Sue Barnett

Sign up for Weekday J and get the latest on what's happening in the Jewish Bay Area. Bay Area native Amit Elor made history on Aug. 5 when she became the youngest-ever wrestler on Team USA to win Olympic gold. Elor, 20, hadn’t lost a match in five years and was already a two-time world champion, but competing and winning in the 2024 Paris Games was a dream come true.

Ben Stern, who survived two ghettos, nine concentration camps and two death marches, died Wednesday at home in Berkeley. He was 102. Stern famously worked to prevent neo-Nazis from marching in Skokie, Illinois, in 1977, and he was willing to oppose them in Berkeley when they threatened to come to his city in 2017.

Congregation B’nai Tikvah in Walnut Creek was among 14 Northern California synagogues known to have been emailed a false bomb threat early Saturday. The email was part of a wave of “swatting” incidents and false bomb threats that hit hundreds Jewish congregations and institutions across the U.S. over the weekend, according to the Secure Community Network, which works with the Jewish Federations of North America to coordinate safety for the organized Jewish community.