One should read Israeli writers, of course — Agnon, Amichai, A.B. Yehoshua, Aharon Appelfeld, Orly Castel-Bloom, Etgar Keret. But the more appropriate template may come from fellow Americans, writers who, by exploring the Diaspora Jew\’s relationship to Israel, have gone down this road before.
\”Out of Faith\” will screen at 7:30 p.m., Sept. 12, at the Laemmle Sunset 5 Theatre, 8000 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, to be followed by a discussion between the audience and the filmmakers. When Holocaust survivor Leah Welbel learns that her American granddaughter is about to marry a Christian, she cries out, \”When this happened in my old hometown, my family used to sit shiva. Here they expect me to open my arms. I can\’t do it.\”
Here are the stories of these American servicemen who observed the High Holidays not in conventional synagogues, but on far-flung battlefields. The worship services they participated in were often improvised and incomplete. But the jarring juxtaposition of war and prayer, faith and fear, continues to resonate with these men.
Can an alcoholic who was poisoned with his father\’s anti-Semitism use a moment of naked exposure to confront his bigotry? Can he ever hope to cleanse himself of this deeply-seated hatred or is he forever doomed?
Three times over the past six years that I\’ve been editing this paper, I\’ve come to work in the morning to find an old man waiting for me. A different man each time, though I remember all of them being thin and frail.
One day last year Rabbi Levi Meier, the Jewish chaplain at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, was summoned to the room of an elderly Russian man in the ICU who had cancer.
He was in poor spirits, so Meier decided to bring in the Torah from the chaplaincy ark. The patient\’s eyes lit up at the sight of the Torah that Meier, and volunteer Sandy Gordon, brought into a room.
Carolyn Blashek is a Jewish mother in Encino who, like most Americans, was horrified by the events of Sept. 11, 2001. However, her reaction was slightly different than that of the average Jewish mother — she tried to enlist in the military.
The local Jewish community, unlike those in other cities, neither supported most existing centers nor clamored for the types of state-of-the-art facilities that have proven so successful elsewhere, he added.
Having celebrated Shabbat around the world, Elie Wiesel conveyed the novelty of Sinai\’s Friday Night Live service, which invites singles to stick around for socializing.
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