Ronald Weiner sits on a bench in a serene Beverly Hills park on a perfect, sunny day, filled with rage and frustration. He\’s shaking, his fingers tremble, and his voice cracks with every other sentence. The source of his anger is the city in which he sits. For the past year, Beverly Hills has thwarted Weiner\’s efforts to build a large senior-housing project on property he owns.\n
\”You, Me & Dignity,\” which officially opened last week at themuseum space inside the Westside Jewish Community Center on OlympicBoulevard, is a thought-provoking, hands-on walk through the world ofdisabilities.
First, please understand that it has nothing to dowith health. The laws of kashrut — the food restrictions imposedupon Jews by the Bible and the Talmud — were not intended to keep ushealthy.
There is, of course, the thriving Skirball Cultural Center in theSepulveda Pass. And the American Jewish Committee\’s SkirballInstitute on American Values. And the Skirball ArchaeologicalBuilding and Skirball Museum on the Hebrew Union College campus inJerusalem. And the Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine at NewYork University.\n\nThere is also the Skirball Film Archive Fund at UCLA.
TV writer and CBS executive Eugene Stein exposes a darkerside in his latest book of fiction
For Robert Anthony Siegel,April is indeed the cruelest month.Siegel\’s first novel came out in April — that was kind. But so did novels by Norman Mailer, Saul Bellow and Philip Roth. That was very,very cruel.\n\nAs book reviewers wrote fevered mini-tomes, dissecting the latest works by the greats, and publishing-house publicity budgets emptied to push Saints Norm, Saul and Phil, Siegel\’s exceptionally funny and entertaining novel, \”All the Money In the World,\” received zero attention.
Sarra Levine and Rochelle Robins began sharing their dreams three years ago, during a long car ride from the Michigan Women\’s MusicFestival to Philadelphia.
\”I always knew I wanted to start a politically minded organization that was Jewish and focused on women,\” Robins says. \”I also wanted to create the school I sought but couldn\’t find.\”
My mother called to give me an update on my aunt Ruthie\’s condition. She had a cancer-spotted kidney removed a few days ago,and the family Jew-Ex was hot with medical reports. My mother, whose curse it was to be the firstborn, was cursed a second time by havinga daughter who she used to liken to her sister Ruth whenever I stepped out of line — which was often, according to my mother.Ruthie\’s curse was to be born two years after my mother and to neverhave had a daughter.
