San Diego, CA (special) -- For a number of San Diegans, Yom Yerushalayim--Jerusalem Day-- not only celebrates the day in 1967 when victorious Israeli troops reunified the Holy City, but also provides a vehicle to express their hopes that the city can grow into a place of lasting harmony among Jews and Arabs, secular and religious Jews, Sephardim and Ashkenazim, Sabras
and new immigrants.

Edith & Irving Taylor, Anne Taubman, and Earl Feldman, in his capacity as an executor of the Joseph & Dorothy Goldberg Charitable Trust, all are helping to finance the program of the Jerusalem Foundation to beautify the city and to encourage interactions among its diverse residents. The Taylors also contribute to the American Friends of Hebrew University to support
Jerusalem's most famous educational institution.

The Taylor family has been giving to Jerusalem charities for more than 35 years--in fact, on one of several recent visits to San Diego, former Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek told Irving Taylor that the first gift ever given to the Jerusalem Foundation was by Taylor's father, Isaac Taylor, for a garden planted near Jerusalem's famous windmill.

There were other Taylor family projects in Jerusalem over the years, including the Isaac Taylor Community Center in Kiryat Yovel, a neighborhood of post-1967 Jerusalem, which boasted only the third swimming pool to be built in all of Israel; a new Orthodox shul in Kiryat Yovel named the Rose and Isaac Taylor Synagogue; the Maryland column at the John F. Kennedy Memorial in Jerusalem, and a dormitory at Hebrew University.

"My father had a saying, 'If it's good for Israel, it's good for Isaac Taylor," recalled Dr. Irving Taylor, a psychiatrist who owns the Taylor Manor Hospital in Ellicott City, Maryland. His father, who was an optometrist, jeweler and retail furniture dealer, purchased the 10-bed facility in 1939 and the family built it up over the years to a 200-bed facility.

One of the units at their psychiatric hospital is called the Isaac Taylor Institute of Psychiatry and Religion, which has designed treatment programs "to meet the specific needs and unique problems of ministers, rabbis, sisters, priests, brothers and other religious professionals," Taylor said. There are larger treatment programs for adolescents, geriatric patients and adults between those two age groups.

With their psychiatrist son, Bruce, now running the facility, Edith & Irving Taylor are able to divide their time between a home in Baltimore, about 60 miles from the facility, and a home in the Fairbanks Ranch area of San Diego, where they have twice hosted Kollek for local fundraising events for the Jerusalem Foundation. "In Baltimore, my father was known as 'Mr. Israel,'"
Irving Taylor said. "In Israel, he was known as Mr. Baltimore."

Before Isaac Taylor died, a fundraising tradition in Baltimore was an Israel Bonds dinner every fifth birthday. Golda Meir was the guest speaker at one of those dinners. "For Isaac's 80th, "Teddy Kollek came over, gave a talk and flew right back -- he had come specifically for that. He said 'Isaac, next year when you are 81, you are going to come over to Jerusalem and I will
give you a birthday party'" When Isaac acted upon the mayor's offer, "he had a little birthday party for each of five days at each of his projects that were then existing."

At another fifth birthday dinner, Irving chuckled, his father was able to bring over an Israeli who had been crowned Miss Universe. A picture of this ravishing beauty sitting with the quite interested 85-year-old Isaac still is a family treasure.

Whereas Isaac liked to finance capital projects throughout Israel, Edith & Irving Taylor prefer to contribute their money for ongoing operating expenses not only in Jerusalem but elsewhere in the Jewish state. 

While this type giving does not result in projects being named for them, they have the satisfaction of knowing that Isaac's works are being carried on. Edith Taylor, who had spent a year in 1934 living in Jerusalem with her maternal grandparents, Miriam & Abraham Fisher, brought her own family's enthusiasm for Israel and Jerusalem to the equation.

In Maryland, she organized "one of the first Israel Bonds fashion shows which brought in over 800 women," and after they established a winter home in Palm Springs (prior to the one in Fairbanks Ranch) she organized a similar event.

In Israel's earlier years, Edith recalled, "we needed to educate people. They just didn't understand. After Exodus (by Leon Uris) came out, I went down a street where they had really wealthy people and if they tried to give me $5 (for UJA or Israel Bonds), I refused it and said, 'I will tell you what, I am going to give you this book and I am going to come back in two weeks.' So I bought a mess of Exodus books and left them, then came back because people were really not aware of what the situation was." The strategy worked; instead of $5 contributions; Taylor says she collected "hundreds or thousands" from the very same people.

American Friends of Hebrew University became Edith's major thrust. "I worked very hard and they made me an honorary fellow," she said. "That was the nicest thing that ever happened. People like Eleanor Roosevelt were honorary fellows."

Anne Taubman is an animal lover with a long history of contributing to the San Diego Zoological Society. Through Helena Galper, the San Diego director for the Jerusalem Foundation, she learned about the various projects that San Diegans are supporting at the new Jerusalem Zoo. A San Diego New Leadership Group financed construction of two children's houses at
the zoo where Israeli children can meet baby animals face to face. The same group also is financing the construction there of a mini-version of the San Diego Wild Animal Park, to be known as the Biblelands Wild Animal Preserve.

Taubman, who is president of Seaport Village--a specialty shopping center on San Diego's waterfront--decided to make a contribution for the support of the Jerusalem Zoo's ongoing research on primates . The contribution led to that zoo naming an island in a pond near the zoo entrance as "The Taubman Siamang/ Monkey Island" and erecting a plaque noting that Taubman's
contribution was in memory of her father, Morris. It was packaged with a contribution from the Herman P. and Sophia Taubman Foundation.

Recently, a pair of siamangs on the island had two babies which were promptly named by animal keepers as "Christopher and Nicholas," Taubman said. She added it was possible that one of the infant siamangs might have his name changed to Toby.

The island was dedicated with much fanfare this past Yom Ha'Atzma'ut (Israeli Independence Day) with the zoo arranging for Taubman and her husband, David Boyle, to ride into the ceremonies upon the back of an elephant.

To dismount, they had to first climb onto a chair that was standing on a table and eventually from the table to the ground, Taubman recalled. She said she managed to accomplish the feat more gracefully than she had accomplished getting on the elephant in the first place.

"The few people there who knew us were laughing with us" as they made their entrance, Taubman said. In a ceremony in which Kollek participated, they were presented with a certificate announcing that they were the first people to enter the zoo by elephant, as well as with a little medal from the Jerusalem Foundation.

As one of three co-trustees of the Goldbergs' estate, Earl Feldman keeps watch for projects in keeping with the priorities of the Goldbergs, who are well remembered in San Diego for the acute care pavilion that Dorothy donated to San Diego Hebrew Homes' Seacrest Village campus in Encinitas after her husband's death. 

Feldman said the Goldbergs desired that proceeds from their trust be divided among three general areas: the San Diego Jewish community, the general San Diego community, and Israel.

In San Diego, the trust also is making a contribution to the expansion of the Lawrence Family JCC; has supported Hillel of San Diego, and has helped such non-Jewish organizations as the Wellness Community and a center for seniors.

In Jerusalem, the Goldbergs' charitable trust has agreed to pay for the two trams which take visitors around the Jerusalem Zoo,and is studying involvement in the Biblelands Wild Animal Preserve.

Feldman said he was impressed that "the zoo is non-denominational; it brings people together." He added that the trustees believe that "to keep the cohesiveness of Israel, you need a place where (diverse) peoples can be together."

Taubman said she also is enamored with the Jerusalem Zoo because of its diverse clientele. "I think it is the only place in the city where all of the different religions come together at the same time," she said. "It has a nice friendly atmosphere and I think that it is a great place for the various inhabitants of Jerusalem to come together, to get to know each other in an informal way, and to
realize that everyone is just people."

Further, she said, "It is very different in Jerusalem than it is here. Kids here--a lot of them at least--have an opportunity to live in a single family home, which is not as prevalent there due to land constraints. Growing up, we often have an opportunity to have pets of our own but that is not as common there. The zoo is a nice way for people to interact with the animals."

Irving Taylor said his reason for contributing to Jerusalem specifically and Israel generally is that he long has believed that "theJewish people need a place where they can go and no one can kick them out."

While he does not plan on making aliyah, he added, "it is important that there be a place that Jews can feel is a homeland, even if they never use it for themselves."

"I am Jewish," commented Edith Taylor. "I feel the Jews have gotten a very rough deal handed to them in life early on. I feel we should stand up for what belongs to us and what is right; I feel we should have our own homeland. I am connected with Jews all over the world as brethren, and I am also connected with all humanity."

One of Edith Taylor's other causes is the Delta Society, which helps train animals for use as "servers" -- seeing eye dogs, hearing dogs, wheel chair dogs -- and for such therapeutic tasks as helping hospital patients get over their depression. Through the American Friends of Hebrew University, she said, she would like to find a way of combining her interests by establishing
programs in Jerusalem promoting the use of animals in helping people to achieve good health.

There is a saying among people who know how to give. "One mitzvah often leads to another." The Taylors, Taubman, Goldbergs and Feldman are proof of it.