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Julie Gruenbaum Fax

Julie Gruenbaum Fax

Get ready Jewish leaders, the Next Generation is here

If the group of Gen Y-ers — also known as Millenials or NextGens or iGens — who gathered for a Jewish leadership conference in Santa Monica last week are any indication, it seems that parents who did everything to build their children\’s resumes and self esteem may have been on to something. This handpicked group of Jewish leaders in their 20s and early 30s have the self-confidence to think — to actually believe — that if the old people would just make some room for them, or maybe get out of the way altogether, they could fix this mess of a world. They are committed to social justice; they are willing to get their hands dirty; they have great ideas, time to volunteer, and they have the arrogance, self-centeredness and technological savvy to bring their ideas to fruition. The question is how to channel all that into the Jewish community.

Holocaust remembrance — Exodus redux

Over the last several years, in anticipation of the voyage\’s 60th anniversary, survivors of the Exodus have been asked to share their stories in an effort to solidify Exodus\’ place in history, before all that is left are the fictionalized and romanticized versions of the 1958 Leon Uris novel or the 1960 Otto Preminger film (and even those are already being forgotten). Among the recent projects are \”Exodus 1947,\” a 1997 documentary film by Venice resident Elizabeth Rodgers, and a new release of journalist Ruth Gruber\’s account of the voyage, \”Exodus 1947: The Ship that Launched a Nation\” (October 2007, Union Square Press).

Milken students win first high school X PRIZE

Milken Community High School students joined the space race this week when two seniors won the first-ever X PRIZE competition for high schoolers. On Sunday, Michael Hakimi and Talia Nour-Omid took home the first Pete Conrad Spirit of Innovation Award for their concept of developing bio-monitoring sunglasses to keep space travelers healthy during civilian spaceflight.

Volunteers drive eclectic learning at LimmudLA

Limmud was founded 25 years ago in England, where each December more than 2,000 people gather for a five-day conference. In the last six or seven years, the Limmud model has spread around the world, with conferences in Russia, France, Canada, Turkey, Israel, Germany, Australia and New York.The goal of LimmudLA, slated for Febrary during President\’s Day Weekend at the Costa Mesa Hilton, is to bring together the broad spectrum of Los Angeles Jewry to experience the richness of Judaism through intense days packed with the arts, shared meals and conversations, and a quirky and diverse offering of text studies, lectures and workshops. At Limmud, all the teachers are participants, and many of the participants are teachers, so everyone learns from each other.

The secret life of etrogs

Ari Greenspan and his colleague, Ari Zivotofsky, a neuroscientist at Bar-Ilan University, have an ongoing project to document all manner of etrog, the Aramaic word for citron, traditions from pockets of time and place in the Jewish world

Transcendence — a true story for Yom Kippur

What is it that allowed this family to stay whole and renew the life in themselves when fate, or God, or a violent man, dealt them unimaginable grief? In this season of renewal and introspection, of fate and faith, what can others facing obstacles of any degree learn from this family\’s remarkable ability to transcend the unthinkable?

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