Consul General — now Ambassador — Yuval Rotem arrived as a 39-year-old career diplomat in Los Angeles in September 1999, with his wife, Miri, and their three children. He will return to Jerusalem Aug. 16, leaving behind hundreds of friends who consider him one of the most popular and effective envoys to have represented his country in Southern California, the Southwestern United States and Hawaii.
More out of ethnic loyalty than any expectation of a great match, The Journal stayed late at the 78th annual Mercedes Benz Cup men\’s tennis tournament on July 17 at UCLA to watch a doubles semifinal between two Israelis and two Americans. The Americans, Bob and Mike Bryan, were the tournament\’s top-seeded doubles team, handsome identical twins from Camarillo who have been unstoppable lately. The Israelis\’ record was spottier. Yonatan Ehrlich, 28, is a native of Buenos Aries, Argentina, and a resident of Haifa. His partner, Andy Ram, 24, is from Jerusalem by way of Montevideo, Uruguay. They also are strikingly handsome — they prepped for the match by running shirtless around a practice court, kicking a tennis ball as if it were a soccer ball.
Both are sports heroes in Israel, according to Hagai Ben Zvi, who covers tennis for the Israeli press. Their international careers were set back by three years (each) of army service, but both made the semifinals at Wimbledon last year and both have been invited to the Olympics in Athens.
Film composer Jerry Goldsmith, died July 21, age 75. The following is excerpted from a 1997 interview with The Jewish Journal.
Letters to the Editor, Point of View in response to Articles.
The report shows that American intelligence agencies received signals that Al Qaeda was looking to attack Israel or U.S. Jewish sites in the months before the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
It also shows that several of the hijackers, as well as Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, were motivated in part by hatred of Israel and anger over the support it receives from the United States.
\”Ice cream was something my husband and I were hooked on,\” said Vicki Grossman, talking from New York Scoop in Woodland Hills, her newly opened modern reincarnation of an old-fashioned ice parlor. \”It was something of a ritual — we would take the family to Carvel at least once a week.\”
That ritual, and others like it — such as serving ice cream for desert or eating it straight out of the carton with a spoon — have made ice cream one of the most popular foodstuffs in America today. No better time to celebrate that fact now, with July being National Ice Cream Month, designated by former President Ronald Reagan in 1984.
The breathtaking beauty of Pepperdine University inspires spirituality, surely not unintentional for the founders of this 67-year-old Churches of Christ institution, where instilling moral values based on a love of God is as much a part of the mission as academic excellence.
At the very top of the tiered campus is Pepperdine\’s School of Law. On its top floor is the office of Sam Levine, an associate professor of law who happens to be an Orthodox rabbi at the nexus of quietly flourishing Jewish community in the middle of a Christian university.
Letters from Jewish summer camps have not changed much since 1963, when Allan Sherman recorded the classic song, \”Hello Muddah! Hello Faddah!\” Kids still write about what they had for lunch, what their cabin is like and their bunkmates. Though a national Web site allows one-way e-mails from parents to kids, Jewish summer camps still expect campers to write their folks the old-fashioned way — with pen, paper, stamps and envelopes.
At French Connection on Boston\’s fashionable Newberry Street this past Tuesday evening, L.A. native Lindsey Berman is juggling. A song by the band Journey blares out of her satchel shaped like a guitar each time her cell phone rings. People are calling — friends, friends of friends, friends of friends of friends. Everyone wants a ticket to the Black Eyed Peas concert that evening, the hot after-party sponsored by the organization Rock the Vote at the Democratic National Convention. Inside French Connection, vendors are hawking their black T-shirts that read, \”FCUK you! I\’m voting,\” referring to the brand French Connection United Kingdom. Art Alexakis, the lead singer of the pop band Everclear, is singing. Berman is making sure everything goes smoothly, firing up the volunteers on the street, and figuring out how she\’ll get credentials for young people so they can get on the floor for the convention\’s speeches that evening.
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