A UCLA student group that supports the homeless is headed to the White House, one of five initiatives to win the White House’s Campus Champions of Change Challenge. The White House selected 15 finalists from hundreds of applicants, and online voters chose the top five.
Tamir Appel scampers to his room to pull out a photo album of his latest trip to visit family in Israel. He sets it on the dining room table, where some of his housemates are gathered to talk about their daily life at the Ryzman Family Group Home for Men in Valley Village, one of three run by the Etta Israel Center, the only Jewish group homes on the West Coast.
Lauren Levine is settling in with a group of friends apartment to watch “American Idol,” when a look of panic comes over her face. She rummages around, finds her keys and darts out.“I left the hair thing on,” she says when she returns, breathless, from her own apartment downstairs. “I was straightening Jasmine’s hair before we came up here, and I forgot to turn it off. Wow. That was close.” Levine has wide blue eyes accentuated with sparkly eye shadow, and her voice is spiced with a sense of interested wonder.
A little while ago, Hendel Schwartz got a call from a city bus driver. “Your son walks with God,” the driver told her.
With pomp and ceremony, the Los Angeles Modern Orthodox community in Pico-Robertson welcomed the British Commonwealth’s Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks and Lady Elaine Sacks for a full weekend of appearances Feb. 3-5.
Jay Sanderson visited Vista Del Mar’s Ness Gadol Shabbat services last week, and it was a personal as well as communal inspiration for him to see kids and young adults with autism and other disabilities lead prayers for the wider community.
The chief rabbi of the British Commonwealth, Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, will address several Los Angeles gatherings Feb. 3-5 in a scholar-in-residence program sponsored by a consortium of Modern Orthodox organizations.
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