Jay Sanderson, making his first public appearance as the incoming president of The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, addressed the Jewish Communal Professionals of Southern California (JCPSC) this week at a Bel Air sukkah party with a killer view of the Getty Center and beyond.
Hundreds of Latino Pentecostal pastors and congregants milled outside Sinai Temple’s sanctuary on Oct. 8, waiting to go inside. They had come from Downey, Cypress Park, Compton and other places far from the Wilshire Corridor, where Sinai Temple is located. They’d also come from cities even farther away: Fresno, San Antonio, Tijuana.
And the Lord said to Cain: “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground.”
When John Adams’ opera “The Death of Klinghoffer” premiered in Brussels during the final weeks of the 1991 Gulf War, security was super tight, following rumors that Arab terrorists might wreak vengeance on the “Zionist plot.”
When Beverlye Hyman Fead was diagnosed with fourth-stage inoperable cancer in 2002, her doctors gave her two months to live. After being treated with four different forms of chemotherapy and two experimental treatments, the eight large tumors lining her abdomen were reduced and she’s been able to live with the cancer.
When 49-year-old Adel Hakim, an Iranian Jewish resident of Beverly Hills, failed to appear at his Sept. 24 court appearance on charges of attempted murder of his brother last year, the judge in the case issued a $1 million warrant for his arrest. Beverly Hills Police Sergeant Michael Publicker said city police detectives have had no leads on Hakim’s whereabouts and are seeking the public’s assistance in bringing him to justice. “He’s committed a very violent crime, is wanted for attempted murder, and we believe him to be armed and extremely dangerous,” Publicker said. “If anyone comes in contact with him, we ask that they dial 911 immediately, or if they know his location, to call us.”
Temple Aliyah in Woodland Hills is recruiting participants for the Los Angeles area’s first Mothers’ Circle, a group for non-Jewish mothers who are raising their children Jewish. Set to begin mid-November and funded by The Jewish Federation Valley Alliance, the 16-session course includes information for mothers on Jewish lifecycle events and celebrating Jewish holidays. The group also provides access to local rabbis for one-on-one dialogues and a forum in which mothers can discuss issues and get answers to questions that “just aren’t comfortably asked with Jews in the room,” according to Temple Aliyah’s program director Lori Marx-Rubiner.
About 20 guests and 60 members of B’nai David-Judea and the larger Jewish community gathered in the synagogue’s Pico Boulevard sukkah on the night of Oct. 6 for a dinner sponsored by Federation’s Fed Up with Hunger campaign.
Los Angeles has been at the very center of the extraordinary growth of the women’s rabbinate. These rabbis have brought new voices and certainly a new look to today\’s clergy. They have established new and innovative minyans, brought new kinds of music to services, written new liturgy and helped establish new forms of activism. Seven extraordinary rabbis will take the stage at 7:30 p.m. on Oct. 21 at the Saban Theatre in Beverly Hills, spanning two generations and sharing seven very different views of the rabbinate, of the future of the Jewish world, and of their roles as leaders, role models and compassionate clergy. Please join me for this singular and provocative evening.
When T.R. Knight chants the Shema blindfolded and with a noose tightening around his neck in the role of Leo Frank, his character’s terror is palpable. The scene takes place as the inevitable tragic dénouement of the historical musical “Parade,” now playing at the Mark Taper Forum, the story of the anti-Semitic trial and lynching in 1915 of a pencil-factory manager accused of brutally murdering a 13-year-old girl. In this production, Frank lives again via this boyish, 36-year-old actor best known for his part in the original cast of “Grey’s Anatomy.”
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