Barbara Cook was watching the horror in Ukraine unfold on TV and feeling helpless when she stood up, turned off the television, and started packing her bags. Fifty-six bags, to be precise. Cook, an entrepreneur who lives in the East Bay and the daughter of Holocaust survivors, started gathered donations of clothing, toiletries and suitcases…
Wine flows freely in the ancient story of Purim, which takes place in ancient Persian. Buzzed on wine, King Ahasuerus asks the beautiful Vashti to come party. At two other wine-soaked feasts, the heroine Esther sways the king against the evil Haman. Wine all but disappeared from modern-day Iran following the country’s takeover by Muslim…
This story originally appeared in Jweekly.com. Reposted with permission. The national environmental nonprofit Sierra Club, headquartered in Oakland, has canceled its scheduled trips to Israel in response to pressure from progressive and anti-Zionist groups. The decision came after activists alleged the organization was “greenwashing the conflict” and “providing legitimacy to the Israeli state, which is…
Yiddish was spoken in Howard Paul ’s home until he was 5. That’s when “my father was explaining to a friend some stupid thing I did, and I turned and said to him, I understand what you’re saying. And that ended Yiddish as his code language.” Fitting then, that the East Bay winemaker has a…
As a nurse in San Francisco General Hospital’s psychiatric emergency room, Jennifer Esteen’s typical first task was to, as she put it, “take people out of handcuffs.” Twelve years of treating mentally ill patients brought to the ER by law enforcement taught Esteen that the health care system, especially regarding mental health, was broken. She…
This essay was adapted from a section of the book “Why Do Jewish? A Manifesto for 21st Century Jewish Peoplehood,” published by Gefen Publishing in Nov. 2021. If the last century of Jewish American life was built by the Jews of the East Coast, then it’s quite possible the next hundred years of Jewish life…
In a stunning decision, a federal judge sentenced former Chabad of Poway rabbi Yisroel Goldstein to 14 months in prison for tax and wire fraud on Tuesday, overriding prosecutors’ sentencing recommendations of house arrest and providing a measure of relief to a community still reeling from a deadly shooting at the synagogue in 2019. Federal…
Jeff Morgan was thinking about the cabernet sauvignon grapes he bought this fall in Pope Valley, near Napa. “I’ve been sourcing grapes from this particular vineyard for I’d say almost 20 years,” said Morgan, co-founder of Covenant Wines. “And I’ve never had an issue with water before. We’ve always had enough water to get through…
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