A sell-out crowd packed the American Jewish University’s (AJU) Gindi Auditorium on April 3 and watched as Rabbi Zoë Klein of Temple Isaiah tangoed her way to the inaugural “Dancing With the Rabbis” trophy. An ecstatic Klein, cheered on by her family, wowed the audience with her passionate routine with professional partner Daniel Ponickly.
What happens to members of a generation when all the seemingly immutable verities of their childhoods are turned upside down? Suppose you are in your late 30s or early 40s and are suddenly told that everything you learned in school about American democracy and its Founding Fathers was a lie. Such abstract questions seem ready-made for a seminar at an American Psychological Society meeting but come to vibrant life in the documentary “My Perestroika.”
A novel approach to photography is exemplified in “Illuminated Reflections,” the current exhibition at the Skirball Cultural Center Ruby Gallery, which features some 20 images based on Jewish themes from Israel, New York, Los Angeles and Mississippi — among them, a woman praying at the Wall in Jerusalem, the window of the Pike Street Synagogue on New York’s Lower East Side with a Star of David in the center, and a cotton field in Mississippi that was part of a series about Jewish life in the American South.
As reported in the Los Angeles Times on March 31, the failure of Democratic and Republican lawmakers in Sacramento to agree on a budget could mean cutting the spending on the state’s 112 community colleges by $800 million. In addition to an already-planned hike in student fees of nearly 40 percent, the additional cuts would mean eliminating courses from community college offerings, loading more students into the classes that remain and admitting fewer students.
Earth Rose Farm in Costa Rica is situated on a remote hillside between the villages of Santa Fe and Esperanza, or “faith” and “hope.”
At the Republican Jewish Coalition\’s winter leadership retreat here, it was the absence of certain likely candidates for president that had the crowd most excited. While names like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann generate enthusiasm at some other conservative gatherings, their absence over the weekend here had the Jewish crowd giddy that ahead of the 2012 race, the Republican Party may be retreating from the divisive hyper-conservatives that have frustrated Jewish attraction to the party in recent years.
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