Hundreds of Latino Pentecostal pastors and congregants milled outside Sinai Temple’s sanctuary on Oct. 8, waiting to go inside. They had come from Downey, Cypress Park, Compton and other places far from the Wilshire Corridor, where Sinai Temple is located. They’d also come from cities even farther away: Fresno, San Antonio, Tijuana.
Zalman Schachter-Shalomi — “Reb Zalman” to his many friends, students and disciples — is considered the guiding light of Judaism’s Renewal movement. Recently he was in Los Angeles for Makom Ohr Shalom’s Rosh Hashanah services. Because he was so busy during the visit, he agreed to an interview via Skype after returning to his home in Boulder, Colo., where he lives with his wife Eve and their two cats, Mazel and Brakhah. Now 85, Zalman said he was “tired” from his holiday traveling, though he appeared as vital as ever. Bearded, eyes twinkling, animated, wearing suspenders and a knitted kippah, he chatted about topics close to his heart: Eco-kashrut, aging and the future of religion.
On a Los Angeles FM radio talk show, the following aired recently:
A caller identifying himself as Mohammed said, “I believe that so-called Israel should be annihilated totally, wiped off the map … I hope that Iran has the gall to nuke and exterminate them so they go back to Europe.
The e-mail was short and to the point: Several members of my 1952-1954 class at Garrison Junior High in northwest Baltimore — Class 215 — were holding a reunion.
The medical facility where I received treatment is one of the most prestigious in the world, but some staff members had a lousy bedside manner. One resident — I thought of him as Dr. Worst-Case-Scenario — would always give me his gloomiest predictions.
Rabbi Gershom Sizomu, the first black sub-Saharan rabbi ordained at an American rabbinical school, has had a very busy time since returning to Uganda in June, after not having lived there for five years.
At pilot school in Florida, Mark Gabriel found something that he loved and had the craving to learn. After two years of study and training, he returned to Southern California, where he worked as a co-pilot for a charter jet company
\”Failure of Intelligence, The Decline and Fall of the CIA\” by Melvin A. Goodman (Rowman & Littlefield, 2008).
In the small lobby, a teenage boy with blondish hair sits passively on a couch, staring at the wall, not reacting to the threats thrown his way. His mother, her face puffy from crying, pleads with her husband, the boy\’s enraged stepfather, who slams in and out of the building, furiously yelling that the boy stole his car and his money to buy drugs
On a wall at Beit T\’Shuvah\’s sanctuary there are plaques with the names of those connected with Beit T\’Shuvah who have passed away. One of those names is that of Josh Lowenthal, a former resident who died on June 11, 1995
