The growth of Jewish day and high schools in America is testimony to their central role in Jewish continuity. Parents who are choosing Jewish day or high school for their family are making a momentous investment in their child’s Jewish future.
I looked sheepishly at the speaker who dragged out to Waltham to speak to our Israel advocacy group. We felt rather awkward when only six people showed up to the training session, the latest in a series of pro-Israel educational events on campus. Five of the six people were on my club’s board.
Rain pouring in Jerusalem, tears streaming down the faces of fans of Team USA, tremors shaking Chile — and always, always lunch at Eli\’s.\n
Republicans have a reputation for being indivisible on foreign policy, but February saw a minor meltdown in the California Republican primary campaign for U.S. Senate. Republican commentators across the country debated for weeks over the pro-Israel, anti-terrorism pedigree of one of their own, former Congressman Tom Campbell. Campbell faces former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina and California Assemblyman Chuck DeVore in the June primary.
“I am what one would call a perfectionist,” said the Swiss film producer Arthur Cohn, who is as renowned for his ardent Zionism as he is for his illustrious career. “I am involved in every aspect of a production, and I always believe in what I do.”
There is a mystical tradition that states that a Jew gains a neshamah y’teyrah, an extra soul, on Shabbat. For those 25 hours, we are doubly spiritually charged,\nor at least potentially so.
“We only know the worth of religion when it’s taken away from us, only know the worth of God and music when it’s not there. We’re all here for God, we’re all in health, holiness, happiness.”\n\nIt wouldn’t be hard to imagine this statement spoken by a learned old rabbi, ruminating over years of scholarly and spiritual teaching. But it’s a bit more difficult to reconcile the words with their actual source: a freckled, 15-year-old boy named Wyatt, wearing a bright purple T-shirt and Bermuda shorts. Explaining the meaning of his bar mitzvah speech, Wyatt is also divulging the ways in which he has found peace with the fact that he has autism.
I’ve been spending a lot of time at the Beverly Hills library. I go there almost every day, laptop in hand, impelled by the irrational idea that this is the only place in
the world where I can finish my new book. I also have an office with a great view and a house that’s empty and quiet all day where any normal person should be able to sit and work just fine, and yet, I have to get up and drive 15 minutes every morning to sit among dozens of strangers — some more strange than others — to find my focus.
Two Orange County elected officials have joined calls for administrators at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) to act decisively against students involved in provocative, anti-Israel activity.\n\nIn separate letters to UCI Chancellor Michael Drake, Rep. John Campbell (R-Calif.) and state Assemblyman Chuck DeVore (R-Irvine) called for strict discipline against students for repeated heckling of Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, during a Feb. 8 speech at the Student Center. Eight UCI students, including the president of the UCI’s Muslim Student Union (MSU), were arrested and charged with violating the university’s student code of conduct.
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