Three in five adults report that their level of Jewish involvement has changed substantially over the course of their adult lives. Remarkably, their involvement is nearly as likely to have increased as to have declined.What\’s constant is change. American Jews continually adapt and reinvent their identities throughout their adult lives.
3:45 a.m. I am walking down a very dark, silent alleyway in Oakwood, a two-square-mile, mostly low-income community in Venice, behind police officer Robert Eisenhart. A 16-year-old boy, a member of the Venice Shoreline Crips gang, has been shot in the shoulder and in the middle of his back by a member of the same gang. Eisenhart is looking for the shooter, who may be at a party in a nearby darkened house. The silence is almost surreal. I am afraid of what may appear, or explode, out of the darkness. We arrived at the scene minutes before, and I see the boy wheeled out on the stretcher and placed in the ambulance as his brother, his sister and other gang members watch without overt emotion, in dazed silence. I am surprised at the dewy youth of the gang members, and by their glazed faces and darting eyes. The scene has the hopeless, listless feel of the ghetto: some lawns with piled-up rusted machinery, nails, weeds, tubs, broken bicycles, old porcelain, busted mattress springs. An old mattress is stuffed into the window of one house to keep out the cold and prying strangers.
Wow, that hit me. Of course it has a different heartbeat than I do, but how could it? I\’m carrying this fetus inside of me; it\’s me. Or is it me?
First date. He agrees to see a movie about ballet instead of \”Gladiator.\” You\’re heartened by this early sacrifice.
After the movie, he drags you along to a friend\’s birthday dinner at some Italian sounding restaurant on Sunset. On the way he gets aggravated about the traffic. This, you count against him.You try to be charming around his friends, as you realize you\’re on display and want to be seen as someone with good social skills. He reaches way across the table for bread. This, you remember your aunt used to call \”boarding house reach.\” You also count this against him.
He sees to it immediately that you get a shot of ouzo, a Greek liquor he says will be good for your cold. It is. This erases the traffic temper and the reaching, which persists.
There are dozens of Jews in the Los Angeles Police Department; in fact, the city\’s first chief of police, in 1872, was Emil Harris, a Polish-Jewish refugee.
\”The United States was the first country to legally sterilize people for eugenic reasons, and the Nazis took that from us,\” says exhibit curator Dr. Michael Nutkiewicz, adding that anti-immigration sentiment fueled the movement.
This past year, Toys R Us was excoriated for proposing and, in some instances, constructing separate \”Boys World\” and \”Girls World\” sections. But public outrage quickly forced the 707-store retailer to abandon this gender-based marketing concept, which it euphemistically referred to as \”logical adjacencies.\”Twenty years ago, I would have vehemently condemned Toys R Us\’ discriminatory actions, perhaps even joining the ranks of the politically correct protesters. Girls, I would have argued, have as much right to play with a Tonka truck as boys with a Little Tikes vacuum cleaner. And not only a right, a need.Twenty years ago, I was single, childless and clueless.
When Haoman first opened its doors five years ago, says Jerusalem nightlife mogul Ruben Lublin, who is one of five owners of Haoman, the emphasis was on the music.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach\’s unfortunate and patronizing apologia on Dr. Laura Schlessinger ( \”Dr. Laura Misguided on Homosexuality,\” June 16) looks very much like flattery in an attempt to ingratiate himself with people who are vehement in their single-issue activism.
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