fbpx
Picture of Jonah Lowenfeld

Jonah Lowenfeld

Holocaust museums: L.A. and the rest of the world

Next weekend, the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust publicly opens the plate-glass doors of its brand-new home at the northwest corner of Pan Pacific Park for the first time. Observant visitors might be drawn to the building’s grass-covered roof, or the retro-futuristic shape of the windows, or the repeated use of triangles in a design that seems to nod to the six three-sided black pillars of the Los Angeles Holocaust Monument that sit just outside the museum.

The Ten Commandments of social networking

The increasing ubiquity of social media raises the question: How should Jews behave online? Conversations with rabbis, educators and even one lawyer, as well as with a number of Jewish Web innovators led to the following guidelines.

L.A. donors play role in Israeli settlement

The city of Ariel is home to 19,000 Israelis, a university center of 12,000 students and a growing industrial park with 27 factories employing thousands of workers. The city’s backers describe Ariel as beautiful, diverse, peaceful. One repeat American visitor said, “It’s like driving into some San Diego suburb.”

A rabbi’s journey, a mother’s anxious path

Rabbi Naomi Levy has been hearing people speak variations of this phrase for years. Whether she met them at Nashuva, the Westside spiritual community she founded in 2004, at one of her many speaking engagements or just somewhere in her travels, Levy kept finding people who seemed to be enduring the day-to-day, waiting for something to happen so that their lives could begin.

Apples: Fresh or nearly frozen?

Before you bite into that honey-dipped apple slice, consider this: If you bought your Rosh Hashanah fruit in one of Los Angeles’ supermarkets and it didn’t have a sticker that said “California” on it, it was probably picked halfway around the world just before Passover — or it came from Washington and has been sitting in a nearly freezing, oxygen-reduced chamber since Chanukah.

A new Holocaust museum pushes toward the future

When the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust officially opens in its new home in Pan Pacific Park on Oct. 14, it won’t just be moving to a bigger, more prominent and more easily accessible building. It will be moving into the 21st century.

[authorpage]

More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.