She\’s mean, she\’s popular. And she\’s more political than her shocked listeners realize. Pat Buchanan has floated her name for running mate. Gay activists have made her a target in the battle for marriage rights. And Christian lobbyists and proselytizers are carrying her flag high.
It\’s been a month of extremes for the National Conference of Synagogue Youth (NCSY) on the West Coast. As the Orthodox youth group basks in the joy of moving into its own building, it is also reeling from the shock of a scandal involving an East Coast regional director allegedly abusing teens.
If Jewish Los Angeles seemed a more melodious place in late June, you can thank 250 of the Reform movement\’s sweet singers of Israel, who gathered in Beverly Hills to celebrate Jewish music and share their knowledge, skills, and repertoire.
Siegel. Shuster. Kane. Just a few names of Jewish storytellers whose restless imaginations fueled a multimillion dollar entertainment business that boomed throughout the 1940s and 1950s, when America was at war and television was in its infancy.
Eighty-eight years after Henrietta Szold founded Hadassah in 1912, the 306,000-member Zionist and social service organization will gather in Los Angeles for its first national convention of the 21st century. From July 16-19, more than 2,500 leaders and guests will mingle at the Century Plaza Hotel, where speakers will range from actor Richard Dreyfuss to political commentators Mary Matalin and James Carville. Hadassah is the largest women\’s and Jewish group in the U.S., but president Bonnie Lipton admits membership is down from its high of more than 350,000 in the 1980s. More than half of current membership is over 61, so the group is working to reinvent itself and draw younger women. Besides its historic focus on health care in Israel, for example, the organization is now championing women\’s health in the U.S, among other issues.
When Los Angeles artist Victor Raphael was a boy, he gazed at the biblical murals at Wilshire Boulevard Temple and pondered the divine. His cosmic musings, in the age of Apollo and Sputnik, led him to dream of becoming an astronaut. But when the need for eyeglasses made that dream impossible, he invented another way to visit the stars.
Q: When does a fence equal freedom?
A: When it\’s an eruv.
On Sun., July 2 the Jewish community of Northridge will celebrate the official initiation of its new eruv, allowing observant Jews the ability to carry on the Sabbath within its domain.The project was initiated more than 10 years ago by members of Young Israel of Northridge, at that time the only traditional Jewish community in the North Valley. They created the North Valley Eruv Society, which eventually expanded to include members of surrounding congregations, such as Temple Ramat Zion, Em Habanim and Chabad of Northridge.
When Curt Fissel stomped on the glass after his wedding in the southwestern Polish city of Wroclaw, the congregation erupted into loud applause and a resounding chorus of \”Mazel tov!\”But the joyous response went far beyond heartfelt good wishes to Fissel and his bride, Ellen Friedland, both of Montclair, N.J.
It was perhaps the most emotionally potent moment of the evening, as the elderly Rabbi Yedidiah Shofet, addressing his audience in Farsi, broke down and cried, his voice trembling, his frail body shaking.Representing the Nessah Cultural Organization, Shofet was part of a lineup of speakers appearing earlier this week at West Hollywood\’s Hollywood Temple Beth El, where – reacting to the July 1 verdict that sentenced 10 of the Shiraz 13 – local Jews met to demonstrate support for the prisoners and to condemn the actions of the Iranian government.
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