Yosef Abramowitz is running out of time. With only minutes to go until he has to speak to a group of donors at the Jewish National Fund (JNF), Abramowitz looks like he just finished a workout. He’s wearing sneakers, shorts and a white T-shirt featuring an outline of David Ben-Gurion’s head superimposed on the picture of a sun.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was confident Israel and the United States could chart a way forward on how to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
It’s a Wednesday in September. Brad Baker stands in front of Elat Market on Pico Boulevard, holding out his baseball cap. People exit the supermarket, pushing shopping carts and carrying bags with groceries. Some look at Baker. Some don’t. For Baker, this is just another day.
If you’ve ever felt just a little silly sniffing what looks like an oversized lemon and shaking some branches, you’re not alone. Even though we do it every year, many of us aren’t quite sure why we do it.
Last April, just inside the entrance to the “Salute to Israel” Festival at Rancho Park, the National Council of Jewish Women set up a large tented area where it sold all sorts of secondhand items from its thrift stores: clothes, Judaica, kitchenware, art.
It’s not exactly true that Jews have nothing to do with the controversy surrounding the anti-Islam video that has sparked riots in the Muslim world, along with a furious debate about the limits of free speech.
Karl Marx once said that history repeats itself: first as tragedy, then as farce. The riots and Iranian fatwa calling for the death of Salman Rushdie, which forced the British-Kashmiri author into hiding for 13 years, can only be described as tragic — for him and for the cause of freedom and tolerance.
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