Risa Gruberger, whose children are 8 and 9, hopes they will both grow up loving the Jewish holidays as she does. \”When the weather\’s crisp out,\” says Gruberger, \”I want them to feel they can smell it, they can taste it, that Chanukah\’s coming.
When my daughter, Samantha, was 6, I got a call from our synagogue\’s Hebrew-school principal. \”Do you have a Christmas tree?\” DiDi asked.
Israel is on its way to becoming a back-burner issue in much of the American Jewish community. Studies show that the younger the Jew, the less connection he or she feels to what is, let\’s try to remember, the Jewish homeland. The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, which used to give Israel 50 percent of the funds it raised, has cut that figure by nearly half. One of the Federation\’s \”old leaders\” pointed out to me that Israel isn\’t even mentioned any more in Federation advertising — it\’s bad for business. Israel has become a wormy apple for many American Jews — all this unpleasantness with the Palestinians and, on top of that, a hot, fuming plateful of disrespect for Conservative and Reform rabbis and the Judaism they practice.
My two grandfathers held one another in respectful, yet distant regard. My mother\’s father, a Polish-born, Conservative rabbi, devoted his life to Jewish education and study. He had little use for popular entertainment, and, despite his keen intelligence, rarely appreciated the jokes the rest of us found so funny.
Jewish leaders often lust for media attention, but mention the Jonathan Pollard case, and most dive for cover.
Lisa Weinmann-Myara, a State University of New York graduate who settled in Jerusalem with her Israeli husband 16 years ago, is waging a vigorous defense of her soldier son, who faces a court martial on charges of disgracing himself and the army by allowing a Palestinian mob to steal his automatic rifle when it stormed the car in which he was hitchhiking through the West Bank.
Every summer, my sisters and I, along with our husbands and children, spend a few days with our parents at Red\’s Meadow resort near Mammoth.
City Spa is one of only a handful of old world saunas left in America. A tradition brought over by European Jewish immigrants, \”the shvitz\” was and still is a place for men to schmooze, bond and sweat. Now, though, women can see what they\’ve been missing.
\”Phantom,\” \”Les Mis,\” and now… \”Masada: The Musical.\”
\”Masada\” is based on the mass suicide of 967 Jews who preferred death to enslavement by the Romans who had held their desert mountaintop fortress under siege.
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