Ely Pouget had a solid reason for trekking down last week from her home in the Hollywood Hills to the Westside Jewish Community Center (JCC) on Olympic Boulevard. She wanted her twin daughters to take swimming lessons with Olympic gold medalist Lenny Krayzelburg.
The family of an Israeli immigrant fatally wounded by Burbank police has filed a $51 million wrongful death suit against the cities of Burbank and Los Angeles. Assaf Deri, 25, died June 25, 2004, when Burbank undercover officers shot him in a North Hollywood alley.
While on a summer vacation on the East Coast, my family and I visited some spectacular sights in northwestern North Carolina, especially near Ashville, N.C. On our way to Ashville, we stopped and asked directions from a fine gentleman who turned out to be a Methodist minister.
It is impossible for me to look at images of the double-decker bus blown apart in last week\’s terror attacks in London and not think of Bus No. 37.\n\nBus No. 37 was the mangled hulk of an Israeli bus that activist brothers Ed and Bernie Massey sent on a tour in November 2003, as part of traveling exhibit on terror.
A lot of people my age feel pressure from their families to get married, but I think my not being married is the only thing keeping my grandmother alive. Bebe often tells me she just wants to live long enough to see my wedding. I\’ll say \”I do\” and then she\’ll immediately keel over. It\’s a lot to bear.
Bebe likes to pretend she\’s open-minded and doesn\’t care if I date non-Jewish women. I should point out that I am technically Jewish — both my parents were born Jews. I never went to Hebrew school but we did celebrate Chanukah — until the year we couldn\’t find the menorah. Then that was that: Bring on Christmas!
Perhaps there was a time when the secular/religious divide — it is of the Jews I write — made sense. In Eastern and Central Europe from 1850 to 1930, it may have been the case that seculars Jews were genuinely secular, as some few remain today.
The age of terror, it seems, has sprouted an era of dialogue. A host of conferences designed to bring together East and West are cropping up everywhere.
Never before, perhaps, have so many talked so optimistically about so serious a problem. But behind all the words is one unspoken disagreement that may imperil any chance for progress.
My direct encounter with this optimism took place at a high-profile get-together, the U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Doha, Qatar, in mid-April. Organized by the Qatar government and the Brookings Institution, the conference was packed with more than 150 scholars and leaders from all sides who diligently discussed both the needs and the means for achieving democracy, reforms and renaissance in the Muslim world. Strikingly, there was hardly a Muslim speaker who did not tie the implementation of such reforms to progress toward settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
As if mocking the scenes of jubilation at London\’s successful 2012 Olympics bid, the terrorist explosions that came the next day left devastation in their wake.
Two years ago, my wife and I proudly stood on the bimah as our son, Benjamin, became a bar mitzvah.
He had worked so hard for this day and he looked as handsome as could be in his dark suit draped with a striking new tallit. All four grandparents were shepping nachas from this joyous event.
A large, striped blue-and-white flag bearing the phrase, \”Liberation!\” greets visitors at the Museum of Tolerance exhibit, \”Liberation! Revealing the Unspeakable,\” about the Allied soldiers and the starved, dying and dead Jews they discovered while liberating concentration camps.
In a hallway there is a row of photographs of soldiers who became the saviors of survivors. Then, down a set of stairs to the main exhibit area, one gallery wall features a 1945 poem written by an unnamed survivor upon learning of Hitler\’s death:
I have outlived the fiend
My lifelong wish fulfilled
What more need I achieve
My heart is full of joy
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