Before David Rouda became a stage director and writer, he was an internationally ranked rower who placed 17th in the 1999 World Rowing Championships. Rouda, who started training as a sculler at 13, won six Gold Medals at the Maccabee Games and just missed qualifying for the 2000 Olympics.
Mimouna represented the love and intimacy of a neighborhood. There\’s nothing like popping in to see 10, 20, 30 different neighbors on the same night, most of whom you see all the time — especially when you know your great-great-great-grandparents probably did the same thing in the same place.
My father was a man who was not tied to money. Most important in life, he taught me, are our relationships. When we care about others, we will then find the essence of who we are.
It was called the \”Miracle on Florence Avenue,\” a small, humble synagogue that thrived for 50 years before shuttering its doors in 1986, a victim of old age and changing demographics. By all accounts, Huntington Park Hebrew Congregation, the second Conservative synagogue established in Los Angeles, should be buried in the sands of oblivion by now. And yet, 30 of us — all fiercely loyal former members, ranging in age from 50 to 97 — gathered on Jan. 7 at the home of Elliot Monka in Sierra Madre for a reunion that brimmed over not only with nostalgia, but with insight into how this tiny Jewish enclave could produce an unprecedented number of successful professionals and deeply committed Jews.
With two miles of bare footprints behind them, Ahmed and Fatima and their three children approached the border with Israel in the middle of a cold winter night. Snow was falling in the Sinai.
A group of refugees from Darfur on a visit to Yad Vashem lingered next to a model of the crematorium at Auschwitz, taking in the ghastly sight of bodies carried on cots and pushed into ovens.
Israeli activists and lawmakers are challenging in court the current policy of incarcerating Sudanese refugees who illegally enter the country under a law dealing with \”enemy nationals\” that allows them to be detained indefinitely.
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