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Friday October 17, 2003

shorts

bay area

Synagogue honors

cantor on 80th birthday

Congregation Beth Israel-Judea will be honoring Cantor Henry Greenberg at 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 26 to mark the cantor’s 80th birthday and 28th year at the San Francisco synagogue.

Several Bay Area cantors, the BIJ Choral Group and professional musicians from the congregation will perform.

This will be the third time the synagogue has paid tribute to Greenberg, who was also honored during his 25th anniversary and for his 18th year at Beth Israel-Judea.

Greenberg grew up attending Kol Yakov, a former Orthodox shul in San Francisco. He conducted services for the first time when he was 8 years old. While he never set out to become a cantor, he is of the old school that grew up steeped in Jewish tradition but never formally trained.

At 20, he began serving as cantor and became an assistant at Conservative Congregation Beth Israel in 1952.

His professional career began when the man who was supposed to serve as cantor had a heart attack the day before Rosh Hashanah.

Over the years, Greenberg worked in the grocery business and later sold insurance. He became the cantor at Daly City’s Congregation B’nai Israel in 1968, while still selling insurance.

In 1975, he returned to Beth Israel, which had merged with Temple Judea, a Reform synagogue, a few years earlier.

The synagogue is affiliated with both the Conservative and Reform movements, and Greenberg is a member of both the Reform American Conference of Cantors and the Conservative Cantors Assembly.

—alexandra j. wall

Portion of Israeli art

sales to aid victims

Artwork by 100 Israeli artisans will be on display and for sale in Danville at the “Israeli Artisan Galleria,” sponsored by Bridges to Israel.

Ten percent of the art sales will benefit the Israeli Terrorist Victims’ Fund.

The event will be held from 4 to 7 p.m. Oct. 24 and from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Oct. 25 and 26 at the Danville Community Center, 450 Front St.

For more information, call (925) 820-3633.

Local water expert

wins ‘genius’ award

Peter Gleick is the recipient of the MacArthur “genius” award, one of three Bay Area residents who were chosen among the 24 grantees.

Gleick, 46, who is Jewish and lives in Berkeley, is the co-founder and president of the Oakland-based nonprofit Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment and Security. As a water expert, he has worked on regional conflicts around the world, including the Middle East.

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