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

                              Today's Postings

Aaron Demsky in Ramat Gan, Israel: "Biblical names, popular in America, fraught with meaning"

THE SECOND STORY ON THIS PAGE HAS BEEN REMOVED

Gail Feinstein Forman in San Diego: "A Farewell to Marcel Marceau"

                              The week in Review
                           (click on dates to see back issues)

Sherry Berlin in San Diego: "Children's book author and illustrator Lori Mitchell will attend Book Fair's Family Day

Carol Ghitman in San Diego: "Hillel sandwich' helped former Mexican Catholic realize she could become a Jew"

Donald H. Harrison in San Diego: "Foxman's book will prove valuable for American and Mideast historians"

David Meir-Levi in San Jose, California: "Hate crime suspected in torching of succah at San Jose State"

Sunday, October 7

Donald H. Harrison in San Diego: "Mision Trails reverie: Moses, Kumeyaay Indians, U.S. history."

Joe Naiman in Lakeside, California: "Youkilis played part in Red Sox ALDS sweep over L.A. Angels"

Sheila Orysiek in San Diego: "California Ballet dances Giselle"

Dorothea Shefer-Vanson in Mevasseret Zion, Israel: "Life is returning to normal in Israel as it is finally 'after the holidays.'

Saturday, October 6

Donald H. Harrison in San Diego: "'Bubbie and Zadie,' who live in Taiwan, actually speak Yiddish"

Natasha Josefowitz in La Jolla, California: "Thinning out the wardrobe closet."

Ira Sharkansky in Jerusalem: "Are Abbas-Olmert negotiations diplomatic window-dressing?"

Isaac Yetiv in La Jolla, California: "Warming the North African winter with Maimonides"

Friday, October 5

Donald H. Harrison in San Diego: "Not the best of the Viorst"

Dov Burt L\Salem, Massacusetts: <srael lobby' responses

Larry Zeiger in San Diego: "A tzedakah project in Honduras"

Thursday, October 4
Shoshana Bryen in Washington, D.C: "World without Israel still would be unpleasant for the Arabs"

Donald H. Harrison in San Diego: "Torah-chology: Mogel blends psychology and Judaism"

Sheila Orysiek in San Diego: "Why Torah bears reading again and again"

Lynne Thrope in San Diego: Sampling San Diego's best chefs' creations at annual Chef Celebration

San Diego Jewish World staff: Three photo combination shows march of Torahs followed by one's unrolling at Tifereth Israel Synagogue in San Diego

Wednesday, October 3

Shoshana Bryen in Washington, DC: "U.S. recruitment of Arabs to anti-Iran coalition must not be at Israel's expense"

Donald H. Harrison in San Diego: "SDJA student activist unrelenting in campaign to alleviate Darfur suffering"

Jay Jacobson in St. Louis Park, Minnesota: (Humor forwarded from internet): "Buddhist philosophy with a Jewish twist"

Bruce Kesler in Encinitas, California: "Columbia and Ahmadinejad: guidelines needed for future"

J. Zel Lurie in Delray Beach, Florida: Real socialized medicine is what takes care of President Bush."

Joel A. Moskowitz, M.D. in San Diego: "Sour and sweet at ‘Davka’ exhibit"

Archive of Previous Issues

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A Farewell to Marcel Marceau

By Gail Feinstein Forman

SAN DIEGO—The first time that I saw Marcel Marceau perform was in New York City in the 1960’s. I was teaching in the city at that time, and found New York the perfect place to feed my passion for theatre. But what I saw in Marcel Marceau's performance was much more than mere theatrical entertainment.

Dressed as his alter ego, “Bip,” in a sailor costume and dilapidated opera hat with one red rose sticking up, he was “Everyman,” stumbling through life with its mishaps, joys and sorrows in a way that I had never seen or even envisioned before.

Marceau referred to his character of “Bip” as a modern day Don Quixote, ”alone in a fragile world filled with injustice and beauty.”

Marceau’s work was infused with his politics and philosophy. In “The Cage,” a man

struggles to escape but finds that one cage leads to another, often interpreted as the Czechs did after the 1968 invasion of the Soviets, as a life under political oppression

I was awed by his “Seven Ages of Man,” where he took the audience on a journey of birth, renewal and death. One critic said of that performance that it communicated in “less than two minutes what most novelists cannot do in volumes.”

I knew I had met up with artistic genius, and I was hooked. Whenever Marcel Marceau performed in New York, I was there. A fellow Aries, he and I share March 22 as a birthday.

I carried this grand obsession with me when my husband and I moved to San Diego. But unlike in New York where I had never met Marceau in person, or asked him for an autograph, it was in San Diego that I essentially became a “stage door groupie.”

When I saw that Marceau was scheduled to appear in San Diego in 1984, I ordered tickets in advance. The day of the performance arrived, and I have no other rational way to explain my bold actions the rest that day except to say that I must have been under the influence of “The Spirits of Chutzpah.”

At the start of that day, I wrote a letter to Marceau asking him if he were able to perform his sketch “The Mask Maker,” as it was my favorite piece. Hilarious at first, he pantomimes an array of absurd situations, abruptly changing from one mask to the other. But as he puts on the sad face for the last time, though he struggles to rip it off, it cannot be removed. And tragically, the mask becomes his face.

I drove down to the theatre in the afternoon and presented the letter to the box office attendant and asked if he would give it to Marceau before the show. I had no idea if he would deliver the letter or not.

We arrived at the performance that evening with a large bouquet of flowers I planned to give to Marceau after the performance.

It was an extraordinary performance, in which I was enthralled by his reprise of the “Mask Maker” and after Marceau’s first bow, propelled by a force I never experienced before, I ran up the aisles, and threw the bouquet onto the stage. The flowers fell at his feet; he picked them up, took a bow with them, and went backstage towards the stage door.

I motioned my husband to follow me, and we ran to follow Marceau to the dressing room. As Marceau was entering the dressing room, his handler shooed us away. I told the attendant I had a question for Marceau. At that point, Marceau came out to talk to us and asked what our question was.

“Did you get our letter, I asked?”

“Which letter?” he answered.

The one about the “Mask maker?”

“I did it, didn’t I? He replied. And he had.

I was speechless and couldn’t believe that we were having this conversation in person with Marceau. He autographed the cover of a 1984 Geo Magazine, which features his picture on the cover, as well as our playbills. He was friendly, generous with his time, and surprisingly— very talkative!

Marceau played in San Diego several more times over the years, and each time, we got to chat with him behind stage. I learned to anticipate just the right moment to jump up and run to meet him at the stage door.

The last time I saw him in San Diego was at the Escondido Arts Center in 1998. He autographed a French book on his life and art that I had bought the year before in Bordeaux, France. He autographed the book with his usual message—“For Gail, With All My Heart, Marcel Marceau, “Bip.”

Marcel Marceau died on September 22, 2007. A French Jew, he was active in the French Resistance and lost his father in the Nazi Holocaust. His art reflected his life—what he had seen and what he hoped we might become. He said, “I want to be a man who will represent as an active witness of my time, and who wants to say, without words, my feelings about the world.”

For Marcel Marceau—With all my heart—Adieu.

Biblical names, popular in America, fraught with meaning

By Aaron Demsky

RAMAT GAN, Israel—Biblical first names are in fashion in the USA today. If you look at the Social Security Administration's "popular baby names" website, you will see that among the ten most popular names for new born American boys in 2006 are Jacob, Michael, Joshua, Ethan, Matthew and Daniel, followed by Christopher, Andrew, Anthony and William.

For girls, Abigail is number 6 and Hannah is number 8 and for the past fifteen years Sarah has ranked among the leading names. This does not mean that more Americans are reading the Bible, nor does it reflect a growing Jewish influence on American naming patterns. On the contrary, this general fashion will probably influence the choice of children’s names for young Jewish families. These names sound “right”, carrying enough sense of upward mobility, class and style, and have certainly lost their ethnicity.

One of the first words that a baby hears is its own name. That name is its identity. Often the Jewish name is a cultural code that may express the religious, social and political allegiances and/or the psychological mood of the name-giver, whether he be the parent or the name-bearer himself. Then again, the first name reflects contemporary trends and customs, and may tell us something about that person’s place in society.

Almost every Jewish person has a Hebrew given name which he may generally use or not. Outside of Israel, he/she will probably have two given names a Jewish (Hebrew, Yiddish or Ladino) one and another in English. Even if he/she does not usually use that Hebrew name, it may be recalled on certain significant occasions of life-cycle events like during a name-giving ceremony -for a boy at his brit milah (circumcision) or for a girl at the synagogue or at a shalom bat ceremony when that name is announced in public. Again at confirmation at a bar/bat mitzvah ceremony one is called up to the Torah by that name. Then again, at one’s wedding, the Hebrew name is written in the marriage contract. In the case of a divorce, the Hebrew name must be written without a mistake in the bill of divorce (get). Traditionally one’s Hebrew name is inscribed on the tombstone and is recalled in the special prayer for the dead, called the Molay, said at the graveside and at the Yizkor prayer service. We see therefore that one’s Jewish or Hebrew first name is with us at all the important moments in our life-cycle.

The given name expresses the thoughts and wishes of the parents. Very often the child will be given a memorial name after an older member of the family. If the family is of Ashkenazic origin, then they probably will name the child after someone who has died in order to perpetuate his or her memory. If it is a Sephardic or Oriental Jewish family, the firstborn might be named in honor of a living grandparent. Whatever the case, the child’s first name is a living link with the historic past of that family, an expression of continuity of the tradition into the next generation as well as a fulfillment of the value concept of honoring one’s parents.

If the parents do not feel the obligation to perpetuate the name of a family member then their choice might reflect their own ideology and beliefs at the time of the birth of this child which they want to announce to the world. For instance, one may name a child after a Hassidic master or a modern national hero like Herzl or one of Israel’s prime ministers, just as others might name a child in honor of some celebrity in the fields of art and entertainment.

Some names have been traditionally given to commemorate the day the child was born. This practice has given us Shabtai (Sabbath), Pesah (Passover), Hanukkah and Yom Tov (holiday) or Menahem/Nehamah, i.e., “Comfort(er)” for a child born on Tisha Be’Ab, the day when both Temples were destroyed. Esther (Malkah)/Haddasah might be for a girl born on Purim.

Linked names are quite common. Some of them are derived from the Torah reading, especially from Jacob’s blessing (Genesis 49) and indicate the direct influence of the Bible on the layman. In Eastern Europe, some of these names were given their Yiddish equivalents. Very often these Yiddish translations continue to influence the contemporary choice of an English name that might have the same initial letter: Yehudah-Aryeh (Leib), Naftali-Zvi (Hirsch) and Benjamin-Zev (Wolf).

More often than not, names reflect trends in name giving practices especially in the modern period. Not since the biblical period have we witnessed such an explosion of innovative and diverse Hebrew names in the State of Israel, a development that is characteristic of the renaissance of the Hebrew language. In turn, this creativity has influenced Jewish names and name giving throughout the Diaspora, foremost among Jewish couples in the States.

The study of Hebrew first names provides an opportunity of understanding our own Jewish identity within our family, religion and history as well as how our parents saw themselves and us as links in the continuity of that Jewish experience.

Professor Aaron Demsky is the founder and director of the Project for the Study of Jewish Names and a professor of biblical history at Bar-Ilan University in Israel. He will serve as the scholar in residence at Young Israel of San Diego on Friday, Nov. 16 and Saturday, Nov. 17. Besides discussing Hebrew names, Demsky plans to deliver separate talks on "The Origin of the Hebrew Alphabet and the Oldest Hebrew Inscription" and "Leaving No Stone Unturned: the Excavaitons at the Temple Mount."

More information on his speeches as well as the special Friday night and Saturday meals during the Shabbaton may be obtained from Young Israel of San Diego, 7291 Navajo Road, San Diego, CA 92119. (619) 589-1447