San Diego Jewish World
                         'There's a Jewish story everywhere'
                                               

 Vol. 1, No. 125

 EU's Solana in Israel for consultations

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs assigns great importance to Solana's visit, against the backdrop of the EU's increased involvement in the region and the anticipated upgrade in bilateral relations between Israel and the EU.

The preceding story was provided by Israel's Ministry for Foreign Affairs

 



Firefighters battled Greek blazes,
saved village, won friends for Israel

TEL AVIV (Press Release)--After four days of grueling, round-the-clock activity in Greece, Israeli firefighters returned to Israel early Friday morning (31 August).

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni commended the firefighters and the Israeli embassy staff in Athens for their life-saving activities.

The preceding story was provided by Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs
 

Olmert, Cabinet members, help to
inaugurate Israel's new school year

RAMLA, Israel (Press Release)—Prime Minister Ehud Olmert this morning  visited schools in Ramla and Lod to mark the beginning of the school year.  He was accompanied by Education Minister Yuli Tamir, Interior Minister Meir Shetrit, Education Ministry Director-General Shmuel Abuav and Teachers Federation Chairman Yossi Wassermann.  
 
They visited the Achva School in Ramla where they met with first grade pupils and continued on to the DKL School in Lod for handicapped Jewish and Arab students. 

Prime Minister Olmert said: "I am pleased and moved to open the school year and am even happier that it has opened as scheduled.  Education is the State of Israel's top priority, along with security and dealing with social distress. This finds expression in the actions that we are undertaking and in the resources that we are investing in education. 

“The new reform that is underway this year, in cooperation with the Teachers Federation, is not at the expense of the steps that we have taken previously but is a significant addition that begins a new horizon for teachers, students and education in general.  To you, dear teachers, I can say that I know how difficult this work is.  But I can also describe to myself that it is also very satisfying, certainly for those of you that work with special-needs populations.  We can see what compassion, fostering and investment can do. 

“As I view the excellent teachers in Ramla and Lod, I reiterate that the belittling of the education system must stop.  Whoever does this does not recognize the excellent schools and the wonderful teachers that we have here.  Our schools are among the best in the world and many teachers have a sense of mission, dedication and are motivated by great love. 

The school year opened around the country and I am very pleased that in the end, parents in Sderot showed responsibility and sent their children to school.  We are anxious and concerned for the security of our children and for that of parents and teachers everywhere, especially in Sderot and the other communities near the Gaza Strip.  We will do everything, with the necessary balance and responsibility, to protect them."

The preceding story was provided by the office of Israel's Prime Minister

 


Austrian chancellor to visit Yad Vashem

JERUSALEM (Press Release)—The Chancellor of Austria, H.E. Dr. Alfred Gusenbauer, will visit Yad Vashem on Monday, September 3. He will be accompanied by Avner Shalev, Chairman of Yad Vashem.

His 90-minute schedule at Israel's national Holocaust memorial and museum includes a tour of the history museum and a visit to its Hall of Names; a wreath-laying ceremony at the Hall of Remembrance, a visit to the Children's Memorial, and the signing of the guest book at the exit of the Children's Memorial.

The preceding story was provided by Yad Vashem

 

United States of America

New York Gov. Spitzer helps teach immigrants about state labor service
  
NEW YORK (Press Release)—New York Governor Eliot Spitzer recently launched “Labor-On-Wheels,” a new Department of Labor initiative to promote outreach among immigrant workers throughout New York City.

The “Labor-On-Wheels” outreach vehicle will be used to educate immigrant workers about their labor rights and the services provided by the Department of Labor. Many immigrant workers do not visit Department of Labor offices due to language and cultural barriers. This proactive outreach tool will bring labor services directly to workers for the first time. By partnering with community and immigrant groups and using their existing spaces, the Department of Labor will set up temporary Labor offices throughout New York City. These offices will be staffed by bilingual agency representatives in an effort to provide much needed, basic resources to immigrants working throughout the City. The majority of the outreach will be done during weekends and evenings to provide workers more flexibility in learning about available services and resources.

“Throughout our state's history, immigrant workers have played a pivotal role in our economic prosperity,” said Governor Spitzer. “They represent a vital, and growing, segment of our workforce, and it is important that they have access to services provided by the Department of Labor.”

The preceding story  was provided by the office of Gov. Spitzer



New York Mayor Michael  Bloomberg launches marketing campaign

Bloomberg launches campaign to make visitors feel at home in NYC

NEW YORK (Press Release)—Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has launched the first phase of "Just Ask The Locals," the City's first-ever five-borough marketing and advertising campaign to make visitors feel more welcome, thank them for visiting, and help them navigate New York City.

The campaign includes outdoor advertising throughout the five boroughs, insider tips from celebrity residents available on a tourist hotline, and a new tourism website. Other elements include color maps that provide guided tours of celebrity residents' favorite neighborhoods and tip cards with the ten essential things to know when navigating the City, which will be distributed in hotels and by teams of tourism ambassadors on the streets.

The Mayor announced the campaign at the unveiling of the state-of-the-art, $1.3 billion American Airlines terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport. The terminal itself will serve as a campaign focal point, with advertisements for "Just Ask The Locals" lining the corridors to create a comprehensive welcoming experience for passengers.

The preceding story was provided by the office of Mayor Bloomberg

 

Pennsylvania Gov. Rendell announces major
new solar plant—largest east of Arizona 

FALLS TOWNSHIP, Pennsylvania (Press Release) - Governor Edward G. Rendell today unveiled plans for the construction of a new solar energy power station that will be the fourth-largest facility of its kind in the country and the largest east of Arizona when operations begin in next April.

“This major announcement shows that affordable, secure and alternative sources of power are available now and will result in a cleaner environment, competitive energy prices and the reduction of our dependence on foreign fuel,” said Governor Rendell. “In the next few years, consumers and businesses across the state are expected to encounter dramatic energy cost increases. In order to avoid economic hardship on our families and businesses and we must act now.

“With the introduction of new, reliable alternative energy choices for Pennsylvania’s consumers, we will empower our citizens and businesses to take control of escalating utility bills by adjusting usage to take advantage of lower, off-peak rates; encourage energy efficiency; use new, clean electricity generation and invest in Pennsylvania’s home-grown energy,” the Governor said.

Speaking on August 30 at the project site, Governor Rendell announced that Exelon Generation Company LLC has signed a 20-year power purchase agreement for the energy produced at a new solar energy generation plant with EPURON LLC, a subsidiary the world’s largest solar integration company Conergy AG. Plans call for more than 16,500 solar panels to be built on 16.5-acres, adjacent to Waste Management’s GROWS Landfill, capturing the sun’s rays and converting them into electricity.

Upon completion, the plant will produce approximately 3,700 megawatt hours of power, enough to meet the annual energy requirements of 300-350 homes. At this output, emission levels of carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide that directly contribute to pollution and acid rain will be reduced by the equivalent benefit of planting 33 acres of trees every year.

The preceding story was provided by the office of Gov. Ed Rendell

 
Louisville's Mayor Abramson seeks help
naming the city's 100-mile trail system

LOUISVILLE, Kentucky (Press Release)—Mayor Jerry Abramson has a challenge for Louisville residents — help name the Metro Loop, the 100-mile hiking and biking trail that will encircle the city.

Metro Parks has been using the working name “100-mile Metro Loop” to describe the series of paved trails that will eventually link to one another.  The project, however, has evolved from one trail around the perimeter of the community into a system that includes smaller loops and other paths along routes such as the Olmsted Parkways.

“The 100-mile Metro Loop trail will be more than 100 miles, and it will be more than just a loop around the edge of our community,” Abramson said.  “Clearly, we need a name that will do justice to the significant impact that this project will have on our community once it’s completed.  We want a name that makes a statement about Louisville becoming a regional destination for recreation.”

The preceding story was provided by the office of Mayor Jerry Abramson

Jewish Humor

The two-word (at a time) rabbi

Rabbi Schwartz answers his phone.

"Hello.  Is this Rabbi Schwartz?"

 "It is."

"This is the IRS.  Can you help us?"

"I can."

"Do you know a Sam Cohen?"

"I do."

"Is he a member of your congregation?"

"He is."

"Did he donate $10,000?"

"He will."

—Our thanks to Larry Gorfine for passing this on
 

The Jewish Grapevine

CYBER-REFERRALS—San Diego Jewish World appreciates and thanks those individuals and organizations which recommend or post stories of interest to the worldwide Jewish community:

● Bruce Kesler: A review in The Observer of The King's Most Loyal Enemy  Aliens by Helen Fry.  Here is the link.

●San Diego Union-Tribune: A story by Tony Manolatos about the growing violence of neo-Nazis in the Lakeside area of San Diego County.  Here is the link.

●Shahar Masori: A feature in the San Francisco Chronicle about Zebulon Simentov, the last Jew in Afghanistan. Here is the link.


JEWISH OFFICEHOLDERS

●U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein  (Democrat, California) has a private bill to award citizenship to Jacqueline Coats of Kenya, whose husband, Marlin, lost his life trying to save two boys from riptides off the San Francisco coast  Because she had  not instituted immigration proceedings before he died, Coats is not eligible to stay in the country without such intervention.

A 'good name' for a horse

By Joe Naiman

DEL MAR, California—He's not truly a Jewish athlete, but a racehorse named Shem Tov deserves some mention in a Jewish sports section.

Shem Tov (Good Name) made his Del Mar Thoroughbred Club debut August 31. It would be nice to have said that he won, but his finish did have some Jewish significance as his final position matches the number of points on a Star of David.

Shem Tov was foaled in May 2005.  His sire was Unusual Heat, who himself was sired by Nureyev.  Breeder Madeline Auerbach paid a $12,500 stud fee to breed Chemolo to Unusual Heat.

Shem Tov was ready to race as a two-year-old, and trainer
Barry Abrams selected a six-furlong race July 14 at Hollywood Park for the colt's racing debut.  Shem Tov broke last among the nine horses and was last after a quarter of a mile, but he gradually gained ground and finished fourth, 4 3/4 lengths behind winner Polonius and 1 1/4 lengths behind third-place finisher Follows None.

Although fourth place only benefits bettors with a correct superfecta ticket, the total purse is split among the top five finishers and fourth place garners six percent of the purse.  Including Cal-bred incentives for California-foaled horses, Shem Tov earned $3,588 in his first race.

Jockey Joseph Talamo returned to Shem Tov for the August 31 race.  That day was a Friday, but don't worry about Shem Tov violating work on Shabbat, since he competed in the afternoon's first race.  That contest was a one-mile maiden special weight race for two-year-olds who had never won a race.

Shem Tov went off at 2.6:1 odds, an improvement over his 5.3:1 odds at Hollywood Park.  He broke third among the seven horses and was fourth after a quarter of a mile.  He fell back to fifth at half a mile but returned to fourth place with three-quarters of a mile completed.  He moved up to third entering the stretch before being overtaken and finishing sixth.

Since the Del Mar meet closes September 5, Shem Tov won't race again at this year's meet.  He may run at the Fairplex meet at Pomona, although trainers often skip Fairplex races for distance runners and wait for the Oak Tree meet at Santa Anita Park.



  

{Marc Kligman, who combines being a sports agent with his life as an observant Jew, invites you to listen. Click on the ad above for more information}



 

Dance~The Jewish C~o~n~n~e~c~t~i~o~n           by Sheila Orysiek

Boor at barre was genius in archives

SAN DIEGO—The Age of Reason and Enlightenment of the 1700’s preceded the much less reasonable (and some might say unenlightened) Romantic Era of the 1800’s.  The mystical concepts of Romanticism influenced poetry, literature, music and finally the ballet.

Giacomo Meyerbeer, (Jacob Liebmann Beer) born Sept. 5, 1791, into a wealthy German Jewish family started it all by writing an opera, Robert le Diable (Robert, the Devil). Described as the first of the genre called “grand opera” it premiered in Paris in 1831 and was a sensation which raised the composer to superstar status being performed a total of 593 times over the next 45 years.  Meyerbeer was the envy of other luminaries such as Wagner and was considered the finest musician of his time having debuted as a nine year old in a Mozart concerto.  But Meyerbeer’s opera also caused a sensation because in Act III a dance of ghostly nuns was led by the leading ballerina of the time, Marie Taglioni. 

Taglioni occupies a secure place in ballet history as the first and finest of the major Romantic Era ballerinas.  Every dance history book includes her name, scholars study her life, galleries and libraries value documents and prints of her career. It was she who was the first to make dancing on pointe part of normal ballet technique, wear a filmy calf length tutu, and part her hair in the middle: the now conventional impression we have of a Romantic ballerina.  Her performance in Meyerbeer’s opera led to the creation of subsequent Romantic ballets which over a hundred years later are still amongst the most beloved and well attended ballets in the repertoire.  

Shortly after the opening of the opera Taglioni gave up her role in the dance, her reasons have since engendered much dispute as discussed in an article from the New York Times (Kisselgoff, Dec. 2, 1984):

“Edwin Binney 3d, an American expert on Romantic Ballet, puts forward (the reasons for) her disinclination to appear in a ballet within an opera, a foot injury and the accidents that marred the premiere…..”

Dr. Edwin Binney the Third was an internationally recognized expert-docent in several fields of art but most particularly the ballet of the Romantic Era, its first ballerina, Marie Taglioni, and most specifically her connection to Meyerbeer.

As sometimes happens in life these various streams – Meyerbeer, Taglioni, Binney, came incongruously together in a ballet studio housed in an old building on Market Street in downtown San Diego in the mid 1970’s.  Designated as a “Historic Building” it had seen some truly stellar ballet dancers including the Kirov-Mariinsky Principal Dancer Valery Panov who detailed the harrowing life of a Jewish dancer in the Soviet Union and his flight from that life in his autobiography: “To Dance.”  In that old studio filled with trained and sleek ballet bodies, the internationally recognized expert-docent Dr. Edwin Binney the Third stood out for several reasons. 

Binney always entered the class by walking along the barre kissing on the mouth each of the females; it was his aggressive way of announcing his presence.  Having watched his “progress” as he came toward me, I turned decisively away.  Most of the other women, however, were younger and succumbed to his aggression. After letting me know emphatically he didn’t appreciate my refusal of his kissing approach, we eventually adopted an unspoken truce, spent the next several years observing one another and ended up appreciating the love we both shared for the art of the ballet.

Binney  didn't belong in a professional ballet class. He did not have a dance body and he couldn’t dance. He was in the way, sometimes dangerously so. He was unwilling to wait his turn, never stood still, and never stopped talking. He also didn't belong there by virtue of the invisible almost unexplainable social strata we as human beings subconsciously assign to those around us. He was from an elitist world, but was constantly striving to be one of the young dancers in our world. He could be needlessly acerbic to a tear producing fault or surprisingly – rarely - complimentary beyond any expectation. I once received a compliment from him that I treasure to this day - he was abstemious with compliments or even a smile that wasn’t a sneer. Physically, socially, chronologically, emotionally - he didn't fit in.

Understanding the social context from which he came, I found him fascinating even as his behavior repelled me. He was the inheritor of the Binney and Smith fortune - owners of Crayola - yes, the crayons. His name appeared on every Crayola product:  “Binney and Smith.” He came from the Boston aristocracy, a scion of a First Family of Boston: he had money, social position, recognition and yet couldn't resist floundering around in ballet class. He was impervious to his own image in the studio mirror – he simply didn’t believe it. He told me once as we stood at the barre as age and fatal illness began to claim him: "I don't know how I'm ever going to leave this."  It was not the salons of Boston that claimed his heart – it was the sweaty steamy ballet class and stage.

Binney was an illustrious contributor to Dance Magazine, dance literature and other arts publications.  The very things that endeared him to his social milieu set him apart in ours. In the world which he inhabited he was an internationally acknowledged expert in several fields of art in addition to ballet, particularly Oriental painting and miniatures.  His collections are exhibited in art museums to this day including the permanent collection in the San Diego Art Museum (he had his own private office in the museum) about which one can read here: 

With all his financial resources, he wore a torn t-shirt and tights that hung in shreds with large gaps in strategic places which when he bent over invited the world to view what legally should not be seen.  He relished the resulting gasps he heard.  Since he usually stood next to me at the barre, I had the unhappy “pleasure” of this view and once offered to buy him new tights to the delight and applause of the entire class.  He just smiled – and continued to wear the holes he called tights.  He loved it.

His unsolicited critique of those around him was even too much for people ready to share nasty gossip. He interrupted class constantly with his extemporaneous scholarly lectures on music, ballet and history.  These were delivered with all the aplomb of the truly knowledgeable, but also the truly elitist to a bunch of dancers more interested in why their feet hurt.  The teachers, too, were uninterested, unappreciative, overwhelmed and impatient to get on with the class or rehearsal and yet everyone endured him in silence.

He made a point of dropping names of mega-star dancers he knew on a first name basis and while he thought he impressed everyone, he was really solidifying their view that he simply didn’t belong. His frustration of not actually being a dancer overrode all else – that was all he really wanted. This fueled his efforts so he tried harder and ended up causing more havoc in class, dominating the teacher and the rest of us. 

What the teachers and dancers didn’t know, and probably didn’t care about is that it was he who was preserving the history of the art form – the ballet – to which they were all dedicated.  When the Library at Harvard needed to have its renowned collection of dance materials examined and catalogued they called on Binney as one of the world's foremost experts on ballet - especially Romantic ballet, especially Marie Taglioni – and the Jewish composer, Meyerbeer.

As the years went by and age and illness overtook him, Binney told me that he simply couldn’t stop “dancing” and so he doddered about becoming even more of a nuisance and laughing stock.  As much as I hated his vulgarity, I was also saddened for him.  I shared the love he had for the ballet.  At the very end, probably the last time I saw him, he was alone in the ballet studio and I happened to see him execute a rare smooth double pirouette and when I complimented him on it, his eyes shown as if he had at that moment achieved everything he held most dear in life.

He died in 1986. We all owe this man a debt - it was his knowledge that saved, catalogued and enabled the use of those Harvard Library papers on dance.  Those very papers were recently used by the Bolshoi Ballet to reconstruct the Romantic ballet Le Corsaire which the Bolshoi Ballet has just performed in London, August 2007.

The Romantic style ballets: La Sylphide, Les Sylphides (Chopiniana), The Dying Swan, Giselle, La Bayadere, Pas de Quatre, La Peri, Le Papillon, Les Trois Graces, Pas des Deesses, La Vivandiere, Paquita, A Folk Tale, Le Corsaire and Swan Lake are all still  danced today – an entire genre of dance - started by the Jewish composer, Meyerbeer, who actually wrote an opera.