When the now-legendary film director Martin Scorsese first discovered Herbert Asbury\’s book, \”Gangs of New York,\” in 1970 and decided to make it into a film, Rick Schwartz was a 2-year-old growing up in a modern Orthodox home in Teaneck, N.J.
Friedl Dicker-Brandeis was a prolific Bauhaus artist, who taught art to the children of Terezin. Her art and the art produced by the children in the camp under her tutelage is the subject of a new exhibition at the Simon Weisenthal Center\’s Museum of Tolerance.
The JOFA conference brought together some 700 women and 300 men for a weekend of religious activism and scholarly lectures on the question of tzeniut, a mix of modesty and dignity, and other aspects of communal life, all gathered under the rubric \”Discovering/Uncovering/Recovering Women in Judaism.\”
The Argentine government owes $135 billion to the IMF and the world bank, with little chance of ever repaying this staggering amount. In addition, over the past 45 years, 15 of the 19 agreements with the IMF have been broken, and thus, Argentina has zero credibility for further borrowings.
For the uninitiated, the happy minyan is a fairly recent American phenomenon, in which the melodies of Reb Shlomo Carlbach of blessed memory are infused into the davening.
Well, it used to be true that the melodies were infused into the davening. Now the davening is virtually one long Reb Shlomo-fest.
Conventional wisdom holds that the well-heeled population is spearheading this out-migration and that this sprawling out is continuing, particularly among the better-heeled population. By rights, Jews should be joining them; they are considerably wealthier, better educated and more likely to be homeowners than most Angelenos.
Yet, unlike most white Angelenos, or middle-class minorities, for that matter, Jews are sticking to their turf, not only in Los Angeles but in other key urban centers. Today\’s Jewish population in L.A. County, unlike the white population, which dropped by over a million, actually grew slightly from 503,000 to around 520,000.
As an Israeli whose life was split between Israel and America in the familial and environmental sense, I have the pleasure of viewing both worlds as a foreigner and native. When it comes to Israeli men vs. American men, I am a big advocate of my Mediterranean-blooded counterparts.
Israeli men seem to have confidence imbedded in their DNA. Maybe it\’s from the army, or perhaps it\’s the carpe diem syndrome. Maybe it\’s outright self-destructiveness. Either way, Israeli guys know how to approach a woman and make her feel like God has descended upon her.
The art of public speaking is a special gift. In the anthology \”Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History\” (Norton & Co., 1997), New York Times columnist William Safire collects 200 of history\’s outstanding instances of oratorical eloquence.
He divides this compendium of great speeches by categories, including Memorials and Patriotic Speeches; War and Revolution Speeches; Tributes and Eulogies; Sermons; Inspirational Speeches; and Speeches of Social Responsibility. Among the outstanding public addresses are Abraham Lincoln\’s \”Gettysburg Address,\” Martin Luther King\’s \”I Have A Dream\” speech and John F. Kennedy\’s inaugural address.
The scope and effect of projects in Israel funded by The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles have always been broad. But the Tel Aviv-Los Angeles Partnership, with its specialization in hands-on, people-to-people programming seeks to transcend mere philanthropy in order to change the attitudes of Jews in both cities and create a mutual stake in each other\’s Jewish life.
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