News & Impact

On May 12, two Holocaust survivors—Sonia Apfelbaum, 81, and David Diamond, 92—stood on the bimah at Peninsula Temple Beth El in San Mateo in front of family and friends. Their dreams of becoming a Bat and Bar Mitzvah had been lifelong in the making, and three years in the making for JFCS and a small army of local Israeli volunteers. “Today is the happiest day in my life,” David said from the bimah. David and Sonia met through JFCS’ Café By the Bay program on the Peninsula, which brings survivors together weekly on Zoom to socialize, connect, and support one… Read More

Jewish Family and Children’s Services (JFCS) Holocaust Center has established the California Collaborative for Holocaust and Genocide Education, with support from a $1.9 Million grant from the Marin County Office of Education and the State of California. The California Collaborative, a first-of-its-kind statewide network, will connect educators, genocide survivors, and community leaders in order to support California teachers to effectively teach Holocaust and genocide education in their classrooms and address the surge of antisemitism and hate in California school communities. Members of the new statewide collaborative network include the University of Southern California’s Shoah Foundation; the Museum of Tolerance; the… Read More

Read the original article on jweekly.com > Anita Friedman thought she’d seen it all: wildfires, earthquakes, 9/11 and the brutal 2008 economic recession. But the longtime executive director of the S.F.-based Jewish Family and Children’s Services had not seen it all—not until the onset of the coronavirus pandemic of 2020, which she calls “the deepest and most profound crisis we’ve had to deal with in the last generation. This combines both a health crisis with a mental-health crisis with an economic crisis, and it affects everyone.” Having served the local Jewish community for more than four decades, Friedman is… Read More

KQED’ Forum with Michael Krasny Death and saying goodbye—they are among life’s most mysterious and challenging phenomena. The theatrical production “End of Life” opens a dialogue about these experiences via staged readings of two Greek tragedies written by Sophocles. Artistic director Bryan Doerries joins Forum, along with award-winning actor David Strathairn and a palliative care expert, to discuss the show and making peace with mortality. Guests: David Strathairn, actor Bryan Doerries, artistic director, Theater of War Redwing Keyssar, palliative care director, Jewish Family and Children’s Services; author, “Last Acts of Kindness: Lessons for the Living from the Bedsides of the… Read More

J Weekly By Laura Paull As Sophocles surely knew, people often are able to absorb tragedy much more easily on a stage than in their own lives. That’s the principle behind an upcoming performance at the Castro Theatre, where a New York-based theater collective will guide audiences to reflect on the ultimate drama we tend to avoid. After staged readings of scenes from two plays by the ancient Greek playwright, the ensemble will ask: Is death necessarily a tragedy? “I see it, rather, as a transition,” says Judith Redwing Keyssar, palliative care director at Jewish Family and Children’s Services, sponsor… Read More

J Weekly By Karen Galatz The generation of Holocaust survivors may be passing, but thanks to a just-launched initiative in San Francisco, their testimonies will live on through their children and grandchildren. Called the Next Generation Speakers Bureau, the initiative is the brainchild of Morgan Blum Schneider, director of Jewish Family and Children Services’ Holocaust Center. The bureau is designed to address the challenge of Holocaust education when the last of the survivors are gone. “We want to ensure that the Holocaust remains a story of faces, not just a history of numbers,” said Alexis Herr, the Holocaust Center’s new… Read More