One could almost see historyon the march in Washington last week when the House Banking Committeeheld a day of hearings on Nazi plunder — stolen artworks in themorning, looted insurance policies after lunch — and how to restoreit to its rightful owners.
\”The Oslo agreement took Yasser Arafat out of the dustbin of history and gave him the tools to destroy Israel. If we accept that, then they should put a fence around Israel and declare it an insane asylum.\”
For four millenia, the Jewish homeland has survived either as dream or reality. A nomadic tribe began migrating into the Land of Canaan in the early second millenium B.C.E. Their history of wandering, exodus and eventual conquest of Canaan, which they renamed Israel, forms the core story of the Bible.
If Los Angeles is the nation\’s undisputed film capital, in recent months it also seems eligible for the title of the Jewish film capital, and that is largely because of the efforts of the Laemmle Theatres organization. Laemmle\’s played host to the recent Israeli Film Festival and to its own screenings of independent films of Jewish interest throughout the year.
Tired of spinning the same old dreidels, eating the same old latkes, singing the same old tired songs year after year on Chanukah? Well, the personal computer and the World Wide Web provide a fresh approach to the holiday, combining ancient traditions with new technologies.
Fifty years ago this week, on Nov. 29, 1947, the General Assembly ofthe United Nations voted to partition British-held Palestine into aJewish state, an Arab state, and a corpus separatum, comprisingJerusalem and Bethlehem, to remain under the control of the UnitedNations.
Apples and honey, a spinning dreidel, a Red Sea parted — all thevivid highlights in the Jewish holiday cycle — get their due in thislively assemblage of poems, fables, stories, traditional songs andbrief forays into history and custom.
The largest Israeli mission ever launched by the Jewish FederationCouncil of Greater Los Angeles, and the biggest North Americancontingent this year, returned home last week, with organizers in astate bordering on euphoria and participants exhausted but mostlypleased with their experience.
The big stories of the year were not Jew vs. Black, or Jew vs.Gentile, but Jew vs. Jew — a continual war of words fought overreligion, sex, politics and history. At least we can\’t be accused ofpettiness.
Mosk is California history with a heartbeat. He\’s the lone Democrat on the Court, its only liberal, and a living reminder of the greatest era in California legal history when our Court was the finest in the nation, a bellwether for individual liberties and establishing legal principles often followed by the U.S. Supreme Court.
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