Category
November 9, 2007
Teen makes a difference for orphans in Kenya slum
After Ryan Silver returned home from a trip to Africa with his family, he began preparing for his bar mitzvah. Without hesitation, he knew that his mitzvah project would involve helping the children in the orphanage he visited in a Nairobi slum. Between the guests\’ donations and his own, Silver raised more than $2,700. In addition to completing a Jewish rite of passage, Silver was pleased that his celebration helped educate others about the plight of the children in Africa and to ultimately offer financial support.
Briefs: Muggings mar Shabbat shalom in Pico-Robertson, ‘L.A. Eight’ case dropped
News briefs.
Writers’ strike is not a Jewish story
Indeed, \”Hollywood writer\” is among the most Jewish job descriptions anywhere, which is why, as this long-anticipated strike approached, my editors asked me to report the news through a Jewish lens. The difficulty, however, is that this really isn\’t a Jewish story. It\’s a business story that just happens to deal with an industry built largely by Jewish immigrants and sustained by their successors.
Skirball builds a real rainbow for Noah’s Ark
Just beyond the new Noah\’s Ark installation at the Skirball Cultural Center, where Asian elephants and Boringo giraffes tower, a lushly landscaped courtyard has been designed as a rainbow arbor. Rising from a base of rocks, Kahn\’s rainbow is a curved metal form that wraps around a walkway, spraying droplets of mist that coalesce to form a rainbow. It is the marriage of a museum exhibit and a symbolic natural oasis, recalling both the benevolent and destructive elements of nature and symbolizing God\’s promise to Noah not to flood the earth again.\n
Get ready Jewish leaders, the Next Generation is here
If the group of Gen Y-ers — also known as Millenials or NextGens or iGens — who gathered for a Jewish leadership conference in Santa Monica last week are any indication, it seems that parents who did everything to build their children\’s resumes and self esteem may have been on to something. This handpicked group of Jewish leaders in their 20s and early 30s have the self-confidence to think — to actually believe — that if the old people would just make some room for them, or maybe get out of the way altogether, they could fix this mess of a world. They are committed to social justice; they are willing to get their hands dirty; they have great ideas, time to volunteer, and they have the arrogance, self-centeredness and technological savvy to bring their ideas to fruition. The question is how to channel all that into the Jewish community.
Kidnapped Iranian Jew’s family finds closure
Kidnapped in 1980 in Iran, Isaac Lahijani\’s fate remained unknown to his family for 26 years. His wife and three children say they wept for weeks and months, unable to hold a memorial for him because they had no information about his whereabouts. The Lahijani family continued living in grief until this September, when Farzaneh Lahijani was finally given an official letter from the Iranian government telling her of her husband\’s death.\n
Authors explain Jewish influences on their works
The Jewish Journal invited writers who will be featured at Sunday\’s Festival of Books to answer the simple, essential question that every Jewish writer is often asked: \”What Jewish sources — ideas, writings, traditions — inspire you, and how do they show up in your work?\” The following show that there is no easy answer to what defines a Jewish author, but there is no question that there\’s much to draw upon within the faith.
I’ve never had real heroes
t is true that Gunter Grass has brought much good into the world by his writings. It is also true that his late-in-life revelation calls into question or, depending on your point of view, entirely invalidates his right to the high moral ground he has for so long occupied. But in doing so, he has proven to those of us who have followed his life and career what he says he learned as a POW after the war: That no truth is ever entirely true, that what we revere today may become indefensible tomorrow, that the wisest path through life is to distrust certainty and instead to walk, in Grass\’ own words, \”the long route, paved with doubts.\”
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