(L-R) Mayor Jonathan Rothschild, Solar Celebration Co-Chair Scott Arden, Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon, Temple Emanu-El President John Judin and Solar Project Coordinator Steve Tofel at Temple Emanu-El’s Earth Day Solar Celebration April 22.

When Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon and Tucson Mayor Jonathan Rothschild flipped the switch on Temple Emanu-El’s solar energy array during its Earth Day celebration on April 22, it was the culmination of a long process. “It started last summer,” said Cohon, spurred by “a lot more incentives from the government and the power company to go green.”

“Our congregants were very enthusiastic about doing this because of the moral and Jewish implications,” he said, citing the Jewish value of bal tashchit (do not destroy). “It’s our responsibility as stewards of the Earth.”

There have been a few other solar energy pilot projects at Reform synagogues across the country that didn’t work out, said Cohon. He was primed to take the plunge, having had personal experience with his own home, which he converted to solar power in September 2011. “My parents solar heated their pool in the 1980s,” said Cohon. But it wasn’t yet “the right time for Temple.”

Until recently there weren’t enough incentives for nonprofits to go green. “Cost effectiveness hasn’t been as effective as you would think,” said Cohon. “It’s a little hard to understand how this could work for a building constructed in 1948,” yet it does.

Temple Emanu-El will not be a totally green structure, he said, “but we’re lowering our carbon footprint, creating a source for renewable energy that doesn’t damage the environment, the ozone layer or contribute to global warming.”

“Basically, you go to a solar contractor and pay the same amount for electricity” as you would to the electric company for air conditioning, lighting and other electricity needs, explained Cohon. The solar company installed the photovoltaic panels in the parking lot, which convert light into electricity at the atomic level. An added benefit is that they provide covered parking spaces.

The solar array is “an investment in the future. The panels will last around 40 years,” said Cohon. “It will take around 13 years to pay them off, with no electric bill.” Plus, the cost is locked in, negating a possible rise in the cost of electricity if Temple hadn’t switched to solar.

Is it a coincidence that it takes 13 years to amortize Temple Emanu-El’s new solar project? “By the time the kids I’m naming today become Bar or Bat Mitzvahs,” noted the rabbi, “we’ll be looking at a future with a significantly improved financial situation.”

“You can’t really do any better than this,” said Cohon.

Members of the Los Angeles chapter of the Pomegranate Guild of Judaic Needlework presented Barbara Esmond with this quilt in honor of her term as president of the chapter. The gift was a surprise, as Esmond never completed her term because she went to Israel for a two-month visit and ended up staying 16 years. “That’s a story for another time,” she says. (Phyllis Braun)

The group is named for the fruit that is one of the “seven species” in the Bible. The pomegranate, said to have 613 seeds symbolic of the 613 mitzvot, provides a colorful theme for many of the guild’s designs.

A long-time member of a chapter in Los Angeles, Esmond moved to Tucson almost four years ago to be near her daughter, April Bauer, who has also been a guild member. Although Esmond still attends some guild meetings in L.A. when she visits her sons and their families, she has decided to start a chapter here. She promises that anyone can produce beautiful pieces like hers, even if they’ve never done so much as sew on a button — as was the case with at least one member of the L.A. group.

Esmond had started doing needlepoint before she joined the guild in 1981, but a canvas she bought at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, which didn’t have a pre-printed pattern to follow, had her stumped. She sought the guild’s advice after seeing a mention of their meetings in a synagogue newsletter.

At her first meeting, she heard unfamiliar terms such as “blackwork,” “hardanger,” “huck” and “Brazilian.”

“It really intrigued me, so I stayed,” says Esmond.

At her second meeting, a member showed examples of Brazilian, a form of three-dimensional embroidery. “I decided I wanted to make a chuppah out of Brazilian embroidery when one of my children got married,” says Esmond, which she did. Three of her four children and a niece have used the chuppah so far.

Barbara Esmond models an apron depicting symbols of the Jewish holidays.

Afikomen bag

As for those other mysterious terms, blackwork traditionally uses black silk, although red, aka scarletwork, is also popular – and perfect for pomegranates. Hardanger uses white thread on a white fabric background, with cutwork, reminiscent of papercuts or lace, while huck is a woven embroidery technique.

In addition to embroidery, guild members may also choose appliqué, quilting and needlepoint projects; pretty much anything that can be done with a needle and thread, says Esmond.

Alef Bet sampler with designs based on ancient needlework. The pattern was created for the Los Angeles chapter of the Pomegranate Guild of Judaic Needlework.

Prior to her first Pomegranate Guild meeting, Esmond imagined members working on pictures of rabbis at the Western Wall, which wasn’t the case at all. “I went and saw they were doing all this wonderful stuff,” she says.

But Esmond got more out of the meetings than just beautiful needlework. She also met wonderful people. “When I moved to L.A.in 1978 I was very lonely. I started a business and I didn’t really have friends, I didn’t know people,” she says. “Pomegranate opened up the world to me.”

Many of the group’s projects, such as challah covers and afikomen bags, fulfill the commandment of hiddur mitzvah, enhancement or beautification of a mitzvah. The pomegranateguild.org website notes that when members sit down to stitch, “They are reviving Jewish traditions … Some create their works as heirlooms for their children; others stitch to recreate memories of ceremonial objects or perhaps of family members lost in the Holocaust.”

Matzah cover

But you don’t have to be Jewish to join, says Esmond — the L.A. group had Christian and Muslim members. You also don’t have to be a woman, she adds.

Esmond has a list of 10 or 11 prospective new members in Tucson, and plans to hold the chapter’s first meeting either in early June or in the fall. Dues are $36 per year and include a subscription to the quarterly national newsletter, The Paper Pomegranate. For more information, contact her at 204-3364 or brealjs@yahoo. com.

Edna Feldman San Miguel

Edna Feldman San Miguel is a sixth generation Tucsonan who has spent more than two decades discovering her Jewish ancestry. In February, the artist and illustrator led a tour for visiting Israeli artists of the San Xavier Mission, where she’d worked as a conservationist, which was followed later that day by a Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona Lion of Judah Chai Tea at the Tucson Jewish Community Center. San Miguel was sitting next to Wendy Feldman, a part-time Tucson resident from New York. When someone, seeing a resemblance, asked if they were related, San Miguel — who recently added Feldman to her name to honor her great-grandmother — wasn’t at all surprised.

Juanita Feldman Chavez Arvizu was her great-grandmother on her father’s side. San Miguel’s great-great-grandfather, Robert Feldman, came to Tucson as a blacksmith with the military at Fort Grant in the early 1860s. He married Estafana Chavez and they had three daughters. “Their middle daughter, Juanita Feldman, was my great-grandmother,” says San Miguel. “One day Feldman left camp and never returned. I don’t know what happened to him, but I’m still trying to find out.”

Estafana, as a single mother, was living at Fort Bliss in El Paso with her three daughters. When Juanita was eight years old, Tucson’s Mayor Esteban Ochoa was there on business. “My great-great grandmother handed over Juanita and said, ‘please take care of her,’” says San Miguel. He did, she says, and “Juanita was raised in Tucson where she received the best education. She learned to read and write. That was unusual at the time.

“My mother’s last name was San Miguel. Her relatives were Jewish, too,” says San Miguel. “They were persecuted in the Spanish Inquisition.” Although San Miguel was raised Catholic, “in my heart,” she says, the message was “you are Jewish. Go.” Now 54, she started to explore her Jewish ancestry in the late 1980s. “Members of my family have European features,” San Miguel told the AJP. In 1990 she asked her father, Al Aquilar, if they were Jewish, and he said, “‘Yes, we are.’”

“I left the Catholic Church,” says San Miguel, who has raised her two teenage sons with Jewish traditions. “I’m still exploring. My artwork is very Judaic. It comes from my soul.”

She’s taught art at Tucson High Magnet School and in local middle schools, “throw-away kids who were high on drugs, involved in drive-bys, or had just had abortions,” says San Miguel. “I worked with them painting murals. I really wanted to affect their lives.

“I want to go to Israel and paint beautiful murals, inside and outside of the bomb shelters” for children there to see beauty, she says.

San Miguel’s newest book, “Mission San Xavier” (Arizona-Sonora Museum Press, 2011), recently won first place in the history/nonfiction division and second place in the fine art division in the Royal Dragonfly Book Contest. She illustrated “My Nana’s Remedies/Los remedios de mi nana,” a children’s book by local author Roni Capin Rivera-Ashford. San Miguel received a bachelor of fine arts degree from the University of Arizona.

She recently participated on a Handmaker Services for the Aging Celebration of Lifelong Learning Series panel, “Between the Lines: A Conversation with Local Authors,” along with Edie Jarolim and Bill Broyles. Two of her paintings, “Honor Thy Father and Mother” and “Noah’s Ark,” hang at Handmaker.

In July, San Miguel will discuss Judaic artistic influences on the Mission San Xavier at the Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies 22nd annual conference in Albuquerque, N.M.

She recently was interviewed for a documentary on the mission, which will be submitted to the Sundance Film Festival. San Miguel is currently working on illustrations for several children’s books, including a Chanukah story. And she’s considering future Judaic art projects.

“Walking into a temple and feeling at home,” she says, “is not as easy as I thought. I’m really part of two cultures. I’m trying to sort it all out.”

Among the artifacts are over 40,000 paper items, including articles, photographs, documents and scrapbooks, which will be sorted, scanned, photographed and, in some cases, researched prior to being placed in archival storage boxes for preservation. Interns from the University of Arizona History Department, as well as volunteer archivists from the Tucson community, will be working with museum professionals over the next year to complete the work.

One of the first items to be archived is a delicate fragment of paper with a typed list of the Theresienstadt Cremation Log dated May 22, 1944. The list contains the names of 18 individuals who were murdered at the concentration camp, their year of birth, age and the time of day that they were sent to the crematorium. Two of the 18 names appear to be Roman Catholics, says Eileen Warshaw, executive director of the museum; the remaining names are believed to be Jewish. The fragment was presented to the museum by the late Gerd Strauss, a Holocaust survivor. The Strauss family donated a large collection of papers to the museum.

Additional volunteers and funding are being sought. For more information call 670-9073. Donations may be mailed to JHM Archives, P.O. Box 889, Tucson, 85702.

Daniel Saban, 21, completed his military service with the Israeli Air Force. He is fluent in English and Spanish, enjoys horseback riding, jazz dance and travel, and has served as a kibbutz summer camp counselor.

Ravit Rokach, 20, finished her military service with the rank of sergeant. Fluent in English, she has served as a youth movement and summer camp counselor and worked in an afternoon child care facility.

Host families are also needed for one night for 10 Israel Scouts, who will perform at the JCC on Thursday, June 21 at 6:30 p.m. as part of their Friendship Caravan tour.

For more information, contact the Weintraub Israel Center at 577-9393 or IsraelCenter@jfsa.org. The Israel Center is a joint project of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona and the JCC, in partnership with the Jewish Agency for Israel.

Tucsonan Bill Kugelman and teens from the Western region of the United States lead the March of the Living from Auschwitz to Birkenau in Poland on April 19. (Courtesy CJE)

Holocaust survivor Bill Kugelman has been to Birkenau before, once on a previous March of the Living trip in 2006, and as a prisoner of the Nazis. From 1939 to 1945, Kugelman, 88, spent three and a half years in concentration camps, including Birkenau, and two and a half years in the Jewish ghettos of Poland.

The long-time Tucson resident embarked on this year’s journey “to raise curiosity, so Jewish parents will send their kids on the March of the Living,” he told the AJP. “If they want their kids to remain Jewish, to have a spark of Jewishness, they need to know the price of Jewishness.”

Physically, the trip was difficult for Kugelman. “Emotionally, I’m strong enough. I know how to shake off my feelings,” he says. “Basically, I’m there for the kids, to show them what happened.”

Kugelman took part in the MOL with two Tucson teens and 36 others from the Western region of the United States, along with six staff members, including Rabbi Steph­anie Aaron of Tucson’s Congregation Chaverim and Rabbi Daniel Pressman from Silicon Valley, Calif. Their participation on the trip to Poland and Israel, which took place from April 15 to 29, was administered by the Jewish Coalition for Jewish Education of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona.

In Poland, the group visited Kugelman’s hometown, Sosnowiec, the first time he’s returned since being abducted by the Nazis. Thirty thousand of the 150,000 people who lived in Sosnowiec in 1939 were Jews. Today there are around 225,000 residents, says Kugelman. “Zero Jews,” he adds.

“I showed the kids the Jewish streets where all the Jewish stores were. My parents were in the shoe business; so were my grandparents. I was in the shoe business in Tucson,” he says, noting that his son now owns the business, Alan’s Shoe House.

Kugelman, who has lived in Tucson for 47 years, participated in this year’s MOL at the request of CJE Director Sharon Glassberg. “Every trip is a little different,” says Kugelman. “In 2006, we saw the demolished crematoria. Our guide asked me if we knew what we were stepping on,” which turned out to be pieces of bones.

This year, “the kids saw other things that were just as traumatic for them, piles of hair and babies’ shoes,” he says, adding that he was too busy explaining everything to the teens “to let my feelings get to me.”

At the end of World War II, says Kugelman, “when I came out of the camps I wondered, why did I have to pay that price to be a Jew?” He’s thought about this a lot since, noting that “a lot of New Yorkers try to wash their Jewishness off themselves to fit in. I like to fit in myself. I don’t want to be an oddball, but I wouldn’t submerge my persona. Be careful. Don’t sell out! If you’re a Jew stay a Jew.”

Benjamin Bressler, one of the Tucson teens who went on the trip, delivered a speech, “Not Changed But Enlightened,” at the Hebrew High graduation on May 8. “From what I learned in Poland and understood in Israel, I can proudly say that I have a heightened appreciation of life,” said Bressler, “because I saw the dark depths of humanity, while later seeing a reason to celebrate.”

Kugelman, who has been to Israel many times, volunteered in the Israeli Army twice, once repacking pharmaceutical items and once building movable fortifications, “an invention that only a Yiddishe kup could do,” he says. On this trip, “Ben Ye­huda [Street] was packed with Jews. I said, ‘God bless you and multiply.’ It’s the joy of my life to see so many Jews in one place.”

The mood was different in Israel than in Poland, notes Kugelman. “The kids were jazzed up on the way there so they could let loose. In Poland it was a subdued, depressed situation. All you see is shadows of the past and the Jewish community who once lived there.”

But for teens who participated in the MOL, Kugelman’s efforts were not in vain. “I cannot stress enough how important this trip is,” said Bressler in his speech. “Not just because you are Jewish but because you are human … So if you’re not sure about going on this trip, listen to me, you have to go, in the end it’ll be the best experience of your life.”

Kristopher Carson “KC” Rosburg and Carol Galper, assistant dean for medical student education at the University of Arizona College of Medicine, with the letter announcing his award from the Dr. Sam Goldfein Memorial Fund

The Dr. Sam Goldfein Memorial Fund of the Jewish Community Foundation will honor Kristopher Carson “KC” Rosburg with its second annual award of $2,500. Rosburg is a graduating senior at the University of Arizona College of Medicine who will become a pediatrician. He will do his residency at St. Louis University. Rosburg teaches CCC-CPR classes throughout the community, volunteers for the College of Medicine’s graduation white coat ceremonies, and often volunteers as an interviewer during school tours. The award will be presented to Rosburg by Ann Goldfein, a JCF trustee and widow of Sam Goldfein, at the annual senior breakfast ceremony on May 10.

The award recipient is selected by the Goldfein advisory committee from senior students who have been involved with the UA’s Commitment to Underserved People program and exhibit the compassion, commitment to patient care, humility, desire to learn and leadership qualities exemplified by Goldfein during his lifetime. The annual award is a surprise each year to the recipient; nominations are a result of recommendations by physicians and advisors who work with students in the CUP program. Goldfein volunteered as a mentor in the CUP program.

The first annual award was presented last year to Amber Steves, M.D., now a resident in the Fort Collins Colorado Family Medicine Residency Program.

Graizbord will discuss how Sephardic Jews from the “golden age” of medieval Spanish Jewry, through the Inquisition, to modern times viewed and used genealogy.

The meeting will be held from noon to 3 p.m. at the Tucson Jewish Community Center, with Graizbord’s presentation from 12:45 to 2 p.m.

A donation of $5 is suggested. For more information, contact Andy “Avi” Rosen at 237-6470 or arosen2@cox.net.

Handmaker Youth Leadership Team participants who complete the program requirements, which include four hours of volunteer work, will receive a special Youth Volunteer Corps t-shirt, have access to priority registration for YVC summer programs and receive an invitation to a celebration honoring their service to Handmaker. Local youth ages 11-18 are invited to participate. The advisory board, chaired by Phil Bregman, is also seeking parent and teen participants.

A kick-off event will be held Sunday, May 20 at 2 p.m. at Handmaker, 2221 N. Rosemont Blvd. To RSVP, contact Lori Riegel, religious and cultural education coordinator, at 322-7006 or lriegel@handmaker.org.

Pima County Supervisor Ray Carroll

Tucson City Council member Richard Fimbres

Cooperation was on the agenda at the annual legislative breakfast that took place at the Tucson Jewish Community Center on April 20. Republican and Democratic Pima County supervisors and Tucson City Council members started out by voicing opposition to the proposed Rosemont Mine, drawing repeated applause from the audience of around 60 attendees.

The event was sponsored by the Jewish Community Relations Coun­cil of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona and Hadassah Southern Arizona.

After voicing his opposition to the mine, Supervisor Ray Carroll said, “I’m a Republican who’s not moving to the right. I’ll always be civil.”

“We all ride over the same potholes, the same streets, the same as everybody does,” said Supervisor Richard Elias. Fixing potholes was on everybody’s mind. Council member Paul Cunningham announced that $15 million has been approved for each year during the next three years to address the issue.

The city needs to look at bus rapid transit traveling up and down Broadway, connecting to the airport, Raytheon and other locations, said Cunningham, the only Jewish official on the panel. “We can have a commuter train from Marana to Vail,” he said.

Cunningham, who was on the panel with City Council member Richard Fimbres and supervisors Sharon Bronson, Carroll and Elias, explained some of his other goals. “We give away $20 to $30 million a year. Ninety-six percent of Maricopa County lives in incorporated areas, [compared to] 60 percent in Pima County. We’ve got to get more areas incorporated or annexed to get more funds from the state.”

A successful professional soccer program in Tucson, which would provide a “one-quarter billion dollar influx to the economy,” is another of Cunningham’s goals. “We’ll need to build a new arena downtown,” he said. “My vision is in about eight years for us to host the Pan Am games.” Tucson hosted major league soccer’s 2011 Desert Diamond Cup in February and March.

Panelists also promised to fight for education and to bring good jobs to Southern Arizona.

The new Costco warehouse in South Tucson “brought in 110 jobs to a neighborhood that needed it,” said Fimbres. “Those neighborhoods all wanted the good-paying jobs. Costco pays $14.83 an hour compared to Walmart’s $8.”

In the past, Arizona had the three C’s — cotton, copper and cattle — said Bronson, adding that “we have to be focused on growing jobs. We need sustainable jobs. Those jobs today will be in aerospace and defense, transportation, solar and alternative energy resources and biotechnology.”

Supporting local businesses is always the first priority, said Fimbres. “They’re really the backbone of our economy.” Since taking office in November 2009, “all I’ve known is the downward trend of the economy. We live on sales tax,” he said.

Bronson noted that there’s a petition circulating locally for an initiative to extend the one cent sales tax, which would be used for transportation or education.

The plight of Tucson Unified School District and other local education entities was a hot topic for the panelists, who agreed that reduced funding is only part of the problem. “There have been a series of attacks from state legislators on [TUSD’s] Mexican-American studies” classes, declared Elias, noting that the program has helped many students stay in school.

“Young adults in TUSD have shown leadership in talking about education,” he said.

“And let’s be honest — it’s not good to be 50 out of 50” in per pupil funding, especially when “close to one in four children in Pima County live in poverty.” A few panelists urged the audience “to elect legislators who are behind education and care about it,” acknowledging that good jobs aren’t available to an uneducated population.

Cunningham, who attended Tucson schools and was a Bar Mitzvah at Congregation Anshei Israel, said that 20 years ago, educators came from around the country to see the amalgamated TUSD. These days, he said to the JCC audience, “say we had a school system that was 55 percent Jewish and they voted to eliminate a Jewish studies program. How would you feel about that?”