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Amy Klein

Amy Klein

When the rabbi talks politics from the pulpit

In 2006, Rabbi Nancy Myers of Westminster\’s Temple Beth David used her Rosh Hashanah sermon to address the horrors of the Abu Ghraib scandals.

She was about to make a point about acting morally as Jews when a congregant walked down the sanctuary\’s aisle with his hands crossed in a time-out signal. Myers, new at the time to the Reform synagogue, thought the interruption was because someone had had a heart attack, so she stopped talking.

Math wiz clowns around to ‘serve God with joy’

Yehuda Braunstein wasn\’t one of those kids whose childhood aspirations (to be a fireman, astronaut, actor) never came true. Even though he studied to be a mathematician at MIT and earned a doctorate at UC San Diego, and he also became religiously observant — a ba\’al teshuvah, through Chabad. Now, at 39, he\’s a mathematician, an active Chabad member — and a clown.

Sunday rally planned to support Israel

The Simon Wiesenthal Center and Young Israel of Century City are holding a memorial rally on Sunday, March 9 at 4 p.m., in honor of the eight yeshiva students killed in a terror attack at Mercaz Harav in Jerusalem. StandWithUs and others will demonstrate in support of Israel in front of the Israeli Consulate at noon on Friday in response to a protest scheduled at the same time by the UC Irvine Muslim Student Union.

Ex-JDL member urges faith without fanaticism

Review of former Jewish Defense League member Brad Hirschfield\’s \”You Don\’t Have to Be Wrong for Me To Be Right: Finding Faith Without Fanaticism\” (Harmony Books, Random House, 2007).

Books: The end of many things, but not of the Jews

Book review of \”The End of The Jews\”, a literary family saga built around three narratives in different time frames, opening with Tristan Brodsky, \”15 years old, the sum total of five thousand years of Jewry, one week into City College, a mind on him like a diamond cutter.\”

Rabbi’s novel idea draws inspiration from geniza

Some people cap a career by writing a memoir or an exhaustive magnum opus based on a lifetime of research. But after eight books and 30 years at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York as rabbi and professor, Burton L. Visotzky decided to write a novel. A work of Jewish historical fiction, to be more precise.

Finding the sacred in the mundane

Now, following the latest publishing craze of themed Jewish anthologies comes \”Bread and Fire: Jewish Women Find God in the Everyday\” (Urim Publications, 2008), edited by Rivkah Slonim (with consulting editor Liz Rosenberg). The 400-page compilation features writings from 60 women on topics including modesty, faith, childbirth, prayer, family, community, feminism and, in one way or another, Orthodox Judaism.

Whither the Left?

What exactly is the state of the pro-Israel peace movement in America? Does the Jewish institutional establishment represent the position of the American Jewish community? And if not, why are alternate voices not being heard?

When ketubah didn’t wow, bride created her own

Tsilli Pines couldn\’t find a ketubah that she and her fiance liked. The Jewish wedding contract is often artfully handwritten and later framed as a wall decoration. But Pines, 33, a Portland, Ore.-based graphic designer, wanted something modern and simple. So she designed her own ketubah — and then one for a friend.

Keeping it fair and balanced at the Los Angeles Times

As the Los Angeles Times\’ editor of the Op-Ed page and Sunday Opinion section, Nicholas Goldberg oversees publication of about four opinion pieces per day and eight to twelve on Sundays. The most volatile topic on those pages by far — even more than the war in Iraq, the election campaigns or immigration — is the Middle East and Israel.

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