It isn’t easy facing the cold stare of a Nazi perpetrator, even in a photo. Increasingly, however, memorial sites in Germany are making the confrontation possible, opening a door that long has been sealed.
We all know that California is a blue state, with two Democratic senators and a record of favoring the Democratic presidential candidate in every presidential election since 1992. Barack Obama won California by more than 2 million votes. But the governorship has tended to be more red than blue.
Two of my favorite journals ever since I was in college have been Commentary and The New York Review of Books. The first is a major right-wing publication, the second a major left-wing one. Though on opposite sides of just about every issue, they both have a feature that should be present in any journal that takes ideas seriously: a response from the authors to letters to the editor.
It struck me during the Passover seders this year how impersonal the Jewish master story can be. We seem to jump so quickly to the grand themes. Slavery, freedom, responsibility. The characters are mythical, the drama is epic, the story laden with symbols. It all feels so overwhelming. It’s as if God gave us a blockbuster movie that we must turn into an indie.
If you want to know what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thinks about the peace process, don’t watch what he does, listen to what Danny Danon says.
For one day in December, the word “Auschwitz” was ranked second on Yahoo’s daily list of most-popular searches. Third most popular that day? LeAnn Rimes. So what did it take for a symbol of the attempted destruction of an entire race of people as well as millions of others to outpace a country singer in her 20s? The previous day, five bumbling crooks stole the “Arbeit Macht Frei” sign that teased and tormented prisoners passing through the main gate of the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. This brazen crime was subsequently solved, the sign was recovered in Northern Poland, and searches for Auschwitz returned to their normal ranking well outside of the top 10.
Mourning Loss of Jewish Day Schools\n\nThe pending closures of Shalhevet’s elementary and middle schools (“Shalhevet to Close 3 Schools Because of Financial Woes,” March 26) are tragedies. The schools are blessed with excellent faculties, and their corridors exude ruach at every turn. They’ve complemented well the outstanding array of Jewish day schools that dot the local landscape by providing unique alternatives for committed Jewish families. The shuttering of their doors will be a sad day for our community.
On March 28, nearly 10,000 Los Angeles Iranian Americans of various religions, including local Iranian Jews, celebrated the Persian New Year of No Ruz on Westwood Boulevard in Westwood Village, with the official naming of a street corner as Persian Square. Los Angeles City Council man for District 5, Paul Koretz, was on hand for the ceremony; he introduced a motion in the council to name the corner of Westwood Boulevard and Wilkins Street as Persian Square earlier this year.
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