After arriving by cattle car at Auschwitz, many Jews were handed postcards, with the uniform message thoughtfully prepared by the Nazis.
How many lawyers does it take to build a library? If you’re expecting a punch line, think again, because despite attorneys’ sharklike reputations, many law firms are generous charitable givers and many attorneys are getting personally involved in the charities their firms support. A few years ago, Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp funded a library at Richland Avenue Elementary, a school with many economically disadvantaged families and disabled students right next to MS&K’s West Los Angeles office. In addition to paying for the library, about a dozen of the firm’s lawyers continue to volunteer as reading tutors for kids in the school through KOREH L.A., a literacy program sponsored by The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles.
Jerry B. Epstein is probably best-known as the developer of two apartment complexes in Marina del Rey. He and his wife also have long been very generous supporters of Saint John’s Medical Center in Santa Monica. But as much money as Epstein has donated to his favored causes, which also include AIPAC and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, some of his most notable contributions can’t be totaled up in dollars and cents. That’s because Epstein, 87, has made something of a second, unpaid career out of offering advice on every topic under the sun, even when some of it is unwelcome.
It was nearly 5 o’clock when Susan realized she didn’t have the fresh basil and black olives she needed for the chicken dish she was preparing for dinner. Guests were arriving at 7 and she still needed to shower and change. Scribbling the few items down on a scrap of paper, she dashed out of the house — hair a mess, T-shirt stained with olive oil. She flew from the parking lot into the store and headed straight for the spice aisle. What was it she needed again?
When I walked into our local Kmart the night after Labor Day, Christmas music already beckoned shoppers to do what they do best during the great white winter holiday: consume. Traditional Christians probably decry the way in which the focus of their holy day has shifted away from their Messiah toward consumerism. Jewish folks decry this as well (and certainly this Jewish folk does) because it pressures us to celebrate our less significant winter holiday, Chanukah, in a similar way. The irony couldn’t be more striking. Chanukah is the holiday that celebrates Jewish distinctiveness over assimilation. The Maccabees — zealots to some, freedom fighters to others — fought to preserve a sense of Jewish distinctiveness in the face of the Assyrian Greeks and other Jews who were attracted to their ways.\n
While economists say the recession ended more than a year ago, you wouldn’t know it to look at Jewish nonprofits. In an annual list released Nov. 1 by The Chronicle of Philanthropy of the top 400 nonprofits in the United States, fundraising at the country’s largest Jewish charities had declined by an average of 18.5 percent in 2009 — nearly twice as much as the list as a whole, which showed a fundraising decline of 10 percent. Twenty-two Jewish organizations made the Philanthropy 400, which ranks the country’s 400 largest nonprofits by the size of their fundraising totals.
If you can count on a Starbucks on every corner, you can also count on finding a bottle of Ethos water inside. They are the plainly packaged bottled waters promising that, simply by purchasing one, you can help make a global impact. Ethos ensures that 5 cents from every bottle sold in the United States (10 cents in Canada) will go to improving both the water supply and sanitation standards in developing countries. To date, those pennies have created a combined pot of more than $6.2 million. The money flows from the stores into the Ethos Water Fund (part of the Starbucks Foundation), where it is distributed in grants to various nonprofit, water-focused organizations. One grant, for example, paid to build a gravity-fed water system in a rural, mountainous region of Honduras. Newly installed pipes now bring water from rain and natural springs to the homes of people in need, as well as to their community center. Locals, for the first time, have hygienic latrines and a basin with a spigot.
Walk into Café Europa at Westside Jewish Community Center on Tuesdays, or the Valley version in North Hollywood on Thursdays, and you’ll find dozens of elderly men and women, sometimes as many as 60 or 70 of them. Some are frail, some feisty, many are both. They chat, they snack, they listen to lectures or watch movies or play Bingo. The name itself — Café Europa — sounds romantic, evocative of pre-World War II Europe, of Linzer tortes and intense political discussions and a world that’s disappeared. And, yes, almost all the group members were born in Europe and have European accents.
For a little more than three decades, the Los Angeles-based International Judea Foundation (known as SIAMAK), among the oldest and most active of the local Iranian Jewish nonprofits, was known for looking out for the needs of the Iranian Jewish community here and abroad. Now, as the local Iranian Jewish community has matured and prospered in Southern California, SIAMAK has turned some of its focus to Israel, creating a program to nurture and develop innovative medical, high-tech and alternative energy research at Israel’s Ben-Gurion University (BGU). Dubbed “Project Jacob” after the biblical patriarch, the program is the brainchild of Dariush Fakheri, SIAMAK’s president, a businessman and entrepreneur who lives in Encino. With an initial investment of $200,000 last February, SIAMAK funded three projects at BGU.
For a good couple of minutes I was in shock,” said burgeoning ballerina Hana Goldstone, a light giggle punctuating her otherwise grown-up voice.
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