Jewish Community News

News: April 2008

Speakers present talks on local Jewish history and growing up Jewish in China
Conversations in Jewish Learning, sponsored by Congregation Beth David, will present its final two lectures in the spring series on April 3 and April 30, at 7:30 p.m.
     Stephen Kinsey, history teacher and lecturer, will speak on “The History of the Jews in San Jose” on April 3. Kinsey will explore the development of the San Jose Jewish community in the 19th century and its further growth into the 20th century.
    Kinsey and his wife, Lynne, have been members of Beth David since 1978. He is a middle school history teacher. As a trustee of the Commission for the Preservation of Pioneer Jewish Cemeteries and Landmarks at the Judah Magnes Museum in Berkeley, he lectures on and leads tours to Jewish Gold Rush cemeteries.
     Rena Krasno, author and former Shanghai resident, will speak on “Shanghai Experiences of a Jewish ‘Old China Hand’” on April 30. She will lecture on life in multi-cultural Shanghai as seen intimately by a Jewish girl born and raised in this amazing city of adventure and international politics where Sephardi, Russian Jews, and later European refugees from Hitler rebuilt their lives. Book sales and signing will follow the lecture.
   Krasno was born in Shanghai in 1923. She attended the French Municipal College where she earned her bachelor’s degree. She later entered the Faculty of Medicine at the Jesuit Aurora University (now called Shanghai School of Medicine #2), where she studied for three years during World War II. She left Shanghai in 1949.
       In her professional life she has worked as a simultaneous interpreter for international organizations (UNESCO, ILO, FAO, Olympics Committee, and others) in Europe and Asia. Her working languages are English and French (active) and Russian and German (passive). She also speaks Hebrew and Spanish. She served as Honorary Chancellor of Austria in Seoul, Republic of Korea. In 1984 she helped produce an exhibit at the Tel Aviv Nahum Goldmann Museum of the Jewish Diaspora on “The Jews of Kaifeng - Chinese Jews on the Banks of theYellow River.” The exhibit later traveled to 17 cities in the United States.
       The author of seven books, Krasno has also been interviewed for video and film presentations about her experiences in Shanghai during World War II. Her most recent book, “Cloud Weavers,” published in 2003, was acclaimed by the Washington Post to be “a terrific collection of 23 smoothly told tales from the treasury of Shanghai.” Two of her previous books have been translated into Chinese.