Reality bites. So thousands of people in the Los Angeles Jewish community learned last week after Rabbi David Wolpe got up on his pulpit, opened his mouth and unleashed a storm.
What a difference a few months make. Last fall, a host of Jewish groups were sharply opposing various \”charitable choice\” plans favored by religious conservatives.
It took nearly 10 years, but now the other shoe has dropped. In the early 1990s, the American Jewish community was jolted by findings of an intermarriage rate exceeding 50 percent during the previous five years. Now, a new survey sponsored by the American Jewish Committee (AJCommittee) sheds light on the profound social and psychological consequences of widespread intermarriage.
These are the weeks that we read of our heroes. The book of Genesis tells the stories of the faith and tenacity of the fathers and mothers of our nation for whom every day was another stride in the uncharted waters of living in covenant with God. It was their passionate determination to keep the vision of a righteous and holy people alive that ultimately produced the Jewish people. But it wasn\’t always easy.
A 1998 article about Chicago collector Stephen Durschslag\’s haggadah collection set the number of different haggadot on his shelves at 4,500, increasing almost daily.\nIt\’s probably impossible to know how many haggadot exist, but it\’s obvious that for every Jew, there should be a haggadah that fits like a glove.
When I first started out as a journalist, fresh from graduate school, I thought of my profession as that of the perennial outsider, a stranger who would pack up and leave the next day.
An unusual Buddhist-Jewish dialogue took place inSeptember 1989, when the Tibetan Buddhist leader, the Dalai Lama, metwith a group of six Jewish leaders. The Dalai Lama requested themeeting, not because of an academic interest but, rather, because ofa practical need. He wanted to learn the Jewish \”secret technique\”for survival. \”We always talk of Jewish people scattered in so manycountries, speaking so many languages, yet the Jews keep theirtraditions. It\’s something remarkable,\” he said.
Who needs Halloween or Mardi Gras? On Purim, the masquerade of characters is lively and intriguing: Spangled Vashtis, bearded Mordechais, snarling Hamans, bejeweled Esthers, silk-robed Ahasueruses.
In truth, though, many other Orthodox Jews — including most of Agudath Israel\’s constituency — do not consider Yom Ha Shoah to be the appropriate time for focusing on the destruction of Jewish Europe.
Like most converts, the Hardins take the precepts of their adopted faith more seriously than many born to it, and they display an intense hunger for knowledge, as if to make up for what they missed during their childhoods.\n
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