The first fashion show by the Shayna Punims, a Red Hat Society chapter based at Jewish Home for the Aging\’s (JHA) Eisenberg Village campus, gave former models an excuse to come out of retirement and provided nervous novices an opportunity to shine among their peers.
Just a year ago, the Lenny Krayzelburg Swim School, headed by the four-time Olympic gold medalist, opened with fanfare and big ambitions at the Westside Jewish Community Center (JCC), a once lively place that in recent years has been seeking to reinvent itself. Living up to the center\’s dreams, as of late July, Krayzelburg now has 896 students on his roster.
Ten years ago, I interviewed a dozen graduates of the Miller program who had followed through with conversion. Although Rabbi Neal Weinberg, who has long directed the program, tries hard to keep track of alumni, many slip out of his database. He was able to supply me with contact information for 10 Jews-by-Choice I had interviewed when I wrote my previous article.
Talmud teaches that a righteous act is its own reward. But if that\’s not inducement enough, a rabbi in Woodland Hills is offering $10 cash plus a Krispy Kreme doughnut to teens who attend his 7 a.m. minyan.
Joanne Rocklin is obsessed with food. On her 60th birthday, she began summarizing her life with the essentials: \”I love to cook. I love to eat\”. But it\’s her passion for writing that has enabled her to come to terms with her life and her faith.
As a 9-year-old violinist performing for world-renowned cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, Camilla Tsiperovich was told to call herself Camilla Gadjieva. Her headmaster at the Azerbaijan Conservatory considered this a more suitable name, one that reflected the Muslim heritage of her country. While representing Azerbaijan in international music competitions and spending her first year of high school at the famed Moscow Conservatory, she always understood that \”there was something wrong because you were Jewish.\”
There was a time when Jews dominated the ranks of American orchestras, and superstars like Leonard Bernstein and Isaac Stern were musical ambassadors to the world. The fact that today\’s master Jewish musicians tend to have proteges with names like Yo Yo Ma, Kyung-Wha Chung and Lang Lang is one hint that for many Jews, classical music is no longer a top priority.
Spain\’s Andaluca is romance. It\’s orange blossoms perfuming the air. It\’s golden drops of sherry sliding down your throat in a smoky bodega. It\’s fingers dancing on the strings of a flamenco guitar.
Spain\’s Toledo contains — along with spires, damascene jewelry and scrumptious marzipan — a treasure trove of Jewish memories.
Poets have been known to wax lyrical about \”the glory that was Greece.\” Yet a visitor to Greece today quickly finds that the glory\’s not only in the past tense. While those who built the shrines to Zeus and Apollo are long gone, the people who inhabit modern Greece are unquestionably alive.
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