For someone wandering the cobblestone streets of Mexico City\’s Historic Center, where the sound of the cathedral bells fills the air and the streets have names like Jesus Maria, it\’s hard to imagine that this neighborhood was once the heart of the country\’s Jewish community.
Three of Orange County\’s senior rabbis have decided to take a sabbatical. While the three have decided on their own to take a respite from the 24/7 demands of being a rabbi, their congregations are taking a different approach to temporarily replacing an absent spiritual leader.
\”I don\’t get it,\” one of them told me. \”Here this popular governor is going to Israel at a time when Israel really needs all the friends it can get, and people are turning it into an issue. I\’ve had it with the Jews.\”
Bike the Sites, a smart solution to the challenges of sightseeing in heavily trafficked D.C., allows visitors to enjoy Washington\’s history and architecture in an environmentally friendly way.
What brought the first, mainly Sephardic, Jews to Charleston was its remarkable religious tolerance, not to mention the economic prospects elevating them to a new aristocracy to which their Ashkenazi kinsmen who followed greedily aspired.
I\’m so caught up in my dreams of being the first in my family to replant our roots back in Israel that I almost forgot that I\’m making this journey alone, without any family at all.
Every other year, our congregation travels to a different part of the Jewish world to meet and, if necessary, help our fellow Jews. Having traveled to Israel, Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union many times, as well as Turkey, Morocco, Spain, Argentina and Brazil, our experiences have mostly been with communities under political, demographic or economic siege. This trip was different.
Jews in distress are being encouraged to seek out a trouble-free environment way, way down under — in New Zealand.
Lee Hirsch struggled for nine years to make \”Amandla! A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony,\” which won the audience and Freedom of Expression Awards at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival and opens today in Los Angeles.
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