Each year, when we set out our criteria for our annual pantheon of L.A.’s top mensches, we try to find nominees whose good works are, for the most part, unsung.
The Jewish Journal created this list as a response to all those lists extolling fame, money, power and hotness. We honor these special ten because they are just people — menschen, to use the proper Yiddish plural — who understand the power and possibility of just one person.\n\nMeet Gabriel Halimi, Kim Krowne, Manijeh Youabian, Andrew Wolfberg, Susan Corwin, Ari Moss, Richard Braun, Bracha Yael, Jack Matloff and Neil Sheff
\”It is hard to convey the special sense of respect, dignity and approbation that can be conveyed by calling someone \’a real mensch,\’\” writes Leo Rosten in \”The Joys of Yiddish.\”\n\nThe Yiddish word infuses the basic German denotation — \”person\” — with an almost indefinable connotation. A mensch is a person who is upright, honorable, decent, as Rosten writes, a person to admire and emulate.
\”It is hard to convey the special sense of respect, dignity and approbation that can be conveyed by calling someone \’a real mensch,\’\” writes Leo Rosten in \”The Joys of Yiddish.\” The Yiddish word infuses the basic German denotation — \”person\” — with an almost indefinable connotation. A mensch is a person who is upright, honorable, decent, as Rosten writes, a person to admire and emulate.
To its detractors, Los Angeles seems very much like a modern-day Sodom or Gomorrah — besotting civilization with a trash culture of celebrity murder trials, reality TV and movies that trade on violence and superficiality.
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