The presidential race makes the headlines, but there\’s lots of emotion, energy and money left for the 12 statewide propositions on the California ballot. As in McCain-Obama contest, Jewish voters are sharply split between the Democratic/liberal majority and the Republican/conservative minority.
South L.A. will, hopefully, have a hospital that won\’t have the term \”killer\” in front of its name, because of the very difficult steps that have been taken over the past two weeks and the hospital is reborn. Perhaps, Turkish governmental leadership will begin to confront its dreadful past vis–vis the Armenians when they realize they can no longer successfully bully organizations to ignore history to its benefit.
King Solomon was known to have coined the expression, \”Educate the child accordingly so that when he grows old, he will not leave.\” In other words, take advantage of the child\’s education as soon as possible.
In modern times, this admonition certainly applies to preschool, and it\’s something that my day care school, the Bilowit Learning Center, based in the Lomita-Torrance area, has always taken as a mission.
At first blush it seemed an odd thing for an observant Jew to do: Slogging my way through morning rush-hour traffic to get downtown to demonstrate against the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors\’ decision to remove a small cross from the county seal.
And yet, I felt compelled to be there. The supervisors had already capitulated, in a 3-2 vote, to a threat by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to sue the county over the cross. Surprised by the public outcry, the supervisors called for another vote to consider a so-called \”compromise\” with the ACLU in which the cross on the seal — just one of a dozen various symbols of the region\’s history — would be replaced by a mission. But as one clever observer noted, a mission without a cross just looks like a Taco Bell.
Barry Fisher, director of the Los Angeles County Sheriff\’s Department crime laboratory, showed up in Jerusalem this week, invited by the Israeli Police Department to give a couple of lectures and the benefit of his 30 years\’ experience to the forensics people of the Jewish state. In a wood-paneled room at National Police Headquarters, along with about 25 Israeli police officers, I caught his second lecture, \”Forensic Science After O.J. Simpson.\” (I will assume that, despite so many breathlessly absorbing high-profile murders and sex scandals since then, you still vaguely remember O.J. Simpson.)
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