By Donald H. Harrison  

SAN DIEGO, Calif—It was Israeli night on Thursday evening, March 30, at the San Diego Museum of Man.  Spaced among the museum's exhibits on evolution, ancient Egypt, and the indigenous civilizations of Panama, Mexico and Southern California, were serving tables filled with traditional Jewish foods, if not necessarily Israeli ones, like knishes, chopped liver and rugelach for museum members to sample.  


Josie Gomez, left, samples a knish dished out by Alex Krasnikov of Elijah's Restaurant and Delicatessen, while in background Sammy Sussman arranges the rugelach.  Note the models of skulls and photos of apes in the background 
which are part of a regular exhibit on evolution at the San Diego Museum of Man.  (Photos by Donald H. Harrison

For those willing to try, Yoni Carr, an Israeli of Yemenite descent, led traditional Israeli dances in the rotunda of the 90-year-old museum which every month celebrates a different culture represented in the Greater San Diego area's population.  In February, the dances, songs, and foods of Spain were featured; next month the "Tower After Hours" event will focus on the culture of Italy.

The anthropological Museum of Man is located in the California Tower, a landmark of Balboa Park, which is the cultural heart of San Diego.  Museums of art, photography, natural history, science, aerospace, automobiles,  sports, railroading and San Diego history are housed in historic Spanish colonial-style buildings initially constructed for international expositions of 1915 and 1935.  

These museums compete for the visitors' attention with gardens, botanical buildings, outdoor sculpture collections, a large outdoor organ where concerts are given every Sunday afternoon, and a group of international cottages—including one for Israel—where the stories of other countries are told to visitors by volunteers.  What is perhaps San Diego's best known attraction, the San Diego Zoo, is in the northern portion of Balboa Park.

Javier Guerrero, Museum of Man director of operations, said the "Tower After Hours" event, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., had a two-fold purpose: "to introduce people who don't know or who have never experienced aspects of the Jewish/ Israeli community and let them experience it.  And then for the community organizations themselves to come around one event—not as any one organization, but as people coming together to celebrate that particular community in San Diego."

The Museum of Man produced the Israel night with the cooperation of the United Jewish Federation of San Diego County, especially its Young Adult Division (YAD), and the Center for Jewish Culture which is housed at the Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center in La Jolla.

An exhibit case at the entrance to the Israeli party featured various ritual objects of Judaism including a kiddush cup, mezuzah, menorah, mizrach, taillit and kippah, oil lamp for sukkot, an etrog holder, a siddur, a shofar, gragger, and a sculpture of a rabbi with a Torah.  More secular Israeli subjects were illustrated with a Jerusalem harp, a wooden chamsa, and a sand creation depicting the Israeli desert by artist Rhea Carmi, whose other works are to be exhibited in April at the Lawrence Family JCC.

A story board also discussed the local San Diego Jewish community, noting that Jews had lived in the California city since 1850, the same year that California became the 31st state of the United States. 

The legend mentioned early pioneers Louis Rose and Lewis Franklin, who both occupied important civic positions, and also polio vaccine discover Jonas Salk—who established the Salk Institute in La Jolla—as important members of the San Diego Jewish community.  Not mentioned on the caption, but of particular interest to Balboa Park, was Marcus Schiller, who served on the City Board of Trustees that had set aside the land for the park.  

Schiller went on to become the inaugural president of San Diego's first synagogue, Congregation Beth Israel, which held Rosh Hashanah services in its own building for the first time in 1889.   Once located several blocks from Balboa Park, the old temple building was relocated after it passed from Jewish hands to the Heritage Park area of Old Town San Diego several miles away.