Rabbi Rachmiel Steinberg and his family were finishing their Shavuot meal last Friday afternoon when a loud drone drew their attention to the window. His son, Levi Yitzchak, screamed, \”Tati, that airplane is going into the building.\” They heard a thunderous crash and then saw plumes of heavy black smoke billowing skyward.
When Rabbi Mark Diamond asked seven Westside rabbis last summer to nominate emerging lay leaders for the Board of Rabbis\’ new Synagogue Leadership Institute (SLI), many of the rabbis countered with another request. Rather than potential leaders, they wanted to send current leaders — presidents, executive board members and committee chairs.
To understand how Rabbi Morley Feinstein has re-energized University Synagogue, just peek in on his Friday night services, which have been attracting upwards of 125 people every week.
When Steven Leder was 14, he got into some trouble with the law. Rather than send him to reform school, his parents sent him to a Reform Jewish summer camp in Wisconsin.
In his 35-year career, Rabbi Juda Mintz established a Jewish youth group in Montreal, founded a traditional congregation and a campus Hillel in Atlanta and led more than 50 missions to Israel — all without the aid of a computer.
One Friday night 33 years ago, when Yisroel Richtberg was 12 years old, an older boy sneaked into his dorm room at his Chasidic yeshiva in Israel, pulled off Richtberg\’s pajama pants and raped him. The same thing happened the next Shabbat.
Rabbi Benay Lappe had been out of the closet for years. She appeared on \”Oprah\” and taught at a gay synagogue in New York, her colleagues and students at Milken Community High School in Los Angeles knew — she even had a chapter included in an anthology titled \”Lesbian Rabbis\” (Rutgers University Press, 2001).
If you\’ve ever been curious about \”Hierarchy and Transcendence in Gersonides\’ Theory of Knowing\” or \”Mnemonic Characteristics and the Oral Transmission of Aggadic Tradition,\” you\’re about to get your chance to wade through these weighty issues with leading academics, when 1,000 members of the Association for Jewish Studies (AJS) descend on Los Angeles for the organization\’s 34th annual conference Dec. 15-17 at the Century Plaza Hotel.
Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller walks out of his office at the University Religious Conference, locking the door on its matted and stained rust-colored carpet, which for years has been covered with stacks of books and journals. On his way out, he doesn\’t bother to glance into the musty student lounge because he knows students don\’t hang out there. As he emerges onto Hilgard Avenue, he lets the glass-and-steel door swing shut on the building where UCLA Hillel has been housed since the 1950s.
Two days after her radical breast cancer surgery last May, Missy Stein hit that moment where all the emotional and physical implications of her condition came crashing in on her.
But then she remembered Sari Abrams\’ words.
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