Bemoaning the way Israel is portrayed in the news is something of a favorite pastime for many American Jews. But rather than complain that Israel is depicted unfairly in its conflict with the Palestinians, two Silicon Valley executives are taking a different approach.
A Jewish community initiative to bring to justice those who kill Americans overseas has become law.
Provisions of a bill spearheaded by the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), dubbed the Koby Mandell Act, were incorporated into the omnibus spending bill President Bush signed last week.
Consider this year\’s fluke on the December Dilemma: Christmas Day usually occurs during the workweek, with Jews often handling this day off by filling Dec. 25 with some volunteer work — then Chinese food and a movie.
But the quirks of the calendar find this Dec. 24 falling on a Friday, meaning Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are in a rare calendar co-existence with Shabbat.
It was in 1998 that my son, Sammy, broke out of his cocoon and started kindergarten at our neighborhood school. Up until then, he had spent his entire tiny life surrounded by Jews.
Having left his Jewish preschool behind only a few months prior, he had little knowledge of his own minority status in the world, not to mention in our South Bay community. But that didn\’t matter to him, at least as far as I knew.
Five days a week during this holiday period, Jodi Braverman sits in a room that conjures up images of the North Pole. The walls are covered with pictures of jolly old St. Nick, and not one, but two miniature Christmas trees serve as obstacles to the seating area. From time to time, Yuletide carols serve as background music.
Transcript to the 10 p.m. ET Show
As Israeli tourism officials focus on their main demographic with seven new tourism DVDs targeting Christian churches, 233 people will travel to Israel on Dec. 20 for the Los Angeles Jewish community\’s 10-day, post-Chanukah Mega-Mission. The number falls short of the 400 Jewish tourists who were expected to go, with the drop-off partly due to the Orthodox Union\’s (OU) convention last month in Israel.
The syllabus for my USC general education class includes both Shakespeare\’s \”The Tempest\” and Chapters 37-50 of Genesis — the Joseph story or \”novella.\” These two narratives share themes that commend themselves: forgiveness and reconciliation. Both Prospero and Joseph were set upon by their own brothers and narrowly escaped death. Both protagonists contributed to their victim role — Prospero through neglecting governance and Joseph by insensitive boasting.
When the controversy over Mel Gibson\’s \”The Passion of the Christ\” first erupted, Jewish leaders like Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League angered Christians by coming out forcefully against the movie.\n\nWilliam Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Civil and Religious Rights, took umbrage. \”A lot of Catholics in this town are saying, \’Is that how Jews are looking at us,\’\” he told The Jewish Week, \”\’that you scratch a Catholic and out comes a latent anti-Semite?\’\”\n\nLast week, Donohue provided the answer to his rhetorical question. And the answer is, in his case, yes.
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