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Susan Freudenheim

Susan Freudenheim

Is 65 the new 40?

Two years ago on Yom Kippur, Rabbi Laura Geller began her sermon at Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills with a musical clip from The Beatles. “Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m 64?” Paul McCartney famously sang.

Uri Herscher’s and the Skirball Cultural Center: ‘Gratitude, gratitude, gratitude’

One day in early March 1954, Uri Herscher, just 12 at the time, ran away from his parents. His father, Joseph, a cabinetmaker, and mother, Lucy, a laundress, were having trouble making ends meet living in Israel. Together with Uri and his younger brother, Eli, they were meant to leave from Haifa the next morning to travel to the United States. There, the family would find a new home in San Jose, Calif., a thriving middle-class community with very few Jews, where Joseph’s sister had already set down roots.

The Conservative gay marriage debate

On Rosh Hashanah in 1992, Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis stood before his Conservative congregation at Valley Beth Shalom (VBS) in Encino and declared that despite the words of Leviticus, homosexuality is not an abomination. He argued that the same understanding and compassion Jews afford all human beings should be extended to those attracted to others of their own sex, and he told his congregation:

Becoming Jewish: Tales from the Mikveh

Late on a recent Wednesday afternoon, Judith Golden and Suzanne Rosenthal perched at their desks in a small room in the depths of American Jewish University (AJU).

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