On May 1, the sanctuary of the Baha’i Center in Encino was filled with Jewish families excitedly enjoying an unusual event: a group bat mitzvah for adult women, a study group through which the women had come to feel such a deep commitment to Torah, such a strong sense of personal transformation, that only a formal rite of passage would do.
Chabad emissaries usually associate Washington with their emphasis on education, but this year they got a taste of foreign policy suasion while handing out some, too.\n
Joel Pollak has traveled from liberal to conservative in his young lifetime, and now he hopes to take Chicago\’s storied Lakefront with him.\n
The family of Anne Frank is accusing a British author for exploiting the famed diarist\’s relationship with Peter van Pels for her new novel.\n
Richard Abramson died March 18 at 65. He is survived by his brother, Lewis. Malinow and Silverman\n
“Anyone who has never read the entire Chumash with Rashi is simply not Jewishly literate,” said Rabbi David Hartman, with whom I was studying 14 years ago at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. “It doesn’t matter whether you read it in Hebrew or English, but you must go through the Five Books of Moses with Rashi’s commentary.”
Abigail Kuhns was not even 12 years old when she became a budding women’s rights activist.
Among the major gifts of the Jews to humanity — the idea of one God, the Bible and Ten Commandments, individual rights and human equality — there is also\nthis: finicky eating.
So what does a good Jewish girl do when her date goes in for the kiss after he downed meatloaf and she mac-and-cheese? In “Life, Love, Lox: Real-World Advice for the Modern Jewish Girl” (Running Press, $13.95) by Carin Davis, the issue at steak (pun intended — the book inspires them) is not breath or kissing technique, but whether the kiss violates the rules of kashrut that dictate separation of meat and milk.
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