What rights would a yarmulke-wearing child have in a public school that decides to prohibit hats on campus? What about a group of Jewish inmates who want to light Chanukah candles when a regulation clearly bans fire of any kind inside a prison? Or a synagogue or church that wishes to build or expand in a restricted area?
In every picture, Melissa Kahn is smiling — whether covered with mud at the Dead Sea, riding a donkey up Mount Canaan or hiking from the Mediterranean to Lake Kineret. Kahn, 16, a junior at Harvard-Westlake School, mused recently about the eight weeks shes pent in Israel last summer on the Bureau of Jewish Education\’s Los Angeles Ulpan program.
The Jewish Community Library is used to catering to the literaryneeds of groups of school children, Yiddish scholars and day-schoolteachers. But seldom does it get a call for Talmudic texts to gracethe set of a sitcom. That changed a few weeks ago when librarydirector Abigail Yasgur received a request from the \”Seinfeld\” artdepartment to borrow a set of the sacred books. The 29-volume redSoncino Talmud filled the bill. The books, borrowed for a week, willappear in an episode scheduled to air next Thursday (Oct. 9) on NBC.
Thousands of Los Angeles-area youngsters participate in hands-on workshops.
Quick, what\’s a kosher animal with horns that can be used to makea shofar?\n\nUh, well, everyone knows the answer to that. A ram, right?\n\nOK. Right. But name another kosher animal with horns good formaking a shofar.\n\nBzzzzzz! Your time is up.\n\nBut the several thousand Los Angeles-area day- and Hebrew-schoolchildren participating in Chabad\’s Traveling Shofar Factory know theanswer: The long, spiraling horns of the male kudu, a type of Africanantelope, are often used to make the shofarim employed in Sephardicsynagogues.
Three generations of Grahams. Is there such a thing as a \”typical\” Jewish grandparent in America? When I thought about this impossibly broad question, I turned to my own extended family for examples. Were they typical? Stereotypical?
The Federation had received only four cancellations — a total of seven people who decided not to go because of the twin blasts — according to Evy Lutin, mission co-chair. More than 350 people are signed up for the 10-day mission, which celebrates the kickoff of Israel\’s 50th-anniversary year. About 500 people are expected to make the trip.
It turns out that there are more Jews in the South Bay than many had imagined — about 45,000, according to a just-released population study by the Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles.
Sephardic, Ashkenazic, Mizrachic, or just out for a good time — whatever their background, Jews poured into the Skirball Cultural Center last Sunday for the first annual Sephardic Arts Festival. The event was a success beyond its organizers\’ wildest dreams. Attendance, estimated at more than 4,000, was more than double the anticipated turnout, making it the largest audience for any one-day event since the Skirball opened in April 1996. Despite long lines for shuttle buses and food, the mood of participants — a mix of generations and ethnicities — was festive and good-humored. Many people bumped into relatives and friends — often literally — while searching for seats, program notes or restrooms.
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