Last Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Memorial Day, Walter Essinger did not attend any community vigils or synagogue commemoration services. Instead, the 73-year-old survivor spent that day, April 26, being interrogated by Ventura County detectives. He was then arrested, handcuffed and eventually booked into the Ventura County Jail.
The Shul on the Beach, formally known as the Pacific Jewish Center (PJC), has crowned four years of negotiations to install an eruv along the Pacific shoreline and inland area.The historic Orthodox congregation in Venice finally won approval from the California Coastal Commission to create an unbroken symbolic border to allow observant families to carry basic necessities and push baby strollers beyond the confines of the home on the Sabbath.
Some people say you can learn everything you need to know about a person on the first date.That\’s when people reveal themselves, because it\’s before they feel something is at stake. Will she like me? What will he think of me? I hope I make a good impression.The beginning — the preliminary phone call, the casual party conversation, the unwitting meeting of total strangers on a plane, an elevator, a funeral (don\’t ask) — is the best time to glean all the information you can from a person.It\’s kind of like being a police investigator at a crime scene.
Thanksgiving is the holiday to which most American Jews fully relate. It\’s based on the biblical Sukkot, and it\’s the American holiday most associated with family gatherings and food. And yet, there is much more to the holiday than stuffing and pumpkin pie.
Fascinating, isn\’t it, to watch professors Stephen Walt (Harvard University) and John Mearsheimer (University of Chicago) attain near rock star status by resurrecting the tired and discredited canard that U.S. foreign policy is dictated by a devious, dangerous and disloyal cabal known as the pro-Israel lobby — sort of a Protocols of the Middle-Agers of Zion. Of course, the good professors are convinced that any policies advocated by the cabal are anathema to the interests of this country.
Ever since I moved to this country 25 years ago, I\’ve been in awe of how 250 million people stop everything during the fourth Thursday of November to gather around cranberry sauce, stuffing and bread pudding.This year, however, being in the Orthodox hood, where they celebrate a Jewish version of Thanksgiving twice a week — on Friday night and Shabbat lunch, without turkey and TV but with lots of prayers, blessings and songs, and at least as much food — I\’ve been experiencing something a little different: a respectful but slightly blasé attitude toward this big American holiday.
Following the massive success of the movie \”Borat,\” there is bound to be an equally massive deluge of punditry on what it all means.I defy you to watch the movie and not cramp up from laughter. And by all means, continue laughing when the pundits say \”Borat\” reveals something dark, ugly or frightening about America. Taking \”Borat\” seriously is seriously ridiculous.
After rejecting a new European peace initiative, Israeli leaders are gearing up for more international efforts to restart the Israeli-Palestinian negotiating process on terms unfavorable to Israel.
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