San Diego, CA (special) -- The week marking the 50th anniversary of Israel's independence was one of the busiest in recent memory for the United Jewish Federation of San Diego County. 

The Federation participated in a Yom HaZikaron service on Tuesday evening, April 28, at Congregation Beth El and staged a Yom Ha Atz'ma'ut festival Sunday, May 3, at the Lawrence Family JCC. 

UJF also greeted former Israeli Ambassador to the United States Moshe Arad at its Ranch Breakfast Club, and briefed Yael Hacohen, the "Israel desk officer" of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee on upcoming San Diego-Israel programs, including a mini-mission, a teen summer experience, a community mission and a new program for earmarking contributions to Israel to the separate Jewish religious streams.  Although Israelis have been quietly marking Yom  HaZikaron--Israel's Memorial Day--at San

Student at Yom Ha'Atzma'ut Festival in San  Diego signs a huge happy 50th birdthday card

Diego venues for several years, this year the San Diego Jewish community was invited to share inthe solemn occasion.

There were readings in both Hebrew and English remembering those who had fallen in the five wars since Israel became an independent state; with some poems starting in Hebrew, then switching to English, and back to Hebrew, as an audience of hundreds followed along in printed programs.

Greetings were extended to the group in behalf of the Israeli Consulate General in Los Angeles by Mike Nitzan, himself a symbol of the interconnection between the American Jewish and Israeli communities. Born an American, he made aliyah to Israel, and now is serving as a shaliach in his native country on behalf of the Jewish Agency for Israel.

"This is the 50th time we juxtapose the pain, sorrow, anguish and mourning with the joy and exultation of Yom Ha'atzmaut, Israel Independence Day," Nitzan said. "For 50 years, Jewish independence has demanded that the pastoral landscape of the Holy Land be stained by the blood of its youthful fighters and defenders. For 50 years, wars and battles have created ordinary heroes out of Jews, Druze and Bedouin who wished to live their lives and fulfill their dreams, only to have their enterprises cut tragically short."

One of the many poems read that evening, unattributed, was titled In the Field.
 

With his bare feet standing in the field a little boy. It's spring now, the grass in his father's grave wants to hug his son. The father tries hard making his son laugh the boy tries- but can't

Up in the sky, a cloud is sailing. The boy can't remember his dad's face. he is watching the cloud passing by Dad--he cries, using all his power. The scream stays in him,  stuck in his throat-- for ever.

When the service ended, the audience participated in a community sing along, with lyrics to patriotic Israeli songs projected onto a screen in Beth El's combination sanctuary and social hall.

The mood was upbeat when former Ambassador Moshe Arad, now a vice president for the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, delivered an address to the Ranch Breakfast Club on Thursday, April 30. The ambassador suggested that educational and cultural exchanges between the Jewish communities of Israel and the United States must be increased if, in the next 50 years of Israel's existence, the two communities are not to drift apart.

He said Jews in the United States and other Diaspora countries can reinvigorate their Judaism -- and resist assimilation -- by making visits to Israel--a point that one member of the audience countered with a suggestion that Israelis should visit the United States if they want to find a religious alternative between complete secularism on the one hand and ultra-Orthodoxy on the other hand.  Arad agreed with the questioner, saying that when he talks to Israeli audiences--as opposed to American audiences--he often urges them to learn more about the religious practices and culture of Jews in the Diaspora. In fact, he said, the Hebrew

Former Ambassador Moshe Arad

University has been asked to prepare a curriculum for Israel's secular high schools explaining to them the Jewish world of the Diaspora. 

The ambassador had served in Washington in the latter portion of Ronald Reagan's administration and at the beginning of George Bush's administration. The latter was beset by tension between the United States and Israel over the creation of settlements in areas that had been in Arab hands prior to the Six Day War of 1967.

Some of the misunderstanding was due to semantics, Arad told HERITAGE in a post-speech interview. When Bush pushed then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir to stop building new settlements, Shamir replied "that shouldn't be a problem," Arad said. Bush took that to mean idiomatically that it would not be a problem acceding to his request. 

In fact, said the ambassador, what the Israeli prime minister meant was that the issue of settlements, in his opinion, ought not to be an occasion for a problem between the United States and Israel. In other words, the United States should not make such a big fuss over the issue.

The fact that there can be such misunderstandings even between friends who ostensibly are speaking the same language was one of the reasons that Yael Hacohen, the new Israel desk officer at the JDC offices in New York, came to visit San Diego.

Interviewed by HERITAGE on Monday, April 27, Hacohen explained that her "desk" serves as a liaison between American Jewish groups and Israel, particularly in coordinating projects financed by Jewish Federations in the United States through the JDC. With two members of the JDC's national board being past presidents of the San Diego UJF -- Rebecca Newman and Gloria Stone -- Hacohen, an Israeli, said she wanted to have a first-hand look at San Diego to understand its needs and priorities.

Stone's husband, Rodney Stone, is the current president of UJF. He is participating this week in a Federation mini-mission to Israel which will assess various projects which have applied for local UJF funding. The San Diego Federation has approximately $750,000 available to support projects in Israel in the next fiscal year. 

In years past, the money simply went to the Jewish Agency for Israel, as that body saw fit. Now the Jewish Agency recommends projects and Federations like San Diego's pick the ones they want to fund. 

Gary Jacobs, president of the Lawrence Family JCC, is leading the mini mission whose other participants include Richard Katz, next year's UJF president; Robert Price; Jeff Solander; Stephen Abramson, the UJF executive director; and Yaakov Schneider, the shaliach from Israel.

The committee will make recommendations to UJF's executive committee, which in turn will seek board approval for its funding choices. Proposed projects are located in Hof Ashkelon, the area that is "twinned" with San Diego County's UJF in the "Project 2000" program; Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Nitzana, a community near the Egyptian border. Stone said among San Diego's criteria are that the money support pluralistic projects which can be seen and understood by anyone who visits Israel.

Schneider also will put the finishing touches on the June 28-Aug. 5 Scott Stone San Diego Israel Teen Trip, in which between 40 and 50 San Diego teenagers will experience Israel first hand after spending time in the Czech Republic and taking a voyage from Italy to Haifa in a re-cretion of the voyage of the immigrant ship Exodus. The trip is named in memory of Rod and Gloria Stone's late son, Scott.

Similar reconaissance will be done by other members of the mini-mission as they plan a 200-member San Diego community mission to Israel Nov. 2 -11 that will be led by former banker Murray Galinson.

Galinson said that the mission will cost $1,500 per person, and that anyone who has contributed $1,000 or more to the Federation in the current year's campaign will be eligible to participate.

"We would hope they would come home committed to Jewish philanthropic endeavors whether they be in Israel , or local issues," Galinson said. "I think they will see a lot of things there that relate to things here. " The itinerary still is being planned by a committee headed by Miriam Robbins.

Stone told HERITAGE that by taking people to Israel, such trips not only build relations between San Diego and Israel, they also develop a spirit of solidarity among trip participants. When participants return to San Diego they are more ready than ever to work together on projects, he said.

The UJF president said also because it promotes unity, he is pleased that Jews from all religious streams--from Reform to Orthodox--have agreed to a new program for UJF giving that will supplement the Federation's normal fundraising campaigns.

A drive to earmark contributions through Federation to the programs of the various Jewish religious streams is expected to be formally inaugurated June 11 at a community event to be co-chaired by Stone, Orthodox Rabbi Avram Bogopulsky of Beth Jacob Congregation and Conservative Rabbi Leonard Rosenthal of Tifereth Israel Synagogue.

Given the fight over "pluralism" that has riven Jewish communities across the United States, Stone believes this program, marrying choice and communal unity, will help to build the San Diego Jewish community and heal some rifts.

Stone was interviewed during last Sunday's Yom Ha'Atzma'ut festival on the grounds
of the Lawrence Family JCC at which organizations ranging from the Humanistic
Jewish Congregation of San Diego to the Chabad Hebrew Academy staffed booths,
offered giveaways and literature, and joined in celebrating Israel's first 50 years of
existence. Many hundreds of people visited the festival throughout the afternoon.

"Gevatron," a chorale group from Kibbutz Geva in the Israel Valley, near Jordan, sang during an afternoon that was punctuated with greetings from county Supervisor Ron Roberts and from Ido Aharoni, Israel's Consul for Communications.  Young members of the Spanish-speaking Ken Jewish Community performed Israeli folk dances on stage, while other children tried their hand at imaginative gymnastics--including "nerf

Gevatron performs in San Diego

archery"--sponsored by J.W. Tumbles at the other end of the grounds.  

Elsewhere, Hadassah Southern California had other children add their handprints to a
cloth painting of Jerusalem to be mounted in the children's pavilion of Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem.