Rabbi Matis Weinberg has been a controversial figure in education for decades. The son and grandson of two successive rosh yeshivas of Ner Israel in Baltimore, a preeminent Orthodox seminary, Weinberg started Kerem Yeshiva in the mid-1970s in Santa Clarita, when he was 29.
Last week\’s Torah portion ended with a dramatic cliffhanger. A plague was in progress, punishing the Israelites for worshipping the false gods. Despite earlier prohibitions and the snare of idolatry, an Israelite man openly brought a Midianite woman into the camp. (Commentators infer that the two had sex.) While others wept, Pinchas pierced the couple with a spear, and the plague was suddenly halted. Pinchas risked both his life and the priesthood. The families could have sought revenge, and priests who kill are normally ineligible for service.
Vail, Colo., might seem like Siberia compared to the more established Jewish community of Los Angeles, yet here in Lionshead (elevation: 10,350 feet) there\’s some 75 Jews gathered for Shabbat morning services.
When you last left me, I had just proposed to my long-suffering girlfriend, Alison, while on the beach with a pimple. She said \”yes,\” and we agreed to start fighting about the wedding plans as soon as possible.
A recent report in The New York Times captured almost perfectly the thorny questions that stand at the center of relations between the American Jewish community and Israel. Should one be permitted to criticize the government of a foreign country with which one feels a deep affinity, or is it a moral and political imperative to support the policies of that government, right or wrong?
Sixty years ago this week, many residents of Los Angeles became aware of the Nazi Holocaust for the first time, thanks to a dramatic pageant staged at the Hollywood Bowl by an alliance of Jewish activists and Hollywood celebrities.
An Argentine gaucho lounges near his horse. A Bombay bride displays her upturned palms, filigreed entirely with henna. An Ethiopian boy lights candles with a classmate. A woman poses stiffly in her kitchen in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. What unites these disparate images is that the people depicted in them are Jews, all of them captured in black and white by Israeli-born photojournalist Zion Ozeri.
Clean Comedians, a comedy booking agency, has a \”no-gross-out\” policy: no gender-bashing, racist remarks, obscenity, sexually explicit material or swearing. A sixth prohibition — no divisive politics — graces its \”Comedy for Peace\” event, featuring a Jewish and a Palestinian comic at the Doubletree Hotel in Santa Monica on Sunday, Aug. 3. The goal is to raise $10,000 to send Israeli and Arab youths to a conflict resolution camp run by the Seeds of Peace organization.
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