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Amy Klein

Amy Klein

In search of . . . Chanukah gelt

But what is the real origin of gelt? Is it, as my father claimed, really a long-held Jewish custom? And how did gelt evolve from money to chocolate? And why does the chocolate taste so waxy? If gelt is here to stay — if it\’s going to really represent the Jews like mistletoe and holly do the Christians — are there any better options than the molten coins of our childhood? These are some of the questions I had as I set out on my journey in search of gelt.

Fundraising the Rabbi Hier way

Interview with Rabbi Marvin Hier who created the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the Museum of Tolerance and Yeshiva University of Los Angeles (YULA).

The Connector

But they can\’t give me credit — only God can. It says if you make three successful shidduchim, three matches, you automatically go to heaven. And this High Holy Day season I was thinking that I\’d really like an automatic pass. (\”Go directly to heaven. Do not pass hell; do not collect $200.) Three should be easy enough. I meet so many guys who just because they aren\’t for me doesn\’t mean they wouldn\’t be good for someone. What if this is my purpose in life? What if the point of my meeting so many people is to serve as what Malcolm Gladwell, in his book, \”The Tipping Point,\” calls \”The connector?\” I feel heady with possibilities.

A pioneering minyan celebrates double chai birthday

Pressman and the group did create another entity, what has become known as \”The Library Minyan,\” named for the downstairs library where the 15 families began to meet weekly to pray. Members organized and participated in all parts of the service (especially the weekly sermon), discussed all aspects of Judaism and debated the increasingly complex issues of the changing times.Thirty-six years later, the Library Minyan, with its opportunities for engagement and intellectual rigor is seen as having helped to start a revolution — empowering lay leaders in the essential structure of spiritual leadership. It has become a model for many Conservative and Reform congregations seeking to create alternatives both within and outside the fold of conventional synagogue structure, and has allowed individual congregations to morph it into new and ever-changing incarnations.This weekend, the Library Minyan will celebrate its double-chai anniversary (two times \”life\”) with a Shabbaton Nov. 2-4 that will remember the past but also look toward the future.

Books: ‘The Year of Living Biblically’ includes a beard, snakes and peaches

So while the book, which is categorized as \”humor,\” may explain religion in a palatable way to the many secular rationalists in the Blue States who would never understand it from a religious person\’s point of view, \”The Year of Living Biblically\” can remind even the faithful, even those who \”pick and choose\” their levels of observance, why they do what they do. And that\’s not annoying.

Interfaith panel wrestles with troubling texts:<BR>Will the real ‘chosen’ please rise?

Scholars, clergy and seminarians gathered this week at the Luxe Hotel to discuss troubling passages and ideas in Christianity, Judaism and Islam, and ways of understanding them in modern times, as part of \”Troubling Traditions: Wrestling With Problem Passages,\” a conference co-sponsored by the Board of Rabbis of Southern California and the Center for Christian-Jewish Understanding of Sacred Heart University.

Women’s commentary offers alternative take on Torah

As Cantor Sarah J. Sager began her research, she found there were many people — both women and men — who were thinking about the silence of women in the Jewish tradition, and working to create \”a sense of women\’s presence at the most important moments of our history and in our most sacred text,\” Sager later wrote. But there was no one place to find all that commentary. Fifteen years later, the WRJ is publishing \”The Torah: A Women\’s Commentary,\” edited by Tamara Cohn Eskenazi, a professor at the Los Angeles branch of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.

Linked Out

Today I received the 50th e-mail from someone I vaguely know, someone who isn\’t spam, but is spam of a different sort. \”You are invited to join LinkedIn.\”

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