With their hands all but frozen, lips blue and feet soaking, nearly 50 South Bay teens and a large handful of adult volunteers braved the storm on Sunday, Dec. 5, to devote their afternoon to testing, cleaning and repairing bicycles.
What does $1,000 buy you these days in Jewish life?
Maybe, if you\’re lucky, a full-year family synagogue membership. But what exactly does that mean? Two tickets to High Holiday services? Free parking? Entree to Kiddushes?
At a time when families have limited time and money and so much competing for it, synagogue leaders are realizing the need to offer more to potential and existing congregant.
Three of Orange County\’s senior rabbis have decided to take a sabbatical. While the three have decided on their own to take a respite from the 24/7 demands of being a rabbi, their congregations are taking a different approach to temporarily replacing an absent spiritual leader.
The weekend was spectacular, not only from an intellectual standpoint, but as a Jewish parent and communal professional. It was refreshing to see so many generations of Jewish families — some with children, some without — learning together, singing together and laughing together.
They are not scholarships but \”camperships\” in Jewish summer camp parlance. Of the 1,000 campers expected soon at Malibu\’s Camp JCA Shalom, which is supported by JCCGLA, about 200 parents applied for camperships.
\”It\’s amazing, in the past few years, the income level of people who are requesting camperships,\” said Bill Kaplan, executive director of the Shalom Institute, which runs Camp JCA Shalom. Its campership aid this year will run about $130,000, $75,000 of which is general camp aid from The Federation. That is an increase from the $50,000 The Federation made available 2002, the boost due to the increase in cash-strapped families.
\”When they hear Blanche\’s story, they get it,\” Tenaya Wallace said. \”She was so sick; it was an absolute transformation.\”
The National Jewish Population Survey, funded for $6 million by the federation umbrella group United Jewish Communities, reported that the nation\’s population of 5.2 million Jews represented a decline of 2 percent from the 1990 survey, which reported 5.5 million Jews.
Part of the team readying O.C.\’s Jewish Community Center for its planned relocation and expansion next year in Irvine is not staying to see the result.
\”I\’d like to know that America is going to take actions against those who could be threatening me,\” said 17-year-old Ezra Pinsky, clutching his letter. \”It\’s not going to be a pleasant year if I\’m in danger.\”
In one of the most complex legal battles in the annals of Holocaust restitution, centering on the return of art looted by the Nazis to their rightful owners, E. Randol Schoenberg is stationed on the front lines.
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