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Gaby Friedman

Gaby Friedman

Sher Cohen’s Law & Order: Justice Unit

Don\’t call Nancy Sher Cohen at home after 8:30 p.m. \”One of two things is usually true,\” the 54-year-old-litigator said. \”Either I am asleep, because I am exhausted [from all the work], or I am out because I am working.\”

Q & A With Bruce Feiler

Feiler spoke to The Journal by phone while taking a break from moving into his new Brooklyn home, which he shares with his wife and his 6-month-old identical twin girls.

Kabbalah and the Modern Shrink

Since the early 1990s, Rabbi Abner Weiss, former rabbi at Beth Jacob Congregation and current rabbi at the Westwood Village Synagogue, has been using kabbalistic tools in his psychology practice. Recently, he published \”Connecting to God, Ancient Kabbalah and Modern Psychology,\” a book that asserts the congruity of the two disciplines.

Mamet Serves Feast of Foul Language

When actor Steven Goldstein started reading David Mamet\’s new play, \”Romance,\” he was thrown by the relentlessly foul language.

Reviews of the play, which ran in New York for two and a half months, generally appreciated the humor in the obscenity and racial-epithet laden play. And many in the audience laughed raucously, although others exited the theater by the second act.

Now, L.A. theater patrons will be able to judge for themselves. The play opened this week at the Mark Taper Forum.

Spectator – Lessing’s Shots of Liberty

Erich Lessing received his first camera when he exited the synagogue from his bar mitzvah in Vienna in 1936.

\”There was no idea of taking up photography as a profession,\” said Lessing, 82, from his house in Austria. \”In a good Jewish family in Vienna you would only be a lawyer or a doctor.\”

Between the Pages for Young, Young-at-Heart

Let\’s face it. Many people go to synagogue on the High Holidays because they have to. A feeling of poorly understood and unappreciated obligation can pervade this time of year. But it doesn\’t have to. You can put yourself or your children in the spirit and in the know with help from this by-no-means-comprehensive list of titles that elucidate the prayers and customs of the holiday.

More Love and Lust From the Bible

\”The Song of Hannah\” as imagined by Etzioni-Halevy, tells the story of two women — Hannah and Peninah, Elkanah\’s other wife — and its chapters alternate between their two voices.

Many Factors Enter Into Temple Choice

When Mark Firestone was searching for a shul to join, he didn\’t look for a shul that had a nursery school or Hebrew school attached. Nor did he fret about the services he\’d be getting for his membership fee. Instead, he wanted a shul that was quiet.

\”I wanted it to be very quiet, so you can hear yourself daven, and hopefully Hashem can hear it,\” said Firestone, a Pico-Robertson life insurance salesman who belongs to Aish HaTorah. \”I have been to other shuls where you can barely hear the Torah reading, because people are talking so much. Aish has zero tolerance for people talking in shul.\”

For many Jews, the High Holidays is a time when they consider joining or renewing their synagogue memberships. However, what attracts them to synagogues, and what rabbis feel is important when choosing a synagogue, is not always the vast array of services that synagogues and temples provide.

Many members and rabbis feel that it is the intangibles — the atmosphere in the shul or the feeling of community that really attracts people, not the Hebrew school, youth program or adult education that is offered.

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