The best parts of the Noah story are not found in the Torah verses, but in the stories we weave between them. Classical midrashim and the movie “Evan Almighty” help us answer such questions as: How did all those animals get along on the ark, and who cleaned up after them? How did Noah build such a humongous vessel all by himself?
After 12 years as the top professional at the Board of Rabbis of Southern California, Rabbi Mark Diamond took his post this week as director of the American Jewish Committee’s (AJC) Los Angeles chapter, the local arm of the more than century-old global Jewish advocacy group.
Israeli conductor Zubin Mehta was awarded a Presidential Medal of Distinction by Israeli President Shimon Peres.
“Open your mind, and you will see the garden of the world.” Fifth- through eighth-grade students from New Horizon School, a Muslim day school in Pasadena, sang these words loudly and in unison from the stage of the Pasadena Jewish Temple & Center, while a boy in the audience, whose head was covered in an oversized kippah, played air-guitar to the rhythm of the song.
Rabbi Menachem Youlus, once dubbed the “Jewish Indiana Jones” for his remarkable tales of rescuing Holocaust-era Torah scrolls, was sentenced to more than four years in prison for fraud.
When the Etta Israel Center was hit by the recent economic downturn, its leaders weren’t satisfied with simply surviving the crisis, as they sought to provide services, including group homes, to local people with special needs. They wanted to grow.
Wearing a T-shirt that read “Stamp Money Out of Politics,” Ben Cohen, co-founder of ice cream company Ben & Jerry’s, unveiled a grass-roots campaign in North Hollywood on Oct. 11 denouncing the influence of money in politics.
By the time former Congressman Mel Levine took the stage as an official surrogate for President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign at a gathering of mostly young Iranian Americans, the ballroom at downtown’s Millennium Biltmore Hotel was more than half empty.
Marnie Alexis Friedman and Steven Barnett Stiglitz married on Sept. 2 at Temple Beth Am in Los Angeles. Rabbi Adam Kligfeld of Temple Beth Am officiated, and Rabbi Laura Geller of Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills participated under the chuppah as well.
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