Insight
!ACeS
Remember
When • •
„eas
Unlikely Turn Of Events
From the pages of the Jewish News for
this week 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50
years ago.
Splintered Reform Party faction chooses
a California Jew as its vice-presidential candidate.
ANDY ALTMAN-OH R
Jewish Bulletin of Northern California
San Francisco
A
Jewish multimillionaire from
California who went to the
Reform Party convention to
enjoy it wound up as the splin-
tered party's vice-presidential candidate.
At the convention held in Long
Beach, Calif, Nat Goldhaber of
Berkeley was selected on Aug. 12 to be
the running mare of John Hagelin,
whom the party's anti-Pat Buchanan fac-
tion chose for its presidential candidate.
Goldhaber, 52, and his wife,
Marilyn, say the turn of events caught
them by surprise.
"I went down there to enjoy the
convention and to avoid all the dirty
tricks of Mr. Buchanan," Goldhaber
said. "Dr. Hagelin asked me if I wanted
to be chairman of his campaign and I
said 'sure,' even though I was a little
reluctant to do that. Then he prevailed
Nat Goldhaber
on me to at least put my hat in the ring
[as a running mate] and I won by a
majority among four candidates."
Goldhaber's name is not familiar to most Americans,
even though he is a multimillionaire and well-known in
California's Silicon Valley. In 1987, he sold a software com-
pany he developed, Tops, to Sun Microsystems Inc. for a
reported $20 million. Recently, he pocketed about 6 per-
cent of MyPoints.com , worth about $27 million on paper,
when the company completed a merger with Goldhaber's
Oakland-based Cybergold Inc.
In 1995, he founded Cybergold, which offers rewards to
customers as an incentive to respond to Web site ads and
offers. He has headed several other start-up companies as
well, and owns two planes, a Cessna 414 and a Citation jet.
Upstaged
Goldhaber's status as a Jewish candidate might have
received more play in the media had he not been beaten to
the punch a few days earlier by Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-
Conn., who was named as Vice President Al Gore's running
mate on the Democratic ticket.
"Excellent," Goldhaber said was his initial reaction when
he heard about Gore's choice. "It's terrific that Jews are now
being considered for senior positions in the American polit-
ical domain, but we're still a long way from having a Jewish
president," he said. "The good thing is that the U.S. is iter-
ating in the direction of greater tolerance in all areas."
1990
The Goldhaber family
joined Temple Sinai, a
Reform synagogue, in
Oakland about four years ago.
The couple's 12-year-old
triplets, who attend Jewish
day school, are only 10
months away from celebrating
"a triple bar mitzvah" at Sinai.
His Vienna-born mother,
Sulamith, moved to pre-state
Israel as a teenager. She met
her German-born husband,
Gerson, who was raised in
Egypt, when both attended
Hebrew University in
Jerusalem in the late 1940s.
"Both sets of grandparents
had the good sense to figure
out what was coming and get
out [of Austria and Germany]
in plenty of time," Goldhaber
said of his ancestors' exodus
in the mid-1930s.
Sulamith and Gerson
Goldhaber immigrated to the
United Stares to pursue doc-
torates at the University of Wisconsin, she in nuclear chem-
istry and he in physics.
Goldhaber said he is "not actively involved with any
Jewish organizations," although his wife, a U.C.-Berkeley
graduate and epidemiologist, is a lifetime member of
Hadassah, the Zionist women's organization. As for attend-
ing synagogue, he said, "we don't go weekly, but we do
occasionally."
Goldhaber, who holds a master's degree in education
from U.C.- Berkeley, spent five years working in
Pennsylvania state government as an aide to Lt. Gov.
William Scranton III and as an interim state energy secre-
tary in the wake of the Three Mile Island nuclear accident.
A devotee of Transcendental Meditation, as is Hagelin,
Goldhaber also holds a bachelor's degree from Maharishi
University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa.
He said two of his reasons for backing Hagelin are the
candidate's positions on finding renewable energy sources
and agricultural reform. "I am very much for promoting
indigenous energy sources," Goldhaber said.
"Jews are activists and generally dissatisfied with the status
quo," he explained, defining the Reform Party as one that
has a reform-oriented political agenda but no social agenda.
The vice-presidential candidate said Hagelin is "a big
supporter of Israel" as well as "a supporter of applying sci-
entific innovation to the solution of very real problems
which, in my estimation, is a Jewish outlook."
Young Israel of Southfield and
Temple Shir Shalom celebrated the
addition of new Torahs.
Hiram Dorfman and David
Engelbert are co-chairs of the
Holocaust Memorial Center
anniversary dinner.
1980
The Israel embassies of Guatemala
and the Dominican Republic are
moved from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv.
1970
Ground-breaking ceremonies take
place for the new Beth Abraham
Synagogue on Maple Road in West
Bloomfield.
Rabbi Jacob Bakst is named
supervisor of kashrut [kosher] at
Detroit's Sinai Hospital, succeeding
his late father Rabbi David Bakst.
1990
The New York City Board of
Education plan to close schools on
Rosh HaShana comes under legal
attack from, the Freethinkers of
America.
Alumni of Boy Scout Troop 135,
sponsored by the Congregation
B'nai David Men's Club, are plan-
ning a 25th anniversary reunion
dinner at Rainbow Terrace on
Wyoming Avenue in Detroit.
Herbert Polk of Detroit has been
named assistant director of physical
education at the Jewish Center in
Buffalo, N.Y.
1950
A self-imposed draft to provide
Jewish chaplains for the U.S. armed
forces is adopted by the Rabbinical
Assembly of America.
Wayne University officials
announce that students assigned to
register on the two days of Rosh
HaShana may do so by proxy.
The Zionist Organization of
America presents a silver plaque to
President Harry Truman for his
part in the founding of Israel.
— Compiled by Sy Manello,
editorial assistant
❑
9/8
2000
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