Rabbi David Ellenson, immediate past president of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR), and Sue Neuman Hochberg, chair of the HUC-JIR Western Region Board of Overseers, were honored with a musical tribute at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel on Feb. 9.
Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky will not make a bid for the seat currently held by retiring Congressman Henry Waxman (D – Beverly Hills).
The campaign to succeed long-serving L.A. County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky in the 3rd District reveals much about how Los Angeles Jewish politics is evolving.
Some months ago, L.A. County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky was “cruising Boyle Heights,” the neighborhood where he grew up and where a large portion of Los Angeles’ Jewish community once lived. Feeling nostalgic, he drove by B’nai Jacob Synagogue — once known as the Fairmont Street Shul — and recalled that some of his parents’ students had celebrated their bar mitzvahs there.
Photographs of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa play on a large screen. In one photograph, he’s with Israeli President Shimon Peres. In others, he is visiting the Western Wall, walking at a kibbutz and greeting Israeli soldiers.
There was a moment that took place last week in this community that, if you didn’t witness it, you need to hear about it.
When Cain killed Abel, the Bible recorded it as the first murder in history. But the rabbis commented, this is more than murder. Abel’s murder opened the jaws of genocide. For when Cain killed Abel, it wasn’t Abel alone that died.\n
When theater producers Pierson Blaetz and Whitney Weston established Friends of Fairfax to help Fairfax High School in 1998, they came up with the Melrose Trading Post, a flea market held every weekend in the high school’s parking lot. But the annual $200,000 from the Trading Post has not been enough to help Fairfax High cover the shortfall it’s currently facing due to statewide cuts in education spending.
When theater producers Pierson Blaetz and Whitney Weston established Friends of Fairfax to help Fairfax High School in 1998, they came up with the Melrose Trading Post, a flea market held every weekend in the high school’s parking lot. But the annual $200,000 from the Trading Post has not been enough to help Fairfax High cover the shortfall it’s currently facing due to statewide cuts in education spending.
The news is bittersweet. On the one hand a public servant who has dedicated nearly forty years of his life to the Los Angeles community will be unburdened from the demands of a public that wants him virtually every day and night of the week (whether it’s this group’s board meeting or that neighborhood council or the major donor who would like to “show him off” to friends), Zev Yaroslavsky has led a career of rarely saying no to his constituents. On the other hand, Los Angeles will be losing the chance to elect the one potential mayoral candidate that might have set our fiscal house in order.
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