscate her relatives’ properties. My mother experienced a lot of hardships for being Jewish. On the other hand, my father, because he was a psychiatrist during the war with Iraq, was very respected, so it kind of counterbalanced in a way. At the beginning of the revolution, we were afraid they were going to come to our house, but nobody ever did. They asked my father to go for one interrogation, and once they found out what he did, they never called him in again.

What was it like coming to America?

I was coming to what we call “Tehran-geles.” Los Angeles was like Tehran before the revolution, which is where I wanted to live. I knew more people, more cousins and friends in my high school in L.A., than I knew in the school I left in Iran.

Was there a moment when you realized, “OK, I’m going to be fine here”?

I knew that my future was here. Despite all the difficulties of immigrating, especially after the first eight or nine months when I was staying with different family members, I did not know where I was going to live. So even at the risk of becoming homeless, I never had a doubt that I would want to live here. It was the best decision of my life. It never crossed my mind that I would ever go back.

Did you always know you wanted to become a lawyer?

No, when I came to L.A. one of my uncles gave me the idea. And watching “L.A. Law” at the time, I guess, helped too. When I applied for my own naturalization, I was a Cal student. I didn’t have the resources to even look for an attorney, and I thought, “as a Cal student, I can do it by myself.” I tried it, and I was successful. So then my next client was my mom. By then, I was in law school when I petitioned for my mom, who was my second client. She immigrated in 1998, but she continued going back and forth because her brother and my brother lived there.

How does your personal story affect the way you show up for clients?

I came here as a Jewish refugee, so definitely being Jewish Iranian is a big part of my immigration story. The fact that I knew at the age of 12 I had to immigrate helps me understand why other people immigrate too, and what they go through to immigrate, especially my younger clients.

What would you say is the hardest part about immigrating to the U.S. that people usually underestimate?

One big thing is not knowing how long it takes for those who want to come here legally. If it is possible at all, it may take many years waiting in their home country. Even getting here took me a year. People think immigrants just get on a plane and come here. 

What is one change you’d make to the U.S. immigration system if you could?

Comprehensive immigration reform to legalize the status of over 11 million undocumented people here. Many of them have lived here for many, many years. Many have mixed families, including U.S. citizens, spouses, children, parents. They’ve been paying taxes and they do not get the benefit of the taxes they pay. Many of them own homes and businesses. So I would do a comprehensive immigration reform to legalize their status, but in a way that doesn’t put them ahead of the line. One argument that we hear all the time is that many people are waiting abroad for their turn, and I do sympathize with that. We all benefit every single day from the services provided by the more than 11 million undocumented people who, especially these days, have been living in fear and uncertainty of whether they can remain here.

What do you wish policy-makers understood about people who immigrate?

I wish that policy-makers would push for humane conditions for those who are here and stop ICE from its inhumane activity. That will be the first step, considering what’s going on in Minnesota and many other parts of the country, with the way ICE has been treating people. Government officials say they’re going after the criminals, but the reality is the great majority of people they’re going after have no criminal records whatsoever. One thing people forget is that being undocumented here is not a criminal violation. It’s only a civil violation. So most of the people who the government is going after, terrorizing, only have civil violations and not criminal violations.

What is it like to watch what is unfolding now in Iran, especially as we are facing our own political crises here in the U.S.?

It’s a very difficult time, both as an immigration attorney and as an Iranian, but because my focus is on my work in immigration, what has been happening in this country to immigrants affects me almost every hour of my life, every moment of my life. But of course, what happens in Iran affects me and my friends. Many of my friends here are very much affected because they have many close relatives and friends there. The event I just came from before this conversation was a showing of a recent Iranian movie made underground, as many movies are made in Iran. It’s called “The Crowd,” and it’s a very brave movie about the LGBT community in Iran, which is, of course, also underground.

What has your experience been like as a queer Iranian Jew? Have you always been open about your identity?

For many years, I wasn’t. It took me a long time to initially tell close friends one by one, and then close family members one by one. I started going to my first coming out group in my first year of law school. Around the same time, in the mid to late ’90s, I found out about Sha’ar Zahav and that’s when I started going on and off.

Why did you struggle with coming out?

I would say first of all due to internalized homophobia, which I guess is very much related to the very conservative Persian Jewish community and culture. In many ways, the Persian Jewish community is a lot more conservative than both the Jewish community at large in the U.S., and also, I would say, even the Persian community at large.

What gives you hope right now?

That’s a hard one. What gives me hope is what the people are doing, especially these days. When I hear people in Minnesota, in freezing weather, are protesting and supporting immigrants, that’s what gives me hope. But I hope to see a lot more of it all over the country, and not just when there is a tragic incident in one location. I hope that we will see more widespread protests and general strikes against what’s happening to immigrants in this country.

When Tiffany Shlain was in fourth grade, her dad, a surgeon and writer, came to parent day at her Mill Valley school and presented her classroom with a human brain soaked in formaldehyde. “A lot of the kids screamed and ran out,” Shlain said. “I was riveted.”

Her innate fascination with neuroscience, coupled with her natural artistic and creative talents, set Shlain on an unconventional path. Over her 30-year career as an artist, filmmaker, writer and the founder of the Webby Awards, Shlain, 55, has produced award-winning videos and documentaries as well as traveling art exhibits, often focused on her three signature interests: feminism, technology and Judaism.

Her fascination with the brain endures. Last year, Shlain and actress-producer Goldie Hawn created a 10-minute video that aired on ABC’s “Good Morning America” all about what’s happening inside the teenage brain.

Last month, Manny’s cafe in San Francisco hosted a 20th anniversary screening of one of Shlain’s most celebrated works, the 2005 documentary short “The Tribe,” described as “an unorthodox history of the Jewish people and the Barbie doll.” Shlain co-wrote the 18-minute film with her husband, Ken Goldberg, a professor of robotics at UC Berkeley who is also an artist.

On Jan. 22, the Mill Valley couple will bring their latest exhibit to the di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art in San Francisco. “Ancient Wisdom for a Future Ecology: Trees, Time, and Technology” debuted in October 2024 at the Skirball Cultural Center in L.A., part of a Getty Museum initiative exploring the intersection of art and science. A number of pieces explore Jewish history and themes. Notably, several massive slices of tree trunks — at least one weighing 10,000 pounds — are used to ask existential questions (“Tree of Knowledge”), explore feminist history (“Dendrofemonology”) and trace 5,000 years of the Jewish people (“DendroJudaeology”), with words sculpted into the tree rings. 

Shlain spoke with J. about the exhibition’s big plans for Tu Bishvat, her complicated relationship with AI and technology, and the joys of creating art with her husband of nearly 30 years. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You’ve spoken about growing up in a culturally Jewish but nonreligious household, and later as a mother of two you embraced a tech-free ritual during Shabbat. How did that come about?

We started doing Shabbat when our children were young, on and off, lighting the candles. It was really when I had this very dramatic couple of weeks [in 2009], where I lost my father and our second daughter was born, that we started turning off screens every week. It just made our lives so much better. 

We’re not designed to be online all the time, and this idea of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel describing Shabbat as a “palace in time” has never been more needed, especially as the technology is becoming more and more in the ether. We need to have the courage to step up and bring back this practice, because it refreshes and recharges you. It feels like the most important practice I’ve brought into my life. Friday night, we have people over for Shabbat, and all the screens go off. I do my best thinking on Saturday, and we’re usually in nature. 

Is being in nature a big part of your life?

I grew up in Mill Valley near the Muir Woods, and I spent a lot of time in the Muir Woods with my family and at the Sequoia Theater. We went to the movies every Sunday. That was a real way to have an art form open up a deep conversation after we went to the movies. Those two things were really important growing up.

How did you get into filmmaking?

I went to Berkeley and studied sciences, philosophy and trees, and then eventually studied film. I took a film class, and I was like, this is going to be the way I can bring it all together. I made films at Berkeley and then studied filmmaking at NYU during the summer of my junior year. I tried to make a very ambitious film right out of college, which was called “Zoli’s Brain.” It was my big failure. I kept running out of money. I was a waitress, a professor’s assistant. I was doing multiple jobs trying to raise money for this movie. I went to work in the CD-ROM industry — this was all before the web. Eventually, I was like, maybe I should stop working on this movie.

In 1996 you founded the Webby Awards, back when the internet was young. Now we’re in this new frontier of AI. Is there anything we can learn now about your creative approach then?

[Creating the Webbys] was almost like I was honoring this new medium that I was so excited about. I was making films, doing this really edgy, alternative, subversive award show.

I think new technology is good and bad. Just like media theorist Marshall McLuhan said, it’s an extension of us as humans, and Jews certainly know the idea of questioning everything. AI is about actually learning how to ask interesting questions. The whole process of AI, if you think of ChatGPT, is how do you ask the right question and keep iterating on the question? It couldn’t be more Jewish.

There’s immense potential with AI, with medical research and having the world’s knowledge at your fingertips, and there’s a lot of concern with disinformation spreading. What kind of knowledge is it basing it on? And how do you trust it? It’s good and bad and everything in between. Cultural critic Neil Postman talked about having a “bullshit detector,” and that is something that you’re going to need to have on overdrive at all times.

How did this latest exhibit, about trees, time and technology, come about?

I spend a lot of time in salvaged lumber yards looking for wood. In 2022 I was working on tree ring sculptures — my first one being the feminist history tree ring — and Ken was working with AI and robots. He was working on a tree census of L.A. We got an email saying the Getty Museum’s theme was “art and science collide.” So we kind of merged. I brought my tree ring sculptures, he brought his AI, and we co-created all of these works.

How did you bring a Jewish lens to the exhibit?

You could say that all of my work comes from that lens, because that is absolutely who I am. A new work for the show is called “The World Is a Narrow Bridge.” I saw this piece of wood, which to me looks like a narrow bridge. It’s a juniper, and it actually has a lot of natural dots. I’m going to engrave on there “The world is a narrow bridge, and the most important thing is to…” And then you need to think of what for you is the most important thing in this moment.

Especially these last couple years, since Oct. 7, have been so difficult being Jewish, but they’ve also been very clarifying. It’s underscored for me how incredibly important being Jewish is for me. 

The timing of this exhibit is right around Tu Bishvat, the new year for the trees.

Ken and I love artist-led tours. On the eve of Tu Bishvat, Feb. 1, from 1 to 4 p.m., we’re inviting the Jewish community to come for a more Jewish-focused, artist-led tour. We’re going to walk you through our Jewish lens on the show.

Related programs at di Rosa SF:

• Opening night reception, 6 to 8 p.m. Jan. 22. RSVP
• Artist talk and tour for SF Art Week, 11 a.m.-12 p.m. Jan. 24. RSVP
• Tu Bishvat artist-led tour, talk and celebration, 1-4 p.m. Feb. 1. RSVP 
• An afternoon of feminist art and action, 1-4 p.m. March 7. RSVP
• Art & AI conversation with Ken Goldberg and Whitney curator Christiane Paul, 6-8:30 p.m. March 12.  RSVP 
• Tiffany Shlain and Ken Goldberg in conversation with journalist Krista Tippett, 6:30-8 p.m. March 26. RSVP
• Show closes April 11

Serendipity struck in Palo Alto last month when I bumped into the mother of Raphael Bob-Waksberg, the Bay Area–born writer and executive producer of the animated hit show “BoJack Horseman.”

I’m a big fan of his work. Like many, I watched “BoJack” religiously. I told Ellen Bob on the spot that I would love to interview her son about his new and very Jewish TV show “Long Story Short” that premiered on Netflix in August. 

Long story short, he listened to his mother. 

The name “Bob-Waksberg” is familiar to many in the Jewish community. Raphael’s parents have had long careers in Jewish life in the Bay Area. His mom was co-owner of the Palo Alto Judaica store bob and bob and has been executive director of Congregation Etz Chayim in Palo Alto since 2011. Waksberg is the former CEO of Jewish LearningWorks, which offers professional development and support to Jewish educators in the Bay Area, and from an early age was deeply involved in the movement to bring Jews out of the Soviet Union. 

“BoJack Horseman” is set in an alternate world where humans and anthropomorphic animals live together. The title character is the has-been star of a ’90s sitcom.

“Long Story Short” features the Schwoopers, a boisterous Jewish family from Mountain View.

As someone who is new to the Bay Area, this first season felt like a kismet guide to understanding the Jewish zeitgeist here. While visually colorful and often playful (with animation by Lisa Hanawalt, who also worked on “BoJack Horseman”), the show isn’t afraid to delve into complex relationships, the intensity of bereavement and contemporary Jewish identity.

Bob-Waksberg, 41, now lives in L.A. but is coming to San Francisco on Jan. 28 to present an episode of “Long Story Short,” as well as other work, as part of a career retrospective at SF Sketchfest titled “The Bob-Waksberg Binge.”

He spoke with J. about his creative process, Judaism and connection to the Bay Area. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

“BoJack Horseman” takes place in Hollywood. “Long Story Short” takes place in a Jewish, Bay Area microcosm. What compelled you to tell the story in such a niche neighborhood and community?

One of the things I’m most proud of, with all of my shows, is when people tell me, “I didn’t think I would like a show like this, but I really do.”

With “BoJack,” one thing we found is that the show did work really well with all kinds of audiences, whether you were interested in show business or not, because it tapped into themes, stories and relationships that were universal. That was my goal on this show as well. 

It’s the reason why I was not afraid to go into the hyperspecifics of the Bay Area or the Jewishness of it. I knew people would come into it with their own experiences, and though they might not get all the references or all the jokes, they would find their own way into the universality of the stories and the relationships. 

In the new show, the JCC, the Rosh Hashanah grocery store rush and synagogues are all places where the texture and tension unfold. How has your experience in these spaces informed the writing process?

Because I grew up Jewish in the Bay Area, the show’s setting is the water I was swimming in. I’m from Palo Alto. I set the show in Mountain View, so it wasn’t purely autobiographical. 

When I first developed the show and wrote the pilot, I was actually pretty noncommittal about the show’s setting. It was only through working with brilliant artist Lisa Hanawalt [“BoJack Horseman,” “Tuca & Bertie”] when she started drawing these houses that looked like Peninsula houses. And then I had the comfort of knowing what’s right or not right. If I were to set the show on Long Island, I’d be guessing. I just knew I could be more accurate about the details. 

We have a map of the Bay Area in the writers room. The other writers tease me sometimes because they’ll try to create some story where one of the characters is popping over to another character’s house. I have to explain they can’t just pop by if they live in Mountain View, Oakland and Santa Rosa. They are intentionally living in different cities. 

Animation is a medium seldom taken seriously, yet in this show you’ve been able to create these delicate, emotional moments about how different people process grief and grow. 

I think you probably have readers who are maybe reading this interview who assume they wouldn’t like a family cartoon show. And I would appeal to them to give it a chance, because I think it might not be what you are expecting, and you might discover that you connect to it in ways you didn’t think you could. 

“Long Story Short” is a deep dive into modern Jewish complexity, with Jews of color, queer Jews, patrilineal Jews and Jews who are questioning both ritual and belief. Why was that important to you?

The show does not speak for all Jews. It is of a specific milieu and subset. But even within that subset, I wanted to show various characters having different feelings about their culture, religion, upbringing, religiosity, etc. In order to accurately portray that, you need to go a little bit in detail. They are Jews, sure. But what kind of Jews are they?

It was also a correction to how religion is talked about and perceived in this country, which is primarily through a Christian lens, in which the more important facet of religion is faith and belief. That’s what defines whether you are a Christian or not. That has not been my experience of Judaism. So many Jews I know call themselves atheist or agnostic, if they even thought to label themselves at all. So I wanted to explore various debates and conversations around Jewishness that were not centered on belief.

I am finding now, as an adult who is looking for ways to recreate, adapt and improve upon the Judaism of my childhood for my own family, there’s a religiously rigorous but politically progressive strand of Judaism that I grew up with. I feel as though I took it for granted. I’m discovering it’s harder to find than maybe I anticipated, that it’s not the universal experience of Judaism. That particular combination feels uniquely Bay Area to me.

What parts of Judaism do you keep in mind while crafting the personhood of each character?

I’ve had my own challenges and discomforts with what I thought Judaism was or had to be. What I have found as I’ve gotten older is that the freedom in discovering or establishing for yourself what you want it to be is empowering. If you don’t believe Judaism is a mandate from God telling you exactly how you ought to be, that’s OK. It is there for you to get out of it what you want to get out of it.

That has been my search as an adult, to try to track my questions and create that version of Judaism for myself. I wanted to show some characters on that journey who answer those questions in different ways.

I would argue Judaism informs the thinking of each character in some way. Except perhaps, for the goofy, resident troublemaker Danny Wegbreit. 

Danny Wegbreit was named after a childhood friend of mine, David Wegbreit. We went to the same summer camp, Camp Tovah at the JCC, and would get in trouble together. After the show premiered, I got an email from David Wegbreit saying, “I think I’m flattered?” and I said, “You should be!” 

To anyone living in the Bay Area now, if you know a Wegbreit, please do not judge them based on my portrayal of Danny Wegbreit on the show. That is not an accurate depiction of the Wegbreits as a whole!

“The Bob-Waksberg Binge” at SF Sketchfest
7:30 p.m. Jan. 28. Great Star Theater, 636 Jackson St., S.F. $37-$48.

March 11, 2013, was a prophetic night for Corey Rosen. It was when he got to perform at the first-ever San Francisco show of The Moth, national storytelling competition since 1996 and today also a popular podcast and radio program. 

The story he told was about his late 82-year-old cousin Norman, which he whipped up with less than a day’s notice, and it was a hit –– so much so, that he was soon invited to become an official host of The Moth’s StorySLAM shows in San Francisco and Berkeley. The open-mic nights feature people telling five-minute stories without notes, and on a given theme.

It was no random stroke of luck or creativity for Rosen, who has devoted his life to storytelling from a young age, attending a performing arts camp for many years and later studying radio, television and film production at Northwestern University. 

After college, Rosen moved to the Bay Area and secured his first job at the visual effects company Industrial Light and Magic. He initially worked as a “creature supervisor,” overseeing the development of animated characters for major motion pictures including the “Star Wars” prequels, a “Jurassic Park” sequel and “The Chronicles of Narnia.”

Over the past five years, Rosen, 52, has taken on another role, going from a storyteller to a storytelling educator. “Your Story, Well Told,” his guidebook of strategies for developing and performing engaging stories on and off stage, was published in 2021.

Earlier this month, the San Francisco resident and father of two came out with his second book, “A Story for Everything,” which functions as a companion to his first book, with expanded resources for more diverse storytelling occasions.

On Feb. 19, Rosen will host a storytelling workshop at Urban Adamah in Berkeley. 

Keep reading, or listen to the full interview below. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What was your Jewish upbringing like?

I went to Sunday school, Hebrew school, I was bar mitzvahed. Weirdly, the stories in the Torah and the way we celebrate, interpret and reinterpret over and over those same stories is the thing that has always kind of hooked me. I mean, Jews are always telling stories.

I didn’t go to a Jewish summer camp, because I was in performing arts, which was my interest from a very young age. I was lucky enough to go to a summer camp in the Catskill Mountains called French Woods Festival. I was acting in musicals before I was 10 years old. I went there for nine summers.

Some of my closest friends in the world are the people I went to that camp with. Many of those friends are also creative professionals using their theatrical backgrounds in their lives, whether on stage or behind the camera, in different capacities.

You’ve had several creative interests. How have they all complemented each other over the course of your life?

As a kid, I wanted to be more of an actor. I wanted to be on stage, I like to perform, I like to be creative. But I also liked to make films with my friends, so I went to film school, and I loved it. Even after I started working in the animation industry, my happy place was on improv stages, where I could show up without a script, without the fear of doing it wrong, and I could make up scenes and characters and stories. I think that everybody should take an improv class at some point in their life. Improvisation is not just a theater or comedy skill, it’s a life skill.

For example, for the last 15 years or so, I have been part of the team that helps craft The Kitchen’s Purimspiel. One of the things that we did this year that was particularly enjoyable was figuring out what resources we had in the community, then and there. And we happened to have Barry Kendall, the former executive director of the San Francisco Circus Center. So we set Purim in the big top, and we had circus performers and clowns and acts. It was incredibly messy, but it was a resonant, humorous, but also deeply moving and powerful way of telling and retelling that story. 

The first job you had out of college at Industrial Light and Magic is listed as “creature supervisor.” What does that job entail?

To make special effects in the computer, it takes many specialists. People who are crafting and designing, people who are writing and voicing the characters, etc. But in between, there was this kind of nether region: how does it go from an idea and a drawing to an animation in a scene? That’s how the concept of a creature supervisor was born. I did a lot of helping and facilitating that creature through the pipeline, from its origin to its design, to showing up and looking correct on screen, being a sort of steward of a character in a movie.

You’ve had a lot of experience in developing both true and fictional stories. Any similarities between those two seeming opposites?

When I was a staff writer at Lucasfilm, I was looking at the themes that were emerging in the stories that I was writing. A lot of them were about being a young person, and discovering who you are. And I realized that these are my stories, I was just dressing them up with the adventures of a young character. Those fictional stories were about stepping out of your comfort zone and finding out who you are. So when you flip that on its head, the conclusion can be “Well, let’s just tell the real versions of those stories.” And The Moth is one of these platforms where anybody can get on stage and tell a true story.

These are true stories that are elevated beyond anecdotes. It’s not just a thing that happened, it’s a thing that happened for a reason.

When did you go from seeing storytelling as an artistic craft to seeing it as a skill that can be applied in many ways and places?

When I was hosting these story shows, one of the first things I realized is that the job of a host in that context was not to entertain per se. My job was to hold the stage as a kind of safe space for anyone to feel comfortable to come up and tell their story, because a lot of people are afraid of getting up and speaking in public. 

While I was on tour promoting my first book, I was getting a lot of questions along the lines of, “Well, I’m not a storyteller, why should I learn about storytelling?” And I was like, of course you’re a storyteller! You have to write grant applications, or you’re applying for jobs, you’re going on dates, you’re giving feedback to your employees, etc. Whatever your job is, odds are you’re a storyteller, or at least you have to connect or communicate with other people. And what I’ve found is that doing it as a story is always better. If you can say not just what happened, not what the data is, but also frame it, and contextualize the “why,” the impact is really amazingly tangible.

When I arrived at Rita Semel’s apartment on the evening of her 104th birthday, bouquets of flowers and birthday cards adorned the room. A potted white orchid was placed on the coffee table between us. “These are from Nancy Pelosi,” said Semel’s daughter, Elisabeth. The former House speaker, a friend dating back more than 50 years, always sends a birthday gift.

Semel celebrated her Nov. 15 birthday with relatives and close friends over dinner at Troya, her favorite Turkish restaurant in San Francisco, a quieter birthday compared with the big celebration for her 100th.

Semel, who served as executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area in the late ’80s, is most known for pioneering several initiatives fostering dialogue and understanding across faiths and races. She is the co-founder of the San Francisco Interfaith Council, which she began in 1988 with Father Eugene Boyle, a “maverick” Catholic priest. 

Still, her brief stint in journalism in the 1940s, working for the San Francisco Chronicle as a “copy boy” and later as associate editor of the Jewish Community Bulletin (one of the former names of this publication), holds a special place in her heart. She left the Bulletin in 1950 when Elisabeth was born. Two years later, she welcomed a second daughter, Jane, who died at age 18 in a tragic accident.

Elisabeth Semel recalled growing up with a front row seat to the Civil Rights Movement, thanks to her mother’s activism.

“When Martin Luther King came to San Francisco to speak at the Cow Palace, my parents took us. When John Kennedy came to speak at Cal, my parents took us,” said Elisabeth Semel, now a professor at UC Berkeley Law and co-director of the school’s Death Penalty Clinic. She noted how her mother took part in demonstrations along San Francisco’s “Cadillac Row” on Van Ness Avenue, protesting employment discrimination by auto dealers against Black Americans. And in 1965, during the Delano grape strike, when farmworkers protested for fair wages and working conditions, Semel brought her daughters to march with Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta in California’s Central Valley.

J. sat down with Semel to hear about the challenges and successes she’s experienced over her 104 years.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You and I are both proud Barnard alumni, many, many decades apart. You majored in political science when you were at Barnard. What got you interested in politics?

I thought it would be a good background to being a reporter.

So you and I were the same. You knew you wanted to pursue journalism after Barnard. 

It was unusual for women to be reporters in my day, but I tried, and I was a reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle. I remember going in the street to ask people about how they felt about World War II ending. And the men that I stopped to talk to thought I was trying to pick them up. I mean, it was very unusual in those days for a woman to be a reporter. But anyway, I managed to get through it. I had an assignment where I went to see them sign the U.N. charter in San Francisco in June 1945. That was very exciting. I enjoyed my days at the Chronicle.

Was being a reporter a dream come true?

Yes, absolutely, it was a dream. I got to meet different people. I got to learn about different things. It was a way to see the world in a different place.

In 1964, you organized the inaugural San Francisco Conference on Religion and Race, bringing people of different races, ethnicities and faiths together who were all committed to desegregation. What got you interested in interfaith work?

I guess I’m a busybody at heart, but I wanted to know what was different about each religion, what was the same and what we all believed and what we didn’t believe. And I still feel that it’s very important to get to know people of other religions and other faiths, because you never should stop learning. There’s always something new to learn. Even at my age, I feel like I still learn something.

Being a reporter, you must know that you’re always looking for a good story. And so I got introduced to this Catholic priest, Eugene Boyle, who had a very good story, and we became very close friends. In those days everybody was sort of in their own closet. I felt that it was time for people to come out and meet each other, because there were certain things we shared. There were differences, of course, but there were more similarities than people realized.

You’re a longtime member of Congregation Emanu-El.

I go every Friday.

Besides the recent major renovation of Emanu-El, does synagogue life feel like it always has, or have things changed?

It’s much more open than it used to be, and that’s probably true of most. How is it at other houses of worship? I mean, there was a time when someone who went to a Catholic church never met anybody who went to a Protestant church. But I think that’s changed somewhat. Not enough. I started an organization called the San Francisco Interfaith Council, in which we brought in people of different faiths to meet each other, and we found that we had more in common than anybody ever thought. When you think about it, what’s the reason for being anything — Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim — is to make the world a better place. That’s something we all want to do.

Did those experiences change the way you saw intermarriage, which was much less accepted in the mainstream Jewish community a generation ago?

I was fortunate to marry someone who was Jewish, but if I found someone who wasn’t Jewish, I would have married him. I think that, and we have to learn from each other. I hope the time is over when if you didn’t marry someone of your own faith you were ostracized. I hope that’s no longer happening.

Someone who has long embraced the Jewish community and celebrates connections across faiths is Rep. Nancy Pelosi. 

What you said about her is very true. She and I are old friends. She was one of the best. I worked very hard to get her elected. She’s done a wonderful job in Congress. 

Early in your life, what are the things you set out to accomplish?

I wanted to make the world a better place. And I was very fortunate. I had a husband who — he probably would have preferred a housewife, but he didn’t have one. He had me. But he was very willing to let me do the things I needed to do. So we had a good marriage. 

Are those pearls that you’re wearing from your late husband, Max? They look special.

He gave them to me a long time ago.

It’s pretty remarkable to live past 100. 

It’s interesting that you say it’s remarkable. I guess it is, and I never really thought about it that way. Here I am, I just make the best of it.

What’s a typical day like for you?

I wish I had more to do. I’d love to get a job, but who wants to hire me?

What kind of job would you take?

I’d love to work for a newspaper.

I’ll let J.’s editors know.

When we first profiled Emily Winston, it was 2017 and the Cornell- and Davis-educated engineer had just sold eight dozen bagels in 13 minutes out of her home in Alameda.

A series of pop-ups followed. Then Winston opened her first, highly anticipated bagel shop in Berkeley in 2019, on the site of the original Noah’s Bagels. Six years later, there are 12 Boichik Bagel outlets, including shops in San Francisco, Palo Alto, Larkspur, Walnut Creek and even two in Los Angeles, while the frozen bagels are available in stores or sold fresh in coffeehouses around the Bay Area. In 2023 she opened a factory in Berkeley, complete with robots that sling trays of bagels onto racks.

The origin story of the Boichik bagel has been told many times. In short, Winston missed the bagels she remembered from her New Jersey childhood, from the classic (if financially troubled) New York City chain H&H. So she decided to re-create them.

“This was done for my own personal benefit,” she told J. in 2017. “I’m a picky Jew who just wants an H&H bagel. No one here is trying to do that. All the chefs here want to make it their own, or make some kind of hybrid.”

The New York Times food critic Tejal Rao called Boichik “some of the finest New York-style bagels I’ve ever tasted” in a 2021 article, and Winston is no longer an independent home baker with bagel-rolling carpal tunnel syndrome. Now she’s a bagel kingpin. But she’s not resting on her laurels.

J. sat down with her to talk about how she got here, what she sees for the future and what it’s like to own a publicly Jewish business in the post-Oct. 7 world.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

So how does it feel to be a bagel macher and the big player on the California bagel scene?

It’s definitely snuck up on me. I still feel like the scrappy underdog, internally, but I’m not seen that way anymore. Now I’m a big dog.

How did you do it? The skills needed to make a bagel are vastly different from the skills needed to scale and run a business.

I think the miracle was that I developed the bagel in the first place. I didn’t have any baking background or culinary experience, so I think the craziest part of the whole thing is like, how come I’m the one that discovered this magical bagel recipe?

My training is as an engineer, so the factory piece is just: What can we do to make this, keep the product where I want it but make it easier and allow us to scale and allow us to make more bagels, and get more bagels to more people, and grow this whole thing?

I like to call it a benevolent bagel empire that I’m building. I grew up playing all these really nerdy computer games like Sim City and Civilization, so my natural state is thinking about stuff like this.

After the New York Times piece, I really did a lot of soul searching. I could sit here in my wildly successful bagel shop, or I could grow it. I’m like, “I’m going to get bored with one.”

Boichik is a very identifiably Jewish business. It’s clear when you walk in a store that it’s a real Jewish bagel shop. Was that intentional, or did it just happen naturally because bagels, and you, are Jewish?

That was by design. Just coming up with the name, I wanted it to be Jewish. I had that great moment with my grandmother where she looked at my hair and said I looked like a boychik [Yiddish for a young man]. I came to bagels because of my Jewish upbringing. My dad would be in the city and go to Zabar’s and H&H and Russ & Daughters. A big piece of my Jewish identity is the food.

How’s it been being a Jewish business over the last two years?

It has been very rough. We had the graffiti incident here, a lot of hate messages, a lot of really nasty stuff on Instagram, people trying to suss out if I’m a Zionist or not, demanding statements. The statement is: “We’re a bagel shop and we’re not involved, our business is making bagels.” People were livid about that.

I am absolutely one of the many who have been living in a happy bubble, thinking antisemitism was ancient history. I had never experienced it personally myself. I thought we’re all just happy multicultural people now, and we just celebrate everything. It’s been a very unpleasant learning experience the last two years.

What’s next for the expansion of the benevolent bagel empire? Are you going to take over the East Coast?

That could happen eventually. The crazy thing is my parents in central Jersey complain that they don’t have any good bagel shops around them anymore.

I think international is a possibility. I’m learning about franchising, and thinking that could be a possibility, but not just yet.

So many promising pop-ups go under. How have you been able to grow?

We used a lot of debt to grow. We reinvested all the profits. I sold my house. We did a crowdfunding campaign for over a million dollars; that’s also debt. [Backers were able to buy “bagel bonds” that pay returns.] I just recently did a friends and family equity round.

My parents were like, “How much do we own?” And I’m like, “Nothing, remember when you said this is a terrible idea, and you tried to talk me out of it?” Which they did. They said don’t put all of your money into this. This is not what we sent you to engineering school for, so you could open a bagel shop. They tried, really. They thought this was a terrible idea.

Once the New York Times thing happened, they completely obliterated from their minds that they ever thought this was a bad idea. Now they’re very proud. I think my mom has the article in her purse at all times. Just in case someone hasn’t seen it, she can whip it out. 

Do you think of yourself as a leader in some way in the Bay Area Jewish community?

In a way, it does feel like I’ve created kind of a JCC, because everyone comes for bagels, there’s no actual religious practice needed. You can just come and enjoy a bagel. Before I started this, I had not met that many Jewish people in the Bay Area. Like, I wasn’t active, I didn’t belong to a synagogue. But as soon as I opened this, all the Jews came running. It’s cool.

I feel like I am part of the Jewish community. It feels meaningful to me. Especially after the last two years it feels good to have this. It wasn’t what I was thinking about at all when I decided to start this. It was just, “I’ve got a great bagel and I think this could fly.”

Some people meticulously chart their careers with five-year plans and carefully set goals and milestones. Others, like Yoav Schlesinger, follow a path that’s less about planning and more about curiosity and the willingness to answer when opportunity comes knocking.

Schlesinger describes his career path as “delightfully nonlinear,” and it has led across coasts, through religious studies, nonprofit leadership, tech ethics and civic engagement.

Schlesinger was born in Los Angeles but raised in southern New Jersey where his father served as a Conservative rabbi. He returned to California to attend Stanford University, where he majored in Jewish studies before expanding into explorations of international security, Islamic ethics and religious philosophy. Since then, his career has moved fluidly across sectors, grounded in an interest in values, meaning and community impact.

From fundraising at the JCCSF to co-founding a consulting firm that supported nonprofits across the Bay Area, to executive leadership roles at Reboot and The Kitchen, to launching the most successful Jewish Kickstarter of all time, each chapter of his story builds on the last. More recently, his work has focused on responsible innovation in technology and AI, including leading initiatives at Omidyar Network and Salesforce.

Schlesinger, 46, lives in San Anselmo with his wife, Keely, and their two daughters. Last year he got involved in a new kind of leadership, one close to home: local government. Schlesinger was elected in December 2024 to the San Anselmo Town Council, where his focus on people and values remains central.

Schlesinger spoke with J. about his career path, the role of resilience in a changing world and the cautious optimism that fuels his commitment to building a better future.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How did you decide to major in Jewish studies? Part of a life plan?

I didn’t set out to major in it, but after spending a semester at Hebrew University in Jerusalem during my junior year, studying Hebrew, Talmud, Jewish history and literature, I came back and realized I already had all the credits. I declared the major and wrapped it up quickly, which gave me time in my senior year to explore other interests. That included international security, and I ended up writing my honors thesis on Islamic ethics of war, specifically how Islamic scholars framed the use of chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq war.

Where did that take you after graduation?

I worked for a year as a USY director at a synagogue in L.A., then tried grad school at Columbia. I’m a proud grad school dropout! I came back to San Francisco and landed my first job at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco — at the front desk. They knew I was overqualified, but I think they saw some potential. A few months in, the development director asked me if I’d ever considered fundraising. So I joined the capital campaign team and basically went through fundraising bootcamp, which kicked off my professional path in a serious way.

You co-founded a consulting firm and worked with nonprofits across the Bay Area for five years on everything from capital campaigns to strategic planning. What made you then decide to try executive leadership?

I realized I’d spent years advising executive directors without having been one myself. So I moved to New York to lead Reboot, a Jewish cultural incubator. Then my wife and I were expecting our first daughter and decided to return to California. We’re both fifth-generation Californians and we wanted our daughter to also be Californian. Back in San Francisco, I became the inaugural executive director of The Kitchen, a synagogue founded by Rabbi Noa Kushner. I helped grow that from an idea into a thriving community organization. I also launched Hello Mazel, a Jewish-themed quarterly subscription box. It ended up becoming the top Jewish Kickstarter project of all time.

And your next venture went in a very different direction — tech and AI work.

Around 2017, I had this moment where I asked myself, “Am I really having the kind of impact I want to have?” It felt like the world was shifting dramatically, particularly around two existential issues: climate change and the role of technology in our lives. I found a way into the tech world through Omidyar Network, the venture philanthropy founded by eBay’s Pierre Omidyar. There, I helped launch and lead the Tech and Society Solutions Lab, where we explored responsible innovation and created tools like the Ethical OS [Toolkit] for product teams. That work led to a role at Salesforce, where I spent six years on the AI team focused on responsible innovation and how AI intersects with society.

That was a significant pivot. Is there a thread that connects all these different roles?

It’s a question I’ve had to ask myself many times! What connects it all is a deep interest in values, meaning-making, purpose and community. I have an interest in how people come together around shared norms and principles. That thread runs through Jewish studies, Islamic ethics, fundraising, synagogue leadership, cultural innovation and, now, the ethics of technology and AI. At the end of the day, I’ve always cared about how people organize themselves to live meaningfully and ethically.

You recently took on another leadership role, this time in local government. What inspired it?

Another open door, honestly. When a beloved local bookstore was being priced out of their location, I started asking questions: What does it say about us if we let our community institutions die? Is this the kind of town I want to live in? In a last-minute decision, I threw my hat in the ring for San Anselmo Town Council. Three months later, I was elected. I’ve now served for almost a year.

Do you connect with people naturally, or did that grow through your work?

A bit of both. I’ve always enjoyed connecting with people, but each career chapter has helped me develop that skill in new ways, whether it’s listening to donors, understanding tech users or engaging with voters. It’s like building different muscles that all contribute to the same goal: keeping people at the center.

What advice will you give your kids about figuring out their own paths?

This is one of the hardest things for me right now, and the thing that keeps me up at night. The technological change that we are currently facing is only accelerating from here, and it’s already been a wild ride over the last few years. When you think about human-AI interaction and the impact that AI will have on every corner of our lives — from how we work to how we access education, to health care and services and its fundamental integration in every aspect of our lives — it is nearly impossible for any of us to accurately predict the future.

It comes down to things as fundamental as, what is the value of education? Will a college degree matter when my children are in early- to mid-career? If not, what does matter? What are areas where humans are uniquely positioned to flourish, as opposed to places where humans are likely to be displaced or replaced by AI? What are uniquely human capabilities where leaning in will get you further? It’s going to be all about resilience and adaptability to change, because that change is coming, and it’s coming fast.

Are you hopeful for the future?

I’d say I have cautious optimism. The moment we’re in is precarious. It wouldn’t take much for things to tip toward a darker future, but it’s also within our power to tip it in the other direction. 

I want people to understand that the work around technology, especially AI, isn’t about doom. It’s about responsibility. AI has tremendous potential to improve lives, but only if we are thoughtful and intentional about how we develop and apply it. If we don’t act deliberately, we risk serious consequences. The stakes are high, which is why we have to keep humans, values, rights and community at the center of it all.

As I sat down to write this introduction to my interview with Rachel Goldberg-Polin and Jon Polin, it occurred to me that they need no introduction. Since their son, Hersh, was kidnapped from the Nova music festival on Oct. 7, 2023, taken hostage in Gaza and, later, brutally murdered, Jon and Rachel have become, for many, the personification of an entire nation’s pain. 

They didn’t want this. They surely didn’t ask for it. “We’re the manifestation of everybody’s worst nightmare,” Rachel said. And yet, it is precisely that fact, coupled with the almost supernatural grace they have brought to their international advocacy for Israel’s hostages, that helped make Hersh one of the most recognizable faces among the captives and why his death last year hit so hard. It’s also why Jews have looked to them as exemplars of how to respond to one of the worst periods in Jewish history. Despite all they’ve gone through, and all they continue to endure, Hersh’s parents still see this as a moment of opportunity. 

“You’ve got your narrative, we’ve got our narrative,” Jon said. “You’ve suffered, we’ve suffered. … And you know what? We’re never going to outshout each other. Let’s look forward and start right now and dedicate ourselves to something better for all of us.”

In advance of their Nov. 9 appearance at the Z3 Conference at the Oshman Family JCC in Palo Alto, Jon and Rachel — who lived in Berkeley before moving to Israel in 2008 — spoke to J. from their home in Jerusalem. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

A lot of people here in the U.S., and also in Israel, felt as if they knew Hersh after Oct. 7. Some did, but most of us didn’t. I wonder if you could tell us about him as a person, and what it was like to be his parents.

Rachel Goldberg-Polin: Hersh, obviously, was a curious citizen of the world. “Obviously,” just because that’s really what I’ve come to realize is the most apt way of describing him. He was always hungry for knowledge, but very much outside of the confines of normative learning. So school was not really interesting to him. He did enough to get by, but was always an underachiever in school. And yet he was this voracious reader about whatever subject was floating his boat. As a young kid, he was obsessed with geography, obsessed with American presidents, obsessed with Native American history, obsessed with the Civil War.

And as he became a young man — I still think of him as a boy. He was a very young 23. He had just turned 23 on Oct. 3, three days before we said goodbye to him and he went down to the Nova festival. He was obsessed with his favorite soccer club, his Jerusalem Hapoel soccer club. He loved trance music and music festivals, and used them as an opportunity to get to know and meet different people from all over the world. He was very committed to traveling by himself when he went to those festivals, because he said when you travel in a clump, then you stay in a clump. And he wanted to meet people from everywhere.

He was also a real professional listener, which I’ve grown to understand is such a rare gift that is hard to learn. I’m trying to learn it in his memory and as part of his legacy. To train myself to really be with whoever’s speaking and not be thinking, what am I going to say next? What do I want to share? What do I want to say? What do I want to ask? And he was not afraid of having those pauses in between when someone was speaking. He would digest it, and then he would react.

We’ve had so many people come to us in these past two years to tell us about little moments that they had with him that were special, because they really felt heard. And in this time of such challenge in civil discourse everywhere around the world, when the new way of speaking is screaming, it is, I realize now, a unique blessing.

Jon, I recently saw you wearing a T-shirt that had an image of Hersh, and under it the phrase yehi zichrecha mahapeicha — may your memory be a revolution. What kind of revolution did you have in mind?

Jon: It’s not the revolution of taking to the streets with fires burning. It’s a revolution for good. Hersh really, really — in some ways, naively — wasn’t jaded, and really it’s a revolution for bringing more good to the world. I was walking down the street this summer with my daughter, and a man who we didn’t know stopped me and said, “Hey, Hersh’s dad” — that’s how he referred to me — “can I show you something?” And he shows me that the screensaver on his phone is a picture of Hersh. And he said to me, “Every morning the first thing I do is turn on my phone and look at this picture and say to myself: What can I do today to be better? What can I do today to make the world better?” And right then I said, that’s the greatest legacy a person can have. 

Rachel: Hersh still believed in goodness and possibility. But he also was a realist. When he was in high school in 2014, a young Israeli Ethiopian man named Avera Mengistu wandered into Gaza and Hamas took him hostage. Hersh was 15 years old and he came home and he was beside himself. He couldn’t believe that people were not on the streets advocating for Avera Mengistu. There were four or five people who would stand up on this square at the top of Ben Yehuda Street in Jerusalem a couple times a week, and they reminded me of the people on the UC Berkeley campus lawn who say “No nukes” — like, six people with gray hair and long braids. And then there was a short, dark boy with big, black-framed glasses standing with them. And it was 15-year-old Hersh. (Mengistu was released by Hamas in February.)

The resonance of him being out there as a kid, protesting in the street to bring someone home from Gaza, is quite extraordinary.

Rachel: We said before he was a hostage, he was a hostage advocate.

You’ve become the personification of an entire nation’s trauma. Obviously, you never wanted to be symbols like this, but you are now. Can you talk about what it’s like to have people look to you in this way?

Jon: We talk about this a fair amount, and sometimes wonder, can we just go and escape in privacy somewhere? And the answer is, maybe — but not in Israel. Part of us just wants to do that. But another part of us is saying, this has been thrust upon us, this horrific, terrible personal tragedy that’s part of a national tragedy that’s part of a global tragedy. And somehow, largely due to Rachel’s eloquence, there are people who are strangely looking to us. And we’re saying we might need to embrace this. Because part of the story is also the lack of clarity, leadership, morality, voices of sanity in the world today. And if somehow, in some small way, we can be a little bit those voices, it’s so important that we need to do it.

Rachel: We all experience loss. It makes us human. It’s a commonality that we all have. What’s different about our experience is that it was so completely public, and that is really scorching. And it is definitely hard, you know? When we go out, we are kind of the trigger for people — we’re the manifestation of everybody’s worst nightmare. That is a sad thing to be. A lot of people see us and they can’t help but cry. And I know that they are coming at it from a place of empathy and love. They’re feeling our pain. But it’s difficult to have that when you’re walking down the street just trying to go wherever your destination is, and to have people crying along the way, whenever they see you.

Jon: To the extent that we, in some way, are offering strength to anybody out there, it’s symbiotic. I’m not asking that people start coming up even more on the streets to say things and hug us, bring things to our apartment. But that stuff that we’ve been experiencing for 751 days has been remarkably strengthening. We buried Hersh 419 days ago, and we continue to be strengthened by the people who come anonymously and leave baked goods by our door every Friday. We take so much strength from so many people around the world who think they’re taking strength from us.

Rachel: Everybody is holding everybody, and I feel like that is where we as the Jewish people are, and have to be, now. And I don’t care if your hair looks that way, and you cover your knees down to here, and you pray with this book, and you don’t pray at all. It doesn’t matter. 

It seems that many believe what you’ve endured must afford you special insight into what’s going on in the Middle East. That you’re singularly able to see through the confusion, right into the heart of what’s happening. I’m wondering if the terrible price you’ve paid has given you any particular understanding that’s different from what you understood before Oct. 7.

Jon: We have definitely been, against our wishes, thrust into the underworld of geopolitics and how it works. We watch the news like everybody else, and we read newspapers like everybody else, and we now understand that there’s the story that we all look at and hear and are told, and [then there are] the things we see out there every day of how the world [really] works. And I wish we could unsee it but, unfortunately, we’ve now learned that the world works on concepts like interests and equities. Every leader has them. And sometimes those interests and equities align with the will of the masses. And sometimes there are other things at play. I don’t know what to do with this information, other than it’s a hard burden to carry to know this reality. 

With all that being said, I go back to something that I thought on Oct. 6, 2023, and I still think it today. There’s a better way. There’s a better path. And despite the pain, despite the suffering, despite all the agony that so many have felt, we can’t lose sight of that better path. I always say, let’s pick a day and say, “We’re moving on. We’re only looking forward. You’ve got your narrative. We’ve got our narrative. You’ve suffered, we’ve suffered. You got your Bible that says something. We’ve got our Bible that says something. You get your claims. We’ve got our claims. And you know what? We’re never going to outshout each other. Let’s look forward and start right now and dedicate ourselves to something better for all of us.”

You made aliyah in 2008. Can you tell me what it means for you to live in Israel? And I’m also curious if that meaning has changed over the course of the years you’ve lived there and specifically after Oct. 7.

Rachel: What really brought us here was very simple. Jon had said for years, we have an opportunity to be part of this giant Jewish experiment of living as a Jewish people in a Jewish homeland. We happen to be observant Jews who pray every day and we thought, how is it that every day we’re asking God to please allow us to return to Jerusalem? And Jon said, “We can go.” When you’re actually able to get on a plane and 12 hours later to be in this place, it started to feel inauthentic to be praying for that when we had the ability to do it. 

So we came and we really did feel, and do feel, that we are privileged to live here. I certainly have had challenges all these years, because my Hebrew is not great, and I’ve felt like a fish out of water, and I’ve felt like a stranger in a strange land. And yet it’s my land. I feel privileged that I have lived here. I feel privileged that I raised children here. I feel privileged that my three children were and are bilingual, and that they had an opportunity and have the opportunity to still be part of this experiment.

We’ve had an enormous challenge thrust upon us. When I say us, I mean all of the nation of Israel and the people of Israel worldwide. But at the same time, with this great calamity comes extreme opportunity — extreme, extreme opportunity. And I pray that we will have the resilience, the recovery, the healing and the comfort that is needed to take this chance and make something really luminous.

Jon: You asked what we’ve learned or how things have changed. Something that’s become really clear to us, maybe to everybody in the world, is there is an intertwined sense between Israel and the Jewish people globally. We’re all connected, like it or not, and I would like to see us use this as an opportunity. How do we take this little country in the Middle East, this concept of an independent Jewish state with sovereignty and agency, and say, no matter who the government is, who the prime minister is, who’s in charge, this is a concept that’s bigger than us or any entity. How do we make this a source of pride and inspiration for all of us? 

This is going to be your first time in the Bay Area since Oct. 7. What are you anticipating on coming back?

Rachel: Unfortunately, we won’t be there very long. But I know that it will be an embrace from the wonderful Bay Area Jewish community. We have felt the love and support and appreciate it. It sounds crazy to say that we feel it, but it’s like a visceral, tangible, tactile feeling of support and love. And we felt your confusion and we felt your pain and we felt your concern, and it helped us, and it touched us, and we will always feel a huge debt of gratitude to the Bay Area, because that’s where Hersh was born, and that’s where our older daughter, who’s younger than Hersh, that’s where she was born. They were both born at Alta Bates Hospital in Oakland. Jon and I had just gotten married, and we spent almost three years before Hersh was born in the Bay Area. It’s very much woven into the core of who we are. And I think in many ways, it was a foundation that made us strong as a unit in order to face this unbelievable mission that we are in now.

Jon: I just specifically want to bring it to Hersh for a minute and say, it’s amazing that we lived in the Bay Area for seven years. It left such an indelible, lasting mark on our identities. Hersh left the Bay Area when he was 3½ years old. He was blessed to grow up at Gan Shalom in Berkeley and to be part of Congregation Beth Israel in Berkeley and the Berkeley JCC. He lived 20 more years outside of Berkeley, yet Berkeley, California, and the Bay Area more broadly were such a prominent part of his personality, his thinking, who he was as a person. You could take the 3½-year-old out of Berkeley, but you can’t take the Bay Area out of the boy. It was the embodiment of so much about who Hersh was.

Rachel: I think it’s a lot of why he never liked to wear shoes.

I’m curious about the power of prayer. You talked about living in California and praying about returning to Jerusalem. Can you talk about your own approach to prayer now, and if that’s changed in any way — but also what it’s like to know that there are thousands of people you don’t even know praying for you every day?

Rachel: It absolutely works and is felt and is appreciated. And I am bottomlessly, endlessly grateful to the people who still have us in their prayers. Because I’m telling you, unfortunately, we need it. I think we might always need it. 

I’m so thankful that I have prayer as a tool that I use daily. Every day, I open my eyes and immediately say the line that many Jewish people say upon waking, thanking God for giving me back my soul, and [saying] that God has tremendous faith in me, and that’s why I woke up this morning. 

When I go to do my morning prayers, it’s such a relief. It’s the best therapy. You know, Rabbi Nachman, the famous mystical Kabbalist, said, “Life makes warriors out of all of us, and the most potent weapon is prayer.” And so I say to people, use it. Everyone has their pain, and we have this toolkit accessible to us. I pour my soul out in the morning, and then I can start my day. The question was, how has it changed since Oct. 7. I think I use it more. I lean on it more. I think that it’s more transformative. All of us have a different idea of God. What is God? Nobody knows what God is. It’s very confusing. But I have this idea of God, and I’ve been in a relationship with this idea of God. I’m so thankful, because when Oct. 7 happened, I wasn’t approaching a stranger. I’m thankful that I still have that and I’m grateful that people are shooting energy our way. I think it changes the sender and it changes the recipient.

Arlo Blackman-McGrew just spent the summer between high school and college hiking. But not just any hiking: They completed 500 miles on the iconic Pacific Crest Trail. Blackman-McGrew, who uses they/them pronouns, spoke to J. about their experiences right after moving into the dorms at UC Davis.

The trail spans over 2,600 miles as it meanders from north to south, all the way from the U.S.-Mexico border to the 49th parallel in Canada. Hiking the PCT, as it is known, has become a rite of passage for a certain outdoorsy type, and was further popularized by Cheryl Strayed’s 2012 memoir, which became the 2014 film “Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail.” 

Though Blackman-McGrew initially hoped to cover 700 miles, finishing just over 500 was still an impressive feat. They hiked a total of 43 days, covering a stretch from Kennedy Meadows (about 100 miles northeast of Bakersfield) to the peak of Sierra Buttes (60 miles west of Reno). Hikers must stop along the way in towns to replenish their food supply; Blackman-McGrew also used the opportunity to send friends and family regular email updates about the experience. 

Blackman-McGrew, 18, of Oakland, is now enjoying their first year at UC Davis. Their family belongs to Berkeley Renewal congregation Chochmat HaLev, and they grew up attending both B’Hootz and B’Naiture, the Jewish outdoor educational programs of Wilderness Torah. They later served as a mentor in those same programs.

Blackman-McGrew first heard about the PCT from a friend, and the two planned to hike it together. But as the time got closer, the friend dropped out, and Blackman-McGrew decided to proceed and “take it on as a solo challenge between high school and college,” they said.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

How did you first fall in love with nature and backpacking?

I’ve loved it ever since I participated in the Neshama Quest with Wilderness Torah. They took us backpacking for a week, all four summers of high school. It means Soul Quest, and more than going far, it’s about finding who you are as a Jew, in nature.

Isn’t there also a kind of initiation ritual in B’Naiture where you stay up all night, tending a fire?

Yes, B’Naiture really helped prepare me, as it was essentially a really big solo challenge. In that ritual, every kid does a fire solo, meaning we tend a fire in the forest. We have to gather our own wood and keep the fire going all night, and set an intention. I really learned about intention setting and how to be alone and how to hold space from that, which supported my journey, just like knowing how to backpack. Intention setting and holding space for myself, by myself, on a solo trip was really important.

You chose not to listen to music or an audiobook at all during this experience. Why? 

I knew that if I did, my emotions would be actively manipulated by that external source, and it might aggravate me. All media you consume activates you; it stops you from going into a more settled mode and just relaxing. So instead, I just listened to the sounds of nature and let my thoughts wander. I felt what it feels like to take a step, or a barefoot step sometimes. Every few days, I went barefoot a bit.

How crowded is the trail? How easy is it to meet people? 

It’s super easy to meet people. Every time you pass someone, you say hi. The only people who don’t say it back are day hikers. You also can customize your experience, as there are more people going northbound and there are more people earlier in the season.

Were you disappointed that you didn’t reach your goal of 700 miles?

No. I was hoping to do about 20 miles a day, which would have been about 700 miles in a little less than two months, from Kennedy Meadows to Mt. Shasta, which would have been the entirety of the Sierra Nevada range. I realized pretty quickly I didn’t like doing 20 miles a day. Also, I had to take time off. 

Why?

My maternal grandfather was sick. I got to spend time with him, and then he died a few days later, once I was back on the trail. I left the trail a second time to attend his celebration of life. 

How did mourning someone you loved while on the trail affect your experience?

My Poppa was a total outdoorsman. So, being outdoors, I was able to feel really connected with him. And the trail doesn’t judge; not having deadlines was really nice; I could just be on my own time and have the space to grieve.

When he died, it was just before the start of the month of Av, which is a major month of grieving. I met some Jewish guys, and they taught me about the holiday Tu B’Av. They described it as a celebration of love in the midst of this intense month of sadness, and that was really cool to learn about. I got to feel a bit of light in this niche holiday that I hadn’t celebrated before. 

Did you observe Shabbat at all on the trail?

I did twice. One time, I was by myself, and once, I shared it with a new friend of mine who wasn’t Jewish. I didn’t meet many Jews, I think maybe three. Besides the two guys who taught me about Tu B’Av, I met one Israeli finishing up graduate school. He gave me some challah. Sharing Shabbat with the person who had never done it before was cool because she really loved it. I told her about resting on Saturday, and she really took it to heart.

Over what did you say the blessings?

I used my “finger candles,” and I used water with special intentions and a tortilla.

Was it difficult to get your parents on board with you doing this?

At first, they really wanted me to do it with a partner, but then they learned about the culture, that you meet people along the way and hike with them. They aren’t big backpackers, but were so supportive; a big shout-out to them. I used a Garmin GPS device so I could let them know where I was each night.

Will you return to finish the sections you didn’t complete? How did this experience change you?

I cannot imagine myself not going back on the trail. Doing it at this stage of my life was eye-opening in that the experience gave me a lot of chances to meet people I wouldn’t have met otherwise. I met so many people from other countries, and got to know them really quickly, and hear lots of different perspectives. Also, I just love being outside; I’m definitely doing a lot more backpacking.

I imagine you would recommend it to others.

It sounds hard, and it is hard. It’s grittier than the photos you see on Instagram. But it’s a meaningful, potentially life-changing experience. I highly recommend it for any level of skill. I met people there who had never gone backpacking before, and they were having the time of their lives. Of course, it’s easier if you have gone before, but it’s not impossible, and I really suggest it to anyone.

After teaching Jewish history at the College of Charleston for nearly two decades, Joshua Shanes has stepped into a new role as the UC Davis Emanuel Ringelblum Distinguished Professor of Jewish History.

Over the summer, Shanes succeeded the late David Biale, the renowned historian who held that position for 22 years. Biale died last year at age 75 after battling metastatic prostate cancer.

As a scholar, Shanes has focused on the Jews of pre-Holocaust East Central Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries, as well as on early Zionist theory. 

Shanes, who has identified as a Conservative, a Modern Orthodox and a Chabad-Lubavitch Jew over his lifetime, said he has developed a deeper understanding of his own religious identity through his scholarship. He has also come to believe that his role as a scholar includes helping others make sense of how historical events shape the modern Jewish world.

“Especially lately, people are constantly referencing fascism,” said Shanes, 53. “The best we can do as academics is give better tools to understand the past. If the comparisons are going to be made, let’s make them responsibly.”

Outside of academia, Shanes has written about antisemitism, Zionism and U.S. and Israeli politics in publications such as the Washington Post, the Forward, Slate and Haaretz. 

He is a member of the Nexus Task Force, one of three major efforts that seeks to define antisemitism and its relationship to anti-Zionism. The other two are the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) and the Jerusalem Declaration. Shanes also helped develop a 2024 Nexus document focused on universities called “A Campus Guide to Identifying Antisemitism in a Time of Perplexity.” 

His first book, “Diaspora Nationalism and Jewish Identity in Habsburg Galicia,” was published in 2012. He is currently working on a second book, which focuses on the history of Orthodox Judaism.

Keep reading or listen to the full interview below. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Was there anything specific about UC Davis that attracted you to pursue a position there?

It was very hard to apply for a job to succeed David Biale. His books, which he wrote in the 1980s, are still assigned readings in Jewish history courses. I got to know David because he and I were part of a group, which he basically founded, called the Jewish Studies Activist Network. It was founded in 2016 when Trump won the election for the first time. We were, as academics, very concerned about the political developments that were happening, both in terms of power and the election outcome, but also in discourse and rhetoric. 

We had no idea what was coming eight years later, but even at the time we were concerned, and we wanted to harness our expertise for public good. I learned from him how to do that responsibly: When is it appropriate to intervene? When is it appropriate to write an op-ed or to make a petition or whatever it may be? So the idea of succeeding him, while humbling and scary, was also quite exciting and attractive.

Throughout your life you have explored different Jewish denominations. At this point have you homed in on a preferred practice? 

I was raised Conservative, and I lived as a Modern Orthodox Jew for a while. I was in Chabad for over a decade, hard-core Lubavitcher — big beard, big coat, the hat, the whole deal. So I’ve lived in almost every Jewish world.

I continue to be observant. I have been keeping Shabbat and kosher and other rituals in the manner most associated with Orthodoxy for 32 years. I consider myself at this point nondenominational. I do keep Shabbat in a way that you probably associate with Orthodoxy. I do keep kosher, mostly in a way that you consider Orthodox. But I don’t feel I can call myself Orthodox anymore. I consider Orthodoxy to be completely bound up right now in right-wing politics, especially about Israel.

Your bio on the UC Davis website describes your research focus as the “process of Jews negotiating new identities under modernization.” Do you consider Zionism and Orthodoxy as the prisms through which you explore those new identities? 

Yes. Modern Orthodoxy has become indistinguishable from Zionism in practically every way. Jews used to live in these autonomous communities — pre-modern societies that were not built on a nation-state model. It was a feudal society of castes.

In the 19th century, we had a new nation-state model, where Jews are being emancipated, given equal rights, and they’re being influenced by the Enlightenment. And therefore they’re thinking about new ways of living their lives. Jews are now a voluntary community, and Jews have to choose to do these things, and they are being swayed by different pulls.

Jewish Orthodoxy came up with an idea of hierarchy. The old version was: If you were not living a halachic life the way Orthodoxy understands it, you were not a Jew. But that didn’t work once most Jews were like that. So they said, “Since that doesn’t work, we’ll have a hierarchy instead,” where everyone accuses the other of being the “worst ones.”

Zionists do this also. Even 100 years ago, they said, “Anyone who’s not a Zionist, you’re a bad Jew, you’re an assimilationist, you’re a traitor,” etc. And the Orthodox took it back to the Zionists and said “You’re the traitor, because you’re advocating for a national, secular Jewishness.”

In January, The Conversation published your piece against Harvard’s adoption of the IHRA definition of antisemitism. How do you understand the major differences between how the IHRA, Nexus Group and Jerusalem Declaration define antisemitism? 

What’s interesting is all three definitions talk about Israel a lot, and I think the reason for that is we all sort of agree what antisemitism is when it’s not about Israel. All the conflict comes when it’s about Israel.

Since Oct. 7, 2023, J. has reported extensively on antisemitism at Northern California college campuses. How do you reconcile those incidents with the Trump administration’s attempts to punish major universities for their handling of antisemitic incidents?

It’s quite clear this has nothing to do with fighting antisemitism or protecting Jews whatsoever. This is just an excuse. Let’s talk about ourselves — how do we judge? People often ask me, “How do I protest Israel without being antisemitic?”

If possible, I usually suggest that they avoid the term Zionism and Zionists because there are two ways to constructively think about Zionism: One is Zionism as actualized in the country of Israel, and the other, which is the primary meaning for most diaspora Zionists, is identity. It’s some sense of Jewishness and Jewish pride. I think that protesters often forget about that.

On the flip side of that, I tell Jews or other non-Jews who are Zionists and concerned about this: “Is the protest focusing on the state? Is it talking about equality? If it’s doing that, then they’re doing it right.”

If you’re concerned about a protest, it should be something that is not about the state, but attacking you as a Zionist, or you as a Jew, or thinking about some sort of global conspiracy of which Israel is the mastermind. If it’s doing those things, that’s antisemitic. I feel America has a hard time with the fact that there are people with ethnic connections to another place that aren’t responsible for that place. You, as a Jew and as a Zionist, have no responsibility for this foreign state.

Even with two decades of work in counterterrorism under his belt, Rafael Brinner was shaken by the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. In his line of work, antisemitic violence was not central, but the raw display of anti-Jewish hate made him realize he needed to pull it into focus. The following year, Brinner became senior director of community security at the Jewish Federation Bay Area.

In that role, Brinner, 59, has leveraged his public safety expertise to help Bay Area Jewish communities strengthen their resilience. His team does security consultations and  safety assessments with Jewish organizations, and has also developed training programs in collaboration with the Secure Community Network, a national nonprofit that works with federal law enforcement agencies on behalf of the Jewish community.

As the son of renowned Middle East scholar William “Ze’ev” Brinner, he was a self-described “faculty brat” growing up. His childhood was split between Berkeley, where his late father taught Near Eastern studies at Cal for 35 years, and Jerusalem, where the elder Brinner led the UC Overseas Study Center at the Hebrew University. 

As an undergraduate at UC Berkeley, Rafi Brinner (as he’s familiarly known) started to follow in his father’s footsteps into the humanities. But his horizons widened in graduate school when he studied history and spent time abroad in Vienna, the hometown of his mother, a Kindertransport survivor.

“By living in Vienna, I got to revisit those roots from the perspective of studying history where it was happening, rather than from the safe and comfortable distance of California,” Brinner said. “I became inspired to have a more international career.”

Upon returning to the Bay Area, Brinner pursued another master’s degree, this one in international policy, and interned for the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies (now an affiliate of Middlebury College). He began his career as a terrorism analyst for the U.S. Department of Defense and later worked for the Coast Guard and Department of Homeland Security before joining the Federation.

Brinner spoke with J. about what led him to his current role and what his team is doing to better prepare the Jewish community on responding to tense or potentially dangerous situations. 

Keep reading or listen to the full interview below. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

What inspired you early on to pursue a career as a terrorism analyst?

The terrorism field was very small during the early 1990s. The Soviet Union had just fallen apart, so the nonproliferation center at the institute was a focus of my work. My interest in counterterrorism really emerged once I got into the federal government in the mid-1990s. I was aiming to become an intelligence analyst, and the attack on the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia happened [in 1996], which killed several U.S. Air Force members.

The thing that really is the thread that carries forward from my upbringing, my time living in Israel through [the Yom Kippur War], is that even though I was still a kid, when I got back from Israel in the mid-1970s, I found myself always reading about what’s going on in Israel in the news.

I already had the understanding and grounding, just from the life that I lived, the curiosity that I had. Even as a kid, on the evening news in Israel we’d hear about whatever terrorist attack had happened. So I really grew up with terrorism as my biggest fear, as opposed to crime being my biggest fear, long before 9/11.

And did the Sept. 11 attacks impact how you approached your work?

I think the lesson from those few years before 9/11, when I got started in my career in terrorism analysis, is that there are limits to what intelligence can provide, and understanding those limits is really important to assessing what the threat is. After 9/11, the terrorism industry grew into a huge thing, and in that context, a lot of people’s understanding of terrorism was formed by 9/11 without having the background of what led up to it. 

Has that continued to inform your thinking? 

In some ways, my philosophy is shaped around, how do we avoid amplifying the impact of terrorism? How do we avoid growing the level of fear on behalf of those who are trying to instill fear in us? How do we continue living our lives in a way that allows our communities to grow and feel free to be active and participate, be out in public, form bonds with our neighbors, be Americans, be Jews, all of the above? I think that is really the essential thing for us to move forward in the 21st century.

Your role at the Federation is your first Jewish community job. What led you to change direction?

One thing that prompted my career shift was the jarring impact of what happened in Charlottesville in 2017. Having studied World War II and the rise of the Nazis, having lived in Austria, I never for a minute thought that I’d see the day that we’d have Americans marching with torches chanting “Jews will not replace us.” I hadn’t heard of replacement theory yet either, that somehow Jews are orchestrating the replacement of whites in the United States. So there was a shift in understanding, that this background noise of white supremacy was actually something larger.

In what ways has your work changed since Oct. 7? Have you and your team taken extra measures to help people feel more safe?

Our team’s workload quadrupled after Oct. 7. We handled 40 threats and incidents in the 12 months leading up to 10/7; that rocketed to 287 incidents in the year following 10/7, and demand for our services spiked across the board. As antisemitism and anti-Israel protests surged, our team advised event organizers, film festivals, Jewish heritage nights at sporting events and hostage vigils and shared security best practices with them so that our communal life thrives and we continue to show up as a community.

Are there special precautions around the High Holidays, when Jews are visible in large numbers?

With High Holiday services expanding into rented venues and filling our shuls to capacity, extra effort goes into making these gatherings secure. We held in-person trainings with staff, greeters and congregants at synagogues over the summer and have advised leadership about the current threat environment and appropriate safeguards. While each year the lead-up to High Holidays is a full-court press, security has to be a year-round commitment.

What prompted the launch of security fundamentals training webinars?

It was a follow-up to both the shooting in Washington, D.C., outside the Capital Jewish Museum, and the attack on Run for Their Lives activists in Boulder, Colorado, both of which took place outside of the protection of a Jewish facility. We realized we really wanted to reach not just Jewish organizations in our community, but community members themselves, because it’s really about being safe in your environment, wherever you are. Situational awareness is key.

There’s been an expansion of all these efforts as things have progressed … the litany of events in the last seven, eight years, right up to Oct. 7 and all the things that have happened in recent months. So the security fundamentals training we currently offer is an outgrowth of the level of concern in the community. But it’s also an opportunity to empower our community to be responsible for their own security, and for us to look out for each other.… really to be our own protectors.

We plan to hold the trainings at a regular monthly cadence and include new topics like cybersecurity. Check the Federation’s events page after the High Holidays, or email us at security@jewishfed.org. 

How do you personally deal with the stress that comes with your line of work?

Around the beginning of the Covid pandemic, I got off of social media. Not completely, but I avoid it. I stopped being on Twitter all the time, I pulled back from Facebook significantly. I just found that [social media] reinforced all the negative trends of fear and anxiety.

The larger move is keeping perspective. I’ve had the benefit of working in a career where I had access to the information that other people didn’t have through classified sources, and getting a better sense of the scope of the problem.

Another course correction is that if we think more about the daily life choices we make, the risks that we’re taking — not to be fearful of them, but just to be alert to them — then some of the events that are much less likely can recede into the background.

For years, Galya Blachman and Elay Cohen lived just a few doors apart from each other in San Francisco’s Noe Valley neighborhood. They’d see each other now and then, since their kids went to the same school and were close in age, but they rarely spoke.

Just weeks after Oct. 7, 2023, that changed. A provocative anti-Israel mural appeared on 24th Street, the five-block commercial thoroughfare of Noe Valley, riling the Jewish community and upsetting Jewish residents.

The mural depicted a Palestinian family clutching each other amid a pile of rubble, cowering under a bomb that was headed toward them. An Israeli flag was painted on the bomb, with a dollar sign replacing the Magen David. Written across the top were the words “Stop the Genocide in Gaza Now!”

The reaction to the mural was visceral. “I felt afraid for the first time in my life in San Francisco,” said Cohen, who moved from Canada in 1999. 

“I was horrified,” said Blachman, whose family made aliyah from South Africa to Israel when she was young; she moved to the Bay Area after getting her Ph.D.

Blachman began messaging her friends in the neighborhood, exchanging ideas on how  to respond to the mural while also respecting the artist’s right to free speech.

“What bothered me were the antisemitic overtones of that imagery,” Blachman said.

Soon after, Jewish friends of friends connected with Blachman over WhatsApp, eager to get involved. Cohen was among them. The small group drafted a letter, expressing how much pain the mural brought at a time when the Jewish community was already shattered by the Hamas murder of 1,200 and the kidnapping of 251 hostages.

“They didn’t acknowledge Oct. 7 at all,” Blachman said of the mural, created by a Palestinian American artist on private property.

Blachman’s group printed out copies of the letter, and on a weekend morning with their kids in tow, they posted it on buildings, streetlights and bulletin boards, and handed them out to people along 24th Street. Some were torn down instantly, she said. The mural itself was vandalized several times.

In the end, the artist made some modifications to the mural in response to concerns raised by the group, Blachman said. It has since been removed.

In the nearly two years since the mural brought some neighbors together with a common purpose, the group has grown to more than 400 people on a WhatsApp group. Called the Noe Valley Chavurah, it functions as a community town square, with Cohen as its unofficial “CEO,” responding to messages and helping to develop subchannels based on different community interests.

What has most impressed Blachman and Cohen is the diversity of the group — encompassing a wide swath of ages and Jewish backgrounds, including Israelis, interfaith couples, secular Jews and synagogue-going Jews. The havurah hosts in-person Jewish community events every week, from Saturday morning walks to Jewish book club meetings. Members have also engaged with local elected officials, including former San Francisco Mayor London Breed, District Attorney Brooke Jenkins and state Sen. Scott Wiener.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How did your group go from protesting the mural to becoming the Noe Valley Chavurah?

Elay: What was amazing was that we took that energy, the group, the togetherness, the chatting together digitally… we met a couple of times, and I said, we should do Shabbat. I think we transformed into a community when we held our first Shabbat. We were debating, do we do the Shabbat in the Town Square [a neighborhood community space]? Do we do it in someone’s house?

Galya: A big reason for doing it in someone’s house was that people were scared. Since then, we have started doing Shabbat in the Town Square, and people have become fine and comfortable with it. But even the first time we did it there, we had security. So there is definitely a sensitivity of being identified as a Jewish group, even in San Francisco, which is really sad.

What was that first Shabbat like?

Elay: It was early December. We did the blessings, we did the candles, we had the challah. It was a potluck and then … here’s where I got emotional … after dinner, we did a d’var Torah, and at the end someone got up and started singing “Hatikvah.” I’m still emotional.

Galya: It was so wonderful. It just felt so special after feeling so isolated. And suddenly we had this group. Now we’re kind of like an extended family. We have this cross-generational group where we can get together and feel like we can have very open discussions.

What blew me away with this whole thing was I had no idea how many Jewish people there are in Noe Valley and the surrounding area, and this real need for community. It’s amazing how quickly people have just become very good friends, coming over to people’s houses for meals, spending Saturday mornings with each other.

What other activities does the havurah do together?

Galya: We’ve got a book club, which is incredibly active. And from the book club, we’ve also developed a theater group. 

Elay: There’s a main feed, and that’s where most of the conversation happens. Like when something happens [in current events], people can go there. You read about it, you cry about it, you scream about it. And then we’ve got the Shabbat, and Shabbat morning walks where you can hug it out. There’s a subgroup called the shuk.

Galya: It’s a buy-nothing group.

It sounds like the Nextdoor app, but for the Jewish community.

Galya: Nextdoor has become so big and disconnected. This is like a little shtetl. I think what makes it really special is we have this core, which holds us together. We try to have a Jewish bent to whatever we do; that really brings people together. 

I’ve always grown up around Jews, but I’ve never been particularly religious, and I’ve never truly found my place.For me, that’s what makes it so special, is that you’re not put in a box. You can express your Judaism and be part of this group in any form that you want to express your Judaism.

How do you see the havurah evolving in the future?

Elay: I would love to figure out a way to help support another city, another neighborhood, create a similar thing, and then we can establish a connection. 

Galya: In San Francisco, because of the school situation, where local schools are not necessarily where your kids go because of the public school lottery — for me that’s a big loss of community. So we’ve created these different age groups. My wish is that we have children who are friends, growing up together in the same neighborhood and creating lifelong friendships.

When you first started, people were afraid to have Shabbat in the Town Square. How are people feeling now about expressing their Judaism in public?

Elay: In June, after the war with Iran, I said, hey everyone, we’re going to hold off on doing the Shabbat in the Town Square. And then in real time, 10 or 15 people approach me and go, “Why? No. We have to stand up. We should not hide.” And then we ran a poll, and boom, universally, everybody wanted to be in public.

Galya: People are feeling bolder. We feel strength in numbers, and feel confident because of it. We know that there’s crazies out there, right? I think that might exemplify the difference between the world outside, which is maybe not as safe as we would like it to be, versus our world, knowing we have created a safe island for ourselves.

When J. caught up with Analucía Lopezrevoredo in late July, she was packing to fly home to San Francisco from Toronto, where she was on a Fulbright fellowship researching the Canadian Jewish community’s response to Jewish immigration from Latin America.

Immigration is no abstraction to Lopezrevoredo, who was born in Peru in 1985 to a Jewish mother and non-Jewish father. They immigrated to the U.S. via Spain when she was 5, and she grew up amid the Jewish and non-Jewish communities of Orange County, California, navigating a multicultural identity.

“We had a strong Peruvian identity and strictly spoke Spanish at home,” said Lopezrevoredo, a 39-year-old San Francisco resident.

But most of her peers had no concept of what a Peruvian was, and there was a great deal of xenophobic and anti-immigrant sentiment in conservative Orange County in the 1990s.

Lopezrevoredo was an undocumented U.S. resident throughout her youth. After becoming a citizen at age 20, she earned a doctorate in social work and traveled widely, learning five languages. She has forged a career studying the diversity of global Jewish cultures and advocating for closer ties within and between Jewish and Latin communities. In San Francisco, she’s played key roles in Jewish organizations such as JIMENA, OneTable and Bend the Arc, and in 2019 she founded the national nonprofit Jewtina y Co. to nurture Latin-Jewish community, identity, leadership and resiliency. Lopezrevoredo is its chief executive officer.

In a conversation with J., she reflected on the social and moral impact of the current American immigration policy on Latin Jews and the Jewish community at large, and spoke to how in the face of it we might rise to the challenge of upholding Jewish values. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How did immigration come to be a central concern of your life and work? 

I’m an immigrant and the child of immigrants. I’ve been surrounded all my life by stories of immigration. What’s happening right now is painful because the United States is such an important place for me and so many others: It is a container for people’s dreams. And now it feels like the lid on that container has just been shut.

Growing up in the U.S., what was it like to carry aspects of identity from both Jewish and Latino backgrounds? What was the process of integrating them?

I think nurturing the Latino part was probably the most difficult, socially. A lot of my Latino peers tried to distance themselves culturally, because Latino culture was so stigmatized by people in authority. Given my name, I always stood out, and there were many times when I was younger that I wished I could just be like all the “Nicoles” in my class.

I really learned how to be a Jew in community, mostly here in the States. Being Jewish in Southern California in the ’90s was relatively easy. But to be fair, I mostly was being seen as Latina over Jewish by non-Jews. And even in Jewish spaces — my non-Ashkenazi last name always caught people’s attention.

As you delved more deeply into Judaism, how did it inform your concern for immigrants and shape your views?

A big part of how I have connected to Jewish life has been through learning about the migratory patterns of Jews all over the world. Jews are so deeply shaped by the experience of migration. Whether it’s the Exodus story, or the repeated exile and displacement Jews have experienced throughout history, it’s embedded in our collective spirit and memory. Jewish texts remind us repeatedly that we were once strangers, so we shall not oppress a stranger. It’s not just a metaphor, it’s a mandate. 

Something that doesn’t get talked about as much is the erev rav — the mixed multitude. It refers to the fact that when we left Egypt, other peoples who were also enslaved left along with the Hebrews. I’ve always been moved by the idea that the Jewish people didn’t do it all on our own. No movement ever has. Our story of freedom and migration has always included people from outside. We need good allies, is what I’m getting at.

Are there ways your personal history comes into play? 

My work is also informed by the modern Jewish diaspora and the stories of Jews who fled pogroms, war, dictatorships and persecution. My Jewish ancestors migrated over several generations from Spain, to Amsterdam, to Curaçao, to Chile. This long trajectory is just part of how I tell the story of who I am. It’s important for us to be fighting for a society that’s just and doesn’t cast certain people aside. Because all of us had someone who put their lives on the line for us to get to where we needed to go for safety. 

 How have you been affected by the changes in current U.S. immigration policy?

I’d like to think that I’m not at immediate risk myself, because I am a naturalized citizen. But it is still deeply impacting me as a human being. Many members of our Jewtina community can be easily identified as Latino, and when ICE agents can target people based on how they look, without any due process — that’s really scary. We’ve seen this happen before. It always starts with the most vulnerable, then it goes to the next most vulnerable, and before we know it —  we’re it.

The legal penalties for interfering with an immigration process are severe. Is there anything you can recommend?

It’s probably not going to be the best thing for you to get in the way of ICE because, unfortunately, we know that they’ve been using force. We want to be able to be here for the long run. I think it’s important to know when it’s safe to step in, or instead step out. Understanding our rights is crucial. For those navigating uncertain immigration status, our guidance is: Take care of yourself, mitigate risk. We’ve got a whole team to ensure that our information is up to date and we deliver it to people who come to our programming.

 What is your sense of the pulse of the Jewish community on this issue?

I think the Jewish response to what’s happening is still being written. It’s been great to see a number of synagogues that have opened their doors [to immigrants]. HIAS is still doing their work, even though they’ve had more than half of their budget slashed. But Jewish leaders and institutions are still trying to figure out how we can show up at this moment. I understand, though I might not agree, where people have real concern for political backlash or funding loss.

What can people do when facing these kinds of headwinds?

The number of people who have come forward within our community to help, especially immigration attorneys, is incredible. I would call on people who have the ability to support those most in need through representation, to think about how they can do that. Mental health professionals, psychologists, rabbis and artists could support people in making meaning of this really horrific moment. And obviously, resources. Funding is always important for the folks on the front lines of this work.

For Jewtina, it’s a big part of our work to not separate the Jewish story from the immigrant story or the Latin or Latino story: What’s happening to them is also happening to us. I think we need to continue to build coalitions, to work across lines of race, class, religion and [immigration] status, knowing that it’s going to take time. Resiliency is going to be key. But again, no group has ever prevailed on their own. We didn’t leave Egypt on our own. We’re part of the erev rav.

Guy Miasnik grew up in Israel in a mixed Sephardic-Ashkenazi family. But when he was a teenager, his father, then working for Israel’s Defense Ministry, got a U.S. posting in the South Bay. Miasnik spent three years there as a teenager — a period that changed his life path.

Now 55, Miasnik is a tech entrepreneur with several successful companies to his name (including a communications platform acquired by BlackBerry), and he’s making his own personal mark by straddling and connecting two worlds: the Israeli community and the American Jewish community in the Bay Area.

As a board member of many Jewish organizations, including the Jewish Community Federation and Endowment Fund in San Francisco and Gideon Hausner Jewish Day School in Palo Alto, the Los Altos resident has become a linchpin between Israel and the U.S., tech and philanthropy, institutions and innovations. He’s an investor and adviser at J-Ventures, a venture capital fund in Silicon Valley that connects Jewish investors and entrepreneurs, and is co-founder of BACCA, the Bay Area Center to Counter Antisemitism, which supports grassroots groups fighting antisemitism in their local communities.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

J.: Tell me about your background, your mixed family and the way you ended up, unexpectedly, in the Bay Area as a teenager.

Guy Miasnik: I grew up in a town called Bat Yam, which is a tough neighborhood, if you know Israel. It’s in the south of Tel Aviv.

We dealt with a lot of the issues of a hybrid [Sephardic-Ashkenazi] family in Israel at the time. We speak here in the Bay Area a lot about belonging and inclusivity. These are concepts that Israel was dealing with at that time.

As a teenager I came to the Bay Area. My father was working for the Israeli Defense Ministry, and he was sent with the delegation here for a few years, so I spent a year and a half at South Peninsula Hebrew Day School, and then I was a freshman at Homestead High School, which is a public school in Cupertino. So I had my first taste of America. 

After that stint, you went back to Israel, where you became an entrepreneur. How did that come about?

I did a special program where I studied engineering at the Technion, and then went into the military for an extended period of time, about five years. It was a very tech-oriented, entrepreneurial-oriented environment in the military, and then immediately after that, I actually became an entrepreneur.

People often talk about the way the Israeli military experience fosters innovation. Do you think that’s still true?

Absolutely. Suddenly you have relatively young folks, in their early 20s, getting a huge amount of responsibility and access to innovate in a way that is very atypical in a normal environment, and that nurtured a culture of entrepreneurship that then affected the entire country for decades.

This force has only matured over the years, and is one of the main reasons I think Israel is such a startup nation.

What brought you back to the U.S.?

My first company was acquired in Israel [Kinetica, a web services company, was acquired by NetVision, an Israeli internet service provider] and I decided to go to grad school. I was accepted to Harvard Business School and went and got my MBA. Actually I also got married just before we left, so it was my wife, Michal, and myself. After I finished business school, we moved to California, literally a few miles away from where I grew up as a teenager. So that was sort of closing the loop.

What had changed, in terms of Israeli life in the South Bay, since you were there the first time?

The South Bay has always been sort of a hub for Israelis. It’s funny, even from the time that I remember as a teenager, Sunnyvale and Palo Alto were centers of Israeli presence.

But what we found at the time [when we came back] was also the challenge I think we’ve all seen for many years — the connection between the Israeli community and the American Jewish community.

What do the two groups not understand about each other, in your opinion?

They developed in a very different way. Israelis developed in a very tough neighborhood, had to develop a self-identity and strength, and were effectively a majority in the state but needed to fight every day to make that work. And if you look at it as a society, it’s still true. 

Americans learn a different mindset. It’s a mindset of assimilation: We need to be part of this amazing, amazing entity called America, and we need to assimilate within it. We need to make sure that we are accepted.

As I sort of lived through both of them, I see how ingrained it is.

One is about fighting and surviving and flourishing in a very tough neighborhood. And another one is about flourishing as well, but in an integrated, assimilated way into the ecosystem. Each one had to develop a different set of skills to do that. And these skills are not always well aligned, and sometimes they’re actually contradictory in some respect.

How does that play out?

We are now fighting a level of antisemitism that we haven’t experienced in America for decades.

There are many people in Israeli society [here] who are effectively shouting: What happened here? Why? Why didn’t you deal with this? They became more aggressive, more proactive in dealing with antisemitism.

In the American community, you see that in some parts of it, but in other parts, it’s more: Hey, we need to keep quiet. We need to let it go. It’s a wave, we’re now at the peak. Let’s wait until it goes out and adjust ourselves appropriately.

These differences are affecting behavior today, in the Bay Area specifically.

What drew you, as an Israeli, into working with the established Jewish American community?

When we moved here in 2000, we already had a young kid. Unlike, frankly, many Israelis, we actually selected to go to a Jewish day school, to Hausner.

We all grew up in a place where you go to your public school and you play after that in the playground with your friends. That’s the way it goes in Israel. We tried to figure out how we can make sure that our kids grow up feeling Jewish, connected to Israel, connected to our family there, connected to Hebrew in a way that will sustain all of these relationships.

And then you ended up joining the board at Hausner. Why was that an important step?

By joining the board, suddenly I was involved in how American Jewish institutions and communities function. And that’s not something that you see from the outside, definitely not as an Israeli coming in.

As a board member and being active, both for Michal and myself, it created for us a much stronger link to the American Jewish community than your typical Israeli family.

You’re involved in so many things, from programs that promote entrepreneurial thinking in Jewish day schools to bringing Israeli entrepreneurs together. Do you consider yourself a leader?

I see it as more of a responsibility. That’s typically how I view leadership. You take responsibility for things that you’re passionate about and that you think should make an impact, and think that the world needs to be better in these respects. So leadership is really a responsibility for the community that you’re working for.

Each week on their new podcast “What’s Your Number?” Michal Lev-Ram and Yonatan Adiri take a deep dive into their favorite topic — data — to examine Israel’s economy from a global perspective. 

From energy independence to U.S.-Saudi relations to laser defense tech, the nature of the numbers differ from week to week. But here’s one data point that remains constant when these economics wonks record an episode: the 7,400 miles between Lev-Ram’s home in Palo Alto and Adiri’s in Tel Aviv.

Lev-Ram, born in Rehovot, moved with her family to the Bay Area at age 8. Raised by parents who worked in tech, Lev-Ram became a business journalist and built her career at Fortune magazine. But after 15 years at the publication, the Israel-Hamas war put her on a new path. She decided to step away from her full-time work at Fortune and merge her Israeli American background with her focus on economics into a new endeavor.

“It’s called ‘What’s Your Number?’ for a reason,” Lev-Ram said of the podcast. “These aren’t just anecdotes. We’re really looking at making this as data driven as possible.” 

Adiri, whose parents immigrated to Israel from Iran and Iraq, grew up in Tel Aviv. A precocious child, Adiri graduated from Israel’s Open University at age 17 with a degree in international relations and then began his service in the Israel Defense Forces, serving as an operations officer of the IDF’s foreign relations division.

After the army, Adiri worked in the U.S. as a counterterrorism researcher and then became an adviser to Israeli political leader Shimon Peres. Later, Adiri shifted from public service to entrepreneurship, founding Healthy.io, an Israeli health care startup. 

“What’s Your Number,” which launched April 30, is available on all podcast platforms. Video versions of the episodes stream on YouTube. The podcast is part of Ark Media, whose president Dan Senor is best known for co-authoring the 2009 book “Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle.”

Episodes of “What’s Your Number” consist of discussions between Lev-Ram and Adiri, as well as interviews. For example, their June 11 episode, “(Real) Jewish Space Lasers,” featured Oded Ben David, chief technology officer at ELOP, the electro-optical division of Elbit Systems, discussing Israel’s recently declassified Iron Beam aerial defense system.

When J. spoke with Lev-Ram and Adiri on June 20, the war between Israel and Iran was at full bore. Lev-Ram was home in Palo Alto, while Adiri was in New York City, unable to return home due to the shutdown of Ben Gurion Airport. He finally made it back to Tel Aviv on June 22.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

J.: First off, before I get into your backgrounds and the podcast, can I hear a little bit about what you have gone through in the last week? 

Yonatan: I left Israel on [June 11] on a three-day mission in Rome with a couple of business partners. We had a few important presentations there with the government. And as I was in the beautiful city of Rome, my phone rang at 2 a.m. My wife called saying, “Look, something weird is going on. There’s been a siren.” My wife made aliyah  to Israel from Switzerland. We’ve been there for 17 years. So she’s been through rounds of hostilities. And she wasn’t sure what was going on. So I immediately woke up trying to understand. 

Then I realized what’s happening. And then the next thing I knew, I couldn’t go back. So I flew to Geneva, which is where my wife is from and where we have a place. I was supposed to be in Washington, D.C., [on June 17]. So I just flew out from Geneva to Washington and was there for two days. Now I’m in New York. 

It wasn’t an easy week. My wife’s amazing. We have a great safe room. Kids are great, but you want to be there for them emotionally. And rockets are falling 500 yards from our house, already three times, quite significant blasts. It’s an emotional toll above and beyond everything else. And you want to be there for your life partner, for my parents, for my brother, my nephews, my kids.

It’s a nightmare. Michal, you’re here in the Bay Area, but you have loved ones in Israel. Your phone must be going off quite a lot with alerts. 

Michal: A lot of checking in with loved ones back in Israel. I have a sister who’s there with her family, and then almost all of the extended family is there and a lot of friends, of course. So just a lot of checking in on people. I’m in Palo Alto. This is my home. I literally landed at SFO an hour and a half ago from Charleston because some of my husband’s family is there, and they had a mini reunion, which was very weird with everything going on. Honestly, we almost canceled the trip. It just didn’t feel right to me. But we went, and I’m glad we went.

The reason I bring it up is because what was striking to me being there — I was walking around a little downtown area on one of the beaches there in Charleston, and there are storefronts there that have “We stand with Israel” signs and Israeli flags. And we walked by a wall of one restaurant where they had all the pictures of all the hostages. And I was almost brought to tears seeing this because in the Bay Area, you don’t see that, and it’s just inviting vandalism at the very best, right? It was really, really, especially this week, so heartwarming and so encouraging.

Diving into the work you two are doing with “What’s Your Number?” — how do you both know each other?

Michal: Funny enough, Yonatan and I were connected several years back because Fortune was looking at potentially trying to do a tech conference in Israel. It never came to fruition, but the two of us were both very much invested in trying to make it happen. And then we were reconnected by Ark Media, which is the producer and distributor for our podcast. So it’s very serendipitous.

Where did the idea for “What’s Your Number?” come from?

Yonatan: I got a call from Ilan [Benatar], the producer, saying, no one’s telling the [Israeli] economic story in an effective, podcast-worthy kind of dynamic. The producer and the team there are so adept, and they’re so experienced in how to do this. We figured out the sound, the music, the whole thing took its own shape. And we had great support from the team to build it as our own. 

I think we managed to create something that’s very organic and rings true to both of us. It fills a void of people wanting to understand the Israeli economy, not just startups and not just the “cool” stories, but in depth, in a way that is presented by someone like Michal, who’s known the scene for so long and has the ability to pitch it to the American ear. I think my responsibility here is to bring more of the Israeli angle and some of the stuff that I’ve done before and try to come up with numbers that tell a story.

Michal: The idea for this podcast was to look at the Israeli economy through a global lens, and that’s a really critical part of what we’re trying to do. There’s so much that’s going on now, politically, geopolitically, that feels like Israel is more and more isolated, at least according to certain stories you read. And I think that looking at the economic story, the opposite is true. 

There’s so much more than tech also, but at its core, the innovation story, the cyber story, the defense tech story — increasingly, Israel is a really, really critical, integral part of a global economy, including a growing economy in parts of the Middle East. And I think we’re really trying to tell that story, and there are hurdles there too, for sure, but that’s the trajectory. 

It’s a topic that both of us are obviously super passionate about. So I think it’s pretty easy and natural for us to be ourselves because it’s where our heart is. I think the fact that our brains can be in the same place as our heart is amazing. And it’s exactly what I want to be doing right now.