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Monday December 18, 2006

Faces

by suzan berns

Art for healing

Original, one-of-a-kind colorful collages created by Deborah Friend will be featured — and for sale — at the Jewish Home art show Tuesday, Dec. 19, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Also available will be paintings and ceramics by other Home residents, plus Friend’s sculptures. Friend, who has Parkinson’s disease, will donate the proceeds of the sales of her work to the Michael J. Fox Foundation, which is working to find a cure for the disease. Last year she raised $1,800 for the cause and she hopes to double it this year. If you can’t make the show, but are interested in purchasing art produced by Friend and other seniors at the Home, call (415) 334-2500.

Teens learning philanthropy

Proud mom Amy Shulman writes that her daughter Allison Lesovoy was a member of Peninsula Jewish Community Teen Foundation, which was awarded the Outstanding Youth in Philanthropy Award from the Association of Fundraising Executives at their national meeting last month. The group, a program of the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation’s Jewish Community Endowment Fund, raised and allocated $41,000 last year. Sue Schwartzman is the group’s director and other members of the 2005-06 teen foundation include Zoe Adler, Tali Azenkot, Brittany Blum, Alyssa Breetwor, David Brown, Sydney Calander, Alyssa Caplan, Elana Cohn, Adam Costello, Molly Dellheim, Adam Herzog, Allison Hoffman, Rivka Kelly, Arlie Krigel, Todd Lavine, Jessica Mann, Sasha Mironov, Ben Reback, Daniel Seidel, Aaron Wessels, and Jack Wolfe.

Demonstrating to stop genocide

Stanford’s Elissa Test and Nikki Serpio were among the Bay Area residents who demonstrated outside the Sudan Embassy in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 9 to protest the genocide in Darfur. (The two also led the April 30 rally in San Francisco.) Martina Knee of San Francisco helped to coordinate the action. And in New York City in November, Diane Sampson of San Francisco, Gayle Donsky of Marin and I were among the Bay Area folks organizing Judgment on Genocide, a citizen’s tribunal of Sudan’s president Omar el Bashir. (Yes, he was found guilty.) Segments from the trial, including the opening statement by Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, can be heard on www.judgmentongenocide.org.

50 years young

Suzanne Broad, Marci Dollinger, Deb Grant and Jan Luxenberg have been overseeing a year of festivities — one event each month — as Congregation Rodef Sholom commemorates its 50th anniversary. The celebration will culminate in a gala dinner, highlighted by a video and entertainment, on Feb. 3. Dini Freeman, Lee Battat and Mary Rabb are co-chairing the gala. For information, contact the temple.

Short shorts

Tova Grunes of the Jewish Community Federation of the Greater East Bay is the national recipient of the Edell Scholarship, which sends one young professional to the annual convention of all federations. Grunes, the young leadership director, joined the East Bay federation in 2004 … Stephen Steiner has left the JCF’s Endowment Fund after almost seven years to join the San Francisco Symphony as director of gift planning … Steinberg Architects, designers of the new Taube-Koret Campus for Jewish Life, has been the recipient of at least six awards for excellence, including one for its principal Rob Steinberg, and one for its work on Temple Beth Am. Other buildings the firm has been recognized for are San Jose City Hall, Evergreen Community College Library/Technology Center, Classic Residence by Hyatt in Palo Alto, and Pacific Shores Apartments.

This columnist can be reached at faces@jweekly.com.

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