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Friday February 18, 2005

Faces

by suzan berns

Festivities …

Former 49er Harris Barton will emcee Jewish Family and Children’s Services annual spring event, silent auction and Fammy awards, slated for March 19 at San Francisco’s Ritz Carlton. Fammy awardees are Gina Waldman of Tiburon and Alison Ross and Barry and Evelyn Adler of San Francisco, all recognized for their outstanding service and commitment to the JFCS mission and Jewish community. Laura Scher and Ian Altman are event chairs. Co-chairs include Julie and Lowell Singer (San Francisco), Susie and Richard Sorkin (North Peninsula), Ellen and Ron Shulman (South Peninsula), Marion Weinreb and Paula Pilecki (Marin), Judy Freedman and Bill Skoonberg (Sonoma), and Jessica and Michael Eisler (young leadership). Check out the JFCS Web site – www.jfcs.org — to bid on silent auction items or for more info.

On another front, “Someone’s in the Kitchen,” the Jewish Home’s signature fund-raiser featuring 57 chefs, is sold out! But save the date for the 2006 event — it’s March 7. Barbara and Richard Rosenberg and Phyllis Friedman are chairs, and Barbro and Barney Osher are honorary co-chairs.

Emerging artists

Vavi Toran of the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation’s Israel Center reports that a poster exhibit promoting coexistence in Israel is doing more than engaging day school students in discussion of the topic — it’s developing talents. Yael Cushman, a 12th-grader at the Jewish Community High School of the Bay; Rene McDonald, a third-grader at Brandeis Hillel Day School; and Naomi Wexler and Rose Clair Guthrie, eighth-graders at Brandeis Hillel, have added their creative posters to the show of works by Israeli artists. The exhibit, one of the first projects sponsored by the new Israel Education Initiative, has been making its way through local day schools. Rachel Lewin of the Ronald C. Wornick Jewish Day School in Foster City, noted that when the exhibit arrived there it “created an immediate stir in the school.”

We’ve got culture

Marin Symphony Sundays look a lot like Rosh Hashanah. The symphony plays at the Marin Center in San Rafael, where Congregation Rodef Sholom holds High Holy Day services, and on Sunday symphony nights the seats are peppered with Jews. Among them: Joanne and Steve Saxe, Bobbie and Tom Garber, Lee and Frank Battat and Mary and David Rabb. In fact, Lee and Mary are co-chairing “Bella Musica, Bella Cucina,” the symphony’s annual black-tie fund-raiser on March 13.

A football legacy…

Who would have guessed that when a few dads and their 13-year-old sons — all Brandeis Hillel Day School students — got together to form a football pool in 1984, that it would still be going strong 21 years later? Chuck Wexler and son Scott Dalton, Rabbi Michael and Dan Barenbaum, Fred and Andy Simons, Dennis and Josh Jaffe, and Gene and Ira Kaufman were among the founders – and five of them are still involved. Back in the pre-computer days, Susie Kaufman, who was (and still is) a Brandeis teacher, served as the intermediary. She’d collect the “picks” from the kids and take them home to husband Gene, who did the paperwork. Today, through the miracle of technology, people who have moved away, such as Chuck’s daughter Shira Wexler in Atlanta, and Kenny and Jem Atterman can take part. By the way, Chuck was the big money winner this year, Andy Colvin picked the most games, and the all-time big money winner so far is Milt Jacobs.

Suzan Berns is a freelance writer and publicist. She welcomes submissions of cute, poignant or informational anecdotes about you and your organizations at faces@jweekly.org.

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