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.
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.
\”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.
Last year\’s Israeli merchant fair in Irvine — the first stop in a three-month caravan — spoiled vendors with large crowds open pocketbooks and home-cooked meals.
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.
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.
When newer, color versions supplanted the 1923 Union Haggadah Revised, Tamar Soloff\’s brother and father hoarded enough copies of the original to ensure that their extended families would have a supply of their own.
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.
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.
When we open our doors at the seder and invite Elijah the Prophet to sip the glass of wine that we have designated for him, we express our longing for
the Messiah. Elijah, in our tradition, will herald the arrival of a ruler who will enable a world of peace. The message of the seder is of hope: God, the Creator, entered history to free us from bondage, providing reason to believe that God will re-enter history to facilitate the final redemption.
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