For example, Lawrence Baron, director of San Diego State University's Lipinsky Intitute for Judaic Studies, was introducing author Michael Berkowitz last Sunday as the speaker at the annual Robert Siegel Memorial Lecture held in conjunction with the book festival.

He cautioned the audience that another event was planned to be held in the same auditorium immediately following Berkowitz's speech, so people should not linger inside the auditorium. 

"There is a definite end to this--unlike our election," Baron said.

Berkowitz's topic dealt with how Jews have pictured themselves over the years -- as opposed to how they have been pictured by others. To many, he said, it may seem "natural that Jews adapted well to changing circumstances and managed to protect and assert their communal interest. 

"Surely the recent evidence of this is the nomination and, hopefully, the election of Sen. Joseph Lieberman as the Democratic vice presidential candidate," he added. After a pause, he quipped, "This has been a paid political announcement!"

* * *

Berkowitz's book, The Jewish Self Image in the West, focuses on prominent Jews who were taken to the heart of the Jewish people of the United States and Britain in the years between 1880 and 1940. 

Theodor Herzl, Chaim Weizmann, Albert Einstein, Louis Brandeis, Henrietta Szold, Rose Schneiderman and New York Congressman Meyer London were the kind of co-religionists with whom Jews liked to identify, he said. So was the boxer Barney Ross.

On the other hand, the financier Jacob Schiff, the poet Emma Lazarus, the labor leader Samuel Gompers, the father of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud, the Communist thinker Karl Marx, and movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn, did not help to shape Jewish self-perception although all of them were Jews.

What was the difference? People in the first group were seen by Jews as "representing us" while people in the second group were seen as people who, though they might help fellow Jews, nevertheless held themselves apart, Berkowitz said.
 

* * *
In last week's issue of HERITAGE, we mistakenly described Henry Abarbanel, who was elected Nov. 7 to the Del Mar City Council, as a newcomer to public office. Although he was not in public office at the time of the election, Abarbanel had served on the Del Mar City Council previously.