By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO — Our special license plate correspondent, Melanie Rubin, espied two more "Jewish" plates for our collection: one allowing a father to kvell about his wonderful daughter; the other enabling a driver to protest the pollution and sewage that regularly foul our ocean, especially after winter rains in California.

The first, on a California signature plate, combines Hebrew and English: ABA2JEN.  Aba is "father"; 2 is license-plate speak for "to," and Jen most probably is a wonderful young lady named "Jennifer" or some derivative.  The driver is a proud papa in other words.  Whoever he is, he probably has many photos of his daughter in his wallet, ready to be shown at a moment's notice.  Just like I have for my grandson.

The second message was on a California license plate that urges us to "protect our coast and ocean," and depicts the tail of a diving whale.  Therein lay the tale when combined with the message KUKEN.  We went to a Yiddish/ English website maintained by Natalya Belinsky called the "Everyday Yiddish-English-Yiddish Dictionary" to decipher this one. Using our word search tool for "kuken" we found that it is commonly used in the expression, gai kuken ahfen yam, a curse meaning (pardon the expletive): "go shit in the ocean." As the driver wants the oceans protected, we assumed that he wished to enjoin society from further pollution of this wonderful global resource.  In the San Diego/ Tijuana areas, sewage runoff during winter flood season is a major problem, frequently forcing closure of beaches.

Our collection grows.  We'll be delighted if you will send in photos of Jewish license plates that you see. Please send a JPG image of the license plate to us at sdheritage@cox.net.

      JEWISH LICENSE PLATE GALLERY

    
Yiddish: Upright, outstanding person


Hebrew/English: Father to Jen

    
Yididish:  For you, only good
 
   Hebrew: In peace

    
Yiddish: Grandma 


 Yiddish: Grandma 2 

 
Hebrew: Wisdom
                                                               
          

   Hebrew & English: Mother to 3    





   Hebrew & English: Mother for 4                



 Hebrew: Life 18     



Yiddish: Excrement


           
Yiddish: Little Mindy                      





Yiddish: Woe is me, Ma                





English & Hebrew: San Diego Mother

   
Biblical: A life as long as Moses            





Yiddish: Grandpa