Some people kiss the soil of Israel when they come to the Holy Land. Last month, Audrey Adler didn\’t so much kiss the dirt as inhale it.
Adler and a handful of other Angelenos participated in a charity bike ride for Alyn Children\’s Hospital in Jerusalem through some of the toughest terrain Adler has ridden.
Carbohydrate-filled days are over. Almost everyone is on the Atkins or Zone Diet. That is unless they\’ve deserted them for The South Beach Diet, which proposes eating the \”right carbs\” and the \”right fats\” along with protein, giving dieters the best of both worlds.
There was a time when Dora Apsan Sorell could have really used the $3,043 she received from the German government last summer. The check was meant to compensate Sorell for her slave labor during the Holocaust.
But the 83-year-old Auschwitz survivor and retired doctor who lives in Berkeley gave the money away as soon as it arrived. She donated it to the American Jewish World Service (AJWS), which is among a handful of Jewish organizations trying to aid desperate refugees from the Darfur region of western Sudan.
On Rosh Hashanah, Rabbi Harold Schulweis of Valley Beth Shalom (VBS) gave a sermon on the tragedy of Sudan and what the Jewish community needs to do about it.
His proposed remedy: Start the Jewish World Watch (JWW), a commission of caring men and women that will monitor atrocities around the world by organizing educational evenings with international relations experts and raise money to help societies being ravaged by genocide.
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In this remote region, more than 1.5 million African tribal farmers have been violently driven from their homes by the government of Sudan and the militias they armed, called Janjaweed (evil men on horseback). Despite repeated calls from humanitarian organizations and U.N. agencies warning of the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today, there continues to be a systematic program of expulsion, rape and murderous violence that has taken at least 100,000 lives.
Becky Wahlstrom isn\’t a Jew, but she plays one on TV. As Grace Polk on CBS\’s \”Joan of Arcadia,\” the blond Chicagoan looks refreshingly unlike your stereotypical Jewish character. Of course, Grace\’s character wasn\’t supposed to seem Jewish from the start. The contrary, politically outspoken, rebellious teenager in black has been packed with surprises since her character debuted in last year\’s first season. Recently, it came to light that her mother is an alcoholic. Toward the end of last year, it was revealed that her father was a rabbi and that, at age 16, she was finally giving in to his pleadings that she have a bat mitzvah. Tonight, then, is the big night. Grace will become a woman in the eyes of the Jewish community at 8 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 26.
A recent report by The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles found that nearly one in five local Jews, or 104,000 out of 520,000, earns less than $25,000 a year, with 7 percent living beneath the poverty line. Los Angeles\’ high cost of living makes it especially difficult on poor Jews, who often go without health insurance and are reluctant to ask for assistance.
In March, City Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski will be termed out of office. Two well-connected front-runners, Bill Rosendahl and Flora Gil Krisiloff, are already battling for the prize of representing the quarter-million people — including the sizable Jewish communities in places like Brentwood and Pacific Palisades.
There is ample room at the new picnic tables, but old habits die hard, and the girls are making themselves at home in Yeshiva University of Los Angeles\’ (YULA) new state-of-the-art, architecturally stunning girls high school.
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