With religious school winding down this month at many synagogues, some cantors will regularly seize the opportunity to produce a brief season of secular concerts with guest artists and visiting cantors.
Alan Beals started collecting stamps as a boy. In the \’80s, when a flood of new issues from the U.S. Postal Service swamped his enthusiasm, Beals stumbled into the obscure niche of Judaic philatelists.
Shavuot, the holiday that celebrates the receiving of the Torah, will be honored this month with special tributes by two area congregations. Figuring prominently is the holiest of all Jewish books, but each event has its own twist.
Sheryl Krok often drives from Irvine to Los Angeles on business for her cleaning products line. But before the South African immigrant returns home, Krok makes a kosher pit stop, buying a month\’s supply of chicken to feed her carnivorous family of five.
\”Because, hello! Irvine doesn\’t know there are kosher Jews down here,\” said Krok, who would be happy to give up bulk buying.
Isidore Myers and his three siblings had a less-than-carefree childhood. Their parents, penniless immigrants, eked out a living early in the last century in Akron, Ohio, where their barely literate father painted houses. Although the family managed food and shelter, they scrambled for odd jobs like peddling papers so they too could to contribute something to the household.
From such hardscrabble beginnings, Myers nonetheless recently made a gift of more than $3 million to Newport Beach\’s Temple Bat Yahm, the largest single contribution in the synagogue\’s 31-year history. To honor the philanthropist and his late wife, the 7-acre site recently was renamed The Isidore C. Myers and Penny W. Myers Temple Bat Yahm Campus.
Next month Sevy will relive, in part, his parents\’ journey with his 18-year-old son, Nadav, as they traverse the 2-mile walk from the so-called \”death gate\” of the former Auschwitz Nazi death camp to the International Monument of Holocaust Victims of the Birkenau death camp.
Nadav is one of about 23 students committed to a three-week senior class trip planned for the fourth graduating class of Irvine\’s Tarbut V\’Torah Community Day School. Their sobering itinerary includes Auschwitz, Schindler\’s factory and the Warsaw ghetto, followed by Israel\’s modern cities, historical sights and natural beauty.
The high-profile defendant is a head of state accused of adultery and murder. The prosecutor is a trial veteran familiar to a nation of cable TV junkies enthralled by the O.J. Simpson case.
\”Capturing the horror of those years with ink is almost impossible,\” wrote Stephen Hill, one of 140 finalists in the fifth-annual Holocaust Art and Writing Contest sponsored by Chapman University\’s Holocaust education center and The \”1939\” Club.
Nevertheless, more than 1,000 students from 56 schools, mostly in California, made the effort to enter this year\’s contest, an experience in \”becoming a witness to the future,\” said Marilyn Harran, the center\’s director.
Allowing students to chose what they want to study in religious school is sure to loosen a standardized curriculum. But such an exercise in democracy potentially can also instill commitment by its participants.
Music and animal motifs from \”The Lion King\” will provide thematic structure for the April 18 talent show by members of the Jeremiah Society, a group serving Orange County\’s developmentally disabled Jewish adults.
\”The talent show uncovers hidden talent among our handicapped adults,\” said the group\’s founder, Rose Lacher, of Orange, whose daughter, Amy, 55, is a member.
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