Anya Karlin has been fascinated with opera since the age of 4, when she was invited to join the cast of \”Madame Butterfly.\” At 10, while performing in a Chanukah concert, she discovered the joys of singing in Yiddish.
Darlene Basch has always had a fiery independent streak. Born and raised in Queens, the former Darlene Chakin was taking the F train by herself into Manhattan well before she had her Bat Mitzvah. Basch\’s mother, a Holocaust survivor, wanted young Darlene to be able to rely on herself, just in case.\n
The quiet hallways of the Jewish Historical Society of Southern California (JHS) are teeming with something you wouldn\’t expect: young blood.
Although only 23 miles apart, Milken Community High School in Bel Air and Jordan High School in South Central might as well exist in different worlds.
It\’s a rainy Monday morning, and youth from Watts and Beverly Hills are sitting together in the auditorium of David Starr Jordan High School in South Central L.A. Rabbi Marc Schneier and Martin Luther King III share a stage, and even the ninth-graders are paying attention.
The day before a report came out confirming allegations that the Orthodox Union (OU) for years ignored signs that a top rabbi at the National Conference of Synagogue Youth (NCSY) was abusing teens in his charge, Ayelet Fischer and 300 other teens were at the Marriott in Woodland Hills attending NCSY\’s West Coast regional conclave. And nobody was talking about Rabbi Baruch Lanner.
While many of us were doing the Chinese-food-and-a-movie thing, some Jews around town chose to take part in a different kind of Christmas tradition.
Mogen David, one of the last Trad-itional synagogues left in Los Angeles, installed a mechitzah and took out its microphones this month, choosing to become Orthodox rather than defunct.
The world gets smaller every day. Thanks to technological tools such as the Internet and e-mail, people in the United States can easily communicate with others around the globe — if they speak one another\’s language.
It was a very emotional evening for Fred Kort. Two weeks ago, from the stage at Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel, Kort introduced Josef and Theresa Herinx-Pieter and Annie Schipper, righteous gentiles who risked their lives to harbor Jews during World War II.\n
