On a blazing hot Saturday in the hills of Calabasas, the streets are deserted, devoid of the usual clusters of children playing ball or teens on bikes and scooters within this gated community south of the 101 Freeway.
For years, the only signs of life at Boyle Heights\’ historic Breed Street Shul were the flocks of cooing pigeons flying in and out through the large hole in the ceiling.
Rabbi Jonathan Aaron of Temple Emanuel in Beverly Hills knows as much about show business as shul business.\n\nThe 39-year-old rabbi, a former actor and managing director of the Open Forum Theatre in Connecticut, is the author of a new musical, \”Hyrcanus,\” an intergenerational production of the temple\’s Emanuel Arts Center.
On Yom Kippur, my wife Sally and I went to shul just around the corner from the Vatican. It was a visit we will not soon forget. The imposing Comunita Ebraica di Roma Synagogue (the Great Synagogue of Rome) sits just off the Piazza del Firori close to the Tiber River and spitting distance from Vatican City across the river in one direction, and Palatine Hill and the Roman Forum in the other.
What can Home Depot possibly have to do with Jewish spirituality?
Everything, according to Ron Wolfson.
As you drive north along Figueroa Street in Highland Park, past La Pescador and the car wash, past Frank\’s Cameras and the farmacia, you come to El Paso Shoe Store, where families from the neighborhood shop to get a good bargain on shoes.
Shoshanna Levi* identifies with the Passover story of Jews traversing the \”narrow place,\” yetziat mitzrayim.
Last Pesach, her Orthodox family celebrated a plentiful seder in their spacious home in the West Valley.
Note to future rabbis: If you want to make a lasting firstimpression with your congregants, nothing beats farm animals on thebimah. Just ask anyone at Temple Adat Shalom in West LosAngeles. It\’s been almost four months since Michael Resnick took overthere, and they\’re still talking about his goats.
Attention,anyone who was ever married or bar mitzvahed at Etz Jacob Congregation at 7659 Beverly Blvd.: The shul wants testimonials, photographs and memorabilia for an exhibit honoring its 80thanniversary. The temple is the oldest in Beverly-Fairfax, and, according to Rabbi Rubin Huttler, it\’s in large part responsible for creating the Jewish enclave around Fairfax Avenue.
Call it shul-searching. Or call it finding the place. For thousands of Los Angeles Jews, the problem is something of a late-summer ritual.
More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.