Twice a year, the high tides of Judaism crash on the shores of the disenfranchised. The chill of fall and the early blooms in spring are two occasions when I seek refuge from the waves of not belonging.
When, as a young woman, Rebbetzin Yehudis Fasman met Chaim, her husband-to-be, he laid out his life plan and made sure that she agreed with it.
There is little doubt that Aseret Ha-dibrot, the Ten Commandments, form the centerpiece of Parshat Yitro and probably the entire Torah.
There, a steady stream of vehicles arrived, disgorging clusters of teenagers at Orange County\’s Jewish Community Center. Instead of movies, sleepovers and football games, the typical high school student\’s Friday night pursuits, about 60 teens gathered to participate in the center\’s \”Teen Shabbat\” program, now in its second year.
Three little words. That\’s what makes the difference between a religious school and a synagogue, as recently defined by the Los Angeles Central Area Planning Commission.
The five-member Planning Commission, responsible for zoning decisions in Hollywood, Hancock Park and other neighborhoods, made its decision Aug. 28 in a hearing regarding Yavneh Hebrew Academy.
In April, Yavneh had submitted an application for a number of changes to the K-8 school\’s zoning conditions, including adding a ninth grade for girls and allowing prayer services Saturday mornings. In June, after consulting with nearby residents, traffic consultants and architects, Associate Zoning Administrator Dan Green approved all but one of Yavneh\’s proposed changes. The request \”to authorize Saturday prayer for students, parents, relatives and other guests\” was denied.
Late last summer at Adat Ari El, when work was going on in earnest to craft the new One Shabbat Morning service, Rabbi Moshe Rothblum recalled feeling some resentment at having to drop his High Holiday preparations to attend a One Shabbat Morning meeting.
Families of individuals with special needs often feel a sense of helplessness and isolation from the community, as well as confusion about how to best help their loved ones. In an effort to give families the tools to cope with these issues, Etta Israel Center (EIC) will hold its second annual retreat May 20 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Shaarey Zedek Congregation in North Hollywood
The sanctuary of B\’nai David-Judea Congregation in the Pico-Robertson area was once a spacious movie theater. Last Wednesday, April 25, it was filled to the nosebleed rows with more than 500 junior-high and high-school students from Yeshiva University of Los Angeles Boys and Girls Schools, Maimonides Academy, West Valley Hebrew Day School, Hillel Harkham Academy and Emek Hebrew Academy. Looming large onstage were photos of two teenagers with L.A. connections who were murdered by Palestinian terrorists: 14-year-old Yael Botwin, killed in a 1997 terrorist bombing in Jerusalem, and 19-year-old Yitzhak Weinstock, grandson of Rabbi Simon Dolgin, who for three decades served as spiritual leader of Beth Jacob Congregation in Beverly Hills. Weinstock was one of the victims of a 1993 drive-by shooting on the outskirts of Jerusalem.
Rabbi Leonard I. Beerman\’s art-filled home on a quiet, verdant Brentwood street is a world away from the gritty industrial world in which he lived as a child during the Depression and again as a young man on the cusp of World War II. But it\’s his experiences in that world of assembly-line workers that led him to the rabbinate and to his 52 years in Los Angeles.
At a groundbreaking and consecration ceremony at the site of Kol Ami\’s future building, leaders of the Los Angeles and West Hollywood communities, as well as leading Los Angeles rabbis, offered support and congratulations.
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