If you\’ve ever been to Ocean Parkway — that long thoroughfare traversing all neighborhoods Brooklyn, connecting the BQE from "The City" (Manhattan), to the Belt Parkway from Long Island — you\’d have seen the two "island" streets lining the two outer streets like an Israeli flag, where old men played chess, young mothers strolled their children and we teenagers hung out.
Congratulations! You have been invited to the bar/bat mitzvah of a friend or family member. Now what?
According to Rabbi Tuvia Teldon, director of Lubavitch of Long Island, the root of this custom is a verse in the Torah that compares man to a tree. In Deuteronomy, it states, \”A person is like the tree of a field.\” Just as a tree grows tall and with time, produces fruit, so it is hoped that a little boy will grow in knowledge, good deeds and, eventually have children of his own.
Rita Milos Brownstein, author \”Jewish Weddings\” (Simon & Schuster, 2002) said she wishes she had known about yichud before she was
married.
Step aside, gentlemen. You will have no interest in this column, I guarantee it.
And the award goes to –The Holocaust! No, the Academy Awards have not been given out yet, but the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and\nSciences nominated \”The Pianist,\” a searing film of one Jew\’s survival during the doomed uprisings of the ghetto and city of Warsaw during the Nazi occupation, for seven Oscars, including best picture.
Earlier this month, a group of Lubavitch Jews gathered in a downtown Moscow synagogue to welcome the 16 books that were returned to the movement from the Russian State Library, formerly known as the Lenin Library, where the collection has been held for the last 80 years.
Rules of etiquette suggest that one must whisper in a library. But for the Jewish Community Library of Greater Los Angeles, that rule is just the beginning.\n\nThe library recently held its culminating ceremony for a group of youngsters enrolled in its Children\’s Etiquette and Social Grace class. This is the first time that the institution has sponsored such a class.\n\nThe idea developed after the library director Abigail Yasgur and children\’s director Sylvia Lowe, children\’s librarian, enrolled their respective youngsters in an etiquette class.\n\n\”Libraries are not just about the books,\” Lowe said. \”They\’re becoming meeting places for people in the community.\”
Putting a new spin on Chanukah celebrations, the U.S. Marine Corps Marching Band will perform at The Calabasas Shul\’s annual menorah-lighting ceremony to honor the men and women of the United States armed forces.
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