Rabbi Neil Comess-Daniels received the surprising news during Rosh Hashanah morning services at Beth Shir Sholom in Santa Monica. The Rev. Sandra Richards of the Church in Ocean Park stood up in her seat to tell him: The Oct. 1 vote on whether to decertify the union at the Miramar Sheraton Hotel had resulted in a virtual draw.\n
It\’s High Holiday speech season. Rabbis prep, call each other withideas, exchange jokes, insights, and witty stories. They ponder thegreat issues of the day and get ready for prime-time talking in therabbinical world. Synagogues may not be full throughout the year, butcome Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, there is hardly an empty pew. Thisyear, attendance will be a bit higher, as Yom Kippur falls on aweekend.
According to my son, Disney\’s \”The Lion King\” is the greatest film ever made. He saw it three times in the theater,and insisted on playing the soundtrack every morning on our way to school. All the way to kindergarten, we sang the film\’s stirring theme song, \”The Circle of Life,\” until, one morning, I listened to the words.
It is a late Friday morning, not long before Rosh Hashanah, and already the tantalizing smells of exotic spices and frying onions are wafting from Marcelle Kadkhoda\’s sunny, compact apartment kitchen.\nThe Persian émigré, in her 70s, is wearing an apron and sensible shoes as she cooks for Shabbat, preparing the family recipes that have been handed down from mother to daughter for generations.\n
My Aunt Illa, a woman capable of great charm and vast intrigues,was hated by both my mother and father.
By Father, because he believed that Illa was so jealous of the love between his brother Zoltan and himself that she prevented her husband from the frequent contact the brothers wanted. And my mother– well, because of the usual animus she held against the women in Father\’s family.
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