Jewish students are currently subjected to an unprecedented assault on their identity as Jews. And we, the Jewish faculty on campus, have let those students down. We have failed to equip them with effective tools to fight back this assault.
We can reverse this trend.
It\’s a lot more than Kenn Phillips could have bargained for when he accepted this gig as principal. Lucky for him, he doesn\’t have to come back tomorrow.
That\’s because Phillips isn\’t the real principal, but merely principal for a day. Phillips is among more than 200 professionals who arranged to shadow principals as part of a Los Angeles Unified School District effort to create alliances between businesses and schools.
At Congregation Ner Tamid, most members can trace their ancestors back to Eastern Europe and the late 1800s. Few are aware that 1654 was one of the most significant years in Jewish history — the year that 23 Jews fled the Portuguese Inquisition when they boarded the St. Charles bound for North America.
The UJ has been around since 1947. My office window in Koreatown overlooks the block of Ardmore Avenue where it was originally housed. The university followed the Jewish community west in 1979, settling in to the expansive Familian campus, where it fulfills a unique but hardly problem-free niche in a unique Jewish community.
On a recent gloomy Sunday afternoon in L.A. Family Housing\’s recreation room, 13-year-old Julia Harreschou laughs with 5-year-old Lara as they take turns drawing on a Magna Doodle.
When Amy Cohen graduated from Adat Ari El\’s day school in 2003, her family faced a decision: Where would she continue her education?
Everybody talks about Israel, but, surprisingly, there is no teaching, research and community program at an American university that focuses solely on the Jewish state in all its multiple facets.
Miss Smith, my third-grade teacher at Vollentine Grammar School, stood facing the class with her arm around my shoulders. She was a large woman the size of two or three of today\’s fashion models, with gray hair pulled back from a ruddy, round face. All I knew of her personal life was that she was unwed, but mothered 25 third-grade kids. She lived in a small, neighboring town famous for its horse farms.
She looked out to her students, her eyes focused above them. I looked down.
I had just finished reciting a poem to the class and before I could return to my desk, Miss Smith was at my side.
\”Children, Teddy is Jewish. And I like Jewish kids. Teddy\’s people have made some major contributions to the South. How many of you know of Dr. Joseph Goldberger who cured pellagra? How many of you know about pellagra?\”
On a sunny afternoon at Cheremoya Avenue Elementary School in Hollywood, fourth- and fifth-graders rapped to a poem about slavery, accompanied by a ponytailed musician on an African drum.
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