I was looking through my closet this morning for a spring outfit to match the warmer weather, and I found his T-shirt. It\’s a red T-shirt with the Fox label — Israel\’s closest version of the Gap.
On his first day of work in 1985 as executive director of the Hillel Foundation at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Rabbi Stephen Cohen received a telling welcome.
Cohen, a former New Yorker, stepped off the plane and took a cab straight to the University Religion Center (URC), where the offices of Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life are housed. A social worker, prompted by the rabbi\’s forlorn and scruffy look, invited him to take part in that day\’s breakfast program for the homeless.
Cohen, 28 at the time, laughed and explained his position.
On Sept. 9, Benhaz Eshrat Zaghi received the Rabbi Richard N. Levy Distinguished Student Award, presented by the Los Angeles Hillel Council, for her many contributions to the Hillel community.
Yael Barzideh applied to two colleges last year: University of Pennsylvania because she wanted to go there, and UCLA because that\’s where her parents wanted her to go.
The following is a partial list of Jewish organizations, schools and synagogues in Valley cities with already developed, and growing, Jewish communities.
The fourth grade take-home assignment seemed fairly straightforward: take a huge hunk of butcher paper, lay your kid down on it, and trace a life-size version of their favorite American tall-tale protagonist.
Didi Carr Reuben was not keen about the idea of dating a rabbi, and on her first official date with Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben, she was desperate for a way to get out of it.
\”He\’s a cute guy, but I couldn\’t see cuteness,\” says Didi in her husky voice and Bronx accent. \”All I [imagined] was a guy who was 98, 3 feet 2 inches, with a white beard, smelly; three teeth, davening in another language.\”
Little did this aspiring pop star know that two years later she would marry the rabbi, and eventually serve by his side as a rebbetzin of Kehillat Israel in Pacific Palisades for more than 15 years.
As the school year comes to a close, The Jewish Journal profiled eight outstanding graduating seniors from a cross section of high schools in Los Angeles. An examination of their dreams, their hopes, their personal and professional goals — as well as what has shaped them in the past — proves that the Jewish future is alive and well.
While the current crisis may have deterred some schools and parents from participating in the exchange programs, Pressman Academy and Milken Community High School of Stephen S. Wise Temple demonstrate that such programs can thrive despite the tense security situation.
When the new intifada first began, a few Israeli men I dated could not figure out why I wanted to remain in Israel considering the "situation."
