Dr. Scott Braunstein sits in a hospital room with Sam Bottleman, 91, on the Sunday of Chanukah. Bottleman has a neck brace and a deep wound on his head after falling down 12 steps in his apartment building the day before. Braunstein, 27, a resident in internal medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, holds Bottleman\’s hand and asks questions that elicit an entire history.
Israeli filmmaker Amos Gitai will direct a novice actor in his next movie. He is playwright Arthur Miller, better known as the author of \”Death of a Salesman,\” \”The Crucible\” and numerous other dramas.
The lobby of Cal State L.A.\’s Luckman Fine Arts Theater was stocked with pamphlets on Israel and its culture, both in English and in Spanish, on Jan. 16.
In 1995, nurse, mystery writer and prospective single mom Serita Stevens traveled to Romania to adopt an abandoned 9-month-old baby girl. So appalled was she at the conditions in the orphanage at which she finally met her future daughter, she started Hugs and Hopes–Romania to help care for the orphans and abandoned children in a country still struggling to recover from the ruin and desperation caused by the Ceausescu regime.
God created the animals and brought them, one by one, before man to see what he would name them. Man examined the essence of each creature and assigned its name. So teaches Genesis.
The families of children with Canavan disease are suing the researchers who found the gene responsible for the illness, using blood and tissue from two children in Chicago and other children who died of the disease.
A conference on genetic diseases held by the Cultural Foundation of Habib Levy in November led The Journal to examine the Jewish community\’s reduced state of awareness about genetic testing for prospective parents. During the past 30 years, large-scale genetic screening of Ashkenazi Jews in the U.S., Israel and other countries has reduced the number of babies born with Tay-Sachs, the most widely known Jewish genetic disease, by 90 percent. Yet today, younger Jews are less conscious of Tay-Sachs and even less aware of testing made available during the past five years for a newer array of genetic diseases. Geneticists and physicians confirmed that many people are not adequately informed about their genetic testing options. Regardless of their educational background, few individuals know if they fall into a high-risk category for genetically transmitted diseases. Experts interviewed maintain there has been a relaxation in vigilance about carrier screening and a consequential rise in danger signals for American Jews of Ashkenazi descent.
On weekend visits home, I can always count on finding news clippings in the hall tree drawer that my mom slipped there for me.
During the lamest duck days of his presidency, Bill Clinton hustled to cobble together a series of under-the-wire executive orders and pardons, but he was unable to secure The Grand Prize: a comprehensive peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
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