For Josh Bernstein, host of The History Channel\’s \”Digging for the Truth,\” myth-dispelling, artifact-hunting and body-straining adventure are part of his regular routine.
In recent years Los Angeles, the nation\’s second-largest Jewish community, has become a stop for visiting Jewish dignitaries — especially politicians, hoping to tap into the fundraising network here.
Last year at the Israel Independence Day Festival in Woodley Park, anti-disengagement activist Shifra Hastings of Los Angeles was clad all over in orange, the color of protest, right down to her painted fingernails.
\”Aliya: Three Generations of American-Jewish Immigration to Israel\” by Liel Leibovitz.
The association of Darfur with the Shoah is a natural one for us. When we hear phrases such as \”ethnic cleansing\” and \”relocation,\” we know all too well what these euphemisms are concealing; the organized destruction of a people.
In Los Angeles, as in other American cities where Jews have moved out en masse from their old neighborhoods, they not only left dwellings behind, they also left behind synagogues, social centers, stores and street corners that connected them to a certain time in their lives and to a particular era in their collective past.
When sexy authors like Erica Jong and Jerry Stahl get together onstage, you expect fireworks. But when I drag my friend Kay up to Skirball for the Writers Bloc conversation, the room is too bright, and Kay tells me Jong\’s blue-framed eyeglasses and gold necklace make her come off more Carol Channing than \”sex goddess.\”
While this was the third year for Kosher World, it was the first time the show joined with the ethnic and halal markets, under the umbrella of the World Ethnic Market.
Here\’s a verse that should be written in Psalms: \”He who is lenient about Purim is a truly unhappy person.\” Or, as one rabbi put it: \”Who doesn\’t enjoy a bacchanalian feast where it\’s a mitzvah to get drunk?\”
About six years ago at the University of Texas, I was asked to be the guest speaker for Shabbat 1,000, an event where 1,000 Jewish students are served full-course traditional Shabbat meals for free. There are no prayer services.
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