Protestors, many clad in orange T-shirts stamped with the word \”Shalom,\” cheered speakers who alternately pled for the center\’s survival and criticized The Federation and the Jewish Community Centers of Greater Los Angeles (JCCGLA) for failing to do more to save it.
\”I don\’t get it,\” one of them told me. \”Here this popular governor is going to Israel at a time when Israel really needs all the friends it can get, and people are turning it into an issue. I\’ve had it with the Jews.\”
President Bush hugged a cantor, listened to an Orthodox high school choir, walked with an addict-turned-rabbi and heard success stories of the Jewish-based Beit T\’Shuvah addiction treatment center during his March 3 Southern California visit.
Chinese-food-and-a-movie faces strong competition in our city once again this year.
\”Danny\’s sister, Michelle, asked, \’What would Danny have liked for his birthday?\” his father said. \”And the answer came naturally; he would have liked a jam session with all his friends. And where were all his friends? They were all over the world. So we began making phone calls.\”
The emerging ethnic commercial district, akin to better-established Little Saigon in Westminster and Los Angeles\’ Koreatown, is further evidence of the county\’s evolution from suburbia into a more diverse, urban environment.
All traces of the solemnity and sadness of Holocaust Remembrance Day were gone by nightfall when the gang from New York-based Heeb Magazine threw their first West Coast party at the Hollywood-and-Vine hotspot Deep.
Festival Chair Itzik Glazer said he was pleased by the number of people willing to come out to the festival, despite it falling on Mother\’s Day.
\”People have told me it\’s the best festival yet,\” said his wife, Mikki Glazer.
Aside from the exposure to new music and techniques and the camaraderie of being with peers, one purpose of the convention is to explore the role of cantor as klei kodesh (literally, holy vessel), or clergy member, a position that transcends music-making, said Joseph Gole, senior cantor of Sinai Temple, a local co-chair of the convention.
The self-described raconteur refuses to label herself a stand-up comedian. But Rhea Kohan\’s wit has, over the last decade, made her a sought-after personality in the local Jewish community, and she refuses to charge money for her humorous hostessing.
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