The Shul\’s powerful sense of Jewish solidarity is well-documented. In May 1995, it hosted a meeting of the annual Sephardic Rabbis Convention, which featured an address by Rabbi Eliahu Bakshi-Doron, then the the Sephardic chief rabbi of Israel.
I am the Shiva Guy. When a member of my temple\’s congregation loses a family member, it is my job to take prayer books to the
house of mourning, where at least 10 people of bar/bat mitzvah age or above pray twice daily. And eat — mostly bagels, lox and cream cheese and fruit, but those particular menu items aren\’t mandatory.
Fall was just beginning to turn the Moscow air crispy when the lot of us — 10 high school seniors and three faculty members of Yeshiva University Los Angeles Girls\’ School — trudged down the stairs of our Intourist Hotel in the late \’80s, and began our walk of several miles, not to the better-known Chabad Lubavitch Synagogue or to the Moscow Choral Synagogue, but to another shul in the city\’s north.
A few weeks ago, I was at a funeral at Mount Sinai in Glendale when, at one of the most emotional moments, a cell phone rang loudly for several minutes, humming a Broadway tune.
Davi Cheng had some trepidation when she went to Hillel for the first time. She tried to feel comfortable, but she couldn\’t understand the language of the services and the liturgical rituals were confusing.
Then she spied something unfamiliar on a bookshelf that made her feel right at home: a shofar.
In considering the impact of what is arguably the single most cataclysmic event to befall the United States in this generation, professor Lew Smith of Fordham University wrote in Education Week that social institutions such as schools must seize this moment in our history to define their purposes.
The historic Breed Street Shul will be holding an open house this Sunday, Aug. 22 at 247 Breed St. in Boyle Heights from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Since opening in December 1958, Congregation Beth Meier has been a quiet, unassuming little staple of Jewish life near the corner of Moorpark Street and Colfax Avenue. The shul — its name honors not Schimmel, but Mishnah writer Rabbi Meier Ba\’al Ha\’Ness — has about 150 families. While Beth Meier\’s exterior replicates the Tomb of Rachel, its brown, wooden interior intentionally was designed to resemble the Little Brown Church in the Valley, the Sherman Oaks church where Ronald and Nancy Reagan were married. Only on the High Holidays was Beth Meier\’s cozy sanctuary traded for the larger Studio City Theater on Ventura Boulevard, now a Bookstar.
Rabbi Abner Weiss is looking through the closet that holds his shul. There are two Torah scrolls lying face up on shelves, the gold mechitza curtains are hung against the wall and the mini-weekday ark is facing the closet door.
\”\’Have ark will travel\’ — that\’s our motto,\” Weiss said, and quoted the verse that is used in the Shabbat liturgy when the Torah scroll is removed from the ark in the synagogue: \”Vayehi binsoah aron\” (and behold the ark was traveling).
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