Ellen Jaffe-Gill
Israeli Conductor Soars in ‘Butterfly’
Madame Butterfly,\” the story of a trusting 19th-century Japanese girl who falls in love with a fickle American naval officer, first captivated American audiences in 1900 as a play by impresario David Belasco.
Sacred Sounds All Over Town
Vanessa Paloma\’s performance at the 200-year-old mission is one highlight of the 2005 World Festival of Sacred Music, which will be spread out among many Los Angeles locations over a two-week period beginning Saturday.
The Silver-Haired Bar Mitzvah Boy
My husband was called to the Torah as a bar mitzvah in 2001, more or less on the sixth anniversary of his conversion to Judaism. People started asking Spencer when he was going to have a bar mitzvah when his hair was barely dry from the mikvah.
Emanuel’s Jumpin’ at the Synaplex
It\’s erev Shabbat, and this joint is jumpin\’. As dusk deepens, seniors who have just emerged from a talk on globalization mingle with new arrivals in the lobby of Temple Emanuel\’s school building on Burton Way in Beverly Hills, where "Cafe Synaplex" has been set up.
Off the Bimah: A Concerted Effort
With her slender figure, long, shining strawberry-blonde hair and big hazel eyes, Alison Wissot looks more like a stage ingénue than most people\’s conceptions of a cantor — not surprising, since that\’s what she was 10 years ago.
Wissot\’s cantorial career is off to a brilliant start: Less than three years after graduating from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion\’s School of Sacred Music in New York, she is filling the largest Reform cantorial pulpit in the San Fernando Valley, the 1,300-household Temple Judea in Tarzana and West Hills.
L.A. Music Man Is Homeward Bound
Zubin Mehta, one of Southern California\’s favorite musicmakers, will return to his old stomping grounds Dec. 10 to conduct the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra\’s (IPO) first Los Angeles concert in three years.
Mothers, Daughters Bond Over Torah
Netivot, the women\’s Torah study institute, will begin a program next month on a subject not often associated with Orthodoxy: bat mitzvah.
Part-Time Work, Full-Time Families
Women form slightly more than 11 percent of the RA\’s membership today, with both JTS and the University of Judaism (UJ) ordaining them as rabbis.
Bias Hits Rabbis on Mommy Track
Today, the 377 women in Reform\’s Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) constitute about 20 percent of Reform rabbis — closer to 25 percent when retired and inactive rabbis aren\’t counted — up from about 10 percent in 1991. Currently, there are 246 Reconstructionist rabbis, 45 percent of whom are women.
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