Cantor Martin Feldman retired in 2003 after 43 years as cantor at Congregation Sherith Israel in San Francisco. Now the community is preparing to celebrate his 95th birthday.
This summer, two Hebrew Union College students one on his way to becoming an ordained rabbi, the other, an aspiring cantor are back at the Bay Area synagogues where they began their Jewish journeys as children.
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Christina Jefferson grew up in a Baptist family before converting to Judaism along with her wife. Now, she attends synagogue, volunteers and sees her job as a form of 'tikkun olam'
(J. the Jewish News of Northern California via JTA) Though she calls herself an “art kid” at her core, Christina Jefferson is no stranger to contact sports.
Recently hired by the San Francisco 49ers to lead the NFL team’s diversity and inclusion efforts a newly created position Jefferson has a long history with a quite different, yet still bruising, athletic pursuit: roller derby.
In that sport, players in full pads and helmets race around an oval track in roller skates, jostling and jockeying for lanes, blocking and body checking each other along the way. Roller derby traces its roots to the 1930s but was revitalized on television in the 1960s with the help of Jewish Bay Area showman Jerry Seltzer. In a 2017 interview, Seltzer called the game a “symbol of women’s empowerment.”