Tu B\’Shevat, the Jewish birthday or new year of the trees, is a really fun and lightweight holiday, celebrated mostly by schoolchildren. As a child, this was one of my favorite holidays. I loved planting trees and somehow felt very much at home with this simple way to participate in tikkun olam (healing the world).
A new mural joins the A-list of great Jewish murals in Los Angeles.
The rabbi wore a pooch-print tie.\nThe rebbetzin sported a pussycat brooch and a doggy bone pin \”to give equal time\” to man\’s best friends. The congregants arrived two by two, with canines and felines in tow.
Vegetarianism may be trendy and maybe even healthy, but when Jeff Rohatiner was looking for a product on which he could base a restaurant, he knew that most of us are carnivores at heart. So he figured there\’d be a market for the wares at Jeff\’s Gourmet Kosher Sausage Factory, opened in late 1998 in the heart of Pico-Robertson.
Midway through JDate\’s first annual Tu B\’Av get-together, Nurit Ze\’evi, product manager of the Internet-based Jewish dating service, halted the music and Israeli folk dancing taking place. With marked enthusiasm, she turned to the audience of 50 and began to expound on the significance of Tu B\’Av – an obscure, forgotten love holiday created 4,000 years ago, when women, dressed in white, arrived to choose male suitors. Looking around the room rented from Congregation Mogen David, I gathered that the lecture might have been a waste of breath – judging from the median age of the partiers, they undoubtedly remem-ber the days when the ceremony was new.
When Curt Fissel stomped on the glass after his wedding in the southwestern Polish city of Wroclaw, the congregation erupted into loud applause and a resounding chorus of \”Mazel tov!\”But the joyous response went far beyond heartfelt good wishes to Fissel and his bride, Ellen Friedland, both of Montclair, N.J.
As he breezes into a Melrose trattoria, the international man of mystery known as Shuki could be mistaken for any other player in town — cell phone in hand, expensive suit, hardball negotiator demeanor — were it not for the long shock of Gene Simmons rock star hair tied back in a tail that betrays his youth.
The Passover holiday contains countless traditions. There\’s the matzah and the sweet wine, the charoset and haggadot, the gefilte fish and the good fortune we celebrate. But perhaps most importantly, there is the gathering together of family and friends — the people who make the singing, reading and eating around the seder table meaningful and special.
Before there was Vista Del Mar Child Care, the Jewish Home for the Aging, or the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles — there was B\’nai B\’rith International. And what the aforementioned institutions have in common with the world\’s largest Jewish organization is that they wouldn\’t have existed without it.
Just last month, Walt Disney World appeared to be right in the path of a bona fide hurricane. Hurricane Floyd was headed for Florida\’s eastern coast, and Walt Disney World was forced to close its doors for the first time in its 28-year history. But Mickey\’s luck held out. Floyd veered north, and Walt Disney World was saved from potential devastation.
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