Harriet Benjamin, co-founder of The Wellness Community, a groundbreaking network of cancer support centers, died at her Marina del Rey home on April 7 of lung cancer. She was 85 years old.
The United States\’ Jewish community was roiled this week when the news blog POLITICO reported that a senior member of the Obama Administration had indicated that Middle East adviser Dennis Ross might have dual loyalties. The official\’s words, at least as reported by Politico, were that \”he ( Ross) seems to be far more sensitive to Netanyahu\’s coalition politics than to U.S. interests and doesn\’t seem to understand that this has become bigger than Jerusalem but is rather about the credibility of this administration.”
These are not the easiest of days for Benjamin Netanyahu. The Israeli prime-minister is faced with a growing nuclear threat from Iran, collapsing relations with neighboring Arab countries and the worst crisis in U.S.- Israeli relations since the 1956 Suez War. And just when he thought things couldn\’t get any worse, along comes demands for him to attend a Washington D.C. conference on nuclear security where, he is told, Israel\’s supposed best friends in the region are going to demand that Israel sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
On March 26, a delegation of 10 Milken Community High School students and two faculty members took a trip to New Community Jewish High School (NCJHS). The purpose of Milken’s visit was to show support for NCJHS as the end of the 30-day period of mourning following a funeral for Adir Vered. Vered, a NCJHS 11th-grader, died in a car accident in February.
“I know why you’re here, and I want to address it, but I think it’s a tempest in a teapot,” Brad Sherman, the Democratic Congressman from Sherman Oaks, said at a town hall at Temple Aliyah in Woodland Hills on April 7. The meeting was called to focus on U.S.-Israel relations.
Pulling the Tazriah-Metzorah card in the divrei Torah lottery is not considered a lucky draw, but I seem to get it every time. I am repeatedly assigned the task of commenting on this double parashah, which elaborates on skin eruptions, bodily secretions, contact with dead bodies and fungal growths. It establishes a period of confinement for women following childbirth and articulates the prohibitions connected with menses. (Do I hear Julie Andrews singing “My Favorite Things”?)
In September 2006, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law Assembly Bill 32 (AB 32), the Global Warming Solutions Act, regulating greenhouse gas emissions throughout the state. This year, the California Air Resources Board will adopt mechanisms to reduce those emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 — a 25 percent reduction — and 80 percent below that by 2050. Such landmark legislation puts California ahead of the country in combating climate change, but critics question whether it will be too expensive to a state already under economic stress.
What doctors tell you to do is often based on hunches and common sense, but what’s common sense today wasn’t common sense years ago.
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