To the end, Rechavam Ze\’evi, murdered at the age of 75 by a Palestinian gunman on Wednesday, was a soldier in mufti. Alone among the Israeli generals who went into politics, he continued to sport his army identity disk around his neck. It was a statement: the battle for the Jewish State was not over, and one of its most aggressive commanders was still fighting.
Letters to the Editor, Point of View in response to Articles.\n
On May 27, 2001, artist Morris Aaron Feinerman died at the age of 80. Morris\’ passion was painting. He came to America as a young boy and lived in the Jewish neighborhoods of Brooklyn. His experience of discrimination and economic hardship led to a lifelong interest in ethnic art.
When Sherman Oaks resident Robina Suwol drove her two sons to school in the Valley March 1998, she didn\’t know she was about to become a crusader. The events of that morning kicked off a chain of events resulting in the Los Angeles Unified School District\’s (LAUSD) new integrated pest control policy, now considered a model for school districts across the nation.
Remember Hanna-Barbara\’s \”Squiddly Diddly?\” Well, a new cartoon cephalopod has come to town, and his name is Oswald the octopus. Voicing the title character on \”Oswald,\” Nickelodeon\’s new addition to its children\’s line-up, is a Valley boy who has been a popular actor since childhood, Fred Savage.\n\n
The ghost of Lenny Bruce still haunts North Hollywood.
Just around the corner from the Lankershim Boulevard hobby shop where Bruce was busted for heroin in 1962, \”Lenny\’s Back\” at the American Renegade Theatre offers a thoughtful, stinging monologue from the grave.
Interfaith programs — a concept which up until recently provoked a ho-hum attitude at best — are suddenly sweeping the country as people of all faiths struggle to come to terms with events of the past five weeks.
To look at one example, Valley Beth Shalom\’s lecture series \”One God: Many Faces,\” beginning this week, had already been a year in the making before the recent tragedies, but it could not have come at a more significant time, according to the synagogue\’s Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis.
In a rustic little corner of Chatsworth, flanked by trees and horses and dry, dusty land, sits the nerve center of the oldest interfaith program in the San Fernando Valley.
From its offices in a building owned by a United Methodist church, the Valley Interfaith Council (VIC) has, for 37 years, quietly provided an outlet for religious organizations to pool their resources and feed the hungry, shelter the homeless and support the elderly while allowing Jews, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims an opportunity to learn tolerance by sharing mitzvot.
Deep red curtains, dark lighting, cushiony pillows and pictures of camels and bellydancers adorning the walls: That\’s what you\’d expect from a restaurant reputed to be one of the best Middle Eastern eateries in Southern California.
Instead, what you find is a bright diner-like atmosphere, with orange and yellow arches on the walls, in a strip mall in Sherman Oaks. Oh, and a long line of Americans, Arabs, Druse and Israelis.
Carnival\’s green awning welcomes guests in Hebrew (\”Bruchim Ha\’baim\”) English and Arabic. Newspapers in three languages line the table of the anteroom, as people wait for a table or takeout on this busy Saturday night.
Years ago, UCLA visiting professor Luisa Del Giudice discovered she was more interested in the way ordinary people remembered their past than the way writers and academics recorded formal history.
In pursuit of that interest, she founded the Italian Oral History Institute (IOHI), a project dedicated to documenting the groups typically unacknowledged in Italian life and history. This year, the IOHI presents \”Italian Jews: Memory, Music, Celebration,\” a far-ranging survey of Italian Jewish life including music, food, cinema, history and language. The Jewish presence — and now absence — in the Italian landscape, in the small towns and large cities, inspires a new generation of both Italian and American scholars.
More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.