Encinitas, California, a model of co-existence and brotherhood.
You don’t gotta get me started on the righteousness of the Jewish people or their gorgeous little sovereign nation, forged in the fires of the Holocaust, endless war and the indifference and hostility of the rest of the world.
If there’s a problem, tech, health, yo, the Jews got it.
Therefore, it came as little surprise when the WSL commentator Chris Coté shared a lovely story of Jewish generosity and ingenuity that was taking place in the surf town of Encinitas, just north of San Diego.
The Leichtag Foundation has taken a novel approach to dealing with California’s catastrophic homelessness problem which is partly due to the hard right’s contempt of the weak and the hard left’s infantilisation of the same people.
What our Jewish brothers have done is open up parking lots for people sleeping in their cars to exist safely until they can get back in the game, under a roof that doesn’t have four wheels.
A simple, elegant, and cheapish solution.
Have a little taste of the story by Babs Henry of the San Diego Trib.
Early on a chilly Monday night, the first of what would become eight clients of a newly opened overnight parking area for homeless people brought his vehicle to a stop at the back entrance to the Leichtag Foundation property.
The middle-aged man, who drove a sport utility vehicle and holds a job in the retail industry, checked in with the security guard at the gate. The guard looked his name up on a list, then opened the big metal barrier that had blocked off access to the Leichtag Foundation’s 67-acre farmland property and directed the man to drive up a paved, private roadway toward the 25-spot parking area. Just over the crest of a hill near some night-lit greenhouses glowing softly in the darkening evening sky, two caseworkers waited to greet the man.
He spoke to them briefly after he parked his vehicle near the portable restroom building, then climbed back in the vehicle, eased his seat back and closed his eyes, looking like a weary dad waiting for his kids to finish an evening soccer or softball game.
“He’s tired, I can see,” Lea Bush, the senior director of family and community services for Jewish Family Service, said as she watched from the shadows.
And, here, my last holiday to Israel, with Ozzie Wright (listen to Oz sing Jesus was the King of the Jews, here) and Otis Carey.
