Shorts: U.S.

Capitol honors S.F.’s Florence Kahn

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and others took part in a May 19 ceremony at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., unveiling a portrait of Florence Kahn, the first Jewish woman to serve in Congress.

Kahn, a Republican, represented San Francisco from 1925-1937, winning a special election after her husband, Julius, died in office in 1924. A member of San Francisoc’s Congregation Emanu-El, she died in 1948.

The seventh woman to serve in Congress, Kahn was the first woman to serve on the House Appropriations Committee and the first woman to serve on the Military Affairs (now Armed Services) committee.

The Capitol has not yet determined where her portait, which pictures Kahn standing in front of the Golden Gate Bridge, will be hung. The ceremony was in honor of Jewish American Heritage Month. — jta

‘Jew’ graffiti in L.A. confounds experts

Law enforcement officials and hate crime watchdogs have been confounded over the last few months by a spate of graffiti with the word “Jew” marking multiple locations in the Fairfax area of Los Angeles.

The word “Jew” or “Jewish,” sometimes accompanied by the letters “TMA,” has been spray-painted on lampposts, freeway overpasses, walls and dumpsters. No anti-Semitic messages or symbols accompany the word.

The six or seven locations of the graffiti also seem unconnected to anything Jewish, according to the ADL’s Pacific Southwest office. The ADL is working with the LAPD on the investigation. — l.a. jewish journal

Jewish New Yorker dies from swine flu

Mitchell Wiener, an assistant principal at Intermediate School 238 in Queens, died May 17 at Flushing Hospital Medical Center, becoming New York’s first fatality of the swine flu virus. He was 55 and lived in Flushing, N.Y.

Wiener, the sixth U.S. victim of swine flu according to the Centers for Disease Control, was a member of the Garden Jewish Center in Flushing, according to news reports, and served for a time on the synagogue’s board of directors.

Hospital officials said complications besides the virus probably played a part in Wiener’s death, but his family has said he suffered only from a joint disease.

IS 238 was one of three Queens schools closed by New York City last week amid concerns over the spread of the swine flu virus. — jta & ap