Missions to Israel are a staple of Jewish organizations, but when Pepe Barreto leads a group tour there in August, it\’ll represent something new.
Missions to Israel are a staple of Jewish organizations, but when Pepe Barreto leads a group tour there in August, it\’ll represent something new.\n\nBarreto is perhaps the most popular drive-time host on Spanish-language radio in Los Angeles and a major player in a new drive to boost travel to Israel among California Latinos.
It used to be that the Conservative movement\’s United Synagogue Youth (USY) sent around 1,000 kids to Israel each summer.
More fashion for a cause? You betcha. After all, why \”Livestrong\” when you could \”Get Sababa?\”
Lance Armstrong\’s yellow \”Livestrong\” bracelets to benefit his cancer foundation are already passé. But hoping to start a fashion craze of her own, 27-year-old Traci Szymanski has launched Get Sababa, a clothing line in progress, complete with the now-requisite rubber-band bracelets. (Hers are blue-and-white tie-dye.)
Call it the new gold rush. While Israelis have long flocked to Los Angeles to escape economic and political difficulties back home, artists and performers are increasingly coming to mine gold from the hills — especially the Hollywood Hills — in this arts and entertainment capital.
David Grossman, 18, wanted to make the Holocaust more personal. Eliya Shachar, 18, wished to understand her grandmother\’s pain. And Max Kappel, 17, wanted to find a tangible place to comprehend the Shoah.
They were among 51 teenagers from Los Angeles who took part in last week\’s March of the Living 2005 in Poland, which retraces the nearly two miles from Auschwitz to Birkenau, following the path of concentration camp inmates forced to walk to the gas chambers. They were accompanied by survivors for whom that trail once meant death, including Nandor \”Marko\” Markovic, 82, a Holocaust survivor, and his wife, Frances, who squeezed into the slow-moving and untidy line of about 20,000 people from almost 50 countries.
In 1917 Alfred Steiglitz was a giant in the world of photography. His \”Steiglitz Circle\” included artists like Arthur Dove, Paul Strand and Georgia O\’Keefe, \”all of whom believed in the expression of a modern art, one that was distinctly \’American,\’\” according to Anne M. Lyden, associate curator in the Getty Museum\’s department of photographs.
Men slowly arrange scattered clothes into a makeshift tent on the front steps of 126 N. St. Louis St. A few windows in the building\’s powder-blue facade are broken; an old chimney stains a sliver of the north wall black.
Today, the anonymous building is one among thousands that dot the Los Angeles cityscape, but in the 1930s and 1940s, the Vladeck Center was the secular heart of Jewish Boyle Heights. The building was a base for the Workmen\’s Circle and the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, as well as the founding location of the Jewish Labor Committee (JLC).
The Vladek Center\’s history was unearthed last year, half a century after most of Los Angeles\’ Jewish community moved west, when the city began moving forward with plans to demolish the building for an expanded Hollenbeck Police Station. Getting the city to alter course seems a tall order, but the planned demolition has attracted critical attention.
What, Where and When: The 17th annual Israel Independence Day Festival celebrating Israel\’s 57th anniversary on May 15, from 10 a.m.- 7 p.m., Woodley Park, Van Nuys (between Burbank and Victory boulevards).
Rain and clouds greeted Southern California\’s annual Holocaust Remembrance Day, while sunshine welcomed a gathering of World War II veterans and the Shoah survivors whom they liberated from concentration camps.
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