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marlene adler marks

State Races Get Hot

As I made the rounds of endless cocktail parties and debates two weeks before March 7 primary day, I could see that the Jewish community has little reason to cheer term limits, just as it will not likely salute restrictions on campaign contributions, if that should ever come to pass. The Jewish community has spent much of the past 30 years learning the effective use of government for the wider public good. The race between Assembly members Wally Knox and Sheila Kuehl to replace State Senator Tom Hayden is another case of chopping our institutional wisdom at its root. Newly-installed Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg, already regarded as one of the most effective and professional legislators of his generation, will be term-limited out of office at the next election term.

The Jewish Future

I have seen the Jewish future and, to my surprise, it still belongs to the Baby Boomers. By now I\’d guess that Boomers would happily cede attention and civic responsibility to Gen Xers and Gen J but nothing doing. One in three Jews today are between ages 35-53, and the needs and demands of this group will dominate Jewish life well into the coming decades.

The Meaning of Loehmann’s RIP

Whatever the rest of America made of last week\’s news that Loehmann\’s discount department store is declaring bankruptcy, for American Jewish women, it is very, very sad.

A Class Act

The political question of the week is, \”What will David Tokofsky do now?\” For four years, Tokofsky, the veteran teacher and former coach of Marshall High School\’s champion academic decathlon team, has played the role of maverick on the Los Angeles Unified School District Board. He exposed the lack of textbooks in district schools; publicized the scandal-plagued Belmont Learning Complex; crusaded against \”faddish\” educational philosophies; and urged an end to social promotions (implementation of which was rescinded last week by Superintendent Ruben Zacharias). Against the \”Cuckoo\’s Nest\” aura of LAUSD, Tokofsky has sounded like a visionary.

On the Lone Prairie

When I consider author Sara Davidson\’s now-so-public love affair with a cowboy who didn\’t know about Anne Frank, I can hear my mother saying, \”Honey, you could do so much better.\”
To which Davidson\’s response would surely be, \”Show me how.\”

Just in Time

ff, the guy from the party rental place, left this phone message two weeks ago:
\”Passover is March 31,\” he said, \”and, say Marlene, you always call us the last minute. Do you think you might plan a bit ahead this time?\”

Making the Cut

Circumcision was Page One news in the Los Angeles Times on Tuesday after a report from the American Academy of Pediatrics did all but call the ritual cutting medically meaningless. You didn\’t have to be a man to feel the cut.

A Better Strategy

History never precisely repeats itself. I was cleaning up after dinner the other evening when I heard my daughter, Samantha, now nearly 17, on the phone; she was talking with a guy named Vinnie.
\”Vinnie?\” I said, as she hung up. \”I think we should be focusing on Jewish guys now, don\’t you?\”

\”He\’s a friend, Mom,\” said Samantha.

And to my surprise, I let it go at that because I wasn\’t sure what else to do.

I Wish It Were More

I am a lousy gift-giver. I\’m bad enough on birthdays, when gift-giving makes me so nervous that my gifts never arrive on time. But I\’m absolutely awful in December, when I feel so pressured by Chanukah expectations that I buy gift after gift for three of the people on my list, inadvertently leaving out everyone else. Maybe it\’s a new kind of learning disability, Adverse Gift Disorder. But I mean well, I do.

The Liberal Revival

What a great week this has been for liberals. If it does nothing else, Election \’98 makes it OK to use \”L\” word again. I love it — it is so much more descriptive of hope and dream than the neutered word \”moderate.\” Liberals have been abused on both the left (by multiculturalists) and right (by fundamentalists) for so long that it will take us a while to reconsider the beauty and dignity of its expression. Liberal is who we are, even if L.A. Times\’ columnist Bob Scheer doesn\’t fathom why, defining a liberal as one who votes against self-interest. Not true.

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More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.

More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.