Here is a dreaded conversation familiar to most parents of Jewish teens: Them: \”Hi, this is your synagogue youth adviser calling to make sure you received the flyer about our upcoming youth group event. Will your child be joining us?\”
A group of 25 campers from Ramah of California\’s pilot summer in 1955 returned to camp this summer to kick off a yearlong celebration of Ramah\’s 50 years on the West Coast. The camp officially opened in 1956.
Back then, there were 62 campers and 24 staff members. Tuition for the 10 days was set at $56.16 — with scholarships available. Today, there are 1,275 campers at the Ojai location, just down the road from the original campsite and a four-week session costs $3,120.
Rabbi Jacob Pressman, director of the camp that first summer, and assistant director Miriam Wise were among the delegates this summer. Rabbi Daniel Greyber, current director, presented the two with an award of recognition for their service.
The alumni toured the camp and then spent the evening in a singalong with current campers. Young campers and alumni alike were touched and amazed to hear that they knew the same camp songs, some of them authored by the adult guests.
When parents gather for monthly meetings of Ozreinu, a spiritual support group for families with special-needs children, the first thing they do is check in.
Linguists have predicted that within 100 years, more than half of the 6,000 languages that exist today will disappear.
For a long time, it\’s looked as though Yiddish was among those bound for extinction, but scholars and Yiddish speakers, as well as some Jews who remember their parents speaking Yiddish, have never given up on the language.
And now there\’s a better chance that a new generation of Jews will understand Yiddish and the Jewish culture it embodies. This fall, three local Jewish day schools will offer their middle and high school students classes in Yiddish, the language spoken for 1,000 years by Ashkenazi Jews of eastern and central Europe.
The three schools represent a spectrum of Jewish education and geography in Los Angeles: New Community Jewish High School in the west San Fernando Valley is non-denominational, Shalhevet School in the Fairfax district is Orthodox and Sinai Akiba Academy in West Los Angeles is Conservative.
In the backlot at Universal Studios, somewhere between the lake where Jaws lurks and the courthouse square where Michael J. Fox sped back to the future, researchers in nondescript trailers are finishing up one of the most ambitious projects involving the Holocaust.
Once upon a time, children didn\’t step into a classroom until kindergarten. There, 5-year-olds got their first real introduction to ABCs and 123s, colors and shapes and how to share and take turns.
Last year, Deena Messinger considered leaving her job as a kindergarten teacher at Sinai Akiva Academy in Westwood to teach at a secular private school or a public school.
In his raw, autobiographical monologue, \”Who Is Floyd Stearn?\” actor Michael Raynor struts onstage with a swagger reminiscent of James Caan. Raynor, playing himself, jabs a finger at a faded photograph.\nThe photo was taken on 185th Street in Queens, on his grandmother\’s lawn. In the photo, an athletic, brawny man embraces a 3-year-old. The man is Raynor\’s father, Floyd Stearn. The smiling boy is young Michael, who clutches a toy banjo, his blond bangs peeking out from a cowboy hat.\n\nRaynor tells the audience that, even at 40, he cannot discuss the photo; should anyone pressure him, he angrily departs.\n\n\”Every time I see the picture I cry,\” he adds quietly. \”That\’s why I can\’t look at it. I see the happiness in my face, and it scares me. I\’m hoping it won\’t go away.\”
To the Jews of the Diaspora:
I recently returned from a monthlong vacation to the United States. Since I\’ve gotten back home to Israel, however, it seems as though \”reality\” has smacked me upside the head.
The disengagement from Gaza has exposed raw emotions and wrenching scenes of families being uprooted from their homes of decades.
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