MARTY KAPLAN: Dear NSA (NSFW)
Marty Kaplan

By Marty Kaplan

We really have no idea what websites you’ve been visiting. If we’d wanted to know whether you’ve been cruising men4men, we’d have gotten a warrant from the Fisa court.

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What I want for Father’s Day
Lifestyle

by Howard March

If you’ve never had a tooth extracted, I can assure you that it is everything you’d imagine and more, especially since I opted out of the general anesthesia that would’ve rendered me unconscious during the procedure.

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Men who made a mark that will endure
Opinion

By Rabbi David Wolpe

A generation comes and another goes: True enough, but not all generations are alike. Experiences shape some in ways that are unrepeatable. Gil Glazer, Jona Goldrich, Max Webb and Parviz Nazarian are part of a unique generation.

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Respect, inclusion and tolerance at the Western Wall
Opinion

'There are no villains in this story.” Those were the calming words of Natan Sharansky, renowned human rights champion and Chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel.

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The death of your privacy
Greenberg's View

By Steve Greenberg

Editorial cartoon

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Letters to the Editor: Dennis Prager, gun control and BDS
Letters to the Editor

In a bizarre attack on diversity under the guise of defending “historical truth,” Dennis Prager denounced a music critic who once made the “mistake” of writing that Debussy, Bartok and Stravinsky were more important composers than Prager’s beloved Haydn and Handel (“CA: The Left’s Laboratory,” June 7). He seemingly fails to understand that the issue is a matter of opinion, not “historical truth.”

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Survivor: Lidia Budgor
Lifestyle

By Jane Ulman

The cattle car pulled up to the Auschwitz platform. As the doors opened, German soldiers with guns and barking dogs began pushing out the more than 100 Jews arriving from the Lodz Ghetto.

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My Single Peeps: Renata R.
My Single Peeps

by Seth Menachem

Woven into the right side of Renata’s curly hair are white strands stripped of color. She has vitiligo, but it didn’t reveal itself until she was under some stress about four years ago. I love how it looks.

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‘Because I say so’: Parashat Chukat (Numbers 19:1-22:1)
Torah Portion

by Rabbi Michael Barclay

“This is the decree [chukat] of the Torah” (Numbers 19:2). Isn’t it amazing how, as we get older, our parents seem to become wise?

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Abraham
Poetry

by Bill Yarrow

I came late to sunrise. The hills were lit
with goats. Everything shimmered in
small steps. I closed my eyes.

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Crossword Puzzle: June 14, 2013
Crossword

by David Benkof

Can you solve this?

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South African Jews find a home in L.A.
Los Angeles

By Tom Teicholz

How far can you travel in less than an hour? All the way to Capetown, South Africa, and back, if you are talking to Leora Raikin, a third-generation South African Jew who has lived in Los Angeles for the past 15 years.

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Welcome to rehab city
Los Angeles

by Jared Sichel

At 9:30 a.m. on a recent Tuesday morning, six men in their 20s and 30s were sitting on leather chairs in a cozy, dimly lit room in a nondescript Miracle Mile building, sharing with one another and two therapists their progress in transitioning from a life of addiction to what they hope will be a clean future.

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Lights out (and sirens off) for Hatzolah?
Los Angeles

By Jonah Lowenfeld

In March 2011, Hatzolah of Los Angeles, the Orthodox Jewish volunteer emergency response corps, celebrated its 10th anniversary in this city.

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Outstanding Graduate: Daniel Schwartz — Grad’s goal: A better world
Graduation

by Kylie Jane Wakefield

Tis the graduation season, but unlike most 17-year-olds wrapping up their high school careers in recent days and weeks, Daniel Schwartz knows exactly what he wants to do with his life.

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Moving and Shaking: Ziering family honored, IRF elects new president, JFS honors former president
Los Angeles

By Ryan Torok

Temple Beth Am honored the Ziering family for its generosity to the Los Angeles Jewish community, Israel, the arts and numerous philanthropic organizations around the world on May 29 with a concert gala that featured performances by Placido Domingo, Melissa Manchester and Cantor Magda Fishman.

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UC Regents nominee supports BDS
Nation

By Tom Tugend

Sadia Saifuddin, a junior at UC Berkeley, has been nominated to become a student member of the powerful University of California Board of Regents, the governing body that determines policies for the 10-campus system.

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Right-wing settlement activist speaks up
Los Angeles

By Ryan Torok

The director and co-founder of the Israel Land Fund (ILF), a right-wing, Israel-based pro-settler group, told a small crowd of hawkish Israel supporters that “Arabs are eating the sovereignty of Israelis in our capital” during a local event on June 6.

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Thousand Oaks rabbi leaves post
Los Angeles

by Jared Sichel, Staff Writer

Rabbi Ted Riter of Temple Adat Elohim (TAE) in Thousand Oaks officially ended his tenure at the Reform synagogue on May 1, and in a subsequent Facebook post announced that he no longer intends to continue in a similar post.

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EU envoy targets settlements
Israel

by Ron Kampeas, JTA

Israel’s settlement building is increasingly isolating the country in Europe, leading to European Union policies that could reinforce Israel’s delegitimization, according to the top EU representative to the peace process.

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Google buys Israel’s Waze to protect mobile maps lead
Science & Technology

Reuters

Google Inc bought Israeli mapping startup Waze on Tuesday for an undisclosed sum, acquiring an online real-time mapping service to safeguard its own lead in one of the most crucial aspects of smartphone usage.

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Women added to rabbinical judge selection committee
Israel

JTA

Four spots on the committee that appoints religious judges in Israel will be reserved for women under a new Knesset law.

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Senate bids to add kosher food to emergency food distribution
Nation

JTA

An amendment under consideration in the U.S. Senate would add kosher food to emergency food assistance.

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U.S. finds long-lost diary of top Nazi leader, Hitler aide
Nation

by John Shiffman, Reuters

The U.S. government has recovered 400 pages from the long-lost diary of Alfred Rosenberg, a confidant of Adolf Hitler who played a central role in the extermination of millions of Jews and others during World War II.

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Can dance maverick Millepied make it up to L.A.?

By Danielle Berrin

Of the many upbeat ways to describe the dance culture in Los Angeles — “hungry,” “pioneering,” “innovative,” “risk taking” — it is probably best characterized as striving. Even the most enthused of local enthusiasts admit there is something unrealized about the dance scene here, which is really a polite way of saying that it is lacking.

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What is Judaism in a ‘post-ethnic’ world?
Books

By Jonathan Kirsch

The ongoing public conversation about the future of American Judaism is embodied in a small library of recent books, many of which have been considered here. None of them, however, offers quite the same potent brew of courage, clarity, passion and expertise as Shaul Magid’s “American Post-Judaism: Identity and Renewal in a Postethnic Society” (Indiana University Press, $40), a scholarly but also visionary book about what it means to be a Jew in America today.

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Secret suffering of ‘Kindertransport’ survivors

By Naomi Pfefferman

Around the time that British playwright Diane Samuels was pregnant with her second child in the early 1990s, she was intrigued by a television documentary on the Kindertransport, the evacuation of 10,000 Jewish children from Nazi Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia to foster homes in Britain, where most would never see their parents again.

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Jewish roots of the ‘Man of Steel’
Culture

by Michael Aushenker

Seventy-five years after bursting into the world of comic books, something still feels Jewish about Superman.

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Crowdsource your Simcha
Celebrations/Simchas

by Lilit Marcus, JTA

When Amanda Melpolder began planning her wedding to Jeff Greenberg, she hoped the ceremony would be unlike others.

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Getting ready for baby
Celebrations/Simchas

by Kylie Jane Wakefield

Rabbi Julia Weisz found herself in a bit of a conundrum when she became an expectant mother.

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Bands enter b’nai mitzvah music mix
Celebrations/Simchas

by Rachel Wizenfeld

While b’nai mitzvah parties have long featured DJs to mix tunes and rouse the crowd, some celebrants are choosing something else: teen bands.

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Calendar Picks and Clicks: June 15-21
Picks and Clicks

By Ryan Torok

American Jewish University’s inaugural arts festival begins with an evening of contemporary dance with BODYTRAFFIC and the L.A. Dance Project, directed by Benjamin Millepied, a choreographer best known for his work on “Black Swan.”

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Obituaries
Obituaries

Obituaries

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