Category
Judaism
Torah Portion
Is it any wonder that in education, andparticularly in Jewish education, there is an astonishingly highprofessional mortality rate?
Torah Portion
I grew up as a hyperactive child. Of course, noone ever called it that at the time. They didn\’t yet have suchclinical labels for every childhood behavioral challenge.
Yoram Ben Ze’ev
Several months ago, I happened to be present when Yoram Ben Ze\’ev, Israel\’s ConsulGeneral in Los Angeles, addressed a local group at the Jewish Federation offices on Wilshire Boulevard. The talk, of course, wasabout politics: the conversion bill, the peace process, Israel and America — the standard fare.
Torah Portion
In April 1994, following numerous suicidebombings, 400 American Jewish leaders took a two-day trip to Israelto show American Jewish support for the besieged State.
The Bonds that Unite Us
Enter a cathedral, and what do you feel? Thesoaring vaulted ceiling, the giant columns, the colossal statues ofsaints and martyrs, the luminous stained-glass images of scripturalheroes — the architecture articulates a spirituality of contrast. Weare small, insignificant, ephemeral creatures, no better than insectson the floor. We are impure, corrupt, stained with sin. Who are we toapproach God? God is magnificent, distant and fearsome in judgment.In the cathedral, it is only the figure of Christ that mediatesbetween my miserable condition as human being and God\’s majesty.Holiness, argued the scholar Rudolf Otto, lies in the contrastbetween our \”utter creatureliness\” and God\’s frightening \”tremendum.\”Holiness is the shiver of vulnerability in the face of theinfinite.
Taking the First Step
More than 40 rabbis, from Orthodox to Reform, look for ways to increase respect among Jews
Up Front
It all started because of the theft of my automobile. One sunny morning, while waiting for my car pool, I noticed something in a storefront window across the street, just behind some citizens standing at a bus stop. It was a monkey. In a diaper.
L.A. 5758
As Rabbi Allen Freehling of University Synagogue in West Los Angeles and a bus load of bishops and rabbis left the Rome airport for their hotel near the Vatican, one of the bishops read aloud a document that would soon spark a firestorm of controversy around the world: the Vatican\’s March 16 statement on the Holocaust, released just hours before. The group had just flown in from Israel, where they had spent a week worshiping together, learning about each other\’s histories, and beginning to understand, as only true friends can, what the other believes.
Torah Portion
Here\’s a riddle: What do leprosy and the State of Israel have in common? Hopefully, nothing leaps to your mind right away. I, however, needed to solve this riddle before I could begin to write this week\’s parasha column: For the week that we celebrate Israel\’s founding also happens to be the week that we read the Torah portion concerning lepers.
New Articles
“Netflix is a Joke” Returns to LA with Jewish Acts Galore
The Book and the Sword
In the Desert – A poem for Parsha Bamidbar
A Bisl Torah — Your Time Capsule
