Leon Wildes sits in a polished conference room on Madison Avenue, where the walls are festooned with news articles and enlarged photographs of John Lennon, Yoko Ono, and…Leon Wildes. He may not be the fifth Beatle, but it was the legal artistry of this HIAS board member that masterfully secured Lennon’s U.S. residency back in 1976.
The Beverly Hills Courier has learned exclusively that preliminary ballistics analysis of the bullets that killed famed Hollywood publicist Ronnie Chasen
Actress Holly Robinson Peete and her husband, former NFL star Rodney Peete, were honored during the American Friends of Beit Issie Shapiro West Coast gala at Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel on Nov. 3. Through their HollyRod Foundation, and as a result of their family’s personal experience, the Peetes have become leaders in the ongoing effort to better understand and find a solution for autism.
During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, thousands of Jewish girls fled pogroms and poverty in Eastern Europe for the promise of marriage and a fresh start in South America. Instead, they found themselves sold into prostitution by the Zwi Migdal, a Jewish criminal syndicate that controlled 2,000 Argentine brothels at its peak in the 1920s. Join the Jewish Genealogy Society of Los Angeles for a discussion on, “From Shtetl to Tango: The Untold Story of South America’s Jewish Sex Slavery,” and for a screening of “Passages,” director Gabriela Böhm’s award-winning documentary about unlocking myths and secrets while exploring her family legacy in Eastern Europe, Israel and South America. Sun. 1:30 p.m. $5 (general), free (JGSLA members). University Synagogue, 11960 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles. jgsla.org.
Surely, like other ideologues, historian David N. Myers means well when he claims that “settlements [on the West Bank] are the major impediment to Israel’s future as a Jewish state,” as he denigrates Dennis Prager for his thesis that the settlements are not the problem in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (“Settlements Are the Issue,” Dec. 3). Myers (conveniently?) overlooks the many facts that support Prager’s position.
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