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Picture of Rachel Heller

Rachel Heller

Performances, Classes Spark Connections and Joy

Celebrated Jewish thinker Mordecai Kaplan, whose philosophy helped shape American Jewish University (AJU), once wrote that one of the most powerful ways to bond a community is through the performing arts.

Up Next: Clinton, Bush Share Wexler’s Stage

It’s T-minus five months to one of the most high-profile headlines in the history of American Jewish University’s (AJU) annual lecture series: On Feb. 22, former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush are slated to share a stage at Universal’s Gibson Amphitheatre, with AJU President Robert Wexler probing their perspectives on world affairs.

Rabbi-Novelist Mines Ancient Treasure

Of all the prophets, Jeremiah has always been the personal favorite of Rabbi Zoë Klein. So in a series of two fictional works, the prolific pulpit rabbi and fiction writer did him a favor: She gave him a lover.

Innovative Religious Schools Take Hold

When the Silverlake Independent JCC (SIJCC) opens its new Jewish Learning Center on Sept. 22, it hopes to enroll a new kind of student along with the target crowd of grade-school children: their parents.

Service Honors Victims ofTel Aviv Attack

In the flicker of a yahrtzeit candle, congregants and community guests rose and draped their arms around each others’ shoulders. As Cantor David Berger strummed the first chords of “Oseh Shalom,” men and women began to swa

Advocates Offer Support for Facing Family Court

After a while, Rachel (who didn’t want her last name printed) stopped calling the police. They never believed her when she told them her husband was physically abusing her — no one could see the bruises because he would hit her around her head. Afraid for her two young sons, she went to court in November 2005 and filed for divorce.

College Uncertainty Marks Class of 2009

After getting wait-listed at her top three colleges, Liora Simozar seemed poised to go to UCLA. She had already sent in her acceptance when, out of the blue, she heard back from Harvard.

Health Care Is Broken, But How Do You Fix It?

As the march toward health care reform takes place nationally, the debate over what form it should take is heating up on the local level, as well. Many California doctors believe the best plan to cover the uninsured is laid out in a bill slowly gathering momentum in the California State Senate: a government-financed health system backers call “Medicare for all.”

Still Want Your Kid to Be a Doctor?

Five years as a yoga instructor gave Priel Schmalbach an intuitive sense of others’ well-being and a desire to heal the medical ailments that lay beyond yoga’s reach. So the Miami native enrolled in UC Irvine’s School of Medicine as an MD/PhD student, pursuing a career as a family practitioner.

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