Following Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s final State of the State speech and as his last budget proposal circulates, it is time to assess the long and winding road we have taken with our celebrity governor.
For the past 17 years, John Fishel has spent his days handling major crises, instituting dozens of programs and initiatives, fielding hundreds of daily challenges, and representing L.A. Jewry as president of The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles.
Yiddish has a brand new bag — of cash — thanks to the late comedy writer Mickey Ross who surprised The National Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Mass. with a $3 million donation from his estate.
One Shabbat morning several years ago, Dan Shevitz, one of my two favorite Venice rabbis, was walking down Abbot Kinney Boulevard toward his synagogue, Mishkon Tephilo. He came to a narrow stretch of sidewalk in front of Abbot’s Habit, and stopped, not wanting to walk over a large dog standing guard beside its owner.
Jan. 8, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a civil law suit against popular Iranian Jewish radio talk show host and financial adviser John Farahi. The suit alleges Farahi and his Beverly Hills firm, NewPoint Financial Services Inc., defrauded Iranian American investors of millions of dollars and that Farahi, his company, his wife Gissou and the firm’s controller, Elaheh Amouei, misled investors by falsely telling them their funds were being invested in low-risk unsecured corporate bonds, FDIC insured certificates of deposit, government bonds and corporate bonds issued by companies backed by funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). In reality, the complaint alleges, the investors’ money was transferred into personal accounts controlled by Farahi and his wife to fund construction of their multimillion-dollar mansion in Beverly Hills and in risky option futures trading in the stock market that resulted in more than $18 million in losses for investors.
“My father was a hero of the early Israeli air force — isn’t that an amazing story?” Paul Reubens said recently between rehearsals of “The Pee-wee Herman Show” at Club Nokia.
Jackie Mason is a tough customer. The rabbi-turned Borsht Belt comic jokingly gave Ed Sullivan the finger on live TV in 1964, which gained him pariah status in Hollywood for years. Since then the irascible Mason has become as famous for his uber-right-wing politics as he has for his Jewish schtick, irking Democrats, for example, by quipping that President Barack Obama is an “arbiter of change — he changes his story every five minutes.” He feels entitled to use the word schvartze because, as he’s said, “I’m an old Jew. I was raised in a Jewish family where \’schvartze\’ was used. It\’s not a demeaning word and I\’m not going to defend myself.” And he staunchly refuses to turn down his bile — where all things liberal are concerned — either in his video blog, “The Ultimate Jew,” or on stage. On Jan. 20-24, he’ll bring his tenth one-man show, “Jackie Mason: No Holds Barred,” to the Wadsworth Theatre. In advance, the 73-year-old comedian refused a telephone interview with The Journal, but agreed to answer e-mailed questions so that he could ensure his answers would run verbatim.
If God were to send you on a mission to confront a despot, win the trust of his slaves and lead them in an escape to freedom, you might want a few assurances:
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