Bay Area-based Taube Philanthropies is celebrating the conclusion of a yearlong exchange program between local rabbis and Jewish community leaders across Poland.
The virtual exchange dubbed “Minyan Makers” saw local religious leaders log online to facilitate Jewish text studies for Polish professionals from the Auschwitz Jewish Center, the Galicia Jewish History Museum, JCCs in Krakow and Warsaw, and other organizations.
The exchange, inspired by a 2015 Jewish heritage tour of the Eastern European country for local clergy affiliated with the Northern California Board of Rabbis, brought 13 local rabbis together with 44 Polish professionals from 21 institutions, and was funded via a grant from Taube Philanthropies. Its founder, the Bay Area real estate developer and businessman Tad Taube, was born in Kraków in 1931, and immigrated to the U.S. in 1939 just months before the Nazis invaded Poland.
In early February, Dr. Bruce Feldstein, a Jewish chaplain at Stanford Medicine, peered into a glass window as a man on a breathing tube, suffering from a severe case of Covid-19, took his last breaths.
A Jewish man in his 90s, he had been a favorite of the nurses, Feldstein said. They had learned to love him. They called him a “spitfire,” a man “full of life.” He had been looking forward to getting out of the hospital to share breakfasts with his grandchildren and great-grandchildren again.
While the family couldn’t be in the room during his final moments, per hospital policy, Feldstein was on the phone with them shortly after, sharing a message from the nurses about how their loved one was such a special patient.
There’s a new synagogue on the scene in San Francisco. It doesn’t have a name yet, but it can trace its roots to 1860 and it owns two buildings.
In November, 90 percent of the members at Congregation Beth Israel Judea and Congregation B’nai Emunah voted in favor of merging their two communities. The plan had been in the works for some time, and the two synagogues have even run a joint religious school since 2012.
Leaders of both congregations say it will lead to greater financial stability, more vibrant events and a more secure future for Jewish life in the southwestern part of San Francisco.