Saudi Arabia must reduce its support for terror or suffer the consequences, Democratic presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman said. Speaking Sunday in New York, the Connecticut senator said he told the Saudis during his recent trip through the Middle East that if they don\’t change their backing for terror, \”our relationship with them will not go on as before.\”
Washington Watch, news briefs, information, and updates from Washington and Government.
Lynn Kaufman admits that she comes from \”big, hearty stock.\” But after 30 years of being overweight, the Westside resident decided to get control.
\”I had gotten to a really scary number on the scale,\” said Kaufman, a veteran of numerous diets and 10 years with Overeaters Anonymous. At long last, Kaufman lost 42 pounds with Weight Watchers and has kept them off for two years.
Of course, she needs to stay slim to keep her job as a Weight Watchers group leader.Spirited and passionate about health consciousness, Kaufman even drastically curtailed her hours as a personal injury attorney in favor of a far less lucrative career with the weight-loss company.
The National Council of Synagogue Youth\’s (NCSY) Lord of the Regionals Shabbaton weekend was what camp would be like if camp took place in a four-star hotel. Some 400 teenagers from the West Coast gathered — actually, nearly overran — the Renaissance Los Angeles Hotel near LAX Dec. 19-22 to bond with Jewish high schoolers from around the region.
On this rainy, winter weekend, the ninth- through 12th-graders from Jewish and public schools in large Jewish cities such as Seattle, and smaller ones such as El Paso, Texas (with five religious families), came together to contemplate God: Who is God? Why does God do what he does? How can people come to believe in God?
Rabbi Binny Freedman, the educational director of the international Jewish organization Isralight, was nonchalantly eating his baked ziti in the back of Jerusalem\’s Sbarro\’s pizza store when a suicide bomber detonated his bomb there.
\”It was the loudest explosion I have ever heard, and I am an Israeli army officer who has been under artillery fire,\” Freedman said of the August 2001 incident. \”People started screaming, and then a huge ball of fire swept through the entire front and there were flames everywhere. It was one of the most horrible things I have ever seen. I was coming down the stairs, and I saw a woman lying on the ground, looking at me trying to say something. I kneeled down next to her and I saw the light go out in her eyes. I watched her die. There was a man who had been at the table to my right, and he had been blown back against the wall, and he was lying there without his legs.\”
Fans of the legendary first seasons of \”Saturday Night Live\” remember Laraine Newman sashaying with Gilda Radner in the hilarious faux commercial for \”Jewess Jeans.\” They recall her Barbra Streisand impression and her angry beatnik character reciting bad poetry in nasal Brooklynese. But Newman, 50, will reveal one of her more serious roles when she\’s honored at Hillel at Pierce & Valley Colleges\’ Comedy Nite 2003 on Feb. 1: her involvement with the Jewish community. The granddaughter of an Arizona Jewish cattle rancher, Newman will describe how she grew up so assimilated that \”all my Jewish friends went to Hess Kramer but I was shlepped off to Camp Trinity.\”
But ask San Franciscan Elliot Brandt about Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Jewish community, and you won\’t be able to put a stop to his praise.
Since the 34-year-old moved here in April to become the Western States director for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the pro-Israel lobby, Brandt expressed nothing but admiration. \”To see the potential that is represented by the size of this Jewish community, the dynamism and the passion of this community … it\’s amazing,\” Brandt said.
For the past 60 years, the Jewish Community Centers of Greater Los Angeles (JCCGLA) has been the glue which, until recently, has kept area Jewish community centers largely flourishing. As the organization struggles to reinvent itself as a consulting business, some in the Jewish community said they have little intention of tapping the group for its services and wonder whether it should even continue to exist.
If the JCCGLA were to disband, supporters worry JCCs would lose their biggest support system and could eventually close their doors.
Community Brief, news from around California, los angeles,United States.
What makes a good parent? Once, while waiting on line at Passport Control in Israel, I overheard two American couples talking.
Each was describing how much luggage they had brought. Finally, one said to the other, \”We brought nothing for ourselves. The truth is we could have done just fine with a carry-on case. All our oversized bags are filled with items for our children and grandchildren. We took orders for whatever they wanted and shlepped it here.\” Then she added the ultimate Jewish thing. \”Isn\’t that what parents are supposed to do?\”
The other couple, nodding in agreement, replied, \”Yes, and may you do so for 120 years.\”
Suddenly from all over the hall came, \”Amen!\”
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