When California moved its presidential primary to Feb. 5, and other big states followed suit, the strategic role of Jewish voters in the nominating process was greatly enhanced.
Just weeks after his first presidential visit to Israel, President Bush made clear his priority for his final year in office: the economy, stupid.
If the president has a Middle East breakthrough up his sleeve, he was not ready to reveal it Monday in the State of the Union address that precedes his last year in office.
The collapse of the border wall between the Gaza Strip and Egypt has done much more than break Israel\’s siege of the Hamas-run strip. It also has opened up new, far-reaching strategic options for Israel while exposing it to grave new dangers.
Some strategists say Israel should use the opportunity to force Gaza to look outward to Egypt, its natural Arab hinterland, and thereby reduce and eventually end Israeli responsibility for Gaza\’s fate. Others say such a handover of responsibility would expose Israel to worse terrorism than ever and that Israel instead should clamp down on all crossing points: between Israel and Gaza, Gaza and Egypt, and Israel and Egypt.
Christianity has an image problem, and Christians ought to pay earnest attention to it, rather than dismissing it as the product of media bias. That\’s the message of a new book that should be of interest to Jews, because it shows the kind of questions that Christians have started asking themselves — questions that we Jews don\’t seem to be asking ourselves. Yet we, too, have an image problem.
Rob Eshman\’s peculiar attack on CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (\”Butt Out,\” Jan. 25, 2008), for alerting some of its Los Angeles area members and friends to the pernicious activity of an anti-Israel group called the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center and its spokesman, Naim Ateek, is wrong and distorted on many levels.
If the great Maimonides ever came back to life and found himself in Los Angeles, chances are he\’d look for a house on a small street called Detroit, between Oakwood Avenue and Beverly Boulevard, one block west of La Brea Avenue. There are no holier streets in Los Angeles.\n\nThis little discovery happened thanks to my 10-year-old daughter, Mia, who informed me recently that she had volunteered me to be a driver for her upcoming class outing. Little did I know what kind of class outing it would be: a minitour of a very Jewish neighborhood — not my neighborhood of Pico-Robertson, but the neighborhood of Hancock Park.
Last Thursday night at LACMA, I was treated to a reading of my own works by the very talented and beautiful actress Bahar Soumekh, and by UC Irvine professor Nasrin Rahimieh. Outside the Bing Theater, rain poured in sheets, and traffic on Wilshire was at a standstill because all the lights had been blown out by the wind and — this being Los Angeles where even the mildest winter storm is dealt with like Armageddon — I was rather astonished that anyone had shown up at all.
Three years ago I was unloading some 50-pound bags of landscape pebbles from the trunk of my car when I felt a four-inch blade of molten steel jab into my lower back. Middle age had officially arrived, and my doctor ordered the permanent closure of Eshman Lifting and Schlepping, Inc. It was time to find younger men with stronger backs to do my dirty work.\n\nThat\’s how I met Luis.
A few weeks ago, I finally saw \”Juno,\” a movie I\’d been told was \”uber-cute,\” \”amazing\” and just \”soooo good.\” And I\’ve become one of many Juno-obsessed. But unlike others who are doting mostly on the movie\’s dialogue, soundtrack and sweatbands, the movie got me pondering about who really makes a good parent. And when.
The oddly idyllic portrait of teenage pregnancy — which began with a cartoon sketch, a hamburger phone and a big orange jug of Sunny D — introduced a smart-ass 16-year-old Juno (Ellen Page), who makes a very grown up decision. The perpetually tomboyish, ironic, T-shirt-clad kid realizes that she is not ready to be a mom. Instead, she\’ll find the perfect parents to raise it.
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