The 2019 Mensch List
For our 14th annual mensch list, we asked readers to nominate people they know who are doing extraordinary work without receiving deserving credit for it.
We couldn’t publish every submission, but the 12 stories that follow, including the husband and wife who throw birthday parties for homeless children on Skid Row, the retired educator who continues to teach as if working full time, and the high school class president who volunteers with special needs children, are inspiring examples of what it means to be animated by action, not accolades.
Happy 2019.
Click on the mensch names below to read about what they are doing around the community.
Photos by Cyndi Bemel
JJ Inside The Print
The Democratic party is in a pickle. If their leading candidate, Bernie Sanders, wins the nomination, they’ll have to pray against all odds that a...
This is a Valentine’s Day column about love, flowers and scorn. I’m not usually one to pry into the private lives of 17th-century English playwrights, but...
“Kvetching doesn’t do much,” Dov Hikind, a former Democratic New York State assemblyman, told a crowd of Republicans on the Upper West Side of Manhattan...
The year 2019 was an extraordinarily productive one for the California Legislative Jewish Caucus. While our caucus is relatively young and still working to establish...
Every Friday, my mother and her 11 brothers and sisters have lunch at my grandmother Hela’s home in Petah Tikva. There, they find dozens of...
When I first met my husband, Daniel, he told me that one of his favorite musicians was Billy Joel. “Billy Joel? Ugh. Why?” “How could...
The Polish Jewish magazine Chidusz recently published an article titled “Who Has Written the Jewish History?” about Polish Wikipedia pages relating the history of Polish...
At the beginning of his legendary career, Kirk Douglas, born Issur Danielovitch, was almost typecast as a well-meaning but ineffectual husband, in “The Strange Love of...
On Nov. 24, 1961, in the shadow of the Adolf Eichmann trial, Israeli newspaper Haaretz published a review of journalist and war correspondent William Shirer’s...
Every day Commander Rami Hassan drives 90 miles each way from his home in Kfar Yarka in the Galilee to his military base in Yehud...
Heba Yazbek will be a member of the next Israeli Knesset. Likud member and Minister of Public Safety Gilad Erdan thinks this is an outrage....
Elie Wiesel always carried his U.S. passport. Justice Hugo Black kept a copy of the Constitution in his pocket. And at the 2016 Democratic National...
Autocorrect wanted to change the title of this poem, from Yitro to Nitro I almost didn’t change it back. God, after all, descends from the...
One verse, five voices. Edited by Salvador Litvak, Accidental Talmudist You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, his manservant,...
I had just arrived at my friend’s house in Sonoma when she ran inside carrying a huge jar of milk and a carton filled with...
The worldwide global phenomenon known as Limmud that offers hundreds of sessions on Jewish life to thousands of participants began with a handful of volunteers...
In a forum at Valley Beth Shalom on Feb. 10, Democrats for Israel in Los Angeles (DFILA) hosted surrogates for some of the Democratic presidential candidates,...
In one room, children lined up at tables with small succulents and buckets of plant food, including volcanic sand, and stuffed soil into pots. And...
After the apocalypse wipes out the world’s adult population — turning some into zombies and obliterating the rest — it’s up to the teens of...
Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Chabon is best known for his acclaimed novels “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay,” “Moonglow,” “Wonder Boys” and “The Yiddish...
A career spent shuttling between film, TV and live theater is bound to have its zigs and zags, and director Joel Zwick’s is no exception....
From “Mamma Mia!” and “Beautiful: the Carole King Musical” to “The Cher Show” and “Jagged Little Pill,” jukebox musicals built around the songs of pop...
“Spiritual Surgery: A Journey of Healing Mind, Body and Spirit” by Eva Robbins draws on all of her skills, experiences and roles in life. Robbins...
Every February in time for Valentine’s Day, stores stock up on Sweethearts candy conversation hearts, those chalky confections with sayings printed on them like “Kiss...
Hollywood has lost one of the greatest legends of its golden age. Kirk Douglas, star of “Spartacus,” “Lust for Life” and nearly 100 other films...
Maureen Armand died Jan. 1 at 87. Survived by daughter Helene; son David; 3 grandchildren; sisters Irene, Jeanette. Hillside Stanley J. Berk died Dec. 27...
If he were alive today, would the Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson be a vegetarian? A few months ago, I read a thoughtful article in...
American Society for Yad Vashem held the first of its three-part series “#EducateAgainstHate” at Sfixio restaurant in Beverly Hills, on Jan. 30. During the event,...
FRI FEB 14 [caption id="attachment_310579" align="aligncenter" width="900"] Rabbi Rebecca Schatz[/caption] “Fighting for the Right to Fight” A traveling exhibition at the Museum of Tolerance (MOT)...
