West Side and South Bay parents who send their teenagers to Los Angeles Hebrew High School (LAHHS) had to contend with some extra miles and a longer school day this week as the program moved its Sunday classes from the University of Judaism (UJ) to Pierce College.
Ten years ago, it was a first — and it\’s still an only. When Noreen Green established the Los Angeles Jewish Symphony (LAJS) in 1993, Los Angeles became the only city in the world with a resident symphony orchestra devoted to Jewish music, and the city maintains that unique status today.
File under Incongruities, Major: One of the latest luminaries in the world of grand opera is an Orthodox mother of four from Brooklyn.
Chayim Frenkel, cantor at Kehillat Israel in Pacific Palisades, conceived \”Nishmat Tzedek\” (\”A Righteous Soul\”) in 1993 after his brother Tzvi, 39, died suddenly, the victim of an undetected blood disease.
The Milken Family Foundation, well-known for its philanthropy to education and medical research, has announced that it will begin to issue recordings this fall from its 13-year-old music archive project, an enormous undertaking spanning more than three centuries of American Jewish music.
Los Angeles\’ three rabbinical schools will present the Jewish community with 26 freshly minted rabbis this month as the seminaries hold their ordination ceremonies.
Aside from the exposure to new music and techniques and the camaraderie of being with peers, one purpose of the convention is to explore the role of cantor as klei kodesh (literally, holy vessel), or clergy member, a position that transcends music-making, said Joseph Gole, senior cantor of Sinai Temple, a local co-chair of the convention.
Chayim Frenkel grew up in the Pico-Fairfax area, where his father, Uri Frenkel, was cantor for Judea Congregation on South Fairfax Avenue. With his mother, Shari, working as a kosher caterer, both parents were \”servants of the Jewish community,\” Frenkel told The Journal, and \”role models of what a mensch (good guy) should be.\”
Not all Chanukah music is kiddie music — even when it\’s played by kids. On Sunday, Dec. 1, the Skirball Cultural Center will host the West Coast premiere of Russell Steinberg\’s suite, "Lights On!"
What you notice in almost every shot is the hair: abundant, snow-white, carefully coiffed.
It\’s an apt metaphor for Jacques Derrida\’s mind, which is prolific with ideas, yet well-ordered and consistent in its probity and depth. In a new documentary, filmmakers Amy Ziering Kofman and Kirby Dick make arresting cinema from the mind, memories and habits of a man whose life has been devoted to thought.
Derrida, a Jew born in Algeria in 1930, is identified with deconstructionism, a system of thought that challenges established assumptions about the knowledge of what is true and real. But the 85-minute film is far from a static parade of talking heads. Exposition of Derrida\’s ideas comes mostly through voice-over readings from his books that accompany shots of the philosopher walking from one place to another or scenes of a gritty, industrial Paris rushing past a moving car.
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