Sue Barnett

There’s something irresistible about Lawrence, an effervescent group influenced by the funk-soul bands of the 1960s and ’70s. 

Bay Area gold medal wrestler Amit Elor talks hard beds, celebrity athletes and snakcs in the Olympic Village.

Outside, 1,500 protesters shouted, waved bloodied Israeli flags and flipped off arriving guests. Inside, 220 FIDF supporters cried, sang “Hatikvah” and raised $1 million to support Israel’s soldiers.

In the Bay Area’s largest Israel solidarity rally since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, an estimated 1,800 supporters of Israel showed up Sunday at Yerba Buena Gardens in San Francisco, just blocks from where a march calling for a cease-fire had briefly shut down the 101 freeway the day before. Sunday’s event took place inside […]

This incident at Congregation Beth Am comes exactly one week ahead of Rosh Hashanah and as the synagogue was hosting Rep. Anna Eshoo and J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami.

Yesterday, Feb. 2, we reported on an incident at a Jewish center in San Francisco, in which a man entered a study session and fired several blanks from a gun. As part of that reporting, we shared a video taken from the security cameras. Two hours later, we decided to take that video down. We […]

Sue Fishkoff has been very good for the Jews. You won’t hear those words from her. In fact, retiring after 11 years as J.’s editor, Sue cannot bring herself to speak of her own accomplishments.

Remember the olden days when we all used to Google ourselves and be amazed that we were on the internet? Well, I recently did the same with J.’s digital archives, and I was amazed to find myself there, too. My 15-year-old self. I’m a born-and-raised San Franciscan with what I believe was an undistinguished history […]

Books coverage is supported by a generous grant from The Milton and Sophie Meyer Fund. When Rebecca Handler’s father died from Alzheimer’s in 2013, there were, “unsurprisingly given our family, moments of hilarity,” the San Francisco writer recalls. She was in the room with her mother and her brother, Daniel, waiting to witness their loved […]

Dee-Dee and Yoel Sberlo started out just wanting to help a longtime friend who had an ambitious idea about making personal protective equipment for frontline health care workers. Now, in […]

Morocco, once home to the largest number of Jews in the Arab world, is doing some serious Jewish outreach these days. Ten years ago, King Mohammed VI began allocating funds to restore Morocco’s historically significant Jewish sites and open them to visitors, part of an ongoing project to recognize the Islamic country’s rich Jewish past. […]

Miz Cracker is a N.Y.-based performer and comedian who competed on “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” a popular reality TV series in which contestants show off their talents in comedy, dance, improv, costumes, makeup and more. The show is a launching pad for drag queens seeking exposure, opportunity, fame and fortune. Miz Cracker will perform in “Femlins” […]

It’s back-to-school season, a $27.8 billion industry and the second largest shopping season in the U.S. after Christmas. Most of what parents buy is made of plastic and often winds up as landfill. Heather Itzla, 50, and Nikki Kozlowski, 27, are business partners in San Francisco with a mission to eliminate “plastic pollution” by providing […]

From page to stage to screen, “Cabaret” has been beguiling audiences — and disturbing them — for nearly 80 years. Set in prewar Berlin during the rise of the Nazi […]

Margarita Bekker, 48, of Redwood City is a certified health care interpreter and lead interpreter of education and training at Stanford Health Care, where she has worked for 16 years. She immigrated to New York from Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) in 1989, when she was 19, and settled in the Bay Area the following year. […]

Hannah Jannol, 18, graduated in June from Shalhevet, a Modern Orthodox high school in Los Angeles where she was editor-in-chief of the award-winning student newspaper the Boiling Point. She was J.’s intern for eight weeks this summer before heading off to college in New York City. How did you end up with an internship at […]

It’s nearly impossible to capture in words the spirit of a wedding celebration, even if you were there. This one was joyful. Silly. Unconventional. Exuberant. Inspiring. Jewish. And fun. Mostly fun. There was dancing, of course. And raising the chuppah. Breaking the glass. A ring prayer. But there was also tent camping. Costumes. Eating in […]

"For me as a former Soviet Jew and an immigrant to the U.S., [it was important] to see and understand what kind of Jewish life exists in today’s Poland."

Part Three of a three-part series (Read Part 1 and Part 2 here) J. Senior Editor Sue Barnett traveled to Poland in June with the Jewish Federation of the East Bay and the S.F. Federation’s Young Adult Division. She documents the experience in a series of reports. When stories of resistance against the Nazis are […]

Part Two of a three-part series (Read Part 1 and Part 3 here) J. Senior Editor Sue Barnett traveled to Poland in June with the Jewish Federation of the East Bay and the S.F. Federation’s Young Adult Division. She documents the experience in a series of reports. Lodz, Poland — From the time he was […]