\”I am very proud of my Jewish heritage,\” Jason Pullman said, talking to The Journal from the Clear Channel offices (Star\’s parent company). \”I used to use stage names, but then as of four or five years ago [I decided] I am myself, and that is only person that I want to be.\”
\”Love is a fine thing,\” the Yiddish saying goes, \”but love with noodles is even tastier.\”
Tashbih Sayyed believes in democracy as a way of life. He can be counted among the few Muslims in America who believe that modernism, free-thinking and education are keys to rid Muslims from the morass of extremism.
Watching the sunrise over Lake Tahoe is one of my great summer pleasures. I usually awake before my family and, in solitude, watch as the contours of the lake begin to take shape in the morning light. The serene stillness of this mountain silence is punctuated later only with the distant sounds of speed boats and water skiers, the mute screams of glee from those sailing beneath billowing parachutes pulled by fiberglass vessels. And if it is quiet enough, I can hear the flapping sounds of sails riding on crafts as they slowly pass me.
On the sunny porch of his Santa Monica cottage, a scruffy-looking Harry Shearer, Los Angeles\’ preeminent satirist, is describing his fascination with an all-male power retreat called the Bohemian Grove. It began about nine years ago when the caustic, 58-year-old humorist started interviewing Grove guests — and hookers — about the super-exclusive Northern California resort. The interviews eradicated every conspiracy theory he\’d had about the place: \”These guys aren\’t micromanaging the world,\” says Shearer, best known for voicing myriad \”Simpsons\” characters and for his National Public Radio program, \”Le Show.\”
Remember Hanna-Barbara\’s \”Squiddly Diddly?\” Well, a new cartoon cephalopod has come to town, and his name is Oswald the octopus. Voicing the title character on \”Oswald,\” Nickelodeon\’s new addition to its children\’s line-up, is a Valley boy who has been a popular actor since childhood, Fred Savage.\n\n
Jewish prayer is a spiritual discipline for regaining wonder each day. One hundred times a day we are instructed to stop and recite a bracha recognizing the miraculous in each moment of life.
One of the most engrossing reality-based television shows is the thrice-weekly KLCS public broadcasting program, \”Conversation with Roy Romer.\” Unlike \”Survivor\” and \”Temptation Island,\” where contestants wearing cruise and safari garb compete against each other and the weather, \”Conversation\” features little more than a white-haired man in a black suit talking to off-camera live callers wearing who knows what. Nevertheless, the sharks are out. Romer is superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), and what is at stake on the show is the education of some 700,000 Los Angeles children.
Nostalgia for Bill Clinton? Don\’t say I didn\’t warn you. Even as George W. Bush takes office, the Jewish community is weeping sentimental tears for the almost lethally charismatic president who, in the words of The Forward, \”had come to embody the hopes of Jewish liberals in America and Israel during the 1990s.\” Clinton, who is no stranger to schmaltz, had policy wonks and foreign affairs careerists alike publicly weeping when he chose the Israel Policy Institute as the site of his last address last week, hinting that yet one more attempt at an Arab-Israeli solution was still in the works.
God spoke to me once when I was 12 years old. Although it happened years ago, I remember it as clearly as if it were today. Revelation is a tricky thing. I am reminded of the Midrash that when God gave the commandments at Mt. Sinai, God speaks to the Children of Israel in a divine voice so powerful they are too terrified to hear anything beyond the very first word of the first commandment. Since even that was too much to bear, God arranged it so they only heard the first letter of the first word. The first word is Anohi (\”I am\”), and the first letter is an alef, which is silent. So the rabbis teach us that what the Jewish people heard when God spoke was the Divine Silence of the mitzvot. Within that Divine Silence, each woman and man experienced her or his own unique divine revelation.
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