The hardest part about writing about brain radiation is writing the words \”brain radiation.\” I assure you that I\’m OK. It\’s my fingers that are typing these words on my computer. It\’s my thoughts that are deciding which of the Yip Harburg lyrics from the Scarecrow\’s song, \”If I Only Had a Brain,\” I should use later in this piece.
Back in 1990, while working as an assistant at a film production company, my daily mail chores acquainted me with the postal worker across the street. One Friday, as we said our goodbyes, I said, \”See you Monday,\” when she corrected me: Monday was Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
I didn\’t know if my office would be closed, I said.
Her eyes flashed as she said she would take the holiday even if it weren\’t given to her, because \”it\’s our holiday.\”
In that flash, I saw the different worlds we inhabited in the same country, my skin color having allowed me to forget it. I knew our meant black. I wanted to tell her it was my holiday, too, but I didn\’t know if it was. Back at the office, I learned that it was an optional holiday — whoever wanted to take the day off could, but the office would be open. I told my boss that I would take the holiday. I later learned from a co-worker that the boss was annoyed with me, that in her opinion \”the only person who should have the day off is the receptionist — the only black employee.\”
Does Stanley Mosk\’s California Supreme Court seat naturally go to a Jew? In the political jockeying left by the death at 88 of California\’s longest-serving justice, the debate begins again: Is there a special \”Jewish seat\” that deserves to be enshrined on the high court?
In filling the seat Mosk occupied for 37 years, here are some names being mentioned: former L.A. City Attorney Burt Pines and former Rep. Lynn Schenk, both close aides to Gov. Gray Davis; Arthur Gilbert, presiding justice of the Court of Appeal in Ventura (and a jazz pianist); Appellate Justice Norman Epstein and U.S. District Judge Nora Manella. Personally I\’m for Pines (though I hear he eschews it). The Manella name has a certain poetic impact; her father\’s firm, Irell & Manella, was among the early \”Jewish firms\” in Los Angeles, responding to discrimination against Jews among old-line law offices.
\nWhen voters cast their ballots for mayor in next week\’s primary, they may be electing to that office the first Jew, the first Latino or the first woman.
When Kelly Smith and Brian Bloch met at a convention in Long Beach in 1999, sparks flew. As they developed their long-distance relationship via e-mail — Brian at his computer in Houston, Kelly at hers in the Valley — they were astounded to find out how much they had in common.
I\’m doing my laundry on Christmas Eve. The Ebenezer Scrooges who own my building see fit to provide only one dryer for all the residents.
Now I understood why Reuven was able to bring me into the neighborhood, into his home, into his shul, invite people to meet me, and then into his yeshiva. No one would question the actions of an ilui. I further understood his ability to teach me, to move so adroitly into the issues of my world and professional endeavors while we were in London.
My relationship with Reuven has continued to grow through further visits, meals with my wife and his wife, and through study. He has brought me as his study partner into all the great yeshivas of Jerusalem. He wants me to see them all.
In 1776, printers in New York City organized and declared a strike in support of the newly formed United States of America.
Dr. Norman Lamm, the president of New York\’s Yeshiva University, once told me of a professor he knows in Israel who does not consider himself an observant Jew but who insists that his children maintain one halachic practice at home: \”Birkat HaMazon\” (the grace after meals). Lamm explained this peculiarity as the professor\’s belief that the Torah\’s commandment that we should give thanks for our food is an ethic that every child should be taught, so that at every meal they will never forget to appreciate the food on the table.
Raquel Bitton was 22, her first love affair over, when she reached into her father\’s dusty old box of 33\’s and pulled out an Edith Piaf album. \”I thought I would never fall in love again,\” says the chanteuse, now 38, who previously had spurned what she perceived as her father\’s \”old-fashioned\” music.\nBut while locked in her room with a broken heart, Bitton avidly listened as the late French icon sang of love and resilience. I thought, \’My God, she is talking about me,\’\” recalls the Moroccan-born Jew. \”And I knew I had found my voice.\”
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