Preventing human trafficking: You can help. Here are some guidelines:
Cover Story

by Elissa Barrett and Kevin Kish

Be aware. Trafficking victims are everywhere, and they often exhibit characteristics similar to victims of domestic violence and sexual abuse.

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His Holiness Mirza Masroor Ahmad
Rob Eshman

By Rob Eshman

Before His Holiness Mirza Masroor Ahmad, leader of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, entered the gilded ballroom of the Montage Beverly Hills last Saturday afternoon, a spokesman took the microphone and explained the rules to the 500 or so acolytes, dignitaries and invited guests.

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Hawking and Mohammed
David Suissa

By David Suissa

There was so much Jewish outrage last week in the wake of Professor Steven Hawking’s decision to join the academic boycott against Israel, it’s hard to know where to start.

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The day the Earth stood stupid
Marty Kaplan

By Marty Kaplan

Say goodnight, Earthlings. That message — plus the slimmest of shots at an eleventh-hour reprieve — was announced to the people of the world last week.

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The Shavuot Challenge: Connecting Liberal American Jewish Males to Jewishness

By Shmuel Rosner

Shavuot is a great time to think about intermarriage, conversion and what it means to be Jewish. A new JPPI paper which examines families with one (male) Jewish parent gives us a lot of food for thought on these matters.

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Character references: Eric Garcetti
Opinion

By Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

In a few weeks, Eric Garcetti might become Los Angeles’ youngest mayor in more than a century. When Eric was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford University from 1993 to 1996, we were close friends and he was a regular at my L’Chaim Society.

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Character reference: Wendy Greuel
Opinion

by Janice Kamenir-Reznik

I have known Wendy Greuel for almost 30 years, since she was a young UCLA graduate working for Mayor Tom Bradley.

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A voter’s eye view of the Los Angeles election
Raphael Sonenshein

By Raphael J. Sonenshein

This year, for the first time, the Pat Brown Institute at CSU Los Angeles went into the polling field.

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Ditto
Greenberg's View

By Steve Greenberg

Editorial cartoon

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Letters to the Editor: Shavuot, Syria, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, more
Letters to the Editor

Congratulations on a fine Shavuot cover story by Susan Freudenheim (“Becoming Jewish: Tales From the Mikveh,” May 10). Henceforth, I may well recommend it to conversion candidates who come to Judaism through our cross-denominational Bet Din.

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Crossword Puzzle: May 17, 2013
Crossword

by David Benkof

Can you solve this?

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Poem: Here Today
Poetry

by Esther Cohen

God is here today. She is a spectacular god...

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Survivor: Irene Rosenberg
Lifestyle

By Jane Ulman

“Mommy, I’ll be right back.” Irene Rosenberg — then Irene Grunfeld — said as she was leaving the apartment of her cousin Mancy Weiss, where she and her mother were staying temporarily.

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The ordeal of the Sotah: Parashat Naso (Numbers 4:21-7:89)
Torah Portion

By Rabbi Anne Brener

In the late ’70s, I carried a beeper when it was my turn to be on call for a rape-victim helpline. One evening I had it clipped to my jacket during a faculty meeting at the community college where I taught.

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A shandah at Mount Zion
Opinion

By LiAmi Lawrence

After the Los Angeles Times recently published a piece by Hector Becerra on the deplorable conditions of the Mount Zion Cemetery in East Los Angeles (the subject of a Jewish Journal investigation in the May 10, 2013, issue, as well), I joined with others in the Jewish community to express my disgust — not only over the conditions of the cemetery but also over the fact that leaders of our community knew about the problem and chose to ignore it.

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Knesset, American style
Live from the Arab Spring

by Linda Gradstein, The Media Line

The Israeli parliament, or Knesset, is quiet on Sundays. The plenum does not meet, and the carpeted hallways are silent. But at the end of one corridor, in Room 2021, there’s a lot of foot traffic in and out of Rabbi Dov Lipman’s office.

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Wrestling with it: U.S. vs. Iran
Nation

by Alan Abrahamson

Iran is a mainstay in international wrestling. The United States has a long and proud wrestling history, too.

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Is Obama George W. — or even Nixon? The secrecy factor
Nation

by Ron Kampeas, JTA

The Obama administration has in recent weeks suffered a 1-2-3 scandal outbreak.

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City of Hope: A match made in … Israel
Los Angeles

by Jared Sichel

When Joseph Mandel went to City of Hope in Duarte after his diagnosis with acute myelogenous leukemia (AML) in 2009, he remembers his doctor giving him a very clear message: “If we don’t find you a donor — like, in a year — you might not be here.”

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Elul and Jewish pluralism
Los Angeles

By Roberto Loiederman

A typical study session for Elul, a pluralistic Israel-based beit midrash (house of study), doesn’t confine itself to a discussion of Abraham’s journey in Genesis.

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Larry Dubey is a consultant in courage
Los Angeles

by Benji Rosen

Larry Dubey had every right to give up. The active and outdoorsy Mar Vista resident suffered a catastrophic snowboarding accident at Mammoth Mountain four years ago.

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Helping teens face cancer
Los Angeles

by Kylie Jane Wakefield

When Tammy Kaitz’s son, Dylan Crane, was diagnosed with cancer eight years ago, the two started going to meetings of the support group Teen Impact at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.

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Moving and Shaking: Foster Mother’s Day, ‘Woman of the 21st Century’ award winner named
Los Angeles

By Ryan Torok

More than 1,200 youths and their foster parents from Los Angeles County participated in Foster Mother’s Day on May 12, a day filled with food, carnival games, arts and crafts, and a clothing boutique and beauty.

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AJU gets Hillary Clinton
Los Angeles

By Ryan Torok

Hillary Clinton — former secretary of state, U.S. senator from New York and first lady — will take the stage at the 2013 American Jewish University’s (AJU) Public Lecture Series this summer.

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Autism musical sells out
Los Angeles

Jewish Journal

Normally, a two-day run is nothing to boast about — but no one who saw the new musical “A Chorus Line of Another Kind” at the Highways Performance space in Santa Monica would say it was anything but a resounding success.

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Son of ‘Pacific Standard Time’
Tommywood

By Tom Teicholz

It’s back! Remember long ago in those dark days of 2011, when “Pacific Standard Time,” the Getty-sponsored initiative, got more than 60 cultural organizations throughout Southern California to shine a light on the impact of Los Angeles’ art scene between 1945 and 1980?

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Filmmakers reveal magician’s secretive world

By Naomi Pfefferman

A British journalist recalls how she once sat down at a cafe with the legendary magician, author, historian, actor and, perhaps, the greatest sleight-of-hand artist on the planet in the documentary “Deceptive Practices: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay.”

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Allan Sherman: Funny music, sad life
Books

By Jonathan Kirsch

On an otherwise unremarkable day in 1938, a chubby but charming student at John Burroughs Junior High in Los Angeles “cracked the code of his comic gift and discovered his life’s work,” as we learn in “Overweight Sensation: The Life and Comedy of Allan Sherman” by Mark Cohen (Brandeis, $29.95), a penetrating biography by a savvy observer of show business.

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Rachel Frenkel: Mezzo’s Kibbutz roots
Culture

By Tom Tugend

It’s a long way from Kibbutz Dalia, where Rachel Frenkel was raised, to the Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles, but the mezzo-soprano is completing that journey this week.

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‘The Property’: Graphic in gray areas
Culture

by Michael Aushenker

Rutu Modan’s recently released graphic novel, “The Property,” is the latest in a long line of works using the medium to express the Jewish experience.

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Read this article, bubala!
Culture

by Jon E. Drucker

Back in the 1970s, when I attended the freshly integrated Fairfax High School, black and Chicano gangs would spar in the lunch yard. I used to joke that we Jews should also form a gang.

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Cellist’s path to Judaism
Religion

by Kylie Jane Wakefield

When cellist Lynn Harrell would play “Kol Nidre” at his synagogue on Yom Kippur, he felt more than the notes and the melody. It was through the music that he discovered he wanted to become a Jew.

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Calendar: May 18–24
Picks and Clicks

By Ryan Torok

Events throughout Los Angeles. Food festival, Shavuot activities, Allan Sherman and more.

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Obituaries: May 16-23
Obituaries

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