The Circuit

Koufax Honored

The annual Professional Baseball Scouts Association Dinner in Beverly Hills is a fundraiser for baseball scouts. It honored Koufax, Barry Bonds and Tommy Lasorda, among others, with Willie Mays, Dennis Gilbert and Jerry Reinsdorf as the featured speakers.

Masorti Mensches

Conservative Jewish leaders attended the 10th annual dinner of the Masorti Foundation for Conservative Judaism recently at Sinai Temple. Honorees for the evening were chosen from the five principal supporting congregations for the significant roles they have played within the Los Angeles community.

Honorees were: Merrill and Gregg Alpert of Valley Beth Shalom; Abe and Annette Berman of Temple Beth Am; Rabbi Sherre Zwelling Hirsh of Sinai Temple; Sue Shrell Leon of Temple Aliyah; and Steve and Jill Namm of Adat Ari El.

Earl Greinetz, chair of the Masorti Foundation’s Los Angeles Committee and national co-chair of the foundation, received the Parnas Award for Community Leadership.

Peace Prize

Americans for Peace Now (APN) held its annual Yitzhak Rabin Peace Award Dinner recently at the Luxe Hotel in Bel Air. The event featured Rabbi Susan Laemmle, dean of religious life at USC and a member of the APN Southern California Rabbinic Council, and award recipient Elaine Hoffman, longtime APN national leader and former Southern California regional co-chair.

Gala for IDF

More than 850 people, including many of the most prominent leaders of the Jewish community, gathered at the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills to honor the brave men and women who serve in the Israel Defense Forces. The Friends of the Israel Defense Forces Western Region held the event to raise funds for an auditorium, library and synagogue at the soon to be built new REIM Base in the Negev.

The gala dinner was co-chaired by Cheryl and Haim Saban and included a live satellite hook-up with soldiers stationed near Gaza. The evening’s special guest speaker was Avi Dicter, who recently retired as head of Shin Bet. By the end of the evening, the gala dinner had raised nearly $4 million with many additional pledges and commitments under discussion.

Even in Beverly Hills, it’s not every day that someone gets up to pledge $1 million to a good cause, to say nothing of two successive million-dollar donors.

Dichter, a rising star in Kadima, warned that the “terror states” of Iran, Syria and Lebanon had not given up on their hopes to destroy the Jewish state. — Tom Tugend, Contributing Editor

JFS Rocks

Gene Black, lead guitarist for rocker Joe Cocker, has played in front of hundreds of thousands of fans at a time. Black, got a smaller but equally enthusiastic crowd dancing at the JFS/Valley Storefront Adult Day Health Care Center in North Hollywood recently. The center regularly presents live music from top performers such as Black and Craig Taubman.