In a watershed event for the California central coast\’s small Jewish community, the Santa Barbara Jewish Federation marked the 65th anniversary of Kristallnacht by opening the city\’s first permanent Holocaust exhibit.
The opening shows just how far this small Jewish community has come.
A fresh outburst of anti-Semitic violence throughout France has Jewish leaders fearing the return of Kristallnacht.
The reference to the horrors of Nazi Germany, issued by French Jewish leader Jean Kahn, hit the French dailies, as police in Marseille were still investigating a fire that reduced a synagogue to ashes.
The incident punctuated a weekend of anti-Jewish aggression that included attacks on synagogues in Lyon and Strasbourg and a shooting at a kosher butcher shop near the southwestern city of Toulouse in which no one was injured.
In addition, a French Jewish couple was injured in a weekend attack in the southern part of the country.
Don\’t be misled by the play\’s title.\n\n\”After Crystal Night,\” a comedy-drama now at the Odyssey Theatre in West Los Angeles, is not a story about the November 1938 Nazi rampage. Not literally, anyway. The Kristallnacht connection is metaphorical; a reminder that what happened once in not-so-long-ago Nazi Germany could happen again if Jews grow too comfortable and passive — even in America.
More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.